A Guilty Conscience

Today on Renewing Your Mind. We have become professionals at silencing the feelings of real guilt and we live in a culture that teaches us that guilt feelings are inherently destructive because they undermine a person's sense of self-worth or of self esteem. In fact, just the opposite is true. Few things are more destructive than silencing or tamping down feelings of real guilt just as we would never ignore symptoms of the coronavirus ignoring the reality of our guilt brings very real consequences. So what's the remedy for guilt and the feelings associated with Dr. RC Sproul. Three. Continue now with our study of the biblical concept of guilt and forgiveness. I like to direct your attention today to lay little-known passage in the book of the prophet Jeremiah in the third chapter beginning in verse one, a few words of comment before we look at the text itself. In this passage Jeremiah is speaking of the infidelity of the people of God in the Old Testament, and as frequently is the case in the biblical teaching.

Israel's unfaithfulness is described by using the metaphor of adultery because Israel is seen as becoming a harlot by joining herself to foreign deities and that's basically the thrust of this passage here in chapter 3, which reads as follows.

They say if a man divorces his wife, and she goes from him and becomes another man's may he return to her again would not that land be greatly polluted, but you have played the harlot with many lovers yet returned to me, says the Lord lift up your eyes to the desolate heights and see where have you not laying with men by the road. You have set for them like an Arabian in the wilderness, and you will polluted the land with your harlotries and your wickedness. Therefore, the showers have been withheld and there has been no latter rain. You had a harlot's for head, you refuse to be ashamed. Now that's the image that I wanted us to look at today because it's quite graphic in its description and voicing the judgment of God against the nation Israel. Israel is accused of committing harlotry and in the use of this imagery, Jeremiah describes Israel as having a harlot's for head.

What the world is that me what he's getting at here is that Israel has forgotten how to blush.

She is so practice and habitual in her infidelity that she has lost any sense of embarrassment or of shame that we've been looking at the relationship of guilt and guilt feelings and forgiveness and the feelings of forgiveness. But today I want us to see that the Scriptures make it clear that there is often a large gap between objective guilt and the ensuing guilt feelings that flow from it.

We are told with other images in Scripture that it is possible for people by reason heated sin's to lose the capacity for embarrassment and shame to dull the conscience. The language that the Bible uses frequently is the language of the hardened heart. The person who no longer feels remorse for their transgression, and that's why it's a dangerous thing for us to rely totally on our guilt feelings to reveal to us the reality of the guilt itself because we can quench the pangs of conscience. It was not the Scriptures but Walt Disney who gave us the adage, let your conscience be your guide. That was the expression that was uttered frequently by Jiminy Cricket and I call it Jiminy Cricket theology. Now there's a very real sense in which we are to act carefully. According to the direction of this inner voice of God that we call conscience. But we must remember that for us to be wise in following the dictates of our conscience, we must first make sure that our consciences are being informed by the word of God.

St. Thomas Aquinas once described the human conscience as that inner voice that either accuses or excuses us for our behavior.

Now there are times when we do sin and we feel the pangs of conscience and the Holy Spirit works through our consciences to make us sensitive to that transgression against God and their conscience is doing what God created it to do. But again, the conscience can be seared it can become immune to the accusation of the law of God as we become calloused in our souls. And that's the judgment that God is speaking to Israel here. When God says through the prophet Jeremiah.

You have the four head of the harlot I would talk. The last time about how creative we are in denying our guilt or in rationalizing our behavior.

All of these actions are designed to stifle or to quench the voice of our conscience now one of the reasons we do that is because guilt feelings are painful and there is an analogy I think between physical pain and psychological pain. The psychological pain that is associated with guilt feelings whenever we have a stabbing pain in our body we are alarmed by it.

We are uncomfortable because of it and we will seek immediate relief will go to painkillers or whatever to try to get rid of that uncomfortable feeling and yet from a physical perspective pain is an extremely important reality because pain signals to us that there is something wrong and if we cover-up the pain we could be covering up a life-threatening illness. And though we are no longer suffering from the torment of the pain we may be moving in a deadly direction now by way of analogy, the pain that comes with guilt feelings is God's way and nature's way of sending an alarm system to our soul and speaks to us and says there is something wrong here that needs to be dealt with and what we try to do is get relief from the pain by denying it or excusing it, and so on. Rather than understanding that guilt feelings may and often do have a therapeutic and redemptive importance to our lives. Now there are two ways in which the subjective side of guilt. The guilt feelings can be distorted. We've already looked at one of them the ways and which just because we have doled our sense of guilt and our guilt feelings and we assume that because we are not feeling guilty that therefore were not guilty. That's one distortion.

The other distortion is a little bit more complicated, and that's when we experience guilt feelings when we haven't done anything wrong. That's where the whole process of guilt manipulation can be so destructive and devastating in human relationships among one of the easiest ways we can get people to do what we want them to do is to heap some kind of guilt upon them and try to shame or embarrass them into doing what we want for our own interests and there are people who have become past Masters at guilt, manipulation, and that is a dreadful thing. Of course not, it's possible. As I said for people to feel guilty about things that, under God, considered in and of themselves are not sinful suppose for example you raised in a Christian home in one of the Christian subcultures where you're taught that this behavior. That behavior is wicked and your parents drum into you that Christians are not allowed to do this or do that and some of these rules and regulations that we find in the Christian community are not found in Scripture, there is such a thing as legalism that imposes laws where God has left men free but you have been taught that to do one of these things is a sin, so that if you do it you incur a great sense of guilt. The guilt feelings that go with it. Even though the behavior you were engaged in is not under the judgment of God that I said a moment ago that this side of the coin is very complicated because here's the rub. The Bible tells us that whatever is not of faith is sin.

We illustrate this, I had a friend who love to play ping-pong and he was an avid ping-pong player. Now the Bible doesn't say anything about playing ping-pong at all ping-pong wasn't invented at the time the Bible was written, and I think that we can readily see that there's no intrinsic evil in engaging in a simple pastime recreational sport like ping-pong nothing wicked about God. Even this simple sport can become the occasion for sin in this fellows life. It was my friend. He was an earnest Christian that he had serious responsibilities at his job that he became so caught up in his ping-pong that he started to neglect his job neglect his family and neglect other responsibilities that he had because he was addicted to playing ping-pong. So for him. Ping-pong became a moral issue not because ping-pong in and of itself was evil, but because this sport, which otherwise was legitimate, had become an occasion for sin and for your responsibility in this man's life. So he began to have to struggle with ping-pong now.

By the same token, if a person has been taught. Let's use the expression of and trying to avoid it because I know if I said on the radio. I many 100 letters from people about do it anyway. Beloved in the Old Testament in Israel in the religious festivals that were instituted by God. Most notably, the Passover part of the elements that were used in the Passover feast included wine. It was real.

Why it was a beverage that had the capacity if overused or abused to make people drunk in the Old Testament Israelite culture drunkenness was a problem and God spoke against drunkenness and sought as a serious sin. Likewise, the New Testament makes it clear that drunkenness is a sin.

What Jesus made at the wedding feast of Cana was why Lloyd Noss is the Greek word and what it means is the fermented fruit of the vine. It was used for religious purposes. It was used in daily dietary doses, and it was also used in times of celebration, the Bible spoke of the wind that makes the heart glad when Jesus established the Lord's supper. He consecrated real wine because the ceremony Jesus was involved in at the time he instituted the Lord's supper was the celebration of the Passover and they were using one now again I'll get calls and I will get letters from people who've been taught in their churches were in the families that the wind of which the Bible speaks is not real wine is on fermented grape juice and so I just will say to you that that view of the biblical position is one that grew out of prohibition in the temperance movement in this country and just simply has no foundation in the lexicography of the ancient languages, but in any case, if you're persuaded that one drink of wine is a sin.

That's fine and you take one drink of one you have sent will reset again. If you believe that taking a drink of wine is a sin and you take a drink of water. Then you have sent. Now, in my judgment, the sin is not in drinking the taste of wine, because if drinking a taste of wine is a sin. Jesus would be a sinner and he would not qualify to be the sinless Savior of his people. He would be the lamb without blemish, rather than the lamb without blemish, but the principal again is that which is done without faith is sin. And if you do something that you believe is wrong, then the sin that you have committed is in acting against your conscience you have done something with the thought of transgressing and to choose to do something that you believe is wrong, even if it is not wrong is wrong. If you follow the logic of what I'm saying here and that's why it's very important for us to get a clear understanding of the relationship between guilt and guilt feelings because the presence of guilt feelings does not automatically indicate the presence of objective guilt with respect to a particular action, but it may represent the presence of the guilt of acting against your conscience. So the bottom line is that any time you have guilt feelings you need to step back and ask yourself as honestly as you possibly can have. I broken the law of God. Again, that's a problem and people take advantage of your sensitivity to certain behavioral patterns and try to impose guilt feelings upon you that are not inherent in the action that you have done, but that's a small problem compared to the other side of the coin. Basically, we have become professionals at silencing the feelings of real guilt and we live in a culture that teaches us that guilt feelings are inherently destructive because they undermine a person's sense of self-worth or of self esteem and even in the realm of psychology today. We are told is there something wrong about telling people in counseling that their behavior is sinful. Manager wrote a book a few years ago entitled whatever happened to sin, because the whole driving idea here is the one I want to tell anybody that their behavior is wrong because I may make them feel guilty and if they feel guilty. They may suffer some kind of psychological distress from that again there is wisdom to a degree distorted as it is here because we do know from study of psychology that there is probably nothing more paralyzing to human action. Then, on resolve guilt feelings we know for example that frigidity in the marriage relationship for the woman and frequently impotence for the man is rooted deeply in real guilt and guilt feelings that have never been resolved.

Guilt feelings paralyze people and that's why when we are confronted with guilt feelings we have to deal with them, and God has given us a way to deal both with our guilt and with our guilt feelings and the way that the Bible prescribes treatment for guilt and guilt feeling is by forgiveness and forgiveness that is authentic is one of the most liberating freeing experiences of the students and as we continue our study, we will discover how forgiveness is the solution for guilt you're listening to Renewing Your Mind on this Thursday.

I'm we webinar featuring Dr. RC Sproul series guilt and forgiveness. This week a series that helps us understand the feelings of guilt that all of us experience. We can't justify them. We can't make light of them. We have to deal with them and in the series. Dr. Spruill provides clear biblical solutions for our guilt. We like to send you the six part audio series when you give a donation of any amount to look in your ministries. You can call us with your gift at 800-435-4343 also go online to Renewing Your Mind.Ward will also send you a copy of Dr. Spruill booklet. What can I do with my guilt in three concise chapters you'll find out why we experience guilty feelings, and in what God is done to take them away is a great resource to give your friends or family members who may have questions about the forgiveness that we find in Christ when you give your donation today to look at your ministries.

We will send you this booklet along with a series guilt and forgiveness phone number again is 800-435-4343 in her web address is Renewing Your Mind.work but also like to let you know that we have hundreds of resources online and on our mobile app to help you understand guilt and forgiveness from a biblical perspective. If you haven't already done so, let me recommend that you download the later app to your phone or tablet and begin exploring the articles, videos, blog posts and devotionals that you will find there to search for linear in your app store and let me spell with dinner for you.

It's LIGO in IE are and before we go today. Here's RC with a final thought force in our next session were going to be looking at the other side of the coin of guilt, namely at the experience that God provides for real forgiveness. And if you're following this brief series of lectures. Let me suggest to you that you prepare for the next segment by examining your own heart and your own conscience and asking yourself where do I need forgiveness. In what way am I still paralyzed by guilt is never ever been resolved. Where do I have pangs of conscience that disturbed my soul and disrupt my sense of fellowship with God and with other people and what can I do to get relief from the painful reality of the assault of my conscience. Be sure to join us tomorrow for Dr. Scholl's message titled, the only cure is forgiveness right here on Renewing Your Mind