The Compassion of Christ - John 11:28-37) - The Heart of Jesus

All right. Hey, Mercy Hill.

All of our locations this weekend. Can you give it up for this year's church planting teams? You guys, man, you guys know Brody and Maddie.

You guys know Jeremy and Julianne. We got two church plants going out. This is an awesome year.

In 2019, if you guys were here, some of you guys might be new from then, but if you were here, we kind of went on this sort of all in. We're moving from partner planting to parent planting, okay? We're going to truly become a church that multiplies. And a few years later, we've had a couple of church plants that go out, but these guys are the teams that are going out for this year. This represents four, all right? So now the family of Mercy Hill is now expanding, and we end up with, yes, Mercy Hill, but then there will end up being four church plants.

We have one in Tampa, and we have one in Roanoke. And actually, if this works, we've actually kind of made this a family affair. So these guys are still going to are supposed to now kind of be beaming in. All right, here we go. If you guys look, we have Carter and Tamara, and we have Erica Kelly.

Oh man, this is awesome. So hey guys, this is what it's all about. You guys know that the prayer at Mercy Hill is that one day we would have more worshipers in the family of churches that we plant than just in the flock right here at Mercy Hill. And this is what is represented as these teams go out, and we continue to stay connected.

Actually, I want you to hear from these guys really quickly. Hey, Redemption, Carter, and Tamara, man, tell us one awesome thing about this past weekend from your Easter service. Man, we are super pumped.

We had the highest attendance that we've ever had as a church at 141 people. So that was so awesome. And we know a bunch of those were the one from some of our members who've invited people. So it was super cool for us. Man, we are so pumped for you guys celebrating that. It's a big deal to get back over that launch number, and y'all have done it in a year. We're excited for y'all.

Man, Eric, you and Kelly, man, give us something awesome. Last week, Easter, what did you guys see? Yeah, last week at Easter, it was a crazy Sunday for us. We also had the biggest Sunday we've ever had in the history of our church. And we also baptized 13 people last Sunday. Praise God, yes. Yeah, so we baptized 13, including my own daughter, five from different countries, kind of all over the world. It was just a movement of God. It was really fun.

So God's moving. Man, thank you guys for sharing that. And thank you guys for y'all's investment. I've been seeing it with the family. It truly is a family. Y'all were raising these churches up together, and these guys have been integral here for these guys that are going out.

So hey, this is what we want to do now, man. We want to pray over them and to commission them. This is one of those times, church, and listen, this guy helped plant Mercy Hill.

There was three people that came to plant this church, and him and Julianne were one of those three first families that came in. Man, we've got people that we love on both sides. You guys from Clifton, No Cal. I mean, there's people just all over. Hey, we got Chad. Chad's going to be the executive pastor.

He came down already living in Canada, living in Nova Scotia now. So this is just a cool time for all these guys to come together. But church, here's what we know. This is why I can bring everybody's name up, but here's what we got to do today. Man, we've got to open our hands, all right? This is what we call at Mercy Hill, a gospel goodbye, all right? And what it's saying is, it's saying, man, we love y'all.

There are stories on both of these launch teams. We love you, but at the same time, man, we understand that eternity is going to be a long time to celebrate what God did, and so we're going to let you go right now. And we're going to open our hands. It's hard for me. I told these guys earlier we had a commissioning dinner today, and I told them it was easier for me being sent than it is sending sometimes in my flesh.

I want to grab. You got leaders like these guys right here, and their wives, and their families, and all these families, and you just want to hold on to them. But we understand that the movement is not just about Mercy Hill. It's a kingdom movement, and we're going to see their gifts and talents multiplied as they go out to plant unique churches. Hey, we have got to be in prayer for them, okay? When Satan does not like this, spiritual warfare gets stirred up when we begin to plant churches, and we saw that in our story, so we want to pray for them and make sure that we are sending the prayer support.

She's like, all right, come on, Pastor, wrap this thing up. Okay, here we go. Hey, let's pray for them, then we're going to celebrate. They're leaving this month, right?

You guys are getting pretty close. The next couple months, you guys are leaving this month. You guys are leaving here very soon, so let's just be in prayer for them, all right? Father, we come before you right now, and Lord, we just ask that you will put your hand and your head to protection on these families. We are so excited about what is going on.

It hurts, though. It's sorrowful, yet we rejoice today, and we look forward to all the stories that we will tell in the future of your faithfulness. God, as these families have opened their hands, Lord, as this church has opened its hands to send them, God, there's so much that you're doing. Lord, I pray that you will protect, two prayers, God, I pray you will protect them, and you will make them wildly successful. God, I pray you will make them wildly fruitful, and Lord, I pray that many would come to know you as their Lord and Savior because the faithfulness of these brothers and sisters that are going out. In Christ's name, we pray, amen.

Hey, at all of our locations, can we just praise God? Man, thank you, guys. We're praying for y'all. Thank you, guys, so much, man. I love you, brother. I love you, guys.

I love y'all. All right, man, what an awesome way to begin a sermon and a service. So, hey, what we're gonna do now, I'm actually, man, just for the sake of time, I've got a lot of celebrating to do for Easter, okay? But we're gonna do that next week, all right, because we saw some awesome stuff last week, you know, tenants-wise, baptisms, so many cool stories, but for the sake of time, we're gonna point that to next week, so stay in tune for that. We're excited about what God did last week, but I want to go ahead and jump into this sermon for today. Hey, if you have this book, they were giving them out of all of our campuses.

We had them on the seats last week. I should have done this last week and I didn't do it then until later in the weekend, but, guys, this book is really a companion for you for this series if you didn't get a chance to look at it, all right? Our guys spent a lot of time, a lot of work on this. Hey, your sermon notes, a Bible reading plan daily that you can walk through. If you don't have a great plan, just grab this and kind of walk through, and this is how our church is set up. I want you to understand how our discipleship works at Mercy Hill.

It's lecture and then lab, okay? So we come on the weekend and somebody, me or somebody else, has spent a ton of their week poring over the Scripture and trying to get it right and make it stick and bring a sermon that is gonna, hopefully, God's gonna use to kind of change us from His Word. And then we go into our groups, that's the lab, and we sort of work it out. How does this work out? Mature believers and immature believers kind of coming together and seeing, hey, what does this mean for your life? What does it mean for my life?

This book has the questions and it helps you do that. If you are not in a group, God wants to change your life and radically grow you and that don't happen alone, okay? That happens in community with others. You can still, this weekend, they do start this week, okay? But you can still this weekend, there are a few groups that have openings. I hope that you'll get online and jump into that, but grab that book and make it a companion through this series. Today we are going to be in John chapter 11. You guys can turn with me to John chapter 11 and let me go ahead and give you, if you're there in your book, you can write this down as the big idea, the big idea for this weekend. Jesus feels deep compassion over a broken world, okay? Jesus feels deep compassion over a broken world.

Now, actually, the first two words of that big idea are a little bit startling depending on what tradition you come from and how you have thought about Christian maturity, okay? Because the fact that Jesus feels, and when I say feel, I mean feelings as in the way that we feel feelings. See, a big part of what's different about Christianity is that the Son of God became human. He became flesh. He took on flesh. Never lost his divinity, okay?

He's a hundred percent God, but he's a hundred percent man. One famous theologian said it like this, when Jesus took on flesh, he took on feelings. Jesus feels things. And that's important for us today because many of us have judged Christian maturity, uh-oh, by the way that we numb feelings. A lot of us judge our Christian maturity by the way that we have learned how to slap a smile on things even though our life has fallen apart, and we call that Christian maturity.

We call that being anchored in the truth and anchored in the fact that Jesus is coming back. Jesus is coming back, and there is a truth that reframes everything, but that does not mean that we don't go through the gambit of human emotion, and it doesn't mean that God didn't create us this way. He did create us this way, and it doesn't mean that we serve a Savior who doesn't know what it's like to feel. He knows what we feel.

You got to think about it like this. In this story today in John chapter 11, it's the shortest verse in all of the Bible, not gonna be the shortest sermon in all of history, okay, but shortest verse in all of the Bible as Jesus wept. Can you get your mind around a God who cries? The ancient Greeks couldn't. In fact, when Hercules cried, Jupiter, the God, now when I say Hercules, many of you just got the image of Kevin Sorbo in 1997, okay.

You know what I'm talking about, all right. Hercules, all right. You got Hercules. When Hercules cried, he was becoming a God. The God Jupiter kind of slapped him down for that.

That's ungodlike to feel. As you mature in being a God, Hercules, you'll stop worrying about how they feel on earth. We serve a God who is in the exact opposite situation, but many of us still, remember this series about the heart of Christ.

Not just about what he did, but who he is. We serve a God who is not distant and cold and unrelatable. We do not serve a God who is a distant lawgiver, truth teller, life examiner, only. He is those things, but he's not only those things. He's also a God who cries. He is a God, this is, and man, you know, one pastor said it like this, I thought it framed it up super well. He is a God. He is a man of truth and a man of tears.

And that's what we got to see today. This is the heart of Christ for us. Let's start in John chapter 11. What I want you to see today is that those things that plague us make Jesus sad and angry. I mean, he's sad and angry about the things that plague us. The things that break our heart breaks his heart. He is not immune from that for us. And it should change the way that we think about our relationship with God.

And it should change the way that we think about our relationship and how we relate to others, all right. Let's dive in John chapter 11, starting in verse 17. When Jesus came, he found that Lazarus had already been in a tomb four days. Bethany was near Jerusalem about two miles off, and many of the Jews had come to Mary and Martha and Mary 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, Lord, if you had been here, 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. That's probably, listen, that's probably kind of a phrase.

That's probably like just kind of a little bit of a platitude kind of idea, okay. He'll rise again. Yes, I know on the last day, he'll rise again. Jesus says to her though, no, no, no. I am the resurrection and the life, and whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he 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 Christ, the Son of God, the one who is coming. Now, I'm dropping you right into the middle of a story, one of the most famous stories, okay. The end, this is funny about today's sermon. I don't know if I've ever talked about Lazarus without ever actually getting into the fact that Lazarus is about to come back from the dead. That's not what this sermon is about today, although that's what is the bigger part of John chapter 11.

Many of you have kind of heard this before. Jesus is going to come, and he weeps with them, and he talks about his power, and then he's going to raise Lazarus from the dead. But I want to focus in on the heart of Christ and what we see, not Jesus toward Lazarus, but Jesus toward these sisters who are broken and brokenhearted over the death of their brother.

Let's get into that. Now, the Bible tells us here, and every preacher points this out, and I'm no exception, okay, that Jesus waited, and he gets to the scene four days after Lazarus is in the tomb. Now, that's interesting, isn't it? And he could have come earlier, we could have read this earlier, but he doesn't. He waits, and Lazarus is dead for four days by the time that he gets there. People have mentioned for a long time, and I think this is probably true, that this is probably intentional on the part of Jesus, because in this day, there was a lot of superstitions around spirits, and maybe somebody could be kind of dead, but not, you know, all the way dead, and not fully dead, and all that kind of stuff, right?

And so Jesus was intentionally waiting. I was actually listening to something the other day, and I heard Dr. Bruce Grayson is a near-death experience expert from the University of Virginia. He just, he wrote a book last year about just kind of different things in death, and all that, and he tells all these stories of people who, like this one guy from South Africa, doesn't wake up in the morning, family takes him to the doctor, they pronounce him dead. He goes into the morgue, and 24 hours later, he wakes up, okay?

And it was a mis- it was obviously a misdiagnosis, okay? And he wakes up. He's banging on the door of the morgue, telling him to let him out, because how cold he is. Well, all the staff has run for their lives, okay? They're scared to death, all right? And they finally, somebody calls an ambulance, they come, hook him up to a bunch of machines, diagnose him with being dehydrated, and send him home, okay?

These type of stories, it's kind of scary, right? But these type of stories happen, and you know, misdiagnosis or whatever, and I think that's kind of maybe the point that Jesus is getting out here. Now, people have made the point Lazarus is going to be resurrected in this story, so obviously Jesus is trying to show his power. Well, I think he's trying to show something else as well.

I think he's gonna show his power, but I think we're gonna see more than that. Jesus does wait, and Martha runs out in verse 22, if you saw what she said. Even now, you can do whatever you want, but she said in verse 21, man, if you just would have been here. Let me ask you something really quickly. Have you ever had that moment that was a Jesus, if you just would have been here moment?

If you just would have been here? I think about this because we are having an exciting day where we commissioned these church planters, but I told their teams today, man, when you go plant a church, a target gets put on your back. It's the funnest thing you'll ever do, and the hardest, simultaneously. Spiritual war is real, and how we fare in spiritual war is partly, I think, predicated on how we have prepared for it. I think that's actually what Paul is getting at when he talks about spiritual war in Ephesians chapter 6, but spiritual war is a real thing, and we see Satan come after us in many ways, and we think, Jesus, if you had just have been here, the world is broken, and we see things that come our way. I remember our first year planting, and we were one year in, and Anna gets pregnant with twins, and we were so excited, and you've never seen two people that were more excited, and then she miscarried. It was devastating in year one, and it was one of those moments, Jesus, if you just would have been here, right?

I don't know what's going on with you. I just feel prompted to say this, man, if you're having one of those moments, if you were just here, you got to know, man, that Jesus is doing something grand. That's, and what I mean, and we're gonna see here, what I mean, there is a truth that He's gonna share that does not, and is not intended to take away your tears. It is intended to deepen them, and reframe them, and fill them with hope, and we're gonna get there, all right? Jesus loved this family, and there's a history here with them, and people are probably telling, you know, rumors, why didn't Jesus come, and all this kind of stuff, and Jesus says in verse 23, your brother will rise again. Now, what's interesting about that is the commentators have pointed out, this may have been, at least the way it seems that Martha takes it, is just a little bit of coach speak, and, and you, you guys know it, and I know it too. Man, sometimes we don't know what to say, and so we just end up saying something, and sometimes it ends up feeling, I said this word earlier, but a little bit like a platitude, and what a platitude is, is an overly used phrase that has moral content that thereby has kind of lost its meaning.

It, it'll all work out in the end, right? How many of, how many of us have seen, you know, somebody loses somebody, people don't know what to say, and I mean, they end up saying things that are crazy. Well, God needed another angel in heaven, and, and He, you know, and just this kind of stuff, right? And you don't want to fall, it's like people don't know what, they're trying to, to enter in, they don't know exactly what to say, and it feels like maybe Mary thinks, or Martha thinks, that that's what Jesus is doing. Hey, you know, He will rise again, and, and she ends up saying back to Him, I know that in the end, He will rise again, but I think what Jesus was trying to get her to see, is that man, no, no, no, that there is something else that you need to see here. Yes, in this immediate story, but also, Martha, you just need to see a truth that reframes and deepens this situation.

Don't take away the pain right now, but it deepens, it, it, it's gonna fill it with something else, fill it with hope. And look what he says in verse 25, Jesus said to her, I am the resurrection and the life, whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. And then he asked her this, do you believe this?

This is not a platitude, this is truth, big difference. Jesus is entering in, and He is sharing a truth with Martha in the moment, maybe one that she already had some framework for, I don't know, but what He's saying to her is, hey, it's not just some generic one day, in the end, everything is gonna work out, and God's gonna, it's like, no, Martha, I am the resurrection. The, in the end, when people rise, and there is a family of God in heaven, it will be because of me. I am the life. One commentator said it like this, Jesus doesn't have life, He is life. What he's trying to get her to see is, I am the one with the power over life. I will lay my life down, I will pick my life back up.

I am the source, okay? I am the one who is life. I am the resurrection and the life. Mary, Lazarus will live again.

Now she probably don't quite realize that he's gonna live again like in a few minutes, okay? But whether you realize that or not, actually not the point today, what Jesus is saying is, because of me, and here's what I want you guys to hear this weekend at all of our campuses, that truth changes things. It doesn't take away all pain. It's not intended to. The world is broken, there are things that come, there are things that we feel, but it deepens and moves in our heart when the truth comes in.

This is very important for us to catch. If I can do my job, we'll see it, okay? It's important to understand, Jesus shares the truth before He shares His tears. And here's why that's important, because some of us think, but I thought sharing the truth was the answer for tears. I thought the truth was what was supposed to mean your tears are supposed to dry up. Like because there is a truth that Jesus is the resurrection of the life, that means that you're supposed to feel better in this moment right now, and that's not true.

That is sold as Christian maturity, but I'm gonna tell you, it's about an inch deep. When people kind of come at us with this idea of maturity, I mean and we've all heard it, and I'm not saying, I mean we probably in some ways all being guilty of it, but it's like when you're sitting in the midst of something hard, and somebody's like, well brother, you know all things are gonna work out together for the good of those who love God, so buck up. You know, what's the problem? You know, it's all gonna be fine. Like you're not supposed to feel the way that you feel in light of the truth that Jesus is the resurrection and the life.

Here's the problem with that. Jesus shares the truth, then immediately shares His tears, which we're gonna get into. The truth isn't supposed to be the answer for our tears. The truth instead reframes our tears. The truth deepens our tears. The truth expands the way we see and understand God in our tears. Martha, Lazarus is dead. This is hard. Your brother is gone.

As C.S. Lewis pointed out, when someone leaves this earth, it's not just them that we lost, it's the aspect of everybody else that they only uniquely could bring out. The humor that they could bring out in the crowd.

The other people who lit up when they are around. It is an inexpressible loss. It is hard. But then he says, I am the resurrection and the life. But then he's gonna go and weep. I think the point of this is, hey, the truth doesn't take away all of our pain. It reframes it. It deepens it. You say, okay, you've said that a few times. Reframes and deepens. What do you mean? Here's exactly what I mean.

You can write this down. 1 Thessalonians 4, 13 to 14. We do not want you to be uninformed brothers, but those who are asleep, about those who are asleep, that you may not, this is the point, grieve as others do who have no hope. He doesn't say that you won't grieve at all. What he says is, you will not grieve as the world does, as people who have no hope.

For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. In light of the truth of the gospel, we can be sad and filled with hope. 1 Corinthians 6 tells us this, sorrowful, yet always rejoicing. 2 Corinthians 6, I mean. 2 Corinthians 4 tells us this, we are pressed, but we are not crushed. There are things that come at us in this life.

Here's what I want you guys to see today, all right? The truth part of this, Jesus is the resurrection, Jesus is the life. It is not sort of this stereotype, you know, I don't know if anybody's not, you should or shouldn't, but I'm just, it's, what's coming in my mind is the Ned Flanders character from The Simpsons, okay? If anybody, and what, and the reason is, that is such a cultural thing, it is the stereotype for Christianity. It is the world's way of kind of looking in and saying, this is what it feels like to us to see a Christian.

And what's the point of that character? It's, it's just, hey neighbor, how you doing? Doesn't matter that my life is falling apart because everything's fine.

I'm gonna slap a smile on it. I think what Jesus is trying to get us to see today is the truth is not, the truth is not intended to make you feel less, it's intended to make you feel more. It's intended to make you feel the heart of God even, in a deeper way, and to feel hopeful even in moments that seem to the world like it's hopeless. Jesus shares a beautiful truth, but then look what he does. When she had said this, she went and called her sister Mary, saying in private, the teacher is here and is calling for you. And, and, and when she heard it, she rose quickly and went to him. Now Jesus 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, consoling her, 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 down on his feet, saying to him, same thing her sister did, Lord, if you had been there, my brother would not have died. Jesus seeing her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was, verse 33, deeply moved in his spirit. He was greatly troubled. But he's already told him he's the resurrection of life, doesn't that fix everything?

Like it doesn't, don't, don't you just slap a smile? He's the resurrection. There's gonna be heaven one day, doesn't matter what happens here. When he sees their pain, he enters in. Before he fixes their problem, he enters into their pain. And he weeps, and he's greatly troubled.

Where have you laid him? They said to him, Lord, come and see. Jesus wept, so the Jews said, see how he loved him.

But some of them said, could not he who opened the eyes of the blind also have kept this man from dying? We are chasing this idea this weekend that Jesus feels in his heart. He is not just a man of truth, cold distance, law-giving, life-examining, but he is one who feels in a way that we feel.

That's what Trinitarian theology is, that Jesus took on flesh. He under, he not, he doesn't just understand what we feel. He has felt and feels what we feel. And when he does, he is greatly moved. He is not just a fixing Savior, he is a mourning Savior. He is one who comes to us in tears.

And this is the idea that we have to get y'all. He gives the truth and then he's willing to enter into pain. The truth reframes, it deepens, it gives us hope in the midst of sorrow, but it is not meant. Jesus never is the one who is coming to say, I want you to slap a smile on your suffering and I'm gonna be playful around your pain.

That's not what he does. It's not Christian maturity. Christian maturity, in other words, is not shown by muted emotions. Maturing as a believer is not deciding, hey, nothing in the world is gonna affect anything about the way that I feel.

That's becoming unhuman. To be human is to feel. What we are called to do, I think, is to be broken over the things that break the heart of God, yet do so in a way that is never crushing, repressed but not crushed. We are sorrowful, yet we never stop rejoicing.

We are one to grieve, but we don't do it, 1 Thessalonians 4, like the world does. This is what we see in a perfect, sinless Savior. Whatever it means to grieve the right way and to feel the right way, we see it in Jesus.

He's the perfect human. And what happens in Jesus' life right here? He sees the pain that is going on, he sees this funeral procession, and he is deeply moved.

This is a word that's actually kind of hard for us to translate a little bit, all right? In one sense, it's like a throbbing pity over the people that are broken. In another sense, there's a bit of anger over the death of Lazarus, his friend, the fact that death is even in the world, the unbelief. Did you see that little part at the end where they said, oh, why couldn't he save him? He could heal the blind.

Why can't he? Even the unbelief. There's a heart-throbbing pity and compassion, and it's mixed with pain. In Greek, what this word gets at is, and I know we're not in an agricultural society so much, but in Greek it's the snort, the audible snorting of a frustrated horse. That's what it means. It's like when an animal, it doesn't quite know what to do, but they're frustrated, and they make some kind of audible kind of gasp and movement. That's what Jesus is feeling.

What I'm trying to get you to see, it's hard to translate. Jesus isn't just sad in this funeral. He's also mad. Is that not the flip side of compassion? When we love and then we see the people that we love in pain and hurt, are we not angered by that? Do we not become righteously angry at the friend that hurt them, or the boss that hurt them, or the school, or the church even, that hurt them?

Right? There is a righteous anger there, and Jesus is showing us that. Well, brother, you know, it's all gonna work out in the end. Why would we ever even feel anger in this world, or how would we ever feel this type of sadness? That is billed as Christian maturity.

Y'all, it's an inch deep. You know, we should be filled with sadness and anger when we see the state of the world. Food insecurity all over the world.

The bullying that kids walk through in schools and online. You know, when we see the way our our laws target the vulnerable, the unborn. We see racism in our society. When we see death itself, the feeling that we have following Christ, it is it is a greatly moved, troubled, man, I'm compassionate here. I'm angry here. This is what we feel. A few weeks ago, we lost a dear brother in our in our congregation. Dear brother. I mean, you know, leaves a mountain of a legacy here.

All right? And I think about him, and I think about his family and and the and the testimony of this family and caring for him over the last couple of years. And I can tell you multiple stories about our brother, Trey, who has gone now to be with the Lord. But I think about that, and I think about when someone like that, man, even when they've done the life well lived before God, what is the emotion at a funeral? I've even been to funerals where the funeral is trying to be spun only to be a happy occasion. There, listen, there is beauty in a life well lived, and there is hope fully in understanding that that that people move on and they become, you know, in a better place, so to speak, if they're, you know, found if their faith is in Christ.

I get that. There is hope in that. But there is also a great sadness in it, and that's okay. There is also a grief in it. There's a brokenness in it.

I would say there's even a maddening in it. There's even an anger that the world is the way that it is, and a longing for God to come and to change it. I think in this passage we see the truth doesn't take away our tears. It reframes them. It expands them.

It deepens them. Jesus Christ smashes that stereotype of the Christian who slaps a smile on suffering and is playful around pain and is trite about tragedy. This is not the God that we serve. It's not the Christ that we serve.

It's not the example that we follow. Never pressed, never crushed, but pressed. Never, never, never, never so sorrowful that we are mastered by our emotions. We always rejoice, but we are sorrowful at times. This is what it means, I think, to be a human. It's a step into maturity. I would think about it like this.

I thought of this example. Guys, I don't know if you've ever been sick and they prescribe something, but I think many times Christians feel like the truth of the resurrection and the truth of heaven is supposed to be an anesthetic that numbs us from the pain of the world. And what I want to tell you today is that the truth is not an anesthetic that numbs us from the pain. It's a shot of prednisone that gives us a massive appetite to feast more upon the goodness and the hope until we become strong. It's not an anesthetic to make us think everything's fine.

It's a shot of steroids to give us the strength to not run west, but to run east directly into the long dark night of the soul. It's a hold on to God until we get to the other side and we see the sun begin to come up. I think that's more in line with Christian maturity. You know, I've thought about this passage obviously for a couple weeks and well really a couple months we've been talking about these different sermons, but you know a lot of people, a lot of people can't square this this message. They can't square John 11.

Here's why. Because they say, man, who is Jesus troubled by? Like why is he so upset? He's about to raise Lazarus from the dead. I mean Jesus is going to turn this funeral into a party.

Why in the world is he upset? And I think actually theologically some different preachers that I love and listen to, some different commentaries that I love and read, I think that one idea takes them down some rabbit holes that are way far away from where we ought to be. I think the plain reading is the main reading. And the plain reading is that the people saw Jesus weep and here's what they assumed.

You guys read it. What do they say? They said, oh how he loved him. They saw Jesus' reaction and they said, man, his heart is broken over Lazarus, over Mary and Martha. His heart is broken over this funeral. They said that because that's exactly what he was troubled and moved by. Not just Lazarus, but all of the funerals that he wouldn't interrupt in the future.

All the pain that he wouldn't be there to just snap his fingers and it go away. He was seeing all of this stuff and he was moved in compassion. I think it deepens what we're talking about here today. Don't you understand what I'm getting at? Jesus knows full well I'm about to turn this funeral into a party and yet he still is willing to go there with Martha and Mary.

He's still willing to weep as they weep. And I think that matters a ton. And I don't know about you, but here's why I think about it for myself. Because there is nothing like a series like this talking about the heart of Christ to expose the failures that we have, you know, as the way that we relate to others, the way that we relate to as parents, the way that we relate to our kids. If I had one thing I could change about my personality, I wish I could be more and I pray God would change me in this.

I want to be more of a tender father than a football coach all the time in my home, you know. And here's what I think about this story. We think and this is what we do many times in the Christian life. We try to take somebody in pain and punt them all the way to a world that doesn't have tears. We say, hey, I mean look at Revelation.

Jesus is gonna wipe away every tear. Yeah, that's not the world we live in. You're right. Whenever there's a world where there's nothing to cry over, we won't cry anymore. But that's not the world that we live in today, right? But here's what we try to do. We try to punt people toward the end and say, hey, because this glorious truth is coming, you shouldn't feel the way that you feel right now. But, and I think about, man, I, that's, I mean, how many times do I do that as a dad?

Kid falls down and scrapes their knee. And before I can even say, hey, I love you, I understand, I remember what that's like. It feels like the world is over, but I think in about five minutes you're gonna be okay. Like, instead of doing that, what do I do many times? Immediately jump in football coach mode. And I get it, and don't take this the wrong way, I ain't trying to raise sissy kids, okay? I'm not. And you probably know me, I'm telling them to be tough, and tell them to buck, and my kids are tough.

They're super tough, alright? But can I not even step in for what, what am I doing? I'm looking at the situation going, hey, I know that this ain't gonna kill you, right?

I, I, you don't know that because you're five years old. I know that, and I know that this is gonna be okay. And so what I want you to do is act like it's okay right now.

I want you to go all the way there and anchor, and bring that all the way back in, and stop feeling the way that you feel. And I'm just so glad Jesus doesn't do that with me, right? Instead what Christ does is say, man, I'm about to blow this funeral up.

It's gonna be a party. That's exactly what he's gonna do with this whole world. The truth is that Jesus Christ is gonna take everything sad and make it untrue. He will wipe away every single tear.

We fully understand that. It is coming one day, but he doesn't use that to beat us down and say, don't feel now. Instead he enters in the heart of Christ for us. It is one that comes tenderly and gently, actually gentle and lowly.

You could say, we, man, for the sake of time, let me, let me move, let me move here, and let's just go ahead and just jump into applying this, alright? Here's what I want us to say this weekend, and try to take all this and try to boil it down. Follow Jesus in feeling deep compassion, alright? And I mean that for others, yes, feeling that compassion, but also understanding that we live in a broken world, and that, and I'm using that word compassion, a lot of emotions can come into that. Emotions or feelings are kind of hard to talk about, but just thinking about, man, even sadness, brokenness, anger over the world, sub all that stuff in, okay?

But what I'm saying is, understand that Jesus failed. Maturity is not in muting our emotions. Maturity is in allowing the hope of the future to come in and deepen them, and reframe them, and like a shot of steroids, help us get through the long night, dark night of the soul.

But they are not an immediate quick fix. It's not truth instead of tears. It is truth that reframes our tears.

That is Christian maturity. And I think first we got to say this, man, it all starts with understanding the deep compassion that Jesus has for you. You know, Isaiah 53 calls Jesus a man of sorrows. He is a man of sorrows. He is a man acquainted with our grief. Jesus Christ came to this earth because of how broken He saw the situation that we were in. Man, He has compassion over us.

He has perfect anger for the things that plague us. I think Jesus in this moment is seeing a lot of funerals that He won't interrupt, and that's why He came. Y'all, He came, there's gonna be things in this life where He doesn't give us an instant fix, but Jesus Christ came to this earth to give us that eternal hope that one day He will usher in a new heavens and a new earth. And He did this on the cross for us, where Jesus Christ gave His life that we could have an eternal hope, all right? Man, many people went through the baptismal waters last week at different campuses, different services. I don't know if the service you're in is gonna have one or not, but you know, if there's gonna be more baptisms this week, but that's what it is when people realize Jesus came for them, and they give their life over to Him, and maybe that's something you would do even today. But as you think about the heart of Christ, I want to try to apply this in two ways and we'll be done, all right?

The first one is this. I want you to think about your own life, just the way you have thought about your emotional life, all right? The way, and have you had that, have you thought in your mind, man, I think Christian maturity is not feeling. Brokenness, sadness, grief, compassion, anger over the world, I think that's what maturity is, and that's what I've been trying to run to.

Will you see today that that's not where He wants us to go, because that's not where He went? Here's the question, are we muting our emotions thinking that that is Christian maturity? And if we are, could we start the journey today and allow the truth of the resurrection of life to begin to reframe the way that we feel? Man, are there people in our life that we can begin to say, hey, I need you to come in, I need to engage this, I need to feel, and it's okay to feel the sadness and grief over what's going on in my life, but I don't want to do that alone. You know, I mentioned groups already and I pray that somebody, maybe even this service or at our campuses, hey, make the decision right now, if Christian maturity is not muting your feelings, you may need help with growth in that. And one of the ways that you're going to get help and growth with that is in a group of people. Discipleship happens in community, get into a community group at Mercy Hill. But the second final way that I want to apply this this weekend is this, in what ways can we come alongside others in their sorrow?

In what ways can we come alongside others? Or do we allow the truth to trump tears? Okay, what I mean by that is this, man, some churches might lean one way or another. I've got my finger on the pulse of this church and I'm telling you, I think we're a truth-leaning church. And what I mean by that is, I think we might lean toward, hey, these are the set of truths that you need.

Someone is crying and weeping because of the pain of their situation and before we know it, we've given them the six things they need to do to fix it. You know? I'm never telling you to get away from the truth. We can't get away from truth, ever. Then we need the truth of the Word. We need to see what Jesus, we need the truth. But we've also, we've also need to see, maybe today, that God isn't just a law-giving, truth-telling, life examiner. Man, he is also one who weeps with us. And so what does that mean for us?

Man, what, what, what image, you know, what kind of things come to your mind where we immediately skip to, yeah, but I've got the three things I need to tell you. And maybe we need to enter in and weep with those who weep. Romans 12 says, share, carry the burden, get under the load with somebody. Man, just, just have compassion over the way it feels for them right now. You know, I thought about this because I thought, man, okay, here, here's, here's kind of, this is the best way I could think to maybe apply this as we close, okay? Yes, alright? Yes. Government programs can create poverty cycles. But you know what, somebody who's in poverty, they might actually just need somebody to come alongside them to say, man, this has got to be very, very hard. That, am I getting at it?

Yes. If you're a Christian, you, you're born twice, you die once. You know, that's kind of the old preacher way to say it, right? Born once, die twice. But you're born, you know, you're born twice, you only die once.

If you're reborn, this death and this life is all you're ever gonna experience of death and, and heaven awaits and, and, and all of that and, and yes, heaven is gonna be awesome. I got it. That's the truth. I understand the truth. We need the truth. The truth helps us to reframe. At the same time, somebody in our community groups or somebody in this church, it's walking through a pretty heavy diagnosis. Yes, they need the truth to help reframe and give hope and encourage.

But they also might need someone to just sit and weep with them, to understand. Now, I don't have, I'm not giving you a bunch of answers. What I'm giving you is myself. What I'm giving you is my emotions. What I'm giving you is to get up under the burden with you.

And I've got four or five other things I could say, but I think we're getting it, right? Man, let's, yes, we're truth people. But Jesus Christ was a man of truth and tears. Let's pray. Father, we come before you and Lord, I pray that you will take the words from John 11. You will take the truth of the heart of Christ, and you will make us a deep church. God, make us a deep people who are not afraid of feeling deeply.

God, who are not afraid of the greatly moved, troubled, compassionate anger that happens because of a broken world. Lord, I pray you do that in my life. I pray you do that in the lives of all those who attend. Lord, I pray that our groups, God, I just pray that they would move the needle this week. Lord, I pray that our people and groups would get real and get deep. Lord, I just ask that you would move for us. God, show us what it means that you're not just a distant, cold God, but the Son of God feels. In Christ's name, amen.