Dr. William P. Barker tells about a story that appeared in the newspapers back in 1972. The story was datelined Salonika, Greece. The city of Salonika had a real problem on its hands. It seems that many pending court trials could not be held as planned because mice had devoured files in the civil court archives. The evidence against the alleged criminals had totally disappeared. Imagine how those scheduled for trial felt knowing that all records of their crimes had been permanently destroyed. They could never be tried for their misdeeds! (1) That would seem like a gift from heaven. The mice chewed up their crimes!
We’re all familiar with the school day’s excuse, “The dog ate my homework.” But that’s all that is--an excuse. This is more like a complete pardon from the governor: The mice chewed up my crimes!
Our lesson from Hebrews carries a similar message. Christ, through his death on the cross, took away our sins as if they had never before existed. The Judge of all the universe has decided our sins will never be held against us.
Hundreds of years before, Isaiah the prophet wrote, “Wash and make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight; stop doing wrong. Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow.
“‘Come now, let us settle the matter,’ says the Lord. ‘Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool’” (Isaiah 1:16-18).
What an amazing piece of scripture! And yet all that Isaiah prophesied has been made possible because of the death of Jesus Christ on the cross of Calvary.
We read in our lesson for the day, “Day after day every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when this priest [referring to Jesus] had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God . . . For by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy . . .”
Are you among those people who are being made holy by the work of Christ? Then relax. Your sins have been forgiven. Just as those fortunate criminals in Salonika, Greece could slap each other on the back in celebration because mice had chewed up the records of all their crimes, Christ has taken away our sins. He has made us holy in the sight of God.
This is why Christ came into the world. He came into the world to take away our sins. We all love John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
But the following verse is just as wonderful, “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him” (3:17). Isn’t that what we most need to know about God? God didn’t send Christ into the world to condemn us, but to save us . . . and not only us, but everyone on this planet.
Pastor Leith Anderson tells of visiting Manila in the Philippines several years ago. His hosts took him, of all places, to the Manila garbage dump. This was certainly not the most pleasant place on earth to visit. But what he saw there was something almost beyond belief. He discovered that tens of thousands of people make their homes on that Manila dump site. They’ve constructed shacks out of the things other people have thrown away. And they send their children out early every morning to scavenge for food out of other people’s garbage, so they can have family meals. You and I cannot imagine such desperation.
Leith Anderson saw people who had been born and grew up there on the garbage dump. He reports that these unfortunate people raised their families, had children, built their small shacks, eaten the garbage, finished out their lives, and died there without ever going anywhere else, even in the city of Manila. It is an astonishing story.
But here is something even more astonishing! Leith Anderson reports that there are people from the United States there in Manila. These Americans also live on the garbage dump. “They are missionaries, Christians who have chosen to leave their own country [to] communicate the love of Jesus Christ to people who otherwise would never hear it.” He says that he is amazed by that. People would leave what we have, to go and live on a literal dump.
Then he says, “Amazing, but not as amazing as the journey from heaven to earth.
The Son of God made that journey, and he knew what he was doing. He knew where he was going. He knew what the sacrifice would be. He journeyed from heaven to earth on a mission to save the human race.” (2)
That is amazing. This is why Christ came into the world . . . that our sins, though they be as scarlet, shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.
Some of you may remember a story that Garrison Keillor told on his Prairie Home Companion broadcast years ago about a man in Lake Wobegon who was saved 12 times at the altar of a Lutheran church. This was in a Lutheran church that never gave altar calls, by the way. But Larry Sorensen would come to the altar time after time and weep buckets and buckets of tears and come back the next Sunday and do the very same thing. He kept repenting and repenting but somehow he couldn’t get beyond the repenting stage. Pretty soon even the “fundamentalists got tired of him,” said Keillor.
Larry was obviously a man who could not move on with his life. Even though he had heard the message of salvation, his sense of guilt was too great. Of course, Larry was a fictional character, but he represents people who are all too real. They are people racked with guilt.
Let me say it again: This is why Christ came into the world. He came to take away our sins. You and I do not have to hold on to our guilt any longer. We are forgiven.
Let’s talk about guilt for a moment. It may be that someone in this room has brought in a heavy burden of guilt today. In a survey several years ago of 52,000 people, more than 40 percent indicated that they were often troubled by deep feelings of guilt--forty per cent! Perhaps that number wouldn’t be as great today. After all, some people today boast of things that people would have been ashamed to talk about in an earlier generation. But don’t kid yourself. There is still plenty of guilt to go around. And maybe someone is this room falls into that category.
Maybe it’s a misdeed from your youth that has been lingering in your consciousness for decades. Or maybe it was an action from a more recent time. Maybe you betrayed someone you love. Maybe you neglected someone who needed you. Whatever it is, whether major or seemingly minor, you regret it now. If only God could remove the guilt, you would be healthier and happier if it could just disappear.
Of course, guilt has its purpose in our lives. Guilt is to the soul what pain is to the body. We feel a stab of pain and we know that something is wrong, something that we need to take care of. So it is with guilt and the soul. Guilt helps us see that something is wrong with our life just as pain tells us something is wrong with our body.
Author Philip Yancey tells how his perspective on pain was changed by his work with Dr Paul Brand, the dedicated orthopedic missionary surgeon working among leprosy patients in India. Dr. Brand made the startling discovery that all the terrible manifestations of leprosy came about as a result of the inability of people suffering from that awful disease to feel pain.
For example, a tiny pain cell makes most people blink every few seconds. But it falls silent in people with leprosy, and the leprosy patient soon goes blind for lack of the lubrication provided by blinking. Patients lose toes and fingers because they experience injuries that go undetected because they feel no pain. Diabetics face a similar danger. With no sensation in their feet, diabetics will sometimes become prone to injuries and infection that often lead to amputation.
Brand and Yancey wrote a book together called The Gift of Pain. Spending time among leprosy patients, Yancey became solidly convinced of the need for pain in a normal life. Yancey began to view pain not as an enemy but as the language the body uses to alert us when something needs attention. “The very unpleasantness of that language makes it effective: pain‑sensitive people almost never duplicate the injuries of leprosy patients,” says Yancey. (3)
Guilt is to the soul what pain is to the body. It tells us that something is wrong and needs to be dealt with. And if we ignore that inner voice that tells us that something is wrong, then we do it at our own peril.
A teacher once told each of her students to bring a clear plastic bag and a sack of potatoes to school. Then the teacher instructed them to write on each of those potatoes any wrong, any shameful deed that they might be carrying in their hearts. They were then told to carry this bag with them everywhere for one week, putting it beside their bed at night; on the car seat when driving; next to their desk at work . . . Some of their bags were quite heavy.
The hassle of lugging this bag of potatoes around with them made it clear what a weight they were carrying spiritually, and how they had to pay attention to it all the time to not forget and keep leaving it in embarrassing places.
Naturally, the condition of the potatoes deteriorated to a nasty slime. That is how guilt works. If it is allowed to sit in our hearts it deteriorates to a nasty slime . . . and who wants to carry around a nasty slime? Guilt motivates us to make a change in our lives to get rid of that slime forever. Guilt tells us that there is something in our life that needs to be taken care of.
But here is the most profound purpose of guilt. Guilt points us in the direction of God. What can I do with my guilt? Can I act out some kind of penitence? Can I say I’m sorry? Can I contribute to some good cause? Well certainly, those things do no harm and can sometimes be good. But there is only one way you can blot out your sin as if it had never happened. And that is to turn it over to God. It is to confess that you have done wrong and to pray for strength of character so that sin never gains hold of you again.
Martin Luther’s great discovery that did so much to initiate the Protestant reformation was this. He discovered that righteousness is a gift from God and not a human achievement. God is the only one who can cleanse us of our sins. God has promised us that, because of what Christ has done in our behalf, He will write His law upon our hearts and He will remember our sins and iniquities no more. “There is a fountain filled with blood” goes an old hymn, “drawn from Immanuel’s veins and sinners plunged beneath that flood loose all their guilty stains.”
Nikos Kazantzakis years ago wrote a book titled, Letters to Grecco. In it an old man lies dying. He is filled with remorse for his sins. At his death he goes trembling before the Lord for judgment. A big bowl of aromatic oil is placed at Jesus’ fingertips. Jesus dips a sponge into that bowl and begins washing this remorseful man clean of his grime and shame. Then Jesus says to him, “Don’t bother me with that stuff anymore. Go over and play.” (4)
That is the grace of Jesus Christ. “Don’t bother me with that stuff anymore. Go over and play.” That is the only hope for our guilt. This can be the dawning of a new day. The past is past. We can make a new start today. If guilt is saying to you that something is wrong in your life, if guilt is saying to you that you need to make some changes, if guilt is pointing you to God, listen to that voice. Unload your burden in His presence this day.
In Decision magazine, Mark Strand tells of an experience that occurred following his first year of college. His dad and mom had left for vacation, and Mark wrecked their pickup truck, crumpling the passenger‑side door. Returning home, he parked the truck.
When his dad returned home and saw the damage, Mark acted surprised and denied any knowledge of the accident. Mr. Strand then asked the hired man who worked on their farm about it, and to Mark’s delight, the man suggested he was responsible. He had heard a loud noise while passing the truck with the wings of the cultivator up, and now he assumed he had caused the damage.
But the weeks that followed were torturous as Mark struggled with his guilty conscience. He repeatedly considered telling the truth, but was afraid. Finally one day he impulsively blurted it out. “Dad, there’s something I need to tell you.”
“Yes?” his dad asked.
“You know that pickup door?” said Mark. “I was the one who did it.”
Mark says his dad looked at him. Mark looked back at him. For the first time in weeks Mark was able to look his father in the eyes as the topic was broached. To his utter disbelief, his dad calmly replied, “I know.”
Silent seconds, which seemed like hours, passed. Then his dad said, “Let’s go eat.” He put his arm around Mark’s shoulder, and they walked to the house, not saying another word about it. Not then, not ever. (5)
You and I have a Father with more love and forgiveness than Mark Strand’s dad. If only we would confess our sin.
The writer of Hebrews says, “Day after day every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when this priest [Jesus] had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God . . . For by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy . . .”
Are you in the company of those who are being made holy? I hope so. There’s no greater feeling in the world than knowing your sins have all been forgiven.
1. Tarbell’s Teacher’s Guide (Elgin, IL: David C. Cook Church Ministries, 1994).
2. “A God’s-Eye View of Christmas,” Preaching Today, #208.
3. Rumours of Another World (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003), pp. 145-146.
4. Brennan Manning, Lion and Lamb (Old Tappan, New Jersey: Chosen Books, 1986).
5. Mark Strand, “I Couldn’t Forget That Door,” Decision, December 1996, 19. Cited in Robert J. Morgan, Preacher’s Sourcebook Creative Sermon Illustrations (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 2007), p. 310.