Tears of Disappointment
From the Series: Tears
Speaker: Joel Schmidgall
Date: March 7, 2010
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Transcript
Today we continue our series entitle ‘Tears’ as we move into the Book of Jeremiah. It is appropriately titled this because we see a man who is called the Weeping Prophet. This man did not just pray, but he cried out to God. This man would not just seek a solution but he would feel the pain of those that he was ministering to. The people who would come and would give him grief and hate him, he would weep on their behalf. This man is way too in touch with his emotions for me! He makes me feel a little uncomfortable. On the pendulum, Nina, my wife, would be over here as a person who cries at movie previews, and I would be on the other side as the guy who laughs at those crying at the movie preview. It was interesting growing up in my house because my dad, this big 6’3, 260, a lot of man, living large and in charge, he found himself, in the middle of all the stress and conflict and the anger that would happen as a pastor, he would never lose control of his emotions and never shed a tear. I think once in my life I saw him cry, that is outside of the altar. He was a different man. He would get into the altar, and for those of you who aren’t familiar with the altar, back in the day at the front of a lot of churches, you would come forward at the end of a service or after a sermon and you would come forward because of what God was doing inside of you. You would come forward to pray, maybe asking for forgiveness or seeking the Lord for some decision or some place of change that you need, and you would come forward and it was a very persona thing. It was you and God, but at the same time, the pastoral team could pray over you. And it was so cool to see this large, intimidating man, a rock of a man, would come into the altar and would be transformed into a pastor with constant tears running down his face, crying out to God for these people who were seeking God. I thought it was such a wonderful picture of what God does to us. He takes us and He takes the toughest parts of who we are and He breaks those things down. We come into the presence of God and we are changed and we are different and we are used in unique ways before Him. So, he would step into this altar and he would be transformed into a different man, weeping and caring and loving on the people who were coming forward to seek God. He would pray for them and he would take their burdens and put them on his back and he would walk with people along as they carried pain. And the quintessential image I have in my head was this picture where it’s just his big ol’ paw. He had these massive farmer hands. A big ol’ paw reached out extended to the front on someone’s head with this intense tearful prayer on his face as he prayed for them. In many ways, he was a weeping prophet in the altar. All of us need a weeping prophet in our life. Someone who sees the best in us. Someone who can speak the truth to us. Someone who can walk through pain with us. That’s what I call love, those three things.
We jump into the context of Jeremiah and here is the situation: King Josiah had died and the nation of Israel has turned from its principles and turned from God, and they started to be very concerned with self-gratification, merely looking inward to please themselves and their selfish desires and they’ve turned away, in Chapter 5, from the poor and from those in need and they’ve started down the wrong path. All of us here know someone who is going down the wrong path, who is in this situation. Maybe it is ourselves, or someone in our life who is taking the wrong direction. Maybe there are parents here today who have watched a child choose the wrong direction, leading directly toward some serious pain. Maybe it is a friend who has made bad decision after bad decision after wrong decision. You might have a family who it hurts to even think about the direction they are headed in. This is a topic that I don’t think we talk very much about. How do we deal with the pain and the grief of the present situations and the future situations of someone who is so close and someone we love so much? Who are we to be for them and how are we to act around them? How are we to treat them?
I’ve always thought that Jeremiah’s description of a weeping prophet was a contradictory one because I think about the word ‘prophet’ and all the associations that come with that. First of all, someone who is really just weird. And then maybe someone who speaks in King James language, ‘how art thou?’ Maybe in a deeper voice, and someone who is kind of removed from relationship, and on the field of normal, maybe they would be on the sidelines cheering everyone else on. Then you’ve got the word ‘weeping’ for someone else. When you think of someone who weeps for another, you think of someone who is very emotionally connected, who is involved in relationships and has a level of understanding of the heart condition. So you put the two words together and they don’t quite match up in my mind. But the contradiction of those two words is essential, I think, to becoming the friend that we need to be for those who are walking down the wrong path.
So I want to lead us into a bit of that tension today as we look at Jeremiah Chapter 1. I’m going to start us out in verse 4, then we will make our way over to the end of Chapter 8 and into Chapter 9. Jeremiah 1:4
4 The word of the LORD came to me, saying,
5 "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations."
6 "Ah, Sovereign LORD," I said, "I do not know how to speak; I am only a child."
7 But the LORD said to me, "Do not say, 'I am only a child.' You must go to everyone I send you to and say whatever I command you. 8 Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you and will rescue you," declares the LORD.
You would think this prophet would be this strong, confident personality, but we look at Jeremiah and he almost has Moses-like qualities, doesn’t he? You would think of someone who has strong opinions, but when you read the Book of Jeremiah, you’re going, ‘Wow! This guy has to be a strong personality,’ but in the very beginning of his calling, we see these self-esteem issues rise to the surface. And on many levels, it’s just an excuse. Now, when I think of a prophet, I think of this very self-assured person who just has strong opinions, but I think it is something worth noting for us, because, like us, he has reasons and excuses, and maybe for us, those mean different things. Maybe it’s ‘I don’t want to bring awkwardness into that relationship’ or ‘I don’t want to risk the relationship by saying something like this’ or ‘maybe I’m not the right person or someone else needs to say that’ or ‘I don’t want to intrude into the relationship.’
Years ago, I sat down with a pastor who I just greatly respect and I asked him, “What does a discipleship relationship look like for you?” And he just began to talk and he said, “I’ve got a lot of friendships but I found a long time ago that if I want a friendship to be meaningful, I’ve got to take it below the surface level.” And he said, “The easiest and best way that I do that is to ask hard questions. So when I get together with my guys, I ask them, ‘how are you treating your wife right now?’ And ‘when you go on that long business trip, what are you doing in your hotel room?’ and ‘What’s your relationship like right now with your son or your daughter or your parents?’” He said, “I ask hard questions.” And he said, “People know you love them when you care enough to engage the hard parts of life.” I love that. People will know you love them when you are willing engage the hard parts of life. Isn’t that true? Anyone who is of meaning in your life knows the rough stuff and the hard parts of your life.
A number of years ago, I felt challenged to do exactly this in my own life, to plunge beyond the shallow levels of relationships and to get into the depths of people’s lives. So I just started to do it, and there were different results with different folks, but I remember one specific example of a guy who I had known for years. I just started to take the plunge and ask some tougher questions and man, it was like a wall immediately went up. So I took note and I didn’t push too hard. So for the next number of years, I made it clear that I didn’t desire to have a surface level friendship, but it just stayed there in social contacts, and I wanted to go beyond tools and sports but never quite got there. Until I got a call one day and his life fell apart. He lost everything, including a lot of these surface level relationships, and I was one of the first people that he called. I went over and sat down with him and he just laid it out before me and began to share the stuff that he was going through and it completely changed the course of our relationship. What’s interesting is it is one of the more meaningful relationships that I have today. One where we can just share life and pray together or we can speak accountability and truth into each other’s lives. But something had to change. Our routes had to go differently. I would look at the situation and see the way the Lord used, years before, just a moment, a desire to take things to a different level. And it’s interesting because for years there was no fruit in this relationship, but without the step of faith, without going to a place of risk in that relationship, no rewards would have been seen.
We look at Jeremiah and we see what happens here, and Jeremiah runs us into exactly the same situation. There are some things that I don’t think we’ll see the fruit this side of heaven and we’ll never see the seeds that we have planted, we won’t know what God has done in their lives, and Jeremiah is in the same situation. He lays out some of these prophetic ideas and all of them end up coming true in the latter part. So 70 years, Israel spent in captivity and then they come around there is redemption and restoration of the country, but Jeremiah has to sit through all this stuff and take grief from his people, not knowing what is to come, but in the end, Israel reaps the results of his obedience to God. Verse 9
9 Then the LORD reached out his hand and touched my mouth and said to me, "Now, I have put my words in your mouth. 10 See, today I appoint you over nations and kingdoms to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant."
This passage is more fascinating to me in light of Jeremiah’s background. Jeremiah is the son of Hilkiah, the priest, and he comes from Anathoth, this small village about two to three miles north of Jerusalem. And it says in the Scripture that his upbringing was a good one, and he refers fondly upon it. So this joyful great part of life, then he comes to this place, and he is always leading toward the priesthood himself when God decides to interrupt his plans and calls him to be a prophet. He takes Jeremiah, moving towards a destiny of stability and moves him to a future of unpredictability.
I have to wonder if many of us settle for what comes easiest to us, including in relationships. Those of us who tend to be truth-tellers seek our peace and then we’re done, right? Those of us who are grace-givers tend to take a back seat and not say that confronting word. We tend to do what is easiest and the older we get, the more we draw into the naturalness of who we are and our personality tendencies. Jeremiah is confronted in his tendencies and God’s plucks him out, this easy, comfortable, clear-path life and gives him a new direction.
There are times if you affirm when you are supposed to confront, then you lead people towards apathy. There are times if you confront when you are supposed to affirm, then you lead people into guilt and bitterness. But all of us at moments in our lives can access in our brains those times when we needed confrontation and someone confronted us; when we needed affirmation and someone came along and affirmed us at the right time; and it changed the course of our life; it changed who we are and God used it in a moment to change our lives.
Someone changed with me one of those moments in their life, via email and they said I could share it. They said this: I distinctly remember a time in my life when I was living the way I wanted to live, far from God. My parents had tried over and over to reason with me, to love me back to God, to gently show me the way, but nothing was getting through, nothing. One day when my father sat me down, one on one, he began to share with me how much he loved me, but that he could not longer stand to the side and watch. He said to me, ‘I feel like you are standing in the middle of oncoming traffic and I’m standing on the curb yelling at you to get out of the way. I’ve tried calling to you, I’ve tried reasoning with you, and now I have the choice, do I stand here and let you learn your lesson, or do I risk hurting by knocking you out of the way of oncoming traffic but in the process, save your life?” He said, “At the risk of you getting hurt by me and getting angry, I have to choose life.” It was that day that I was given some choices that were very difficult choices, that in the end were pivotal in the future direction of my life. When I looked back on that, I know my father risked our relationship to save my life, not only in the spiritual sense but probably in many other ways as well. And even though it hurt me to be given the ultimatum that day, I could sense the deeper hurt and brokenness in my father for my soul. It was that true brokenness and desire for me soul that ultimately opened up my eyes.
No matter who you are or what your personality is like, there are moments in life that God ordained for you to step in and speak truth; for you to step in and give a word and if you don’t, a Babylon is waiting for that person. The consequences live in front of them. Their deliverance is in front of them if you step forward and do that. Let me also say this, there are times when you need to build and to plant; when you need to encourage and give someone a word of affirmation. Remember last week when we talked about Job and we talked about his friends and these guys who had a good message but in the wrong situation. They had the right content but the wrong context and they go the wrong direction. So there are times, as we see in verse 10 that we are called to uproot and to pull out, and there are times when we are called to affirm and to encourage and to plant and to build up. It is a coaching relationship. At times, my coach would yell at me, he would get on to me and tell me how I’m a terrible player and he would send me on sprints; but there were times when my coach would come to me and he would say, ‘I know you just missed five shots in a row but I want you to shoot that shot every time you touch the ball because I know you are going to make it because you are better than that.’ There were times when he would get on my back and speak the truth with no love and there were times when he would encourage me, and that’s what a coaching relationship is. There is no pat answer for this. We can’t sit here and give a formula for how we act in these situations in relationship, but it is a coaching relationship where you look at that person and you look at that situation and you evaluate the situation and you evaluate the person and then you ask God to help you and give you his mercy and his wisdom.
Here is the tricky part about Jeremiah though, because part of what I think we need to be challenged with today is to take a step out. We need to have some boldness in our lives sometimes to go beyond the surface level relationship. God forgive us as believers for leaving things right here when we have access to the hope and the power of Christ. Help us to live boldly and enter prophetically into relationships that we can speak and be life-givers to those around us, speak encouragement and affirmation, and uproot at times. But here’s where we find ourselves in this story, Jeremiah does exactly this, he has lived according to his call and he steps out, and what happens? Nothing happens! Very encouraging for us! Job and then Jeremiah, another great week of depression. He steps out and says something and nothing happens. And he says it again and nothing happens. We are brought to this question – when I step out and nothing happens, what do I do? Where does that leave me? How do I act in that relationship? I’ve got a very encouraging word for you – I don’t know! But that’s what awesome about where we’re at right now in this Scripture. I spent the entire week wrestling with Jeremiah this week, wrestling down what does he do? How can we learn from him? How does he treat the situation? As I was wrestling with this, I feel like I was able to make some observations of a few things. Jot these down.
The first thing is that the consequence must occur for restoration. Consequence must occur for restoration. Reality parenting is a new popular theory among parents. The idea is really simple, it is that you allow your child to experience the natural consequence of their decision. So, last week, I’m eating grapefruit with my youngest, Zeke, he is 11 months old, and he comes waddling over and he keeps trying to grab my grapefruit while I’m eating, and I’m moving it around and so I set him over here and he comes back, so I set him over here and he’s right back. He is a stinker, he perseveres and keeps coming and coming, and it got to the point where he would reach for the grapefruit and look at me like, ‘what are you gonna do dad? You got something for me?’ So finally, I’m like, alright, reality parenting, let’s try this thing out. So I give him the grapefruit. He has just started to stand and he is barely starting to take a step and I give it to him and he looks like a little drunk umpa lumpa with a big punch bowl in his hands. Finally he gathers it and he takes this big chomp, and you know what happens, it’s like he got shot in the foot or something, and he throws this thing five feet in the air behind and drops and hits the floor, and I’m watching the whole thing with a little bit of a smile on my face. Finally he looked up at me and he gives me this look like, ‘how could you do that to me dad?’ It is interesting the crossover to our relationship with God, isn’t it? We seek and we pursue and we are persistent and we want to go after our own desires and God is saying, ‘No, no that’s not a great idea,’ and finally He gets to the point where He says, ‘Ok, you need to experience the consequence of your decision.’ And He lets go and we get nailed and we end up on our backside and we are having trouble, and finally we gather ourselves and what’s the first thing that we do? We look at God with our hands up going, ‘Where were you on that one God?’ We get frustrated before the Lord, blaming Him for what just happened in our life, when in reality it is God allowing us to experience the natural consequence of our decision so that we can learn to become better people. My sister used to say: a cut is worth a thousand ‘no’s. I love that! What a great excuse for when you blow it as a parent!
We tend to want to shelter our kids from bad things, right? We want to keep them from anything that will hurt them, but then they don’t experience the consequences and at times, they need to, because then they need to because then they realize that it’s not just a parent saying no because they are an annoying parent, it’s that there is a being greater than me that knows more than me that loves me more than I love myself who cares enough about me to try to lead me in a right direction in life. That’s exactly what Jeremiah is trying to communicate to the nation of Judea right here in this book. If you don’t change your course, you are going to experience the consequences of your decision. Let’s be honest, it is hard sometimes, because you see it and you think, how can a merciful God allow his nation to be the conquested of another nation, to be taken over, to be bonded into captivity? Because love allows lessons to be learned.
We don’t have time tonight to get into the idea of covenant. Maybe we will hit it next week, but when you read the Book of Jeremiah, there is all the marital language all over the place. The idea was that the nation had entered into covenant with almighty God. If you’ve ever had a relationship or a friendship who has gotten divorced because of infidelity, you know that it hurts all the way around. I don’t care which side you are on, it hurts and there are going to be consequences to those decisions. And even if a spouse, the non-guilty spouse, is completely merciful, it doesn’t matter. There is incredible consequence and hurt and pain that comes from those decisions. So, in this case, the covenant has been broken. The nation must experience the consequence of their decision if they continue to go down this route. Sometimes cause and effect, action and consequence have to happen for a lesson to be learned.
But here’s the second thing Jeremiah did when that happened. He didn’t just stand by watching, but he stood with his people in the midst of trouble. He stood with his people as they experienced consequence. He never left. In fact, he almost got killed. He was taken into captivity. He was thrown in to prison, he went through the whole thing. He experienced it all. He experienced the consequence of the decisions that other people made. He said, ‘I will stand with you.’
My brother’s birthday is tomorrow and I’ve told him this once before that one of the greatest lessons I’ve learned from him is many years ago, my dad made a wrong decision in life and he had to experience public consequences for that decision. I didn’t really know what to do, I was a younger kid, do I stand with him, do I support him? My brother stood with him through everything. He was there for him and supported him. Every step of the way, he showed himself faithful and he stood with him countless times, and I learned a life lesson that I’ve put into practice a lot of times since then. Standing with someone through pain speaks more than any word of encouragement, speaks more than any exaltation that you could give. Standing with someone through pain speaks encouragement beyond what you could give in your own capacity. Even if the consequence is someone else’s, step into that. Step into the pain of their consequence. Jeremiah allows consequence to occur and he stands with his people.
Third, he experiences the pain with them. Just to be honest, Jeremiah is kind of a morbid dude, isn’t he? He is a little depressing as a guy. He is not the guy you’re going to take to a party with you. I think both sides of his bed are the wrong sides of the bed. But I like this guy, because a lot of the prophets, when you look at them, there’s almost a little attitude or cockiness to who they are and overconfidence, but then you’ve got Jeremiah. There other prophets say things like, ‘thus saith the Lord’ and ‘this is not my word’ but then there is Jeremiah who comes along and he says, ‘Here is what the Lord is saying to us,’ and the guys are like, ‘That’s brutal, you’re killing us,’ and he goes, ‘I know, this is terrible!’ and he cries and he takes the pain on his own back, and it’s why we know him as the weeping prophet, because he gives the word of the Lord then he experiences the pain of someone else’s decision. He could just say, ‘Here it is’ and step back. But he says it and then he steps in and takes the consequence with everyone else. When you enter the scary reality of being a true friend to someone, you are asking for pain. That’s the truth of it. If you are going to be a true friend to somebody, you are going to experience pain. But Jeremiah gives us the third incredibly important part of this friendship that we’re talking about, of being prophetic, and that’s this – we are called to cry for our friends.
Let’s kick back to last week, Job’s friends come before him and they are saying some decent things but it’s just wrong. On one hand, Joel, you are saying we need to be confident and step forward and speak the truth and so forth. On the other hand, you are saying don’t blow it, don’t say the wrong thing. So where do we land? Honestly, we need to come before the Lord. And that’s what Jeremiah gets, a word from the Lord. So we need to connect with Him first of all. But, number two, what if we find ourselves in the place where we do not know what to do? If you don’t know what to do, here’s what you do, you weep with your friends. You put your arm around them and you cry with them. You allow yourself to engage in their emotions. Listen to Jeremiah, Chapter 8, verse 20
20 "The harvest is past, the summer has ended, and we are not saved."
21 Since my people are crushed, I am crushed; I mourn, and horror grips me.
22 Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then is there no healing for the wound of my people?
1 Oh, that my head were a spring of water and my eyes a fountain of tears! I would weep day and night for the slain of my people.
Here’s the point, you better care more about the person than you care about the problem. Jeremiah is called to be a prophet, but he never loses that pastoral heart. He experiences pain with his nation. He feels, he lives and he expresses his pain, and in the culmination of verse 1 in Chapter 9, in this explosion of tears, Oh, that my head were a spring of water and my eyes a fountain of tears! He weeps for his people.
Tears are a powerful thing, aren’t they? Pastor Mark shared last week, he said that tears have a helping agent within their substance. But I also think that when tears begin to run down the surface of your cheeks, there is an healing agent that happens within the observer as well. When you are confronted with tears, it elicits a response from you.
In his retirement, Thomas Jefferson founded the University of Virginia. Because Jefferson entrusted that students would take their studies seriously, the code of discipline was lax. Unfortunately, his trust proved misplaced when the behavior of students led to a riot in which professors, who tried to restore order, ended up getting taken out by a lot of the students and were attacked. The following day, a meeting was held between the University’s board, which Jefferson was a part of, and the students, the larger body, not just the students who committed this because they didn’t know who had done it. Jefferson began the meeting by saying, “This is one of the most painful events in my life.” And he broke down, overcome by emotion and he burst into tears. Another board member asked the rioters at that point to come forward and give themselves up. Nearly every one of them did. Later, one of them said, “It was not Mr. Jefferson’s words, but it was his tears.”
Tears are an outgrowth of what happens in here, and when you see them, when you are confronted with them, it elicits a response, because they are an expression of reaching out, many times.
The friend that I mentioned earlier approached me to share these events that had happened in his life. He came to me and he just laid it out, he let go of it and he talked away his pride was broken down and the way he had nothing left. He was literally crying out in the desperation prayer before God and we get to this point of prayer, and I just, the tear ducts started working for me and I was overcome in a moment in emotion because I knew what I had to do. I knew I had to stand with this guy, first of all, but I knew secondly that I needed to engage this situation. I couldn’t be a bystander watching his life get run over while I just stand to the side. So I just began to emotionally engage this situation, and when I did, I began to feel the pain of what was happening in his life and the consequences of what he was experiencing, in some ways rightly, I couldn’t help but be overcome in a moment of emotion. It’s interesting the way things work. that a moment of emotion can be a turning point in a relationship. I think because he had expressed these heartfelt feelings and emotions and to see that someone responded in the same way exhibited trust and commitment to that relationship, and it turned the course of our friendship, as I said, to reap this incredible fruit in the future.
I’m reminded of where I started today, at the altar. A place where we come and where we engage situations of our life to God, a place where we come and we admit the wrong of what we have done and of who we have become, where we admit the wrongs of the path that we are going down. The altar, a place where we can come and engage somebody else and that we can not be a bystander to the things that are happening and the people that we love so much around us, but that we can begin to come before the almighty God and bring the burdens and put them on our back and carry them before the people who are around us, asking God to intervene on their behalf. ‘God, I know we have to experience consequence, but God I’m just going to stand up for this friend right now, I’m going to stand up with this family member and I’m going to experience consequence with them and I am going to seek You on their behalf, Lord and resolve to know You and to know your passion through this situation, to shed a tear for someone else, to take captive the very confidence that You call me to, not to live at a surface level relationship. God help us to step out of that. Lord help us to grab a hold of the horns of the altar, where we step out of who we are and the easy decisions that we make in life, where we step out of a priestly natural progression to be a prophet that the Lord has destined for us.”
I believe that for every person in here, the Lord has destined moments for you to step into and speak the truth and the love and the grace of our Holy Father, to step into and to change a course of someone else. So I want to end right there, by encouraging you, where is it in the altar of your experience that you need to step forward into the prophetic moments that God has designed for you? Where is it in that altar of your experience that you need to step forward and engage the pain and the consequence of someone around you?
God, we come before You today, and I know there are people here who are hurting for people who are hurting, and we don’t often talk about this subject, God, we are so often focused on our own hearts, but today we take this moment to understand your calling on our life, a calling to be prophetic into other’s lives, a calling to care and to take burdens on our backs. Lord, a calling to experience consequence of those around us. So we pray right now Lord that You would give us courage, courage to stand up and to cut through the awkwardness, to cut through the surface level, Lord, and to engage relationship in a way that would desire and please You and bring fruit in the lives of people around us. Lord, I pray that You would give us courage.
Some people are here today and maybe you are on the side of the people of the nation of Israel and you are making wrong choice and going down the wrong path and this message speaks to you on that level. Or maybe you are here and you understand that you need to engage a different level of confidence to speak into those people around you. Or maybe you are here and you are lost in a relationship and you need to gain the wisdom of God and take some of these steps and make them practical in your life. We are all in different situations, but Lord right now, each one of those things, Lord I pray that you would help us to engage these things in your Holy Spirit. In the name of Jesus we pray, Amen.
Ministry Transcription
Margaret Salyers
404-775-4197
margaretsalyers@gmail.com