And I'm excited about tonight. I really feel just that the Lord has some special things that he wants to share with our community tonight. And I want to encourage you, even if I know that there's about 60% of our church, is actually online. And so even if you're in your living room and you're watching, or maybe you're watching tomorrow, or whatever it is, I just want to encourage you to remove distractions, just be present in this message.
Because I really believe that whenever this gets listened to that the Lord's wanting to do some special work. So this week, Katie and I, we were praying about this message. And what is the Lord's heart for where we're at and where a lot of our community is at? And we felt like the Lord highlighted mourning, highlighted mourning with those who mourn.
And so you can turn your bibles to John 11. 2020 has been a year of tragedy in a lot of different ways. I think many of us are probably finding ourselves going through things that we didn't dream of when we were in 2019. And a lot of us are maybe going through heartache.
Some of us have experienced great love or great loss, maybe great love too. But some of it's related to COVID and maybe other parts of it's maybe related to racism, maybe some parts are related to job loss or what was kind of lurking underneath the surface, rose to the surface in 2020. And yeah, I mean, I know that there's families in our community that have received diagnosis moments. And as a family and as a church, we believe in healings, miracles, signs and wonders.
We believe that we get to be the hands and feet of Jesus and we have the power and authority that he's given us because of the finished work of the cross. And we believe that. And when you believe it and you start stepping into that, you step into tension. Because then when you lay hands on a loved one and they don't get healed, then you actually sit in the tension of are your promises true?
And there's a wrestle that you go through when you try to actually step into the promises of God and believe him at his word. And so tonight, what I'm wanting to do is not discount what if you've been around the growth community for a while, you know that you know that God's a healer and he actually wants to heal people through you. And so I'm not discounting at all our power and authority that we've been given as I share tonight. But the reality is storms hit the righteous and the unrighteous.
Storms are not a respecter of persons. That's just the reality. There's hardship and loss and difficulty that we all face. And it's not because you're less righteous or more righteous than another person.
And so I think for some of us, it's just helpful to go like, oh yeah, all this bad stuff isn't happening because I'm a bad person. No, the bad stuff is happening because there's a fallen world and there's brokenness and there's sin in the world. And it's not God micromanaging your life trying to teach you a lesson. There's just a broken world that we're living in.
And as a church, we actually need to know how do I deal with the pain? How do I deal with the discouragement? How do I deal with the loss? And then when it's not happening to us, but it's happening to someone that we know that's in our lives, how do we actually live and respond to their pain and to their loss and to their heartache and their discouragement?
In American culture, it's really hard to do mourning. Lament is like, think about an American lamenting. It doesn't even, like that doesn't even compute, right? It's like, what do you mean?
An American Christian lamenting? That's like a not a normal thing, right? When we look at the Psalms, David wrote 60% of the Psalms are celebration. 40% are lament.
How many songs do we sing as the American church of lament? Just pause and think about that. It's like, yes, victory in Jesus, but there's real stuff that's happening in everyday life that we're facing, real discouragement, real disappointment, real loss that we're facing. But most of the time when you enter into the church, you enter into this, I'm blessed world land, right?
I'm doing great, I'm blessed. I'm good brother, I'm really good. Yeah, no, it's been tough, but we're okay. You know, we just keep on rolling, keep on trucking.
And we just like the little engine that could, right? And most of us maybe grew up, this wasn't my story, but I know for us as Americans, most of us were told by our parents, hey, don't cry, don't cry, don't cry, stop, don't cry, right? Especially as boys, as men, it's like men, don't cry, men don't do that. And so we get locked up in so much emotion that we just stuff it.
We just push it down, we just ignore it, act like the disappointment, discouragement and loss, it's just, it's not a big deal. And I think that Jewish culture had something going for them because they knew how to mourn. They knew how to grieve when someone passed away in America, it's like, okay, play in the funeral. And then once you have the funeral, you cried the funeral.
And then you move on and you just act like, hey, back to normal, just move on, we gotta move on, as if one of our loved ones didn't die. As if there's not a gaping hole in our hearts, we just kind of gotta move on and make do with what we've got. I think that the church, I think that our city and our nation and our communities don't need any more Christians that have good answers and correct theology and really buttoned up doctrine. Can you imagine at your funeral, can you imagine at your funeral, your friends and family getting up and saying, man, they really knew their Bible.
They really had good doctrine. They really figured it out. Their system of theology, it was seamless. It's like a Ziploc bag, it was perfect.
And man, they really did keep us in check on Facebook, didn't they? They really let us know and we were a little off. They let us know about it. We don't need more Christians that are correct.
We don't need more Christians that are going, but I was studying this theologian and the whole basis of your argument is just wrong. And there's nothing in your argument that makes sense. And there's just this, I just wonder if loving truth doesn't have to be at the expense of becoming love. Is that, does that, I don't know if that connects with you in 2020, but I wonder if the Pharisee will correctness on the church needs to get broken off and we need to step into becoming love and actually carrying out our destiny in him.
I think we need to get acquainted with the brokenness of our culture and our city and even our own brokenness, even our own pain, our own mourning that needs to be done. John 11, it's the story many of us have maybe heard it, some of you maybe haven't. There's a friend of Jesus, his name is Lazarus, and he passes away. And his sisters are Mary and Martha.
And Jesus was not in that area when Lazarus passed away. And so he's coming to Bethany. And it's in the wake of Lazarus dying. And we're going to pick up in verse 17, but what's happening is in Jewish culture, they would mourn a loved one's death after they get buried.
Then they would spend seven days mourning. Seven days, it's not like, wham, bam, thank you ma'am, a funeral, now I'm done, I'm glad I got that over with, wow, that costed $20,000, right? Instead, it was, they spent seven days mourning, and friends and family would come and visit the family that's mourning. And so that's where we're picking up, in verse 17, I'm going to read it.
It says, now in Jesus' game, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. So it's right in the middle of that seven day time of mourning called Shiva in Jewish culture. And Bethany was near Jerusalem, that's where they live, about two miles off. And many of the Jews had come to Martha and to marry to console them concerning their brother.
So when Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him. But Mary remained seated in the house. Martha said to Jesus, my brother would not have died. But even now, I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you.
And Jesus said to her, your brother will rise again. Martha said to him, I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day. And Jesus said to her, I am the resurrection in the life. Whoever believes in me though, he died yet he shall live and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.
Do you believe this? And she said to him, yes Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God who is coming into the world. We're going to keep on reading, are we okay? When she had said this, she went and called her sister Mary, saying in private, the teacher is here and he's calling for you.
And when she heard it, she rose quickly and went to him. Now she had not yet come into the village, but was still in the place where Martha had met him. When the Jews who were with her in the house and saw Mary rise quickly and go out, they followed her, supposing that she was going to the tomb to weep there. Now when Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet, saying to him, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.
When Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled. And he said, where have you laid him? And they said to him, Lord, come and see, Jesus wept. So the Jews said, see how he loved him, but some of them accused Jesus, saying could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man, also have kept this man from dying.
There's two conversations that happened in this passage. One with Martha and one with Mary. With Martha, Martha approaches Jesus. And isn't it interesting, did you notice that Martha and Mary probably had been talking in the middle of all of their pain and mourning?
They had been talking and they both said the same thing to Jesus. They both said, if you were here, he wouldn't have died. They say the exact same phrase, same thing. But did you notice what Martha did after she said the statement?
Look at what she did, right after she says the statement. She says, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that whatever you ask from God will give it to you. What's Martha doing?
She's exposing her pain. You weren't here. And if you were here, things would have been different. She exposes her heart a little bit.
But then right away, the exposed artery, the blood is spreading everywhere. And she exposes it a little bit and then quickly puts a band-aid of faith on it. You see that? Why weren't you here?
But I know that you're good. Why weren't you here? Oh, but I know that you say goes. See, a lot of times what we do is we'll stuff our pain with so many other things.
Maybe it's an addiction that we keep on going back to. Maybe it's pornography. Maybe it's like I'm going to hit up the liquor store again. Maybe it's I'm just going to enter into another codependent relationship.
Maybe it's I'm just going to go. I'm going to isolate. But I think what a lot of Christians do in America, especially if you believe in faith that he's a miracle worker, a lot of times what you do is you just try to slap a band-aid on it really quick, like Martha. It's not that Martha was doing all of these things wrong.
It's not like she was incense, right? But look at what Mary does. I think this is so interesting. Look at what Mary does.
She says the exact same thing. Lord, if you have been here, my brother would not have died. And she sits in it. She sits in the pain.
She sits in the tension. She fully feels. She fully feels the pain of it. That moment moves the heart of God.
In that moment, Martha hears some truth. But what Martha and Mary need is not necessarily truth. They need the heart of God moved in compassion. And we see that Mary gets it.
It says that Jesus responds to you. He says he's deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled. That phrase deeply moved and greatly troubled in Greek is like an indignation. It's almost like anger.
He has anger about the situation. He's seen her weeping at his feet, all over the friends and family behind her weeping. And instead, it's not necessarily he's not going right to tears. It actually is right to one of the stages of grief.
He goes right into anger. And what he's saying in that moment, what Jesus is feeling, is it was never supposed to be this way. In that moment, he's feeling the anger of the gap between the garden and heaven. He's feeling the gap of what he used to remember in the garden with Adam and Eve.
Before it all fell apart, he remembers what he was like. And he's mourning. And he's feeling the anger and the indignation of death and everything that it's stolen. Sin and all of the impact of it.
The brokenness and all of the what-ifs. What if you were here? Why weren't you here? Why didn't you come through?
Why didn't you make this happen or not make this happen? Why didn't you do this? And he's angry about the brokenness of not just that moment, but the gap that we all live in. The gap of the pain, the gap of the injustice, the gap of how could this happen to me?
Jesus, he responds to Mary and he steps into the tension with her. He begins to mourn with those who mourn. He starts weeping with her. In Jesus' sermon on the Mount.
The second thing that he says on the sermon on the Mount, in the beatitudes, he says, blessed are those who mourn. What's the promise that he attaches to those who mourn? For they will be comforted. Blessed are those who mourn.
For they will become comforted. Jesus begins to weep and wail and groan. Listen, I think a lot of times we think of Jesus, and it's like, oh, it's a beautiful tear on his face. He really cared.
Just like one stream, one tear. And it's like this beautiful moment of like, whoa, Jesus, man. He really cared. I don't know how you picture Jesus in this moment, but Jesus ugly cried.
How many of you have ugly cried? I've like ugly cried. And then have you, I don't know if any of you guys are like, this is embarrassing. I'm feeling exposed right now.
I'm exposing myself. Super vulnerable moment. How many of you guys are like, ugly cried? And then you get into the bathroom and you look at yourself and you're like, oh.
Oh. And you just look at yourself like, wow, I'm a mess. You know? You're like, how do my eyes look like that?
You know? Right? Jesus literally, he wasn't good looking. It says in the Bible that Jesus was not good looking.
And so then Jesus ugly cries. And what did the Jews say that were right there? They literally look at Jesus and how bad he was crying. And they're like, wow, he really did love him.
Did you see that in the passage? Look at that. So the Jews said, see how he loved him? Jesus did not cry with one tear streaming down his face.
He ugly cried. He groaned. It's like a snorting cry. Like ugly, it's bad.
It's a moment, a traumatic moment. And he's not, it wasn't composed. It wasn't calculated. It was raw and real.
It was messy. And I believe that he is the God that weeps. He is the God in the mess. Emmanuel in the mess.
Emmanuel in the weeping, in the morning, in the brokenness. In your brokenness and your weeping in your morning. In Exodus 34, Moses, he's talking to God and he's saying, God, show me your glory. And then God reveals himself.
And it's the only place in the Bible where God the Father describes himself. It's the only place in the Bible where he actually uses language to describe who he is. And the first thing that he says is, I am the Lord the Lord, a God merciful. But that word merciful is best translated compassionate.
The first thing that God says about himself is, I am a God of compassion. And that word in compassion in Hebrew actually relates closely with a word womb in Hebrew. And it's drawing this picture of a mother caring for the most vulnerable that's in need. God is declaring himself for you and for me.
He's declaring himself as the God that has the mother heart of compassion. The tenderness of compassion that we all need in our brokenness. That we all need in that moment when we're a mess. Jesus is found in pain over the gap.
The pain of betrayal, the pain of abuse, the pain of rejection, the loss of what life used to look like, the pain of another month with no pregnancy, the pain of racial injustice, the pain of words that have cut, the pain of being misunderstood, the pain of online job searching for another afternoon and not getting an interview, the pain of maybe working from home and having it affect your mental health, the pain of having children that can't go to school and you're not being sure if you can make it another day. The pain of an unexpected diagnosis, loneliness, isolation, the pain of a broken relationship or failed expectations, past addiction tendencies or flaring up, maybe you're struggling to get out of bed in the morning. In the gap, he's found as God compassionate. He's found as the one in your gap, in the gap between the garden, in the gap between the holy city and heaven, in that gap of pain and tension, he's found mourning with those who mourn.
If you have your bibles turned to Revelation 21, Revelation 21, you know what's interesting, I think it's important for us to look at, is Martha moved out of her pain. Do you remember that? She moved out of her pain quickly. But Mary stayed long enough in her morning.
Listen, everyone listen, Mary spent a long enough time in her morning, long enough to be comforted in her morning. Some of us try to move on so quickly out of the pain and it's so good that you want to actually step into faith. That's a really good thing. Praise God.
Praise God that you're gonna bounce back. Praise God, you're gonna lift your chin, look up, and look at him and you're gonna bounce back. That's amazing. But some of us, and some of us need to get out of this zone.
Some of us have been in self-pity mode. And we need to actually lift our chin, look up, and stand up in faith and go, I'm gonna actually hope again. But a lot of us as American Christians, we actually need to sit in the pain long enough to be comforted, because you haven't actually felt the pain of it and you've stuffed it and you're gonna ignore it, but it always surfaces and it always comes out sideways. And the Lord is saying, I'm inviting you in to the mess of the ugly crime.
I'm inviting you into my arms of the God of comfort, because blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted. Revelation 21, John is seeing a vision of the future someday and he says this, then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. For the first heaven and the first earth had passed away and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorn for her husband.
And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying behold, the dwelling place of God is with man, just like the garden. He will dwell with them. They will be his people. God himself will be with them as their God.
He will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore for the former things that have passed away. Then he said, behold, I'm making all things new. The first thing that God says about himself in the Bible is that he's the God of compassion, like a mother carrying a provulnerable needy infant.
And the end of the story is not God bringing the pearly gates in the gold streets and saying, I know that it was hard. I know that it was hard, but look at all of this. No, instead, God, on the eve of the new heavens and the new earth, it's coming down and instead of jumping past all of the pain of the gap that we've lived in in this age, instead of just moving on, he steps close to the billions of our faces and he takes his finger to your eye. And he looks at you with deep love and compassion, and he wipes your eye.
He wipes your tear. Hey, before the party, before the pearly gates, before the streets of gold, before the sea of glass, there's one thing that must be done. All of the morning, I'm going to stand in front of you and look you in the eyes. I have plenty of time and I'm gonna go one by one.
I'm not in a hurry. I got it. I was there in every moment. And in all of your loneliness and all of your brokenness, in all of the difficulty, in all of the tension, in all of the loss, I was there the whole time and I know that you didn't feel my finger wiping your tear away.
I know you didn't feel it maybe in those moments, but I'm telling you this. This is for all of those moments. All of the moments of you in the gap. All of the moments that didn't make sense.
All of the wise, all of those moments in this. Finally, you're seeing that in the faith, in the difficulty that I was here the whole time. I know you bounced back in faith. I'm so proud of you.
I'm so proud of you, how you were present to the pain, how you welcomed me even when you hadn't seen me. Even when you hadn't seen me face to face, you still did it, bless it, are you? My son, my daughter. Oh, I've been waiting a long time to hold you like an infant and wipe every tear from your eye.
Yeah, we're gonna jump. We're gonna celebrate that none of this is gonna happen anymore, but this is the last time. And it's the first time that you get me right here and you finally are able to connect the dots that I was there in all of it. I believe that we're gonna, I just have a wondering, that we're gonna see him and we're gonna have this revelation of like, you get it, you understand it.
You saw what no one saw. You had the emotions that no one could have for me. You mourned in that moment in a way that no one else could. You understand, you know what this is look like for me.
You know what this year has been like. You know how there's been moments where I haven't felt like getting on a bed, you know, that there's been so many moments of lost hope, pain that's too deep to even face. Lord, you know that I haven't even had the strength to mourn. Jesus, I thank you that you had to see us stepping in tonight to be blessed through mourning and then finding comfort.
Second Corinthians starts out, Paul says, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, the God of all comfort who comforts us in all of our afflictions, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. I just see, I see you, I see us, sitting in the pain long enough to be comforted, sitting in the affliction long enough, mourning just long enough to be comforted by him and then the Lord taking that comfort and multiplying it and us being part of the fulfillment of comforting those who mourn. And some of us, I know that even tonight you're going, yup, I can't go there. And don't feel guilty, don't feel shame about that, don't feel like there's something wrong with me, there's nothing wrong with you, if you don't feel like you can go there.
The enemy's totally lying to you and accusing you that there's something wrong with you, but you just be present when it surfaces. It's gonna surface the pain. It's gonna surface, it always does, but when it surfaces, you go in and close the door and you be with him and you let it all out. So it's okay if you're not feeling it.
It's okay if you're not feeling the emotions tonight. You just know what you do when you get them, okay? Let's all stand if you're able. I wanna commission us out, pray over us.
But I believe that the God of all comfort is stepping in. I believe that for some of us tonight, you get to have a continuation of this time and you get to just be alone and talk to the Lord. And even for couples, just check in with each other and say like, hey, are you okay? Do you want some time?
And just let's love each other well to say, hey, go take a drive with the Lord. And let's just love each other well tonight, okay? But man, I believe that there's a people rising up that maybe don't have all the answers, but have learned to mourn with those who mourn, that have been comforted in their afflictions and in their mourning and actually get to comfort in others with the comfort that they've received. So Lord, we thank you that you're right in the middle of it.
You're right in the middle of the gap between how the story started and how the story will end. You're right in the middle of the pain, you're a manual, and you will never leave. You're God with us in the disappointment, in the loss, in the failed expectations and the betrayal, in the abuse, in the, I don't know what's next and confusion, in the pain of what just happened. And I don't even know how to grapple with it.
Lord, we just say that the first step that we're taking is to just cry, even if it's ugly crying, thank you that you ugly cry too, that you're the safe place for my ugly crying. You really are safe. So Lord, we go out knowing that we have somebody that loves us unconditionally, in Jesus name.