Some Problems No.5 Guilt

O Lord, rebuke me not in thy anger, Nor chasten me in thy wrath, For thy arrows have sunk into me, And thy hand has come down on me. There is no soundness in my flesh Because of thy indignation. There is no health in my bones Because of my sin, For my iniquities have gone over my head.

They weigh like a burden too heavy for me. My wounds grow foul and fester Because of my foolishness. I am utterly bowed down and prostrate All the day I go about mourning, For my loins are filled with burning, And there is no soundness in my flesh.

I am utterly spent and crushed, I groan because of the tumult of my heart. Lord, all my longing is known to thee, My sighing is not hidden from thee. My heart throbs, my strength fails me, And the light of my eyes it also has gone from me.

My friends and companions stand aloof from my plague, And my kinsmen stand afar off. Those who seek my life lay their snares, Those who seek my hurt speak of ruin, And meditate treachery all the day long. But I am like a deaf man I do not hear, Like a dumb man who does not open his mouth.

Yea, I am like a man who does not hear, And in whose mouth are no rebukes. But for thee, O Lord, do I wait, It is thou, O Lord, my God, who wilt answer, For I pray, only let them not rejoice over me, Who boast against me when my foot slips. For I am ready to fall, And my pain is ever with me.

I confess my iniquity, I am sorry for my sin, Those who are my foes without cause are mighty, And many are those who hate me wrongfully, Those who render me evil for good are my adversaries, Because I follow after good. Do not forsake me, O Lord, O my God, Be not far from me, make haste to help me, O Lord, my salvation. Amen.

I'd like you to have your Bibles open at the psalm that I read earlier. The 38th psalm. And you might, sometime during the day, or perhaps if later on you hear a tape of this message, read through also the 32nd and the 51st psalm.

Because these three Hebrew poems, the 32nd psalm, the 38th, and the 51st, have a lot in common. They are written by the same man, and they illustrate the condition of someone who is deeply enmeshed with problems of conviction, remorse, and it would seem abject depression. They were written by David.

The circumstances do not really need to be delved into at this point, for time is at a premium. And many of you, in any case, are aware of that man's multiple sinning and the problems that were consequent upon his bout of iniquity. But these psalms, when I gather them together, they compel me to preach and address on what I would entitle the problem of guilt.

Now, immediately, that may sound to some of you who are discerning in my congregation as something of a contradiction from the evangelical pulpit. After all, the thrust of the gospel message seems to create, as its objective, feelings of guilt. We speak of the holiness of the Lord, of the inadequacy of frail people like you and me, and the necessity of Jesus Christ going to the cross.

And when we have a glimpse of our Savior being pinned to that Roman gibbet and hoisted high on Calvary's hill, and we think that he went there for us, then, if we're sensitive to the gospel message, there is a generous amount of guilt within our personalities. Remorse, contrition, heartbrokenness, tears, these are aspects of grief, of guilt, of repentance. And unless you experience them in some degree, then you cannot enter into the joys of salvation.

So here is the contradiction, or so it would seem in the address title for this morning, the problem of guilt. How can you say it's a problem when in preaching the gospel it's one of the objectives to so show a person's inadequacy, to outline their sinfulness, that they feel so remorseful they go to the Savior? Well, you see, when you think it through, to create guilt is not the final objective of the gospel. Guilt is, if you like, a stepping stone across the river of salvation.

It's not the point where you stop. It's a necessary point on the way. But you are to go on from feeling guilty to enter into an experience of forgiveness.

And sometimes it's easier on the human level for a congregation to feel guilty than what it is for them to feel forgiven. That's why I elected for our first hymn for us to sing, Full Salvation, because some of us have not really experienced salvation in all its fullness and in all its joy. An unrelieved guilt can be a very devastating experience and quality within one's personality.

This is why David, when he writes the 51st Psalm with the background of all his sinning, says to the Lord God in the 14th verse, deliver me from blood guiltiness. I've shed innocent blood. And unless you remove the guilt from me, Lord, I just can't continue to live.

And in the 32nd Psalm, having made confession of his sin, David goes on to say in the 5th verse, and I'm reading the RSV's translation, then thou didst forgive the guilt of my sin. Not only sin, but guilt is lifted by the Lord God. And now I say again, for a person to stop on the stepping stone of guilt and never to go right across the stream of salvation and to experience what it is to be forgiven is a very unpleasant state of affairs.

And so I preach this address, perhaps to offer a corrective if your understanding of the gospel is inadequate. I would like to go through the 32nd, 38th and the 51st Psalm to show you all that I mean and to give you scriptural support for the main thesis of my address today, but obviously time would not allow that. But let's hurriedly come to the 38th Psalm and we'll take that as the leading example of the three and there are many other scriptures I could call to bear upon this particular theme.

In the 38th Psalm, you're confronted with a man who is in the depth of a spiritual depression and it will be dangerous if he cannot get out of it. An unrelieved guilt is a very dangerous situation. It can create bizarre happenings in a person's life.

What's the reason for this man's distress? Why does he go crazily around like a soldier with arrows sticking into him as he graphically confesses in the opening verses? Well, the third and the fourth verses give the answer. It's because he feels guilty. It's because of his sin, his iniquities.

He's done things that are wrong and as a result he's suffering. And he's not just suffering in his mind, he's suffering in his body. There is no soundness in my flesh because of thy anger, because of thy indignation.

There's no health in my bones because of my sin. My iniquities have gone over my head. They weigh like a burden too heavy for me.

He's physically handicapped because of the guilt condition in his mind. If you'd have told a doctor 40 years ago that a man's ulcer may be caused from his mind, then you'd have had a job to convince the medical practitioner. But there's been quite a swing in the last four decades and a greater understanding of what medical people will call psychosomatic illnesses, the relationship between a healthy mind and a healthy body.

Now you see, here is this man and he's so guilt ridden and as a result of that his health is impaired to a terrible extent. I think it's an amazing thing that locked away in the Old Testament, the first part of the Bible, are principles of psychiatry which are today recognized as being very sound indeed. The mind to a large extent conditions the body and the person who feels guilty and that guilt is unrelieved is capable of some desperate actions.

That's why it needs to be emphasized that the end product of the Gospel is not the creation of guilt. That's one step along the road. The end objective of the Gospel is for people to feel forgiven and to be reconciled to God and to know joy and hope and happiness.

Come through from the 5th to the 8th verses of this psalm and you will see there declared the most acute situation of depression that one could envisage. My wounds grow foul and fester because of my foolishness. I'm utterly bowed down and prostrate.

All the day I go about mourning. My loins are filled with burning and there is no soundness in my flesh. I am utterly spent and crushed.

I groan because of the disquietness of my heart. Utterly spent? Crushed? You ever seen anyone like that? 95% of this congregation has been in that state at some time in their life and the basic cause guilt anxiety things in the past that are resurrected and jump into the forefront of one's consciousness and as a result there is disquiet discord unhappiness and at rock bottom depression Now notice this man who so bears his heart and we're glad that we have this naked presentation of the condition of his soul recorded in scripture Note that he believes notwithstanding the darkness of his experience that somehow or other God can get him out of the depression in which he's found himself It's not the psychiatrist's desk that he's going to stand before It's not so much the psychologist's drugs He believes that somehow or other the Lord can deal with his problem Now I'm not against psychiatry I'm not against psychology or the practitioners of those aspects of modern medicine But I do believe that within the gospel of Christ and within the record of God's revelation in scripture we have tremendous help for those who sometimes get plunged into a vortex of depression and maybe attempt to behave crazily Lord all my longing is known to Thee You see me my sighing my tossing and turning on the bed You're not immune to this You're not veiling Your eyes It's not hidden from You Verse 10, the palpitations of my heart the withering of my body with its lack of strength even the extinguishing of all hope in my personality for the light has gone out of my soul This Lord God is not unknown to you when you're locked in a depression You can make some very unsound conclusions The 11th verse says that the psalmist believes that his friends no longer can sympathize My friends, my companions, my kinsmen my near relatives, they stand afar off You see, a woman who's engulfed in a depression is an isolated person They're on their own The continent of humanity is a channel away and they're in despair and they've convinced themselves there's nobody that understands Life is absolutely hopeless They are so sodden with their guilt that it seems they can get no relief at all So they make these faulty conclusions Nobody cares, my friends, my companions they stand aloof, my relatives stand afar off and problems become so gigantic they assume proportions which are ridiculous if one had a sound mind to evaluate them but one hasn't So the reference in the 12th verse to those who constantly seek my life those who seek my hurt those who are talking about me those who don't understand me those who plan for my spiritual hurt And you see, the tendency to be an isolated person in this grief-stricken condition is further accentuated in the 13th and the 14th verses I'm cut off, I'm like a deaf man I don't hear I'm like a dumb man who does not open his mouth There's no entry into my mind There's no exit from my personality I don't hear and I don't speak I'm in a little world, all on my own And what's the basic cause of this? Grief No, stronger Guilt Unrelieved guilt that causes a man to plunge into this sort of depression And mark you, we're not talking about an ordinary man we're talking about David, the psalmist the spiritually sensitive man the sweetest singer that Israel ever knew the man who was called friend of God and he's in this mess Praise God for the truth of Scripture Praise God the Bible gives us the insight into David's own heart because it helps me as an individual I'll never be a David Can't play a violin, let alone a harp And I don't think I could write a poem at least not one that anyone but me would appreciate And yet look at the mess he's in so isolated so eclipsed with hope extinguished so cut off like a deaf man that can't hear like a dumb man that can't speak And yet, verse 15 he still has at the back of his mind that the great physician God that somehow or other can come to his aid Yet he's ready to fall all the time, verse 17 And his pain is ever with him the distressing circumstances he closes his eyes and they're there Those situations that he's trying to forget that time with Bathsheba which has now turned from sweetness to sourness the death of her husband Uriah the scandal in the court Those nine months that he has spent outside of the presence of God that nightmare, it's still there The guilt is unrelieved and sensitive, emotional, poetic David because of the sensitivity of his nature becomes bizarre in his thinking and almost suicidal in his thoughts What's the vital thing that needs to be done by the person who is soaked in guilt? Verse 18 is the most important verse in this particular Hebrew poem I confess my iniquity I am sorry for my sin I believe that the evangelical pulpit has gone to the other extreme wanting to be so different from our Roman Catholic friends we decry the confessional and there are certain good reasons why we may hesitate at the thought of a confessional as is witnessed in Catholic churches but you can go to a non-biblical extreme in reacting against something that may have some value if it was approached in a balanced sense Confession of guilt is one of the God-prescribed ways in which you get rid of the terrible thing Turn back to Psalm 32 We're still with David and the situation is exactly what it is in the 38th Psalm Verse 3 When I declared not my sin my body wasted away for day and night, verse 4 thy hand was heavy upon me He's suffering from ill health He's suffering from his depression because he has unrelieved guilt that he will not express in words When I declared not my sin my body wasted away Now go to the fifth verse I acknowledged my sin to thee and I did not hide my iniquity I said I will confess my transgressions to the Lord Then thou didst forgive the guilt of my sin When in the New Testament references made in that important practical epistle of James to the role of elders we are informed that the raison d'etre the reason for being of elders in a local fellowship is not to supervise the spending of money or to check the fabric of the church building assuming the fellowship has such a building to meet in The function of the elderate the function of the pastors is to move amongst the people who may desperately be requiring spiritual counsel and help Is any among you afflicted? Let him pray Is any merry? Let him sing psalms Is any sick among you? Let him call for the elders of the church and let them pray over him anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord and the prayer of faith shall save the sick Ah yes, that you say, we know But listen, in exactly the same context speaking of the ministry of the elderate of pastors within a given church community confess your sins confess your faults one to another and pray one for another that ye may be healed He's not here just talking about physical ailments The reference is to spiritual problems as well It's coupled to this whole business of anxiety and guilt for sins which have been committed And we have yet, I feel, in the evangelical church in the West, as far as I experience it to know what it is to really enter into the ministry of the elders in a local church in this whole area of spiritual therapy and giving aid and assistance to the person who is guilt-ridden and needs to confess their faults and needs to have a sympathetic ear and hands laid on them and to know the relief of being able to speak to someone whose confidence could never be broken and whose counsel is wise and therapeutic It was when David started to confess a confession which was triggered off by the arrival in his room of the prophet Nathan that healing started to come to David I repeat, you can stack the 32nd Psalm alongside the 38th and couple it with the 51st and you have there a picture of a man who is almost demented and he will stay in that condition until his grief, or rather until his guilt has found expression until he has been dealt with by God's healing power and his personality has been utterly and absolutely cleansed and his sins forgiven Another thing that I believe about the evangelical church as I've experienced it is that the gospel of Christ must be preached to those who listen as having an effect at a much deeper level in our personalities than we're prone to accept It's not just a question of responding to what Jesus has done and saying Yes Lord, I believe you died on the cross for me Really benefiting by salvation by the salvation of Christ means that he will deal with all those past unpleasant things that happened in our lives He will move into our background He will move into our personality He will renew us and remake us That what I am saying is not some modern view on psychiatry It's perfectly obvious from the 51st Psalm David is starting to speak and that's good The prophet's been along and David feels convicted and he needs to get out all the unpleasantness all the immorality all the nasty experiences of the past for which he is basically responsible and in the second verse he asks the Lord for inner cleansing but he doesn't just say wash me from my iniquity he says wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin and look in the sixth and the seventh verses again he's dealing with the deepest part of his personality Lord you desire truth in the inward being therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean wash me and I shall be whiter than snow Why is such rich metaphor written into this psalm? Why is David speaking about the depths of his personality? Because it's at that level that he needs cleansing It's at that level that he needs health and I know Christians who belong to the Lord God and of that I'm convinced but they've never known full salvation the eradication, the elimination of the past and they are still blighted in the present by things which happened yesteryear that should have been dealt with by the cleansing and the forgiveness that there is in the blood of Jesus Christ In the 10th chapter of Hebrews we are invited, Christian people are invited to come into the presence of the living God and we read of the invitation from the 19th verse of that chapter Therefore brothers, since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus by the new and living way which he opened for us through the curtain that is through his flesh and since we have a great high priest over the house of God let us draw near In what condition? What state do I find myself in as I enter into the holiest place of all into God's presence let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water The imagery that's in mind of the writer as he pens those words is the Levitical priesthood and its consecration when blood was actually sprinkled on the priest and when he was washed as he moved into the service of the Lord in the temple or in the tabernacle Now that's just like you and me I'm a priest to the Lord and I've been cleansed How have I been cleansed? I've been cleansed by the sprinkling of Christ's blood and that blood is permeated it's gone into the warp and woof of my personality it has neutralized the effects of sin in my life it has made me absolutely clean and my conscience my conscience has been washed my heart's been washed and all the muck of past years all the unpleasant experiences perhaps that I suffered in my boyhood in my girlhood as I moved into maturity of adulthood has been dealt with I'm clean I'm free I'm guiltless Unrelieved guilt is a killer guilt is not the final objective of the preaching of the gospel to arouse in the mind of the listener guilt is a stepping stone along the way when guilt comes it is to be followed by confession and perhaps by the help of spiritually minded people who can aid in someone in that condition and then beyond the other shore of the stream of salvation there is the exquisite experience of being forgiven and all the sunshine that's at the other side of the cross again listen to David blessed is he Psalm 32 the opening verses blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven whose sin is covered blessed is the man to whom the Lord imputes no iniquity and in whose spirit there is no deceit this is David out of his depression this is David having confessed his sin this is David having got rid of his guilt I became blessed I became happy when that occurred and so at the end of that psalm which also parcels his testimony of the distressing experiences that he'd gone through he says be glad in the Lord and rejoice O righteous and shout for joy all you upright in heart the man's guilt has been relieved God's cleansed him and remade him don't let guilt be a problem in your Christian experience get rid of the guilt by confession and moving into the joys of a full adequate salvation which God wants you to inherit because you belong to him through Jesus and he's made you new Amen Father we ask that you will lift from this congregation any burden of guilt that some may have been carrying for years eliminate the pressure caused by past bouts of sinfulness which we have never known relief from and therefore have never entered into the fullest experience of salvation as you intend make each heart anew and help us O Lord to know peace of mind entering into the benefits of all that Jesus would have us enjoy for I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God's love our fears for today our worries about tomorrow or where we are high above the sky or in the deepest ocean nothing will ever be able to separate us from the love of God demonstrated by our Lord Jesus Christ when he died for us Father may that prayer of Paul for the Romans be one that we experience answered in our lives the removal of stress and strain the removal of guilt and an ability to relax and enjoy your blessing for the Saviour's sake Amen