Heartbeat: Healing Hurts

Sermon

We are looking at the Heartbeat of Calvary Baptist Church. It is the statement that is on the wall in the Welcome Center. It is the last thing you see as you walk out so that you remember who we are as a church. We spent six weeks looking at the first part of that statement on what it means to carry out the Great Commission. Today we will be looking at the second phrase “healing hurts” and next week we will look at “meeting needs”.

Last week I started to explain to you about this survey that was just released. If you didn’t do it last week look this survey up. The Gallup-Heathway organization studied the top 189 metropolitan areas through the years 2012-2013 in order to discover the top ten most miserable cities in America to live in. The Muscogee County, Harris County and Chattahoochee County in Georgia, Phenix City and Russell County, Alabama were included all together in this study. I told you last week that our city rated number 7 out of the most miserable American cities to live in. This study looked at standard of living, education, poverty, violent crime, and access to basic health services. As a pastor I am at fault and as a church we are guilty for our city being number 7 out of the top 10 most miserable cities in America to live in. We can’t explain this away. We have to take responsibility.

On this poll Columbus, Georgia ranked number one for depression. Roughly one quarter of the people living in Columbus sought help for depression. Nineteen percent of people surveyed said they had no enjoyment in their day on the day that the survey was conducted. Twenty-three percent said they hated the city that they lived in. We are a city that is hurting physically and emotionally and it is because we are hurting spiritually. You don’t have to be a researcher to figure this out. Life is bad in the Chattahoochee Valley and the church bears some blame in this.

What I’m going to try to do over the next two weeks is to connect the dots on our mission statement. We spent six weeks looking that the Great Commission. Now we will look at how to connect healing hurts back to that statement. Next week we will look at meeting needs. We need to look at what we as a church can do about the statistics that were in the survey.

The reason why our city is hurting is because of sin. If you are really going to make a difference in someone’s life you will have to deal with the sin that is in their life. I think some of the reason why church people don’t do that is because dealing with other’s sins will cause you to deal with your own. It is messy to deal with people and their sin. Today I want us to look at a specific passage in the Bible that I think summarizes what it means to get involved in the sin and hurt that is going on in the city around us. Shame on us as a church if we don’t get involved now that we know the results of this survey.

I. Some hurts are hopeless

Jeremiah 30:12-13

¹² For thus says the Lord: Your hurt is incurable, and your wound is grievous. ¹³ There is none to uphold your cause, no medicine for your wound, no healing for you.

We are supposed to be in the business of healing hurts but God is describing a scenario where there is no hope or healing. It is the idea of a terminal illness. You will not get better and it will only end in your death. Let me describe for you what had been going on when God delivered this message to his people through the prophet Jeremiah. Judah had been at war in the past and a couple of the armies had laid siege to the capital city, Jerusalem. Each time the Lord has supernaturally delivered them. Judah thought because the temple of God is in Jerusalem they couldn’t be defeated. At the time that Jeremiah 30 was written the Babylonian army had laid siege to Jerusalem. At this point the Babylonian army had never been defeated on the battlefield and when they conquered the city they were brutal. Most people died and the few that lived wished they had died. So life was really bad at this time.

Again, Judah thought that because they had the temple of God in their city that they couldn’t be defeated. It’s like Aladdin with the genie lamp. Every time they needed God they would “rub the lamp” and he would be there for them. Then they would put him back in the lamp because they no longer needed him. The temple had literally become a idol to Judah. God is now saying that he will no longer protect them. If you were to trace it back in Judah’s day (and the same is true of us today) it is because of sin. All problems, hurts, and issues in life ultimately take their root in sin. It is sin that fractures human relationships. It is sin that causes societies to spin out of control. If we are going to get serious about healing the hurts in our city we have to get serious about the sin. The government is not the answer to the problems in our city. If these issues could have been fixed by money it would have been done a hundred times over in this city. The problems in our city go to the soul level when you are dealing with sin. The solutions to those problems only happen at the soul level as well. You can treat forever the symptoms of those problems and never really fix the problems. God was saying he was done with letting Israel act like he didn’t matter. He was turning them over to their sin and the consequences of their sin. And, sometimes God does that in our lives too.

II. Some hurts are honest

Jeremiah 30:14-15

¹⁴ All your lovers have forgotten you; they care nothing for you; for I have dealt you the blow of an enemy, the punishment of a merciless foe, because your guilt is great, because your sins are flagrant. ¹⁵ Why do you cry out over your hurt?  Your pain is incurable. Because your guilt is great, because your sins are flagrant, I have done these things to you.

God had said that he was to be the center of their world. Nothing and no one should ever take that place. But, Judah had turned to other things and people and made them more important than God in their lives. When they did that they turned them into idols. Now God is going to let them experience the consequences of turning to idols instead of turning to him. In verse 12 you get the idea of a terminally ill patient. In verse 14 you get the idea of a terminally ill nation. For Columbus, Georgia it would be the idea of a terminally ill city. God is simply saying that they are getting what they deserve. If Jeremiah were here today he would tell us that God has given us his Word, churches and preachers but still they turned their back and ignored him. Now life is miserable in the Chattahoochee Valley. We, as a city, are getting exactly what we deserve. It is our fault that our city is the way that it is.

This is Thanksgiving week and it’s a big deal for us to remember what God has done for us. But, perhaps you don’t think about it when life gets tough. I try to remind you that if God didn’t love you he wouldn’t allow you to suffer the consequences. He wouldn’t discipline you as Hebrews tells us. He would just allow you to plunge headfirst into your sin until it costs you your life. Because God loves you he steps in and sometimes makes your life miserable on purpose. This is what God is doing to his people in Jeremiah 30. He is making their life miserable to get their attention. Even during the Thanksgiving week you can thank God for the really tough times in your life because maybe God is using it to get your attention. Sometimes we make honest mistakes. And sometimes those mistakes carry honest consequences and we deserve them. It is a loving God’s way of getting his people’s attention. If he didn’t love us he would let us continue in our sin to our death.

III. Some hurts are helped

Jeremiah 30:16

¹⁶ Therefore all who devour you shall be devoured, and all your foes, every one of them, shall go into captivity; those who plunder you shall be plundered, and all who prey on you I will make a prey.

This verse is mind blowing to me. God has said Judah treated him like he was nothing but he loves them so much that he is going to intervene. He may allow their lives to be miserable for a little while but he won’t leave them there. Jeremiah will go on to describe how God will preserve a remnant of his people. In these verses there are four phrases. Three of the four phrases are a turning of the table; what they did to you, God will do to them. God is saying that although he is allowing it to hurt for a little bit but he wouldn’t leave them alone. God never completely turns his back on his people.

I’ve been teaching for six weeks now that when Jesus passed his Great Commission on to us he was expecting us to continue his mission until he returns. Jesus made it perfectly clear that he came to earth to seek and to save those that are lost. He came to rescue men and women out of their sin and restore them to a right relationship with God. If you were to look at the first four books of the New Testament, you would notice that Jesus spent a lot of time doing miracles. He healed the sick, restored sight to the blind, and cast out demons. Why? Why would Jesus, who was sent to seek and to save the lost, spend so much of his time meeting people’s urgent needs? Jesus knew, just as our church knows, sometimes the need is so immediate that they can’t understand their ultimate hurt until their immediate hurt has been dealt with. When the crowds were on the mountainside listening to Jesus talk about heaven and hell, Jesus knew they needed to eat and fed them. It would be wrong for us as a church to feed someone who is hungry, clothe someone in need and to give shelter to someone but never talk to them about eternity and Jesus. Essentially what we would be doing would be making someone full, warm and safe but on their way to hell. In fact, we would be making it worse for them. We always connect the healing of hurts back to the sharing of the Gospel.

The last thing I want you to see is that sometimes God will miraculously heal your hurts. As a church, we are not striving to put a Band-Aid on a problem. It’s not just to play spiritual whack-a-mole. Do you remember this game? You put a quarter in the machine and a mole pops up out of one hole and you bang it on the head. Then it pops up out of another hole and you bang it again. I really feel like some churches are playing spiritual whack-a-mole. They are throwing money at one problem and then at a different problem. They throw people and resources at different issues. However, they never deal with the problem. They could keep playing this game until Jesus comes back. Or, they could deal with the soul level issues as you are dealing with the surface level issues. If you never get to the soul level issues you never really heal a hurt.

IV. Some hurts are healed

Jeremiah 30:17

¹⁷ For I will restore health to you, and your wounds I will heal, declares the Lord, because they have called you an outcast: It is Zion, for whom no one cares!

God is saying that he still cares for them and will not leave them. He will turn around their city and heal them. He is going to make a difference forever.

John Pounds was a man who had a profound influence on his city and country. In the late 1700’s Pounds lived in Portsmouth, England. He was a teenager working in the shipyards. One day while he was working on a ship’s mast, he lost his footing and fell head first into the hull of the ship. He had many broken bones but because he was poor he couldn’t afford medicine. For two years, John Pounds lived on a mattress where his bones healed crookedly. There wasn’t a day that went by that Pounds wasn’t in pain. People often visited him and one left him a Bible. Out of boredom he began to read the Bible. His life was radically transformed when he encountered the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Pounds decided he wanted to serve Jesus for the rest of his life.

He became an apprentice for a shoemaker. Pounds eventually opened his own shoe shop but not for the purpose of making shoes. He wanted to make a difference in Portsmouth, England. He started to minister to the orphaned boys in the city. He would bring them to his shoe shop to feed and clothe them and to introduce them to Christ. His shoe shop became known as “The Ragged School”. It was not about making shoes but about transforming lives to become followers of Jesus Christ. It is said that 500 orphaned boys went through the school and became passionate followers of Jesus. John Pounds turned those boys into disciples who themselves would make others into disciples. The influence of that school spread all over England. In fact the “Ragged School” became known as the “Ragged School Movement”. On New Years’ Day in 1839 John Pounds died while treating the ulcers on the feet of an orphaned boy. The boys buried Pounds body in the church courtyard on High Street. They put this scripture on his monument… Luke 14:14 “And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”

We have a choice to make. We can sit back and watch this city continue to plunge into chaos or we, as a church, can get serious about healing hurts. We don’t have any influence over what the other churches in this city do but we can get invested in the hurt. As a church we will do our best to not put a temporary Band-Aid on the problem but in the process of dealing with someone’s hurt we will introduce them to Jesus Christ. God willing we will see men and women become disciples who will in turn make more disciples. Hopefully, in a year, five years or ten years from now we won’t be on a list of the ten most miserable cities to live in in America. We can make a difference! The world is coming to the Chattahoochee Valley and the Chattahoochee Valley is going around the world. God is calling all of us to make a difference.

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Discussion Questions

1. What would you say is the number 1 hurt that people in our city are facing?  Why do you think that is number 1?
2. Can every hurt be healed or are some too severe to be healed?  (Explain your answer.)
3. Can God still be good and loving while punishing you for your mistakes at the same time?
4. What is the biggest hurt you’ve ever caused someone?  Have you tried to make it right?  How did they respond?
5. How has Jesus restored what sin took away in your life? (Give a specific example.)
6. How have you helped someone that was hurting recently?
7. Pray for each other that we would be a people ready to get involved in the hurt that others are experiencing.