This coming Tuesday is July 4th
And on this particular 4th of July our country will have been in existence 230 years.
Ours is a great nation because it has been built upon the principles of Scripture. Our very law is gleaned from the pages of the Old Testament, and many of it’s principles were based upon God’s Word.
Therefore, it’s not surprising that the opening words of the Declaration of Independence declare that they held “these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”
Our nation’s forefather’s found that Scripture spoke about freedom… and so they determined that this new nation would be dedicated to creating that atmosphere. They forsaw America to be a place where freedom would be the foundation of everything they sought to do.
Because of that determination, we in America have been blessed with many freedoms that other nations don’t have. But even with that foundation for our country, there is one freedom that America cannot give it’s citizens. In fact, no government on the face of the earth can supply the freedom that Jesus talked about in John 8.
ILLUS: Back in the 80’s Ann Landers wrote about her experience as a newspaper “answer lady.” People would write to her with their problems and ask advice on how to deal with their children, their spouses, their bosses, etc.
In her book, Landers explained that one of the most difficult things that people struggled with is guilt and shame. “I’ve received letters brimming with self-recrimination - letters that prove no punishment is so painful as the self-inflicted kind. Here are a few examples:
‘I let my boyfriend go too far. Now, when he sees me, he looks the other way. I’m so ashamed of myself I could just die.’
‘I threw a dish towel in my mother-in-law’s face. She was trying to be helpful and I lost my temper. I hate myself.’
‘I got caught cheating in a history exam today. All the kids know about it. I feel rotten.’
(“The Ann Landers Encyclopedia A to Z”)
No matter how many freedoms our nation gives us, it can not give us the freedom from the shame and guilt imposed upon us by our sins.
Jesus said: John 8:34 "I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.”
Or as Proverbs 5:22 tells us “evil deeds… ensnare him; the cords of his sin hold him fast.”
Hazel Felleman wrote a poem about this:
"I wish there were some wonderful place
Called the Land of Beginning Again
Where all our mistakes, and all our heartaches
And all our selfish griefs
Could be cast like a shabby old coat at the door
And never be put on again"
I. The Bible teaches us that sin has a terrible ability to dominate our lives. To drag us down… to destroy us.
Titus 3:3 tells us that “At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another.”
Or as Romans 6:17 puts it: “…you used to be slaves to sin…”
Notice… “you used to be”
That implies that something has changed. Something is different. But what?
Jesus said– “… if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” John 8:36
That is the promise of Christ. That’s our birthright as Christians.
But as real as that promise is…
as faithful as Jesus will be in keeping it
it is a reality that many Christians (even those who understand the promise Jesus gave that day) still struggle with guilt and shame.
They may have believed, repented, confessed Jesus as their Lord and been baptized into Christ…
but they’ve done something that has tripped them up. Something they believe God would never forgive them of. Or perhaps they’re struggling with a sin that they just can’t quite handle.
They believe that they’ve gone over the edge – and they’ll never make it back into God’s graces
Don Francisco once wrote about this in a song. He said that he’d once sinned so badly that: “I was so far down that even up looked wrong”
For many Christians there is a nagging question: “How could God ever forgive me? I’ve really messed up as a Christian. How could He ever forgive me? How could He ever forget what I’ve done?”
II. Now, this type of thinking is based upon a very human concept
There is a word that has become quite popular in our culture lately that describes it. That word is “Karma.” How many of you have ever heard that word? (most raised their hands).
Karma is the belief that you get what you deserve:
If you’ve done good things, then you’ll be rewarded with good things
But if you’ve done bad things… you’re going to pay big time.
Every world religion is based upon that fundamental idea.
Even the Bible teaches something like that.
Galatians 6:7 says “Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.”
In other words: You get what you deserve.
However, there is one distinct difference between this concept of Karma and what Jesus taught.
Other world religions teach that you can work off your “bad Karma”. They teach that you really can do enough good to outweigh the bad.
ILLUS: (At this point I brought out a “balance” Scale – the type with two trays balanced by a center post).
Karma is the teaching that life is like this scales. If you do evil things (put items on one side) your life goes out of balance. So, you need to do good things (put items on other side so that scales are equal) to create a healthy balance. The more bad things you do (add more items to the “sin” side), the more good things you have to do to balance out the scale (add more items to the “good” side).
Now, there are a couple of problems with this mindset.
1st – if you end up doing too many “bad” things in your life… you may never be able to balance out the scales. Islam has particular problems with this because they actually place much of their hope in heaven upon how much good they can do. But if you ask most Muslims if they are “sure” they are going to heaven… they’ll reply that they can never be confident of that. They never know if they’ve done enough good things to outweigh the bad.
Hinduism and Buddhism cling heavily to this concept of Karma, and they have long realized that many people commit way too many bad deeds in their lives to be balanced out by good deeds in a single life time. So they’ve developed the concept of going into “extra innings.” Since one life time could never be enough for most people to make up for their bad Karma, they have to come back for another life… and another life… and another life… until they finally are able to pay off their evil and leave this world.
The 2nd problem with this idea of Karma is that it never really “removes” any of the sin from a person’s life. Karma teaches that when you’ve put bad deeds on one side of the scale you have to put good ones on the other side.
Now if I did that with this scale here… and I put increasingly heavier loads on both sides of the balance… what would eventually happen?
That’s right, the scales would break.
And that is what can happen to people who rely too heavily on balancing the spiritual scales of their lives. Many eventually find that they’ve loaded the scales down so dramatically that they break. There becomes too much weight for the scales of their conscience to handle, and this can literally cripple them mentally.
ILLUS: The famed psychiatrist Karl Menninger, once said that if he could convince the patients in psychiatric hospitals that their sins were forgiven, 75% of them could walk out the next day.
Karma doesn’t work. It can’t really solve the pain of our guilt and shame, because it doesn’t deal with the root cause
ILLUS: A man named Bono is the lead singer of a popular rock group U2. He once made this observation:
"At the center of all religions is the idea of Karma. You know: what you put out comes back to you: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, or in physics-in physical laws-every action is met by an equal or an opposite one… And yet, along comes this idea called Grace to upend all that. . . . Love interrupts, if you like, the consequences of your actions, which in my case is very good news indeed, because I’ve done a lot of stupid stuff."
Now, I don’t know if Bono is a Christian, or if he claims to be one… but he’s nailed this.
God will forgive us our sins – not because we deserve it, or have done enough good to outweigh our sins.
God will forgive us for only one reason: He loves us
Do you need proof of that? Romans 8:32 tells us: “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all— how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?”
God has already proven His love for us. He gave us His son to die for our sins even we were His enemies… while we were yet sinners – we didn’t deserve that either!!!
He loves us so much He was willing to forgive us for all our past sins… don’t you think He would be willing to continue to forgive us because of that same love?
III. BUT THERE IS A CATCH
Look again with me at John 8:31-32
“To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, ‘If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’”
Did you notice the catch?
"If you HOLD to my teaching… then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."
“HOLD” to his teaching. The Greek word here gives the idea of “remaining”, “abiding”, “tarrying” – “hanging around”
So, how do I “hang around” the teachings of Jesus? Well, it’s not that hard. God made it very uncomplicated for us. Hanging around the teachings of Jesus is as simple as
· Reading my Bible… especially when I don’t have to.
· Spending time in intimate prayer with God. Not just sending up “drive by” prayers that are focused on needs and requests… but actually spending time with God telling Him about your dreams and your hopes. Sharing with Him what is on your heart.
· Going to church… and while at church…
o Examining my heart at the communion table to see if there is any hidden sins I’ve not confessed to Him over the past week.
o Examining my life as the sermon is preached. I have particular advantage over the rest of you, because I’ve already spent the entire week running this Scripture over my own life, examining how it applies to me.
(pause…)
I’ve often talked with people who struggle with the decision to become a Christian. I spoke a young woman several weeks ago that told me: “I’m afraid that once I’ve been baptized I’ll go back to sinning and then God won’t forgive me because I’ve failed Him.”
I replied “Oh, honey, I don’t think you understand. All new Christians encounter that potential difficulty.” And then I asked her if she had ever learned to skate.
How many of you here have ever skated?
When you first learned to skate, did you ever fall down? Of course you did.
Now, if you were to go skating today, do you think you’d fall down as much now as you did at first? Probably not.
Have you ever watched professional skaters? Did those professionals ever fall down? Of course they did… but they fell down less often than you or I would (and they do it much more spectacularly).
That’s the same as it is with us when we become Christians
When we first give our lives to Christ, we still struggled with sin… we fell down a lot. But the more time we spent with Jesus: being in church, going to Bible study, praying – we “fell down” far less often.
And if we spend lots of time with Jesus, we’ll hardly fall down at all… but we will anyway!
The Apostle John wrote: “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.” 1 John 1:8
In other words: if we as Christians say we never fall down – we’re not kidding anybody… least of all God.
So, what do we do when we DO sin???
Well, John continues: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” 1 John 1:9
Bette Midler once said “I have my standards. They may be low, but I have them."
To confess my sins to God is to say to Him: my standards don’t matter. They’re not good enough.
Confessing my sins means that I ADMIT I have fallen below God’s standards.
Confessing my sins to God means that I AGREE with God that we shouldn’t have done whatever I’ve done. It means:
1. To refuse to make excuses. My sin wasn’t my spouse’s fault. My sin wasn’t my kids fault. I didn’t do something bad because of my parents… etc.
2. To refuse to allow myself to compare myself with someone else’s sinfulness. To say “Yeah, I did something bad, but I’m not nearly as sinful as my neighbor!”
3. To refuse to try to a good face on this on my sin. “Yeah, I did a bad thing, but I could have done worse.”
Confessing my sin means I admit I was wrong, and I know it was wrong, AND I CAN’T FIX THE PROBLEM by myself.
Too often, though, instead of confessing our sins, we try to hide them.
ILLUS: I recently read the story of Fantasia Barrino, a recent winner of the “American Idol” TV show (Guideposts, July06). In that story, she told of a terrible sin she’d committed as a teenager: “One might I was hanging out with one of my cool new friends. We paid a guy to go into a store and get us some liquor. The first sip burned my lips and throat but I swallowed it down and followed it with another quickly to keep from coughing. Pretty soon we were drunk.
The next day I was terribly sick. ‘I’m sorry God,’ I kept saying. ‘This isn’t me.’
I curled myself up in bed, trying to make myself invisible. If God couldn’t see me, maybe he wouldn’t be disappointed in me.”
Now that sounds so silly. To believe we can “hide” from God… but I’ve caught myself doing things just about as silly.
I remember not so long ago when I was “confessing” something to God that I wasn’t particularly proud of. And I was being fairly frank with God about what I’d done. But then, a thought came into my mind:
“I’ve got to be careful what I say, because those words might be used against me on judgment day.”
How may of you have ever felt like that? (many raised their hands). Good, I don’t feel so bad then.
MY TEMPTATION WAS TO CONCEAL MY GUILT BY NOT PUTTING IT INTO WORDS! But then I realized how foolish that was. It didn’t matter what I said to God about what I’d done or thought … He already knew it ANYWAY. And it wouldn’t make any difference whether I verbalized it or not - if He wanted to use it against me on judgment day… who’s gonna stop Him!!
But Proverbs tells us that God won’t use our confessions against us.
He doesn’t want to hurt us
He doesn’t want to sneak up on us unaware and humiliate us or destroy us.
Proverbs 28:13 tells us “He who conceals his sins does not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them finds mercy.”
God wants to give us His mercy… but the only way that mercy will be given is if we own up to our guilt. If we admit to our sin.
Often people will ask “How many times will God forgive me when we sin?”
Peter once asked Jesus how many times he had to forgive someone else. And do you remember what Jesus answered? 70 * 7 … 490 times. Do you realize that by the time we forgave somebody that many times… we’d probably forget what they’d done to offend us the first time?
But now, think about this: If God holds us to that standard in our lives… don’t you think God Himself would hold Himself to a much higher standard when it came to our sins???
ILLUS: Back in Bible College, one of my professors marveled at the teaching of 1 John 1:9 - “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”
He told us that the Greek in that verse spoke of God “continually” forgiving us each time we confessed our sins. He compared it to driving his car down the road in the rain. He asked “what would I do if rain was coming down on my windshield? I’d turn on the windshield wipers. And would the windshield wipers just brush once across the window and then stop? No! They would wipe back and forth as long as I needed them to. That’s what I John 1:7 is saying about the forgiveness of God. It is as continuous as we need to deal with the shame of our sins.”
CLOSE: One the reasons people don’t confess their sins to God is that they believe that once God “finds out” what they’d done, God wouldn’t forgive them. But of course… that’s foolish – there isn’t anything God doesn’t see or hear. You can’t HIDE your sin from God.
All we lose, by not confessing our sins to Him, is the freedom He can give us from the shackles of shame and guilt that come from those sins.
Max Lucado tells the story about the boy who was shooting rocks with a slingshot. He could never hit his target. One day when he was in his Grandma’s backyard he spied her pet duck. On impulse he took aim and let fly. The stone hit, and the duck was dead.
The boy panicked and hid the bird in the woodpile, only to look up and see his sister watching. After lunch that day, Grandma told Sally to help with the dishes. Sally responded, “Johnny told me he wanted to help in the kitchen today. Didn’t you Johnny?” And she whispered to him, “Remember the duck!”
So, Johnny did the dishes. What choice did he have? For the next several weeks he was at the sink often. Sometimes for his duty, sometimes for his sin. “Remember the duck,” Sally’d whisper when he objected.
After a while tho’ he grew so weary of the chore, he decided that any punishment would be better than washing more dishes, so he confessed to killing duck.
"I know, Johnny," his Grandma said, giving him a hug. "I was standing at the window and saw the whole thing. Because I love you, I forgave you. I wondered how long you would let Sally make a slave out of you.”
He thought his confession would destroy him… when in reality the one who loved him was only waiting for him to admit his sin so he could receive freedom from his guilt.
OTHER SERMONS IN THIS SERIES (Got Questions?)
* Do I Qualify For Heaven? Matthew 22:1-22:14
* Freedom From Guilt. John 8:31-8:36
* How Can I Know God’s Will For My Life? Romans 12:1-12:8
* What are you like, God? Isaiah 6:1-6:7
* God, why do you allow suffering? 2 Corinthians 12:1-12:10
