Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hi, church. Welcome to Easter weekend.
For those of you who don't know me, my name is Sarah Berger. I lead here. I lead the campus here. And it is an honor to be with you tonight. I think forgiveness can bring a lot of emotion with us. I think it can. It can bring up some of those feelings that you would like to forget.
But if I'm super honest, when I think about forgiveness, it's not very difficult for me to forgive other people.
But what's been probably the battle of my life has been to find a way to forgive myself.
What do you do when you feel ashamed?
What do you do when you hated the choices you made?
And I feel like to get started, we're going to need a whole lot of God. So let's pray.
Heavenly Father, I love you.
I thank you for this night. I thank you that this is a gift to my soul. There's no other place I would rather be than in your presence.
So, Father, I ask that you fill this place.
I pray that is your name and your voice that we hear tonight.
I pray for those of us who have struggled with shame and guilt, Father, that you will show us that you are the king of kings and the Lord of lords, and there was nobody like you.
But in our brokenness, you stepped in for us, Father.
You made a great exchange.
And I pray tonight we can feel it fresh.
Oh, for the beauty and the glory of your name, Father, I live to say I love you. So. Will you use my heart? Will you use my testimony?
And will you just do what only you can do?
In your mighty son's name, we pray. Amen.
A couple weeks ago, I saw this painting. And the painting is called the Chess Players. Can we pop that picture up?
And it's also known as Checkmate.
And in this painting, the artist put the devil on the left side, a chessboard in the middle, and a man playing on the right.
The artist kind of was known to have dark thoughts, and so he started adding some guardian angels. So in this picture, you see a guardian angel in the background.
And what captivated me was the look of the devil. It was one of, like, I got you.
And the whole design of this painting was that the man and the devil were playing a game of chess for the man's soul.
And the man has seemingly lost it's checkmate.
And you see his look of like, how do I get out of this?
And he's. He's searching his mind to try to find a way out, but there's seemingly none. Checkmate.
And when I looked at this picture.
I've had times in my life where it's felt like that.
It's felt like when I'm looking at the chess pieces and the moves that I've made with my life, I feel a deep sense of regret.
I feel a deep sense of shame for some of the dumb things I've done.
My dad always says, are there any other sinners out there? Any other sinners out there?
Thank you. Thank you.
I look at some of the ways that I've lived my life and I have felt hopeless. At times I felt like, why am I doing this again?
How did I end up here again?
And the condition of the human soul is one that we feel guilt and we feel shame.
The condition of how we are hardwired, unfortunately, is that when we mess up, if we're healthy, guilt will come.
And guilt is this tool that I think can be divine. Guilt that God can stir up something inside of you that says, man, I got it wrong.
I want to make it right.
Man, I hate that I did that. I don't want to be this way. I want to do better.
Guilt is like based off of your actions. But shame, shame is the devil's game.
Shame isn't based off your actions. It is, I did wrong, so therefore I am wrong. Wrong.
I messed up, so therefore I am a mess up.
And shame is an identity you live in.
And this picture was fascinating to me because not the picture itself, but the story behind it.
You see, years after this painting was painted, there was a champion chess player who came and saw the painting and he looked at it, stared at it, and he reviewed it and he reviewed it and something started sparking in his professional chess player mind.
And he said, I don't think it's checkmate.
I think he's got another move.
And so he took out his chessboard and he recreated and he put the pieces all in the spots that they should go from the painting. And he played the game. And sure enough, it was not checkmate.
Sure enough, this young chess player saw this painting and figured out that there was another move left that changed the whole trajectory of the game.
And what I believe is stirring in my heart tonight is I want you to know that we are never just stuck in our guilt and our shame, that we have an expert, we have a champion who looks at us and says, there is another move.
We have a God in heaven who looks at us and says, yes, you must have done wrong, or you may feel bad about that, but that does not get to keep you where you sit Shame keeps us stuck in our past.
I was looking up, like, what does checkmate actually mean? Because I'm not a chess player. So I was like, what does chess. Checkmate actually mean? And what it actually means is when one opponent puts their king in a position that they cannot escape, it's checkmate.
And I was thinking about this Saturday because it's. It's not Good Friday, and it's not quite Easter.
And I was. I was thinking this morning of, like, how the disciples and how the followers of Christ must have felt on that Saturday, because, man, Saturday was silent.
How must they have felt when they believed, they gave their lives that Jesus was the king, but now he was in a spot he could not get out of, seemingly.
How their hearts must have melted.
When I think about shame, I think, man, this started from the very beginning of time.
From the very beginning. In Genesis, we see that God created all things. And when he created man, he said he created man in his.
And you guys know what he said? He said it was good. It was good.
And then there wasn't a suitable person. There wasn't a suitable partner for Adam. So he took the rib and he made Eve.
And they were created in the image of God.
And I think about the time they spent in the garden of, like, being in full unity with one another, being in full unity with God.
And it's interesting that there's a line in Genesis 2. I think it's 25. It says, they were naked and they were unashamed.
All the men said, amen.
All the women said, can we have clothed and unshamed? Okay?
But they were naked and unashamed. And in the beauty of the garden, it doesn't tell you what it looked like. It doesn't describe its splendor and its majesty in this perfect moment of time. What does it explain? It explains the emotion of being unashamed.
But it didn't last.
Because sure enough, if you know the story, the unholy One shows up and he does what he does.
And he just. He planted a doubt in Eve's mind.
He just planted a doubt.
And he said, did God really say that you can't eat from the trees of the garden?
I love that the Bible lays this out, because this is how the Unholy One works. He works in seemingly half truths.
No, God didn't say that. That's a lie.
But he did put some boundaries around a couple of the trees.
I think sometimes what can happen is when we mess up, doubt can be planted.
I think when we do the things that we shouldn't. I think we can start to believe that that's the whole picture of who we are.
And that one piece becomes a full definition.
And Adam and Eve, they take this fruit because the unholy one says, listen, you are gonna be like God. If you eat this fruit, your eyes will be opened and you will know good from bad. And here they are looking evil in the face and they're looking at the fruit and it looks good.
The scripture says it looked desirable.
I was like, man, that sounds just about right.
And they took the fruit and they ate it.
And now instead of becoming like God, they realized their nakedness and they wanted to cover it up.
They took fig leaves from a tree and sleep sewed them together, stitched them together, I don't really know.
And they tried to cover.
And the Bible tells us they were afraid.
The Bible tells us they hid from God.
And as I think about the fig leaves from Adam and Eve's time, I think about the fig leaves of our life.
Shame is a nasty thing because it isolates.
Shame is a nasty thing because it makes you want to hide, makes you want to cover up so that no one will really know.
And I think we all have our different fig leaves. I think for some of us it is the idea of my core shame thought is I'm not enough.
And so I've lived a lot of my life trying to prove that I am.
And it's by merit then that I'm good enough.
But any of you who live that way, you know that that doesn't last. You know, you can never work hard enough or be good enough or do enough right. It's like you can't outwork a bad diet. You know, you're always left striving and never fully fulfilled.
For some of us, it's power and it's success. And it's what's in our bank account that we try to cover up.
For others of us, it's life's our choices, people we've been maybe just feeling like we're really unworthy to be loved.
And so you look for love wherever you can find it.
For others of us, it might just be the full idea that I'm gonna hide, I'm gonna mask up and I'm never really going to try. I'm never really gonna put myself out there. I'm gonna kinda live the status quo because I'm not good enough anyways.
And so you never really live the life that you were meant to live. You never really go for the things that you were meant to go for. And you're stuck in.
You're stuck in an existence that God did not create for you.
It says it was evening and it was in the coolness of the day that God showed up in the garden and they hid.
And then we hear one of the first questions from God.
We hear the voice of God say to them, where are you?
And this isn't a question of ignorance because he doesn't know where they're at. This is a question from a God who loves them and for the first time feels the separation. Where are you?
And as they hidden, Adam steps out.
And I think about this question for me right now, because I lived in shame. I lived less than. I don't think anyone would really know it because I gave enough.
But if you looked at my life like five years ago, maybe verse today, you could really see it that I was sick of hiding in the shame.
I was sick of isolating the relationships in my life that God could have used.
I was sick of letting other voices be louder than the voice of God in my life.
And I feel like I heard the call of God saying, where are you?
Some of you have grown up Christian your whole life and you come to church and you pray and there's still pieces of you that are just not fully surrendered to God.
There's pieces of you that need to hear the same call from God tonight, where are you?
I was talking to my friend Hank. He's a counselor and he's one of mine and Jacob's best friend, him and his wife Heather. And I was asking him kind of like, what is the counseling side of like self forgiveness?
And he said, you know, it's a human construct to hide.
It's a human designed emotion really made to punish yourself. It was never a good idea of God. And when I read the story, I saw it right there. This is not God's idea. Isolation and hiding and covering, it's never been God's good idea.
See, where we hide, where we cover, God pursues.
And I am so thankful of this question, where are you? Because it is a question of a God who pursues you personally.
It's a question of a God who says, you may have disappeared, you may be hiding, you may be putting your fig leaves on, but I am am here.
I've listened so hard and been seeking God for weeks on this sermon and it just feels like a stomachache that just needs to get out because so much of my life has been lived it and I just believe it with all my heart. And as I was listening to sermons and planning and reading scripture. I heard a pastor tell a story from John chapter eight. And I have read this probably a hundred times and I have probably preached on it. And I think sometimes what happens is I grew up in the church and I've been a leader in the church since my teens. And so this story in John 8, I always looked at it from the perspective of the religious leaders and it really made me mad.
There were these religious leaders who were always out to get God. And they did this whole setup where there was a woman and they caught her in the act of adultery.
And I would listen and read this story and I would think to myself, oh, I don't want to be like him. I don't want our church to be like this. I don't want to be. These self righteous hypocrites are supposed to love God and honor God and all they do is condemn. And so I've looked at this story from their point of view. But this pastor reminded me I need to put myself in her shoes.
And as I thought about this story, it says she was caught in the act.
And I imagined like, what horror must she have felt when the door was opened?
What fear and shame she must have felt when she was grabbed from the bed?
Was she even able to grab a sheet?
I thought of as she opened the doors and they drug her out, the gasps from the people outside.
And then she was drug into the temple and thrown in the presence of Jesus Christ. My heart wondered, did she want to meet him?
Had she ever heard of a God of love?
Had she ever known mercy? Had she ever known grace? Did she possibly want to meet him? But know, not like this.
And the religious leaders, they say the law of Moses says, if you're caught in the act of adultery, you're stoned.
And I can't imagine that the shame and the condemnation stoned her long before the next sentence.
Some of us need to hear that we can be hypocrites.
Some of us need to hear that man in our mess, we can act like we are better then.
But I think more of us need to put ourselves in her shoes.
Imagine her head withdrawn and down. Is she covering her body? Is she at the feet of Jesus like I'm picturing it?
And Jesus does what only he can do.
And he says, you who is without sin, you throw the first stone.
And every man dropped their stone and left.
Then Jesus says to her, woman, where are those who condemn you? Have they condemned you?
And she said, no, Lord, I feel like for the first time she looked up and she saw him, and he said, neither do I go and sin no more.
I've heard people say that religion is hard for them because it starts with guilt and it starts with shame. But I want to say that is the human condition.
Religion can say, shame on you. Shame on you. Hypocrites can say, shame on you. You yourself can say, shame on you. But do you know what our Savior says? He says, shame off of you.
I thought about her going home and years down the road, and I couldn't help but to think, on her darkest day, she was guilty. Verdict's in. She's guilty.
But on her darkest day, when she thinks back about it, my guess is she thinks about Jesus.
My guess is she thinks about the man who exchanged something for her that day.
She thinks about the man who exchanged her guilt, her condemnation for his love, for his grace.
She thinks about the man who exchanged her shame.
And I wonder if she imagines looking up and seeing his face and thinking, he is worth it.
Church surely you know an exchange was made for you.
Surely you know something in our soul cries out for the love of Jesus Christ.
Surely something inside of you calls for more.
And when Christ exchanged that guilt and that condemnation, she got to live.
But so do we.
When I try to do this forgiveness on my own, it falls flat every single time.
The truth is, you will never really truly be able to forgive yourself. Because what Adam and Eve did was they took their eyes off of God and they put their eyes onto themselves. And unfortunately, for decades, centuries, thousands of years later, here we are doing the same thing.
And we're looking to ourself for the answers. We're looking to ourself for the solution, and we will not find it there.
But in the presence of Jesus Christ, all I could think was, that's the only thing those religious leaders did right that day. That was the only thing they did right, was they brought her to the presence of Jesus.
And in the presence of Jesus, she found something that nobody or nothing else could give her.
I heard a song this week. It just was released. And it's called Exchange, and I'd love for you to just listen to it for a minute.
[00:26:27] Speaker B: Sary, for shame.
What a wonderful exchange my Savior he made for me.
His was the cross, mine was the blame.
What wonderful change my Savior he made.
I will lift my eyes to cover me where my Jesus live and cover me.
You gave it up, now it's waiting for Lord. I can't believe you did that for me.
I just can't Believe you did that for me beauty for us triumph what a wonderful my Savior he made for.
[00:28:58] Speaker A: Me.
[00:29:02] Speaker B: His was the lost mine was the gift what a wonderful it changed my my Savior where my Jesus died and cover me you gave it up now it's painful, but I can't believe you did that for me.
I just can't believe you did that for me.
You really did it.
You really did.
You really did it.
Shame lost the battle to my Savior's love if it comes chasing after I'm covered under the blood if my shame lost the battle to my Savior's love if it comes chasing laughter I'm covered under the blood if my shame was the blood My Savior's love if it goes chasing up I'm covered under the blood if my shame to Calvary where my Jesus died in cover me you gave it up now it's pain in full Lord, I can't believe you did that for me.
I just can't believe you did that for me.
[00:32:20] Speaker A: In Genesis 3, at the end of this story, there's a line we've all read over, and in it it says, and the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skin and clothed them.
We read over it, but scholars say that they had never seen death before, and they surely never saw someone take a life, and that this line was a brutal moment in that reality.
But it was the foreshadowing of God's plan the entire time.
It was a foreshadowing that Jesus Christ would die for us.
It was a foreshadowing that his life would be given.
And as these clothes, as these skins covered them, the life of Jesus Christ will cover us.
Our mistakes are not a surprise to God. He knew it from the beginning.
And he's had a plan every single step of the way.
You cannot hide from Christ.
You can't surely believe that fig leaves are sufficient.
You see, Christ's life is one piece of the story. His life. We get to see the character and the richness of who God is.
In his death. We get to see the depth of what it looks like for someone to say, I will stand in for you.
But it's in his resurrection.
It's in his resurrection where we find life, where we will say, I will not take that sacrifice for granted.
Where we say, in the goodness of God, I will find a way to surrender to him that I surely can't do life alone. So I will cling and be in the presence of God Almighty, who not for one second ever had a checkmate from the Devil who not for one second when we see Saturday silent. Oh, heaven was on the move, Church, and he is in the move. And your life, not for a second. Do you believe that the unholy one gets checkmate. The story is not done because Jesus Christ, he gives us another move.
He gives us another move in the presence of who he is and the gift of his grace and his death and substitution for us. And all we have to do is believe.
What an exchange.
All we have to do is trust.
All we have to do is surrender.
And I don't want the night to escape us.
Because I think shame keeps us stuck and it keeps us in the past. And for some of you, I think shame was put on you that never deserved to be put on you.
For some of you, you did nothing, but you feel the shame.
For some of us, the verdict's in and we're guilty.
And it can look like a hundred different things. Church can look like the tiny moments when I was a mom and I lost my cool with my kids. And I just think back now, in their 20s, man, do I regret those stupid moments.
I wish I could take them back.
Might look like those anger with my husband or in the fight.
Might look like the hypocrisy where I think I'm justified and so I treat you like junk.
Whatever it is, there's fullness of life in Jesus Christ.
There is a future for you that he desires because in the beginning they were created in his image and so are we.
And we need to be image bearers of Jesus Christ. If you got it wrong, go make it right.
Guilt says I can be accountable.
Go make it right. Apologize, do your best. If they don't forgive you, then you lean in deeper and stronger to the forgiveness of Jesus Christ.
If you're awake at three in the morning and just thinking, why did I do it? Lean into the truth that you may have done it, but it's not the full story. The full story is, yes, it was a stupid thing, but the bigger picture is Jesus Christ substituted himself for you.
Don't waste it.
Don't turn a blind eye to it. Don't get lost in the moments of life and just keep living life. And all the things surrender, take your eyes off of you and put it on to the Lord of Lord and King of Kings.
Dear Heavenly Father, you are. You are so worthy of it all.
Father, I just pray for everyone who's here, everyone who's listening, that you will just help us to surrender that in those moments, Father, we feel your physical covering of us and that we won't waste it, but that we will move in fullness of life, Father.
Because there is nothing that can separate us from the love of God.
There is nothing in all creation, neither life, nor death, nor any angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor anything in all creation will be able to separate us from your love. Father.
Shame is the unholy one's game. So I pray when we feel it, that's what we claim. That is his game.
But you do not play games.
You conquer death. You give us life, and nothing and nobody can ever separate us from you.
Help us to trust it. Help us to walk in it. In your mighty son's name we pray. Amen.
