The Christians Hour

Cody Custer: It's time now for the Christian's Hour. Welcome to our weekly broadcast filled with teaching straight from God's word. I'm your host, Cody Custer. The Christian's Hour is a ministry of Gospel Broadcasting Mission where our goal is to share the truth of the good news of Jesus Christ to the ends of the earth through radio and media until all have heard.

In today's message, Ben Cachiaras, lead pastor of Mountain Christian Church in Joppa, Maryland, explores the importance of taking responsibility for our lives. As a dad, I've become very familiar with what we call the blame game. I'll hear bickering and arguing coming from the other room and, sure enough, when I walk in, there are two of my kids pointing fingers at each other, each one explaining what happened and why it's not their fault.

Now, as we grow and mature, we may become more self-aware, but we still need reminders of how easy it is to fall into the trap of blaming others for things we are responsible for ourselves. In today's message, Ben challenges us to look in the mirror, own our part, and take action. Well, here's Ben.

Ben Cachiaras: Get your Bible out. We're going to look at Genesis chapter one, the very beginning of the Bible. The word Genesis means beginning, and it gives us a picture of how God created us in the beginning. You're going to see the word responsibility pop up a lot here in terms of what God intends.

Genesis chapter one, verse 26 and following. God spoke and said, "Let us make human beings in our image, make them reflecting our nature so they can be responsible." There's something about the nature of God that is imprinted in the human being as we're created in God's image that has responsibility attached to it.

So God created human beings reflecting God's nature. He created them male and female. God blessed them. Prosper, reproduce, fill the earth, take charge, subdue the earth, and have dominion. Be, in other words, responsible for fish in the sea, birds of the air, and every living thing that moves on the face of the earth. This is God's design for us, that from the beginning we would reflect something of God's nature by taking responsibility for the roles and things that he's given us to do. You were made on purpose, with a purpose, for a purpose. And when we fulfill those kinds of responsibilities, it's well with us, like we experience blessing, the scripture promises.

Notice something. There are no long lists of commands here in the beginning. There are no rules because they didn't need them. When people take responsibility, you don't need rules. It's beautiful. Just make babies and play with the animals. That's it. It's called paradise when we have responsibility under God.

There was actually one rule. Some of you remember this one. One little rule. Of everything else, just knock yourself out, but there's this one tree. Don't eat of that one. It's the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It's like God saying, "I want you to look to me to understand what's good and evil, what's right and what's wrong. I want you to look to me and trust me that I know what I'm doing and that if you follow my ways, it will go well with you and you will be blessed. Be responsible in relationship with me and with other people and everything will be great." Got it? Good.

Then the serpent comes along and says, "Don't listen to that. It's fine. This whole thing about the tree, it's overblown. God's just worried that you'll get too smart and you'll be as smart as he is." Eve listened to that, Adam listened to that, and we've been making the same mistake ever since, sure that there are things that we can do that are smarter than God and we know our own way.

Genesis chapter three, verse six. When the woman saw that the tree looked like good eating and realized what she would get out of it, like she'd know everything, she thought, she took and ate the fruit and then gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate it, too. Now, men, who ate the fruit first? It was Eve. That's right. So now we actually know from the Bible whose fault it is. Let's close in prayer. God, we're sorry the woman did that. Amen.

Actually, no, that's not what this is saying. In fact, some people have actually, believe it or not, tried to abuse the Bible to say that. Just look at my family. If you know my wife, my daughter, my mother, you know they're smarter and more godly than I am. There's got to be a different explanation here. And there is, in fact. The obvious truth is that Adam is right there and he was responsible, too. He knew the one rule and he's just like, "Okay, num, num, num." Next thing you know, he's eating.

Immediately they have their eyes opened in a not-so-good way and they realize, "Oh my gosh, we're naked." And they start feeling something that no one had ever felt, but everyone has felt since: shame. And they start trying to hide from each other and from God. We've been doing it ever since.

God confronts them and like little kids playing hide and seek, they were like, "I don't know, we were hiding. We were afraid of you." So God wants to draw them back, to give them an opportunity to repent and to look in the mirror and to see the truth and take responsibility. So he asks a question he already knows the answer to. Genesis chapter three, verse 11. "Who told you that you were naked? Do you like this new loss of innocence and purity and this shame and this fear you're feeling? Did you eat from the tree that I told you not to?"

And Adam says, "Yes, Lord, you got me. I am so sorry and I take full responsibility. Leave her out of this. This is on me. Leave my dear Eve alone. The buck stops with me, Lord. I want to come clean so I can own my part so we can get back on good terms and move forward with your blessing." Does anybody know the Bible well enough to know that's not what happened?

Very much not. Adam found the first magnifying glass in history and played the first round of the blame game 101. Genesis chapter three, verse 12. What does he say? "The woman! The woman you gave me as a companion, she gave me the fruit and then I ate it." It was masterful. He's pointing to her. She took the fruit. She was talking to the serpent. I don't know what they were talking about. Then she took it and she shoved it in my face. What was I supposed to do? I mean, I trusted her. I didn't want to be rude. I didn't know what was going on. It happened so fast. She shoved it in my face. I took a little nibble. Yeah, okay, I took a little nibble.

She did all that stuff and I never would have done it myself if she hadn't done her stuff. And Adam is on a roll now. He's like, "And come to think of it, God, you were the one who came up with the idea to give me a companion. Things were going great when it was just you and me. We were down here naming the animals, we were having fun. Remember that day? 'Hey, it's called a platypus.' You're like, 'Hey, high five.' It was great. And then you said, 'How about a woman?' I didn't ask for the woman. You came up with that idea. So I'm just saying, God, this is sort of on you."

Then God looks at Eve and says, "Did you eat the fruit too?" Genesis 3, verse 13. The woman said, "The serpent! The serpent! I didn't stand a chance. He deceived me. He seduced me. It was so smooth. The devil made me do it." Nothing's really changed, has it? We push off blame anywhere we can off of ourselves, just like the first humans.

Sin isn't just disobeying God. It's the refusal to own the fact that we have. It's the lack of responsibility that goes with it. Responsibility is the fundamental element of human identity. And that's why all over the world, whenever people say "I can't" or they lose their agency, it steals their soul.

So still to this day, we're trying to shift blame in one of these three directions. Adam blames God: "It was the woman you gave me." Then he blames Eve: "It was your fault, someone else." And the woman blames Satan: "The serpent seduced me." And we're still shucking and shunning blame. God, it's your fault, someone else's fault, or the devil made me do it. It's like Oprah: You get some blame! You get some blame! Everybody gets blame but me. God, devil, someone else. It's a blame game.

It continues. It continues in the family, right? They had a son, Cain. What does he do? He kills his brother Abel. And God comes and says another question he already knows the answer to. "Where's your brother Abel?" Genesis chapter four, verse nine. He says, "I don't know," which is a lie because he's lying in a pool of blood right where he left him. And then he says, "Am I my brother's keeper?" Well, actually, yes. Remember the whole "be responsible for one another" part? Yes, you are. But ever since then, we're still—have you ever done this? Don't look at me! What are you looking at me for?

And it spread beyond the first family to God's people. God led the children of Israel through the Red Sea out into the wilderness toward the Promised Land. And their leaders were Moses and Aaron. They're responsible for helping the people of God stay faithful to God. Moses goes up onto the mountain. He's going to get the Ten Commandments. He leaves Aaron in charge.

The people get restless. They're like, "I don't know when this Moses guy is even coming back. We need a new god. We've got to move on." And just like that, they say to Aaron, "Hey, he's gone. Why don't you make us some new gods who can lead us?" And Aaron, no pushback, no conversation, just "Sounds like a good idea to me."

Exodus chapter 32, verse 2. It was Aaron. Aaron said, "Why don't you take some gold and give me the rings from your earrings and ears and just get it from everybody and bring it to me?" And so they did. They took off all their jewelry and gave it to him. Verse 4: Then Aaron took the gold and Aaron melted it down and Aaron molded it together. He worked really hard to make a little calf out of it. And then the people saw it and they said, "Oh, this will be great. These are the gods now that brought us out of the land of Egypt."

Verse 5: Aaron saw how excited they were, so he built an altar in front of the calf and said, "Tomorrow we're going to have a big old shindig. We're going to have a worship service. We're going to worship." And they did. They had this feasting and celebration and revelry and pagan stuff. God says, "Moses, you better get down there. My people have forsaken me. They're bowing down to other gods." Moses goes down and he absolutely blows a gasket. He throws the tablets down and grabs Aaron by the collar and says, "What in the world is going on?"

And Aaron had apparently learned from Adam. Exodus 32, verse 22. Listen to this. This is just the best. He goes, "Oh, don't get so upset, my lord. You see how these evil people are. You know. And they says to me, 'Hey, why don't you make us some gods who will lead us? We don't know what happened to this Moses guy anyway.'"

"So I told them"—I love this part—"So I told them, Moses, swear to God this is what happened: whoever has gold jewelry, take it off and they brought it to me. I just simply threw it in the fire and out came this calf. I don't really know how it happened. It wasn't me, I know that. It just kind of happened."

Right on down, we've been using the same kinds of examples all the way up until Pontius Pilate. Remember him? He could have stayed the crucifixion of our Lord Jesus, but he didn't. Matthew 27, verse 24. Pilate saw that everything's getting out of hand and a riot was imminent. He took a basin of water and what did he do? He washed his hands. "I'm washing my hands of the responsibility," he said. "This is not on me anymore." As if washing my hands makes it not my responsibility.

I wonder if anybody here is playing the Pilate. Because there's something in your life—I'm not talking about something that's not yours to own, but something that is your responsibility that you're like, "Nope, yeah, I'm out. I'm done. I've washed my hands of that. So therefore I'm pretending that it's not my responsibility. I wouldn't use porn if my wife were more attentive." Just wash my hands. "Or I wouldn't have to have an affair if he would just listen to me." Just wash your hands. "Or I yell like that because my dad yelled at me. Or if you knew the kind of boss I had, or everybody cheats, you get..." So we wash our hands. Is there anybody who's playing the Pilate, pretending to wash our hands, assuming it removes the stain of our own responsibility?

So let's get practical. Let's get real practical here for a minute. I just invite you to think about an area in your life where you feel sort of stuck, where you're maybe dissatisfied or disappointed about something that's going on. I want to just encourage us to practice looking in the mirror rather than just out. We're just so hardwired from Adam and Eve on down, every one of us, to kind of think, "If God only would, or if that person hadn't, or someone else."

As long as we blame someone else rather than take responsibility, we can't make peace with our past and move towards the future that God has for us. So let me give you a couple of anchor points. Number one: Blame is like a basket that carries your issues into the future. See, what we think happens is when I blame someone else, I deflect the problem and now it's theirs. It's on them. Don't look at me, it's their fault. But actually, that blame becomes a basket that guarantees I prevent my own healing and it guarantees I'm going to drag it right into the future. We've got the blame on them, but the past hurt is still with us.

So for instance, if Adam had said, "God, I'm sorry for what I did in this situation. I want to own my part," he could have moved toward restored relationship with God right away and met his grace and forgiveness. He could have had reconciliation with Eve right away. They wouldn't have been hiding. But by failing to take responsibility, he closed the door to repentance. He was so worried about assigning blame that he condemned himself to live with a curse. Do you see that?

Number two: Taking responsibility is what opens the door to repentance. It's when you look in the mirror. It's you saying, "Man, I want to come home to God again." A great example of this is King David in the Old Testament. After he was a man after God's own heart, he loved the Lord, he wrote many of our Psalms, but in his later years, he saw a woman named Bathsheba who was taking a bath next door. He called her over and had an adulterous affair with her and then killed her husband to cover it up. Pretty bad stuff.

But when God sent the prophet to confront him, all of a sudden he looked in that mirror and what he did not say was, "Oh, come on, if you knew the pressure I was under as king," or "My wife doesn't meet my needs," or "Oh, come on, did you see how she was dressed? She knew what she was doing." Or "I was so tired and lonely and needed a break." He didn't say any of that. You know what he said? 2 Samuel 12, verse 13. Then he confessed to the prophet and he acknowledged before God, "I have sinned against God."

In that moment, looking in the mirror, the door to repentance swung open and he had this beautiful connection with God again and received the grace and forgiveness of God. And yes, he lived with consequences, but he also lived with healing. And some of us, I think, are ready to cry out like David did and say, "Create in me a clean heart, oh God. I'm tired of carrying this stuff around."

Number three: Blaming prevents me from growing. It prevents me from growing. Because when I blame, I forfeit my ability to actually see things about myself and recognize where I am. That's what mature people do, is they have self-awareness. They can look in the mirror and take responsibility for what actually is the case. Own your part.

So friends, see, when we stop blaming and start taking responsibility for whatever part we can, then we're moving past the situation where we're stuck, saying, "Well, unless they change, I can't." Number four: Always own your part. Think deeply about this. If someone else is responsible for the situation you're in today, for the pain that you're feeling today, for the problem you're facing, well then it's all on them. And you're saying, "Unless they change, unless they do something, I can't. I'm stuck." You have no power, no agency. And that is not how God created you in his image as a person who has responsibility. And that's part of a curse. It's a curse to live that way.

We think we're dishing off and freeing ourselves. We're putting ourselves in prison. When you say, "I can't because they won't," that's part of the curse. And you've given them all the power. You shifted the blame, but you shifted all the power, too, the ability to grow and change. You just gave it all away. Own your own stuff.

Now, we need to pause here and be very clear about something. And that is that there are some things that are not even one percent your fault. I'm talking about abuse. Some of us were abused as a child or as an adult and you already have enough shame and regret and difficulty with that. You don't need one more thing dumped on you. That was not your fault. It was not your fault. But hear this, and I say this because I love you and I want God's future for you: it was not your fault, but it is your responsibility now to seek God for healing.

God can heal and you can be stronger on the other side and even have God use whatever horrific situation even for his glory and blessing for someone else. I don't know if you've ever thought of it this way, but Jesus was the ultimate victim, like a real victim. Like cruel and inhumane treatment at the hands of evil men. He didn't stand a chance.

But here's what the ultimate victim said in the middle of all that. John 16: "I have said these things to you that in me you may have peace. Because in this world you'll have trouble, but take heart because I have overcome the world." Here he was a victim, like a real victim. But there's no victim mentality there because he has peace and he uses the word "overcome." And I know there's some people here today who are ready to say, "I wonder if I could overcome what's happened."

This is what Paul is talking about in Romans 8 when he said, "If God is for us, who could be against us?" And he goes on to say there's going to be real pain and hardship and struggle and persecution and famine, nakedness, sword, all this bad stuff. But God is for us, Christ is with us, and therefore he uses this phrase, he says, "We are more than conquerors through Christ." You can't avoid the pain, he says. But whatever has happened, you can be a conqueror, an overcomer through Christ Jesus. That's not just small talk. It means you're moving past a victim mentality to find the peace that Jesus talked about, to understand that you overcome whatever has happened.

Andy Andrews is a great example of this, in my opinion. Some of you know him, maybe read some of his books. You can read his story there. When he was 19 years old, he lost his mother to cancer and then just a few weeks later his dad was killed in a car accident. So this kid went from having everything to having nothing and living homeless under a bridge in Alabama. Everyone's kind of sympathizing with him and felt so bad for him.

But one day an old man appeared, kind of out of nowhere, and said, "Andy, you chose this life." He was deeply offended and hurt, obviously. He says, "Look at what happened to me! Look at what God has allowed. Look at what everyone's been doing since." But at the challenge of that man, Andy, who was a believer, started reading his scriptures more and started going to the public library and reading biographies of people he thought were successful, men and women.

Two hundred biographies and a lot more scripture. And what struck his heart as he looked at all these people that he viewed as successful, he learned that every one of them had experienced really hard things and some of them ended up under a pier and some of them were overcomers. And as a Christian, he began to draw some takeaways from those biographies and the scripture he was reading. And here's what he concluded: that successful people are people who simply take responsibility for their life. They don't blame others for where they are.

Let's just take these scriptural principles we've talked about today and get ready to make a declaration that will allow us to take some responsibility to move forward. Because we all need this. We've all had so many things happen to us. We've all also become so good at the blame game. Let's not waste one more day living that way. Let me push you a little bit on this and ask God to speak to you. Who are you blaming? Whether secretly in your mind or maybe it's someone sitting next to you and they hear it all the time.

You know you don't have any power to change that person, but you do have the ability and the charge from God to take responsibility for your part. This is going to be hard. But number two, where do you need to take responsibility instead of just blame? I'm not talking about abuse, but where do you need to take ownership? Taking responsibility is the only way to move to a better future. So I'm asking you to be intentional. Who's ready to move from "why me" to "what now"? Lord, I'm ready to be done with the blame game.

Acapella Ministries: Let us worship the Father, worship the Father, worship the Father of glory.

Let us worship the Father, worship the Father, worship the Father of love.

And we will glorify, we will glorify the Lord.

And we will glorify, we will glorify the Lord.

Sing your praise to the Father, praise to the Father, praise to the Father of glory.

Sing your praise to the Father, praise to the Father, praise to the Father of love.

And we will glorify, we will glorify the Lord.

And we will glorify, we will glorify the Lord.

Lift your hands to the Father, hands to the Father, hands to the Father of glory.

Lift your hands to the Father, hands to the Father, hands to the Father of love.

And we will glorify, we will glorify the Lord.

And we will glorify, we will glorify the Lord.

And we will glorify, we will glorify the Lord.

And we will glorify, we will glorify the Lord.

Let us worship the Father, worship the Father, worship the Father of glory.

Let us worship the Father, worship the Father, worship the Father of love.

Cody Custer: So how about you? What areas of your life do you need to take responsibility for? There is great importance in seeking wisdom and awareness from God, asking him to illuminate those areas of our life and then taking the next step forward. For some, that next step may be repentance, a sincere change of direction, turning away from sin or actions that don't honor the Lord. And for others, it may begin with forgiveness, seeking out the person you've been placing blame on and humbly asking for them to forgive you.

It's time to own it. Take the next step to grow, to heal, and to overcome. Christ does not want you to remain stuck, but to flourish in everything he has called you to. Well, our thanks to Ben Cachiaras for helping us to see that transformation begins when we step forward into faith and embrace responsibility. And our thanks as well to Acapella Ministries for providing today's worship song.

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