Although Wendy's is not the biggest of the fast food chains, they did make a permanent contribution to their industry. Before this innovation, fast food was fast, provided that you didn't mind doing it their way. If you wanted your way you could get it, but then it wasn't fast anymore.

Wendy's changed all of that. I'll take mine with cheese, mayonnaise and ketchup only. No problem.

I'd like mine with pickles, lettuce and mayonnaise, but no cheese or tomato. You got it!

Whatever the request, Wendy's workers could fill it; the chain set out to serve the individual. It put individual different tastes first and foremost. Since that time, the idea has caught on in more than just the fast food industry.

There is something out there now that permits us to serve up human wants according to human preferences.

I want my reality with a morality that celebrates homosexuality, bisexuality, bestiality, and any other sexual desires that I may have.

If that is what you want, this society says you shall have it.

I want all cultures treated as if they were all equal. I don't like evaluations that call some societies civilized and advanced and others primitive and backward.

Okay, we can accommodate that desire, too.

What about the matter of truth? I want to believe in anything I want. I don't want anyone to seriously question the validity of my beliefs.

Not a problem.

There is a philosophy out there called "relativism." What Wendy's did for hamburgers, relativism allows for human choices. Relativism promises us that each of us can have reality our way, with or without deities and demons, with or without virtues and vices, with or without truth and error, with or without holiness and depravity. The world is ours to shape, to reshape and reshape again to our heart's content.

Relativism teaches that the person of the 21st century must be broad-minded. They must be open to other beliefs; they must be open to other claims to truth, to other moral convictions. They must be open different lifestyles. The tolerant person of the 21st century must make room for others to do as they wish, even if the other person's behavior contradicts or even mocks their own.

Here, at the beginning of the 21st century, it is unacceptable to say that anything is right or wrong, true or false for anyone but oneself. A person who does is considered by many to be immoral. Everyone must be left to live as they see fit. Live and let live is the way it goes these days.

Now having said all of this, I am going to turn around and take it back. In reality, all that I have been saying about relativism is only an illusion. It may seem that the current mindset believes that anything goes. But actually, people do not believe that anything goes; they only believe that certain things should be permitted. Let me explain.

You see, there has always been a war going on. We have called it the great controversy between good and evil. In the past, the difference was that you knew who was who. There was good and there was bad. There has always been abortion, divorce, sexual perversion, and dishonesty. At the same time, there has always been the respect for life, and commitment to purity and marriage. There have always been people who were honest. There have always been people of integrity.

What is different about this age is that what used to be called evil is now being called good, and what was understood in the past as good is now being called evil. I read an article in the paper once where the practice of homosexuality was being defended, and the person who was defending homosexuality said that those who disagreed with them were immoral!

No, though it may seem like it, this is not a live and let live society. We live in a society that is at war with the commandments of God. You are free to do whatever you want as long as it is not what God tells you what you ought to do. You are free to do whatever you want to do as long as it is against what has been the Christian tradition of honesty, morality and integrity.

We should not be surprised that things are turning out this way. Didn't we read someplace that the Dragon is angry with the woman and that he is now making open war against the commandments of God and those who defend and keep them in the last days?

Please listen closely to what I am about to say now--I don't want to be misunderstood. I don't need to tell you that we are champions of liberty. We are for two reasons: One is that in a democratic society, we are accustomed to freedom like no nation before us has ever been, and the other reason is that we know that one day our religious freedom will be taken away from us.

We are champions of religious liberty; we must be champions of religious liberty. Yet we must be wise and not form alliances with those who appear to be champions of freedom, but who, when the time is right, will take our freedom away. Ladies and gentlemen, what I am saying is that I think that we must realize that we have as much to fear from the forces on the extreme left as from the forces that we more clearly recognize on the right. In plain language, our liberty is just as much threatened by the liberal left as by the conservative right.

We must be aware and we need to understand that those who seem to be defenders of liberty and freedom of belief could well be those who are using freedom and liberty for their own ends, and when they have gained sufficient support, they will deny it to all dissenters. Don't forget what I just said. We have more to fear than just the Christian Coalition. Do you hear me?

In other words, one day we may discover that those who seem to be champions of compassion and who call for acceptance may well not be either compassionate or accepting if you do not agree with them.

That was only the introduction. The title of this sermon is "Is Guilt OK?" In this sermon I am going to talk to you about guilt. I don't need to tell you that there are those out there who are saying that we should feel guilty about feeling guilty, and so, in order not to feel guilty about feeling guilty, we should not feel guilty. Did you follow that?

This sermon is not going to be given from a psychological point of view, but from a Scriptural point of view. Now, a person might say, "But psychology is the study of the mind. What is wrong with psychology?" The answer is...nothing. The thing that can be wrong can be the conclusions that we come to. For honest, sincere people coming to wrong conclusions is usually the result of using wrong baseline measurements; by that I mean, using an argument that is built on a wrong premise.

Let me explain to you what I mean. When the founding fathers of modern psychology conducted their first studies, the only subjects they could use would be what we might call in the religious world, "fallen man." I think you can see what I am talking about. Therefore, the fathers of modern psychology established a so-called normal from a study of the abnormal. You see, fallen man is not what the Bible would call normal. In the universe, sin is not normal; it is abnormal.

Have you ever been cutting lengths of board? You probably know that if you use the last board cut as a pattern for cutting the next one and so on, when you are finished, every piece will be a different length.

I also don't need to tell you that the founders of modern psychology were not believers. I don't know all of them by name, but I greatly suspect that they were almost all to a man evolutionist. This means then that the foundation of modern psychology is seriously flawed.

Now you might say, "But it is different now. Since then we have developed a Christian psychology and appreciate the ministry of Christian psychologists." I believe that the work they are doing is important. I don't need to tell you that the devil would be trying to infiltrate even Christian psychology. Be on guard then, because in some places it is possible that the building that is now Christian psychology could be resting on an evolutionary base. By that I mean a base that doesn't agree with the Bible. Do you see how that could be?

Brothers and sisters, we must understand that what we see is not always what we get. We need to examine everything. Many things look great and sound great, but their foundation is often fatally flawed. For these reasons the Word of God is our only safeguard in the study of all that is science. There is true science and there is junk science. Science that contradicts the Word of God is junk science.

Friends, though the Word of God contains a history and case studies of fallen man, its baseline is that man was created in the image of God and its model man is Jesus Christ. In other words, we must not compare ourselves among ourselves to see what is normal. We are only safe, if we are to get out of this mess, in comparing ourselves with Jesus.

The Word of God must be the standard by which we measure everything that comes to our five senses. Our gracious Lord has warned us that in the last days there would be illusions so well crafted that they might very well deceive the very elect. In another place it says that darkness would cover the earth and gross darkness the people, yet through it all we have the comforting promise that in that darkness, the Word of God will be to us a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path.

What I am saying in plain language is that in the 21st century we are foolish if we do not find out what God's rules are before we play the game, and we must always be on guard because there is now an open attack on the Rule Book. Every house that has the name Christian on it is not necessarily built on a Christian foundation. Did you hear me?

Enough of the background. Let me get into what we are going to be talking about. These days our culture is telling us that a lot of our problems are from guilt. Is this true? In this sermon I am going to discuss the matter of guilt. To be able to understand the true role of guilt and what the Bible teaches us about it, it is necessary for us to understand where guilt resides. Guilt is a product of the conscience; therefore, to understand what guilt is about we must understand something about the conscience.

It is almost incredible, but no matter what problem a person is suffering from--whether they are a cannibalizing serial murderer or just someone struggling with emotional distress--a person can easily find someone out there these days who will explain to them why their failing is not their fault, and will teach them how to silence their conscience.

I am going to begin with the following premise and that is this: An educated, sensitive conscience is a gift that God gave us. Our conscience is given to us to warn us of the moral implication of what we do or plan to do. Our conscience reacts to lawlessness and irresponsibility. It is our conscience that makes us feel guilt and shame; it is our conscience that gives us a fear of punishment.

When we understand what the conscience is for, we can see that our conscience is one of the greatest gifts that God has given us. It is no wonder that it is Satan's strategy to corrupt, to desensitize, and if possible, to kill our conscience. The relativism, materialism, narcissism, secularism, and hedonism in our society are helping him to accomplish his goal. Satan's work is also made easier by the way in which the world's moral weaknesses have been accepted as normal in many sectors of the church.

In 1984 a sad thing happened; an Avianca Airlines jet crashed in Spain. The investigators who studied the accident made an eerie discovery. You remember, that after a plane crash, one of the first things that they try to locate is the "black box." In this case, the "black box" cockpit recorder revealed that several minutes before the crash a shrill, computer-synthesized voice from the plane's automatic warning system repeatedly told the crew in English, "Pull up! Pull Up!"

The pilot must have thought that the system was malfunctioning. The voice recorder has him saying, "Shut up, Gringo," and then he apparently switched the system off. Minutes later the plane plowed into the side of a mountain. Everyone on board died.

What a tragic story, yet it is a perfect parable of the way modern people today are treating the warning messages of their consciences.

Let's get into it a little now. What part should the conscience play in the life of a Christian? As I mentioned already, more and more our society sees the conscience as a defect that is robbing people of their self-esteem. But friends, nothing could be further from the truth. The conscience doesn't create guilt, it detects guilt. Did you hear that? The conscience doesn't create guilt, it detects guilt. God has built the conscience into the very fiber of the human soul. It is the automatic warning system that tells us, "Pull up, Pull up," before we crash and burn.

I don't know if you have thought about it much, but the conscience is what makes us human. Animals don't have a conscience; they don't have the ability to make moral self-evaluations. The conscience is the ability that God has given us to know right and wrong.

It may not seem like it, but everybody has a conscience. Listen to this in Romans 2:14,15, "For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves. Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another."

These texts are telling us that the conscience is that part of us that calls on us to do what we believe is right, and it also restrains us from doing what we believe is wrong.

There is something important for us to bear in mind. We need to understand that the conscience is not the voice of God, neither is it the law of God. The conscience is a human faculty. The conscience judges our actions and thoughts in the light of the highest standard that we happen to understand at the time. When we go against our conscience, it condemns us; it gives us feelings of shame, regret, anxiety, disgrace and even fear. When we follow our conscience, it commends us; it brings us joy, peace, self-respect, well-being and happiness.

I said that the conscience is something that is built-in, and it is a gift of God to remind us of right and wrong. Though God has given us a conscience, it is important that we understand that it is possible to dull it or, for that matter, even to make it inoperable. In Titus 1:15 it says, "Unto the pure all things are pure: but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure; but even their mind and conscience is defiled."

A person who has defiled or blunted their conscience will end up being like a ship without a compass. The warning signals that made them feel guilty are gone, but the danger isn't. In fact, the danger is greater than ever.

I had an experience that helped me to understand how it all works. I used to have a 1985 Ford LTD station wagon. The car had what they call idiot lights. I don't know if any of you have heard about idiot lights. Idiot lights are different than gauges. A gauge will tell you what your oil pressure is; an idiot light comes on when the engine is out of oil, and I don't need to tell you that it is probably too late. I had that happen to me two times. It should have happened only once. I should have had a gauge installed the first time the idiot light came on to say that the engine had overheated. What I am saying is, that a person who doesn't want to have a guilty conscience is an idiot, because what else can we have to tell us when we are in trouble, and which of us doesn't get off the track sometime?

I am glad for my guilty conscience. When my conscience lights up, it is because I am guilty, and why should I be upset about knowing it? That way I can avoid getting into bigger trouble. I am sure you must understand what I am talking about.

Let's continue to think about the conscience. We need to remember that the conscience is not infallible. The role of the conscience is not to teach us moral and ethical ideals. The conscience doesn't decide what is right and wrong; it only reminds us of what is right and wrong according to the way that it has been programmed. Did you get that? Our conscience is programmed by tradition and environment as well as by truth. Because this is where the conscience gets its information, it may or may not have been programmed correctly or in harmony with Biblical truth.

A conscience may be sensitized to things that are not a biblical issue, or for that matter it may be totally unresponsive to things that are clearly a moral issue. It is possible to have a conscience that has no foundation in the Word of God. If this happens, it will do a lot of spinning and will not be taking us anywhere. A strong regular input of Scripture will strengthen a weak conscience. It will also help to stabilize one that is, as it were spinning, because it has no foundation in truth. If the conscience is going to function as it is supposed to, it must be programmed by the Word of God.

What I am trying to say is that the conscience functions like a skylight, not like a light bulb. It lets light into the soul; it does not produce its own light. The effectiveness of our conscience is determined by the amount of pure light we let in it and by now clean we keep it. You can see that, if we resist the voice of conscience or keep it uninformed or misinformed, it will cease to function and may even begin to malfunction.

What I have been saying, my friends, is that contrary to what the current culture may be saying to us, God has given us a conscience. It has been given to us, not to condemn us, but to protect us. It is our wrong actions that condemn us. God has put our conscience there to save us and to tell us when we are off the road.

The gauges on a car are not the problem; rather they are put there to tell us what the condition of the motor is and to help us to prevent problems. When problems come, the gauge advises us that we have got to stop and do something about it. And so in the same way our conscience is a gift of God to alert us when we have wandered into dangerous territory in our lives.

Now, let's go on from the conscience and talk a little about guilt. Remember, society is telling us not to feel guilty. You have heard the expression, "Don't try to lay a guilt trip on me." I don't know if you have thought about it before, but the purpose of Scripture is to do just that. It is supposed to lay a guilt trip on us.

Notice what it says in 2 Timothy 3:16: "All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness."

Ladies and gentlemen, it seems to me that reproof and correction have to do with guilt.

I was in a church recently. The pastor stood up and said that one thing that he would not do is to make the people feel guilty. He said that some people enjoy feeling guilty, but that he was not into that. I must say that I am not into that either. The purpose of our preaching is to open the Word of God. It is not the preacher that is to be responsible for making a person feel guilty. As ministers we are supposed to preach the Word of God, and it is simply a matter of, if the shoe fits, wear it.

I have a program on my computer called Norton Utilities. I run the program nearly every week. The purpose of the program is to check out the hard disk. If it detects a problem it will ask me if I want it to be fixed. I hit the return key and it will fix it and then report, "Fixed."

The Norton Utility program is important for the health and well-being of my hard disk. The program doesn't make the disk problem, but it diagnoses and fixes the problems. But to fix the problem, I have to run the program. When the window tells me that it has detected a problem, I don't run screaming from the room, neither do I get a hammer and smash the screen of the computer. Neither do I ignore the warning.

Listen, friends, when the Word of God reproves us and corrects us, it is not putting us down, but just the opposite--it is picking us up. It is giving us an opportunity to get back on the track.

You will remember that Jesus promised that He would send the Spirit and that the Spirit would convict us of sin. Did you get that? The first work of the Spirit is to convict us of sin. That is necessary, because we must realize that we are wrong before we feel any need to change. The law of motion is that an object will continue in the direction that it is headed until an outside force impacts it to go in another direction.

In the same way, we were, as you might say, born and bred in sin. We know how things shouldn't be done. The Scripture says there is a way that seems right unto a man but the ends thereof are the ways of death. In another place it says that My ways are not your ways or My thoughts are not your thoughts. I heard someone say one time that when you do something that you ought not to do, figure out what to do next, and then do just the opposite and you will probably be right!

In other words, what comes natural for us in the area of faith and morals are the way that things should not be done.

The crazy thing is that our society insists on doing what it wants to do, and then it insists that it is not guilty, and for that reason should not feel guilty. But the truth, my friends, is that when we make a mistake, we are guilty and we should feel guilty. And unless we will admit our guilt and feel guilty about it, we will continue to go from bad to worse.

Our society should be hung up on sin, but is hung up on guilt, which is result of sin instead. If the Bible writers had lived in our day, they would not have been able to write the way they did. It would not have been politically correct.

I have found some biblical confessions that do not match our present mind-set. David in Psalm 52:1-5 wrote: "Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving kindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me. Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight: that thou mightiest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest. Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.

These days he would have written: "Lord, I messed up with that Bathsheba-Uriah thing."

The prophet Isaiah wrote in Isaiah 6:3-5: "And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory. And the posts of the door moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke. Then said I, Woe is me for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts."

These days he would have written: "I'm having a sensory overload from all this shaking, smoke, the throne and big robe, and those seraphs flying around. I feel faint."

The great prophet Daniel wrote in Daniel 9:5, 6: "We have sinned, and have committed iniquity, and have done wickedly, and have rebelled, even by departing from thy precepts and from thy judgments: Neither have we hearkened unto thy servants the prophets, which spake in thy name to our kings, our princes, and our fathers, and to all the people of the land."

Why did he put himself down like that? It would have been more politically correct to write, "Our parents made mistakes; we've made mistakes, but could you lighten up?"

In Luke 5:8, Peter showed what a poor self-image he had. We read, "When Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord."

He should have come on strong. He should have said, "Lord, could you give me some space? You're making me feel bad about myself."

Paul in Romans 7 let it all hang out. What he should have done was simply written, "I am having some internal conflicts, but I'm sure these feelings of desperation are excessive."

I read of an advertisement in a magazine for churches. It was offering "Worship Resources." It advertised "prayers of confession." It said that the prayers admit short-comings without exaggerated "self-flagellation."

I heard of one congregation of a conservative evangelical denomination that invites people to a "new kind of church where there is no ritual, no boredom, no guilt trips." And so it goes.

The Scripture is clear, ladies and gentlemen, that those who cover their sins shall not prosper. This is because, if a mistake is uncorrected, it will simply repeat itself. The present trend to do away with guilt is only making things worse, because guilt is, in the primary sense, an effect and not a cause. Our lives will not be different until we address what is causing our guilt. If we seek to do away with guilt, we are only institutionalizing our sins and mistakes.

Let us make no mistake. The Scripture is clear that Jesus didn't come to condemn us. John 3:17: "For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved." In another place it says, John 8:11: "She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more."

Can't we see then that, though Jesus didn't come to condemn the sinner, He definitely came to convict the sinner and a convicted sinner has a sense of guilt. I don't want you to come to a wrong conclusion or end up saying, "Pastor I disagree with what you are telling us. You are telling us that guilt is good, and I happen believe that it is bad. Don't tell me that Jesus wants me to feel guilty."

Don't stop listening; please hear me out. The Bible may point out our guilt, but it doesn't leave us without hope.

Are you aware that the Bible speaks of two kinds of guilt? Listen now.

The Bible speaks of the "Godly sorrow that produces repentance leading to salvation, not to be regretted," but it says that the sorrow of the world produces death (2 Corinthians 7:10).

The Bible then is saying that there are two kinds of guilt. One is what we would call good guilt and the other is bad guilt. The kind of guilt that is "worldly" does not lead to true change in a person's life, whereas "Godly sorrow" does. Notice the differences between the two kinds of guilt.

Worldly guilt causes us to focus on ourselves, but Godly guilt leads us to focus on the person or people we have offended. So then, if I am late for a meeting with someone, worldly sorrow causes me to focus on how bad I feel about being late, but Godly sorrow causes me to focus on how my friend feels as he waits for me. What I am saying is that worldly sorrow is self-centered; on the other hand, Godly sorrow thinks of the other person.

Worldly guilt causes us to focus on what we have done in the past; Godly guilt causes us to focus on what we can do in the present to correct what we've done. Worldly sorrow keeps us focused on the sin; Godly sorrow prompts us to take corrective action right now. Worldly sorrow focuses on past history, but Godly sorrow focuses on the here and now.

The corrective actions that come out of worldly guilt are motivated by the desire to stop feeling bad. Actions that come out of godly guilt are motivated by the desire to help the person who we have wronged. The actions of Godly guilt actually promote personal growth and focus on doing the will of God.

Worldly sorrow will often result in temporary change, but there may be rebellion later on. Godly sorrow results in a true on-going change.

Brothers and sisters, the Bible is not especially concerned whether we imagine ourselves to have feelings of guilt or not. It is very concerned though about the fact that we are actually guilty. The Scripture tells us that, in the judgment, every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord.

The issue that we face is, shall we be self-centered or God-centered. Guilt is the necessary awareness that we have disobeyed God. A person who refuses to be guilty is the person who either is a Pharisee or a person who refuses to recognize that they are under the sovereignty of God.

These days there are many who are saying that those who are sensitive to sin are Pharisees. It is actually the opposite. Those who are not sensitive to sin are the Pharisees. A person who sins with impunity is a Pharisee. You remember the Pharisees were the ones who refused to admit that they were sinners.

The move these days to do away with guilt is a move against the government of God. It is a refusal to admit that we are sinners.

The issue is not who is a sinner and who isn't, but the issue is, inasmuch as we are all sinners, what are we going to do about it.

In our age we are being told that it is normal to be abnormal. We have studied the abnormal until it is considered to be normal. If we are to be saved, we must understand that holiness is normal in the universal sense of things. We must understand that the way that things are, is not the way that God created them to be. A person in their study of human nature must be aware that what they learn is not the way things were meant to be, yet they are the way that things are.

We will become hopelessly bogged down unless we realize that the model man is Jesus Christ, and the standard of mental and spiritual health can be maintained only when the law of God is upheld and obeyed.

A person who does not understand the way things were meant to be can never understand the way that things are going to be and indeed the way things must become.

Thank God for our conscience. Thank God if your conscience works. Pray that He will make it even more sensitive.

Do you feel guilty now and then? Thank God. It means that we are alive and well, but not to worry. God's grace is bigger than our guilt. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.