Exodus 28:31-38

Our pre-Easter series begins today and it is called ‘Fit for Life.’ We are going to look for the next two months at ways to increase your satisfaction in life. And I want to start today with a set of scales because all of us have to use them, between cholesterol and weight control. Regretfully, its not an inspirational picture – its more the kind of picture that makes you feel guilty for a moment and this is the time of year when people try to get fit once again.

 One of the advantages of church life is that you can form clubs to encourage each other. I think that there are people here who would join an exercise group at the gym or even pay an instructor to come to the church. I encourage you to write an article for the newsletter and see if you can find like minded people and get even more support for daily living from Christian friends.

 The weight I want to talk about today is not a heaviness that anyone else can see. It’s the weight of guilt. And I’m not just speaking about non Christians. There are many people who are trying to follow God and still have a heaviness on their heart. It may not even be sin. Sometimes when we fail, we blame ourselves even if we don’t know what went wrong. People have come to me when they’re sick and said, Pastor, why am I being punished? They felt guilt even though they had no idea what they had done wrong.

 One of the great messages from Easter is that you and I can know peace with God. We can really experience a moment in this life when we say, I just know that my guilt, misdeeds, bad attitudes, hatreds have been forgiven and there is no barrier between me and God. That is losing the weight of guilt and Easter makes it possible.

 So if you came today and in the corner of your heart was shame and a feeling of heaviness, then weigh it now because we are going to lose it in this service. I want you to know the lightness of a heart at peace.

 In Chicago, they have just started a new way to drop out from school. You and your parents have to go to school and sign a release form that says, I will be less likely to find good jobs that pay well, bad jobs that don’t pay well, or maybe any jobs. I will be more likely to spend time in jail or prison. I will be considerably less able to properly care for and educate my children. The form is called the ‘Waiver of Educational Rights.’ Talk about the weight of guilt. Not only are you going to fail in life, but we will have a paper to wave where we can show that it was all your own fault. The New York Times points out that people students already feel guilty. Most don’t drop out of school, they simply stop going.

 So you may have some serious guilt weight on your heart. These weights that we carry are not just our feelings, they often involve something that we did which was the act of a fool. But there is no time machine, we can’t go back and take it back, the only freedom you have is to do something now.

 This is too big a problem for you and me to solve. If you have been struggling and failing to lose the weight, its because you have been trying to rethink it, justify it, live better because of it, or all of the other ideas that you’ve tried which have been ineffective.

 The weight loss solution for guilt is in the work of Christ. It says that he took the punishment for our own sins upon him. I have not seen the Passion. But I have talked with two people who had to look away from the violence of it. And that terrible death by a perfect person is what gave God the opening to say to you and me, I will release the weight from your heart because I took the punishment given to my Son and received it on your behalf.

 There is a beautiful picture of this in the Bible passage from the Old Testament. This chapter 28 in Exodus is a picture of salvation. Remember that in these days there was no media, no stained glass, people couldn’t read, and they were a group of two million people on the march from Egypt to Israel. The tabernacle and the clothing of the priests were made to remind people of the basic stories of God. A lot of people don’t understand the Old Testament because they don’t remind themselves of what life was like at that time.

 This section is just on the clothes for the high priest and I want to pick up at verse 15 where it describes a heavy breastplate that the priest wears. This was a stunning item wrought of gold and jewels and must have been quite a weight to put on. What is the point of it? It is the breastplate of judgment. On it are the 12 tribes, which stand for the people of God. They are represented by jewels and by name on the shoulders and on the breast.

Friends, the 12 tribes are the families of the 12 brothers. Remember that they got to Egypt because 11 brothers sold Joseph into slavery? That is why the people of Israel are now walking back to Israel. This is no easy story of wonderful people on hard times. It is a story of people who wanted to be with God but who carried the weight of slave trading on their hearts.

So what is the picture that God asks for in these clothes? The picture is one of the high priest going into the presence of God with the names of the people of God on his breast and on his shoulder. They are represented by emerald, turquoise, sapphire, and diamond, 12 jewels in all. It must have been beautiful and God says, these are how I want to recall you.

Do you see that God is going 99% of the distance to come over to you and take that weight off your heart? God says in verse 29, I will never forget my people. What you cannot do through self psychology God is determined to do in fact – remove the weight of guilt from your life.

It even gets better. The high priest is an Old Testament picture of what Jesus was going to do – actually take the weight of our sins upon him. On the forehead of the priest, there is a sign to show that he bears the guilt for all the people of Israel, that God should forgive them.

Imagine the dramatic picture that this made to people who could not read and had no books to recall later what God’s real plan was to lift and liberate them. But while we do not have those clothes now, the message that it lifts up has never changed. Jesus goes before God the Father with your name written upon his heart so that God will never forget you. Jesus goes before the Father with a sign on his forehead to remind God that any crime that you have done has been taken care of thru his own agony.

There is only one sin that will keep you away from all this peace and lightness of being. And I can think of two people just as soon as I say this, Bruce and Lenny, who talked to me and sinned away their chance for peace. They heard this wonderful plan and said, but Ron, you don’t understand. I did something bad and I have to do more than just let God do something for me.

 They basically looked at God’s plan and said, I’m too proud to let someone else bear the weight of my problems. I’m just going to keep struggling until I feel better in my own way. What a tragedy. I hope they got another chance.

And what about you? Were you hoping that God’s message is that your guilt is not that bad? There’s a good chance that your feelings are right. Were you hoping that God said to pray 50 Hail Mary’s and a weight would be lifted? Prayer is good, but the only prayer that works is not an act of punishment like writing a thousand times on the board, I will not sin again. The only prayer that God asks for is the one that we have already used today Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy on me.

You have some precious moments now to ask God to release your guilt. The Bible says, that God takes away your guilt and carries it behind the Lord so that no matter whether God looks to the right or left, it can never be seen again because it is behind.

Don’t miss this moment to truly get fit for life. Let us pray