Jeff Schreve - Breaking The Chains of Guilt and Shame
Guilt and shame. They’re Siamese twins of the devil that can devastate our Christian lives, if we let them. Now, these terrible feelings can easily become a giant sticking point to our spiritual growth. So join me today as we open God’s Word and learn about breaking the chains of guilt and shame.
We’re in a sermon series called, «Sticking Points: Overcoming Obstacles to Faith». And today we want to talk about the major sticking point of guilt and shame. You know, when you think of guilt and shame and remorse, those are all three words that go together, and remorse is an interesting word. It comes from the Latin. It’s two words in Latin. The main word, «mordere,» means to bite and remordere means to bite again and again and again and again and again. And that’s what a guilty conscience does. It just bites you over and over and over again. And it condemns you, it accuses you and condemns you. Juvenal, the Roman poet, said this: «No tortures the poets feign can match that fierce, unutterable pain he feels, who, day and night, devoid of rest, carries his own accuser within his breast».
Listen, I have good news today from the Word of God that no matter what you’ve done, no matter what is in your past, no matter how badly you might be stuck today in guilt and shame, the Lord is the chain breaker. He is the God who wants to set us free. Jesus came to set the captives free and He has the prescription for our pain to set us free from the chains of guilt and shame. In Luke chapter 15, Jesus told that familiar story, the parable of the prodigal son. It’s probably the most familiar parable that He ever told. Charles Dickens called it the greatest short story ever written. It’s not a long story, but it’s a powerful story. And in that story, we see how do we get out of guilt and shame.
Luke chapter 15, I’ll begin reading in verse 11. The scripture says: «And He said,» Jesus said, «A certain man had two sons; and the younger of them said to his father, 'Father, give me the share of the estate that falls to me.' And he divided his wealth between them. And not many days later, the younger son gathered everything together and went on a journey into a distant country, and there he squandered his estate with loose living. Now when he had spent everything, a severe famine occurred in that country, and he began to be in need. And he went and attached himself to one of the citizens of that country, and he sent him into his fields to feed swine. And he was longing to fill his stomach with the pods that the swine were eating, and no one was giving anything to him».
Now, I want you to see from this story how you can break free from guilt and shame. But there are three requirements in order to break free so that you don’t have to live under constant condemnation from your past. Requirement number one: you take an honest look at your life. You look soberly in the mirror. You quit blaming your mother, your father, your friends, your brother, whoever it might be, you quit blaming them. You look soberly at yourself in the mirror. We don’t like to do that. Hey, you’re responsible for you. I’m responsible for me. We’re gonna have to give an account one day to God. And so if you want to break free, you have to honestly look at your life and there are three questions that are critical.
Question number one: What have you done? What have you done? Look honestly at what you’ve done. Don’t try and put lipstick on a pig. Don’t try and dress it up. Look honestly at what you’ve done. What did the prodigal do? So the younger son… the father has two sons. The younger son says to his father, «I can’t just sit around and waste my life waiting for you to die. So give me the share of the inheritance that belongs to me». And so he gets his father responds to it. Now, the father, in the minds of the people hearing it, would have been like, hey, he should have kicked him out of the family. Just that one request. He should have slapped him across the face. But the father acquiesces to the younger son’s request and says, «Okay».
And so, the father is a landholder, he has a lot of wealth, obviously. And so he cashes out or does whatever he does, gives the son a third of his estate. And so the son takes the third estate and then he turns it to cash, he has to sell it. So if your father gave you a third of his land, well, what would you do? I mean, what can I do with a third of the land? Dad’s still alive, so I have to sell it. Who’s gonna buy it, because they can’t get it yet until my father dies, so I have to sell it to somebody who’s willing to wait on it. And somebody who’s willing to wait on it is going to buy it on the cheap. And so he takes a third of what his father gives him and he sells it on the cheap and he gets the cash and he gets out of town. He goes to find his fun and he starts to waste his wealth with riotous living, with loose living. The brother, the elder brother, is gonna say, «Hey, this son of yours wasted his wealth with harlots».
And so that’s what he’s doing with the money. He’s spending it on wine, women, and song. But then the money runs out and then when the money runs out, the friends run out because they’re not true friends, and then a famine hits and then he starts to starve to death and nobody’s giving anything to him. And so he attaches himself to somebody that had wealth, some citizen. Attaches himself. It’s like a beggar that just won’t let you go. He’s just, like, holding on to your pant leg: «Please help me, help me, help me. Give me a job, give me a job». And the guy’s finally just like, «Here, go to the pigs. I have some hogs, you go there and you feed them». Didn’t really have a job. That guy just kind of got rid of him. And so he went there and he is feeding pigs. And if that’s not bad enough, he’s longing to eat the pig slop, the pods that the hogs were eating. His life was filled with guilt, was filled with shame, because of what he had done. Hey, what have you done? You have to look soberly at yourself.
Second question: What has been done to you? Did you know that there are a lot of people who are living in guilt and shame and it’s not so much what they’ve done, it’s what’s been done to them. Many people have been sexually abused. The statistics just keep getting higher with people experiencing sexual abuse when they were children. And we tell people at FamilyLife, listen, what happened to you is not your fault, but it is your problem because it happened to you and you have to learn to process this correctly. Otherwise you will live a shame-filled life. Why did this happen to me? It must have happened to me because there’s something bad about me. What have you done? What has been done to you?
And thirdly, what has become your identity? You know, guilt and shame are very closely related. But when you get more specific, they’re different. Guilt has to do with something wrong that I have done. I did something that was wrong and I feel guilty about it. It has to do with the action. Shame is more internalized guilt. Shame said, «It’s not what I’ve done, but it’s who I am. It’s not that I have done wrong. It’s that I am wrong». You know, when you do wrong things that you know are wrong, you willfully do wrong things, it makes you feel trashy and when you feel trashy, you’re inclined to do trashy things. When you’re filled with shame, you just feel like a loser, you feel second class, third class, fourth class. No wonder people treat me as poorly as they do. I would treat me poorly too because I hate myself.
How do you break free? Step number one, the first requirement: you take an honest look at your life. Requirement number two: you take a necessary departure from your pigsty. You leave the pigsty. That’s necessary, now, here’s the prodigal. He disses his father in such an outlandish way, he takes what his father had earned and built. He takes it and he sells it for cheap. He takes the money and he spends the father’s money on sin: on prostitutes, on alcohol and drugs and whatever else. He’s just having a big time and, you know, sin is pleasurable. If anybody tells you sin is not pleasurable, they’re not being honest with you because the devil’s too smart to go fishing without any bait on his hook. Sin is pleasurable. The Bible talks about the passing pleasures of sin. It’s pleasurable, but it’s only pleasurable for a season.
And so this prodigal, he had a big time for a while until the money ran out. From there, he had nothing and no one was giving anything to him and he ends up at the pigsty. You know, we don’t see, when we’re tempted to sin, when we’re tempted to experience sexual sin, and I think there’s something about sexual sin that brings the guilt and shame more than almost any other sin.
Monica Lewinsky felt such guilt and shame. Because it was tied to sexual sin. And there’s a sin that when you sin with your body against your own body and in sexual immorality, there’s just something about it that makes you feel so guilty and so ashamed. And that’s how he felt. And he’s there at the pigsty and the scripture says at the pigsty, he comes to his senses. He says, «Wait a minute». I mean, he’s just longing to dip his hand in the pig slop and to grab a bite. He says, «Wait a minute. I’m gonna get up and I’m gonna go to my father and I’m gonna say, 'Father, I’ve sinned against heaven and in your sight; I’m no longer worthy to be called your son; make me as one of your hired men.'»
And he got up and left. He is a picture of repentance. Listen, if you’re gonna get right with God, if you’re gonna break the chains of sin and shame and guilt, you have to repent. No one can get right with God without repentance. Repentance, metanoia, means to change your mind. And it also means to change your direction. You’re going the wrong way; you have to turn around. You change your mind, what you think about sin, what you think about self, what you think about the Savior, and you say, «I’m going the wrong direction. I need to leave this pigsty and I need to go back and get myself right with God. I can’t get right with God at the pigsty».
You have to repent. You have to leave that behind and you have to get yourself away from the sin, away from the pigsty, and get yourself right with God. Hey, if you’re living with your boyfriend, your girlfriend, and you’re not married and you say, «Well, I really wanna serve God,» the way you serve God, the way you get right with God, is you leave that immoral situation. You can’t do that. You can’t stay in that, and you gotta leave the pigsty. If you’re gonna get right with God, you have to repent. And the prodigal said, «I will get up and go to my father and say, 'Father, I’ve sinned against heaven and in your sight; I’m no longer worthy to be called your son; make me as one of your hired men.'» And then it says, «And he got up and went to his father». He said he was gonna do it and he did it. No one can get right with God without repentance and no one can get right with God without action.
It’s easy to say you’re going to do this. It’s totally different to say, «And I’m doing it». I had a man come see me. He was at the pigsty. His life had gotten totally out of control. And so I said, «Well, let’s pray and let’s map out a plan of action for you to get your life right with God». And he listened and he said, «Yes, that’s what I want to do». And we prayed and he said, «That’s what I want to do». And he left my office and I never saw him again until I did his funeral some months later. He died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He said he was gonna leave the pigsty, but it was just empty talk, there was no action to it. What is real faith? What’s a step of faith? We call that a step of faith because a step of faith doesn’t sit there. A step of faith moves and repentance is not just talking a big game, repentance is actually doing it. So that’s the second requirement. You take a necessary departure from your pigsty.
And then requirement number three: you take a biblical stand on the truth of God. A biblical stand on the truth of God. Here’s the problem that you have. Here’s the problem that I have. Here’s the problem that we have, is when it comes to truth and error, truth and lies, it’s so much easier to believe lies. Well, then the devil comes in and he makes you feel so bad about it. He comes and just beats you up with guilt and condemnation. He’s called the accuser of the brethren. The name «devil» means accuser, false accuser, slanderer. There’s no way God would want to have anything to do with me because of what I’ve done. But here’s the truth of the story. It says, beginning in verse 20: «And he got up and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him, and felt compassion for him, and ran and embraced him, and kissed him».
You know why he ran to him? I just learned this today. I never thought about this before. He ran to him because that son had come back to the village. He had shamed his father. He had shamed his family. He had shamed the village, and the father knew «my son is going to be bombarded with mockery and criticism and shame. And I’m going to shield him from that». The father ran to him and he embraced him and he kissed him, his pig-smelling son. He still loved him. Listen, God still loves you. The devil will tell you God doesn’t love you anymore because of what you’ve done. God doesn’t love you anymore because you looked at this pornography and it’s just so horrible and so terrible and you engaged in that. But the truth is God does love you. He still loves you.
Hey, maybe you’re here and you say I’ve done so many bad things. As one guy told me, «Jeff, if you really knew me, you wouldn’t like me very much». And you feel like that. I want you to know that God lowers the window of heaven and He yells your name and says, «I still love you». The father ran to his son. He embraced his son. Hey, God will do the same to you, if you will leave the pigsty of your sin. He still loves you. He will forgive you. And the son said to his father, verse 21, «Father, I’ve sinned against heaven and in your sight; I’m no longer worthy to be called your son». He’ll forgive you. This boy confessed his sin to God and the father forgave him.
Listen, the apostle Paul said he was the chief of sinners and the Lord forgave him. He said, «I’m a trophy of God’s grace. If God can forgive me, he can forgive you». And some have said, «Yeah, but that was when he was Saul of Tarsus. What do you do if you’re a Christian and you sin terribly, then is there any hope for us»? Yes, Peter is the hope for us because Peter was a believer in the Lord Jesus when he denied three times that he even knew Him. And the Lord forgave Peter. The Lord forgives the lost, the person that doesn’t know Christ, people like Saul of Tarsus and turns them into Paul the great apostle. And the Lord forgives those who know Christ who do terrible, horrible things.
«If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness». He still loves you. He’ll forgive you. He’ll restore you. His little soliloquy, the prodigal at the pigsty, was, «I’ve sinned against heaven, in your sight; I’m no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me as one of your hired men». But he doesn’t say that when he comes to the father. That is left out. Verse 22: «But the father said to his slaves, 'Quickly bring out the best robe and put it on him and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet.'» Maybe the son was getting ready to say, «Make me as one of your hired men,» and he looked at his father and he experienced and saw that look of grace and of acceptance and of forgiveness. And he knew it would be an insult to the father’s grace to say, «I can’t be your son. Just make me as one of your hired men».
And so he didn’t say any more, or maybe it was the father that just shushed him. But the father immediately said, «Put a robe on him,» a robe of righteousness. And the book of Isaiah said, «He has wrapped me with the garments of salvation, with a robe of righteousness. I came with my dirty rags and He put upon me His robe of righteousness». He put a ring on his finger. He gave him his identity back as his own dear son. Hey, the Lord forgives, He loves, He restores. And then it says He will rejoice over you. «'And bring the fattened calf, kill it, and let us eat and be merry; for this son of mine was dead, and has come to life again; he was lost, and has been found.' And he began to be merry».
Michelle Quist wrote a prayer that I think sums up how many of us feel, and as we struggle with guilt and shame. He tells us this in his prayer:
I have fallen, Lord, once more. I can’t go on. I’ll never succeed. I’m ashamed. I don’t dare look at You, and yet I struggled, Lord, for I knew You were right near me, bending over me, watching. But temptation blew like a hurricane, and instead of looking at You, I turned my head away. I stepped aside while You stood, silent, sorrowful, like the spurned fiancé who sees his loved one carried away by the enemy. When the wind died down, as suddenly as it had arisen, when the lightning ceased, after proudly streaking the darkness, all of a sudden, I found myself alone, ashamed, disgusted with my sin in my hands.
This sin that I selected the way a customer makes his purchase. This sin that I have paid for and cannot return, for the shopkeeper is no longer there. This tasteless sin, this odorless sin, this sin that sickens me, that I’ve wanted but want no more, that I have imagined, sought, played with, fondled for a long time, that I finally embraced, while turning coldly away from You. My arms outstretched, my eyes and heart irresistibly drawn, this sin that I have grasped and consumed with gluttony.
It’s mine now, but it possesses me as the spider web holds captive the fly. It’s mine. It sticks to me. It flows in my veins. It fills my heart. It has slipped in everywhere as darkness slips into the forest at dusk and it fills all the patches of light. I can’t get rid of it. I run from it the way one tries to lose a stray dog but it catches up with me and bounds joyfully against my legs. Everyone must notice. I’m so ashamed that I feel like crawling to avoid being seen. I’m ashamed of being seen by my friends. I’m ashamed of being seen by You, Lord, for You loved me and I forgot You. Lord, don’t look at me like that, for I’m naked, I’m dirty, I’m down, I’m shattered with no strength left. I dare make no more promises. I can only lie bowed before You.
This sin that I selected the way a customer makes his purchase. This sin that I have paid for and cannot return, for the shopkeeper is no longer there. This tasteless sin, this odorless sin, this sin that sickens me, that I’ve wanted but want no more, that I have imagined, sought, played with, fondled for a long time, that I finally embraced, while turning coldly away from You. My arms outstretched, my eyes and heart irresistibly drawn, this sin that I have grasped and consumed with gluttony.
It’s mine now, but it possesses me as the spider web holds captive the fly. It’s mine. It sticks to me. It flows in my veins. It fills my heart. It has slipped in everywhere as darkness slips into the forest at dusk and it fills all the patches of light. I can’t get rid of it. I run from it the way one tries to lose a stray dog but it catches up with me and bounds joyfully against my legs. Everyone must notice. I’m so ashamed that I feel like crawling to avoid being seen. I’m ashamed of being seen by my friends. I’m ashamed of being seen by You, Lord, for You loved me and I forgot You. Lord, don’t look at me like that, for I’m naked, I’m dirty, I’m down, I’m shattered with no strength left. I dare make no more promises. I can only lie bowed before You.
You ever felt like that? Anybody ever felt like that? I’ve felt like that before. Here’s the Father’s response: «Come, son, look up. Isn’t it mainly your pride that is wounded? If you loved Me, you would grieve. But you would also trust. Do you think that there’s a limit to My love? Do you think that for a moment I stopped loving you? But you still rely on yourself, son. You must rely only on Me. Ask My pardon, and get up quickly. You see, it’s not falling that is the worst, but staying on the ground». Maybe you’ve come to the pigsty in your life. It’s not falling that’s the worst. It’s not being at the pigsty that’s the worst. It’s staying on the ground. God is calling, opening the windows of heaven. He’s yelling out your name, «I still love you. And if you will leave your sin and come to Me, you’ll find My arms open wide and I will forgive you and I will cleanse you and I will restore you and I’ll throw a party for you, if you will come to Me».