Leave Your Guilt and Sin Debt at the Cross

there there is just this weight that sometimes we can't lose, but this morning I wanna talk to you about some weight that you can throw off. There is a weight that this morning you can leave behind in 2025. You can start this year lighter in your spirit and it's the weight of guilt and shame and regret. It is the weight that our sin brings into our lives. The things we wish we could undo, the choices we wish we had not made, the shame that we walk with. You don't have to carry that into 2026. [00:24:32] (40 seconds)  #LeaveGuiltBehind

And this morning, I want to share with you how you can throw off that weight. Whether you're at our Shepherd Campus, our West Campus, 11:00 east, I want you to know that this morning you can walk in freedom and forgiveness. So what I want us to do is look at Colossians chapter two. In Colossians chapter two there is some powerful language that Paul uses in which Christ is going to deal with our sin. It's not a way to do better. It's not a way to try harder. It is a way to experience the grace of God in forgiveness. [00:25:12] (41 seconds)  #GraceOverPerformance

First of all, let's kind of deal with the bad news. There is a weight you can't lose. There's a weight you can't lose on your own. He says to us that when we were dead, when we were dead in our trespasses or dead in our wrongdoing, in our sin. Paul uses that word in order to confront us with the reality that we can do nothing that changes our lives spiritually. We can do nothing that that changes us really with a lasting kind of change. When you're dead, you can do nothing. [00:26:40] (41 seconds)  #DeadInSinNeedGrace

You you can't download the app that is gonna fix this. You can't go to a bookstore, and there's still a few of those around, and buy a self help book and fix this. No self improvement program will fix it. No moral effort will erase it. We have this idea sometimes that you know I've done some things that are wrong. I I feel guilty for those things so I need to do some good things to make up for them. The problem is this, you can never do enough good things to make up for the wrong things. It just doesn't work that way. It will not work that way in your conscience. It will not work that way in your spirit. It won't work that way with God. [00:27:40] (40 seconds)  #NoSelfHelpCanFixThis

Not only that, but no religious activity can offset it. Now look, thankfully you came to church this morning, But you need to understand that what we do when we express ourselves in in religious activity, when we sing, when we worship, when we take the Lord's Supper, when we are baptized. Those are are memorials of what Christ has done in our life. They are ways for us to express our gratitude for what he has done. They are not ways for us to earn God's forgiveness. [00:28:20] (36 seconds)  #MemorialsNotPayment

When we do baptisms, and not poking fun at anybody, but when we do baptisms we have people do testimonies. And one of the reasons we do those is because sometimes people misunderstand baptism. Now look, that's not that's not anything to we don't laugh at them about that. We wanna help them. We wanna help them understand what baptism is really all about. And one of the things that we experience sometimes is that people will write in their testimony, I wanna get baptized to wash all my sins away. Our water isn't that strong. It'll get you wet but it will not wash your sins away. [00:29:16] (37 seconds)  #BaptismIsTestimony

Baptism doesn't do that. Let me help you with something. Baptism is the public testimony that your sins have been washed away by the blood of Jesus. So no self improvement program is gonna fix it. No moral action is going to erase it. No religious activity can offset it and no sorrow or remorse can undo it. Now repentance is a necessary part of receiving God's forgiveness but just feeling really bad, just being sorry doesn't undo what I've done. We need to be clear on that. [00:29:53] (42 seconds)  #ForgivenessNotByWorks

The deepest of our sorrow cannot undo our sin because we are dead in trespasses and sins. And not only that, but there's another little piece of bad news here. The writ there is a written record of what I've done. That's what Paul says. He talks about the certificate of debt, the certificate of debt that we are indebted to God because of our actions. Our sin creates a debt to God. [00:32:53] (38 seconds)  #SinCreatesDebt

If I were hunting with my dad and and we we used to hunt quail on our farmland and of course there was adjacent farmland to us that we didn't own and if we got to a fence and there was a sign on it that said no trespassing, I knew what that meant. I knew that it is a violation to step across that fence. I shouldn't go over there and hunt, but if we thought the birds were over there and we said, you know what, we're gonna go over there anyway. That is willful rebellion. [00:36:39] (34 seconds)  #WillfulRebellion

Now look, we all have to be honest and say this, there are times in our lives when we knew the right thing to do, we knew the wrong thing to do and we did the wrong thing anyway. We rebelled against God. Whether it was me trying to do the right thing and I just missed the target, whether it is in my nature that I am bent towards something that I know is not right for me, it's not helpful for me, it's it's not good for me and and it's not pleasing to God and I I go that way because I'm sort of bent toward that or I just rebel against God. That's what's written on the certificate of debt. [00:37:13] (35 seconds)  #YourSinIsRecorded

My indebtedness to God is my sin debt and it's not rumor, it's not gossip, it's not hearsay, it's fact. I did it and I can't do anything to make it go away. Now I can pretend that it doesn't exist, I can try to delete it but it's there. [00:37:48] (22 seconds)  #SinDebtIsUndeniable

And some people dug up some old tweets and old posts from social media where he had made some really offensive jokes and he had posted some things that were sort of racially tinged and they certainly did not make him look good. So he went back in all of his social media feed and he's deleting all these posts. But you can't delete those posts and make them go away. Oh yeah, you could delete them. But you know this and I do too, screenshots live forever. The internet is forever. [00:38:25] (37 seconds)  #ScreenshotsLiveForever

Since Jesus is alive, you can be alive too. He can make you alive in him. Not only that but with that certificate of indebtedness, he took it away. He canceled it. He nailed it to the cross. Jesus did not reduce our debt. He didn't restructure a payment plan. He removed it and he forgives our sins. [00:39:49] (25 seconds)  #DebtCanceledByChrist

He cancels every charge against us. As you walk into 2026, you can walk into 2026 in the freedom of forgiveness, in the full cancellation of your sin debt before God. When Jesus was giving his life on the cross because he gave his life on the cross, no one took it from him. [00:40:13] (25 seconds)  #SinDebtFullyCancelled

has a wonderful display and one of the things they have is a piece of papyrus from the first century. This is from the time of Jesus, at least from the time of Paul. This is so old and it basically says tax paid to Telai of two percent through the Gate Of Nisos by Neferos exporting two Arbatas of dates on one donkey. So if someone confronted Neferos and said, hey, you haven't paid your taxes. He just showed them that receipt. Yes, it's paid in full. [00:41:29] (44 seconds)  #ReceiptPaidInFull

My dad talked about that for weeks, that somebody he didn't even know paid the check. When it comes to your sin, I just want you to understand this, grace paid the check. Your entire sin that record, that record of wrongdoing, it's been canceled. It's been taken away. It was nailed to the cross spiritually and Jesus died for your sins and for mine. [00:43:42] (40 seconds)  #GracePaidTheCheck

That's why the Lord's Supper is really so important because it calls on us to remember. We don't take the Lord's Supper to receive forgiveness, we take the Lord's Supper to remember what it took for us to be forgiven, to rejoice in the forgiveness that Christ offers us through the cross. [00:44:22] (27 seconds)  #LordsSupperReminds

if you're here this morning or you're at one of our campuses and and there's a longing in your soul for forgiveness, I want you to know you can experience it today. And while I said, you know, religious activity won't do it, moral actions won't do it, let let me tell you what will do it. Faith in what Jesus did on the cross is what it takes to receive his forgiveness. [00:44:52] (30 seconds)  #FaithInTheCross

It's not by works, it's not by being good enough, it is by totally trusting that what Jesus did on the cross paid your debt and that by his resurrection when he came out of the grave and he's alive right now, he made you alive if you will trust him. [00:45:21] (24 seconds)  #FaithNotWorks

On the cross, God the father judicially placed my sin. Your sin, the sins of the world according to first John two two. He placed all the sins of the world on one sacrifice, on the person of Jesus. That was only possible because Jesus had lived a sinless life. See, only a sinless life can die a sacrificial death. [00:46:45] (37 seconds)  #OneSacrificeForAll