Managing Guilt

Good afternoon, brethren. Well, here we are. You just heard it in the sermon act, pre-Passover season has arrived. It’s hard to really believe that we’re only about three weeks or so, as this is being heard out in the field, three weeks or so from the Passover, which is almost just mind-blowing to me, but here we are. I want to just first start off by recounting my first Passover, how I remembered such a momentous occasion in my life, was keeping my first Passover.

And we can all... if you’ve been able to keep the Passover yourself, or if you’re going to keep your first Passover this year, I can assure you, you can either remember it or you will remember it moving forward, but I do remember how wonderful it felt to do this. Go through the self-examination process for the first time, to deleaven my, at the time, apartment, or the part of the apartment that I lived in.

My roommates, I did not deleaven their areas, even though I kind of overlapped and did the kitchen a little bit, but it was interesting, deleavening with roommates in college who were questioning every little thing that I was doing at the time, but I remember what that felt like. I remember how good it felt going to the Passover and coming out of the Passover, for the first time, feeling clean. It was kind of like baptism. I felt that same sensation, that same feeling of cleanliness, purity, walking out of the Passover.

Same as getting out of the baptismal tank, having hands laid on. It’s like you finally are forgiven. You’ve been forgiven for all of these things that you’ve done. Your slate is clean. And we can all remember what it was like attending our first Passover, but at the same time, we can also understand the emotions that are at play, and some of the aspects of guilt that can try and get in the way. The whole point of the Passover was to try and remove all of the guilt that we had built up.

Guilt is a common byproduct, if I could put it that way, of the self-examination process as we dig into our lives, and we look at ourselves more closely, and try and find areas where we have sinned, areas where we could have done better, things that we have seen in ourselves lead us to feel guilt. And again, guilt is a very common byproduct of this self-examination process.

Everyone who seeks to find areas of improvement in their lives, everyone, doesn’t matter how long you’ve been in God’s church, if this is your first Passover or your fifty-first Passover, you’re trying to find areas where you can improve in your life. And everybody who seeks to find these areas of improvement will come across areas they know they’ve slipped. Turn over to Romans chapter three, because we’re just going to get into the subject of guilt.

And we’ll first start into that by asking, what is it? What is guilt? We’ve all heard about guilt in our lives. We’ve all experienced it, no doubt, but really, what is it, and why is it important to these days of unleavened bread, or the pre-Passover self-examination process leading up to the days of unleavened bread, when we’ll have our guilt completely removed? What is guilt? Well, you may be surprised to understand that, or to learn that the Bible actually specifically defines guilt.

It tells you word for word what guilt is, just like it tells you what sin is. It tells you the definition of all kinds of things. The definition of faith is in the Bible. Here, we’re about to read God’s definition of guilt in Romans chapter three. Let’s pick it up in verse ten. “As it’s written, there is none righteous, no, not one.” These are some of the very verses that we read pre-baptism. I’ve got them marked in my Bible in orange, I’ve had it marked since before I was ever baptized.

This is one of the very verses that we use to help a person come to understand repentance. That we’re all sinners. “As it’s written, there is none righteous, no, not one...” there isn’t any person on earth who is righteous, “…There is none that understands. There’s none that seeks after God. They’re all gone out of the way. They’re together become unprofitable. There is none that does good. No, not one. Their throat is an open sepulchre, and with their tongues, they have used deceit. The poison of asps is under their lips.”

This is a picture of you and me, of course, pre-baptism. But brethren, whenever we fall into sin, we fall right back into these very same things. It’s not like receiving God’s spirit all of a sudden just does away with human nature. No. It gives us the ability to begin to do away with human nature, the ability to begin to overcome human nature. But these things are still in us, and we constantly have to battle them.

Verse fourteen, “Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood, destruction and misery are in their ways, and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes. Now we know, that what thing soever the law says, it says to them who are under the law.” God says that He’s given his law to certain people who, once you know the law, it’s incumbent on us to obey it. “That every mouth may be stopped and all the world may become guilty before God.”

The law is given so that once you know what’s right and wrong, according to God and His word, people no longer are innocent. They become guilty of breaking the law. Now, what is guilt? What is being guilty? “Therefore, by the deeds of the law, there shall no flesh be justified in His sight. For by the law is the knowledge of sin.” Guilt is knowledge of when you have sinned. It’s that simple. No more complicated than that. When you experience guilt, what you’re experiencing is recognizing that you have broken God’s law.

The knowledge and recognizing that you have sinned, which is, again, breaking God’s law. So the Bible clearly defines guilt for us. It tells us what it is to be guilty. When we’re guilty, it’s not just some amorphous feeling. Guilt is a definable trait, something that we can know whether we are guilty or not. Guilt is, of course, associated with feelings and emotions. We’ll kind of get into that a little bit. But guilt itself is just the simple knowledge that you’ve done something wrong.

It’s fascinating to think Christ, who is perfect, never experienced guilt. Christ never sinned. Therefore, He never experienced guilt. The guilt of breaking the law. Think about that. But we can experience guilt, because we break it regularly. When we break the law, when we do something wrong and we sin, we become guilty. And while guilt here is defined as knowledge of sin, or breaking the law, guilt is broader than that. We can hold guilt for not doing something as well as we should.

Let’s say you talk to somebody and you said something to them in a way that maybe, looking back, you say, “Well, I wish I would’ve said it differently to them.” Did you really sin? Did you really break the law? No, not necessarily, but you could still hold a certain amount of guilt for that, because you wish that you would’ve said it better. It would’ve been better for you to say it a different way. So there is a little bit of gray area when it comes to guilt. It’s not just all black and white.

If you break the law, that’s where guilt starts and stops. Guilt can have certain gray areas where you wish that you would’ve done something better or different. And looking back, you say, “I should have handled that differently than I did.” And you could have a certain guilt for it. It doesn’t mean that it was exactly wrong that you handled it the way you did, but you could have handled it better. But guilt of any form can lead to a host of feelings that can be overwhelming.

Turn over to Psalm thirty-eight. I’m going to read a psalm about David and the guilt that he was wracked with. Psalm thirty-eight. Pick it up, in verse one. Psalm thirty-eight one says this, “Oh Lord, rebuke me not in your wrath, neither chasing me in your hot displeasure.” He’s immediately coming before God in prayer and saying, “Don’t destroy me, God.” Why would David say that? Why would David go to God in prayer and say, “Don’t destroy me?”

It’s because he knew he did something wrong. Okay. This is a prayer or a psalm of confession, in a certain regard, but it’s him explaining all of the different emotions that came from guilt. Remember, guilt is just the knowledge of the sin, but guilt also ties to all of these different emotions that we can feel. He goes on in verse two to say, “For your arrows stick fast in me, and your hand presses me sore.” Here’s the first kind of emotion or feeling that he feels from having this guilt.

“There’s no soundness in my flesh because of your anger. Neither is there any rest.” He feels restless. When you have guilt wracking you and you know that you’ve done something wrong, you feel restless. Maybe you can’t sleep because of it. He says, “For my iniquities are gone over my head as a heavy burden. They are too heavy for me.” Have you ever walked around with guilt? It’s a burden that is almost unbearable.

“My wounds stink and are corrupt because of my foolishness.” You could look back and say, I was foolish for doing that. What was I thinking doing that? Again, guilt is tied to all of these different feelings and emotions. “I’m troubled,” David says, “I’m bowed down greatly. I go mourning all the day long, for my loins are filled with loathsome disease and there is no soundness in my flesh. I’m feeble and sore broken. I’ve roared by reason of the disquietness of my heart.”

It’s just his heart and his mind are telling him, “You did something wrong,” and they won’t stop pestering him. That’s what guilt does to a person. “Lord, all my desire is before you, and my groaning is not hidden from you. My heart pants. It palpitates. My strength fails me. As for the light of my eyes, it’s gone from me.” You know when you carry guilt, one of the effects is you walk around and it’s almost like you can’t have any joy.

You can’t have any light in your eyes because of this weight that you’re carrying around. “My lovers and my friends stand aloof from my sore. My kinsmen are far off.” Skipping down to seventeen, “...for I am ready to halt, to limp, or to fall...” Guilt can almost break you if you don’t address it or manage it properly, “...and my sorrow is continually before me.” Sorrow is a massive effect of having guilt. “Make haste to help me, Oh Lord, my salvation,” the psalm ends.

So of course, guilt does bring about different feelings though, it brings about these feelings of remorse, sorrow, regret, sadness, frustration, anxiety, discouragement. But we should not conflate guilt itself as being any of these emotions. These are just emotions that come from guilt. Again, let’s keep it simple. Guilt is just acknowledging where you have erred, where you have done something wrong. Whole sermons could be given on the emotions that come from it, on sorrow, on discouragement.

Whole sermons could be given about all those emotions that come from guilt, but let’s address guilt itself. If we can address guilt, then all those emotions, you don’t even have to hear sermons about them. In many regards, those sermons could be to be eradicated, done away with. And those emotions can be addressed if you just understand what guilt is and how to get rid of it. Because I guarantee you, brethren, as we enter into this pre-Passover season, we’ll be experiencing guilt.

We’ll look at our lives and we’ll say, “Wow, I wish I would’ve done this differently. Wow, I wish I would’ve done that differently. I could have handled this situation better. I sinned over here.” And the question stands now, if we know that we are carrying guilt, or we will carry guilt, how do we manage it? That’s the question at hand today. And we’ll answer that question. How do we manage guilt? What do we do about it?

Must we wait for the Passover is the question, must we wait for the Passover to be freed from this guilt? Do we have to carry this guilt for another month or so before Passover? Or can we get rid of the guilt before Passover, even? You’ll see clearly that we can. We should actually, in fact, brethren, and I’ll say this, which is a fascinating thing to consider, and we’ll build to this. We should walk into the Passover not having guilt. You’ll see why.

So let’s get into two major reasons, two major ways that we can manage guilt, and each way has a couple sub points. So the first big point is that we have to acknowledge guilt. Acknowledge guilt. You can write that as a main point. But as a subpoint under that, there’s two points. We’ll get into the first of two points, that first subpoint under acknowledging guilt is, we can’t ignore guilt. We must not ignore guilt.

Now, imagine having a relationship with someone who never, ever, ever admitted that they’re wrong about anything. Maybe you’ve come in contact... this is a hypothetical person. I don’t know if there are too many of these kinds of people in life, but they probably exist, where they never, ever, ever see themselves as wrong in any situation at all. Now, how long would your relationship with that person last?

If you know that they will never admit their fault, they’ll never accept that maybe your way is better than their way, or maybe your way is right and their way could be wrong, how could you continue a relationship with a person like that? It’s very, very difficult. You’d become frustrated. You’d look at them and say, “Come on, just be honest with yourself. Admit that there’s probably a better way to do this,” but they won’t.

You’d probably never... your relationship with them would crumble at a point, and you wouldn’t want to be with them, because you would know that going into any situation, they would always think they’re right. They would never take the humble position and say, “You know what? Maybe your way is better. Maybe your way is right.” This could be with husbands and wives. If there’s a husband or a wife who always thinks that they’re right, it can be dangerous in a relationship.

It can be dangerous with friends. It can be dangerous with any connection that you have with other people. If they think that they’re right all the time, then it’s damaging to the relationship. There’s a poem here I found online, by Ogden Nash. The poem is titled A Word to Husbands, and I will say this is a very wise poem. The poem reads... It’s very short. Here it is.

To keep your marriage brimming

With love in the loving cup,

Imagine you’ve got this loving cup here, to keep it brimming with love, full of love.

To keep your marriage brimming

With love in the loving cup,

Whenever you’re wrong, admit it;

Whenever you’re right, shut up.

So in a relationship, how important is it to admit you’re wrong? This man knows something very wise. When you are in a relationship with a wife or a husband, particularly a husband with a wife, whenever you’re wrong, admit it. Admit it. Whenever you’re right, [chuckles] shut up. And admitting guilt can be hard to do. Humanly, we all walk around, so says the Bible, “Thinking that all the ways of man are right in his own eyes.”

Naturally, human nature looks at ourselves, and we give ourselves a lot of slack, and we say, “You know what? You’re probably right in this situation. They’re probably wrong.” That’s the way that human nature works. So it’s very hard to fight against that grain. When you pet a dog or a cat, particularly a cat, the opposite direction, against the grain, it doesn’t go well. They don’t like that. They don’t like it. Human nature doesn’t like it when it’s pet against the grain as well.

And in this instance, being pet against the grain means that you admit that you’re wrong. That’s very difficult. It’s uncomfortable to do. I don’t like doing that. I don’t like admitting when I have sinned or done something wrong. Because again, no one naturally sees themself as being wrong most of the time, but it’s very easy to pick out other people’s faults, isn’t it? It’s easy to say, “Well, that person’s wrong over there all the time, and I see where this person’s flaws are, but myself, it’s very difficult to be objective.”

But that’s key. When acknowledging guilt, we have to be objective with ourselves, and look and say, “Look, you know what? You aren’t perfect. I’m not perfect. I don’t do things right every time, and I should acknowledge where I have slipped and sinned.” So coming to the point where we see our sins for what they are is very big in overcoming guilt. I know it seems simple, but rather than ignoring guilt, ignoring where we have sinned, we have to confront it and face it.

We have to walk up to it and say, “I see where I’ve sinned. I see it, I acknowledge it, and I don’t want to turn away from it and ignore it, because ignoring it is a horrible thing to do.” If we know that we’ve sinned in our hearts, but we just keep ignoring it and ignoring it and ignoring it, it’s dangerous. Do you know why it’s dangerous? Because it can lead us to ultimately go down the path toward the unpardonable sin.

If we keep ignoring sin, we’re saying, “Oh, I’d rather not address that. I’d rather not think about it. No, I’m not going to.” That means that we’re not ultimately seeking to change. And if we’re not seeking to change, then it’s a very dangerous and slippery slope. So this whole point is very simple. Acknowledge when we’ve sinned. Turn over to Luke, Chapter fifteen. Luke fifteen. We will read the Prodigal Son parable.

And let’s notice something fascinating in here. “And he said, A certain man had two sons...” Many of us are very familiar with this parable, “...and the younger of them said to his father, Father, give me a portion of goods that falls to me. And he divided unto them his living. And not many days after, the younger son gathered all together and took his journey into a far country, and there he wasted his substance with riotous living.” He left his father to go do what he wanted to do.

Now, it came back to bite him, as we know, but before he came back to his father and, you could say, once guilt caught up to him, because he was a man wracked with guilt at a point, his guilt caught up with him and led him back to his father. And we all know what happened at the end of the story. He was given the ring and a wonderful party. And the other brother was like, “What’s going on here? Why is he so perfect?”

But you have to understand, let’s read through all of the terrible things that led to his guilt. He did one bad act. He took his inheritance, you could say, and he took a far journey and wasted it. That’s the first bad thing that happened. He wasted his substance. He just blew it all on riotous living. And let’s see what that one bad action led to. “And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in the land.” God saw this. I mean, this is a parable, of course, but a mighty famine arose “...and he began to be in want.”

He lacked. Even though he was given this inheritance, he blew it all and then he didn’t have anything left. And now what’s he to do? Now, it’s a famine on top of it. He’s wasted all of his money and now there’s a famine. “And he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country; and he sent him to his fields to feed swine.” So he had to start working for another person to start to feed pigs. “...and he would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat: and no man gave unto him.”

So he went without. He was just... He was in a wretched position, no money, working for this man who had him feed pigs all day long. “And when he came to himself,” in verse seventeen, that’s when the guilt struck, he could no longer ignore the guilt anymore. And that’s the whole point of this part. This point is, don’t ignore guilt. The prodigal son didn’t ignore the guilt. At a point, he came to. It says, “When he came to himself,” it’s like he woke up to his guilt.

He saw all the terrible things that were happening around him, and said, “What am I doing?” He shook himself free of this ignorance, trying to ignore the guilt. And what did he do? “...he said, How many hired servants of my father’s have bread enough and to spare?” My father didn’t have me going through all of this terrible stuff, and yet, “I perish with hunger,” he says.

Verse eighteen, “I will arise and go to my father, and will say to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you, and I am no more worthy to be called your son. Make me as one of the hired servants.” And his father, of course, took him back in as a son and we know the rest of the story. But, brethren, guilt caught up with this man, this son. Now, this is kind of a side point, but I’ve heard a number of stories of younger people who leave the church and tell their parents that maybe they could be the prodigal son.

I’ve heard stories of people who have said this. Younger people or even adults who leave saying, “It’s okay, mom and dad. I might be the prodigal son. I could come back.” Well, that’s a dangerous position to take. Let me explain why. I’ll ask anyone who’s younger or older in the church, who may have this mentality, knowing what this prodigal son had to endure, wouldn’t it be easier to learn from his example rather than learning the hard way?

You know, if I know that lava is so hot that if I touch it, my hand will burn off, if I know that from books, from scientific evidence, from seeing steam coming off the lava, seeing the color that it’s bright red or orange, do I have to then go and actually touch the lava to prove it’s correct? To prove that the lava will burn my hand off, and then, for the rest of my life, have no hand?

Of course not. Of course not. If I know or have heard that jumping out of an airplane without a parachute will lead to certain death, do I need to go physically jump out of an airplane and experience that to be able to prove to myself that I will die if I jump out of an airplane? No, I can look and see other examples. I can see the laws of gravity. I can see that we’ll hit terminal velocity at some point. We’ll hit the ground and you’ll die.

I can look at examples where people’s parachutes didn’t go off and then they did die. I don’t need to go experience it for myself. That’s the whole point of the Bible. When God gives these parables, particularly something like this, He’s saying to anybody in God’s church who wants to leave, you don’t have to experience that. Just take me at my word on it, that if you leave, things are going to get really hard for you.

It’s going to get tough because God also says in His word that the way of transgressors is hard. So when people want to leave, and say, “Well, I might just be the prodigal son. I could come back.” It’s like, so you’re saying you want to go out like the prodigal son and experience, for you, some version of famine, some version of feeding swine, or whatever it would be? You know, you’re not going to have to go out and do those things.

It may not be famine, but there may be some horrendous, difficult tests that you’d have to endure. So rather than experiencing it yourself, take the Bible, take the examples for what they are, and believe them. We don’t need to experience touching hot lava in order to know that it’ll burn our hand off. So while not directly related to the sermon, it was an important side point I wanted to address, since we were here in this parable.

It’s just critical that we all come to this point of, like the prodigal son, admitting our guilt. When we see that we’ve done something wrong, don’t ignore it. Because had the prodigal son continued to ignore it, he would’ve gone deeper and deeper into the difficulties in his life, and he wouldn’t have been received back to his father as easily. So admit where we’re wrong, and don’t ignore the guilt. That’s the first subpoint to this first point of acknowledging guilt.

Acknowledging guilt is the overarching point here. But here’s the second subpoint, don’t let guilt consume you. You have to acknowledge guilt, but when you do acknowledge guilt, there’s two ditches. You can either ignore the guilt or you could let it consume you. Guilt is a powerful thing, and all the emotions that are associated with it are very powerful, and it can lead people to bad places if they’re not careful, if they don’t know how to manage the guilt.

They can become debilitating, these feelings can become debilitating if we’re not careful. There’s this thing called toxic guilt. In society today, they use this term, toxic guilt. It’s a little bit esoteric, but here’s the thing about it. What is toxic guilt? from counselingdirectory.org: “Toxic guilt refers to an intense and persistent feeling of guilt that’s disproportionate to the situation or one’s actions. It’s a form of guilt that goes beyond the normal and healthy experience of remorse for wrongdoing or a mistake.”

You know, God says it’s actually good that we have guilt. He wants us to experience guilt. Again, that’s the whole point of the first subpoint here, is don’t ignore it. God wants us to feel that discomfort. When we’ve done something wrong, He doesn’t want us to just ignore it and continue to try and feel good in our lives. He wants us to feel the discomfort of knowing that we’ve done something wrong, but we can’t let that discomfort overwhelm us. That’s what this point is.

This toxic guilt is when you let guilt just take you and overwhelm you. It overtakes you, at a point. It’s disproportionate to the thing that you’ve done wrong. Toxic guilt often involves self-blame and self-punishment, even when the individual is not responsible for, or has taken appropriate actions to rectify the situation. Toxic guilt can include things like excessive self-blame, or perfectionism. Or it can be ongoing or persistent, if the guilt just continues to stay with you and you can’t get rid of it, and you’re not getting rid of it.

That’s a form of toxic guilt. Self-punishment, negative self-image, and so forth, and it’ll impact you, ultimately, your well-being. Having guilt that no longer allows you to make positive changes is this kind of guilt that can overtake you. And it causes you to feel hopeless. Like, “Maybe I’ll never overcome this. Maybe I’ll never get past this,” and in a certain sense, having toxic guilt causes you to see yourself as no longer just doing something wrong, but now being a bad person. That’s what toxic guilt is.

When you just look at yourself and you say, “I am a horrible, horrible person, and I need to just completely... I don’t know if I can do this.” Toxic guilt, it’s interesting, because you could look at Bible examples of this. Judas experienced this kind of guilt. Just an overwhelming guilt that he felt after he betrayed Christ. You can turn over to Matthew chapter twenty-seven. Matthew twenty-seven, verse one.

“When the morning was come, all the chief priests and the elders and the people took counsel against Jesus to put him to death. When they had bound him, they led him away and delivered him to Pontius Pilate, the governor. Then Judas, which betrayed Christ, when he saw that he was condemned, repented himself and brought again the thirty pieces.” He, in haste, was, “What have I done? What have I done?” “…And threw the money back to the chief priest and the elders, saying…” verse four, “I have sinned and all that I’ve done, betrayed the innocent blood. They said, ‘What is that to us? See you to that.’ He cast down the pieces of silver in the temple and departed…” Brethren, this guilt overtook him so much that he killed himself. “He hanged himself.” Turn over to Acts chapter one. Guilt is an unbelievably powerful thing, and it can be very easy to allow it to get too big in our minds. We don’t want that. We want to experience guilt, but we don’t want it to be too big in our minds.

Acts chapter one, and we’ll start to get into how to address that here, very shortly. Acts one, verse fifteen. “In those days, Peter stood up in the midst of his disciples and said, the number of names together were about a hundred and twenty. Men and brethren, this scripture must have needs be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit, by the mouth of David, spoke before concerning Judas, which was guide to them that took Jesus, for he was numbered with us…” He was one of the apostles, “...and had obtained part of this ministry. Now, this man purchased a field with a reward of iniquity, and falling headlong, he burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out. And it was known unto the dwellers at Jerusalem. All the dwellers at Jerusalem saw it, or knew about it, insomuch as this field is called in their proper tongue Akeldama, that is to say the field of blood. For it’s written in the book of Psalms, Let his habitation be desolate, and let no man dwell therein, and his bishopric let another take.”

Judas experienced this horrendous type of guilt that just simply overtook him, and he took his life because of it. Now, none of us are truly... I hope none of us are thinking, “Let’s take our lives because of guilt.” That is not in any way a position that we want to be in, or should be in, but we can do things that are negative too, to ourselves. Thinking negatively, we could say things to ourselves like, “I just don’t think I can overcome this.”

Maybe we see ourselves struggling with a sin during the self-examination period, and we see that we just keep struggling and can’t seem to kick it. Can’t seem to overcome it, fight it fully, and that could lead you, that guilt, that repeated guilt, guilt of seeing that sin, can lead us, at times, to say, “I just don’t think I can overcome this,” or, “I’m a failure,” or even worse thoughts, like, “It’s pointless to try to even overcome this now,” or, “I’m done trying.”

We can never let ourselves get to that point. We always have to tell ourselves, “This sin is overcomeable. I can do all things through Christ, which strengthens me.” There’s nothing too big, there’s no sin too great for God to help you overcome. We’re told in Peter to cast our cares on God, because he cares for us. The burdens that we bear, of this guilt that we feel can be overcome no matter what the guilt was. You know how I know that? Think about Peter. Remember Peter when he denied Christ three times, could you imagine carrying that guilt on you? Whatever guilt you and I are facing in our lives pales in comparison to the guilt Peter must have felt, having denied Christ three times, not once, not twice, but three times. And having been told in advance, “You are going to deny me three times.” Imagine the guilt.

There is no burden that we could carry that is as powerful as what Peter might have had to carry in John chapter thirteen. Let’s just pick up John chapter thirteen quick verse thirty-six, just a couple verses here. “Simon Peter said to Christ, Lord, where do you go? Jesus answered him Where I go, you cannot follow me for now, but you shall follow me afterwards. Peter said to Him, Lord, why cannot I follow you now? I will lay down my life for your sake.”

Having said that, “I will lay down my life. I will follow you to the ends of the earth. I will do whatever it takes, even unto death,” he’s saying. “And Jesus answered him and said, Will you lay down your life for my sake? Truly, truly, I say unto you, the cock shall not crow till you have denied me three times.” And then it happened. So, imagine being Peter and hearing that cock crow and knowing that you have done exactly as Christ said that would happen. The guilt that would weigh on you.

It could be overwhelming. But unlike Judas, Peter did not let that guilt overwhelm him, even though it was one of the biggest guilty things that he could have done. You betray... you gave... you denied Christ three times to save your own skin after saying that you would go to the ends of the earth, if you will, and die for Christ. Talk about being guilty. But Peter was not overwhelmed by it.

Peter recognized his sin. He said, you know what... it’s not necessarily recorded in the Bible, but you know how we can know that Peter went on and overcame that guilt? Turn over to Acts chapter two. We can see it by his fruits. You know that Peter overcame it. He pushed through whatever guilt he had; he accepted it. He repented of it. He changed. He went to God about it.

In Acts chapter two of verse fourteen, it says this, “But Peter’s standing up with the eleven, lifted up his voice and said to them, you men of Judea and all you that dwell in Jerusalem, be this known unto you and harken to my words for these are not drunken as you suppose seeing it is but the third hour of this day.” But this is on Pentecost, we all know when God’s Holy Spirit came down and the New Testament church began. Peter was the lead apostle.

And he began quoting scripture from Joel and he said, verse twenty-two, “You men of Israel, hear these words, Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs, which God did by Him in the midst of you, so yourselves know Him being delivered by the determinant counsel and foreknowledge of God you have taken, and by wicked hands, have crucified Him and slain Him,” so forth. Peter is speaking with absolute boldness as the leader of the church at this time. You know he overcame his guilt based on how he’s speaking what he’s saying.

He’s not letting the fact that he did such a terrible thing, foretold by Christ to happen, he’s not letting that overwhelm him. We can’t either, brethren. Whenever we go through this self-examination period, if we see these sins in our lives, we must not let them overwhelm us because guilt can do that and Judas proved it. But let’s be like Peter, let’s push past that. And here’s how brethren. This is the second and great point that we’ll cover today. And this point is broken into two parts. The point itself is, seek forgiveness and repentance.

You recall what the first... The first point was acknowledging guilt, this is the second great point of seeking forgiveness and repentance, and there’s two parts to this. The first part is, confessing to God and others, if you need to. Turn over to Psalm chapter thirty-two. Psalm thirty-two. This is how we begin to manage the guilt. Once we’ve put guilt in its proper position, we don’t ignore it, neither do we blow it out of proportion. Now that we have guilt, what do we do with the guilt? This is what we do.

It’s very, very simple. We have to seek forgiveness and repentance, and we have to confess this sin to God. Psalm thirty-two, David knew... again here, this is a Psalm similar to the one we read earlier, but, David knew that he had done something wrong. So, what do we read here in Psalm thirty-two? “Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputes no iniquity, and in whose spirit is no guile, and I kept silence.”

“When I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long.” Now, what he means by that is for a time, David did not go to God to confess his sins. “When I kept silence, when I didn’t go to you, having known that I broke your law, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long.” He held guilt. That’s guilt. That’s another way of describing guilt and the emotions that come from guilt. So, by keeping silence and not going to God, we’re going to continue in a guilty position.

So, we have to unburden ourselves from that guilt. How do we do that? We go to God, we confess our sins. “For day and night,” verse four, “Your hand was heavy upon me. My moisture is turned into the drought of summer.” Whatever... it’s kind of a poetic language, but it’s like if you are full of water, all of that water was gone when he was carrying this burden of guilt. It’s like he turned into a parched, dry desert, Selah. And here’s how he rectified the situation. After he kept silent, here’s what he did. “I acknowledged my sin unto you, and my iniquity have I not hid.”

He came before God and said, I’ve done wrong and he unhid his sins. “I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord, and you forgave the iniquity of my sin, Selah.” Very simple. When we confess our sins to God, he is righteous and just to forgive us. “For this shall every one that is godly pray unto you in a time when you may be found.” He’s telling us, this is what you need to do. If you feel guilty about something, do this, “For this shall every one that is godly pray unto you in a time when you may be found.

“Surely in the floods of great waters, they shall not come near unto him. You are my hiding place, you shall preserve me from trouble. You shall compass me about with songs of deliverance, Selah. I will instruct you and teach you.” Now, this is David speaking on God’s behalf and so forth. “I will instruct you and teach you in the way which you shall go. I will guide you with my eye. Be you not as the horse or as the mule which have no understanding, whose mouth must be held in with a bit or a bridle, lest they come near unto you. Many sorrows shall be to the wicked.”

Do you know why many sorrows are on the wicked? What is sorrow? Sorrow is an emotion that comes from being guilty because people in the world don’t know how to release this guilt. I knew when I was young when I did something right or wrong, I wasn’t in God’s church at the time, but I did know right from wrong to a certain degree. And when I did something wrong, guilt struck and I knew that I was guilty of certain things. But I didn’t know how to address it. I didn’t know how to manage it, how to handle it. And guilt can cause sorrow.

So for many in the world, they walk around sorrowful all the time because they just don’t know how to manage or handle the guilt. “Many sorrows shall be to the wicked, but he that trusts in the Lord, mercy shall compass him about.” Imagine being cloaked, clothed, with a big blanket of mercy that God gives us. He’s saying, I’m going to be merciful to you if you just simply confess your sins, admit what you did wrong, come to me. Don’t sit in silence like David said.

“Be glad in the Lord and rejoice you righteous. Shout for joy all you that are upright in heart.” Until we acknowledge our sins to God, we are keeping silence like David did. And brethren, the guilt will not go away as long as we keep silence. David is saying, rather than simply acknowledging the sin yourself, take it to the next level. Don’t just recognize that you’ve sinned. David recognized that he had sinned, but he’s kept silence. Recognize your sin, don’t blow it out of proportion, but then take it to God.

Offload that burden, because that’s what you’re doing. When you take it to God, you’re saying, I can’t handle this burden, Father, please take it from me. And take that next step of confessing your sin to God and others. You know, it’s also relieving. It’s not the exact same thing, but I’ll just add this in here, a quick side point. It can be very relieving if you know that you’ve done something wrong to somebody else... Yes, of course, confess your sin to God.

But if you’ve done something wrong to somebody else, the relief you will feel having gone to that person and acknowledging that fault, you’ll feel an immense release. The burden will also help... That will also help to offload that burden from you of guilt. Go to that person. If you feel like you’ve done something wrong to them and you feel guilty about something, go to them. Acknowledge your fault to them. So it’s not like some Catholic thing where you go into a confession booth and confess your sins to the priest.

No, it’s just going to your brother or sister that you might have done wrong to and acknowledging that. And they will very much appreciate it too. Their confidence in you will be even greater and restored even greater than it was before because they see that you have admitted fault. Admitting fault goes a whole long way in building relationships and strengthening relationships. Proverbs chapter twenty-eight. This is a fascinating thing here. Listen carefully. Proverbs twenty-eight.

So, you remember how David said that he kept silence? He knew he had sinned, but he didn’t go to God yet. Once he went to God, he basically unveiled his sins to God. That’s when he felt relief. Proverbs twenty-eight and verse thirteen says this. If we don’t go to God and we do continue to keep silence, this is what happens. Proverbs twenty-eight, thirteen. “He that covers his sins shall not prosper.” In effect, by not going to God and acknowledging our faults, we’re keeping our sins covered. Covered.

You know, all of us went to bed last night putting blankets on. Imagine your feet are sins and you cover your sins with that big blanket. Those sins are covered until you decide to uncover them and expose your feet, if I could just use that analogy. So we must... what God is telling us is when we go to God in prayer, we are in effect taking the blanket off. We’re uncovering our sins to God. Now here’s what’s fascinating. Once you uncover the sin, what happens to the sins? Proverbs ten, a few chapters back, and verse twelve.

I’ll just read the second half. Verse twelve says, “Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all sins.” So as soon as we uncover the sin to God, God says, All right. I’m covering them back up again. Uncover your sins to God so that He can then cover them back up. Love covers sin. God says, Okay, now that you have acknowledged these sins to me, you’ve uncovered them to me, I’m going to put covers back over those sins. It’s like they didn’t exist. If we uncover our sins to God, He will forgive you, and cover them back up.

But do you believe that you’re forgiven is the next question. Do you believe that you’re forgiven or do you carry around guilt even though you’ve cast all your cares on God? And this is the final subpoint. Not only should we confess our sins to God or other people, if needed, confessing our sins to God leads us to be forgiven of Him. We all know that. We just saw it. When we uncover our sins to God, He covers them back up. He says, No, you don’t have to worry about them anymore. They’re covered.

So we have two paths. We can either keep our sins covered ourselves or we can uncover them so that God can keep them covered. Which one would you rather have? I’d rather have the latter. So but once we’ve had our sins forgiven, once we’ve exposed our sins to God and he’s wiped us clean of them, the only final step, can be very difficult, is to now forgive yourself. This is the final point, final subpoint. That’s not necessarily easy to do. It’s easier said than done.

If we maintain guilt, even after seeking God’s forgiveness and repentance because theoretically, brethren, once we’ve gone to God and we’ve uncovered our sins to Him, that’s when the guilt should just simply be gone. But for some people, it goes beyond that. It’s not just that easy. For some people, they can understand that God has forgiven them, that they’ve already opened up to God and been forgiven by God for those sins, but they just simply can’t forgive themselves for what they’ve done.

If we maintain guilt after seeking God’s forgiveness and repentance, we’re actually guilty of a different sin, really. So if we have already gone to God and we’ve been released of this guilt, but we continue to feel guilty for it, we now have entered into a different arena. We are actually experiencing a different kind of sin at this point, one that’s much more subtle and dangerous. If we do this, we’re in effect saying, I know God can forgive me, but this sin is just too big, too massive, too overarching that I can’t forgive myself.

And that’s not a good position to be in, brethren. Holding ourselves to an unnecessarily higher standard of forgiveness than God sets can lead to self-righteousness. That’s the dangerous sin that I was talking about. Turn over to Micah chapter six. Micah six. We will just read one verse in verse eight. Micah six, eight, “He has showed you, oh, man, what is good and what does the Lord require of you, but to do justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God,” which should be stated as, in the Hebrew, it says, “to humble yourself to walk with God.”

What is that saying? In life, brethren, because of self-righteousness, we walk up here. God’s standards are really down here. God is walking down here at this level, but we often walk in our minds and in our lives up at this level. God says that we have to humble ourselves to walk with him. We often think that we have to lift ourselves up to walk with God because God walks up here and we’re down here. It’s the opposite. God is down here. He says, humble yourself to walk with me. It means deflate yourself.

Just like the days of unleavened bread. We’re here to deflate ourselves, deleaven ourselves. We heard a sermonette about physical deleavening, but we have to spiritually deleaven ourselves as well. That’s what the self-examination process is all about. So we have to humble ourselves of self-righteousness in order to walk with God. And in the area of guilt, it can be easy for us to set a higher standard of forgiveness. I know God forgave me. His standard of forgiveness is down here.

But for me, I have a higher standard of forgiveness. I need to really go through the wringer in order to make sure that I’m forgiven of my sin. So my standard of forgiveness is up here. I know God forgave me, but I just can’t forgive myself. No, no, no. We have to humble ourselves to walk with God. We have to lower our standard in many regards. Drop the self-righteousness, admit that we were being self-righteous, and go back to step one in the process of guilt.

Admit that by holding unnecessary guilt and setting an unnecessary standard of forgiveness for ourselves, we are in fact sinning and have to acknowledge it and go back through the process, but don’t overblow it and then take that sin before God and seek forgiveness for it. It actually takes humility to forgive ourselves of past sins. And we must lower ourselves, humble ourselves to come down to God’s standard of forgiveness. And in so doing, you’ll remove completely unnecessary stress from your life. Ecclesiastes seven.

Go to Ecclesiastes seven in verse sixteen. It says this, Ecclesiastes seven, sixteen, “Be not righteous over much, neither make yourself overwise. Why should you destroy yourself?”

If we set the bar in our minds too high to forgive ourselves, it is self-righteous. We’re setting our own standard of righteousness. When God says, What? you’ve already brought it to me. I’ve already forgiven your sin. It doesn’t matter what the sin was. It could be denying Christ three times. It could be Paul who murdered the saints.

Paul went on and was able to overcome his feelings of guilt in order to go on and become the elite apostle to the Gentiles, just like Peter overcame his guilt. None of us are perfect brethren. It doesn’t matter what we’ve done. We might have done something bad even after baptism. We might have done something that we think to ourselves, How could I be forgiven of this? But brethren, sin is sin is sin is sin is sin.

There’s no qualifier for saying, Well, if you murdered, or if you had an abortion, or if you did this or you fornicated or you had an adulterous relationship, those are exemptions to my rule of forgiveness. All these are lesser sins and therefore, I’ll forgive you these, but there’s a small category of really big sins that are just unforgivable. God doesn’t think that way. All sin is sin. If we’ve done wrong, if we’ve broken the law in one area, we’ve broken all the law. It’s just that simple.

So from God’s perspective, it doesn’t matter what you did, what sin it is, all that matters is that you truly and earnestly go to him to seek forgiveness and repentance and want to change. That’s what matters. And if you believe that God has forgiven you, if you believe that you’ve been given repentance, you have no reason to hold that guilt any longer or else, again, go back through it, you are holding a higher standard of forgiveness for yourself, which ultimately comes to being over much righteous. And why burden yourself?

It says at the end of the verse, verse sixteen, why should you destroy yourself? By setting this higher standard of righteousness, you’re in effect destroying yourself. You’re putting an unnecessary burden on your shoulders. Again, guilt is knowledge you have broken God’s law. We must embrace this knowledge and use it to repent and change. Embrace that we’ve done something wrong and use it as a catapult to go out and change and do something different. Repent.

But once we’ve been given repentance we should no longer feel guilt. Guilt should go away after we’ve been given repentance and forgiveness from God. Hebrews chapter nine, just a couple of final verses. Hebrews chapter nine, we’ll pick it up in verse eleven, “But Christ being come a high priest of good things to come by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building, neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood, He entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us.”

“For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies to the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ,” this is what we are here to do. In pre-Passover season, we come to the Passover having discerned the body of Christ, discerning Christ’s sacrifice, understanding what it is, why he did it, and its great importance.

“How much more shall the blood of Christ who through the eternal Spirit offered it Himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works and to serve the living God?” Now that sacrifice not just cleansed you from God’s perspective, it says it should purge your conscience. When Christ sacrificed Himself and sin was covered, if we acknowledge it to God, our sins are covered now because of Christ’s shed blood, it should therefore not just forgive you from God’s eyes, you should forgive yourself from your eyes.

Your conscience should be clear of these dead works. They’re dead. They’re gone. When somebody dies, their thoughts perish, and they go into the grave, and they no longer exist in the flesh. So just as somebody dies, and they no longer exist humanly, physically any longer. We have to see the sins that have been covered by the blood of Jesus Christ as being dead, gone. As soon as we ask for forgiveness and repentance, they’re gone and our consciences should acknowledge that as well.

All guilt that we should feel or that we did feel prior to going to God should be gone. “And for this cause, He is the Mediator of the New Testament that by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the First Testament, they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance.” Christ shed blood should not only forgive us in God’s eyes, but in your eyes. If there’s any lingering feelings of guilt going into the Passover, God purges us from this guilty conscience.

And that’s why I return back to the comments that I made earlier in the message. Brethren, when we go to God in prayer, as we’re examining ourselves, we should be acknowledging our sins to God. We don’t need to wait until the Passover to take the symbols and so forth, to be forgiven of these sins. That’s to help us to remember the body and blood of Christ, and to... yes, of course, we are forgiven at that point. But our guilt should be gone by the time we even get into the Passover doors, cross into those Passover doors.

We should be focused on Christ’s sacrifice at that point, that it is by His shed blood and his broken body, that we can even be here and have our sins forgiven but brethren, we don’t need to wait to release ourselves of this guilt until the Passover. We can go to God right now if we’re sinning, if we’ve done something wrong, and seek repentance and forgiveness. We don’t need to hold on to them. “And purge our conscience of dead works.” Turn over to Revelation fourteen for one final verse. Revelation fourteen.

Speaking of the one hundred and forty-four thousand, which we now know more about. Verse one, chapter fourteen and verse one says this, “And I looked and lo, a lamb stood on the Mount Zion, and with him one hundred and forty-four thousand having his father’s name written in their foreheads. And I heard a voice from heaven, as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of great thunder.”

“And I heard the voice of harpers harping with their harps, and they sang as it were a new song before the throne, and before the four beasts and the elders and no man could learn that song but the one hundred and forty-four thousand which were redeemed from the earth. These one hundred and forty-four thousand were they which were not defiled with women, for they were virgins. These are they which followed the lamb whithersoever he goes.”

“These were redeemed from among men, being the first fruits unto God and unto the lamb and in their mouth was found no guile, for they are without fault before God and the throne.” What does it mean to be without fault? These one hundred and forty-four thousand were faultless. In other words, they were without blame. You couldn’t blame them for anything. They weren’t guilty. They held no guilt for past transgressions.

Do you know why? Because as they sinned, they went to God and sought forgiveness and repentance. And not only did they forgive, know that they were forgiven by God, they forgave themselves. They could stand there as the one hundred and forty-four thousand and say, I am without fault. Brethren, we can do that too. You don’t understand. We can do that too right now. We can stand before God right now and say, I am without fault, if we simply acknowledge our sins and confess them.

The one hundred and forty-four thousand not only sought God’s forgiveness, they forgave themselves. Without forgiving themselves, we can’t be found guiltless or blameless. God intends no one going into the millennium, even the rest of mankind who are going to be given the Holy Spirit going into the millennium, he doesn’t want them feeling guilt for past sins because he’s going to wipe their memories. God wants everybody to feel guiltless, faultless, blameless.

And again, we don’t have to wait until the Passover, we can feel that now. We can be forgiven of our sins right now and all guilt will be removed. So, if we self-examine, there’s no reason we should come to Passover holding any guilt. Our focus at the Passover should be on Christ and His sacrifice and the feelings of gratitude and thankfulness that His sacrifice has brought forgiveness and that it all together has removed the guilt. So, brethren, as we close here, let’s clear ourselves of guilt now and be better prepared for the Passover than ever before.