Shame

Shame is the biggest enemy of righteousness. Shame’s main purpose is to force you to look at yourself instead of Christ. Shame forces you to hide who you are.

Genesis 3:6-10, “So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings. And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. Then the Lord God called to Adam and said to him, “Where are you?” So he said, “I heard Your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself.”

What is shame? Shame is a painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behavior. Shame comes when we know we have done something wrong. Being righteous is when we are in right standing with God. So, when we sin, shame will attempt to come in and convince you to hide from God. That is why I said at the beginning of this message: shame is the biggest enemy of righteousness. The reason for this is that shame is trying to tell you, “you are a terrible person for doing whatever you did. God is so mad at you for thinking about what you did, let alone doing it.” Shame is the enemy’s biggest weapon because it is self-inflicting. All the devil does is just spark the match of shame and we will fan the flames ourselves. In some cases, we spark the match and fan the flames.

Let me explain righteousness before we jump in our text. Righteousness, like I mentioned before, is being in right standing with God. As we saw last time, what Jesus did on the cross made us righteous. It is because of Him that we are in right standing with God. As we saw in 1 John 1:9, if we confess our sins, He will forgive us.

God told Adam explicitly what to do and what not to do. Adam was walking in righteousness up until he ate that fruit. He was in right standing with God.

Genesis 2:15-17, “Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

Genesis 3:6-10, “So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings. And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. Then the Lord God called to Adam and said to him, “Where are you?” So he said, “I heard Your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself.”

Remember the main statement from this message is, ‘shame is the biggest enemy to righteousness.’ They clearly sinned! There was no misunderstanding. God spelled it out to Adam and obviously Adam told the woman what God said. Adam and the woman sinned!!! We sin daily. None of you reading this are perfect, including me. For those who think they are perfect, this life has a way of reminding us we are not.

Our response to sin is the issue. Have you heard the statement, ‘the crime is not the problem, but the cover up is?’ A lot of us try to cover up our sins by acting righteous on the outside, but we are sinful on the inside. Adam’s response to the sin was to hide in shame. I wonder how many of us today have chosen to hide from God, from our friends, and from ourselves? God came looking for them, and they hid from Him. Holy Spirit is crying right now, where are you? I know some of us have chosen to go the shame route. God is asking us to take the righteous route.

The righteous route is when we respond to sin through the cross and through the blood of Jesus. The righteous route is when we go to Jesus and confess our sins and accept His forgiveness. Accepting His forgiveness might be a stumbling block for a lot of people. We must accept His forgiveness by faith in His love for us.