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[ Music ] >> The first three stanzas, the first three stanzas. [MUSIC] ♪ We shall overcome ♪

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♪ We shall overcome ♪ ♪ Someday ♪ ♪ Live in my heart ♪ ♪ By you we live ♪

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♪ We shall overcome someday ♪ ♪ The Lord will see us through ♪ ♪ The Lord will see us through ♪ ♪ The Lord will see us through someday ♪

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♪ Deep in my heart ♪ ♪ I do believe ♪ ♪ The Lord will see us through someday ♪ - We are all to victory as we take our seats.

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♪ We are all to victory ♪ ♪ We are all to victory ♪ ♪ We are all to victory someday ♪ ♪ Someday ♪

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♪ Oh, here in my heart ♪ ♪ I do believe ♪ ♪ One hope is a free soul ♪ ♪ Someday ♪

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♪ We shall overcome ♪ ♪ We shall overcome ♪ ♪ We shall overcome someday ♪ ♪ Some ♪

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♪ Some day ♪ ♪ Even in my home ♪ ♪ I do believe ♪ We shall overcome someday.

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And they all condemned him to be guilty of death. Mark the 14th chapter and the 64th verse. and the subject of the message "Overcoming Guilt." The story of the cross is a message about guilt.

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It is about victory over guilt. The Gospels record how Jesus is falsely accused and unjustly condemned. Our Lord appears before the Ecclesiastical Court as well as before the Roman judiciary. In each case, the verdict is guilty.

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Mark gives us an account of Jesus before the chief priests in the Sanhedrin Council, which is the Supreme Court of the Jewish people. This court has judicial powers to make decisions in religious matters. As Jesus had brought before this court the excuse of the crime of blasphemy.

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Witnesses are summoned. They give their testimony, but their testimony does not agree. Nevertheless, the verdict is guilty. They say that this man is guilty of death.

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To carry the cross is to carry a burden of guilt. In many ways, there are those who carry crosses of guilt. Countless thousands are crushed by guilt and burdened by a sense of shame and humility.

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Guilt is a gap between is and ought. We know what we ought to be and what we ought to do, and what we have done has been far from what we should have done. It's a gap between is and ought.

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It's a failure, in some way, on our part, to perform as we should. It's a failure to dare to be oneself. And connected with that is the fear of other people's judgment.

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And that fear of other people's judgment prevents us from being ourselves, from showing ourselves as we really are, from showing our case, our desires, our

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convictions. I think I told you I was here a number of years ago before I became pastor of this church, and two of the dear sisters from the church at

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Waco, New Hope came with me. We came to visit a patient at the state hospital and we ate, decided to eat over at Southern Dinette, which was the main

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restaurant in East Austin at that time. And these dear ladies were older ladies and they were rather sophisticated and they

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Wanted to be sure that They Continued to impress the pastor and we sat down and they looked at the menu and they were rather hesitant to make their order I

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looked at the menu and I Said in rather loud tones. I think I will order chitlings And they were greatly relieved Because that's what they wanted to order too

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But they had a sense of guilt that they thought maybe I didn't want to order that They had a fear And many times that's what guilt does for us We fear other people's judgment

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And sometimes Parents Project their guilt feelings upon their children and Children come home and the grade is not

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What the parents want it to be they want their children to have all perfect scores Some of them most parents think that children little geniuses and they want them to have All A's Like and the child has done the best that he can do or she can do and it may be a C

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and they raised so much cane about this seed and Make it makes the child guilty feel guilty and fearful When if you really remember the record the parent was just a C student back

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before that But this guilt is passed on to the child And This is why

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It is true that when one is Burdened with a sense of guilt That the individual is afraid Afraid I

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was on My way to Dallas a number of years ago, and I went on a Hill Driving a little faster than I should when I came down the hill and there was a man waiting there

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Who stopped me and gave me some greetings and I felt that while I Had very good intentions and I was just going over the hill that I shouldn't have gotten that ticket. I knew I was guilty So I decided that I would go see the judge that very day found out where the judge

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was holding court and As I got into the city of Dallas I went Into the court and I saw the clerk there and she said what do you want? I say I want to see the judge And I went into the chamber and

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As I sat there in the chamber and I listened to the judge talk to a teenager. I Decided I wasn't too sure that I wanted to see the judge And I became very fearful Then I had come there to see the judge when I listened to how he was giving the decision to that teenager who?

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Had a somewhat similar situation So I was fearful because I was guilty And there's a sense of fear when one is guilty When I went up and told the judge what the situation was he said well Reverend I think we can work it out

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He said go in peace Well, that's a great relief When you have Been guilty and you have found release you've been fearful and

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Guilt is something that Every one of us experiences guilt. And so often when something happens to us, we have a rather guilty feeling. We think that it's because we haven't done something.

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In other words, you—we get sick and we wonder, "What is it that I haven't done that I got sick?" And we have certain feelings of guilt. Lord, what what why is this man blind? Why was he born by what did his parents do?

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What guilt? Is involved here Job is a good man and he is besieged with a protracted illness and

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his friends come to see him and they sit there in silence for seven days and seven nights and They said now Job you must be guilty of something guilt guilt guilt and you see when you are guilty

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When you Have somehow failed To dare to be and to do and there is this gap between The is and the ought in your life

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You have a tendency and I have a tendency to rationalize There's always some reason why You know, I Can try to justify why I did

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what I did, you know, about guilt. And you see, this is a terrible thing that sort of gnaws at our very heartstrings, this whole matter of guilt. And there are some people who are living in

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hell because of guilt. You see, It is something that they just keep putting a little more in and you just it's like the garbage can you just keep putting more in it and you some of it is is pressed down in from the conscious into the subconscious and

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It's still there. They've just been pushing it down and it's deeply embedded in the subconscious and and it is something that disturbs and Some people have to take sleeping pills. They don't know why they can't sleep at night and all of it is because of this repressed guilt. And this, it comes out in hostility. Sometimes it is the hostility of the husband against the wife and sometimes it's the hostility of the wife against the husband and sometimes it's the hostility of the parents against the children. All of this guilt.

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And it disturbs just as if you leave the garbage in your kitchen and never carry it out. And that's what guilt does in our lives. And we know that there is guilt, every one of us somehow. When we have failed to do what we ought to do. There was someone, someone sick. I

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wanted to visit yesterday and I got busy going here visiting that person and that one and I didn't get there and I said oh, ever since I didn't get to do that. Your wife gives you a letter to mail and you forget to mail it and you don't want tell her you didn't mean it so you hide it hoping you get out before she asks

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you about it yeah yeah and then of course there is a certain guilt with money matters you know the husband spends some money that he doesn't want the wife to know about and so he has a little guilt and the wife spends some money that she didn't want the husband to know about. There's a certain guilt

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that's bad and we have different ways that we try to to compensate for the guilt and sometimes we try to use gifts as a cloak to cover up the guilt I Remember there was a brother in my ministry earlier Who never came to church?

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He ran a business And he was so wrapped up in his business that he could never Even though he stayed almost across the street from the church. He could never close it an hour He was so wrapped up in his business

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But whenever I would go over to his business, he always wanted to give me something It's a sort of to compensate for what he was not doing I said now look I don't want you to give me anything. I want you to come But it was this guilt and you know a lot of times

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When when we The other day a husband gave the wife some roses and she said now what is this you've done now? What is it you're trying to cover up? What is it that you are guilty of that you are now going to make

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this gift to me? Well, you see the spiritual life is concerned with guilt. It

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it it has a way of awakening a of guilt. Isaiah when he went to the temple and in the midst of the worship he has an experience of the eternal and the heavens open and he has a human and

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divine encounter and he draws close to God and as he gets close to God he recognizes his sense of guilt, a deeper sense of guilt. And he says, "Oh, look at me! "Warn me!

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"I am undone!" And that's the way it is. When you really, the more spiritual you become, the more conscious you become of guilt

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and your failures in some way to be and to do what we ought to be and do. You know you well The divine judgment is against us when we do wrong. It's no question about

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Haven't done what we ought to do that there is a gap between the ears and the

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Autumn Adam, where are you? Adam is hiding behind the trees of the garden. "Well, Adam, what are you doing there?" Well, is that because of sin?

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"What is it you have done, Adam? Didn't I tell you not to eat of the fruit of the tree in the midst of the garden, the knowledge of good and evil?" Yes, but I have eaten of it.

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And you see, you know what you ought to have done, Adam, and there's a big gap here between what is and what ought to be. And so Adam has a sense of shame, a sense of guilt, and the divine judgment is against him.

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And Adam and Eve are cast out of the garden, out of the garden because divine judgment is against wrong, it's against sin. So here he is outside the garden suffering from guilt, guilt. Well, the solution to guilt, the matter of overcoming guilt, is through grace, through divine grace.

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That's the way to overcome guilt. It's to somehow have one who really understands, who somehow recognizes that the wrong has been committed, but that forgiveness is granted. That's the way we overcome guilt.

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And if we never, if we never confess our sins, if somehow we never come to grips with our guilt, admit it, confess it, and somehow seek forgiveness, we remain outside the God. You can never really be satisfied with yourself. You can never be at peace with yourself until somehow confession is made.

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And in that confession somehow forgiveness is received and in receiving that forgiveness there is a bright release. There is redemption and release. unless that happens then one is left in bondage to kill but thanks be to God

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thanks be to God that his grace is available and that somehow God recognizes our sins and yet he somehow grants us his grace. Woman is dragged before Jesus she's caught she's convicted and they accused this woman of adultery. Well Listen I look master we caught her in the very act and

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It's a divine judgment against this woman because That's according to her sin that she ought to be stoned. Now what do you say? This woman symbolizes all of the despised peoples of this world. This woman symbolizes every individual on the

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face of this globe that has been crushed by the judgments that weigh heavily upon us by unjust prejudices and even by fair judgments. This woman represents everyone who somehow finds himself or herself under the judgment or the weight of the healthiest morality. So here this woman represents every person who

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suffers from psychological and social and spiritual inferiority. This woman represents everyone who's in that category and here are her accusers and and here they say now we want a judgment declared. What are you going to do? Are you going to condemn her? Here's a woman out there, she feels isolated, she feels

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dejected, she feels crushed and here Jesus comes and he gets there where the woman is he he writes on the ground and while he writes we don't know what he wrote but as he was writing he said now the one that is without fault let him cast the first stone and they walked away one by one. Here is a woman who's

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guilty he says to her woman where are your accusers and she says now Lord I have none he said neither do I condemn you he didn't he didn't can condemn the lady he did not say that she had done had not done wrong but he said I don't don't condemn you. The judge does not say that the crime has not been committed

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but somehow you are released. You are set free to be yourself, to be the person that you ought to be. Somehow Jesus is the one who does this. He enables us to overcome guilt you see if somebody has to pay somebody has to pay whenever wrong is committed somebody's got to pay the judgment of God declares that

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someone has to pay someone someone has to pay a great price and it's so it's so arranged it's a rather mysterious thing but you see it is the innocent who suffer for the guilty oh it's a great burden but it's the innocent that suffer for the guilty here the innocent one suffers for the guilty he who is without sin comes and he is

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declared guilty and condemned for our sins and he points the way that we may overcome guilt Jesus paid it all Somehow when you've really been with the master you go to him and pray you you have fellowship with him, the Lord I have sinned and I know I've done wrong.

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Somehow he speaks the good word that you are forgiven. God is so good because we all guilty. We're all guilty, we've all sinned and we fall far short of the glory of God but somehow he says you're forgiven. You're free to live your life. Go and sin no more. Well there's only one way. Sometimes people try to get rid of their guilt by using

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drugs, tranquilizers, alcohol, but that won't take it away. The guilt remains. Here Jesus is being tried and he was also tried by Pilate and Pilate condemned him to death. [BLANK_AUDIO]