Shame, Guilt, and the Story You Tell Yourself

It is awesome.

My name is Russ.

I'm one of the pastors here at Church at the Grove.

It is so awesome to be with you guys, especially on the holiday weekend.

You get extra credit for being here at church.

That's not true, but it's good to think that.

But it's so good to see you, especially if it's your first or second time with us.

We are especially glad you're here.

And maybe you're visiting with us as you visit family.

And hopefully this morning you experience some good fellowship, but also I hope and pray that you will have an encounter with our Savior Jesus.

Shame is a powerful force.

Shame is a powerful force.

And probably something that maybe all of us have experienced to some level.

And you may have heard of the The Scarlet Letter, you know, that Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote a book, a novel about a story of a woman basically caught in adultery, and her punishment was to wear a scarlet A for the rest of her life.

And she was placed on a platform in the middle of a town for all to see.

Now the story goes on to share about some redemption that she that was manifested in her life in a sense that broke the bonds of shame.

But I can't imagine what she went through with that experience.

And last week we began this series called Scars, and we talked about all how we all carry scars with us that come from wounds.

Some are inflicted upon us by other people, some are self-inflicted wounds, and those scars reveal a part of our story, and Jesus is able to heal our scars.

He's able, we talk about how we bring things out of the light or out of the dark into the light, and that provides healing.

And shame is one is a big one, and it's something that we all carry, I think, to some extent, because we all, we all are guilty.

We all have probably fallen under the influence of shame because it is one of the enemy's most central, most powerful, most influential strategies and tools to keep you from walking in the truth and the freedom that Christ has provided for you through his life and his death and his resurrection.

Kurt Thompson writes, he says this.

He says, to be human is to be infected with the phenomenon we call shame.

It only requires that you have a pulse.

And everybody said, Amen.

We understand that.

So the question this morning isn't whether we have shame, it's what do we do with the shame that we carry.

And you may have grown up in a church home.

You may have grown up hearing the gospel, you may have come to Christ at a very early age, or you may be more like me and you did not know the Lord until a little bit later in life.

Regardless, we have to deal with the issue of shame.

And there's a distinction that I think is important for us to understand between guilt and shame.

Guilt is a legal position.

It is a legal standing that says you are accountable to a creator that has created this world, he has set in place his standards, his word, his statutes, his principles, and all of us, because of the human dilemma that began with Adam and Eve, we're born into that position, that legal standing of guilt.

So it is a legal standing as if you were standing before a judge, and you were guilty of something.

There's some of us that have probably had to stand before a judge.

And he has that gavel.

He has the ability to pronounce us guilty or not guilty or guilty with some clause and you know all those legal things.

But here's the difference.

Shame, shame is not a standing before God.

Shame is a tool of the enemy that affects your heart and emotions, your mental state.

And it is imposed upon you with no idea of having any redemptive purpose.

Now, guilt as a legal standing leads you down a path where you have to at some point acknowledge your guilt.

And really, it's a fork in the road, so to speak.

And so guilt can lead you down this path of self-loathing and embracing shame as an identity, or guilt can lead you down another pathway that leads you to acknowledge your guilt before God, and then the Holy Spirit, in conjunction with your acknowledgement, leads you to a place where you repent.

And repent is a word that means you turn.

That we simply turn from our shame and our guilt and the things in our life that have led us and broken us and separated us from a relationship with our Creator.

And repentance is turning and embracing what Christ has done in providing freedom through his life and his death and his resurrection.

And so we all have to come to that pathway or that crossroads, so to speak, that fort in the road.

And so if you choose, if you choose the path of conviction, the Holy Spirit works in you.

And though, yes, you are guilty, you, and it is true that it is a statement, you are guilty because of your sin.

The Bible says all of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

And so where does it come from?

Now, guilt is just a legal standing we're born into.

But guilt with the power of the Holy Spirit, it can be a work that God uses to bring us to the pathway of conviction of the Holy Spirit.

And when we are convicted by the Holy Spirit, our response should be to move toward the Lord because of grace.

Now, isn't grace a beautiful word?

And more than just a word, it is a reality of us standing in position before God completely free of guilt.

Not because of anything we've done, but because of what God has done through his son, Jesus Christ.

And it moves us to repentance.

And what kills it?

It's confession and forgiveness.

Shame is it may it may feel similar in the beginning as guilt, where it's not saying I did something wrong, but it's saying I am wrong or something is wrong with me.

And it's all about identity.

Shame is never from God.

It is always a tool of the enemy.

And listen, what's it for?

Listen, it is it is word, it is not good for anything good.

Shame is a tool of the enemy to keep you from walking in God's plan, his purposes, the identity, and really shame wants to isolate you away.

See, we're in a season where we're about to start our community groups and we're you may get tired of hearing us say that this is listen, the way to walk in freedom, the way to kill shame, the way to free yourself up and not to be, is to walk away from isolation, to walk into community.

And so community is not something that necessarily we can organize, but we do organize community groups because we know if you if you search with an open heart, you can find community.

And community can kill shame.

Community is a beautiful thing in this battle against shame.

And so there's a distinction, we need to make those distinctions between guilt and how we can move toward conviction.

And then shame is a tool of the enemy that imposes an identity on you to the purpose to isolate you.

Listen, I I have lived, I lived so much of my adult life.

Even after a call of ministry, I lived so much of my adult life struggling with shame.

And it's really, it's really through the relationships that God has put in my life where I could be vulnerable and open and just tell my story, knowing that I would still be loved and accepted.

And that that that love and acceptance through these the individuals, these men that I have been able to share with, it comes through them, but it's the work of God through the Holy Spirit, through another human being.

Here's what I want us to see this morning.

Big major thought, big idea.

If you don't get anything, I want you to walk away with this.

And it's this reality.

Shame tells you lies about who you are.

The cross tells the truth about whose you are.

See, shame tells lies about who you are.

The cross tells the truth about whose you are.

And my prayer, my hope is that the Holy Spirit will speak to you.

And maybe you don't know that you have an issue with shame.

Maybe God could reveal that to you this morning.

Maybe you say, yes, that's me, Russ.

I'm even coming to church trying to shed myself of the skin of shame.

And and I want you to walk out of here this morning, ring the bell of freedom in Christ, because what Christ has provided.

And so we're gonna do a little Bible study starting back at the beginning in Genesis.

So if you're with me, we're gonna in Genesis primarily uh over this message.

And God puts man and women in the garden.

He creates the world and and and everything in it, and and after each day, he says it is good, but then when he gets finished on the sixth day, he steps back and he said, It is very good.

God puts man and woman in the garden to be fruitful and to multiply.

It's a beautiful picture of paradise.

And and and I what I believe with all my heart, and what scripture I believe teaches, is that the heavenly paradise that we're all destined for, if we are believers in Christ, it will be a restoration back to the way it was in the garden.

This utopian picture where God walks with Adam and Eve in the cool of the day.

A world free of guilt and shame, a world free of disease, a world free of sin, a world free of war and conflict, a world free of chaos and confusion.

I mean, has anybody uh listened to the news lately?

I would say not I would say place a limit on how much you expose yourself to all that mess because it can play with your mind, but we see a world that is broken and full of chaos and confusion.

But here's here's the heart, probably the the deepest painful verse.

There's actually a before we get into the deep deep painful part, this is a beautiful verse.

And it's a verse that's misunderstood.

And it's Genesis 2.25, and it says this both the man and his wife were naked yet felt no shame.

And I believe I believe they were physically naked, and and and they were this is how they were created.

But but it goes way beyond just physical, it is it is it is about their identity and their freedom from shame.

And it's how things started, it's how things were meant to be.

And if you're a note taker, it is to understand this shame was not part of the original design.

Nakedness is not about a lack of clothing, it points to a bigger reality.

There was nothing hidden in the dark, there was nothing that people had to keep to themselves, and there wasn't isolation, they they didn't hide anything.

They were they were no masks to be worn, no pretending to be better than they actually were.

Adam and Eve were unhidden with each other and unhidden before God, and this is how things were created to be.

It's how it's supposed to be.

This is how we were designed, what we were designed for.

Fully known and fully knowing, nothing hidden, no shame.

But then we move to chapter three, and things quickly shift, and says it says, Now the serpent was the most cunning of all the wild animals that the Lord God had made.

He said to the woman, Did God really say you can't eat from any tree in the garden?

Notice that that before any fruit is eaten off the tree.

There's a battle of voices, and there's still a battle of voices in our life.

Pastor, leadership guru, John Maxwell, this is where I heard this.

Um he would say that two things will make or break your life, and he would say it would be the people that you surround yourself with or and what you read.

Now, he probably said this about 45 or 50 years ago.

Um I would say it this way the two things that will make or break or define your life are the people that you surround yourself with and the voices that you allow into your life.

What you read, what you look at, what you expose yourself to.

And so these voices, the serpent wants us to question the voice of God, the word of God.

He starts with a question.

See, God has given them every tree in the garden.

There was there's this one tree.

God is a guy that can set boundaries, right?

Talking to Russ the younger this week.

And and and and he I just love the way he explained it.

He said, you know, the guy who created the Monopoly game, if you ever play Monopoly, there's all these rules.

And I remember playing it as a kid, and I wanted to I wanted to change the rules because I wanted more money.

I didn't want anybody to take my stuff.

And so what do we do as kids?

We make up rules.

But you can't do that.

The creator of the game is the one who gets to set the rules, and you gotta follow the rules.

So let me tell you, the creator of the universe set boundaries in the garden, and that is the right of the creator to set a boundary.

And see, it leads back to this life.

Life is about moving in one direction or the other, toward God or away from God.

And so he goes on to say in verses four and five, he says, he says, No, you will certainly not die, the serpent said to the woman.

In fact, God knows that when you eat, when you eat it, your eyes will be open and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

See, the serpent denies the consequences.

He avoids, he wants to deny the consequences.

Then he gets the woman to believe that God is holding something back.

There's something that the creator is holding back.

He he is questioning the Lord's goodness, and and this is this underlying foundation of shame.

The message that what what you are right now is not enough.

It's not enough.

See, shame always starts with a voice.

Shame always starts with a voice.

If you're a note-taker, that's that's what one of the observations, one of the things I want us to walk away from.

We've all heard this voice in our life.

It sounds like your own thinking, and it and it'll it'll say this.

You're always gonna do this.

You're always gonna be this way, you're always gonna deal with this habit.

You you'll never change.

There's no hope for you.

You're the kind of person that ruins things in life.

These are the voices of the enemy that are thrown at us.

Nobody would love you if they only knew and you could fill in the blank.

Nobody would love me if you knew.

Now, now I um I grew up in Stockbridge, Georgia, which is south of Atlanta.

I'm a Decatur, my family's a Decatur family, and they they moved out, they bought some property so we could do homesteading before homesteading was cool.

And I grew up out in the in the kind of out in the country.

And I wasn't a believer, and I didn't have any any guidance toward Christ, I had I had a grandma that loved Jesus, but but I remember these voices.

There is a reason I didn't go back to my hometown to start a church.

And so when Facebook and social media became a thing, and I signed up, and it allows you to list your credentials, your occupation, and all those things.

I got a lot of messages that said something like this.

You're a pastor question mark explanation, exclamation, exclamation point.

You're a pastor.

You're a pastor.

Because I listen, I was the farthest from what you would think would be a pastor.

You know how they had senior superlatives?

I was voted most likely or most unlikely to be a pastor.

Now that really that really wasn't a category.

I just made that up.

If they had one of those categories, they certainly would not have considered me clergy potential.

And so those voices have have been a real deal in my life.

Jenny Allen says this, uh she has a new book about a lot of these issues with shame and identity.

She says this, you wouldn't call it a lie.

Uh it doesn't feel like a lie, it feels like a fact, like personality, like like just who I am.

And and here's the thing that makes the voice so hard to.

Fight it usually isn't making things up, it's using information, something you actually did, it's bringing up a conversation that actually happened, and and so uh, but it but it draws the wrong conclusion and it hands you rather rather than than guiding you toward the Lord, it hands you an identity.

That's what shame does.

And so the voice speaks, and Adam and Eve eat the fruit from the tree, disobeying God's command, and everything changes in an instant.

And in verse 7, it says there, then the eyes of both of them were open, and they knew they were naked, so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

I just want you to imagine going for freedom.

It says they were they were both naked and unashamed, and all of a sudden shame is a factor.

They realize they're naked, they've got to cover themselves up.

And so they they they take fig leaves.

I thought about getting some greenery, and so they cover this, it's so it's almost funny that they are attempting to do something so ridiculous as to take fig leaves because listen, when you detach a living plant from the vine that produces and gives it life, what is gonna happen to the leaves and the plant that is disconnected from its source of life?

Yeah, so so so is it gonna continually keep them covered in their nakedness?

No, the leaves are gonna shrivel up and die, and so what do they have to do?

They have to go back over and over and try to try to cover themselves and come up with something new, cut something new, pull something new off the vine, and continually over and over try to cover themselves.

Verse 8 says, Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden.

And so strategy number one is to take leaves and to cover themselves.

Strategy number two is to say, Oh, there's God.

He can't see me.

Now, if we understand the character of God and the attributes of God, is that not the silliest thing in the world?

That we can hide from God?

It's a bit silly that we're gonna take leaves and cover ourselves.

Listen, here's the truth.

Here's something to write down.

Shame always causes us to cover and hide.

To cover and hide, isolate ourselves.

And both of these happen without God saying a word.

He hasn't shown up or or just yet or handed down any consequences.

This is not the punishment that God has placed on Adam and Eve.

This is the result of their sin and their response to shame.

They felt exposed.

They immediately started manufacturing something in their own power.

That's what we do.

That's our mistake.

That's the reality of dealing with shame in our own strength, and it falls so short.

They hide.

They hide.

Why would I go?

And this is this, I've heard this response many times.

It's most of the time it comes from men.

Why would I go to a group of people and maybe read a Bible verse and then talk about my feelings?

Which is not necessarily what a community group is or should be.

It may include you being open and being vulnerable because you have safe community.

But the purpose is redemptive.

It's not to push you down or to cause you to run and hide again.

It's to open up, to pull something out of the dark, into the light, and to have accountability and acceptance in our life.

And shame, this is what shame does.

It doesn't change God, but it changes how we relate to Him.

And there's this great cosmic hide-and-seek game constantly going on.

When God wants to bring us into relationship with Himself.

And Neil Anderson says this that Satan's greatest victory is when he convinces believers to hide from the very one who came to heal them.

And while some people run for the Lord, he doesn't always look, hiding does not always look like people who are far off.

Some people hide right here.

You can hide in the middle of a church, never dealing or opening yourself up to defeat the tool strategy of shame.

And so the story keeps going.

Verse 9.

So the Lord called out to the man and said to him, Where are you?

In verse 10, he said, he says, I heard you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.

So here's a clear example of shame.

They didn't hide because they were afraid.

It says, I hid because I was afraid because I was naked.

They were exposed first, then fear set in.

Then the hiding came.

And verse 11 says this.

Then he asked, Now who told you you were naked?

Did you eat from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?

Notice that the first question that God asked is not, What have you done?

Now we parents, we've asked that question, right?

Oh my goodness, what have you done now?

I've asked that a lot in my life.

He doesn't ask that, doesn't ask, What have you done?

He asks, Who told you that?

See, there's a battle of voices, and he addressed the voice, who told you that?

God's first move toward a person in shame is not a verdict, it's a question that goes at the very source of the verdict that's already been accepted or imposed upon them.

They're guilty.

In a legal sense, they are guilty.

And this is where shame takes shape.

It's always a product of listening to a condemning voice rather than the redeeming voice of God.

And it listen, it takes our worst mistakes and sins and it holds them over us and it shapes and imposes an identity upon us.

So God first asks about the voice, and then he deals with the fruit of what Adam and Eve have done.

And here's where we see grace step into the story.

Here's the beauty of God's grace.

Now listen to that.

Listen.

Verse 21.

What does God do?

The Lord God made clothing from skins for the man and his wife, and he clothed them.

Now where do you get skins?

Where do skins come from?

Say it?

You got it?

Animals.

God puts everything in the garden, all the animals.

So what had to happen for those skins to become available?

Say it again.

Something had to die.

And I wonder, I have no idea, but I wonder if God allowed them to visually see this death of an animal take place.

And for the first time, blood is shed.

For the first time in history, for the first time in creation, blood is shed.

And we said, man, that's ugly.

That's ugly.

I know I live I live in a Walton County.

I live in a fellowship of hunters.

I mean, everybody out here hunts, and I've hunted, enjoyed it, the whole deal.

But let me, I just being honest with me, the first time that I ever killed an animal, it was something that was difficult and different.

It wasn't like I enjoyed it.

It was something I had to adjust myself to.

Watching something die is difficult.

Blood being spilled.

Listen, some of I've heard several of you that have referred to my staples.

Russ, I wish you had not shown that in church.

I had to turn away.

Blood causes us to turn away.

We're squeamish.

Don't go into the medical field if you're squeamish about blood.

So blood is shed for the first time.

And it's a beautiful way that God's grace is shown to cover their nakedness.

Now they're going to suffer the consequences.

They're going to be asked to leave the garden.

And it's a terrible thing because once they leave the garden, they no longer are immortal.

They no longer have an eternal existence.

They will, uh, their bodies will give in to the decay.

Brokenness has now entered the picture.

They are separated from God.

They cannot be allowed to go into paradise.

But that's a terrible thing.

But it's but it's a beautiful thing that God shed blood to cover their sins, even though they would have to leave the paradise.

And so blood is a theme through all the Bible.

It's one of those things that I think as unbelievers we struggle with.

Why is there so much emphasis on the blood?

It's because God uses the blood to cover our sin.

And so going over to Hebrews, this is moving toward the victory.

This is moving toward the cross, where it says in Hebrews 12, 1 and 2, therefore, since we also have such a large cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us lay aside every hindrance and sin so that so easily ensnares us.

Let us run with endurance the race that lies before us, keeping our eyes on, say it together, Jesus, the pioneer and the perfecter of our faith.

For the joy that lay before him, he endured the cross, despising the shame.

And sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

And listen, listen, the cross, the cross is always God's answer to shame.

God's all his response is always the cross as the answer to shame.

It's always the cross.

It sets us free.

And so you came in this, you came in here this morning, pray most of you as believers, some of you on the line maybe, some of you like you, you haven't, you may not have a clue where you stand with God, but I'm telling you, outside of your faith and what Christ has done, you remain separated from a relationship with our Creator.

But once you turn and repent and believe and trust in what God provides through the shedding of His blood, His blood is the answer to the shame.

Just interesting thought to me.

Most of us see pictures and movies, and understandably so, in a society where Jesus has a loincloth on, but in reality, he would have hung naked on the cross.

Just a thought to me thinking back to how the purity before sin allowed the humans to live fully naked.

Our Savior bared himself fully naked on a Roman cross to provide for our freedom where we would not have to run and hide and cover ourselves anymore.

He has covered us.

The cross is always the answer to shame.

I was thinking back to the story of one of the key characters in scripture, one of the disciples, a disciple named Peter.

There's two campfires that Peter experiences at the end, at the end of the New Testament.

The end of the gospel.

Taken to be beaten.

And somebody recognizes Peter as one who follows Jesus, and they said, Hey, are you that are you that disciple?

Three times he's asked as he's around the campfire or around the fire.

Three times he's asked, are you with him?

And it says that he says no each time, even becoming belligerent, even using probably ugly language.

No, I'm not with him.

And he denies Jesus three times.

But later, after Jesus is resurrected, Peter has gone back to fishing.

That's all he knows.

And you know, I believe he's walking.

He's walking in shame.

He's running and he's hiding.

And so as they fish, they're catching nothing.

Jesus gives them a command, and and all of a sudden they they just bring in a load of fish.

And they come ashore, and then there's another campfire.

And who's sitting at that campfire?

Jesus is sitting at the campfire.

And he invites Peter over.

And the most beautiful picture of redemption and restoration, he has a meal around that campfire.

I'm telling you, there's something significant about significant about gathering together with one another around a meal.

And in that meal, Jesus restores Peter.

He asked him three times, Do you love me?

And each time Peter says, Yes, Lord, you know I you love me.

There's there's a whole study we could do on that.

I'm not going to go there right now, but but after he asked him three times and he says, Yes, you know I love you, you know I love you, you know I love you, he says, Feed my sheep.

Feed my sheep.

And so the one disciple who is the most outspoken, the one who probably is so bold, uh, is the disciple who denies Jesus, runs and hides.

Jesus calls him back into right relationship over a campfire, having a meal.

And I believe that restoration propels Peter, and he becomes the lead disciple when the Holy Spirit comes and pours itself out over God's people.

He preaches the first sermon.

3,000 people are saved.

I'm telling you, when you understand the freedom that Christ provides, and you are willing to walk away from shame and to walk into the grace of God and embrace the beauty of the shed blood of Jesus that sets us free, he will set you free.

Thank you, all 15 of you.

Now we're about to come and have communion, which is a beautiful meal that Jesus called us to experience until he returns.

And it's a time to examine are we in right relationship with the Lord?

Have we put our faith in him?

This meal is for believers.

Now we're a church that practices open communion.

You don't have to be part of our certain denomination or a certain group of churches.

If you are a believer, you are welcome to come.

And we you take the wafer and you dip it into the juice.

And you'll see people gather as families and couples and friendships and and and pray together as they as they as they take communion.

We have a couple uh of options for you.

If you are uh gluten-free or or or want to want to have your own little packet there, you you've got some options there.

But but here's what we're gonna do.

We're gonna sing a new song this morning.

And I've had this song on replay um on my phone for probably two to three weeks.

And it and it is it is such a beautiful song.

So our band is gonna play over us to take communion, then we're gonna return to our seats, and then we're gonna we're gonna sing this song together.

And and I didn't want you to be trying to focus on communion and listen to this song at the same time because you can't appropriately appreciate worship, respond to this song, and try to do something else at the same time.

Some of you are multitaskers, I'm not.

And so if you are in the two side sections of the room in a second, I'm gonna pray, and you're gonna go to the side tables, and then you come back to your seat.

If you're in these center uh areas, we're gonna ask you to move in this direction to these two tables, move, move in this direction, and then come back to these to these center aisles back to your seat.

I hope I got that right.

But before we do that, I want to pray and I want to give you an opportunity, if you haven't put your faith in Jesus, to do it right now, and you might even practice your first communion this morning as a believer.

Father, God, we ask that you would work, that you would speak, that you would you would do something that is transforming in somebody's life this morning, that you would call them out of shame and into the freedom that we have in Christ.

God, you would do such a work and that we could say with the apostle Paul that he has erased the certificate of death with its obligations that was against us and opposed to us and has taken it away by nailing it to the cross.

He disarmed the rulers and authorities and disgraced them publicly.

He triumphed over them in him.

And so, Father, may those of us that are here this morning for the first time put our faith in Jesus simply by calling out, Jesus, would you save me?

I repent and I believe.

And if that's you this morning, listen, the most important thing you can do is to tell somebody else.

Don't, don't be, listen, don't run and hide.

You you listen, go public.

We've got a baptism at the 11 o'clock service.

There, there's you share it with somebody so somebody can help you take your next steps.

And there'll be a few of us around uh up front.

If you want us to come and pray for you with you, we would be so honored to do so.

Father, would you move during this time as people come and participate in this meal that Jesus basically commanded us to practice until he returns and we have the wedding banquet in eternity.

Father, would you work this morning?

It's in Jesus' name we pray.

And everybody said, Amen.

Hey, listen, stand and go ahead and begin to make your way to one of these tables.