Lies Women Believe About Sin, Part 7

Series: Lies Women Believe About Sin

Leslie Basham: Do you ever struggle to believe that your sins are truly forgiven? It's Tuesday, May 7; and you're listening to Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss.

Have you ever felt that you have done something so bad that God could never forgive you? It's one of Satan's biggest lies, and one that Nancy will expose today. Here's Nancy as she continues in a series called Lies Women Believe About Sin.

Nancy DeMoss: I received a letter last week from a friend who is probably in her fifties. She was telling me some of the things God has been doing in her life in recent days. Then she harkened back to some issues in her childhood that the Lord has really been setting her free from now as a grown woman. In one of those areas she said, "I failed morally with a young man in my teen years. I would go to God over and over asking for forgiveness but never believing I was forgiven. I never felt I could be a virtuous woman."

How many of you would say that there is some area of your life that you have perhaps for years wrestled with--you've found yourself going to God over and over again for forgiveness but really struggling to feel that God had forgiven you? How many of you could relate to that description of my friend? Most of us in this room.

We've been looking at lies that we believe about sin. Today I want us to look at a particular lie that I think haunts and hounds many of us as women, and that is that God can't forgive what I have done. You know whenever I speak on the subject of forgiveness, almost invariably, someone will come up or write me a note afterward and say, "I have never been able to forgive myself for what I've done." This is kind of a "cousin" to the lie that my sin is so bad that God can't forgive what I've done.

It's interesting to me that no where does the Scripture actually talk about the need to forgive ourselves. As I hear women say, "I have never been able to forgive myself for what I've done," I think what they're really saying is that they've never been able to feel forgiven.

Now if they've been around the church any period of time, they know that God can forgive them. But deep down in their hearts they don't believe that they are truly and fully forgiven. So many women today find it difficult to accept God's love and forgiveness. Though they know it in their heads, it's hard connecting it to their hearts and their lives. I think there's this built-in sense in many of our hearts that when we sin, there's something that we have to do to be restored to God--that we have to do penance, a whole bunch of spiritual things, to balance out the scales of the evil thing that we've done and to make up for the wrong that we have committed.

That's what was expressed in another letter I received from a woman who said, "What can I possibly say about the selfishness of my abortion? How do you forgive yourself for murder? It can't be undone. God could have punished me by making me barren. He didn't. He could have made my kids unhealthy or challenged. He didn't. For 27 years I have felt that without punishment, I couldn't pay the debt I felt I owed."

You see the response there? She knew she had done something wrong. She's living with the guilt and shame of that, but it seems so big that she thinks she's got to do something really big to pay the debt she owes. For 27 years she has lived with that bondage, and it's the result of believing the lies that Satan has told her about her sin--that God can't really forgive what I've done, that it is so great.

Now she's right about one thing. She said, "For 27 years I have felt that without punishment, I couldn't pay the debt that I felt I owed." She does owe a debt. Now the debt she owes is no greater than the debt that you owe, and that's no greater than the debt I owe. The fact is that you and I cannot pay the debt we owe God for our sin. It may have been an abortion. It may have been something that the world would not consider nearly as serious, but every single sin requires punishment.

The truth is that a lifetime of good deeds is not sufficient to deal with the guilt of one single sin that you or I might commit against God because He is holy, and His justice requires that there be a punishment for every sin. Sin has to be punished. He tells us the wages for our sin, the punishment that we deserve for our sin, is death. I think that is why there is this struggle inside of us saying, "Somebody's got to pay. I've got to pay. I can't really be free from this because I haven't paid the penalty that my sin deserves."

Now we know from God's Word that there is only one remedy for our guilt and that is the blood of Jesus Christ. When Adam and Eve first sinned against God, they demonstrated this sense of shame and guilt. All of a sudden they were conscious of their nakedness. They were ashamed before each other. They were ashamed before God, and they did what we instinctively do. There in the Garden, first of all they hid from God. There was a barrier between them and God that their sin had created. Then, realizing that they were naked and being ashamed of that, they tried to cover their nakedness.

When I read about Adam and Eve doing that I think, How like us! We sin against God and we think, Oh dear, I've got to cover up. We're afraid and we hide, and then we try and put some good clothing on. The fact is that nothing they could do was sufficient to cover them because God has these all-seeing, all-knowing eyes. There's no place I can hide from Him. There's nothing that, in His eyes, can cover the guilt of my sin.

So God entered into that Garden. He took the initiative to restore fallen sinners--and aren't you glad that He's the One that takes the initiative? It wasn't that Adam and Eve went pursuing God. God came calling on them--"Adam where are you?" Then God dealt with them--talked with them about the consequences of their fallen condition. But He also, from the very first pages of the Bible, put into effect a plan He had devised in eternity past; and that was a plan to provide a real covering.

The Scripture says God made clothes of animal skins for Adam and Eve. Now where did the animal skins come from? An animal had to die; the wages of sin is death. God knew that Adam and Eve needed a substitute--someone, something to die in their place. So God took the lives of those innocent animals; and out of that shed blood, there was a sacrifice. Off those animals God took those skins and made clothing for Adam and Eve to cover their shame, to cover their guilt. This was a picture of what one day God would do in a much more full and permanent way through the death of Jesus Christ as the sinners' substitute.

As you go all the way through the Old Testament--particularly in some of those parts that seem to go on and on and on--and you say, "What's the point?" The big point is that sin requires punishment, and the punishment is death. The Book of Leviticus, for example,is all about how sin requires the shedding of blood for there to be forgiveness.

I looked this morning into the Book of Leviticus and saw that 71 times there's a reference to be clean or cleansed or cleansing. The word clean is a key word in the Book of Leviticus--71 times. How can we be clean? Well, there's another key word in the Book of Leviticus. Do you know what it is? It's the word blood. That word is used 86 times. If we want to be clean from our sin and our guilt and our shame, there has to be the shedding of blood. Again, this was just looking forward to the day when the Lord Jesus would come to this earth, and He would shed His blood on the Cross so we could be forgiven for our sins.

We read about that sacrifice when we come to the Book of Hebrews, chapters 9 and 10. Let me read some verses that describe for us how the blood of Jesus Christ is the sacrifice that pays for our sins. Hebrews 9, for example verse 22--the Law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins. Then verse 26--Jesus has appeared once, for all, at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of Himself.

Then we come to chapter 10, verse 8. When Jesus came into the world, He said, "Sacrifices and offerings--burnt offerings and sin offerings--oh God, You do not desire. Nor were You pleased with them." Then He said, "Here I am. I have come to do Your will, oh God." Verse 10--"And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all."

In the Old Testament system, those animal sacrifices had to be offered up again and again and again and again. It was bloody business. But if people were going to be right with God, the sacrifices had to keep being made. But the Scripture says here in Hebrews that when Jesus came and offered up Himself as a sacrifice, He did it once--for all--so that the penalty for our sin was permanently paid.

Verse 11--"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."

You know what that signified? It's finished because the sacrifice--the once for all sacrifice--has been paid for our sins.

Leslie Basham: That's Nancy DeMoss comforting us with God's promise to forgive all our sins. She'll be back in a few moments to lead us in prayer. You know women today are bombarded and confused by so many falsehoods. That's why Nancy wrote the book Lies Women Believe And The Truth That Sets Them Free. We have the book in paperback for a suggested donation of $13. To get a copy, call 1-800-569-5959, or get more information from our Web site, ReviveOurHearts.com.

Maybe there is a woman you know who's fallen for many of the lies Nancy's been talking about this week. All around you there are hurting women who need to hear the life-changing message of God's Word. Would you help us reach them? Your financial support helps us to continue to reach women in your area. Would you consider sending a gift?  God offers mercy to heal sin's deepest wounds. Join us tomorrow to hear more about that. Here's Nancy to close our time in prayer.

Nancy DeMoss: Father, thank You for that incredible sacrifice You made of Your only Son, who took our place. We feel in our hearts with this woman who wrote me that we can never pay the punishment we feel we owe for our sins. And that's right, we can't.

Thank you that the punishment has been meted out, the penalty has been paid. It was paid by a substitute, Christ Jesus our Savior, so that we would not have to pay it for ourselves. Show us how to receive by faith that forgiveness, that grace that You have extended to us. Yes, our sin is great; but it's surpassed by the grace and the mercy of Jesus. And for that we give you thanks in His Name, Amen.  

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss is a ministry partnership of Life Action Ministries.

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