One of the things you become quite aware of when you visit various churches is the singing in congregations. And I've noted this to my wife many times, that most congregations don't sing very well. And I was really impressed by the singing during the worship. Of course, worship is much more than singing, right? but it's part of the way we worship. And, you know, Ephesians says that be filled with the Spirit. That's addressed to a church, not just individuals. And right away, the first thing it says is be filled with the Spirit and sing. And one of the marks of a church where the Spirit of God is at work is their singing is stronger. It has a little bit of oomph to it, and I really sensed that today, and it really encouraged me, so thank you. Well, we've already had a prayer, but let me pray briefly for the Word. Father, we ask in Jesus' name, as we have often asked, that behind my feeble voice And even the voice of the biblical author, we ask that we would detect. In fact, we would hear strongly and clearly your voice. Speaking to us personally, Jesus said that, my sheep know my voice and they follow me. They'll never follow the voice of a stranger. So we ask today, Lord, as I've already been praying, that you would bring some deep-seated encouragement to many here today. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. I wonder if you've ever thought much about what keeps so many of us at a distance from God. I believe one of the biggest culprits is this foreboding sense of guilt that many of us carry. Being burdened with guilt is the kind of spiritual equivalent of carrying around an invisible knapsack of rocks. Wherever you go, it burdens your step, it discourages and disheartens, and it effectively stops you from praying. Now as you know, God has implanted this mechanism in each one of our hearts called the conscience. It helps us to detect right from wrong. But we are capable of overriding our conscience. And we do things that we know are not right. And when we do that, whether it's indulging in self-pity, or bitterness, or lustful thinking, jealousy, Revenge, pride in all of its deadly forms. Whenever we override our conscience, we pollute it. And it becomes defiled. William Lane, who's a great commentator on the book of Hebrews, says this, Sin is not simply a violation of the law of God. It is a violation of our personhood. It is a reality that stains the sinner and renders him vile. Sin defiles. And this defiled, polluted conscience, if left unattended, leads to all kinds of problems. A lack of concentration, believe it or not. Shallow friendships. self-contempt, self-hatred, a performance orientation, a depression, fear, panic attacks, judgmentalism, and sometimes even complete mental breakdowns. Did you know that some people are driven to success not so much because of their love of excellence, but because they are seeking to atone for this subsurface guilt that seems to stalk them wherever they go. Think of people who, because of failed marriages, strive extra hard in the workplace to succeed. Sometimes it's really just self-atonement that's going on. These are all serious consequences from guilt. I'm not talking about objective legal guilt. I'm talking about this sense of guilt that is related to that. The greatest problem, of course, of unresolved guilt is the way that it affects our relationship with God. It keeps us at a distance from Him. It is virtually impossible to draw near to God with a burdened conscience. Whenever we have this sense of a pointy finger accusing us of wrong and reminding us of how unhappy God is with us, well, we're not likely to run into that God's presence and talk to Him. So today we're going to look at this far too common problem in our lives. I would say I actually shared this teaching with the pastoral staff here and the office staff about four years ago. I would say that there are probably about three or four major teachings in the last 30 years that have had a profound impact on my life, and this is one of them. In fact, I've taught this lesson to men probably 200 or 300 times over the years in my mentoring. I can say it backwards and forwards. upside, downside. And yet, almost every time I go through it, I'm deeply affected by it again. It's very powerful. I often tell people, you know, truth is like that. Just because you had a steak last week and it tasted great, doesn't mean you say, it's not good this week, you know. Truth is like that. It's, you can, wonderful truth, you can revisit it again and again and again and it still nourishes you and you find it deeply soul satisfying. So we want to look at the problem of dealing with a defiled, guilty conscience. This problem where, even though we know that if we confess our sin, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sin, and we're in the practice as Christians of confessing sin, so often, even after we confess sin, we're still troubled by it. We're not free from it. How do we actually get cleansed consciences? This is something that many believers have never thought about. How can we go from actually avoiding prayer to seeking God's face gladly and even with boldness? So please open your Bibles to Hebrews 9. Hebrews 9. We're just going to look at two verses in the wonderful book of Hebrews. Two intriguing verses. Hebrews 9, verses 13 and 14. Let me read this to you. Hebrews 9, verses 13 and 14. For if the blood of goats and bulls and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God. I believe our text today is going to demonstrate to us that seeing the cross from God's perspective, seeing the cross from God's perspective provides for a cleansed conscience. Now, in verse 14, we find that the result of the death of Christ, we find as we go through Scripture that the death of Christ has many, many impacts in our life. It's like a hub, and there's all kinds of spokes that lead to all kinds of elements. It overcomes Satan. The reason the Son of God, it says in 1 John 3, verse 8, was to destroy the works of the devil. It justifies us. The cross of Christ brings justification and puts us into a right relationship with God. It tells us in Galatians 6.14 that it's through the cross that we have died to the world and the world to us. It tells us in Romans 6 that the cross has a profound effect on the mastery of sin over us. And there's all kinds of dimensions of how the cross impacts us. Well, here we're finding that it somehow has this wonderful and often unthought about dimension of purifying our conscience. So the question is, how does the death of Christ 2,000 years ago affect how I relate to God today? How does this actually work? We're gonna look at this from two vantage points. Both are necessary for a complete view. In verse 13, we have the first vantage point, and that is the Old Testament picture that gives us understanding. Look with me at verse 13 again. This is the Old Testament picture that gives us understanding of this great and important area. For if the blood of goats and bulls and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer sanctify for the purification of the flesh." Now, if you are not familiar with the Bible, this verse is going to seem incomprehensible. And even if you are familiar with the Bible, there's going to be things probably in verse 13 that you don't understand. For example, what is all this stuff about sprinkling with the blood of a sacrificed animal? What's all this stuff about ashes? What's going on here? In order to understand this, we have to go into a chapter in the Old Testament that is not a well-known chapter at all. Numbers 19. So I'd like to ask you to keep a marker somehow or your finger in Hebrews 9, because we're going to return to Hebrews 9. But look over to Numbers 19. Fourth book in the Old Testament. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus. Numbers. And Numbers 19 explains what's going on here in Hebrews 9. We're not going to look at the whole chapter. But what I want you to see is four stages that are being described. The first stage, many of you will be very familiar with. But the last three stages are the part that we're unfamiliar with. Numbers 19. And notice verses 1 to 3, Now the Lord spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying, This is the statue of the law that the Lord has commanded. Tell the people of Israel to bring you a red heifer without defect, in which there is no blemish, and on which a yoke has never come. And you shall give it to Eleazar the priest, and it shall be taken outside the camp and slaughtered before him. So many of you are aware of this practice in the Old Testament of taking a sacrificial animal, a substitute animal, and it dying in place of the sinner. The slaughtering of the sacrificial animal will be familiar to most of you if you've been around the Bible for any length of time. But now we get to the next level, which is the unfamiliar part. Look at v. 5 and then later at v. 9. It says in v. 5, "...and the heifer shall be burned in his sight, its skin, its flesh, and its blood with its tongue shall be burned." It also says in v. 9, "...and the man who is clean shall gather up the ashes of the heifer and deposit them outside the camp in a clean place." So we have the slaughtering and then the sacrifice is burned and burned right down to ash, like a cremation. Then the next part is in verse 17. It says, for the unclean, they shall take some ashes of the burnt sin offering and fresh water shall be added in a vessel. And then at the beginning of verse 18 it says, So now you have the ashes combined with water into kind of a murky black paste, okay? And hyssop, a branch that kind of holds things better, the hyssop branch, with many, many leaves that can kind of soak up the liquid, is dipped into that solution. And then we find the final stage in verse 19. And it says, "...and the clean person shall sprinkle it on the unclean on the third day and on the seventh day." Now what's going on here? You can turn back to Hebrews 9 now. What is going on here in Numbers 19? Well, what we have here is a demonstration of God's heart, God's kindness and mercy to the troubled, guilt-ridden sinner. You see, when the sinner sees the sacrifice slaughtered, he knows the facts. He knows Moses' regulations that this animal has been sacrificed, this horrible thing has happened because of his sin. He knows that. But in the Old Testament, he saw this happen many, many times. It had almost become a tradition. It had just been something that they did over and over again. And there would be times where the sinner would have doubt remaining in their heart. They would wonder, is this sacrifice just something that we do as the people of Israel? Or was that sacrifice really and truly for my sin? And so what God does, this is so like God, God goes the second mile to assure the guilty sinner that the sacrifice was actually for them, for them particularly and specifically. And so the sacrifice is burned, which I believe speaks of the completed sacrifice. And it's mixed with water. And even if you don't believe this is what the Old Testament is teaching, I believe it is, but even if you don't, it doesn't change the outcome. But I believe that the water speaks of the Holy Spirit who is taking the completed sacrifice. And then that solution, which is the very sacrifice that was just offered, that exact solution now is applied directly to the sinner. You see, and now they don't only just see that the sacrifice is offered for them, but they actually feel it. It comes and it hits them. And this sacrifice, this burnt offering, as it were, is now touching their body. It's speaking to them personally. It's making the connection. It's saying, that was for you. For you, my friend. It was for your sins and for no other. Now look at our text in Hebrews 9. Starting again at verse 13. For if the blood of goats and bulls and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more? How much more? If verse 13 gives us a picture of God's mercy and grace to the defiled sinner, Hebrews 9 tells us that that practice pointed to something far greater that was accomplished through the death of Christ on the cross. There was a release of a different magnitude that came through the cross. So we've seen the Old Testament picture that gives us understanding. This, friends, is why we need the Old Testament. Without the Old Testament, there's so much of the New Testament that wouldn't make sense to us. You know I've often told our church the the book of Leviticus is the most boring Everybody who's ever tried to read it knows the book of Leviticus is the most boring book in the Bible Okay, it's the most boring book in the Bible in fact when people try to read through the Bible in a year It's almost always they get stuck in Leviticus But I'm telling you Leviticus is the richest book in the Bible. It's one of the richest books in the Bible. It's like a desert with gold about 20 feet below the surface. Because the book of Leviticus tells us amazing things about Christ and about the cross that we would never know without it. It's a glorious book, but it takes time. You have to dig a little bit below the surface. You can't pick up the rocks on the surface. It feels like there's nothing there. You have to dig a little bit. Well, we need our Old Testament, friends. We need our Old Testament because our Old Testaments tell us so much about what the New Testament is all about. We can't understand it. And this is a case in point right here. The Old Testament picture that gives us understanding. But we must go then to the New Testament accomplishment that gives us release. The New Testament accomplishment that gives us release. Look with me at verse 14. How much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God? There are some amazing compressed truths in this verse. Notice, first of all, that the entire Trinity is involved in the crucifixion of Christ. The Holy Spirit, He offers Himself through the Spirit. The Holy Spirit offers the enablement for Christ to go to the cross. The Son provides the sacrifice of Himself, and it is offered up to God, the Father. It's propelled by the Spirit, provided by the Son, and propitiating the Father. Notice also, in verse 14, it says, Christ offered Himself. Offered means He was the priest. Himself means He was the sacrifice. He was both, amazingly. But what I want to focus on are two small words. Sometimes the greatest truths are found in the smallest things. I've often told people that the truths that have made all the difference in my life have been small little truths. You know, have you ever tried to put a nut on a bolt and you've gone about halfway down and you notice it's stuck? And you go back and forth and go, what's going on here? Why won't it go all the way in? And you take it back and you look at it and there's a small little burr. And you take a file and you just go, take off the little, little burr and goes all the way in. I'm telling you, my friends, there's so many things that just require a small little adjustment, small little addition, small little subtraction of truth that make all the difference in whether our Christian life works or not. And this was certainly one of them. Two small little words that make all the difference in the world to whether you understand the truth in this verse or not. If I were to ask you, toward whom is the cross offered? Toward whom is the cross offered? How would you answer from verse 14? Well, you might say, well, it was toward us. The cross was offered for the sinner. And of course, that's certainly true. That's taught in multiple places in Scripture. But the direction of the cross in verse 14 is different from that, isn't it? Look again at verse 14. "...toward whom is the cross offered? How much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God?" To God. Before the cross was ever offered to us, it was offered to God. You see, God was the one that was the offended one. God is the one that was holding the sin against us. God was the one that was wrathful about sin. God is the one that will punish sin. Sure, we punish each other for sins that we commit against each other, but man, that's small stuff. God's the one that has, as Jesus said, do not fear him who kills the body. Don't fear people who can kill you. The ISIS people, don't fear them. Fear him who has the power to throw both body and soul into hell. Fear God. God has the ultimate destiny of every human being in his hand. Fear Him. It is God and God alone who holds the power to forgive or to punish and not forgive. And absolutely, though our guilt affects the way that we relate to one another, and it affects certainly the way that we relate to God, as I spoke about at the beginning of the message, The deeper question is not how our guilt affects how we relate to God. The much deeper question is how does God relate to us? If God is offended against the sinner, the only real question that really matters is what will it take to satisfy this holy, just, perfect being? What can be done to make this holy God satisfied with the situation regarding the sinner who has rebelled against Him? The Bible makes it very clear that God loves justice. That God will not overlook any sin ever. He's a God of exacting justice. And all is lost All is lost, my friends, if God, the offended God, is not satisfied with the settlement. Let me read a verse that many of you know very well. And again, this is one of those little burrs that we often overlook and don't notice in the verse. Notice what it says. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Now, there's something in that verse that's surprising to us. It should be surprising to us. What you'd expect it to say is, if we confess our sins, He is faithful and merciful to forgive us our sins. I can understand how God in His mercy forgives my sin, But when you're talking about, here's the hope you have of getting cleansed if you confess your sin to God. Here you are, the guilty sinner. If you confess your sin, God's going to be just and forgive your sin. Huh? That doesn't make sense. Justice would mean that He doesn't forgive me. Mercy, yes. But not justice. But you see, Justice is the basis of our being forgiven for our sins, isn't it? It's only when the debt is actually paid that God can say, you are now free to go. So when the verse says He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, it is saying that God is completely satisfied. The settlement that was offered to Him actually paid the debt. When it says that Jesus drank the cup of God's wrath, He drank it. He drank every single drop. There wasn't even one drop of His wrath left in the cup. He completely took away the offense. An eternity of eternal judgment was swallowed up in His infinite God-man as He died for us. Now, here's the key. It is looking at the cross and the way the cross affects God that makes all the difference to our guilty consciences. Most of us have spent our entire life looking at the cross vertically. We see what Jesus did for us, and that's wonderful. You have to see that. But friends, your conscience will never be cleansed until you see the cross vertically. You have to see how the cross has affected God. The key issue is not, how does the cross affect me? The key issue is, how does the cross affect God? It is the vertical look at the cross. It is as we look at how Jesus' death on the cross affected the Father. It's as we see that and as we comprehend that that our conscience, our guilty conscience is cleansed for the first time in many cases. We finally see the smiling face of the Father, and it speaks peace to our hearts. The Holy Spirit takes that grand reality, the completed sacrifice before the Father, and He sprinkles our hearts with it. He tells us, do you see that, Tim? All your sins were paid for and the Father accepted that payment. Look at his face. Do you see him smiling there? Be at peace, my son. Don't let your sins trouble you anymore. And finally, the conscience is cleansed. It's not enough for me just to know that Jesus' death takes care of all my sins. I need to feel it. I need to sense it in my conscience. So then how does someone burdened with guilt find release? It is by looking at the cross through God's eyes. Perceiving the effect of the cross on God cures the troubled conscience. Now let me be very practical today. One of the common and I think very deadly practices of many believers is that we trust our own judgment as the final arbiter of truth. It's one of the evidences of pride in our life. We believe the way that we think about reality is reality. We trust our own assessment of reality. We trust our own perception over others. And here's how it comes into play in our relationship with God. We believe that God shares our view regarding our relationship to God. We think the way that we think about our relationship is the way that God thinks about our relationship. It's unbelievable that we think that. If I think things are bad, it must be that God thinks things are bad. If I think things are good, it must be that God thinks things are good. Speaking of this very tendency, the great British pastor, really the first pastor of a megachurch, Charles Spurgeon, where there were 10,000 people meeting at the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London, he speaks about this very tendency. And let me read this entire quote. It's a little longer than usual. But it's a great quote. He says, Some Christians seem to be accepted in their own experience, at least that in their own apprehension, when their spirit is lively and their hopes bright, they think that God accepts them. For they feel so high, so heavenly-minded, so drawn above the earth. But when their souls cleave to the dust, they are the victims of fear that they are no longer accepted. if they could only see that all their high joys do not exalt them, and all their low despondencies do not really depress them in their Father's sight, but that they always stand accepted in the One who never alters. You look within and you say, there is nothing acceptable here, but look at Christ and see if everything is not acceptable there. Your sins trouble you? but God has cast your sins behind His back and you are accepted and blessed in the righteous one. Even glorified souls are not more accepted than you are. What we so desperately need to do is to stop striving to merit God's favor and instead trust in what the death of Christ has actually done to God, that it has actually settled the massive problem. And then we need to ask God, by His Spirit, to sprinkle our hearts with this completed, God-satisfying work that has happened at the cross. We need to look at the cross through the eyes of faith and see how the cross has affected God. And then listen now to a verse, just a few verses later in Hebrews, that talks about the practical impact of having this cleansed conscience. I love this verse. Let us draw near to God with a true heart, in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience." Let us draw near, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience. My friends, the effect of a cleansed conscience is communion and nearness to God. What could be better than that? Nearness to God. Nearness to this holy God. We are aware of being loved and accepted by Him because our conscience is cleansed. And now we see that God looks at us with love and with grace. Have you ever noticed in the book of Ephesians, where he talks all these grand things that Christ has done for us, and then he talks about the last half, about all the ways that a Christian is to live and to be different? And in the very middle, the hinge that connects those two things. It's an amazing prayer that Paul offers. He teaches them, and then he teaches them about belief and then behavior. But in the middle, did you notice what he does? He says, I pray, I kneel, and I pray that God's Spirit will be powerful within you, and that Christ will just dwell in your hearts through faith. And this is what I pray, that when Christ and the Spirit are powerfully at work in your heart, that you will be given spiritual power to see how much God loves you, the height and depth and width of it. that you might be filled to all the fullness of God. He's basically just saying the same thing that Hebrews is telling us here, that we have to, he's saying, he's saying that, listen, all these grand truths I've taught you in the beginning of the book, they're not gonna ever work their way into actually life and lifestyle and life change until you get this view of God, that God actually loves you. You have to see it. Proverbs 16, 15 says this, When the king smiles, there is life. His favor refreshes like a spring rain. Do you see the king's smile? In the eye of faith? If I were to ask you, does God love you? Most of you would say yes, but do you really believe it deep inside? Does he really love you? personally individually because the Apostle Paul came to the place where he believed it that Jesus loved him I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live but Christ lives in me and the life I now live in the body I live by faith in the Son of God who what who loved me and Gave himself for me Not the world who didn't love the world and gave himself for the world. That's taught elsewhere. But he says, listen, I came to the place where I understand that he loved me and he gave himself for me. Have you come to that place? Because that makes all the difference in the world. So let me leave you finally with three questions, three simple questions. that I think could transform your relationship to the Lord and absolutely transform your prayer life. Number one, be honest with yourself. Are you walking under a load of unresolved and condemning guilt? Is there a subsurface guilt about something that you did maybe years ago? Something you did last week? Something that happened to you. Maybe it's false guilt. Something that was done to you that you're not even responsible for, but you feel guilty for. Your parents divorced, and you felt that somehow you could have done something to change it or stop it. Or you were divorced, and you feel guilty about that. And yes, you understand that Christ forgives and cleanses you, but you still live with subsurface guilt about that years later. or some breach of some relationship or conflict that's gone on in your life. Something that's never been resolved. There's somebody that you don't talk to or doesn't talk to you. It just doesn't get fixed. You feel the burden of that years later. Are you bearing something deep inside your heart? Are you carrying a knapsack of rocks around with you everywhere you go? Getting tired of it. God didn't intend for you to do that. To carry these burdens. None of us can bear the burden of sin very long. Question number two. Will you trust what the Word of God says about the effect of the cross on God? How could we know how the cross had affected God apart from God's revelation? We couldn't. Will you trust God's Word? And even more important, do you see how continuing, allowing yourself to continue with a sense of guilt, is really a devaluation of the cross? You're saying the cross wasn't quite enough. Some of you have come from Roman Catholic backgrounds. My mother came from a Roman Catholic background, and I feel like what the Roman Catholics teach is that the cross was almost enough, but not quite. It took away almost everything, but you still need to do some more stuff to finish it off. Jesus didn't cover 98% of it, but you still have to do a little bit of purgatory and a little bit of your own good works and a little bit of religious stuff to kind of make up for the gaps that he didn't quite get to. It's just not what the Bible teaches. The Bible teaches that Christ's sacrifice on the cross was enough. It covered everything. The full payment. And therefore, when I look at it as not being enough, I'm devaluing it. I'm giving a devaluation estimation of the cross that God does not give to it. And most importantly, will you pray about this? Will you do something about this? You know, the connection between hearing messages and reading your Bible and listening to sermons online and reading good books and actually experiencing the life change is faith. You have to believe it. You have three people that hear the gospel, and they all understand it, but only one of them becomes a Christian. Why? Because only one of them believes it. The person that believes it becomes the Christian. Understanding it isn't enough. You have to believe it. You have to believe the truth when you hear it. Sunday by Sunday, if we're not reaching and greeting the Word with faith, then we're not being changed by it. like a lump of clay. You've heard me probably say this before, a lump of clay and a lump of wax in the sun. The same hot sun beaming down on them, but one is getting soft and one is getting hard. That's what happens when you don't respond in faith to God's Word. Every single person today is either going to become hardened by this message or softened. There's no middle ground. You either exercise faith and say, I believe God's Word, or you just ignore it and your heart becomes harder. Calcified. Let's pray. Father, I pray, I know for sure, having been a pastor now for over 30 years, and having lived with my own struggles, I know that there are people here today who are burdened with guilt. And I know you put it on my heart to give this message because you want, you're reaching out to them. You want them to be free. Jesus used to told us, come unto me all who are weary and heavy laden. That's your heart. Father, when your son said that, that's your heart. You don't want people to be under the load of life. Jesus saw that people were like sheep without a shepherd, weary and heavy laden. Lord, I ask that you will take the burdens off people today. Help them to see this truth for the first time. and to believe it, and that finally, that load will finally drop, just like it did in Pilgrim's Progress, where the burden that he was bearing fell at the cross. Lord, I ask whether they be a person who's never trusted in Christ, or whether they're someone who knew the Lord from the time they were five, and they're 85 today. Lord, let the burden fall, I pray, so that they might be able to draw near to God. having their hearts sprinkled to cleanse them from a guilty conscience. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.