From His Heart

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What are the two giant words that can steal your joy and decimate your faith journey? Find out today on From His Heart with Pastor Jeff Shreve.

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Guilt and shame work together to try and wreck and ruin and destroy our lives. Guilt over something you did last week, last month, last year, five years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 50 years ago. And you have on this heavy coat of guilt and you can't ever seem to get it off.

Hey, how? How are we to handle the giant of guilt and shame, that Siamese twin giant that tends to wreck and ruin and steal and keep us from really soaring in the Christian life? He can heal every scar with real truth, real love, real hope from his heart.

Speaker 1

Welcome to From His Heart with Pastor Jeff Shreve, reminding us today that guilt and shame are two emotions that are all too familiar. Many people are being gnawed to death on the inside as they try to hide their sin and explain it away. But God has a better plan. And today on From His Heart, he's going to help us know how we can defeat the giant of guilt and shame. That's the name of the message today.

God really desires for you and me to experience the wonders of his complete and total forgiveness. All this month, we're learning about the evil giants that have more of our attention than the love of God. Today we're in Pastor Jeff's seven-message series, "Land of the How to Deal with Your Biggest Problems." If you miss any from this month, you can always catch up online once they've aired by going to fromhisheart.org and clicking the Listen link.

Open your Bible now to the Gospel of Luke, chapter seven. Here's Pastor Jeff to begin teaching us how we can eradicate from our lives the giant of guilt and shame.

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The giant of guilt and shame. It's kind of a Siamese twin giant. Guilt and shame work together to come at us to try and wreck and ruin and destroy our lives. You know, the sister word, synonym word for guilt is the word remorse. Remorse comes from the Latin and it means to bite, to gnaw again and again and again. And that's exactly what guilt does.

See, we experience the giant of guilt. We experience the emotion of guilt when we do something that violates our moral compass. And when we violate our sense of right and wrong, we have this accusation that goes on inside. Our heart begins to condemn us, and we feel guilty. And if we don't process the guilt, then not only do we feel guilty for this act, this thing that we did, but then we also begin to feel shame. Guilt is focused on the act: "Look what I did." Shame is focused on the person: "Look who I am. Look who I am because I did this terrible thing."

Guilt and shame—a terrible, horrible giant, an invisible giant, but a heavy, heavy giant. A lot like this heavy coat. Many of you are here today, and you wear guilt and shame like this heavy coat. It's with you everywhere you go. People may not be able to see it, but you know it's there, and you can't seem to break free. There's a poem I like that says this: "No torture, the poet's feign can match that fierce, that unutterable pain he feels who day and night, devoid of rest, carries his own accuser within his breast."

And you walk around with your heavy coat of guilt—guilt over something you did last week, last month, last year, five years ago, ten years ago, twenty years ago, fifty years ago. You have on this heavy coat of guilt, and you can't ever seem to get it off. No matter how hard you try, no matter what you do, no matter how many verses you memorize, you seem to just always have this heavy coat of guilt because you had an abortion, because you were unfaithful to your spouse and it ended in divorce and it destroyed your kids.

Hey, how are we to handle the giant of guilt and shame, that Siamese twin giant that tends to wreck and ruin and steal and kill and destroy and keep us from really soaring in the Christian life? Well, the Bible tells us. See, God doesn't want anyone to live in guilt and shame. Jesus came to set us free. He came that we might have life and might have it abundantly. Now, if you're living in guilt and shame, wearing your guilt and shame like a heavy coat, you're never going to have the abundant life. You're never going to experience what God wants you to experience. It's the enemy who wants to keep you in that coat so he can steal and kill and destroy.

How are we to handle the giant of guilt and shame? Well, to show us how to do this, we will be in Luke, chapter seven. We're going to look at the story that Luke records of a prostitute who came to Jesus. I think we'd all agree that a prostitute would know a little bit about guilt and shame. See, there's something about sexual sin that's different from other sins. The Bible says that the immoral man sins against his own body. And so when you are immoral, you are just covered in the slimy fingerprints of sin. It's such a degrading thing, such a filthy thing. And that's what this woman was experiencing.

Luke, chapter 7, verse 36: "Now, one of the Pharisees was requesting him to dine, was requesting the Lord to dine with him. He entered the Pharisee's house and reclined at the table. And behold, there was a woman in the city who was a sinner, an immoral woman. Everyone in the city knew who she was. When she learned that he was reclining at the table in the Pharisee's house, she brought an alabaster vial of perfume. Standing behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears and kept wiping them with the hair of her head and kissing his feet and anointing them with the perfume."

Now, when the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, "If this man were a prophet, he would know who and what sort of person this woman is who is touching him, that she is a sinner." How are we to handle the giant of guilt and shame? And listen, everyone faces it. Everyone faces it. You know the first two people who faced the giant of guilt and shame? Adam and Eve.

Genesis chapter three tells us that when they disobeyed God and ate of the tree that God had told them not to eat from, as soon as they ate from it, their eyes were opened, and they knew that they were naked. They sewed fig leaves together to hide their nakedness. The Bible says that God came down in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord. The Lord called out and said, "Adam, where are you?" Adam said, "I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid myself."

I have sinned against you, God. And listen, guilt and shame follow sin like night follows day. Adam and Eve sinned, and now we find them hiding. Why? They're hiding in guilt; they're hiding in shame. They're afraid to go into the presence of God.

How are we to handle the giant of guilt and shame? Well, I want you to notice three insights about this giant and about this situation. First insight: Many people handle guilt and shame the wrong way because everyone has to deal with it. Everyone in this world has to deal with it. We're fallen people living in a fallen world. So how are you going to deal with it? How do you deal with the heavy coat?

Well, lots of people deal with it the wrong way. What do you say is the wrong way? Well, they try and explain it away. You know, if I have guilt and shame over something that I've done, I feel guilty about it because I've gone out of bounds, so to speak, in my actions. Well, one thing you can do if you go out of bounds in your actions is just move the out-of-bounds marker to say, "I'm not out of bounds anymore." Boy, I was really feeling guilty because I thought I was out of bounds, but now I move the out-of-bounds marker, and I feel good because I'm not out of bounds.

The Bible says in Proverbs, chapter 30, verse 20, "This is the way of an adulterous woman. She eats and wipes her mouth and says, 'I have done no wrong.'" Was that true? You can be an adulterous woman and just move the out-of-bounds marker and say, "I have done no wrong." You know why that doesn't work? It's because we're not in charge of the out-of-bounds markers. God is. God sets morality, and morality is rooted in the person of God.

Fornication is a sin; adultery is a sin; homosexuality is a sin. All these things, sexual immorality, sexual perversion, all these things are outside of the bounds that God has set up. And you say, "Well, I'm going to move the boundary marker." Well, you don't have the authority to do that. That comes from God. And God didn't just willy-nilly set up the boundary markers. He set them up as a reflection of who he is.

Eat and wipe your mouth and say, "I've done no wrong." We have people in our world today who are doing that very same thing and say, "That's not wrong. You can't say what I'm doing is wrong. How dare you say that what I'm doing is sin?" You know the scripture talks about that situation. First John, chapter one: "If we say we have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. If we say that we have no sin, we're deceiving ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us."

We're saying, "God, that's not where the boundary marker's supposed to be. It's supposed to be over here." And see, I'm not out of bounds; I'm in bounds. And that calls God a liar because God said, "No, that's where it is. I put it where it is supposed to be. You are moving it." And in moving it, you're calling me a liar because I call that sin.

You know, there's a problem when you try and explain away your sin. Here's the problem: Every single person has a conscience. We're given a conscience from God, a conscience at birth. It's not absolute in terms of being absolutely correct in every situation, but it is a rudimentary alarm system that God gives you. When you violate certain things that God has set up as terms of right and wrong, that alarm will go off, and your conscience will bug you to death.

Your conscience will not let you just explain it away because it will stab you continually. What is guilt? It comes from the Latin, connected to the word remorse. It gnaws at you again and again and again and again and again. "No torture, the poet's fame can match that fierce, unutterable pain who day and night, devoid of rest, carries his own accuser within his breast."

We try and explain it away, and then we try to hide it away. These are both the wrong ways to do it. It's wrong to try and explain it away, to move the boundary markers. It's wrong to try and hide it away. We do that often. We just try and put that in a closet, put a sheet over that, bury that. You know, Achan in the Book of Judges—what did he do? He sinned. He took something he shouldn't have taken. He stole from God, and he tried to bury it in his tent and hide it. Nobody sees it if it's buried in the tent; nobody sees it.

The eyes of the Lord are in every place, watching the evil and the good. God sees everything. God sees, and God knows. We try and hide our sin. It doesn't work. You try and explain it away; your conscience will call you out. You try and hide your sin as a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ; God will convict you and call you out.

David was a great king, a great Old Testament saint, yet he was a great sinner. David committed the terrible sin of adultery, and then he committed the sin of murder to try and cover up his adultery. Listen, the sin of adultery with Bathsheba was a hot-blooded sin. I see her, and his look turned to lust, and his lust turned to longing, and his longing turned to laying, and his laying turned to loss. He wanted her. That was a hot-blooded sin.

But when he planned to kill her husband, Uriah the Hittite, that was a cold-blooded, calculated sin. When he committed those terrible, horrible sins, the Bible says the things that he did were evil in the sight of the Lord. David kept quiet about his sin. He talks about it in Psalm 32, and he says these words: "When I kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away through my groaning day and night. For your hand was heavy upon me; day and night your hand was heavy upon me. My vitality was drained away as with the fever heat of summer."

Selah. You read that word in the Psalms, "Selah." What does that mean? It means pause. It's probably a musical notation because the psalms were sung. Musical notation. Pause there. I want you to feel what David felt. I'm trying to hide this sin. I'm trying to keep quiet about this sin. God is crushing the life out of me, saying, "You're going to have to deal with this sin."

"My body wasted away through my groaning all day long, for day and night your hand was heavy upon me." Day and night, and night and day, and day and night, and night and day. What happened? The giant of guilt and shame. God was allowing that giant to come and just gnaw at David's heart. There was conviction coming from the Spirit of God, and the hand of God was heavy on David.

How do you know if you're really a Christian? Because when you sin, you feel it. You feel the conviction of God. You feel the heavy hand of God that says, "You need to get this right." Conscience won't let you just explain it away. Conviction won't let you, as a believer, hide it away. But we try and do that. We try and deal with guilt and shame the wrong way.

Second insight: God wants you to handle guilt and shame the right way. God doesn't want you to have on this heavy coat. He doesn't. And so he says, "This is what you do if you're wearing this heavy coat." The woman in Luke chapter seven was wearing a heavy coat. She came to Jesus during the dinner party. She wasn't invited. No way she was invited. Simon the Pharisee was having the party for Jesus, having him over for dinner. That was a big deal. Jesus is big news.

Big news in all around the Galilee, the area called Galilee by the Sea of Galilee, all those Galilee villages around there. He's big news. He's performing huge miracles. Simon the Pharisee invites Jesus over. The way they did things back then, you know, you didn't have radio and TV and other kinds of entertainment. So if the preacher, the rabbi, this guy, this miracle worker comes to the house, that's a big deal.

People would gather, even though they weren't invited. They would gather around the house so that they could listen to what was going on. The house would be big, and they would be at the table, and you reclined at the table. The table was low to the ground. You'd be on your elbow, and your feet would be out, and you would eat and talk, and it would last for hours. The people would come and listen in through the window or maybe be around the walls.

All of a sudden, this woman comes. What's she doing here? She's not welcome here. How does she know that? How can she not know that she's not welcome here? We know who she is. She is that woman. She is the woman of the night. Everyone knew who she was. Simon the Pharisee was amazed that Jesus didn't seem to know who she was and what she was.

She came to Jesus, and it says in verse 37, "Behold, there was a woman in the city who was a sinner." When she learned that he was reclining at the table in the Pharisee's house, she brought an alabaster vial of perfume. An alabaster vial of perfume would have been very expensive. It would have kind of fit in with her trade for sure.

Verse 38: "Standing behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears and kept wiping them with the hair of her head and kissing his feet and anointing them with the perfume." Here's this woman, and no doubt she heard Jesus preach. She had to know something about him—that he was the one who would touch the leper, that he was the one who would welcome the sinner. He was the one who said, "Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest."

And she said, "Maybe I can come to him." There was conviction of sin, her conscience. Maybe she was one who tried to say, "Hey, I'm going to move the boundary markers, and what I'm doing is right and good and fine, and that's how I'm going to make a living." After a while, she couldn't wash up the filth anymore. She sees Jesus, the sinless Son of God, and she says, "I can come to him."

"I would never go to Simon the Pharisee because he wouldn't want to have anything to do with me. But there's something about Jesus. There's something inviting about Jesus. And so I can come." She makes her way and breaks through the scorn of man that was all around that place as they stared at her, stared daggers at her. She came and knelt at his feet and just began to weep.

She was there right at the feet of the Son of God, the sinless Son of God, the God who is too pure to look upon sin. She was at the feet of one whom Isaiah said that the angels do not cease to say, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory." And she's there right at his feet, so aware of her sinfulness. She falls down, and her heart, full of sin, just broke. The water just rained down.

Martin Luther called her tears "heart water." Her heart was just pouring out before the Lord on his feet. Tears came like a flood. She took down her hair. You didn't do that. That was a social faux pas. No woman did that. It was grounds for divorce in Israel if a woman took down her hair in public. She didn't care. She took down her hair. There was no towel that she could see.

She took down her hair and just began to wipe his feet with her hair. Then she began to anoint his feet and kiss his feet. She never said one word that's recorded here, but she gives us the picture of how to get right with God. How do you deal with guilt and shame?

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What a great question. How do you? First, you have to admit the sin in your life that has caused this guilt and shame. And secondly, you need to realize that God loves you and sent his son to die for you on the cross, taking all your sin and burying it into the grave of forgetfulness and receive him as your Lord, making you a child of God.

Listen, when you fall in love with God for what he's already done for you, sin will take a hike. You can find out more about this when you visit us on our website at fromisheart.org, click the "Why Jesus" link. God is doing incredible things through your support from His Heart. This month we hear people coming to Christ because of the messages of Pastor Jeff. And we hear of people deepening their walk of faith and surrender.

It's been said that where there is no fruit, there is no root. Pastor Jeff desires to mature you in your faith with deeper roots and bring others around the world to a point of repentance and faith, even in Spanish and Portuguese speaking countries. And that's why we have just embarked on a new initiative with pray.com to translate each radio broadcast and each television broadcast into those respective languages.

It's a step of faith, but we believe that our supporters will pray about joining us in this impactful outreach. If you ask God to enlighten you about what you would do to help us, then would you please respond with a gift today? And when you do, we'd like to send you as a thanks Pastor Jeff's series "The Land of the How to Deal with Your Biggest Problems" along with his companion booklet, "When You Don't Like Yourself."

To get this series and the booklet and help us in this new project, call 866-40-BIBLE (866-40-24253) or go online to fromisheart.org. Know that your gift will be impacting people around the world, sharing real truth, love, and hope to new nations. God bless you for helping this month.

We trust that today's program was a blessing and that you'll be back again on Wednesday for part two of this reassuring message called "The Giant of Guilt and Shame." That's next time here on From His Heart.

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Heart There is tremendous truth There is blessing, there is hope that you always dream Love. He can heal every scar we trust from his heart.

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From His Heart is the listener-supported broadcast ministry of Dr. Jeff Shreve, speaking the truth in love to a lost and hurting world.

Remember, no matter what, God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.

Find out more. Go to fromisheart.org.