Sermon Summary – Sunday 14 July 2019

REMEMBERING WHAT WE SHOULD FORGET & FORGETTING WHAT WE SHOULD REMEMBER (Calven Celliers)

Wikipedia defines hyperthymestic syndrome or hyperthymesia as “…a condition that leads people to be able to remember an abnormally large number of their life experiences in vivid detail. Two defining characteristics of hyperthymesia are spending an excessive amount of time thinking about one's past, and displaying an extraordinary ability to recall specific events from one's past.” Most of us have a highly selective memory. Some studies suggest that we only remember about 3% of life events. That means during a normal year, you might remember about 17 things, give or take, that really make an imprint on your memory, in other words things you can’t forget. But not Jill Price, a woman who suffers from hyperthymesia. She literally remembers everything! She says in her book, ‘The Woman Who Can’t Forget’: “Imagine being able to remember every fight you ever had with a friend, every time someone let you down, all the stupid mistakes you’ve ever made, the meanest, most harmful things you’ve ever said to people and those they said to you, and then imagine not being able to push them out of your mind no matter what you try.” The problem, as Jill explains, is that the emotions attached to memories aren’t dialled down either. It is like it just happened. She comments: “As I grew up, more and more memories were being stored in my brain. More and more of them flashed through my mind in this endless barrage and I became a prisoner to my memory.”

Without even suffering from hyperthymesia, lot of Christians are consciously or subconsciously, prisoners to a few memories of their own. The bondage that many live with regarding sins and failures of the past, that have been forgiven, and should have been forgotten, but have not been severed, causes far too many forgiven Christians are living under the burdensome cloud of condemnation. If we insist on holding onto the past, we’re never going to live in the fullness of the life that Jesus said He came to give us. We’ve all sinned (Read Romans 3:23) but unless we’re moving forward, we’re losing ground. Living is all about progressing, moving on, and pressing forward. But you can’t see the road ahead if you’re constantly looking over your shoulder at where you have been; sooner or later you’re going to land up in a ditch. “You’ve got to put your behind in your past.” (Pumba the warthog – Disney’s Lion King)

The eighth chapter of Romans begins with one of the greatest promises in all the Bible. The apostle Paul shares this most delightful, liberating truth – (Read Romans 8:1) God’s amazing love and grace is demonstrated in the fact that while we are at our worst, He is at his best. His love is unconditional. In other words, it is not conditioned by what we do or don’t do! God loves us perfectly. There is no condemnation because of the cross. We are more than conquerors because of what Christ accomplished on our behalf on the cross. He paid the penalty for every sin, past, present and future. God loves you and wants to help you put your past behind you once and for all. He wants to plunge all your mistakes, sins, failures and shortcomings under the blood of Jesus and get rid of it so you can walk in your true destiny.

(Read John 19: 29 & 30) “It is finished.” That word is a powerful word, because it means paid in full. It is the final payment on a debt. So what Jesus was saying was, “I am making the final payment for your sin.” Is there any greater feeling than knowing that all that you’ve done wrong has been forgiven? (Read 2 Corinthians 5:21) Jesus says, “Here’s the deal, you transfer all of your sins to my account and then I’m going to transfer all of my righteousness to your account and we will call it even.” It is almost like Jesus saying let me take the blame for everything you’ve done wrong and I’ll give you the credit for everything I did right. That’s the deal, the gospel, the good news! It is this transaction that happens when we put our faith in Christ.

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However, coming to salvation does not mean that we will never again have to deal with temptation, the ravages of sin and struggle with the enemy. None of us are ever going to be perfect on this side of eternity; as we go through life we will make mistakes. We will fall into sin. We will do things we shouldn’t, things that will leave us and others hurting. There is always consequence to our sins. The fact that there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus is completely mind blowing in and of itself, but even more significant is when you read it in light of the preceding chapter. That’s when the personal application of its truth becomes even more invigorating. Romans 7 is one of the most powerful statements about struggling with sin in the history of all literature, and what makes it so powerful is that Paul provides us with a glimpse into his own struggles (Read Romans 7: 18 – 19, 24 & 25)

Often when we think of the apostle Paul, we think of somebody who is larger than life. We see him standing up and defending his faith in front of the Roman governors and even the emperor. We remember him on his great missionary journies all over the Roman empire. We read his letters as he instructs the churches to be faithful, and as he encourages Timothy and Titus to remain true to their calling. Probably most of us have put Paul on quite a pedestal. But the problem with putting fellow humans on a pedestal is that they will disappoint us, for all have sinned and fall…

When you read Romans 7, you get a sneak peek into the fact that the apostle Paul is a lot more human than we might have first thought. He is a fellow struggler. He is honest enough to recognize within himself a tendency to get caught in the clutches of sin. And this is not Paul talking about the way he used to be sinful before he became a Christian. This is Paul saying, "Just this morning, I gave in again.” This is Paul saying “I struggle with sin, and sometimes I lose.”

The problem is that the devil will not give up without a fight (Read Ephesians 6: 10 – 13, I like the way Eugene Petersen paraphrases it in The Message) and one of the greatest challenges about walking in forgiveness is dealing with his underhanded tactic called condemnation. In Revelation 12:10 we read that Satan always stands ready to accuse us. His objective is to weigh us down with condemnation, with the intention to cause us to live under a spirit of failure. Satan is so deceitful and one of the tools he uses to rob us of the joy of our salvation is to cause us to remember what we should forget and forget what we should remember. And as a result we get bogged down in the negative things that produce guilt in us instead of focusing on the victory that Christ won on our behalf.

We need to understand the important distinction between conviction and condemnation. If you don’t understand this distinction, then you are probably going to spend a long time wasting a lot of energy on false guilt. Conviction, the conviction of the Holy Spirit who abides in us as God’s people, is when you feel bad for a sin that has not yet been confessed. That is the key. The Holy Spirit loves us so much that He is not going to let us dwell in places that are going to ultimately hurt us and kill us, for the wages of sin is death, and so He convicts us that what we are doing is not right, it is wrong. It doesn’t glorify God. And He convicts us until we come to that point when we confess the sin and turn from our wicked ways. Condemnation feels very similar but the difference is that it is feeling guilt over confessed sin. So the conviction of the Holy Spirit is a wonderful thing. It is God producing a godly sorrow in us so that we come back to the point of confession and repentance. But condemnation comes from the accuser of the brethren as he seeks to remind us of everything we have ever done wrong, over and over and over again, causing the memory of our confessed sins to produce guilt instead of gratitude for the forgiveness that we have received in Christ. You see if he can get you to live in past guilt, then you don’t live in the present reality of the full victory that was accomplished on your behalf over 2,000 years ago.

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