Pathway to Victory

Speaker 1

Hey podcast listeners, thanks for streaming today's podcast from Pathway to Victory.

Pathway to Victory is a nonprofit ministry featuring the Bible teaching of Dr. Robert Jeffress. Our mission is to pierce the darkness with the light of God's Word through the most effective media available, like this podcast.

To support Pathway to Victory, go to ptv.org/donate or follow the link in our show notes.

Now here's today's podcast from Pathway to Victory.

Speaker 2

Hi, this is Robert Jeffress and I'm glad to study God's Word with you every day. This Bible teaching program is on today's edition of Pathway to Victory.

Have you experienced God's forgiveness in your life? Have you had time to focus on the cause of your mistake and what God's future for you might look like?

If you've done those things, don't be surprised at some changes, dramatic changes that come into your life. God says you can have a new beginning, and that's what we're going to talk about today.

Speaker 1

Welcome to Pathway to Victory with author and pastor, Dr. Robert Jeffress. As much as we try to avoid it, everybody makes mistakes. Some are just minor blunders, but others can truly alter the course of our lives.

Is there any way to recover from committing a serious offense? Today on Pathway to Victory, Dr. Robert Jeffress shows us how we can experience a new beginning regardless of our failures.

Now here's our Bible teacher to introduce today's message.

Speaker 2

Dr. JEFFRESS thanks David and welcome again.

Speaker 3

To Pathway to Victory. In life, few things are more edifying than intentional travel, meaning spending your vacation time engaged in life-giving activity. So today I'm pleased to offer you and your family an exclusive vacation experience you'll cherish forever. I'm referring to the 2025 Pathway to Victory Journeys of Paul Mediterranean Cruise. Imagine reading your Bible in the very places it was written. Picture yourself laughing and bonding with other Christian believers in the land where your faith was founded. The dates for this unforgettable 11-day tour are May 5th to 16th. Please go to ptv.org and take a look at the impressive places we'll visit and then reserve your spot today.

Well, I've titled our current teaching series "How Can I? Answers to Life's Seven Most Important Questions." To enhance your engagement with all seven questions, I've written a full-length book for your private study or to guide your conversation in a small group setting. My book is also titled "How Can I Know?" and a copy is yours when you give a generous gift to support the growing ministry of Pathway to Victory. In fact, when you get in touch today, I'll also include one of our most highly requested booklets called "Is Christianity the Only Right Religion?" This is something you'll want to pass along to a son or daughter to help them sort through this very important issue as well.

More about these two helpful resources later on. But right now, let's begin today's study. I titled this message, "How Can I Know How to Start Over When I've Blown It?"

Speaker 2

One of the questions I'm frequently asked as a pastor is this one: Is it possible for me to start over after a major mistake, or do I have to spend the rest of my life paying for that mistake? When somebody asks that, if they're a Christian, they're not asking, "Am I going to heaven when I die?" That's not the issue. The issue is, is my life on earth going to be a living hell trying to pay for this mistake, or can I start over? Maybe you've had a similar question. A bankruptcy, a divorce, a moral failure has left you sitting on the ash heaps of a ruined life. And you wonder over and over again, "Can I ever recover from this?"

Well, I've got some bad news and some good news for you. The bad news is life has no rewind button on it. You can't erase the past. That's the bad news. The good news is your failure doesn't have to be the final chapter of your life. God says you can have a new beginning. And that's what we're going to talk about today as we conclude our series, "How can I Know?" We're going to look at not a theological question, but a very practical question. And that is, how can I know how to start over after I've blown it? We're going to find the answers in God's word.

God says there are four components that are essential for the new beginning he wants each of us to experience. And it all begins with admitting our mistakes. Our daughters grew up watching Sesame Street. Remember Sesame Street? One of the signature characters was Big Bird, and he had a line he used all the time: "Everybody makes mistakes." When one of my daughters—I'll let you guess which one—was getting ready to get spanked by me, I was about to wallop her when she stopped and said, "But, Dad, everybody makes mistakes." I started laughing so hard I couldn't spank. You can't laugh and spank at the same time; it just doesn't work out. But she was right, and Big Bird is right. We all make mistakes.

Now, there are various shapes and sizes of mistakes. There are what I call "slip-ups," which are minor mistakes that have a few consequences, like a speeding ticket. Then you have "mess-ups," which have more severe consequences. But then there are what I call "blow-ups." These are life-altering mistakes that make you wonder if you can ever recover from them. These kinds of blow-ups are accompanied by laments: "If only I hadn't clicked onto that website. If only I hadn't succumbed to that addiction. If only I had stopped the relationship before it was discovered." Those are the kinds of mistakes we're talking about.

The beginning place for a new beginning is admitting that we have made a mistake, and that's very hard for a lot of people to do. Many people have a hard time admitting their mistakes for a couple of reasons. One reason is pride. You know, Romans 3:23 has Paul saying, "All of us have sinned. All of us have fallen short of the glory of God." That word "sin," harmonia, means to miss the mark. We've all missed the bullseye in God's mind; we've all fallen short of the glory of God. And there's a reason for that. Romans 5:12 says, "Because of Adam, through one man sin entered the world and death spread to all because all sinned." Because of Adam's sin, it means you and I have inherited a defective operating system, if you will. We're prone to make mistakes. When God says yes, our first inclination is to say no. When God says no, our first inclination is to say yes. Because of that defective operating system, we are all inclined to make mistakes.

The other reason people have a hard time admitting their mistakes is really the opposite reason: fear. They're afraid that if they admit their mistakes, they're going to open themselves up to some painful consequences. Adam and Eve tried to hide their sin. They ran from God after they sinned, thinking they could hide themselves from Him. We do the same thing. We think acknowledging my mistake at work will lead to my termination. Admitting an immoral relationship will end in a divorce. Acknowledging our addiction will cause us to lose our reputation. But here's the problem with cover-ups: they rarely work. I mean, it's too bad our friends in Washington D.C. haven't learned that. You know, in 50, 60 years, it's always the same thing. It's not the crime that gets them; it's the cover-up. The same is true for us. Even if we could hide our mistakes from other people, we can never hide them from God. Hebrews 4:13 says, "And there is no creature hidden from his sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of him with whom we have to do."

However, beyond the ineffectiveness of cover-ups, there's an even more important reason to admit our failure. Admitting our mistakes is a prerequisite to moving beyond our mistakes. You know, Proverbs 28:13 talks about the benefits of admitting our mistakes: "He who conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will find compassion." Think about it. Admitting our mistakes is essential for, first of all, receiving God's forgiveness. Augustine said, "God gives to those whose hands are empty." Only when we empty ourselves of our excuses, our rationalizations, and our blame of other people can we truly receive God's forgiveness.

Secondly, admitting our mistakes is essential for renewing our physical and emotional vitality. You know, cover-ups can be draining. Trying to hide those bills from your mate, trying to remember what story you told to what person—all of that takes a toll on our physical and emotional strength. Nobody understood that more than David. After his sin with Bathsheba, he spent anywhere from six months to a year trying to cover over his adulterous relationship. He even went to the point of having Bathsheba's husband, Uriah, killed on the front lines of battle. But none of it worked. He wrote about that period in his life when he refused to admit his mistake. He said in Psalm 32:3-4, "When I kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my vitality was drained away as with the fever heat of summer."

Have you ever felt that way? Just the oppression of your mistake? Constantly hoping and praying nobody finds out? Then came the day when Nathan the prophet walked into the court of the king, pointed his bony finger at David, and said, "Guilty." At that point, David knew the cover-up was over. Everybody knew. As painful as that was, there was a sense of relief when David was finally confronted with his sin, and he admitted it. In Psalm 32, verses 5 and 11, he said, "I acknowledged my sin to you, God, and my iniquity I did not hide; that is, I did not hide it any longer. I said, 'I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,' and you forgave the guilt of my sin. Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, you righteous ones, and shout for joy, all who are upright in heart."

Thirdly, admitting our mistakes is essential to learning from our mistakes. You know, every failure we experience has a price tag attached to it. Every failure costs you something. It may cost you your job, your reputation, or your financial solvency. But every failure has a price tag. The price tag we pay for our failures is kind of like tuition we pay for a course in school. You know, failure has a price tag attached to it that we pay for our mistakes in life. The only thing worse than having to pay it once is to have to pay it again. Think about going through a course in college. You pay the money for the course, you take the course, you flunk the course, and you have to pay the tuition and experience the course all over again.

The Bible has a term for that kind of tuition from the school of hard knocks: it's called a reproof. A reproof is a painful consequence of my mistake. The writer of Proverbs says that the wise person is the one who learns from reproofs instead of ignoring them. Proverbs 10:17 says, "One who is on the path of life follows instruction, but he who ignores a reproof goes astray." Proverbs 12:1 says, "Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but the one who hates reproof is stupid." You know, I was always taught you're not supposed to say "stupid," but the Bible does. The Bible says that somebody who doesn't learn from their mistakes, who repeats them and experiences the consequences over and over again, is stupid. There's no other word for it. Do you want to be stupid? I don't. Then learn from your mistakes. The Bible says admitting our mistakes is a prerequisite to learning from our mistakes.

Secondly, after admitting our mistakes, our new beginning includes experiencing God's forgiveness. We must receive God's forgiveness. Now, this is key to understanding. In the Bible, there are two kinds of forgiveness, and a lot of Christians get this confused. First of all, there's God's judicial forgiveness. Judicial forgiveness happens when I trust in Jesus as my Savior. The moment you trust in Christ as your Savior, God declares you not guilty. Because God has paid for not just some of your sins, but all of your sins—past, present, and future—have been covered by the blood of Jesus Christ. That's what happens when you become a Christian. In Romans 5:1, Paul said, "Therefore, having been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ."

David wrote about the wonderful qualities of that judicial forgiveness in Psalm 32:1-2. Listen to these words from David: "How blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered! How blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit." Will you notice three key words that describe our judicial forgiveness? First of all, "forgiven." How blessed is the person who is forgiven? That word "forgiven" means to separate. You know, we have a hard time separating people from their failures. If somebody's had a big, massive failure, every time we see that person or even hear their name, we think of their failure. I could go through history and give you name after name, and you would name a failure that person committed. But the great thing about God is when He forgives us, He separates us from our failure. He doesn't think about our mess-up; He separates us from our failure. That's what it means to be forgiven.

A great illustration of this occurred in the Old Testament on the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur. We all know that the high priest went into the Holy of Holies to make atonement. But before he did that, he had a goat brought to him. The high priest would take his hands and place them over the head of that goat and confess the sins of the Israelites. Once he had finished the confession of sins, that goat was sent off into the wilderness, never to be seen again. That goat was called the scapegoat. That's where we get our term "scapegoat"—somebody else who takes the blame. The scapegoat went, never to be seen again. It's a picture of the way God forgives us. In Psalm 103:12, the Psalmist said, "As far as the east is from the west, so far God has removed our transgressions from us."

Not only has He forgiven and separated us from our sin, He has covered our sin. Have you ever had a garment that had a spot on it? You tried to put some water on it and rub it out, and it goes away for about five seconds, and then it comes back again? You scrub and scrub, and you might try something you shouldn't try on it, and you ruin the garment. But you don't remove the spot. No, you have to take it to the dry cleaner. The dry cleaner has some special chemical—I don't know what it is—but it removes that spot forever. Ladies and gentlemen, you and I can never remove the stain of our sin. It keeps appearing and appearing and appearing. But there is a detergent, so to speak; it's called the blood of Christ. The blood of Christ covers and removes the stain of our sin forever and ever. It was that kind of covering David longed for in Psalm 51, verse 7, when he said, "Purify me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow." God has covered your sin.

Finally, the word "impute." He does not impute our sin against us. That word "impute" means to charge to one's account. You know, if you use a debit card, or maybe you're back in the Stone Age like I am and still write checks, it's the same thing. Every time you use a debit card or write a check, you're lowering the resources you have in your bank account. It keeps going down and down and down towards zero. The only way to change that is by making a deposit that replenishes the money that you spent. All of us have a spiritual bank account with God. Every day, we're making debits against that account. Every wrong action, every wrong attitude, every wrong thought costs us, and our balance is going down, down, down.

Here's the bad news: there's nothing we can do to add to our account. Anything we think is good in our eyes is counterfeit. In God's eyes, it's as worthless as counterfeit. Isaiah 64:6 says, "Our righteousness, the best we can do, is like a filthy rag to God." So we're always in a deficit position in our spiritual bank account. If we die with that debt still owed, we spend eternity in hell trying to work that debt off, and we'll never be able to do so. But God makes us a wonderful offer. He says when we trust in Christ as our Savior, God fills our spiritual bank account not with counterfeit but with genuine righteousness—the righteousness of Jesus. There's an overabounding amount of it that we can never spend away in a thousand lifetimes. Every time we sin, that is replenished by the righteousness of Jesus Christ. Paul explained it this way in 2 Corinthians 5:21: "God made Him, Jesus, who knew no sin, to become sinful for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him."

You remember that old gospel song we used to sing? "He paid a debt he did not owe. I owed a debt I could not pay. I needed someone to wash my sins away. And now I sing a brand new song, Amazing Grace—Christ, Jesus Christ paid the debt that I could never pay." That's what Christ has done for us. He has forgiven us, separated us, covered our sin, and He does not take our sin into account any longer. I wrote down this week three things that God's forgiveness means for you and me. First, God's judicial forgiveness means He will never think of your failure when He thinks of you. Secondly, it means your mistake has been permanently erased from God's record of your life. And third, your sin means God will never call up your sin for further review. No wonder David was so ecstatic: "Oh, how blessed is the man whose transgression is forgiven."

That's judicial forgiveness. But there's a second kind of forgiveness, and that is parental forgiveness, or relational forgiveness. Even though we as Christians have been judicially forgiven and never have to fear hell, we still sin, don't we? And that sin wrecks a barrier between us and God in our daily experience. Isaiah 59:2 says, "Your sin has become a barrier between you and God." There is only one way to remove that barrier that our sin causes with our Heavenly Father, and that is confession. I mean, those of you who are parents, if your child rebels against you, you don't kick them out of your family; you don't disown them. They're still your child. But until they repent of that rebellion and acknowledge their mistake, there's going to be a barrier between you and your child.

So it is in our relationship with God. How do we remove that barrier? It's by confession. Admitting to God our sin is essential for receiving God's forgiveness.

Speaker 3

Maybe you've been listening today and you're convinced that your case is too complicated. You've blown it and you've concluded it's too late for you. Well, when we receive God's judicial forgiveness, our mistakes are forever removed from our record, never to be held against us. What a relief.

Still, so many people carry a secret burden of guilt. Their laundry list of failure has grown far too long, or so they think to qualify for God's forgiveness. Friends, that is absolutely false.

Speaker 2

It's a lie.

Speaker 3

It's never too late to receive God's forgiveness. And it's never too late to begin doing what's right. So let me describe your next step in breaking this cycle of defeat in your life.

Earlier today, I mentioned a resource that complements our new series. It's my book titled *How Can I? Answers to Life's Seven Most Important Questions*. The first chapter features the pressing issue which we addressed today: How can I know how to start over when I've blown it? When you give a generous gift to Pathway to Victory, I'd like to send you a copy today.

Perhaps you're a bit shaken by today's news. In addition to the political unrest, our country has seen far too many tragic acts of violence. Some are natural disasters like hurricanes or tornadoes, but other times we're witnessing the flight forces of evil unleash their hatred against innocent victims. Maybe you're confused about God's role in these crises.

At times like this, we need to anchor our souls in the bedrock of God's unchanging promises, and my book, *How Can I Know?* will help you do just that. David will repeat this special offer and give our contact information. So let me hear from you.

Speaker 1

Thanks, Dr. Jeffress! When you give a generous gift to support Pathway to Victory or when you sign up to become a Pathway Partner, we'll say thanks by sending you the best-selling book by Dr. Jeffress. How can I know? Simply go online to ptv.org or call 866-999-2965.

And when you give $75 or more, you'll also receive the complete collection of audio and video discs for the newly updated teaching series. It's also titled *How Can I Know?* To request your copy, call 866-999-2965 or go to ptv.org. You could also write to us. Here's that mailing address: P.O. Box 223609, Dallas, Texas 75222. Again, that's P.O. Box 223609, Dallas, Texas 75222.

I'm David J. Mullins inviting you to join us Thursday when Dr. Jeffress continues to answer the question, "How can I know how to start over when I've blown it?" That's right here on Pathway to Victory.

Pathway to Victory with Dr. Robert Jeffress comes from the pulpit of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas. You made it to the end of today's podcast from Pathway to Victory, and we're so glad you're here.

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