Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Weighed Down By Guilt? | New Testament | Hebrews 9

Episode Date: March 13, 2023

Are you carrying around guilt and condemnation? Do you feel the weight of your sin? What is it holding you back from? In today's episode, Keith looks at Hebrews 9 to share the forgiveness of Jesus. Join the TMBT community in reading the entire New Testament in one year. Get your FREE reading plan here. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter@TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Hebrews 9

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. What are you carrying around that's weighing you down? Kathy was a comic strip from 1976 to 2010, and it's about a woman named Kathy who struggles with what she calls the four basic guilt groups of life, food, love, family, and work. In one particular strip, Kathy is sitting at her home with only her thoughts, and she thinks to herself of all the things that she should have done at work, or things that she should have

said to her boyfriend, things that she promised herself to never do again, but did anyway, ways that she made her life miserable that could have been avoided. Her look of depression deepens. Then she starts thinking about all the things that she could have done for her family, her puppy, her friends, her coworker, her neighbors, her finances, her home, her closets, her diet, and millions of people in need all around the world that she'd never met. Then, in the final frame, Kathy summarizes her plight. She says, even when I'm not going anywhere, I have 300 pounds of luggage with me. What are you carrying around that's weighing you down? Like Kathy, we're all carrying around baggage called guilt or condemnation. We live with guilt,

broken promises to your spouse, the grief of parents who were focused on the wrong things when their kids were growing up and now are reaping the consequences. Or maybe it's your nagging conscience reminding you of how you gossip. about a friend, or the last time you looked at pornography, or the last time you lied to your parents or to a teacher. We've all struggled with guilt at one time or another. It's a mistake to think that condemnation and guilt is only for major sins. We can feel the weight of guilt over any sin, big or small, past or present. And of course, guilt can be good. When you sin, it is right to have your conscience bother you. But when you've asked God to forgive you, when you've made amends with

others that you've hurt and you still feel guilty, that's a problem. That guilt is not from God. Some of us have carried around the baggage of guilt and condemnation for so long that we think it's normal. And apart from Jesus, guilt is normal. But I think the struggle with guilt exposes a deeper problem. It exposes that even if a person is a Christian, there is still a failure to fully understand and believe the gospel that in Jesus Christ you are forgiven. Today we'll see how belief in the gospel frees us from guilt and condemnation. The book of Hebrews, as you've already figured out, is full of Old Testament references to laws and priests and sacrifices.

So here we go into Hebrews 9, verse 13. The blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who are ceremonially unclean, sanctify them so that they are outwardly clean. How much more then will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit, offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our conscience from acts that lead to death so that we may serve the living God. One of the key things that shows the weakness of the Old Testament sacrifices is that they can't take away guilt. They can't cleanse the conscience. And our consciences are burdened. A project called Post Secret began January 1st, 2005, and it provided a way for people to

send in a postcard with a confession on it, something that they had never told anyone else but that they felt guilty about. So many responses came in that there are multiple books filled with these anonymous confessions. It was clear that people's consciences were burdened and they used this post secret as a confessional booth because they have a desire to get a clean conscience. guilt eats us up. What do you feel guilty about right now that maybe no one else even knows about? Guilty condemnation can do a lot of damage in your life. It keeps us from experiencing the love of God.

At worship, a person filled with guilt often feels like they're on the outside watching. They feel like the prodigal son who's described as living in a faraway country. They know about God, but they don't really feel like they are close to them. Maybe you feel far from God. Maybe you feel as though God is angry with you, punishing you for bad things. Maybe you beat yourself up and have feelings of worthlessness. Maybe you lack a desire to serve God because surely God wouldn't use a person like you. Maybe you're just much, much more aware of your sin than you are aware of God's grace,

more focused on your failures than on his forgiveness. All of this can lead to a helpless feeling that God is disappointed with you, that you didn't do enough, that you weren't good enough. Do you see any traces of guilt and condemnation in your life? Don't be surprised if you do. But you don't have to keep cultivating that guilt and wallowing in the shame as if somehow that pleases God. The truth is just the opposite.

God is pleased when we believe with all our hearts that because of the sacrifice of Jesus, we are no longer guilty and can never be condemned. According to Hebrews, guilt is due to an imperfect sense. sacrifice for sin. It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. That's why we need a better sacrifice, one that takes away our sin and guilt forever. The idea that sin requires a sacrifice is at the very heart of the Bible. Leviticus 17 says, for the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar. It is the blood that makes atonement for one's life. Animal sacrifices were for the sins of the people.

those sacrifices were bloody. And it's kind of weird to say, but the Bible is a bloody book. Blood is mentioned 362 times in the Old Testament and another 92 in the New Testament. In fact, the New Testament talks more about the blood of Christ than it does the cross of Christ. What was the point of the bloody Old Testament sacrifices? Well, it shows us that what's wrong with the world is serious. I mean, we can't just go to therapy. We don't just need moral uplift.

We don't just need social change. We're going to need something more powerful than self-improvement. Sacrifices reminded the people that God is holy and that they're accountable to him. Sacrifices reminded the people that sin results in death. They reminded the people that they needed to substitute someone to die in their place. But we are told that the sacrifices of animals can never take away sin. In fact, we're told that all those sacrifices were just a reminder of sin. They couldn't take away guilt.

Hebrews 9 has good news for us. All those sacrifices pointed to Jesus, who is the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. And as Hebrews 9 says, the blood of Jesus cleanses our consciences. It deals with our guilt. Here's Hebrews 9 again. Nor did he enter heaven to offer himself again and again the way the high priest enters the holy place every year with the blood that is not his own.

Otherwise, Christ would have had to suffer many times. since the creation of the world. But he has appeared once for all at the culmination of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself. Just as people are destined to die once and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many. The high priest had to enter the most holy place year after year because the blood of bulls and goats couldn't take away sin. That doesn't mean there was something wrong with the sacrifices. They were never intended to take away sin. They were meant to teach us about Jesus, who offers himself as the perfect sinless sacrifice. He's the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. So do you

trust in the sacrifice of Jesus to pay for your sin? Warren Buffett, one of the richest people in the world, gave $1.5 billion to wipe out preventable diseases. After he gave that incredibly generous gift, he said this. He said, there's more than one way to get to heaven. But this is a great way. Or I read a story about a man named Bill. He's 67 years old and he's given over 100 pints of blood over the years. And no doubt a lot of people owe their lives to Bill's kindness. Asked about his motivation for donating all that blood, Bill said,

When that final whistle blows and St. Peter asks, what did you do? I'll just say, well, I gave 100 pints of blood. That ought to get me in. Now, Bill was probably joking, but if he was serious, if he truly believes that his good deeds will get him a ticket to heaven, then that is a perfect articulation of the gospel of works, but not the gospel of grace. If Bill is counting on the giving of 100 pines of blood to get him to heaven, he is trusting in the wrong blood. The only way that you beat condemnation and guilt is by trusting in Christ's blood. It's by taking your sins to the cross and confessing your sin to God and believing that you're accepted because of the perfect sacrifice of Christ. If your trust is in Jesus, then you can be confident that he died to pay the penalty for all your sins.

He died once for all. All your sins. All your past sins, all your present sins, and all your future sins are forgiven in him. Hey, thanks for listening. If you want to go deeper, sign up for the 10-minute Bible Talk newsletter. You'll get a short email once a week. It'll challenge you to grow in your faith, give you interesting background on today's passage, and a lot, lot more.

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