Victory over Condemnation

Speaker: 
Andrew Fountain
Date: 
Sun, 2022-10-09

Video cover image by Public Domain CC0 Public Domain

  • Almost all of us experience inner voices of self-condemnation that can lead to shame or hopelessness.
  • It is vital that we know their source, and live lives of victory in Christ, through the victory he has won.
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Sermon Slides - Victory over Condemnation

Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift! [2 Cor 9:15]

  • Almost all of us have:

Internal voices that are self-critical.

  • They say things like
  • You are always messing up!
  • You could be doing so much better if you got your act together!
  • If people could see what you are really like, you would have no friends!

For some of us, these voices are stronger:

  • You are not enough.
  • You are deeply flawed.
  • You are a loser
  • You will make a mess of your life and die a failure

Or even stronger:

  • You are bad!
  • Deep inside you is some very nasty stuff
  • You would be covered in shame if people knew the truth
  • You are disgusting
  • You need to be punished.

Where do they come from?

  • The Voice of God through the conscience
  • A Voice that originates from the “Accuser”, which we have internalized.
  • I am not saying Satan himself is talking to us, just that we have internalized accusations that originate from him
  • Rev 12:10 “for the accuser of our brothers and sisters has been thrown down,
    who accuses them day and night before our God. “

Goal

To learn to distinguish between God’s voice and the voice of the accuser,

and experience the peace, joy and victory God wants for us.

Victory over Condemnation

  1. The Passage – Romans 8:31–39
  2. Three accusations and three answers
  3. How the Accuser is Defeated

1. The Passage – Romans 8:31–39

  • How shall we respond to this truth?
  • Today is not about the gift, but our response to the gift
  • Very poetic passage, with three sections, all introduced by a rhetorical question
    • What is the “answer” to v.31b?
  • Three sections, each introduced by a question:

Romans 8:31–39

  1. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
    …
  2. How then shall we respond to these things?
     
If God is for us,
Who can be against us?
  1. He who even his own Son did not spare
but gave him up for us all,
how will he not also, together with him
freely give us all things?
 
  1. Who shall bring an accusation against God’s chosen ones?
It is God who justifies—
  1. Who is to condemn?
Christ Jesus is the one
who died
but more—was raised
who is at the right hand of God,
who indeed is interceding for us.
 
  1. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?
Shall trouble, or distress, or persecution,
or famine, or nakedness,
or danger, or sword?
  1. As it is written,
“For your sake we face death all day long;
we were regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”
  1. No, in all these things we are super-conquerors
through the one who loved us.
  1. For I am persuaded that
neither death nor life,
nor angels nor demons,
nor things present nor things to come, nor powers,
  1. nor height nor depth,
nor anything else in creation,
shall be able to separate us from the love of God
in Christ Jesus our Lord.
 

2. Three accusations and three answers

Feelings of Guilt and Shame

Guilt Shame
internal seen by others
  • I looked up every reference to shame in the Bible,
  • Guilt - I know I should not have done that
  • Shame - I feel so terrible that it has been discovered

True & False Guilt

Guilt Shame
true I know it was wrong seen by others
(corrective)
false I am a failure people won’t want to be around me
(abandoned, isolated)
  • I want to expend this chart a little now, so take a moment to look at it now and make sure you get it

Our feelings as broken people

Guilt Shame
true I am guilty & scared of being punished. People won’t want to be around me
I will be abandoned and isolated
I am destined to be lonely and rejected
because nobody wants to be near such a stinking mess
false I am a failure and my life will fail and I will have nothing.
I am just a mess, a worthless waste
I am hopeless
  • The pain of feeling guilty is one of the sharpest we can feel

Avoiding the pain

  • Blame - “the woman you gave me made me do it”
  • Rationalize - “The reason was because I was tricked by the serpent”
  • Suicide - Judas: “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood!” …Then he went out and hanged himself.
  • +others we will look at shortly
  • Three sections, answer these three problems

Romans 8:31–32

  1. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
    …
  2. How then shall we respond to these things?
     
If God is for us,
Who can be against us?
  1. He who even his own Son did not spare
but gave him up for us all,
how will he not also, together with him
freely give us all things?
 
  • That was the fear of failure and worthnessness (bottom left):

Our feelings as broken people

Guilt Shame
true I am guilty & scared of being punished. People won’t want to be around me
I will be abandoned and isolated
I am destined to be lonely and rejected
because nobody wants to be near such a stinking mess
false I am a failure and my life will fail and I will have nothing.
I am just a mess, a worthless waste
I am hopeless
  • Next, real and deserved guilt (top left)

Romans 8:33–34

  1. Who shall bring an accusation against God’s chosen ones?
It is God who justifies—
  1. Who is to condemn?
Christ Jesus is the one
who died
but more—was raised
who is at the right hand of God,
who indeed is interceding for us.
 
  • Finally what happens when people see what losers we are and abandon us: (right)

Our feelings as broken people

Guilt Shame
true I am guilty & scared of being punished. People won’t want to be around me
I will be abandoned and isolated
I am destined to be lonely and rejected
because nobody wants to be near such a stinking mess
false I am a failure and my life will fail and I will have nothing.
I am just a mess, a worthless waste
I am hopeless

Romans 8:35–39

  1. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?
Shall trouble, or distress, or persecution,
or famine, or nakedness,
or danger, or sword?
  1. As it is written,
“For your sake we face death all day long;
we were regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”
  1. No, in all these things we are super-conquerors
through the one who loved us.
  1. For I am persuaded that
neither death nor life,
nor angels nor demons,
nor things present nor things to come, nor powers,
  1. nor height nor depth,
nor anything else in creation,
shall be able to separate us from the love of God
in Christ Jesus our Lord.
 

3. How the Accuser is Defeated

Colossians 2

  1. And you, being dead in your trespasses…
    he made alive -together with him,
     
    forgiving us all trespasses,
  2.       wiping out the record of debt against us with its decrees,
          that which was hostile to us, even this he has removed out of the way,
    nailing it to the cross.
  3. Having stripped rulers and authorities,
    he made a public display of them, triumphing over them in it.

Colossians 2

  1. Therefore let no one judge you in food or in drink,
          or regarding a festival or a new moon or Sabbaths,
  2. which are a shadow of things to come, but the reality is of Christ.
  3. Let no one disqualify you [from the prize],
          insisting on self-abasement…

How do people cope

  • numb out/distract
  • self punishment / self-harming
  • exacting legalism
  • armor of narcissism (over-reaction & angry attack to cover it)
  • retreat into nothingness
  • anxiety
  • Minimize
  • blaming
  • rationalization
  • the body creates sickness

Updated on 2022-10-10 by Andrew Fountain