Greetings to you, friend! I’m Mack Lyon. The program’s a Bible study program In Search of the Lord’s Way. We’re so glad you have joined us for this study. Some Christians feel the nagging sting of shame and guilt of past sins. God has forgiven them, but they don’t know how to forgive themselves. Phil Sanders has prepared a message of help for those people. Stay tuned. We love you.
Hello, I’m Phil Sanders and this is In Search of the Lord’s Way, where we search the Scriptures as Mack Lyon says to find the Lord’s way to be saved and to live the Christian life. Ah, thanks so much for letting us into your busy life. We really appreciate hearing that you are watching or listening to this program; and we want to be a part of your life each week.
Sometimes I have someone who tells me, "Years ago I committed a terrible sin. I'm so ashamed I can hardly talk about it. I don't know if I'll ever be able to forgive myself. I feel so dirty, as if I'll never be clean. I became a Christian a few years ago, and it seemed to help. But, ever so often, I remember that sin and I feel lost all over again. I don't feel fit to be a Christian."
Well, when I hear someone say that I realize that the problem is not in God's ability to forgive but the penitent believer’s ability and willingness to forgive himself. God’s Word teaches us that God is willing to forgive, but, you know what, some people don’t feel saved. People believe what they tell themselves, even if what they say is mistaken. A person who has never forgiven himself feels shame in his heart every day. You remember David sinned with Bathsheba, and he said in Psalm 51, verse 3, “For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.”
David felt the hand of God upon him because of his sin. And so he said in Psalm 38, verses 3 and 4 that, “There is no soundness in my flesh because of your indignation; there is no health in my bones because of my sin. For my iniquities have gone over my head; like a heavy burden, they are too heavy for me.” Your sins may be too heavy for you too, but there’s a God-given solution to a guilty conscience! There is an answer!
Brother Mack Lyon has been preaching the gospel in love here on this program for thirty years and, you know what, he has been offering the information free. If you would like a printed copy, a CD or tape of our study, mail your request to In Search of the Lord's Way, P.O. Box 371, Edmond, OK 73083. You can e-mail us at searchtv@searchtv.org. Or, if you like, call our toll-free telephone number and we’ll pay for the call. That number is 1-800-321-8633. We also stream this program on our website at www.searchtv.org.
Now Ken Helterbrand’s going to lead us now in my granddaughter, Haydn’s favorite song, O Worship the King; and then we’ll read from Psalm 32, verses 1 to 5.
Our reading today comes from Psalm 32, verses 1 through 5. “Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man to whom the LORD does not impute iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit. When I kept silent, my bones grew old through my groaning all the day long. For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me; my vitality was turned into the drought of summer. I acknowledged my sin to You, and my iniquity I have not hidden. I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord, and You forgave the iniquity of my sin.” This is a reading of God’s Holy Word. Let’s pray together. O Lord, we’re thankful that Your forgiveness is greater than our sins; and the blood of our Savior, Jesus, can wash away our sins completely. And, Father, it’s in the name of Jesus that we pray. Amen!
When a person sins, he sins against God. But many don’t realize the harm sin causes to the person who commits it. Sin is an offense against God, but it’s also an offense against one's self. The Bible personifies wisdom in the book of Proverbs chapter 8, and wisdom says in Proverbs 8, verse 36, “But he who sins against me injures himself; all those who hate me (that is God’s wisdom) love death.” Wisdom is God’s revealed will for our lives. When people go against God’s wisdom and His will, they live with the sting of guilt.
The inspired apostle Paul wrote in Galatians 6, verses 7 and 8, “Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.” Sin is the cause of the worst heartaches of mankind. A person can’t live for sin and self and expect to find the blessing of God.
The conscience is a God-given function of the heart. The conscience works as a moral monitor praising us or condemning us. The Bible describes this function in Romans 2, verses 14 and 15. God’s Word says, “For when Gentiles who do not have the Law do instinctively the things of the Law, these, not having the Law, are a law to themselves, in that they show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness, and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them.”
When a person sins, his conscience pricks his heart, causing him a lot of pain. This pricked conscience causes a person to be grieved at himself; and he can lose all respect for himself because of sin. You remember the prodigal son no longer felt worthy to be called the son of his father. You might think the conscience is a bad thing, but it was the prodigal son’s conscience and the terrible effects of his sin that brought him to his senses. God didn’t give us a conscience to punish us but to keep us from doing what is wrong and to encourage us to do what is right. When we fail to listen to our conscience, we end up hurting ourselves.
Now, everyone has a conscience, but not every conscience uses the word of God, that is the Bible, as a basis for what is right and wrong. Many people sin against God and don’t even know what they did was wrong. They rely on their own experience or their own judgment rather than take the time to study the Scriptures and learn what God says about the matter.
Other people allow sin to harden the conscience. The Bible warns in Hebrews 3, verses 12 and 13, “Take care, brothers, lest there be in anyone of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But you exhort one another every day, as long as it is called today, that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.” I worry far more about the person whose conscience is past feeling than the person who feels great sorrow for sin. You see, when a person gets past feeling guilt, it’s not likely he is going to repent. But if a person sees no need to repent or won’t repent, he’ll likely never get right with the living God.
I tell you of all God’s blessings, nothing is more valuable than forgiveness. Forgiveness is not the same as forgetting. Forgiveness is “forgetting against.” When God forgives, He no longer counts our sins against us (2 Corinthians 5 and verse 19). Now, as part of the new covenant, God promises in Hebrews 8, verse 12, “For I will be merciful to their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.”
David by inspiration wrote in Psalm 103, verses 10 to 12 that, “God (that is He) does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love towards those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.” Now when God forgives, He no longer thinks of us in terms of our past iniquities. You see, He has removed them from His mind, but He keeps us close to His heart.
Forgiveness ends the shame and the guilt by blotting out, removing, the offenses and settling the matter once and for all by the blood of Jesus Christ, according to 1 Peter 2 and verse 24. Forgiveness is the putting to death of that old man of sin (Romans 6, verses 4 to 11) and making all things new (2 Corinthians 5 and verse 17). When you forgive yourself, you will forget your past sins against yourself. You will no longer hold those sins against you, and you will be at peace.
You can’t forgive yourself until you have made a change in your heart and life. And that means you’ve got to repent. Many people seek forgiveness but they never change. You will never find the peace that passes understanding if you are unwilling to repent and change. Now, if you commit the same old sins over and over, you’ll keep on having the same defeat and shame over and over.
The Bible says in Colossians 3, verses 5 to 10, “Put to death (that is kill) therefore what is earthly in you.” And he mentions “sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.” And he says, “On account of these the wrath of God is coming. And in these, he says, you Colossians once walked, when you were living in them. But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.”
There are four things you can do to forgive yourself. First, be sure that you have genuinely repented. Repentance is not only turning away from sin; it’s also a turning toward God. The Thessalonians turned from idols to serve the living God (1 Thessalonians 1 and verse 9). And you’ll have a hard time forgiving yourself if you fail to fill your life up with God.
The Lord Jesus warns us about giving up sin but not filling our lives with spiritual things in the Gospel of Matthew chapter 12, verses 43 to 45. The Lord Jesus said, “When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, but it finds none. Then it says, Well, I will return to my house from which I came. And when it comes, it finds the house empty, swept, and put in order. Then it goes and brings with it seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and dwell there, and the last state of that person is worse than the first. So also will it be with this evil generation.”
Second, if you wish to forgive yourself, you must focus your attention on what you have become, not on what you were! My favorite saying is “I’m not all I ought to be; I’m not all I want to be; I’m not all I’m going to be; but, thank God, I’m not what I used to be.” The apostle Paul was guilty of a number of terrible sins before he became a Christian. He was guilty of violence, murder, slander, and blasphemy. He persecuted the church beyond measure and he cast people into prison for their faith.
In 1Timothy 1, verses 12 to 16 Paul said, “I thank him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he judged me faithful, appointing me to his service, though formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and an insolent opponent. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love which are in Christ Jesus. The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am foremost. But I received mercy, Paul says, for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life.”
Paul couldn’t change his past, but that was not his focus. Paul said he was “forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead.” He said, “I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3, verses 13 and 14). He focused on what God was doing in his life and what God wanted him to do. Knowing God’s forgiveness, he could put the past behind him and focus on the will of God. He could say, “For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain” (1 Corinthians 15, verses 9 and 10).
My favorite saying as I’ve mentioned is: "I'm not all I'm going to be; I'm not all I ought to be; but, thank God, I'm not what I used to be." God is more interested in what you are becoming in Christ, than He is what you used to be. You can’t change the past; I can’t, no one can. And you know what, it’s not necessary for you to do so to forgive yourself. What you can do is change yourself and your attitude toward the past by becoming the person God wishes you to be. And in doing this realize that no one is perfect but God.
Third, if you want to forgive yourself trust God instead of your feelings. Feelings represent perceptions, but they are not always true to reality. Feelings accurately reflect how we perceive things to be but they don’t always reflect what is true and real. You’ll remember the brothers of Joseph sold him to some slave traders, and Joseph went to Egypt. Well, the brothers said to their father that a wild animal killed Joseph and they dipped his coat of many colors in the blood.
Well, the brothers, what they did is they lied to their father Jacob. And the Bible says that Jacob tore his clothes in grief, and he wore sackcloth and he mourned for his son for many days. And he refused to be comforted. And Jacob said, “No, I shall go down to Sheol (that is the grave) to my son, mourning.” Thus his father wept for him (Genesis 37 and verse 35). Jacob thought Joseph was dead, but Joseph hadn’t died. He was very much alive; and Jacob was mistaken. He believed the brothers’ report but he didn’t know the truth.
People often feel unforgiven, even when God promises to forgive in black and white in the Bible. Trust God, not your feelings. Trust the Bible to tell you the truth. God never lies. God can and will do just what He promised in the Word of God. The Lord Jesus said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, that everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin.” That’s true. But he also said, “So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.” That’s from John 8:34 and also verse 36. Martin Luther wrote, “For feelings come and feelings go, and feelings are deceiving; my warrant is the Word of God, nothing else is worth believing.”
Fourth, if you want to forgive yourself draw close to God. If you want to be at peace with God, don’t flirt with the sins of the world. The Bible says in James 4, verses 7-8, “Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.” When God rules in your heart and life, when you choose to draw near to God and you resist the devil, you’ll find your life growing better and better.
The Bible says in James 4 and verse 4 that, “whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.” Oh, it’s the double-minded fellow who wants to be a friend to God on one side and a friend of the world, but he never finds peace or assurance in either one of those things. If you want a clear conscience, “submit to God.” And when you draw close to God and you start resisting the devil, you’ll find the strength to live a righteous and holy life. You’ll find things that tempted you aren’t as appealing.
You can forgive yourself, and God can help you. Won’t you let Him? Let’s pray together. O Lord, may each one find the peace that passes understanding through following the will of God. And, Father, we are thankful for Your love and we are thankful that through the blood of Jesus, You can forgive us. This is our prayer in Jesus’ name. Amen!
People think they can get away with their sins, but there are always two people who know we have sinned no matter how secret. God knows and we know. David thought he had hidden his sin with Bathsheba, but it wasn’t hidden from his own heart.
David said in Psalm 32, verses 3 to 5 that, “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. I acknowledged my sin to You, and my iniquity I did not hide; I said, I will confess my transgressions to the LORD; and You forgave the guilt of my sin.”
God forgives us so that we might be able to forgive ourselves. When we get right with God, we find the grace to get right with ourselves. Forgiveness takes place in the heart of God, and it is an act of mercy and grace. It’s a gift. You can’t earn it. Mercy takes place when God does something for us that we are not capable of doing for ourselves. Your salvation, your forgiveness, is the gift of God.
But you have to accept that gift from Him. And that means being honest with yourself and with God in confessing the sin. To become a Christian, we must truly trust God and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. We have got to turn away from sin and turn to God; that’s repentance. We must be willing to confess Jesus as Christ and Lord before others; and we must be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of our sins according to the teaching of Acts 2 and verse 38. Christian baptism is the immersion in water of a penitent believer. Now if you need to do this—to believe, repent, be baptized, why not contact a nearby church of Christ and get your heart right with God.
We hope you’ve benefited from today’s study. I have enjoyed meeting so many of you, and you have said such nice things to me. If you want a free printed copy, a CD, or tape of this message, “Forgiving Yourself,” mail your request to In Search of the Lord's Way, P.O. Box 371, Edmond, OK 73083, or you can e-mail us: searchtv@searchtv.org.
Or, call the Search office toll-free at 1-800-321-8633. Our programs also appear on our website-- searchtv.org. You can download them in a printed form, an audio form, or a video format. We also offer free study sheets, and there are churches who are already using them and you can download them before the programs appear and then use them as you see the program. Well, we are so glad that you have joined us for this study. And we hope these study sheets and other things will help you as you study God’s Word.
Please worship with one of the churches of Christ in the area served by this station. The church loves people, and they know that you are visiting with them and they want to get to meet you. Brother Mack Lyon and I will be back with you next week. Keep searching God’s Word, and from all of us In Search of the Lord’s Way God bless you and we love you.
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