In Touch Ministries

Dr. Charles Stanley: Here's the dilemma. Think about it. If Jesus Christ doesn't bear your sin and you don't turn to him for the forgiveness of your sin, well, let me ask you this: then how do you deal with sin in your life? You've got to have an answer. How do you deal with sin in your life if you refuse to come to Christ and accept the fact that he paid for it? How do you deal with it?

Guest (Male): John the Baptist called Jesus the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Today's edition of In Touch, the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley, begins to detail the fundamental things Christ accomplished in his death and his resurrection, and how our lives can be transformed as a result. Here's part one of Bearing the Greatest Burden. Let's listen in to Dr. Stanley's message.

Dr. Charles Stanley: What is the heaviest burden that you've ever borne in your life? Now, most of you would have to stop and think about that for a few moments, but some of you could think immediately. I remember exactly what it was. It could be one of a number of things. You had the greatest opportunity in your life, you made the wrong decision, and you missed it.

You had an automobile accident, your best friend got killed, and you can't ever get over it. There was a time when you had lots of wealth, and you lost it all because you gambled it away. Then God called you to preach the gospel, to serve him in some fashion, and you decided instead to say no, and you haven't been happy ever since. Wonderfully married, lovely family, lovely children. You walked away because you thought there was something better, and now you don't have either one.

There are all kinds of heavy burdens that people bear, but there's one burden heavier than all the rest. That's what I want to talk about this morning. We've been talking about how to handle the burdens of life that you and I deal with. We've talked about how to deal with the burdens in other people's lives and how we respond to that. Then, what is the heaviest burden of all?

This is one of the most deceptive things because some people appear, it seems, to be getting by all right when deep down inside we know they are not because what God says is true. So I want you to turn, if you will, to the ninth chapter of Hebrews. I want us to read the twenty-fourth through the twenty-eighth verses of this chapter, and then I want us to look to see what is the heaviest burden of all.

Hebrews chapter nine, verse twenty-four. For Christ did not enter a holy place made with hands, a mere copy of the true one, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us. Nor was it that he would offer himself often, as the high priest enters the holy place year by year with blood that is not his own, which is what was their responsibility in those days.

Verse twenty-six. Otherwise, he would have needed to suffer often since the foundation of the world; but now once at the consummation of the ages he has been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. And inasmuch as it is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment, so Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time for salvation without reference to sin to those who eagerly await him.

What is the greatest burden of all? The greatest burden of all is not any of these things that we mentioned, although that's a great burden. The greatest burden of all has to do with our sin. All of us have experienced sin in our life, so all of us have had to bear the burden of sin. So as you think about your life and what's been going on and how far you are along in life, maybe you had dreams and ideas. You had maybe some kind of dreams in your life that you thought could never happen, and now they're moving right along, and somehow you seemingly are doing that without God and everything seems to be just fine.

What a deception, because you see, the truth is every single one of us has to give an account to God. It is very evident from the scripture that we do. So what we do is we just move along in deception, thinking everything is going along really well. So I want you to think about this passage of scripture because in this passage of scripture is the most important truth in all the word of God, no matter where you go.

Now, what is the greatest burden? Here it is. The greatest burden that mankind bears is simply this: it's the sin and the consequences of that sin in our life. That's the greatest burden of all. While a person may not feel that, because we said what is a burden? A burden is a weight. It's an emotional weight. It can sometimes become weariness, discouragement, despair in a person's life, but it's that heaviness of soul and spirit.

Many people are bearing that burden and do not realize what it is. So therefore, because they don't know what it is, they go about in the wrong way trying to alleviate that burden, that feeling of despair, of weariness, of failure, and so forth, and they get themselves in deeper trouble. Sin is a very deceptive burden. While a person on the outside may appear to be doing well, deep down inside the very nature of guilt and sin is that it's inescapable.

People go to all kinds of means and ways of trying to escape it, but they cannot. They deny it, they rationalize it, they try to excuse it. They want to blame their feelings on someone else. Sometimes what they do is they blame their spiritual feelings on something that is physical. They say, well, this is a physical thing, well, I'm just going through a time in my life. The very presence and the very essence and the very character of sin and guilt is destructive. It wears away at your body, it wears away at your soul, it wears away at your mind, and it fragments your thinking.

No matter what the person may do—it may be all the prominence and prestige that the world can offer, it may be alcohol, sex, drugs, whatever it may be—you cannot escape the burden of sin and its consequences. Many people who say, well, I don't believe any of that, when they lie down at night and look up in the night and it's just themselves, they somehow deep down inside know that there's something beyond what they're willing to admit.

So what are these consequences? I want you to think about it for a moment and think about how heavy this has to weigh. The first is this: the bondage of sin. I want to name four consequences of living without Christ. Here they are. First of all, living in bondage. A person says, well, I'm not in bondage. Ask almost any alcoholic or most any person who is addicted to drugs or sex, and if you ask them, "Are you in bondage?" well, certainly not. I can stop this anytime I want to. That's why all of these rehabilitation places are so full of people who said they weren't in bondage until they get absolutely so desperate, then they have to finally confess that something's not right in their life.

So sin is a bondage in a person's life, no matter what it is. It is a bondage that's inescapable except in one way. So one of the burdens of the consequences of sin is bondage. A second one is this: not only is there bondage, but there's this whole issue in a person's life that often times we don't want to admit, and that is the separation from God. Sin separates us from God. There isn't anything in this life worth making me feel separated from him.

Now while I know that once you are saved you are not ever separated, but a lost person is separated from God. The very idea of being separated from God, the scripture is very clear. There are lots of verses we could turn to, for example, when the scripture talks about how our sin has separated us from God. When you think about being separated from him, if a person is not spiritually minded, that doesn't phase them. But if you are a believer, you desire the will of God in your life and you're trying to walk a godly life.

When sin enters your life as a Christian, if you can stand it and it doesn't bother you, you need to stop and ask yourself the question: am I really saved? God hates it. God hates every form of sin and here's the reason he does: because he sees what it does to his children. Look at what's happening to millions and millions of people who are misled, believe all kinds of error, living in all kinds of bondage in their life. They don't understand what in the world is going on, but they're not happy, they're not successful. It takes more than money and pleasure and prestige and prominence to make a person successful.

So what happens? They're living separated from God. You see, a person who is without Christ is separated from God because that's what sin does. All the denial in the world does not change that. Sin is a separator. It separates families, it separates friends, but sin most of all separates us from God. For example, when you turn to Ephesians, look in Ephesians chapter two for a moment and notice what Paul said about this whole idea of sin and how it affects our life.

He says in chapter two, verse one: you were dead in your trespasses and sins. That is, that's what sin does. It deadens us to the things of God. That's why when a person is saved by the grace of God, what happens? We're transformed. Salvation brings us into a relationship with God. Our spirit comes alive. Now we can talk to him and relate to him and have a relationship with him. He says in which dead in trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.

Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of the flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath. Two things I want you to notice. Sin is a separator. Absolutely your spirit cannot relate to God until that spirit is made alive by the Holy Spirit. Dead in trespasses and sins. Notice what he says. He says not only that, but he says by nature the children of wrath, even as the rest.

Now, what's the wrath of God? Because this is the third. Look, first of all, there's the bondage of sin, separation from God, and there's the wrath of God. If you said to one of your lost friends, "Do you realize you're living under the wrath of God?" here's what they'd say: "Well, who are you to judge me?" You're not judging them, because they would probably say, "Oh, I believe lots of parts of the Bible, but I don't believe that part about wrath. What I do is I live by the ten commandments and the sermon on the mount."

Let me tell you something. There are no two passages of scripture in the Bible more condemning of the way people live than those two passages. They say that's the two I believe, then you've just condemned yourself. Listen to what he says, for example, in John chapter three. We all love John 3:16: for God so loved the world, he gave his only begotten son. Whosoever believes in him have eternal life and never perish. We love those verses and I too love them.

I too believe that one of the most awesome, awesome, awesome beliefs in the Bible, ideas of the scripture, principles of the word of God, is his unconditional love for us. But if I reject it, also there's a principle that says whatever I sow, I reap. Whatsoever more than I sow, later than I sow. Listen to John chapter three, verse thirty-six, after Jesus has talked to Nicodemus and now he's coming down to the end. Listen to what he says, verse thirty-six: he who believes in the son has eternal life; he who does not obey the son, which is meaning to believe in him, will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.

Now, here is the condition of a lost person. Here is the burden a lost person's dealing with. They're in bondage to sin. We say, well, I'm not a sex addict, I'm not into alcohol, I'm not into drugs and all of this kind of thing. What do you mean I'm in bondage? You can be in bondage to pride, you can be in bondage to what you're seeking in life. If it's prominence and prestige and wealth, you can be in bondage to anything. All of us are in bondage to something unless Jesus Christ is living and ruling and reigning in our life.

So bondage is one thing. Separation from God. For example, somebody says, "Well, but I'm not a Christian but I can pray and God hears my prayers." No, he doesn't. Well, how can you be so proudful and egotistical and arrogant to tell me that God doesn't answer my prayer? Not being either one of those three things. I'm just telling you what God says. He will not hear the prayers of the wicked, unless the prayer of the wicked is a prayer of confession and repentance toward God.

Why? This is the thing the world doesn't want to understand: that sin by its nature separates me from a holy God who says he hates sin. He does not hate the sinner, he hates sin. Hates everything about sin because it destroys so much and it destroys his children. That's why he hates it. So the wrath of God is God's hatred and anger and animosity toward those things that are ungodly. Does he hate the sin in us? Yes. Does he love us at the same time? Yes.

If you're saved by the grace of God and you sin against him, are you lost? No. Eternal salvation does not rest upon my conduct; eternal salvation rests upon a relationship with almighty God through his son Jesus Christ. I'm saved by his grace and goodness and love and mercy and kindness. I'm not saved by them and kept by myself. We are to live a righteous life and a holy life before him, but we don't keep saved by our conduct.

Here's the burden: the burden of the bondage of sin, our separation from God. Listen to what he says in this passage. He says, but the wrath of God abides on this person who does not believe in Jesus. That means hovering over them. Listen, hovering over them is God's judging hand. Is it because he wants to? No. Is it because he desires that? No. Is it because he likes that? No. Is it because he takes pleasure in that? No. It is because the threat of the judgment of God should lead people to repentance. Also the Bible says the kindness of God leads people to repentance.

But there's one other part of this burden, and that's simply this: that is eternal death. In Revelation chapter twenty, he talks about the second death, and the second death is eternal death. We die physically, but if a person dies spiritually forever, it is the second death. He says those who die the second death are cast into the lake of fire. Some say, I don't believe in any of that hell stuff. Let me just say this: you may not believe it, that does not change it. You may not believe in God, that does not eradicate God.

We are living in a day, and I picked up this magazine and just reading the letters responding to an article in the magazine a few months ago and people writing their editorial letters in, what they thought. It was very interesting to me that you could tell where people were coming from. Some of them were very, very belligerent because the very idea that Christians or some religious people could tell them how to live or even suggest that they, for example, were sinners or whatever it might be.

It was just real interesting to hear you could just feel the kind of resistance and rebellion toward the whole Christian faith—and not just the Christian faith, but other religions also. You're telling me how I ought to live. You know what the issue is? People have their own idea of what God's like. They've already decided in their mind this is the kind of God I'm going to serve, this is who I believe God is.

When you say, well, what's the basis of that? Well, listen, when you decide who God is like and you put aside the word of God, there is no way for you to ever come up to what he's like. Why? Because the most wonderful things in the word of God did not come from man. Man could not have written this book. He would not if he could have, and he could not if he would have. For the simple reason the truth of the word of God is so totally antagonistic against the world's ideas of God. They see him as a God of judgment and a God of condemnation. They don't see him as a God of love and goodness and mercy, and with that mercy must come justice.

Because you see, here's how mixed up the world is. They want God to be all love, no condemnation, no judgment. Do you know what kind of world we'd live in? Unsafe to go out of your house and unsafe in your house if all the doors were locked and you hadn't an alarm system on. If there's no judgment, no condemnation of sin, God's all love, treats everybody just wonderfully well no matter how they live.

This is the issue with mankind. They don't want you to tell them about consequences. Tell me about pleasure, tell me about the goodness of God, but don't tell me about any consequences of my ungodly living because it makes me uncomfortable and I don't want to hear about it. The deception is that people get along so well they don't think it's true until they're sick and on their deathbed, they've lost everything, the family's walked away, one of these burdens we talked about in the very beginning.

They don't want to believe it. Just think about this: living in bondage to sin, separated from the very God who created you and for his purpose for your life, living under the wrath of God every single day of your life, and with your destined future to be eternally separated from him forever and ever and ever. That's what hell is all about. Whatever may be true of hell, eternal separation from God.

Think about the God who created you, who's planned the very best this all-wise God knows how to plan for you, and then you ignore him in your life, reject him in your life, and then to be eternally separated from him. Because in that moment of separation, you will know who he's like and what you missed. That's what the judgment of the wicked is all about. When we stand before the judgment, God's not going to bring up all of our past sins and say, now let's see if the good outweighs the bad. That's not the judgment of God.

When you and I come into the judgment throne, it's the judgment of rewards. God rewarding us for the good he's seen in our life, having accepted him as our savior. For the wicked in the great white throne judgment, it has nothing to do with salvation. It has to do with the degree of punishment a person experiences for all eternity because they deliberately, willfully separated themselves from God. Now somebody says, "What about those people who haven't heard all this that and the other?" I've got a whole other sermon on that. But let me just say this: one thing you can be sure of, God makes no mistakes. He knows everything, he's sovereign. He's not going to be unjust. God is not unjust, he's absolute just in all that he does.

Guest (Male): Thanks for joining us on In Touch, the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley. If you haven't trusted in Jesus Christ as your savior, you still bear the burden of your sin. So accept Christ's sacrifice on your behalf and joyfully receive the forgiveness of God. Dr. Stanley's message continues tomorrow, but you can learn more about the restoration and hope that can be yours through Christ when you visit us at intouch.org.

To listen again, click on "Today on Radio" on our homepage. If you'd like to order a copy of Dr. Stanley's complete message today, Bearing the Greatest Burden, visit our online bookstore. It's also included in his teaching set called How to Release Your Burdens. Log on to intouch.org or call or text us; the number is 1-800-INTOUCH. To write to us, you can address your letter to In Touch, Post Office Box 7900, Atlanta, Georgia 30357.

Being broke sounds like a condition to be avoided, but it can mature you and further equip you to serve God. An explanation is on the way in today's moment with Charles Stanley. We're not the first to seek a life of purpose. The Bible tells of many who followed a specific path step-by-step with courage, with surrender, for a deeper purpose, a stronger passion, a lasting peace. Introducing Your Path to Purpose, Passion, and Peace, a new ninety-day devotional inspired by the timeless teaching of Dr. Charles Stanley, available now at intouch.org/store.

In Touch Plus is streaming on Local Now, featuring all the best of Dr. Charles Stanley. We need to have strong convictions based on the word of God. He's working out things that you and I would never know about in our future. In Touch Plus, your streaming network for quality Christian programming 24/7. Now watch this. In Touch Plus, streaming free on Local Now. From the Pastor's Heart is an in-depth teaching letter inspired by the teachings of Dr. Charles Stanley. To receive In Touch's From the Pastor's Heart letter, call 1-800-INTOUCH or visit intouch.org/pastorsheart.

You're listening to In Touch. A Christian who is broken and then responds in faith can become a spiritually strong individual. Here's a moment with Charles Stanley.

Dr. Charles Stanley: So somebody says, well, what is this breaking issue? Doesn't the Bible talk about being made whole? Yes, it does. But the breaking process is God's method of dealing with the self-life. You say, well, what's the self-life? The self-life is that desire to act independently of God. When you and I begin to act independently of God, what happens? All kinds of things begin to develop in our life. Then all of a sudden we find ourselves struggling where we shouldn't be struggling.

What God is up to is this: bringing us to the realization in our life that we're to depend upon him. For that to happen, we must come to the place where we genuinely need him, and he's the only answer to our situation and circumstance. Now, there are lots of people who are strong enough in their own strength, in their own determination, to keep fighting it out. But you know what happens? Even in the end when they think they've won the battle and they've overcome some particular circumstance, they're still lacking in peace, joy, happiness, contentment, and security.

They're not there. They've struggled, they've overcome, they think, but the truth is they've missed what God's purpose is. You see, God wants to release his Holy Spirit in your life and mine. Therefore, he must deal with the self-life. As long as I think that I can handle it, and as long as I will attempt this and attempt that and go to this situation, that circumstance, talk to this person, try a little bit of this, drink a little bit of that, have this kind of relationship, I will not allow him to break me. So what does God do? He engineers the circumstances of our life to do what? To remove those things that hinder his bringing us into submission.

Guest (Male): Life can be hard, but with Christ, difficulties always provide opportunities. Visit us at intouch.org to learn more about being a Christian. If today's program has motivated you to get to know Jesus better, we'd love to hear from you. Tomorrow on In Touch, take a look at the gospel of John and see how Christ the sin-bearer made it possible for us to know God. You'll hear more about that next time on In Touch, the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley. This program is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia, and remains on the station through the grace of God and your faithful prayers and gifts.