Introduction:
- Men must be persuaded by the Holy Spirit of their Guilt. (Romans 8:1-2)
- Believers must be persuaded by the Holy Spirit of their Innocence. (Romans 8:3-4)
Review: 2 Peter 1:21 | John 14:16 | Col 2:13
Review: Lev 16 | John 8:3-11
Guest Speaker - Mark Ort (HBCPN Elder)
Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANK
Hint: Highlight blanks above for answers!
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Mark Ort:
00:00-00:02
I've been feeling a little guilty about something.
Mark Ort:
00:03-00:11
You and I had a discussion a couple weeks ago about why do I take an hour to speak.
Mark Ort:
00:13-00:15
Do you want to tell everybody why I speak for an hour?
Pastor Jeff:
00:16-00:17
Yeah, I would be glad to.
Pastor Jeff:
00:18-00:24
Because I've been guilty of this too, as you know, and this is something that I've actually saw outside help.
Pastor Jeff:
00:24-00:27
This is it, I've seen outside help in correcting this problem.
Pastor Jeff:
00:27-00:39
The reason the market I would tend to go long is we would do Bible study for Christmas and Friday, and that was sometimes two and a half or three hours of preaching a day.
Pastor Jeff:
00:40-00:44
And sometimes, you know, it would be like the time just flew by.
Pastor Jeff:
00:44-00:51
So when they're preaching and sharing the Word, it's like, wow, it's, you know, we started at seven and it's like 9.30 already.
Pastor Jeff:
00:51-01:02
So, when you're used to every week preaching for two and a half, three hours every week, you have to understand, you can ask that, it's like a teamwork, you need to preach for a half hour.
Pastor Jeff:
01:03-01:07
A half hour feels like about three minutes after that normal thing.
Pastor Jeff:
01:07-01:10
So, I'm doing that too.
Pastor Jeff:
01:10-01:12
Like I said, I'm getting a lot of counseling on that.
Pastor Jeff:
01:12-01:14
I have a good pastor friend of mine down in Florida.
Mark Ort:
01:15-01:19
When you brought that up a couple weeks ago, I can't believe that I didn't even think of that.
Mark Ort:
01:20-01:28
It's like you go in, like I would go in at six o'clock, and it would be 8.30, quarter to nine, and they'd be calling for us to leave.
Mark Ort:
01:28-01:30
I'm thinking, man, that went really fast.
Mark Ort:
01:31-01:35
So for me to condense something down into 40 minutes is just like, it's not happening, I'm sorry.
Mark Ort:
01:36-01:36
(laughs)
Mark Ort:
01:37-01:37
Today-- - I'm gonna
Pastor Jeff:
01:37-01:38
pray for you right now for that.
Mark Ort:
01:39-01:48
Today I'm going to, I have my phone here, so I'm gonna watch the time, and it has the potential of going long, but I'm gonna try to keep it to 40 minutes.
Mark Ort:
01:49-01:55
Okay, today we're gonna look at a great passage of Scripture in Romans.
Mark Ort:
01:55-02:03
So if you turn in your Bibles to Romans chapter 8, while you're turning there, I just have a couple things.
Mark Ort:
02:06-02:18
Do you ever hear this phenomenon of people who, they've committed a crime, and they don't even, they don't get caught, and they turn themselves in some years later.
Mark Ort:
02:19-02:24
like 10 years later, 15 years later, 30 years later, they turn themselves in.
Mark Ort:
02:25-02:27
There's a couple of people like that.
Mark Ort:
02:27-02:36
May of this past year, 57-year-old Charles Kugel, he confessed to abusing children 25 years ago in Oklahoma City.
Mark Ort:
02:38-02:46
Last October, a Milwaukee man told his wife that he was responsible for killing his 13-year-old neighbor 33 years ago.
Mark Ort:
02:47-02:48
He claimed that the girl was still haunting him.
Mark Ort:
02:49-02:58
A local television station in a mental health crisis center reported that somebody had called them reporting the same story.
Mark Ort:
02:58-03:03
And so the next day, Jose Ferreira was arrested for the murder.
Mark Ort:
03:04-03:12
In July of last year, a 91-year-old man confessed to a murder that occurred in 1946 in London.
Mark Ort:
03:13-03:16
That's believed to be the longest gap between a crime and its confession.
Mark Ort:
03:18-03:32
These kind of confessions, to me, they're kind of a strange phenomenon, because why in the world would you get away with something and then confess it at some time after that?
Mark Ort:
03:33-03:37
I suspect that these people are laden with guilt.
Mark Ort:
03:39-03:42
Their conscience, it's like eating away at them like acid.
Mark Ort:
03:45-03:49
A 91-year-old claimed that he wanted to clear his conscience before he died.
Mark Ort:
03:51-04:02
Guilt. I looked guilt up on the internet, and it's been known to cause crippling emotional effects such as anxiety, stress, paranoia, depression.
Mark Ort:
04:03-04:11
It can even cause physical ailments, heart disease, fatigue, things like that.
Mark Ort:
04:13-04:15
while we're confessing things that make us guilty.
Mark Ort:
04:16-04:22
When I was a kid, I was probably 12 years old, maybe 13.
Mark Ort:
04:22-04:24
And did you guys ever hear of Fisher's Big Wheel?
Mark Ort:
04:25-04:26
Nobody ever heard of Fisher's Big Wheel?
Mark Ort:
04:27-04:27
Jay?
Mark Ort:
04:27-04:28
Yeah, a couple people.
Mark Ort:
04:28-04:31
Fisher's Big Wheel was a store kind of like Kmart.
Mark Ort:
04:32-04:33
And it was real near to my house.
Mark Ort:
04:34-04:37
And I would ride my bike up there and buy baseball cards and stuff like that.
Mark Ort:
04:37-04:45
But one time, my next door neighbor, who probably was not the biggest, greatest influence of my life, he talked me into going there and stealing something.
Mark Ort:
04:47-04:49
And I was really nervous about this.
Mark Ort:
04:49-04:51
It's like, I can't believe I'm going to steal something.
Mark Ort:
04:51-04:59
We had those slot car racing tracks, and they had these little tiny slot cars that went with them, and they were real small, so they were real easy to steal.
Mark Ort:
05:00-05:06
And we were back in the aisle, and I pulled up my pant leg, because I had dingo boots on.
Mark Ort:
05:07-05:08
You know what dingo boots are?
Mark Ort:
05:09-05:13
I had bingo boots on, so I was able to shove the car down in my boot and put my pant leg down.
Mark Ort:
05:13-05:18
I'm looking around like I was guilty, because I was.
Mark Ort:
05:19-05:21
I couldn't believe I made it out of the store.
Mark Ort:
05:24-05:26
That theft haunted me for years.
Mark Ort:
05:27-05:31
I would think about it often, and I just felt so guilty about it.
Mark Ort:
05:33-05:42
When I started my job after I got out of college, I think it was the first or second paycheck, I thought, you know what, I know where the Fisher's Big Wheel headquarters is.
Mark Ort:
05:43-05:47
The Fisher's Big Wheel store was gone, but I knew where the Fisher's Big Wheel headquarters was.
Mark Ort:
05:47-05:48
It was in Newcastle.
Mark Ort:
05:48-05:55
So I thought, I'm going to drive over there, I'm going to walk in, and I'm going to pay for that thing plus interest, because it still was on my mind.
Mark Ort:
05:55-05:55
I was guilty.
Mark Ort:
05:57-06:05
I drove into the parking lot, and I saw these big signs that said, "Out of business." And I thought, oh my goodness.
Mark Ort:
06:06-06:09
Me and people like me caused them to go out of business.
Mark Ort:
06:11-06:15
But on the drive home, I thought, you know, I was guilty.
Mark Ort:
06:16-06:24
And I tried, I tried my very best to ease my guilty conscience by going there and making it right.
Mark Ort:
06:25-06:28
And I think that's a desire that we have as humans.
Mark Ort:
06:29-06:31
We have this desire in our hearts.
Mark Ort:
06:31-06:32
We want to be right.
Mark Ort:
06:32-06:33
We want to be clean.
Mark Ort:
06:34-06:35
We don't want to be guilty.
Mark Ort:
06:36-06:37
Guilt can destroy us.
Mark Ort:
06:37-06:39
It destroys us from the inside out.
Mark Ort:
06:39-06:45
And guilt can prevent us from being right.
Mark Ort:
06:47-06:48
So what about us in here?
Mark Ort:
06:49-06:51
Maybe we haven't murdered anybody.
Mark Ort:
06:51-06:55
We haven't abused children or stolen slot cars.
Mark Ort:
06:57-07:02
But aren't there maybe what we would call silent sins that we do that maybe nobody even sees?
Mark Ort:
07:04-07:10
Think about materialism, or lust, or anger.
Mark Ort:
07:11-07:14
Think things that are inside, and we feel guilty about them.
Mark Ort:
07:15-07:20
Nobody even knows about these, but they cause us shame before God, right?
Mark Ort:
07:22-07:38
So at the end of May this past year, I started a discipline a few years ago, maybe five years ago, where whenever the kids get out of school, I start a summer study on my own, and I share it with them as much as I can.
Mark Ort:
07:38-07:44
But I'll pick a book or a topic, and I'll just spend the whole summer looking at that.
Mark Ort:
07:45-07:47
And this summer happened to be Romans.
Mark Ort:
07:47-07:49
I wanted to jump back into Romans.
Mark Ort:
07:49-07:53
My favorite book in the New Testament, I jumped into Romans.
Mark Ort:
07:54-08:39
And my summer of Romans, what you're going to hear tonight or today is some of the fruit of my study in Rome, my summer in Romans, I guess my prayer in this particular scripture is that God would help us deal with feelings of guilt that might be paralyzing us. So why don't we take a moment and just open up in prayer. Heavenly Father I just pray this morning that by your Spirit, by your Holy Spirit, you would teach us in your Word what you want us to know. I pray you give us understanding. Lord help us to to understand the things that are in your Scripture, and that we would apply them by faith to our lives.
Mark Ort:
08:39-08:40
In Jesus' name, amen.
Mark Ort:
08:43-08:45
So just a couple questions pointed at you.
Mark Ort:
08:47-08:48
Do you live with guilt and shame?
Mark Ort:
08:48-08:49
You don't have to answer that.
Mark Ort:
08:49-08:50
You don't have to raise your hand or anything.
Mark Ort:
08:51-08:56
Do you live with guilt and shame over something?
Mark Ort:
08:56-09:02
Something you did wrong, something you didn't do, something you wish you would have done, you stole some attitude that you had?
Mark Ort:
09:02-09:04
Do you feel guilt, shame?
Mark Ort:
09:06-09:08
And the second thing is, do you feel condemned?
Mark Ort:
09:09-09:14
Because of your guilt, do you feel like this weight and this load of condemnation?
Mark Ort:
09:16-09:18
Then I want you to ask yourselves these questions.
Mark Ort:
09:20-09:24
Do I believe that God's Word is effective in changing people's lives?
Mark Ort:
09:25-09:27
Do I believe it's effective in changing my life?
Mark Ort:
09:28-09:34
And do I believe that God's Word is effective in changing my thinking patterns about guilt and condemnation?
Mark Ort:
09:36-09:44
Think about those for a second, and we're going to jump into God's Word and see what He says about guilt and condemnation, and how we can find freedom and relief.
Mark Ort:
09:47-09:50
I want to read the first four verses in Romans 8.
Mark Ort:
09:52-09:58
It says, "Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
Mark Ort:
09:59-10:03
For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.
Mark Ort:
10:04-10:09
For what the law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did.
Mark Ort:
10:10-10:31
God did, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and as an offering for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us "Do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit." If the men who wrote the Bible were inspired, they were inspired by God.
Mark Ort:
10:32-10:38
It says that the Word of God was inspired by God.
Mark Ort:
10:40-10:48
Men wrote down what God said, but in 2 Peter 1:21, it's the Spirit.
Mark Ort:
10:49-10:51
It was facilitated by the Spirit, the Holy Spirit.
Mark Ort:
10:53-11:09
And if you look in Romans 8, in just the first 11 or 12 verses, Holy Spirit with a capital S, capital H, capital S, the word Spirit, it occurs 11 times.
Mark Ort:
11:11-11:13
I'm sorry, 12 times.
Mark Ort:
11:15-11:16
Cheating on my notes here.
Mark Ort:
11:16-11:18
It occurs 12 times in the first 11 verses alone.
Mark Ort:
11:20-11:33
So in arguably one of the most amazing chapters in the New Testament, maybe even in the whole Bible, there's gotta be something with the role of the Holy Spirit here in us dealing with guilt.
Mark Ort:
11:35-11:38
So we must look to the Holy Spirit to find freedom and relief.
Mark Ort:
11:39-11:41
And just briefly, what is the Holy Spirit?
Mark Ort:
11:41-11:43
I'm sorry, what's the job of the Holy Spirit?
Mark Ort:
11:44-11:50
If you look in John 14, 16, it refers to the Holy Spirit as the helper, the one who comes alongside.
Mark Ort:
11:51-11:56
You know, when somebody helps you, they come alongside, you know, the roof project.
Mark Ort:
11:56-11:58
People are coming alongside and helping.
Mark Ort:
11:58-12:00
That's one of the roles of the Holy Spirit.
Mark Ort:
12:01-12:07
That would include things like, the Holy Spirit is your comforter, he's your advocate, your intercessor, and words like that.
Mark Ort:
12:08-12:09
He's your helper.
Mark Ort:
12:09-12:13
John 14, 26 refers to the Holy Spirit as your teacher.
Mark Ort:
12:15-12:15
Teacher.
Mark Ort:
12:16-12:17
What is a teacher?
Mark Ort:
12:19-12:22
We were just talking about this briefly when we were praying back here.
Mark Ort:
12:24-12:26
A teacher is someone who instructs you in the truth.
Mark Ort:
12:28-12:30
It's someone who persuades you.
Mark Ort:
12:31-12:39
And so if the Holy Spirit is one who is our teacher, He's the one who is going to persuade us, right?
Mark Ort:
12:42-12:50
So men-- this is our first point today-- men must be persuaded of their guilt.
Mark Ort:
12:52-12:54
You've got to be persuaded that you're guilty.
Mark Ort:
12:56-13:01
Wait a minute, I thought we were going to be encouraged by freedom from guilt.
Mark Ort:
13:04-13:05
We've got to be persuaded.
Mark Ort:
13:05-13:07
Men have to be persuaded that they are guilty.
Mark Ort:
13:08-13:12
I think a lot of people walk around thinking that sin is not a big deal.
Mark Ort:
13:14-13:14
It's fun.
Mark Ort:
13:15-13:16
It's what we do.
Mark Ort:
13:16-13:17
It's our culture.
Mark Ort:
13:17-13:18
It's not a big deal.
Mark Ort:
13:19-13:22
And I'm afraid that even Christians may even think that.
Mark Ort:
13:23-13:25
But I have a slide that talks about guilt.
Mark Ort:
13:26-13:31
Actually, it's just an illustration of the forensic nature of guilt.
Mark Ort:
13:33-13:39
This is the definition of guilt. It's a fact or state of having committed an offense or a crime.
Mark Ort:
13:40-13:46
Guilt is proven by forensic evidence. That is, evidence is in a court of law.
Mark Ort:
13:46-13:55
This is a legal term. It's specifically obtained by scientific methods such as ballistics, blood, DNA testing, and fingerprinting.
Mark Ort:
13:56-13:57
And you can see these up on the screen.
Mark Ort:
13:58-14:10
If you've watched any of those CSI shows or maybe you've been involved in a court case yourself, these are the kinds of things that they would use to prove that you're guilty or not.
Mark Ort:
14:11-14:12
We're establishing guilt here.
Mark Ort:
14:13-14:14
There's like shoe impressions.
Mark Ort:
14:15-14:17
You have DNA evidence, ballistics.
Mark Ort:
14:18-14:19
We have blood evidence.
Mark Ort:
14:20-14:24
If you watch the OJ Simpson trial, you know they have the famous glove.
Mark Ort:
14:24-14:26
That's forensic type stuff.
Mark Ort:
14:27-14:29
Tire tracks will be one, fingerprints.
Mark Ort:
14:30-14:32
There's things like that that establish guilt.
Mark Ort:
14:35-14:43
So if you go into your passage here in Romans 8.1, we see the word "therefore" in Romans 8.1.
Mark Ort:
14:44-14:47
And so when you see that word, you have to go backwards to see why it's there.
Mark Ort:
14:49-14:56
Leading up to Romans 8, we see that the Holy Spirit is persuading people that they are guilty.
Mark Ort:
14:59-15:06
And if you're not a believer in Christ, if you're not following the Lord, if He's not the Lord of your life, you need to listen really closely here.
Mark Ort:
15:08-15:15
You might begin to become a little nervous or maybe even shaking a little bit.
Mark Ort:
15:15-15:27
You might start to sweat because listen to the stuff that the Holy Spirit uses early in Romans to persuade people that they are guilty, forensically guilty.
Mark Ort:
15:29-15:37
In Romans 1, God's wrath is revealed against men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.
Mark Ort:
15:40-15:45
God has made himself evident to everybody, but people ignore that.
Mark Ort:
15:47-15:50
They ignore him, and Paul says that they are without excuse.
Mark Ort:
15:51-15:54
I think Romans 1 is a good description of what's happening in our culture today.
Mark Ort:
15:55-16:01
His wrath is being revealed against men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.
Mark Ort:
16:02-16:25
In Romans 2, "Because of your stubbornness," he says, "in your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath for yourself." It goes on in Romans 2, it says, "There will be tribulation and distress for every soul of man who does evil." Are you being persuaded yet?
Mark Ort:
16:26-16:27
How about in Romans 3?
Mark Ort:
16:28-16:31
There's some famous verses in Romans 3, you probably memorized some of them.
Mark Ort:
16:32-16:34
"There is none who are righteous, not even one.
Mark Ort:
16:36-16:39
All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
Mark Ort:
16:40-16:50
We have all missed the mark." So, forensically, we are all guilty of offending a holy God with our sin.
Mark Ort:
16:52-16:57
But things like murder and theft, those are things that people see, that stuff.
Mark Ort:
16:58-16:59
What about the stuff that's in your heart?
Mark Ort:
17:00-17:06
Racism, fear, hatred, lust, materialism, envy, doubt.
Mark Ort:
17:06-17:11
I could go on for like a whole hour about that.
Mark Ort:
17:12-17:13
But we're guilty of those things.
Mark Ort:
17:15-17:19
Your DNA and your fingerprints are all over that stuff.
Mark Ort:
17:19-17:20
You are guilty.
Mark Ort:
17:23-17:30
Whenever Jesus died on the cross, like our fingerprints were even on that hammer and the nails.
Mark Ort:
17:32-17:41
But this suitcase represents, I guess, the weight of guilt.
Mark Ort:
17:41-17:43
This is probably maybe even a bad analogy.
Mark Ort:
17:43-17:43
I don't know.
Mark Ort:
17:44-17:49
Whenever you're carrying guilt around, it's like lugging this thing around.
Mark Ort:
17:50-17:55
And if you're carrying it to the car because you're going on a trip and you throw it in the trunk, you can do that.
Mark Ort:
17:55-17:58
You can carry that two minutes.
Mark Ort:
17:59-18:07
You start carrying it for 10 minutes, and an hour, in an hour and a half, and now a week, a month, you're carrying this thing around, it's gonna get pretty heavy.
Mark Ort:
18:09-18:15
The weight of that guilt is a load that we were not supposed to carry.
Mark Ort:
18:16-18:24
You're not strong enough, you're not clever enough, you're not rich enough, you don't have enough friends to help you to carry this.
Mark Ort:
18:26-18:27
You shouldn't be carrying this.
Mark Ort:
18:27-18:29
You shouldn't be carrying this load of guilt around.
Mark Ort:
18:30-18:47
So imagine just carrying this around, and it's bulky, I couldn't get up the steps, you're bumping into things, but for the unbeliever, for the unbeliever, you're stuck with that.
Mark Ort:
18:48-18:57
You're gonna be carrying it around unless you're willing to come to the one who wants to bear your guilt.
Mark Ort:
18:59-19:00
And that's Jesus Christ.
Mark Ort:
19:02-19:11
Someone who is not a Christian, if you're not a Christian, you have a certificate of debt that's consisting of decrees against them.
Mark Ort:
19:13-19:18
This is a rap sheet as long as you're arm of all the things that's got to be paid for.
Mark Ort:
19:19-19:21
And you can read about that in Colossians 2.13.
Mark Ort:
19:23-19:29
I actually had this passage on our wedding bulletin.
Mark Ort:
19:29-19:30
What do they call those things?
Mark Ort:
19:30-19:31
Like the wedding program?
Mark Ort:
19:32-19:42
And I shared the gospel using this verse from Colossians about how you have a certificate of debt consisting of decrees against you.
Mark Ort:
19:43-19:49
And when I put that in there, I was talking about how people were gonna go to hell.
Mark Ort:
19:51-19:58
And as I thought about it afterwards, I think we had the only wedding program that I've ever remembered that had the word hell in it.
Mark Ort:
20:01-20:02
But it's true.
Mark Ort:
20:03-20:05
The gospel message is true.
Mark Ort:
20:06-20:08
If you have a debt against you, it has to be paid.
Mark Ort:
20:09-20:17
And you're going to pay for it in an eternal conscious punishment in hell, unless somebody pays that for you.
Mark Ort:
20:20-20:29
Jesus, it says in that Colossians passage, He has taken the decree against us out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.
Mark Ort:
20:32-20:35
Out of the way, nailed it to the cross.
Mark Ort:
20:38-20:44
"There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus," Romans 8, 1 says.
Mark Ort:
20:44-20:49
In Christ Jesus simply means this, that Jesus Christ is the Lord of your life.
Mark Ort:
20:51-20:54
You believe him, you trust him, and you surrender yourself to him.
Mark Ort:
20:57-21:07
Not only does the Holy Spirit have to persuade men that they're guilty, but the Holy Spirit has to persuade believers that they are innocent.
Mark Ort:
21:09-21:10
That's the second point.
Mark Ort:
21:11-21:17
And we're still looking at why the "therefore" is pointing back the prior points that Paul is making.
Mark Ort:
21:18-21:25
In Romans 4, faith was what the basis of justification was in the Old Testament.
Mark Ort:
21:25-21:29
Paul points back to Genesis and the fact that Abraham was justified by faith.
Mark Ort:
21:30-21:33
I wanna take a minute just to talk about that word justification.
Mark Ort:
21:33-21:38
And I've heard people say that justification means just as if I'd never sinned.
Mark Ort:
21:39-21:41
And that is true, but it's not complete.
Mark Ort:
21:43-21:53
My sins were credited to Jesus' account when He died on the cross.
Mark Ort:
21:55-21:56
My sins were laid on Jesus.
Mark Ort:
21:57-21:59
And His righteousness was credited to my account.
Mark Ort:
22:01-22:04
That is nothing short than the grace of God.
Mark Ort:
22:05-22:06
Here, Jesus.
Mark Ort:
22:07-22:09
Here's all my sins.
Mark Ort:
22:10-22:18
And Jesus looks at you and says, "Son, give all my righteousness." And author Jerry Bridges calls this the great exchange.
Mark Ort:
22:19-22:22
My sin for his righteousness.
Mark Ort:
22:23-22:23
That's amazing.
Mark Ort:
22:26-22:31
In Romans 5, because we have the righteousness of Christ, we have peace with God.
Mark Ort:
22:33-22:36
And when our sin abounds, His grace abounds even more.
Mark Ort:
22:38-22:42
In Romans 6, believers are dead to sin and alive to Christ.
Mark Ort:
22:44-22:47
We are no longer slaves to sin.
Mark Ort:
22:47-22:48
We serve Christ.
Mark Ort:
22:51-22:55
And then in Romans 7, Paul talks about how believers are united to Christ.
Mark Ort:
22:56-22:57
We are one with him.
Mark Ort:
23:00-23:07
So a believer, although he is forensically guilty, I mean, you did the crime, right?
Mark Ort:
23:07-23:09
So we're not changing that, you are guilty.
Mark Ort:
23:11-23:13
You're declared innocent by God.
Mark Ort:
23:15-23:19
Even says it in the passage, you know what the law could not do, God did.
Mark Ort:
23:20-23:21
God can do that.
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God declares you innocent.
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The law couldn't do that.
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It says that in this passage, what the law could not do.
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What the law could not do, God did by sending his son.
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Just think about the law for a minute.
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Pardon the analogy, but the law says that you've got to do 35 in a 35 mile an hour speed zone.
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If you do 55 in a 35, you may get a ticket.
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That 35 mile an hour speed limit sign is not going to pay your fine.
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The law says it's illegal to kidnap somebody.
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the law is not going to come there and bail you out.
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The law is a statement of what's expected of you.
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So God's law points out our need for Christ.
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In fact, there's scripture that says that it's our tutor.
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We read the law and we look at it and we're like, oh my goodness, I can't do this.
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In fact, I haven't done this.
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I need a savior.
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I need somebody to deliver me from that.
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The law can't free anyone.
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The law can't forgive you.
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It merely tells you where you've fallen short.
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And we are in bondage to it.
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Galatians talks about how you're in bondage to it.
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Bondage to the law until you have freedom in Christ.
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What the law could not do, God did.
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So if Jesus Christ is the Lord of your life, Imagine this, you are robed in his righteousness.
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You are wearing his garments of righteousness.
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And when God sees you, even though you're forensically guilty, you're clinically guilty, he sees the righteousness of Christ who is perfect without sin.
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So Paul could say, Therefore, there is now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus because the crime was paid for.
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The crime was paid for.
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Condemnation implies that there's guilt that still needs to be paid for.
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If we're not guilty, if we're declared innocent, we'll say, then why are we still walking around as if we are guilty?
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We need to just get rid of it.
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We don't need to feel the guilt.
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Just a quick word about conviction.
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There's a distinct difference, I believe, in conviction versus guilt.
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Is being convicted by the Holy Spirit the same thing as guilt?
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Now remember what guilt was.
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It's a state of having committed a crime or offense.
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Guilt is proven by forensic evidence.
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A conviction is the act of convincing of error.
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It reveals an offense or sin, but then it also reveals truth and provides an escape from the guilt and shame.
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Guilt and conviction, they kind of start out in the same path, right?
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okay, it reveals an error or a crime, but they take a different path right after that.
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Guilt makes a person feel stupid and useless.
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That's a tool of the devil.
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It can make a person anxious, spiral into depression and shame.
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Guilt says stuff like this, you're wrong, you screwed up, you're an idiot.
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Now this is guilt as a Christian, because remember I said when you're a non-Christian, you need to feel that guilt.
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That guilt is a good thing, because it's driving you toward freedom.
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But as a Christian, think about as a Christian feeling guilt.
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You're wrong.
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You messed up.
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Conviction, it says stuff like this.
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It says, yes, you were wrong.
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Yes, you sinned, but there is hope for that.
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There's hope because we have forgiveness offered by Jesus Christ.
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The conviction says, "I have to repent.
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I need to get right and forsake my sin." Now, in the Old Testament, and you guys know that I love the Old Testament, right?
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There's a clear and beautiful picture of how God dealt with His people and their guilt in the book of Leviticus.
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This is a book we don't turn to very often.
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So let me just - I don't know if you want to turn there or just listen to me here.
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In the book of Leviticus 16, you have Aaron who's the priest.
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Aaron's the priest.
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People would bring animals to be sacrificed.
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That was the system in the Old Testament.
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The Bible says that without the shedding of blood, there is no remission for sin.
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The Old Covenant, animals were sacrificed as a grotesque reminder of the cost of sin.
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It was a graphic reminder of Israel, about how serious their sin was, and costly.
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It was costly because they had to go out get their best animals out of the flock, give them their best animals to be slaughtered in this bloody sacrifice.
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And the sacrificial system was God's way for people to appease His wrath and at the same time to ease their guilty conscience.
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Now, one thing to just bear in mind, that there's not one person in the Old Testament that ever went to heaven because they killed an animal.
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That's not how they got to heaven.
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They got to heaven the same way that we do, by faith in Jesus Christ.
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The only difference is, we look back 2,000 years ago to a person named Jesus Christ, right?
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We know he lived and walked and died on the cross.
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So we have faith in that man, the God-man.
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They looked forward to a Savior who would deliver them from their sins and somebody who was coming.
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So Abraham was justified by faith in that person.
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The animal sacrifices was a way for, as I said, for people to deal with their guilty conscience.
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So in Leviticus, we have these detailed instructions about sacrificing bulls and goats and doves and lambs.
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When we get to Leviticus 18, there's this animal that they call the scapegoat.
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Did you ever hear of a scapegoat?
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The scapegoat is someone who unfairly takes the blame for someone else.
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So Aaron, in Leviticus 18, he had two goats before him, and he had a bull, and they would bring the goats to him.
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And I like the picture that you had up there, it had some goats on there, it had two goats.
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Aaron had two goats that somebody brought to him.
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And this was on the Day of Atonement.
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This would happen once a year.
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And Aaron, the priest, would sacrifice the bull for himself.
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And then he started to sacrifice one of the goats for the people's sins.
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So he would slaughter the goat.
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And then the other goat was the scapegoat.
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and Aaron would go over and he would put his hands on the head of the scapegoat and symbolically transferring the sins of the people to that goat.
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They would send the goat away.
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Let me read the passage where it talks about that.
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You can read about this. I'm not making this stuff up.
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This is in Leviticus 16.
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This is Aaron. It refers to he.
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when he, Aaron, finishes atoning for that holy place and the tent of meeting and the altar, he shall offer the live goat.
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Then Aaron shall lay both of his hands on the head of the live goat and confess over it all the iniquities of the sons of Israel and all their transgressions in regard to all their sins.
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And he shall lay them on the head of the goat and send it away into the wilderness by the hands of a man who stands in readiness.
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"The goat shall bear on itself their iniquities into a solitary land, and he shall release the goat into the wilderness." Why do you suppose they did that?
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Why would they take a goat and just send it away with the sins of the people on the goat's head?
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Well, you probably know why. It was a symbolic thing to the people where that goat was not coming back.
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The sins of the people were laid on that goat, and it was sent to a solitary land.
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And in fact, I read some commentary on this stuff.
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And the commentary suggested that the man who was standing there ready and waiting, he wasn't just taking that goat out and dropping him off.
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Because they knew, if they didn't take him far enough, maybe the goat would come back.
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The commentary suggested that that guy who was standing in readiness, he ushered that goat away, he escorted that thing into the wilderness, and found a rocky, craggy cliff.
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And he kicks the goat over the cliff.
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And the goat tumbles down the cliff, and he's laying there, never to come back.
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He's not coming back.
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It was symbolic that people knew that their guilt was taken away.
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So it's a beautiful picture to them and to us about God's certain removal of our guilt.
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I have a book at home from James R. White on justification.
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And he says, this is a quote, "One who has been justified stands before God, "uncondemned and uncondemnable, "not because of what he is in himself, "but because of what Christ is in him.
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"There is therefore now no condemnation "in those who are in Christ Jesus.
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"The reason for this is clear.
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"All who are in Christ partake of his righteousness "and have been declared free from the curse of the law.
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"Therefore, there can be no possible grounds "for condemnation for them.
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Have they ever transgressed the law?
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Christ has borne their penalty.
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Have they ever failed to love God?
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Christ has loved the Father perfectly in their place.
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The judge has declared them just.
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His Son stands in their place perfectly righteous.
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Are you persuaded?
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Is the Holy Spirit convincing you about this guilt thing?
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I have another illustration for you from the book of John.
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You guys are familiar with this passage, I hope.
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It's a story or an account of the adulterous woman.
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I've read this passage I don't know how many times.
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And it always puzzled me why Jesus told this woman that she wasn't condemned.
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Let's just go there.
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I'm going to read verses 3 to 11.
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John chapter eight.
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This is the story of the adulterous woman.
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The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman caught in adultery, and having set her in the center of the court, they said to him, "Teacher, this woman has been caught in adultery in the very act.
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Now in the law of Moses, the law of Moses commanded us to stone such a woman.
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What do you say?" And they were saying this, testing him, so that they might have grounds for accusing him.
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But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger he wrote on the ground.
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And when they persisted in asking him, he straightened up and said to them, "He is without sin among you.
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Let him be the first to throw a stone at her." Again, he stooped down and wrote on the ground.
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And when they heard it, they began to go out one by one, beginning with the older ones.
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And he was left alone.
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And the woman, where she was in the center of the court, Straightening up, Jesus said to the woman, "Woman, where are they?
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Did no one condemn you?" She said, "No one, Lord." And Jesus said, "I do not condemn you either.
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Go, from now on, sin no more." And every time I would read that passage, I would wonder, why did Jesus not condemn her?
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I don't see any repentance from her at all in this passage.
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And as I studied this, this is amazing.
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To me, I just thought this was pretty cool.
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I love when stuff like this connects in the Bible.
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In verse five, it says, "In the law of Moses, "it commanded us to stone such women." What the Pharisees didn't do was say what the rest of the law said about that.
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They picked out a piece of the law that they wanted and they conveniently left the other part behind.
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There's two things that had to happen in regards to adultery according to the law.
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In Deuteronomy 19.15, there had to be two or more witnesses.
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Now even though the Pharisees and the scribes brought this woman, it doesn't say that they caught her.
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It may have very well been one person that caught her.
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In fact, it probably was just one person.
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But it doesn't say, it doesn't actually say who the witnesses were or how many there were.
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There may have only been one.
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Here's the other thing, in the law, it also said that both the man and the woman caught in the act had to be executed.
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That's in Deuteronomy 22, 22.
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So where was the man?
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It doesn't say anything about the man in that passage.
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And so Jesus asked a legal question here.
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He said, "Has anyone condemned you?" Before anyone can be legally condemned, the witnesses had to come forward to establish the guilt.
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No one came forward.
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So Jesus, far from winking at the sin, he says, "I don't condemn you." He wasn't letting her off the hook.
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He was fulfilling the law.
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Jesus, it says in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, "I didn't come to destroy the law, but to fulfill it." And so Jesus was showing his deepest respect for the law, the governing power of the law.
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He was fulfilling the requirements of the law by not condemning the adulterous woman.
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Was she caught?
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She was caught in the very act.
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Was she guilty?
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Jesus could have stood there and called her a loser.
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You loser, you tramp, what are you doing?
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But instead, Jesus fulfills the requirement of the law and he sends her on her way.
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And I wondered, you know, Jesus knows all things.
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He knew what he was gonna do in a few days.
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I wonder if in that span, if that's when the repentance happened, if she indeed repented.
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But Jesus fulfilled the law in her case by not condemning her.
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For the unbeliever, we'll just close with this.
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For the unbeliever, if there's anybody here that is an unbeliever, Jesus is not the Lord of your life yet, how do I deal with these feelings of guilt and condemnation?
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Here's a couple of things you need to do.
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You need to recognize something.
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How do I get right with God?
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You need to recognize, one, that you're guilty.
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You're guilty of offending a holy God, and you need to be done with that.
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You've committed a serious crime against God.
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Many serious crimes against God.
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Probably most seriously would be your unbelief.
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"I just don't believe this stuff.
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I just don't believe this stuff about Jesus." That's a sin.
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So the unbeliever needs to, one, recognize that they're guilty of offending a holy God.
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These are things that will send you to hell.
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Rejecting the cure for your sin is what sends people to hell.
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So you recognize that, and two, you need to cast yourself upon the mercy of God.
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Cast yourself upon the mercy of God.
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And the third thing is - and these all go together - accept His free gift of forgiveness of eternal life by faith in His Son, It's like if it's your birthday and somebody gives you a gift, you receive it, you take it, and you don't pay for it.
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Recognize your guilty, cast yourself upon the mercy of God, accept the free gift of salvation.
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And the last thing would be to surrender your life to Him in obedience.
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When you belong to Christ, it's not your life anymore.
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You're not a slave of unrighteousness, but now you're a slave of righteousness.
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You're a slave of Christ.
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So, He has things for us to do in the kingdom.
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So we surrender our life to Him and say, "Lord, what do you want me to do?" That's what the Apostle Paul did when he met Jesus on the road to Damascus.
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"Lord, what would you have me to do?" For the believer, if you're here and you're struggling with feelings of guilt and condemnation, here's what you need to do.
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You need to recognize, as we talked about, that God has declared you to be innocent.
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Are you guilty?
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You have done the crime, but God has declared you innocent.
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Think of that scapegoat and how the sins were sent away, never to come back.
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You were actually clinically guilty, but the judge has declared you to be innocent by sending a substitute.
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That substitute was Jesus.
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Jesus paid the price for your sins and you don't need to feel guilty.
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I imagine that some of you would like to pray about that.
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And so I'm just gonna pray for you right now as we close.
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And then if you wanna talk to somebody down front, you're welcome to come down and pray with them as well.
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So let's bow our heads and close in prayer.
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Heavenly Father, I just pray for You just now, Lord, to move in the hearts of unbelievers, that Your Spirit would be persuading them of their guilt before You, Lord.
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I pray, God, that they would finally find freedom salvation in Christ alone.
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Lord, if by faith they would accept your free gift of grace, if they would accept the fact that Jesus Christ died for them in their place, their substitute, to forgive them of all their sin, past, present, and future sins, that they might be a productive member of the church, and that they might someday spend eternity in a beautiful place called heaven, forever and ever.
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Lord, for those who are believers here this morning, who struggle with guilt, that they would know the freedom that God has given us through the Lord Jesus Christ.
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Your word says that it was for freedom's sake that Christ has set you free.
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Lord, I pray that every believer in this room would cast off that baggage of guilt and condemnation, that they would rest in your freedom.
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That they would know that Jesus Christ is enough.
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That Jesus alone paid it all.
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Lord, I thank You for Your great love for us.
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You've given us Your Word.
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You've given us Your Son.
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You've given us hope and freedom, eternal life.
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And Lord, You never stop giving.
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Lord, why should we live in guilt?
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You've given us all things to enjoy, especially Yourself.
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Lord, thank You so much for Your Word and for what You've done for us.
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And I just want to pray these things in the strong name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Small Group Questions (Whole Group):
Read Romans 8:1-4
What is the purpose of the Law? Is the Law good?
If it were possible to obey every aspect of the Law, would that be enough to save someone? Provide scripture as to why or why not?
Describe the difference between ‘guilt’ and ‘conviction’.
What is the Holy Spirit’s role in a believer dealing with feelings of guilt?
What does the theological term ‘justification’ mean?
Breakout Questions:
Pray for one another.