Hey guys, welcome to week 10 of the Restored Bible Study. I hope you are in fact being restored and that God's doing great and wonderful things in your life. If you're doing this series, I would love to hear from you. I would love to know what God's doing. I love testimonies. I love hearing. My favorite stories are all of what hearing God's doing in somebody's life. So if you indeed are being restored to the position that you were created for, which is to be a son of God or a daughter of God, created in the image of the God who is love, becoming more loved and becoming more loving, I sure would love to hear those stories.
Today, speaking of becoming more loved, last week we looked at what it looks like to repent and what that repentance is actually a gift from God. This week I want to share with you some more about how to receive God's forgiveness. This is an important subject. Through the centuries, somehow, religion crept back into the simplicity of this gospel that we have. The good news of Jesus on the cross is that Jesus now cleared all the barriers that we put up between us and God, giving us easy access again to the presence of God. We've looked at how simple it is to just, with a simple turn of our gaze, restore back to the presence of God, back to how it was in Eden before the fall happened, to where Adam and Eve just walked with God in the cool of the day. It was simple.
It was full of joy. It was full of peace. It was everything that life is supposed to be. And then came this issue of the fall. So what we want to look at now is, after we've learned how to repent, which is our way of casting off the shame and the guilt of our sin, our way of agreeing with God and with all of heaven, what I did was wrong and I'm not going to, I don't want to carry this and I'm not going to carry this for the rest of my life. What religion has done over the centuries is added a thing called penance back to the, back to the whole process. In the Old Testament days, if you sinned, you had to bring a sacrifice to the altar.
It could be if you were a wealthy person, it could be a sheep, a goat, a bull, or if you're not as wealthy, it could be a turtle dove. It could be some kind of innocent animal that you had to sacrifice to pay the price for your sins. We've already looked at how Jesus already paid that price. He's the once and forever sacrifice. So we don't have to bring animals to sacrifice them before God. Thank God my cat doesn't look at me funny when I'm having a bad day because of that. But instead of that, what we did through the centuries was added this thing called penance, where, you know, if you were raised Catholic, you knew all about saying the Our Fathers and Hail Marys and doing whatever you had to do.
Back in the day, there used to be, you know, a thing where you'd actually whip yourself in the back to punish yourself for what you did, carry great weights up the side of a mountain. And it was some way of paying a price. And the tragedy of penance is that we're paying a price for something that's already been paid for in full when Jesus said it is finished, as we've seen. He meant there's no more price to be paid. You can't pay any more. It's like trying to pay for something that, imagine going out with your dad to the store and he buys you something. He gets you that, you know, game off the shelf.
He pays for it at the register and you take that gift that he just gave you. Imagine getting back online and then going back and paying for it again. That's penance. Penance is when we try to pay for something. It's a, in one way of looking at it, it's a rejection of the free gift of salvation and grace that God's given us in favor of paying our own price and making our own redemption. So David, he looked at David during the week in this beautiful psalm of repentance that he wrote. And I want to bring something out that David, again, remember he's the Old Testament king doing a New Testament thing.
And David wrote this psalm, which is one for the ages. It's one of our favorite psalms in Christianity. And after confessing his sin and being broken before God over what he had done, he says these immortal words, Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me away from your presence. Do not take your Holy Spirit from me as if God would ever do that. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and sustain me with a willing spirit. But those three verses right there, that's verses 10, 11, and 12.
If by the time you're finished repenting for whatever it is you did, that can be your prayer. Then you've done your part and God will do his part. That's where, you know, if we confess our faults, he is faithful and just to forgiveness of our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. That's what our God is like. David tapped into that. Then David goes on, Oh, I'll teach transgressors your ways and sinners will be converted to you. You know what it's like? That feeling, remember the day you got born again or that time you had your encounter with God?
You just couldn't wait to tell the whole world about what? I've got good news, world. Jesus isn't waiting with a paddle in the woodshed for you. Jesus is waiting with arms wide open. The father can't wait to have a party in the house when the prodigal comes home. That's what he's actually like. That's the good news. And he goes on, Deliver me from blood guiltiness, O God, the God of my salvation. In other words, take the shame off of me. Take this guilt off of me. I can't carry it any longer.
The weight of what I've done is making me lose sleep. Carry it for me. Then my tongue will joyfully sing of your righteousness because I'm not trying to be self-righteous anymore. I could sing of God's righteousness. He's made me somebody different. He's doing a work inside of me. That's what the whole world needs to know. He goes on, Lord, open my lips so my mouth may declare your praise. For you do not delight in sacrifice or I would give it. You are not pleased with burnt offering or I would bring it.
The sacrifices of God, in fact, are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. There it is. No need for a sacrifice. David lived in the day when sacrifices were necessary. But because of his deep sin, I mean, it was overwhelming what David did. But also because of his deep and overwhelming repentance, David learned something. You weren't really after the sacrifices at all, were you? I mean, the pagan gods seem to desire sacrifice because they're the ones that we invented. And we can go trace it back all the way to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden, the tree of religion, the tree which says we will control what God wants and what God doesn't want.
And we will tell God, basically, here's what I'm willing to do because of my sin. I'm going to offer this sacrifice to you. It's how all the pagan religions have worked for all time. This is what I will sacrifice to get from you what I need. And God, David realized, God, you're not like those pagan gods at all, are you? You don't need anything from us. You created all things. God said to his people one time, in fact, if I were hungry, would I tell you? What can we actually offer God?
Here's the gift. Broken and a contrite heart. Why? Not because God loves the fact that we're broken. He doesn't love seeing his kids cry and hurting. But what that reflects is a heart that says, I want to be restored to you, God. I want the intimacy back like we had it before I blew it. I want to be restored in such a way that you and me are just enjoying one another again. And we have nothing between us. I don't have shame between us. I mean, if you're a parent, you know what this is like.
When your kids blow it, when they make a mistake, they're looking down at the floor. And we have opportunity to restore them. Hey, look up at me. I forgive you. I love you. You're still my son and I'm proud of you. You're still my son and I'm grateful to God for the gift that you are. That's a reflection of the Father's heart in heaven. And that's what he's after. So when we have that broken and contrite spirit, we are now ready for something. And that is that God himself can create in us a clean heart.
That's the prayer. God, I can't make myself clean. It feels like no matter how many times I wash myself with this repentance and confession, and if we're still doing it, this penance, I still feel the weight of what I've done. God, I need you to create in me a clean heart, which is to say, I need something deeper than just forgiveness. I need something deeper than just mercy. I need grace to help me change. And what we find God's able to do, which we can't, is actually change our desires. He changes our motives.
He changes what we seek after to meet the needs of our heart. That God's the only one who can change us from the inside out. He's not a God who makes whitewashed tombs like the Pharisees of old did. When Jesus told the Pharisees, you're just a bunch of whitewashed tombs. You're white on the outside, and inside you're filled with dead men's bones. What he was saying was, you've made this whole relationship with God out to be a bunch of rules, and all you do is try to control people's behavior. I want to tell you that God's not about behavior modification, which is to say, do things correct on the outside.
So everybody looking at you will think, oh, what a good boy you are. Oh, what a good girl you are. That's what religion does, and that's not what God does. What God does and says, I'm going to help you on the inside. You have motives and motivations in you that are making you do things that are harmful to you and harmful to the peace we have now with one another. Let me change that in you, if you'll allow me to. So, create in me a clean heart is the prayer of God.
Open heart surgery me. Crack open this heart of stone and replace it with a soft heart. And on that soft heart, write your ways on it. Write your ways of love and compassion. Write your ways of purity. Write your ways of living as kingdom lives, living this righteousness that can only come by a heart change on the inside. So, 1 John 4, verse 18 says some really powerful words and truth about what our new life in God should be like. And he says, there is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.
Why? Why? Because fear involves punishment. Fear involves punishment. If we're afraid of God, number one reason why we're afraid of God is the same reason why we were afraid of our parents when we messed up. Because we think that if they find out what we did, even if I confess it to them, there's going to be some kind of price I'm going to have to pay for what I did. And we teach that. We teach it in church. We teach it in our families. And I'm not, I'm not, this is different than discipline.
We can get into that sometime if you throw in some questions my way. That's not the same as discipline. Yes, we need to train our children. We need to instruct them. I'm talking about the punishment mindset that we do what's right for fear of paying a price for doing wrong. And that's not how this kingdom works at all. This kingdom works with God saying, I know, I see why you're tempted and I know better than you do why you're doing what you're doing. So I'm going to change your heart from the inside.
You don't need to be afraid of me. I'm not going to punish you for what you did. I already punished the son hanging on a cross for what you did. Isaiah 53 says, the chastisement that brought us peace was laid upon him. So that's already done. And Romans 8, we're going to meditate on this whole chapter during this course. Romans 8, if you have to, if you're really, if you're one of those overachievers, I want to recommend to you, if you're going to pick a chapter of scripture to memorize and soak in it, Romans chapter 8 is your chapter.
It sums up the entirety of the good news, how it works on a practical level, what it means on a spiritual level, everything that you need to know about how to stay rooted and established in Christ and have God restore all things to you for now and forever. It's all found in Romans chapter 8. And we are going to take one lesson. We're going to call it Romanating. And we're going to go through that chapter together. And I really want to encourage you to just spend a bunch of time in it. But for now, let's let's start the chapter Romans 8 verses 1 through 4 say these words.
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Just let that phrase alone soak in your spirit. Condemnation means somebody who has authority to judge has said, you've been found guilty as charged. And now you're going to have to pay a price for what you did, whether it's prison or execution, whatever it is. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. If you're in Christ, which you are, remember back to a few lessons ago, we're all in Christ. There's no chance that the righteous judge, the only one who can judge righteously, will ever look at us again and say, you're going to have to pay for what you did.
Praise God. That's good news. That's news to change life. That's news to live on now and forever. Why is there therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus? It goes on and says, for the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set us free from the law of sin and death. What's that mean? Well, the law of sin and death is if you do something wrong, then you have to pay a price for it. The law, the soul that sins will die is a statement made under the old covenant.
It's basically the law of crime and punishment. You do the crime, you're going to have to do the time. That's the law of sin and death. And that's how the world works. That's how religion works. There's a price to be paid for every piece of wrongdoing. But the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus sets us free from that law. Well, what's the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus? It's what we're looking at and what we're being discipled into right now. That when we do wrong, which we all do, that instead of paying a price for ourselves, we turn our attention to heaven and we pray and we say, God created me a clean heart.
I don't want to be like this anymore. These old ways, they're passing away. You're making all things new. I want to be restored to you. Don't take me away from your presence now. Don't cast me out from your presence. Don't take your Holy Spirit from me. Like David prayed, I need you now more than ever. That's the law of the spirit. Life in Christ Jesus is running to Jesus when we fail and fall short and no longer running away. Remember, we looked at Psalm 32. He is now our hiding place.
He's our hiding place. He's not the one we hide from. That's the law of the spirit. So we have a choice. Our free will has been given back to us and this is what we have a choice for each and every day. We can live by the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus, which is what I just described, or we can live under the law of sin and death, punish ourselves for our crimes. Because I can tell you now, God's not punishing us for anything anymore. Any evil that comes our way or anything that we do to bring harm to ourselves, like punishing ourselves, it didn't originate in heavenly places.
God does not punish his children. I feel like I should say it every five minutes until we all get it drilled into our spirit. I needed that drilled into my spirit because I did all these things. How do you think I learned all this stuff? He goes on and it says, Why did we need to be set free from the law of sin and death? For what the law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did, sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh as an offering for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh. What does that mean?
The law, the law means, do this, don't do that. It's what I used to think the whole Bible was all about. A book telling me, make sure you do these things and woe be to you if you don't, or you do those things, woe be to you if you don't do the things you should be doing and you're going to get punished for all of those things. That's what the law is. And you'll see a capital L usually in your Bible indicating that this is God's righteous law, not the kind of laws that we make out there and the rules that make no sense, but God's law, which is perfect.
So what he's saying is the law was weak in the flesh. In other words, God would tell us what to do and as soon as he told us what we should do, we find this desire in us to do the opposite. And man, if you haven't seen this in life, you don't have kids. As soon as you tell the kid, hey, don't eat the candy out of that jar on the shelf, what all of a sudden do they want to do? What's becoming their consuming thought for the next three hours of the day is how can I get the candy in that jar? And it's almost like there's something that's in us that desires the thing that we know we shouldn't do.
And that's the weakness of the flesh. You know, Paul was saying in Romans that, man, I didn't even know what coveting was about till the law said, don't covet. All of a sudden, I'm aware of the fact I want everybody else's stuff all the time. I'm jealous of my neighbor's house. I want my neighbor's car. I want my neighbor's wife. I want all the stuff that other people have instead of just being content with myself. And that's what the law does. Why is the law weak? Not because the rules are wrong.
Not because God's not righteous and he doesn't have a right way for us to live. The weakness is us. The weakness is that as hard as we try to live perfectly as God is, the harder we fall. And so what God did was he put Jesus on a cross. And Isaiah 53 describes what happened on that cross. And I think we have a meditation and new devotions on that in one of these lessons that all of what we put on ourselves was put on Christ on that cross. God already punished.
He condemned the Christ on that cross. Jesus took upon himself all the sins of the whole world, everyone who had ever lived, everyone who will ever live, all in Christ on that cross and whosoever will be found in Christ and say, that's me on that cross in Christ like we looked at. But for that one, he condemns him in the flesh. And now the requirement of the law is fulfilled in us. In other words, the punishment that would be due for the thing we did wrong, it's already fulfilled in Christ on the cross. That's mind-blowingly good news, I realize. And it's hard to grasp.
That's why it seems like every other page of the New Testament, God's reminding us of that in one way or another because it just seems too good to be true, doesn't it? Actually, it's just too good not to believe because God really is that good. He goes on and he finishes, so that the requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who did not walk according to the flesh, but according to the spirit. We can walk in the new covenant according to the flesh. And that doesn't mean that we walk in sin, although that can be part of it. What that literally means is that we're now striving. We're going to discipline ourselves to behave right.
We're going to live in a certain way because that's how God says to live. And we're going to just walk this walk in our own strength. Well, 10 weeks together, if you were new in Christ when you started this, I guarantee you've already got some dirt on your face from all the times you've fallen flat on your face trying to do that. Because we all do. And that's why God said, I am going to give you grace. I'm going to create in you a clean heart and I'm going to renew a right spirit in you. So what God does is changes.
This is where those who are in Christ Jesus walking by the life, the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus, something new on the inside, changing us on the outside. There's this old song. I'm going to sing it for you. It's a real quick two-liner. Jesus on the inside, working on the outside. Oh, what a change in my life. And that's what he does. He works on the inside. Then our behavior begins to change. Our problem with this is patience in the process. It's going to take some time.
And the longer we live before we came to Christ, maybe the longer we had to develop bad habits, bad ways of thinking, bad ways of behaving. We fed, you know, we fed things in our heart. We talked about appetites a few weeks ago. We got an appetite for sin in certain ways, and it's going to take a little while to change the appetites. I'll say again, like I did week one, be patient. Don't try to finish by striving what you began by grace in Christ Jesus. So one last thing before we break for the week.
There are going to be these moments where now, I mean, we're talking about repentance and receiving forgiveness, and it's going to sometimes feel like, man, here I am again, asking for forgiveness for the same thing. And why do I keep failing? Why do I keep falling short in this area? And we can believe every word that I just shared with you, and I hope you do because I'm just reading scripture today and kind of expounding on it a little bit. I hope that we believe that God's forgiveness is what he says it is, and it's meaningful that way. But here's the, that we have the devil who accuses us night and day.
That's one of his names in the scripture revealed in Revelation, the accuser, and he accuses us night and day, and he accuses us before God who's not going to be convinced, but he also accuses us to ourselves, and we're a little bit more susceptible to being deceived, making us feel like this, the ultimate lie that a Christian can believe, that I'm no different than I was the day he found me. I may as well pack it up and give up because this isn't working. And the devil can do that, but here's what's even more dangerous, that once a lie gets planted in our mind, and it sits there long enough so that it makes its way into our heart, now our heart can condemn us. Our own heart, who knows why we do what we do, who knows that sometimes we do the right thing, not because we wanted to, but because we know we should, and if we didn't have the new heart, then we would do something different.
And it was all this stuff, our heart can condemn us. I got really good news for you with this in 1 John, again, I'm going to close with this, 1 John 3, verses 20 and 21. In whatever our heart condemns us, for God is greater than our heart and knows all things. So if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence in God. Our heart may condemn us. You may know on the inside that sometimes you feel like a fake, you feel like a fraud. It's just feelings, and that's your heart trying to condemn you.
Don't believe the lie, even if your own heart believes it already. Believe what your inner man knows. Believe what the Spirit of God in you already knows. Abba, Father, Daddy, I need you right now. May you have a week this week of really enjoying this whole process of having all this stuff cleaned off out of your life and watching how little by little, day by day, God makes all things new. God bless you. Hope you have a great week in Jesus. I'll see you again next week. God bless you.