So the subject today is what do you do when is the preface to the series and then after that a variety of issues that we find ourselves dealing with. The issue today is you find it hard to forget the past. When we deal with that topic of dealing with the past, a couple of areas come to mind. One of them is the area of regrets. And then the other area is unresolved guilt. And so the focus today will be the second unresolved guilt. But in your handout, there in appendix two is a very helpful article, which I will not have time to address today by John Piper on dealing with regrets in life and how we remember certain things and how we frankly need to just move on from certain areas where we have regrets. Regrets would be Could be an area of sin, but often it's a decision that we've made. It's maybe an opportunity that got by us. Could be any number of things, but the focus today will be on the second aspect of unresolved guilt and forgiveness. And so obviously the fundamental issue is what's the underlying cause of unresolved guilt? What's the dynamic that is creating that sense of unresolved guilt? And one of the Puritans, Richard Baxter, wrote a very long treatise on dealing with the emotional toll of dealing with a burden of guilt that just seems to linger like a dark cloud over our lives. And you may find yourself, either now or perhaps in the recent times, wrestling with unresolved guilt. I think at some point, most of us, if not all of us, find ourselves uncomfortable with a burden of guilt and a sense of, am I forgiven? How do I achieve forgiveness? And he said that the grief over past sins can plunge a person into a depth of sorrow. It can swallow them up, and they can feel like they're drowning. Maybe you felt like that. Sometimes it's just literally overwhelming. And there's a sense of hopelessness and despair that can easily creep into our lives. And the disparity, of course, is that as believers, we know intellectually what happened at the cross. We know intellectually that when Jesus said to Telestai, it is finished, that he literally had satisfied the wrath of God against the sins past, present, and future of all of those for whom he came to die. And we know that the scripture tells us in 1 John that he is the propitiation for our sins, that he satisfied the wrath of God. And yet we know those things intellectually, we know them from a doctrinal perspective. And yet, this is sort of the third or fourth paragraph down, sometimes we struggle with finding that feeling of reconciliation. The key word is feeling. We all are people with feelings. We can't divorce our experience from our affect or our feelings. Each of us deal with that. But the question is what role should feelings have in dealing with unresolved guilt as opposed to the intellectually important part of knowing what God has said in his word. But it could be that there are sins in your past that you look at and perhaps they just cling to you like an anchor and they pull you down. And that would not be an unusual experience. People do wrestle with things that have happened in their past, both before coming to Christ and even perhaps after coming to Christ. So this is not unique to unbelievers. It is an experience that believers wrestle with as well. And it deals with things that have happened in our lives, that we just carry this anchor, this weight, this burden of unresolved guilt. So if you feel that way, then hopefully this time today will be helpful for you. Top of page two in your notes, There are, of course, two fundamentally different perspectives on how we deal with unresolved guilt. One of them, obviously the secular approach, is the world's approach. And I'll touch on that briefly, but we won't be focusing on that. We'll be looking at what does the Scripture say. And when the Scripture The scripture does say a number of things about unresolved guilt and about forgiveness. There are three dimensions I've highlighted here for you. The scripture speaks very specifically about what we'll call vertical forgiveness. God's forgiveness. We know, as I mentioned this earlier, that that's why Jesus came to die. He came to die for sinners. He did not come to die for righteous people. There are no righteous people. He came to die for sinners. He came to satisfy the wrath of God once and for all, past, present, and future, no exceptions for the sins of those for whom he came to die. There's absolutely no exceptions to that. So forensically or legally, are our sins forgiven? Absolutely, unequivocally. The testimony of scripture is crystal clear. Yes, our sins are absolutely forgiven. Horizontal forgiveness, extending forgiveness to others. Matthew 18 deals with that as a parable of someone who was forgiven a great burden, and then he harbored resentment and lack of forgiveness against one of his peers. And the scripture says very specifically that that's a great offense. It's an atrocity against the forgiveness of God. Matter of fact, when we pray the Lord's Prayer, forgive us our sins as we forgive. our neighbor, our others who sinned against us, right? So it goes both ways. We're asking God to forgive us. And when we're asking God to forgive us as believers, we're not asking God to re-justify us. Justification is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. It happens upon the exercise of saving faith, and we exercise saving faith when the Holy Spirit does a work of regeneration in our heart, when we have efficacious grace that's applied to us, and suddenly we become a new creation and we're unable to appropriate the promise of the gospel, and we're justified, that does not recur. But there is a cleansing aspect, and that, of course, is what the Apostle John is dealing with in 1 John 1, 9. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to what? To forgive us, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. So there is an aspect of forgiveness that continues to take place, even though our justification is non-recurring. It's once and for all, it's absolutely satisfied. Sometimes, though, you'll have a discussion either with yourself or with a friend about, I have trouble forgiving myself. Does the scripture say anything about forgiving oneself? The answer is, I'm seeing a few nodding heads, at least going laterally, not the other way. And the answer is no, the scripture does not speak about forgiving oneself. The only two areas that the scripture addresses, and the only two areas that we really need to focus on, if we're going to be doctrinally sound, is the vertical dimension, God's forgiveness of us, and the horizontal dimension, us forgiving our neighbor for the offenses that they have committed against us. But still, we have this issue of unresolved guilt, and there's a number of scenarios. There are four of them that have been highlighted, and I've actually drawn at least the outline of this from one of those counseling booklets that was in the back by Robert Jones on forgiveness. I just can't forgive myself. He's a very sound teacher, teaches counseling at Southern Seminary. He was at Southeast Baptist Seminary. But the first is, and this is on page two, an inability or unwillingness to grasp and to receive God's forgiveness. Now, underneath that, there are six sub points. One of them is it could be that someone has an unregenerate heart, and if they have a sense of unresolved guilt, that's a good thing. That actually was what happened in my life, and as a believer, you've experienced that as well. when you understood the gospel message and you saw yourself as guilty. So having a weight of sin around you, if you're outside of Christ, is a good thing, because it shows you your need for Christ. No one really comes to a saving knowledge of Christ until and unless they see that they're lost, that there is this great gulf between them and a holy God, and that gulf cannot be addressed by anything other than the crosswork of the Lord Jesus Christ. So it could be that someone is an unbeliever and they have this sense. And if you're speaking with your friend and you're dealing with unresolved guilt, then of course you point them to the gospel and you tell them, what should they do? Repent and believe in the gospel. Mark 1 15. What must I do to be saved? Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. Now it's important that we define what that means. We'll talk about this a little bit later, but when we talk about an unbeliever repenting, We're not asking them, charging them, encouraging them to somehow get their life straightened out first and then come to Christ. That never happens. When we talk about repenting in a saving sense, we're saying, what are you turning from? You're turning from self-satisfaction of your guilt. You're turning from self-justification. You're turning from any hope of heaven other than Jesus Christ. Self-reformation never works if someone's trying to come to Christ by cleaning up their life first. We'll talk about that later, but that's not what the scripture talks about. So another dynamic is it could be, and this could be a believer, a failure to see one's sin as a direct offense against God. Well, David, I'll give you an example with his sin against Bathsheba. In Psalm 51, his psalm of contrition, he says, I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me against you, and he's addressing God, and you only I have sinned. Now, clearly there were horizontal dimensions. There was a murder of Uriah, there was adultery with Bathsheba, there was treachery, there were a number of aspects to David's sin, but David saw his sin first and foremost against a holy God. He was not denying or dismissing the interpersonal aspects of sin and the wreckage that was created in his life and in other people's life, but he saw his sin first and foremost against a holy God, and he says, I've done what is evil in your sight. Joseph, when he was being solicited by Potiphar's wife, he said, how could I do this great evil and sin against you, and so against God? And so he saw sin as first and foremost as offense against a holy God, and we need to see sin in that same way. What we're dealing with is one of the dynamics that can certainly exist in an issue of unresolved guilt is you may still be free from committing that particular sin. That sin may be buried historically in your past. It may be that you've never really repented of that sin in a biblical sense and dealt with it from a 2 Corinthians 7 standpoint, where you really recognize the severity of that sin. And until we repent, I think it's entirely possible, if not likely, that that issue of unresolved guilt may continue. It's really a prompting of an uneasy conscience that we really haven't dealt with that sin. That does not mean it's not forgiven. It simply means that that issue of understanding the guilt that we had before God when we committed that sin is an unaddressed issue. And so repentance is extremely important. One of the reformers said that God calls us to a lifetime of repentance. And even the Puritans would talk about repenting of our repentance. And what they meant by that was oftentimes our repentance is either insincere or inadequate. And when I say inadequate, we'll talk about an excerpt from Thomas Watson's excellent book on the doctrine of repentance, where he really unpacks what biblical repentance is all about. Some of us, perhaps all of us, if we have issues dealing with guilt in the past, need to go back and really revisit whatever that particular instance is and process that biblically from a repentance standpoint. Not to be justified, but to be cleansed and to have our consciences right before a holy God. So the issue is to grasp it at the top of page three. is related, subpoints B and subpoint C are very, very closely related. C is a failure to see the holiness and wrath of God against sin. When Isaiah, and certainly a holy man, certainly a righteous man, certainly a saved man, when he addressed this, when he saw a pre-incarnate manifestation of Christ, and that's what he saw in Isaiah 6, he said, whoa, to me, I am ruined. I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips. Why did he say that? He says, For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. When we see the holiness of God, it will humble us. It will absolutely drop us to our knees when we see the disparity between who God is and who we are. And that's exactly the experience that Isaiah had in Isaiah 6. Well, sub-point D, it could be a failure to grasp and appropriate the scope and the depth of God's forgiving grace and power. 1 Corinthians 6, Paul is addressing people who've come from very secular backgrounds, and he's talking about, don't be deceived, fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, effeminate, homosexuals, thieves, et cetera, will not inherit the kingdom of God. He's talking about those who have not repented and been changed from that lifestyle. But then in verse 11, he says, such were some of you. These were people who came from really, really rough backgrounds. And Paul says, under the inspiration of the Spirit, you were washed. You were sanctified. That doesn't mean completely sanctified from an experiential standpoint. It means declared to be holy. That's the sense. You have been washed by the blood of Christ. And so Paul often addresses believers as saints. And that's saints because we're holy, because we're clothed with the righteousness of Christ. You were justified. Justification has two aspects. You know this. Well, one of them is the complete expunging of the wrath of God against a believer. That's propitiation, because Jesus bore that on the cross. And there is a second aspect that often is overlooked, and that is the crediting or the imputation of Christ's righteousness to us, where we're declared to be completely righteous before God. Not because we're intrinsically righteous, because we're not, but forensically, legally, we're clothed with the righteousness of Christ. Philippians 3, Paul is saying, is something that I think many of us need to remember and to perhaps meditate upon, forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead. That's really the issue in dealing with unresolved guilt when we understand intellectually what has happened in our lives because of the work of God in our lives, and what we need to do to move forward in walking lives of righteousness. 1 Timothy 1, Christ Jesus came into the world to want to save sinners. That's exactly why he came to die, to save sinners for the people that have offended him. So when we talk about unresolved guilt as believers, we need to rehearse in our mind, and I'll specifically address the whole issue. Perhaps you've heard this expression, preaching the gospel to yourself. I've heard that saying countless times. And if you were to quiz me exactly what that means, I probably would have scratched my head and said, I don't really know. I just know I've heard that expression over and over and over. And Jerry Bridges has a very clear description of what it means to preach the gospel to yourself, where you're rehearsing in your mind and in your heart what the scripture says about your life if you're a believer. And that is absolutely the most important thing that we can be doing is going to truth and living with the indicatives of scripture, where the things that God has said to be the case. It could be, subpoint E, a failure to deal with the obstacles and hindrances to assurance, fostering doubt and an uneasy conscience. In the Westminster Confession of Faith, dealing with the doctrine of assurance in chapter 18, specifically, it's not in your notes, but the Puritans saw something that happens from time to time, and that is our sense of assurance can really be damaged by a particular season of sin in a person's life, a believer's life. Until it's resolved, until that issue has been dealt with from a biblically repentant standpoint, one's sense of assurance can definitely be damaged. And it's important that we recognize that. But one of the chief obstacles to recognizing and appropriating and experiencing forgiveness is to realize who the accuser is. Sometimes it's our own conscience, but oftentimes it's Satan, that's his nature, that he is in fact described as the accuser. But look at what is described in Zechariah 3, bottom of page 3. Joshua the high priest, here's a righteous man, at least from a human standpoint, standing before the angel of the Lord. That would be Jesus, at least a Christophany. And Satan standing at his right hand, what was Satan's role here? To accuse Joshua. The Lord said to Satan, the Lord rebuke you. Now I'm not going to get off on a rant about rebuking Satan, but you know this, you know that we don't go around rebuking Satan. You know that the Lord Jesus rebukes Satan. You've heard that, you understand that. But the point is, If you're dealing with accusations from the enemy, we need to understand that that absolutely happens, and it often happens in the lives of believers. And we need to say, Lord Jesus, you've done the work. Would you rebuke the enemy? Would you hold him at bay? That's an entirely biblical prayer to pray. You've done the work, Jesus. You've conquered the enemy of my souls. I'm appropriating the truth of scripture, and I'm asking you to rebuke the enemy on my behalf. And so what does the angel of the Lord say? This is a brand plucked from the fire. Someone with no hope, but suddenly they have hope because they've been rescued from damage, from damnation. And Joshua was what? He was clothed with filthy garments, standing before the angel. And what does the angel of the Lord say? Remove the filthy garments. I've taken your nickety away from you and will clothe you with festal robes. Let them put a clean turban on your head. And so they put a clean turban on his head, top of page four. That's a picture of justification. All of the guilt has been removed. The filthy robes have been taken away. We've been clothed with clean garments. Those clean garments are the righteousness of Christ. God has no case with us in terms of unresolved sin. If we're in Christ, Jesus bore that sin, no exceptions. But then, what's the implication of that? The angel of the Lord admonished Joshua, thus says the Lord of hosts, walk in my ways. We need to walk in obedience. This is not to dismiss the importance of sin, it's simply to say that sin has been forgiven. We need to walk in righteousness, we need to walk in a path of obedience. Revelation 12 describes Satan as the accuser of the brethren, and how did they overcome him? By the blood of the lamb, and because of the word of their testimony. Satan is defeated at the cross. Is he still alive and well, to quote one of the old books from the 70s? Yes, Satan is alive and well. And he still does the work of accusing. And he still does the work of pointing his finger at us. And in many cases, what he's accusing us of, historically, could be absolutely true. You did this, didn't you? And the answer would be, I did. I did. Matter of fact, I'm guilty of more than you're probably accusing me of. But Jesus, my high priest, is always pointing to the sufficiency of his blood. He's always living to make intercession for me. Jesus paid it all. All to him I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain. He washed it white as snow. Do we believe that? Of course we do as believers. If we believe that, that's the end of the discussion. Because what Jesus has accomplished is a done deal. It's a finished fact. Could be that there are lingering remnants of the same sin, there could be places that you drive by, there could be people that are part of your past, could be a recollection, could be something that you find in your files that just remembers, that triggers a sense of unresolved guilt. If that's the case, just go back to the cross. And we'll talk about this in a minute, but McShane, Robert Murray McShane, has a saying that is credited to him. For every look at my sin, I take ten looks at Christ. And we'll talk about what that means. It's not dismissive of the severity of sin, but how do we deal with guilt? We look at Christ. We constantly look at Christ. It could be that there's a failure to put off sin and to put on righteousness. We call that mortification of sin. We call that, and that's over and over, the scripture tells us, to put off unrighteousness and to put on obedience. Well, maybe as a matter of sanctification, we're not putting off the unrighteousness. We're still finding ourselves succumbing to that. Do Christians continue to sin? Yes, they do. Was Paul a believer when he wrote Romans 7 and said, O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from the body of the sin? And yes, Paul was a believer when he wrote that. Is there a constant battle for a believer? Yes. Matter of fact, the fact that you have a battle against sin is certainly an encouraging sign that you're born again. An unbeliever may not even experience that conflict. So count it a positive thing if you're dealing with the struggles against sin. That is a normative experience. It will be a lifelong experience for each and every believer until we're glorified. So we need to recognize that that is the case. It could be, number two, and there's an unfortunate typo here, an inadequate acknowledgement it should be the depth, D-E-P-T-H, of one's own sinful nature. I wish it were the depth of one's own sinful nature. It was a typo on my part. But it should be depth, D-E-P-T-H, under point two. We could be looking at something that we've said or done or thought and saying to ourselves, I can't believe I did that, whatever that is. Well, we're entirely capable, brothers and sisters, of a great number of sins against the Holy God. We're capable of doing worse than we probably want to recognize, and if we're honest about that. Someone could say, well, do you have a low esteem? Someone who would say, I can't believe I did that, actually has too high an esteem. They have too high a view of themselves. That's why Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10, you know verse 13, no temptation has overtaken you, but such as is common to man, a God is faithful who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you're able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape that you may be able to endure it, right? That's verse 13. What's the previous verse say? Let him who thinks he stand take heed lest he fall. We need to recognize our vulnerability. It is part of our experience and it will always be part of our experience until we go home to be with the Lord and we're glorified. The heart is deceitfully wicked, who can understand it? Top of page five, Psalm 19, which deals with the revelation of God in verses one through six in nature and in verses seven through 11 in the law of God, the law of God is perfect. Converting the soul, the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple, et cetera. 7 through 11 talks about the specific revelation of God in scripture, but then in verses 12 and 13, the psalmist says, who can discern his errors, acquit me of hidden faults. What he's saying is that we really aren't always aware. And matter of fact, we're not often as the case, we're not aware of our own sins. We're not even cognizant of our sins in our lives. But then he prays, keep back your servant from presumptuous sins. That would be a high-handed, voluntary, egregious sin. Let them not have rule over me. That presumes that it's possible for a believer to commit a presumptuous sin because he's praying that. He's acknowledging the fact, Lord, I need your grace to restrain me from what I'm capable of doing. That's not an unbiblical perception to have. Lord, I need your grace. None of us, Galatians 3.3, if we come into Christ by the work of the spirit, are we now being perfected by the work of the flesh? We're not maturing by self-reformation. We're not maturing by our own bootstrap effort. The Holy Spirit works in and through our lives by his word and by his power. And as we obey the imperatives of scripture, to grow in progressive sanctification. But we need to recognize that this is an ongoing battle. It could be, number three, regrets over the consequences of sin instead of the essence of sin. If there's an unresolved issue of guilt, it could be that we're more consumed with what the implications of that sin are. Hebrews 12 talks about the fact that God chastens us. He doesn't punish the believer for his sins. Do you know the difference between being chastened and being punished? God never punishes a believer for his sins. Why do I say that? Because he punished Jesus Christ in your place at the cross for your sin. There's a big difference between being punished and being chastened. Does God chasten a believer? Yes, he absolutely does chasten believers. And why does he do that? Because he's the perfect father. And a loving father disciplines his children. And that's what God does. Why? So because he doesn't want sin to take up roots in our lives. And he makes us, he will bring us into difficult passages in our lives, sometimes painful times, to alert us to the need that we need to really do business with God and recognize that we have erred from his ways. Repent of those sins, not to be justified, but to be washed, to be cleansed, to have our fellowship with him restored. And so sometimes we're just looking at the consequences of sin instead of the sin itself. It could be that it's a misdirected effort to establish one's own standard of righteousness. It could be, I haven't lived up to my own perfect standards. That would be an overly high esteem person. It is a false perception or lived up to other people's standards. Well, what's the biblical path forward? Three key points. One of them is to recognize the problem of guilt and the underlying issue. And then thirdly, to appropriate the biblical path of resolution. So three parts, recognize, acknowledge, and appropriate. And we just spent some time talking about dynamics, about why people have unresolved issues of guilt. We started with an unregenerate person. An unregenerate person should have, by God's grace, a sense of guilt, an awesome sense of guilt. I remember very distinctly the night that I responded to the gospel by God's grace when a tract was given to me and it showed me a depiction of the great white throne judgment and There's a little track called This Was Your Life. And I said, that's me. That's me. And I was broken. I started weeping before the Lord. I was on my knees. And I said, I'm guilty. And I was so glad that I had the sense of unresolved guilt. That's what drove me to the cross. If you're a believer, you've had that experience. You didn't simply come to Christ to get a better life. You didn't come to Christ to get a better job or to have a sense of inner peace. You dealt with Jesus because you said, I'm guilty before a holy God. And that's the, we have to be lost. And God will do that. The Holy Spirit came to bring conviction of sin and righteousness and judgment. And he does exactly that. So for the unbeliever, what's the path forward? Repent and run to Christ. We mentioned this earlier, but when I talk about running to Christ, when we went through the series on hymnology, Thomas Hart has a wonderful hymn that I've reproduced for you called Come Ye Sinners, and I've only reproduced part of this on page five, but this is the operative section. For an unbeliever, you can tell them this, if you tarry till you're better, you will never come at all. Let not conscience make you linger, not a fitness fondly dream. All the fitness he requireth is to feel your need of him. You can tell an unbeliever that, and you should. That'd be a great conversation to have when someone is outside of Christ. You should say, come to Christ. The fact, all the righteousness this requires is to recognize your need of him. The rest of the lyrics are on page six. For the believer, you know what? It's the same two dynamics, repent and run to Christ. Now, you said, I thought you just said that the dynamics for an unbeliever were repent and run to Christ. I did. There is a repentance unto salvation. And then the scripture very clearly talks about a repentance for a believer, a lifelong repentance against sin to recognize our offenses against the holy God, to take them seriously, to call them what they call those sins, what they are. to see the weightiness of sin, to mortify sin, and it's a process. And I'll speak about this, but it's the same two dynamics, to repent and run to Christ. When we talk about repentance, top of page seven, if you don't have this little booklet by Banner of Truth called The Doctrine of Repentance, you should purchase it. And if you don't have it in your budget or your inclination to purchase it, I've given you a link to that book. It's online. And that link is at the top of page 8. But when I talk about a believer repenting, Thomas Watson identified six aspects of repentance. To see sin for what it is, to see a side of sin, to call it literally what it is, the weightiness of it, and to have sorrow for sin. Not just a melancholy feeling, but a true sense of, God, I'm so sorry that I have offended your holy character. I'm only giving you a little snapshot here. To confess sin, to confess literally means to say the same thing about the sin that God says about it. To be ashamed of our sin for what it is. In fact, not only ashamed for sin, but to hate sin. And repentance, it's a very graphic description, but the Puritans would call repentance as the vomit of the soul. I know that's a gross concept, but that's exactly what it is. You don't want to have that in your life. You can't stand it. If you've ever had bad food and you know that getting rid of it was no fun experience, but how much better you felt when it was no longer in your stomach, that's exactly the way it is with sin. Dealing with it is painful. But once it's out of your system, you're so glad that you called it what it is, and it's out of your system. And that's the hatred for sin and turning from sin. So an excerpt of The Doctrines of Repentance, after going through Puritan Watson, dealing with all of these aspects of sin, it says, Christian, has God given you a repenting heart? Know these things for your everlasting comfort. I bolded one very important point. What did he just say? Your sins are pardoned. I mean, that should be an issue that you say, thank you, God. Thank you. I'm going back and I'm rehearsing in your mind the fact, in my mind, the fact that Jesus has cleansed me from my sin. He's forgiven me for my sin. And that when I come to you and I acknowledge it, if I confess my sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from some unrighteousness, no, all unrighteousness. Do you believe that? God has said that in his word. You can point him to that very passage in 1 John 1, 9 and say, I'm going to this passage right now. You've said it in your word. I'm taking it at face value. I'm confessing my sin. I'm recognizing it for what it is. And you were faithful and you were just to cleanse me, to wash me and to set me right. But then he goes on. Have you repented? God looks upon you as if you had not offended. He becomes a friend, a father. He will now bring the best robe and put it on you. God is pacified towards you and will with the father of the prodigal fall upon your neck and kiss you. The repenting sinner can go to God with boldness and prayer and look upon him not as a judge, but as a father. But again, just to be clear, we're not talking about repentance unto salvation. We're talking about that's a one-time experience where we're justified. We're talking about the process experientially of acknowledging sin in our lives, repenting of it, turning it from it, mortifying sin, killing it off, and being cleansed of it. It's a lifetime of repentance. We never, ever, ever stop repenting. Top of page eight. The second dynamic for a believer, we talked about repentance. The second aspect is run to Christ. And I mentioned this earlier. What does it mean to run to Christ? These things sound great. We sing hymns where we use those expressions. What does it mean to run to Christ? I've got this excerpt, the expression that is credited to Robert Murray McShane, for every look at yourself, take 10 looks at Christ. Well, that sounds great, but what does that mean? And look at the bottom of page eight. Someone who's actually looked at that expression in a larger context of what Robert Murray McShane actually wrote. McShane is not saying dismiss your sin. He's not saying, okay, I took a glance at my sin and I'm gonna look at Christ, I'm not gonna take my sin seriously. That's not what he's saying at all. He's saying to see it but then to focus upon the beauty of Christ. When you meditate upon the loveliness of Christ, the beauty of Christ, sin becomes repugnant to us. and we recognize it for what it is. And we see the beauty of Christ for all that he is and what he has done for us. And we bask in the beauty and glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. So the punchline of that thought is the excellency of Christ is both the brilliant contrast to the sin in our hearts and the remedy to the sin we find there. McShane was well aware that we battle indwelling sins by filling our hearts with the sweetness and excellency of Christ and all that is in him. So if you want to battle sin, it's one thing to say, don't do that, whatever that is. But even Thomas Chalmers had a monumental sermon called The Expulsive Power of a Contrary Affection. It's one thing to say, don't do that, whatever that is. It's another thing to say, I'm not going to do that because I'm so overwhelmed with the love of Christ and the beauty of Christ and the holiness of God and what he has done for me and the price that he paid for me. that sin, it loses its luster because I'm growing in my love for Christ. That's the point that he's making. Atop of page nine, McShane reminds us that for every look at your own sin, take 10 looks at the beauty of Christ, because as you delight in Christ, you are expelling sin and pursuing sanctification. What does it mean to preach the gospel to yourself? And here is an excerpt by Jerry Bridges. He says, I begin every day, every day, here's a godly man, with the realization that despite my being a saint, he's not been beatified by the Catholic Church. He's talking about biblical sainthood. Each of us believers are saints. I still sin every day, every day, in thought, word, deed, and motive. If I'm aware of any subtle or not so subtle sins in my life, I acknowledge those to God. I repent of those sins and then I apply specific scriptures that assure me of God's forgiveness to those sins I have just confessed. He goes on to say the reliance on the twofold work of Christ is really what he's going to, the twofold work of Christ. And he goes to this hymn, my hope is built on nothing less. And here's the two aspects of justification, Jesus' blood, His active obedience and a propitiation for sins and righteousness. His active obedience and his passive obedience. So when we talk about justification, that's exactly what this hymn is talking about. Jesus' blood, his propitiation for the wrath of God, and his righteousness, which is imputed to us. He says, almost every day I find myself going to those words, in addition to reflecting on the promises of forgiveness in the Bible. What are some examples of what he goes to? Here's Jerry Bridges just laying it out for us. What does it mean to preach the gospel to yourself? And here's five examples. And he goes on to say that there's a whole bunch more. One of my very favorites is the one that he puts first, Psalm 103. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me. Bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not any of his benefits. Who what? Who heals all our diseases and forgives all our iniquities. All of them. Never forget that. Never forget that. Just the little ones? No. Just the ones that are sort of not as ugly as the other ones? No. What about the really ugly ones? What about the really treacherous ones? Yeah, those are included too. Is the blood of Jesus sufficient to satisfy every sin? Yes, it is. Only Jesus could do that. Only God could do that. And he did that. We need to preach that to ourselves. I heartily recommend that you get a three by five card or put something on your refrigerator or whatever works for you, or make it a screensaver on your computer, all of the above. Memorize these verses, meditate on these verses. How did they overcome the accuser? By the blood of the lamb and the word of their testimony. So what do you rehearse? What do you want to rehearse in your mind? Do you want to rehearse your sin or do you want to rehearse what God has said about your sin? You need to rehearse what God has said about your sin. You need to take it seriously. But you need to also take seriously what God has said. I am he who blots out your transgressions, and I will not remember your sins. If God's not remembering your sins, then what should we do with our sins? If he's not holding them against us, should we hold them against ourselves? No. All we like sheep have gone astray. We've turned each one to his own way. And the Lord has laid Where? On Him. The iniquity of us all. Does that include your sin? It does, if you're in Christ. Your iniquity, where was it laid? It was laid on Christ, right? Top of page 10, Romans 4, blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who were in Christ Jesus. And there's a whole bunch more. This is just a sample. So what do you do? And I will simply close with this. There's a hymn that we have sung, and it's called I Run to Christ. When we talk about what do you do with unresolved guilt, you repent and you run to Christ. I run to Christ when I'm chased by fear. I run to Christ when torn by grief, second stanza. I run to Christ when I'm tired, when I'm worn by life. I run to Christ when I'm vexed by hell, when the enemy's after me. Top of the next page, I run to Christ when I'm battling sin, when I'm stalked by sin. And then look at this last stanza. I run to Christ when plagued by shame, and find my one defense. I bore God's wrath. He pleads my case, my advocate and friend. You need to memorize that stanza. You need to meditate on that stanza. That's your one defense. You don't need any other defense to have a clean conscience. Repent of your sin. Check out what Thomas Watson's dealing with in terms of seeing the severity of sin. But once you've done that, and once you've worked through that sin, and you've recognized it for what it is, then you can simply say, Jesus has paid it all. All to him I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain. He washed it white as snow. If God is not counting my sins against me, then I have no right to hold my own sins against myself either. I don't. There may be consequences to sin, there may be implications of sin, there may be stuff that happens in our lives as a result of it, but in terms of guilt, the believer, there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. That's the definition of a believer, someone who is in Christ Jesus. If you're in Christ Jesus, how does God see you? He sees you clothed with the very righteousness of Christ. He sees you as adopted as a child, as an heir of God, as a fellow heir with Christ. He does not see your sin. God will not accuse you of sin from a judgmental standpoint. He's already paid for it. It's already, if it's been paid for, then it's been paid for, right? It's extinguished. It's, it's, it's, it's canceled. The debt is canceled. That's exactly what to tell us Dai means. Well, there's two appendices and I've kind of given you the Swiss army knife approach here. So if you, if you want some additional reading, and that's why I put these things together, there's an article, what to say when Satan whispers. Some of you may really find yourself and I have, and I suspect you have where the enemy will come. and we'll bring your sins up against you. It's really a good article. And then appendix two is a short article by John Piper, How Should I Handle My Regrets? And I'll just simply close with this last part, page 15. The last two paragraphs, whenever, wherever remembering our failures will help us fly to Christ, love Christ, rest in Christ, cherish grace, sing of mercy, serve with zeal, then let's get on with remembering and regretting. But wherever remembering begins to paralyze us with the weight of failure and remorse so that we don't love Christ more, or cherish grace more, or serve with greater energy, then let us forget and press on by the power of grace for the little time we have left. That's the main word press on in faith toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ. So I hope this is helpful for you. It's it addresses regrets. It deals with unresolved guilt. And the answer. If you're sitting here today and you're not a believer, the answer is very simple. Repent and run to Christ. And if you're a believer, the answer is the same thing. Repent and run to Christ. It's always the same answer. Repent and run to Christ.