Sermon Reources available here...

                      

Sermon Reources available here...

                      

COMING CLEAN This is the fourth sermon in a series entitled “Getting Healthy.” Each week we have looked at a different verse from a very famous sermon that Jesus preached called the Sermon on the Mount. This morning we’re going to look at the verse Matthew 5:8 that says “Happy are the pure in heart.” Each of the verses we’ve looked at represent a different step that each of us need to take on the road to getting healthy, to free us from the habits that mess us up and the habits that cause us difficulties and the memories that we just can’t let go of.

Step 1: Realize I’m not God. There is a God but I’m not Him. The proof of that is that my life is so unmanageable.

Step 2: Earnestly believe that God exists; that I matter to Him, and that He has the power to help me recover.

Step 3: Consciously choose to commit all my life and will to Christ's care and control.

Step 4: Openly examine and confess my faults to myself, to God, and to someone that I trust.

This has everything to do with cleaning up the past, letting go of the guilt, gaining a clear conscience and learning to live in a guilt free way, the way that God intended us to live.

What does this have to do with getting healthy? It’s vital. Probably the number one obstacle that stands in our way of getting healthy is this issue of guilt or remorse or regret. All of us have those places in our life if we could go back and undo them, we would. We feel so shamed and we feel a sense of condemnation. We can’t go back and fix it and we carry it around with us everyday and it’s stifling to us. It just sucks the life out of us. If I could do it over I would but I can’t – what do I do? Most people just choose to carry it around – a big load of guilt. What we find ourselves doing all through our lives is we spend all our time trying to outrun our past.

Have you ever tried to outrun your past?

Is it possible to live in such a way that you’re unafraid that your past will catch up with you? How do you get rid of guilt that seems to follow you around like a bad smell all through your life?

You do that by taking Step 4. This step is your key to relief. How many of you would like to experience what is described in the Bible in Psalm 32? How would you like to live this? “What happiness for those whose guilt has been forgiven. What release for those who have confessed their sins and God has cleared their record!” Wouldn’t that be a wonderful way to live your life?

Let’s answer a couple of questions as we study about this a little more.

I. Why deal with my guilt? Why should I even discuss this topic?

There are a lot of reasons. Let me give you just a few.

      1. If I deal with my guilt I'll gain confidence.

Fear and confidence cannot exist at the same time in the same person. You can’t be both fearful and confident. Guilt is the twin sister of fear. They’re kind of the same thing. Guilt is the fear I'll be caught. It’s the fear I'll be found out. It’s the fear that people will realize I’m not all I’m cracked up to be. It’s the fear that if they learned about my secrets they would reject me and no longer care for me. That’s what guilt does. And fear and guilt are so closely tied together. It’s like living life with a black cloud hanging over our head and we hope that nobody sees it. I know my secrets. I believe God knows my secrets. But I don’t want anybody else to discover my secrets. And our confidence is gone. But if we deal with guilt, we’ll gain confidence.

      2. If I deal with my guilt my relationships will improve.

Have you ever noticed that you’re the kind of person, perhaps, that can only go so far in a relationship but you can’t go any farther? You can only get so close to another person or allow another person to get close to you and then all of a sudden, you put on the brakes. You may not even be doing this consciously but it happens over and over again. You’re stiff arming people. You’re keeping people at an emotional arm’s length. You do it maybe by exploding in anger and people wonder, Where did that come from? They don't know it’s driven by your fear and your guilt. Or maybe you just wound people over and over by a sarcastic tongue or some kind of hurtful attitude or behavior. You do that because hurting people hurt people. If there’s somebody in your life and they’re hurting you over and over again, you can know that’s somebody who’s really hurting inside. You’re hurting other people over and over again it’s because hurting people hurt people. And we do that to keep people away from us. We don't want them to get too close to see, too close to know. And relationships are destroyed. But if we deal with our guilt our relationships will improve.

      3. If I deal with my guilt I'll have a better future

Some of you are saying, I just want a future! But guilt keeps us imprisoned in the past. Do you remember the illustration that I used servera, weeks ago about living life in such a way that we’re flying down the highway of life and all the time only looking in the rearview mirror. That’s a sure way to crash your life. It is appropriate to occasionally glance in the rearview mirror. The past can serve an important function. It gives us perspective. It helps us know where we’ve been. It helps us know where we don’t want to go again. But we don’t just want to stare at the past. What guilt does is make us replay over and over again our past. It forces us to stay confined in our past. We dwell on things that we want to change and we just can’t change.

Guilt cannot change the past just like worry cannot change the future. That’s why this is an important step. That’s why Step 4 matters. But it’s a very scary step. This is the step that separates those who want to talk about getting healthy and those who really mean business. This is the step for those who are saying, “I am going to get on with my life. I’m going to become well. I want to get over my past. I want to bury my guilt.” But you can’t bury it while it’s still alive.

Let’s look at the question we really want to talk about this morning,

II. How do you remove guilt?

I have this guilt deeply entrenched in my life, it has a firm grip on my mind, how do I remove that?

      1. You have to clean out your closet.

You’ve heard the expression “skeletons in the closet”. Where are those closets? They’re in your mind. They’re in your heart. They’re in your past. They are those places you’ve locked some secrets away. You’ve shut the door. You don’t want anybody snooping around because you don’t want those skeletons to come tumbling out. You don’t want your past to be revealed. This means you take a personal moral inventory of your life. Look at those areas of your life that are suspect. You have stuff there that you know needs to be cleaned out.

How do you clean out your moral closet, the hiding places in your soul, the places where you hang stuff wishfully thinking that somehow, someday everything will be ok if I just leave it alone?

You need to set aside a period of time where you can get alone, give yourself to this task of cleaning out your moral closet. I would recommend that you carry with you to this place a Bible and a pen and paper and Kleenex because this can be very emotional. I would give yourself some time to be very, very honest about what is going on in your life. You ask the question, “What have I been feeling guilty about? What have I regretted in my life? What do I know is there that I have never confessed to another person?” Write it down.

The Bible says we ought to do this kind of examination. Lamentations 3:40 “Let us examine our ways.” That means you and I need to give ourselves to this task of carefully taking a moral inventory of all that’s hidden and all that’s secret and all that’s guilt producing in our lives. But there are some things that we’ve denied for so long that we probably wouldn’t put them on the list because we don’t want to accept the blame. Things we’ve laid off to the side, they’re so far back in our closet, we don’t even want to go that far back. There are some things you’ll only put on your list if God tells you to. There are some things that God sees that you might not even be aware of that need to be on that list.

Look at the prayer in Psalm 139, a great prayer “Search me, O God, and know my heart. Test my thoughts, point out anything You find in me that makes You sad.” Would you be willing to pray that prayer? God, if there’s anything in my life that makes You sad, I’d like You to point that out to me.

Some of you are scratching your head saying, “Why do I have to write it down? Can’t I just think about it?” No, because writing it down makes it specific. “Can’t I just pray about it?” No. Not just pray about it. Writing it down proves that you’re honest and you’re ready to do something about it. Writing it down helps you to be specific and face reality and it helps you stop denying the problems in your life.

Different sections of your closet:

Attitude section: What is hanging in the Attitude section of my closet that needs to be cleaned out. Like complaining attitude, a critical attitude, an ungrateful attitude. It’s time to write it down and deal with it.

Relationship section: Would you find a bit of bitterness, or the need to seek revenge, or an unwillingness to forgive? What’s hanging there that needs to be cleaned out?

Integrity section: What’s hanging there that you no longer want cluttering up your life? Integrity is that issue of whether your public life and your private life match. Are you the same person, day in and day out, publicly and privately? Or are you one kind of person with one crowd and a different person with another crowd and what you find is you’re a hypocrite. You’re living your life without integrity. Is that a section of your moral closet that needs to be dealt with?

Priority section: Has there ever been a time in your life when God was first place, fully first place? But maybe because of ambition or other reasons, you pushed God to a far section, a distant third place. Your priorities really need to be reordered.

      2. You stop the blame and deny and avoid game.

It is like a merry-go-round. We wonder why our life is spinning out of control and seems to be at a dizzying pace and always confusing. It’s because we won’t stop playing the game. We go round and round. I blame, I deny, I avoid. I blame, I deny, I avoid. “It’s not my fault it’s your fault! (Blame) Sure there might be some issues somewhere but I don’t think they’re my issues (Deny). I don’t want to talk about that! (Avoid).” We do it over and over and over again.

Proverbs 20:27 “The Lord gave us a mind and a conscience. We cannot hide from ourselves.” The greatest hold up to the healing of my hang-ups is me. And the greatest holdup to the healing of your hang-ups is you. This is all about becoming radically honest and admitting, “I am the problem!”

There are some painful things in your life that are not your fault. Some painful parts of my past that are not my fault. But while we’re being honest there is plenty of pain in my life that was fully my fault. And it’s the truth about you too. In those places we’ve just got to get over the game playing. “If I just change jobs it’ll be better... if I just change cities it’ll be better... if I just change relationships it’ll be better...” The problem is wherever you go you’re still there. You’re the problem. And I’m the problem.

So we accept responsibility for our own faults. We don’t rationalize. We don’t say, It happened a long time ago. It’s just a stage. Everybody goes through it. You don’t blame. You don’t avoid. You don’t deny.

There’s another man traveling at a high rate of speed down a highway. He was pulled over by a policeman. He rolls down his window and asks, “What’s the trouble officer?” The policeman, “I clocked you going 85 in a 65 mile an hour zone.” The man said, “That is impossible! I never speed. I always am very cautious. I only go at the speed limit.” He asks his wife, “Don’t I honey?” The policeman looks in the window and asks the wife, “What about it ma’am?” The wife says, “He always speeds. He has a foot of led. He was flying back there. I was terrified!” The man glares at his wife. Then he notices the policeman writing out a second ticket. “What are you doing?” The police says, “I noticed you didn’t have your seat belt on. I’m citing you for that as well.” The man started protesting, “I always wear my seat belt. I never start the car until I put my seat belt on. I must have unconsciously unbuckled it while you were walking up to my car. Tell him, honey.” The policeman leans through, “What about it ma’am?” The wife said, “He never wears his seat belt. I bet that seat belt has never been used the whole time we’ve owned this car. I bet there are cobwebs on that seat belt.” The policeman gives the guy both tickets. The man is infuriated. He tears them up into little pieces. He throws the pieces at his wife. He starts yelling at her. The policeman leans in the window and asks the wife, “Does he always treat you like that?” The wife said, “Only when he’s drunk.”

There’s a point to this. What are you being dishonest about but you’re really guilty? Why are you being dishonest when you are really guilty? Don’t you think it’s time to finally deal with it? Get over it? So you can get on with your life? You make a moral inventory. You look at that list and say, “Yes, that is the truth about me. No more game playing. That is the truth about me.”

      3. Then I have to let God do the deep cleaning.

There is a great verse in the New Testament, one that I would recommend you memorize. It’s so powerful. I say this verse very often to myself. I need the promise of this verse. 1 John 1:9 “If we freely admit that we have sinned we find God utterly reliable. He forgives our sin. He makes us thoroughly clean from all that is evil.”

Notice the sequence. If we freely tell God, “God, this is the truth about me. I know that You know it. I want to say to You, God, I know it.” Then looks what happens. Because God is utterly reliable, He forgives your sin and makes you entirely clean. Does He do that because you’ve earned it? No. Because you deserve it? No. He does it because this is who God is.

This is something I want you to learn about the very nature of God. God is utterly reliable. He never breaks His promise. He never fails to come through on something He has promised to do. He is utterly reliable. This is His nature and the whole basis of forgiveness is found in the reliability of God's promise.

I read about a woman who was dying of AIDS contracted through a promiscuous lifestyle. She asked the minister to come by and visit her and she said to him “I am so lost. I have ruined my life and the lives of everybody around me. I’m headed for hell. There is no hope that God would do anything for me.” The minister looked at her for a moment. Then he allowed his eyes to wander around her dingy apartment. His eyes landed on a framed picture of a beautiful young woman setting on the dresser of this woman’s small room. He asked, “Who is that?” She brightened just a moment and said, “That is the one beautiful thing in my life. That’s a picture of my daughter.” The minister asked her, “Would you help her if she were in trouble no matter how many mistakes she made? And would you forgive her if she asked you to? Would you love her no matter what?” The woman said, “Of course I would! Why would you even ask me such a question?” “Because I want you to understand,” replied the minister, “that God has a picture on His dresser too. God loves you more than you love your own child.”

Look at what God says to you in Isaiah 1:18. This is God speaking to you. “No matter how deep the stain of your sin is, I can take it out and make it clean as freshly fallen snow.” God, how can you do that? Look at my list. How can You forgive this? Because He is utterly reliable.

      4. You must tell a Christian friend.

God says this is absolutely essential for your recovery. I don’t know if you’ve been to the first three weeks of the series or not. But if you haven’t been I would urge you to pick up the first three videos of the series because step 4 cannot be taken until you’ve taken step 1, 2 and 3. Step 4 doesn’t even make sense until you’ve understood what steps 1, 2 and 3 are about.

The Bible even teaches this. James 5:16 tells us “Admit your faults [to whom should we admit our faults. You’ve got to be honest with yourself. You’ve got to be honest with God. But keep reading...] “Admit your faults to one another [Circle “one another”] and pray for each other that you may be healed.” How are we healed? By admitting our faults to one another.

You say, “Why do I need to drag another person into this? Can’t I just write it down and admit it to God?” No. “Can’t I just think about it and pray about it?” No. “Why do I need to tell someone else? Because God says right here in this verse that revealing your feelings is the beginning of healing. If you don’t do that, the more you hide it the bigger it gets. The amazing thing is when you risk honesty with one person all of a sudden this feeling of freedom comes into your life.

Is there anybody in your life with whom you can be totally honest? Anybody like that in your world? If not, there are some men and women in this church who stand ready to walk with you as you take step 4. This is one of God's ways to free us from guilt and from our past. You don’t just indiscriminately broadcast this. You go to somebody who I would recommend is a devoted follower of Jesus Christ.

You need somebody who’s also strong enough to tell you if you’re still trying to deny or cover up or blame or avoid or procrastinate. You get with this trusted person and you pull out your list and say, “I need someone to listen to me as I take the fourth step in recovery. I recommend you do this as soon as possible. This is the kind of message you could say, “I’ve taken steps 1, 2 and 3. I’m ready for a break now. I think I'll wait a couple months and catch my breath and then I'll ponder taking the next step.” Maybe that’s where you are. All that tells me is you just need a little more pain. And it’ll come. Then you’ll be ready to take step 4. You’ll need to. You’ll need to, to get healthy again.

Some of you are ready. You’re ready right now. You have taken steps 1, 2, and 3 and all you need to take this next step is a little bit of courage.

      5. Accept God's forgiveness and forgive myself.

This is something you don’t need to miss. This step is for everybody. Step 4 is for everybody as are the first 3 steps and the next 4 steps. Pastors need step 4, other church leaders need step 4, all Christians need step 4, first time visitors to this church need step 4. We’re all in the same boat. We all need to get honest and come clean. Because we’ve all sinned. This is what the Bible says. Romans 3:23 “All of us have sinned.” We’re all in the same boat.

But here’s the good news. God forgives us. He forgives us instantly, He forgives us freely, He forgives us completely. He is utterly reliable. Forgiveness frees us from our past. We have the chance to start brand new.

There was a guy who went to his former employer who had fired him three years previously and he asked for his old job back. It might have been a hunch that the foreman had or the look in this other man’s eyes. But for whatever reason the boss said to this guy, “I'll give you a two week probation chance.” The guy worked hard for two weeks. So the foreman said, “I'll extend your probationary period to six months.” After six months he had still done a fantastic job. The foreman approached the man and said, “I just have to ask. You are a different man. What changed in your life?”

The man recounted how during his college years he had pledged a fraternity. As a part of the pledge process he had become very drunk and he was put behind the wheel of a car and he was told to drive full speed down a road. On that road was the other guys in the fraternity who were taking their initiation standing across the road. This man was told, “At the last minute, swerve out of the way.” This man told his foreman, “I was so drunk that when I swerved I killed one of my best friends. I dropped out of college and went from job to job one of which was here. I had many jobs after this one. My marriage failed. I was ready to kill myself. But a few months ago a lady came to my door who looked a little bit familiar. She introduced herself as the mother of the boy I had killed. She told me that for three years after the death of her son she had prayed that my life would be hell on earth, that my pain would be misery upon misery. But then she told me that two weeks before she came to my house she’d become a Christian and for two weeks she’s been on a quest to find me. She had driven two hundred miles to my door to tell me face to face she forgave me.”

Then listen to what the man said to his foreman. “In her face I finally found permission to become the kind of person I could have been had I never driven drunk.”

You may be feeling like you are a total loser. You may think there is no hope for you to ever deal with your guilt but that is not the message of Jesus Christ or the Bible. If you will repent and truly seek to change God will give you another chance.

Video

That’s what forgiveness does. The chance to be who God has always planned for you to be. So I would challenge you, look into the face and the forgiveness of Jesus Christ and you will discover permission to become the woman, to become the man God always intended for you to be as if you had never ever sinned. Your guilt is removed and now you have the chance to live a brand new life. A brand new life is yours to live.

Prayer:

Right now I’m going to ask you to take just thirty seconds and be very personal and be very private but very honest about this. If you have taken steps 1, 2 and 3 right now I would like to challenge you to say “God, I’m going to take step 4. God, I’ve got to get serious about this. I can’t stop now. I want to be healthy again. I’m making a commitment to take this next step.” I’m going to pray that God will give you that courage.

Dear God, there are men and women here, so weighed down by their guilt just seemingly can’t move forward but today they want to. God, I’m asking You to give them the courage. I believe You will because You are utterly reliable. I’m thanking You right now for helping them as they commit to take this step. In Jesus name. Amen.

This is what I want you to do. This is going to get intensely practical. Write down the first name of the person you’re planning to tell. Get very real at this point. You have to be honest with yourself. You have to be honest with God but one more person. Men, write down the name of a man. Women, you need to write down the name of a woman. Write down the first name of a the person that you are going to talk to. God bless you as you let God work in your life.

This sermon was adapted from the Saddleback Sermon Series: Getting Healthy Again.

2004/11/07