When It Hurts Enough to Tell the Truth
Romans 12:15
Lately we’ve been exploring the biblical call to authentic community
and what that looks like in a real church in the real world
-trying to help us see that we have God-given responsibilities as
individuals who-are-part-of-the-greater-whole...as well as realize
realize that we as the community must deal with a whole slough
of individuals with a variety of gifts and a variety of “issues”
--real life, as we all know, isn’t always a pretty picture
-the Bible is always comfortable with being honest about such
things...it’s just that we Christians tend to tiptoe around the truth
--who knows?
---perhaps we’re trying so hard to put up a good front
because we’re hoping that if we do it long enough, we
just might convince ourselves the façade is true
---or, sadly, it could be that we’ve learned that being honest
is a sure-fire way of being rejected, looked down upon,
judged, or worse
--sometimes we in the church can be pretty weird...sometimes
we echo
the words of singer Alanis Morissette
à We’ll
love you just the way you are if you’re perfect.
Let me explain
-today’s Scripture text is about as straightforward as they come
--in describing what life in the real church in the real world is
supposed to be, Paul gives this command in Romans 12:15 à
Rejoice
with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.
-now, as good Bible students, you would expect me to preach
something to the effect of: “we gotta’ be there for one another in
the good times and the bad.”
--that’s right on target and it truly is the meaning of the text, but
I’m going to make a logical leap from that verse to something
else going on in the 1st-century church
-if we’re to rejoice with those who rejoice, what’s that mean?
--right...there were those in the church who were joyful
-if we’re to mourn with those who mourn, what would that mean?
What? are you serious?
-there are people in the church who are mourning?
--why, that must mean, then, that there are Christians who are
having a bad day or a bad week...there are Christians who are
sad...there are Christians who are depressed...there are
Christians who are so lonely or are so scared about the future
they have no idea what to do!
Wait a second—where are those people?
-you can go from
Highview to Calvary to Cornerstone to
chances are you won’t see many, if any, of those people
--and you won’t find many of them here
--in fact, you
can look in churches all across
struggle to find more than a handful of mournful Christians
So what’s up with that?
-are we just more spiritual than those the 1st-century Christians?
-or could Paul have been wrong? of course, if you believe that
Scripture is inspired by God like I do, that would mean God got it
wrong, too
-or has something gone terribly wrong in American churches?
To work through this, let me ask you a question—what was running
through your mind while I was reading earlier from Job?
-He [God] throws me into the mud?
-I
cry out to You, O God, but You do not answer?
-When I hoped for good, evil came?
Were you disturbed hearing a “believer” say such things about and to
God? or were you thinking, “Finally! That’s the first honest thing
I’ve heard all morning”?
-I’m going to suggest to you that we in the American church have a
difficult time telling the truth—I’m not talking so much about out-
and-out lying as I am about pretending that life is all peachy
because we’re Christians and Christians aren’t supposed to have
any problems
--and so we fake our way through much of our life, especially
when we’re at church, because God forbid that anyone ever
find out that we’re not like the smiley people on the billboard
I don’t know how or when it all started
-I do know there was a time when it was understood that this life
was full of trouble
and sorrow...suffering wasn’t only a
problem, it was life—for you, your family, friends, and neighbors
--but at some
point in the recent past and in
hearing about suffering and started hearing about victory and
prosperity...we hijacked a couple of prophetic promises made
to Jewish
exiles in
them to us Americans instead...we began to study and pray
the prayer of Jabez rather than the prayers of Jesus
---face it, it’s just feels better to pray, “Enlarge my territory”
rather than, “Nevertheless, not My will, but Yours be
done.”...I mean if you pray that second prayer then God
only knows what might happen
-but the logical outcome of all of this is that if we’re suffering, it must
be because we’re sinning...right?
--if we’re struggling or doubting or depressed, we can’t be living
the purpose-driven life, right?
--and should we ever question God’s fairness or accuse Him of
turning His back on us in our pain...well, then, we might as well
dig our own grave because He’s sending us straight to hell
I mean, whether we’ve heard it explicitly taught or not, that’s what
many Christians have come to believe
-and because we don’t want people poking around in our lives
trying to figure out our supposed sins, we pretend...it’s not that
we want to lie, but we don’t want to pay the price of being honest
Let’s face it: sometimes it is just easier to lie
-“How are you this beautiful Lord’s Day?”
--[plaster on fake grin] “Why, God has blessed me so much this
week that if He gives me anymore I’ll think I’ve died and gone
to heaven.”
---which, being translated, means: “I have been dumped on so
much lately that I don’t think I can handle any more. And
to be honest, if you truly want honest, sometimes I wonder
if I and everyone who knows me just wouldn’t be better off
if I
were dead.”
-far too many of us are afraid
to tell the truth...not that kind of
truth...
at least not in the church
anyway
--but let me ask you
this: “If we can’t tell the truth in the
church,
then where in the world can we tell it?”
Michael Spencer says that the modern American evangelical church
is dying for lack of honesty
-I’m convinced that our
problem isn’t so much what we say, but
what we don’t say
--we read only the happy
verses of Scripture
--and when we do dare read a sad verse we are quick to
explain it away
-but we simply can’t dismiss
entire passages, chapters, and books
--when we do that, we’re
being so incredibly dishonest about the
Book we claim we
believe from cover to cover
Listen to a few disturbing examples from the Bible, starting with David
David has some good
days...days when God wins the battle and
David composes unforgettable music with lyrics
that praise God so
beautifully that I’m convinced
this must be what we’ll sing in eaven
-but David has his share of bad
days
--some of them are caused
by David’s sinful choices—when men
like David sin, they
tend to do it big and bad...and David’s
heart breaks when he
begins to grasp the pain his sin has
caused God and a lot of
innocent people
--but some of David’s bad
days are because he’s doing what’s
good and right, while
other people are doing horrible, terrible
things...and this
causes David to question God’s goodness
-because Jesus quotes it from
the cross, Psalm 22 is perhaps the
best known of David’s
complaints à My God,
my God, why
have You forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so
far from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry out by day,
but You do not answer...
--that’s honest—and guess
what? despite David’s apparent lack
of faith, God doesn’t
strike him dead
---huh...perhaps God
is big enough to handle our questions
Elijah, as many of you
know, is my favorite Old Testament guy
-he boldly prophesies judgment
to a wicked, violent king
--he experiences God working
miracles to keep him alive, to keep
widow and her son alive,
and then to bring that same son back
to life after he dies
--he experiences a literal mountaintop
experience on the summit
of
the false god, Baal
-but when the queen threatens to
kill him, Elijah runs like a scared
puppy...and he ends up hiding
in a cave, crying to God
--here’s the essence of his
prayer that’s found in 1 Kings 19 à
“I’m the only faithful
guy left in the country and if Jezebel has
her way, that number’s
going to be zero real soon. So God,
why don’t you just take
my life now. Please.”
---now, I only have a
bachelor’s degree in psychology, but
that sure
sounds like Elijah is suicidal—not very heroic, is
it?...no, not
very heroic...but honest
And then there’s Jeremiah,
the so-called “weeping prophet” (and for
good reason, too)
-I don’t think this guy ever has a good day
--despite the assurance
that God Himself has set Jeremiah apart
before birth to be a
prophet, Jeremiah’s message to his people
is so difficult that he
barely makes it from day to day
-Jeremiah gets to the point
when his pain is so raw that he cannot
help but be broken by his
own honesty
--Why is my pain unending and my wound grievous and
incurable? Will you be to me like a deceptive brook,
like a
spring that fails? (Jeremiah 15:18)
---that’s pretty
intense—having the nerve to suggest to God
that He’s
nothing but a mirage...looking like He’s going to
meet your
need, but then failing to come through
--what’s ironic is that Jeremiah is the longest book in the
Bible,
but that’s not enough
words to contain all of Jeremiah’s pain
---so Jeremiah writes another one,
appropriately called
Lamentations, because it is nothing but
pure complaints
----listen
to just a taste à Read
Lamentations 3:1-14
---yeah, I doubt you
ever hear those words put to music and
played on any
Christian radio station or sung in many
churches...even though it’s pretty biblical, I think
----perhaps
it’s just a wee bit too honest for
CCM
Well, let’s move away from those whiny Old Testament dudes and
look at how everything changes
after Christ’s resurrection
-surely, after the empty tomb
we have no valid reason to be sad or
to deal honestly with
death, pain, and suffering...right?
Right...just ask Paul, Mr.
Missionary, Mr. Mentor, Mr. Church Planter
-here’s a guy who, despite the
fact that he is doing God’s will, is
still imprisoned, beaten with
rods, ship-wrecked, not to mention
being abandoned/disappointed/betrayed
by his “Christian friends”
--once he writes to
believers in the city of
want you to be uninformed, brothers,
about the hardships we
suffered in the province of
pressure, far beyond our ability to
endure, so that we
despaired even of life. Indeed, in our hearts we felt the
sentence of death.
I can’t preach on this difficult subject without coming back to Jesus
-we could talk about the
unspeakable suffering He experienced
during His trials, beatings,
and crucifixion
--but we’d then be tempted
to ignore it, saying that it has nothing
to do with us because
we’re not facing a execution on a
Roman cross
-so to keep us on track, I’m
going to mention briefly Jesus’ life
experiences before the cross
--He has crowds follow Him,
but only as long as He gives them
miracles and
healings...but when the teaching gets tough, the
religious
establishment rallies those same crowds against Him
--His closest followers
never really get it...or get Him...and so
when false witnesses are
traipsed in front of the court, there’s
no one there to stand
up for Him...they’re holed up, trying to
save their own hide
--Scripture tells us He
got tired, hungry, thirsty, and was tempted
--He grieves because His
own, holy desires were unfulfilled...
Matthew 23:27 à O
have longed to gather your children
together, as a hen
gathers her chicks under her wings,
but you were not willing.
--He weeps while standing
at the grave of a close friend
---He doesn’t say, “Don’t cry Martha,
your brother is in heaven
because God
needed another angel. Don’t cry, Mary,
death isn’t that
big of a deal.”
----instead,
Jesus weeps...because Jesus hurts for
them,
and
because death is an enemy
---and my thinking is that since Jesus was sinless, this
probably gives
us permission to weep, as well
And then there’s one more moment in Jesus’ life that shocks me
-Mark 14.34 à He took
Peter, James, and John along with Him,
and He began to be deeply distressed and
troubled. “My soul is
overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of
death.”
--excuse me, what was that,
Jesus-Christ-Son-of-God?
---Jesus, don’t You
remember how this story ends? The
Father is going
to raise You from the dead...shouldn’t that
make the pain and
horror of death dissipate completely?
--hmmm...or maybe not...maybe...it
hurt enough to tell the truth
---and maybe Jesus doesn’t
know how well Peter, James, and
John could handle
that kind of honesty...but maybe they’re
all He has at the
moment
And that’s what I think we’re supposed to figure out about the church
-no, I don’t exactly know how
you’re going to react to me telling you
the truth, but you’re all
I’ve got at the moment...and I’m hurting...so
I’m going to risk telling you
the truth, because my other options at
this point are even less
attractive
Now we come to the toughest part about this sermon—the conclusion
-I’m not going to give you a
three-step solution because I can’t...I
can’t do it because the Bible
doesn’t give us a three-step solution
--I can tell you that you need to read the Bible honestly, even the
uncomfortable
parts...and accept the fact that our heroes of
the faith may have been heroes, but there’s nothing
super
about any of them
-and if you’re going to read the
Bible honestly, you’ll also discover:
--the Bible teaches us to pray, and pray passionately and honestly
--the Bible teaches us to
trust completely in a God who demands
us to be open and honest
with Him
--the Bible teaches us that
if we’re truly going to be an authentic,
Christian community then
we must trust each other enough to
risk being honest with
them
--and if we’re truly going to
be an authentic, Christian community
then we need to accept
others and their “issues”...we need to
love them
unconditionally...we must not judgingly accuse them
of not having enough
faith or of having some sin in their life...
but instead just do what Romans 12:15 commands: if he is
mourning, for whatever
reason, then I’m going to mourn with
him...I’m not going to
try to determine whether his feelings are
valid or not, I’m just
going to mourn with him, pray for him, be
his friend, stick by
him, and love him
--cause here’s the
thing...if we’re not creating a safe place for
people to be honest, then we’re not the church—not even close
Listen to what one man posted on Michael Spencer’s blog à
We were missionaries in the
At that moment, my entire Christian world collapsed, like bringing down
a skyscraper with a feather from a hummingbird.
Returning to the States, there was absolutely no place for lamenting
Christians . . . I felt like we were totally lost...
For Christians in pain and
uncertainty, there were only the options of; 1.) faking it in a state of
numbness, 2.) leaving the Church and God forever . . . or 3.) hanging yourself.
I considered all three.
My whole downward spiral was finally halted through an experience with a
stranger I met at a Burger King in
Our conversation led to our missionary experience. I was brutally
honest, yet, my honesty didn’t disturb Dave like it had other Christians. He
had no one-liner clichés like, “You may doubt God but He’ll never doubt you.” Dave just listened, quietly . . . until he
began to weep like a baby. He sobbed and
I did too until we had the whole restaurant looking in our direction. Here were two grown men, who barely knew each
other, crying like two school girls, for an hour we cried until our hamburgers were
soggy with our salty tears.
If you want my unsolicited opinion (or even if you don’t), I think this
missionary and Dave Peterson from