Truth With Tears: Convictions Without Contempt
Faith in the Public Square • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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· 4 viewsYou can't weep with someone you've already filed a verdict on.
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Introduction
Introduction
Three nights in a row we’ve mentioned how we live in a place where the majority do not share our faith.
Thursday, I told you were sent here.
Friday, I said we are watched here.
Last night, I said that when we open our mouths, our words have to carry both grace and salt.
This morning, we’re going to talk about the conversations where all of this gets the hardest.
You can probably imagine the conversations I’m talking about.
The ones you’ve been losing sleep over.
Where the topic is what restaurant should we eat at or who’s going to win the next election.
The conversations where the topic is who somebody is.
How they live.
What they believe is true about themselves.
What they’ve done.
What the bible says about it.
Those conversations.
And here is what the culture has decided about these conversations:
You can’t be two things at the same time.
You can be a person of conviction, which means you must be cruel.
Or you can be a person of compassion. Which means you must be quiet.
Pick one.
That’s the message, That’s the assignment.
The world has looked at every Christian in this room and said, which one are you going to be?
The mean one or the soft one?
The one who stands for something or the one who actually loves people.
Because surely you can’t be both.
Anybody who tries to be both is a liar. Pick.
And you know, a lot of Christians have picked.
Some have picked conviction and gotten mean about it.
Some have picked compassion and gotten quiet about it.
Both sides walked out of the room, thinking they made the right call.
Both sides were wrong.
The bible answered this question a long time before the culture ever asked it:
8 He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?
Eight hundred years before Jesus walked through Galilee, the prophet Micah stood up and gave God's people three verbs.
Do justice. Love kindness. Walk humbly with your God.
And we read that verse, and we want to put it on a coffee mug because we love a good list. Three things. Check, check, check.
But Micah is not handing us a list. He's handing us an equation.
Look at the verbs again.
8 He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?
Justice. That's the conviction verb.
That's the one where you stand for what's right and you don't move on it.
8 He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?
Kindness.
That's the compassion verb.
The Hebrew word there is chesed, a love that doesn't give up on people.
So already, in one verse, you have what the culture says you have to choose between.
Conviction and compassion. Side by side.
Same sentence. Both required.
And then the third verb.
8 He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?
Walk humbly with your God.
Stay with that third verb a second.
Because Micah doesn't say walk humbly as a third unrelated item on a list.
He says it as the thing that makes the first two possible.
Without humility, your justice turns into contempt.
Without humility, your kindness turns into cowardice.
The walk humbly is what keeps the other two from collapsing into something the world has already seen plenty of.
The Bible's answer to the culture's question is this.
You don't have to pick. You never had to pick.
You were never supposed to pick.
We have the verse. Now we need to see a face.
Jesus at the Tomb
Jesus at the Tomb
Let’s turn to John 11.
This is John’s last big story before the cross.
The 7th sign in his gospel and the longest one.
44 verses.
Every single one teaches us something about what Jesus is like in the very place where conviction and compassion are getting put to the test.
The setup is this.
Jesus has friends in Bethany.
A brother, Lazarus. And his two sisters, Mary and Martha.
Real people. Real. house. Real relationship.
Jesus has stayed at their house.
He has eaten at their table. They are not strangers.
And one day word comes to Jesus that Lazarus is sick.
Watch what Jesus does;
5 Now Jesus loved Martha, her sister, and Lazarus.
6 So when he heard that he was sick, he stayed two more days in the place where he was.
He says Jesus loved them.
And then he he says, “so,” — meaning because of that love — He stayed two days longer.
Now that is not what you were expecting.
You were expecting that he would have left immediately.
But he writes, Jesus loved them, so He stayed.
He delayed on purpose.
He let Lazarus die on purpose.
Now, what happens next is the whole sermon.
By the time Jesus has arrived, Lazarus has been dead 4 days.
The funeral is over.
The mourners have come.
Mary is in the house weekping. Martha gets word that Jesus is on the way, and she runs out to meet him.
Listen to what she says:
21 Then Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother wouldn’t have died.
That is not a compliment.
This is a sister with a brother in the ground saying the words you say when you have been doing the math on why somebody you love is dad.
If you had been here.
Where were you? You could have stopped this. You didnt.
And Jesus does not argue with her. He does not correct her grammar. Instead, he gives her doctrine:
23 “Your brother will rise again,” Jesus told her.
24 Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.”
25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me, even if he dies, will live.
Stop right there.
Martha has just been given one of the most staggering sentences ever spoken on earth, and she has been handed it next to her brother’s grave.
She is standing on dirt that is fresh.
And Jesus looks her in the eye and says I am the resurrection.
Not there will be one, I am one. Right now. Standing in front of you.
Hold on to that. Because Jesus has the answer.
He has not lost the plot.
He has not been confused by Martha’s grief.
He knows exactly what he is about to do.
The body in that tomb is going to be walking back to Bethany inside the hour.
He has the truth.
Now, watch the tears.
Martha goes back to the house, gets her sister, and Mary comes out to meet him.
Same reaction.
Same accusation.
But Mary does not stand, she falls.
32 As soon as Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and told him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother wouldn’t have died!”
33 When Jesus saw her crying, and the Jews who had come with her crying, he was deeply moved in his spirit and troubled.
Deeply moved.
It is a word that in the original language, it describes the heavy snorting noise a horse makes when it is agitated.
It is not a quiet feeling.
It is a body coming parart.
Jesus is shaking. His face is doing things his face does not usually do.
And then he asks the only question he asks in this entire story:
34 “Where have you put him?” he asked. “Lord,” they told him, “come and see.”
He knows where the tomb is.
He has known where it is all the time.
He has been planning this for two extra days.
But he asks the question anyway, and they walk him toward the grave, and on the way, John writes the shortest sentence in the Bible:
35 Jesus wept.
Two words.
Don’t move past them.
Two thousand years of Christian history have memorized this verse for the wrong reason.
We have memorized it because it is short and easy to quote in sword drills.
That is not why it is there.
It is there because the Son of God —
who has been calling Lazarus's name in His head for the entire walk to the tomb,
who knows that within sixty seconds the man in that grave is going to be sitting up in his burial clothes and asking for water —
that Jesus, who has the answer, is crying.
He is right.
He is about to be proven right. He could fast-forward past the grief. He does not.
He cries with the people He is about to vindicate.
And then they get to the tomb, and look at what John writes next.
38 Then Jesus, deeply moved again, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it.
He is more troubled now. Not less.
The closer He gets to the place where He is going to win, the harder He is grieving.
And He stands at the mouth of that tomb, and He calls Lazarus out, and Lazarus comes out — and the Son of God performs the miracle with tear stains on his face.
That is the picture I need you to carry into the rest of this sermon.
Jesus has the truth. Jesus knows the answer. Jesus is right. And He is crying.
Two Failures, Same Pride
Two Failures, Same Pride
So here is the picture. Jesus, with the truth in His mouth and tears on His face, walking to a tomb.
That is the standard. That is the Christian standard. Both at the same time.
Conviction and compassion. Truth and tears. Justice and kindness.
And Micah's third verb — walk humbly — making both of them possible.
Now I want to ask you a question:
Where do you fail?
Because most of us in this room fail one direction or the other.
And the failure is not the conviction itself, and it is not the compassion itself.
The failure is the pride underneath both.
Let me show you what I mean.
There may be a Christian in this room — who has the truth right and has stopped crying.
You have the position.
You have the verse.
You have the argument lined up and you can deliver it.
And somewhere along the way your face quit moving.
The conversation about your niece does not bother you anymore.
The post about the issue, the person on the news whose life is falling apart — you are right about all of it, and you are not sad about any of it.
You typed the comment.
You said the thing at Thanksgiving that made the table go quiet.
And you walked away thinking I told the truth. And maybe you did.
But here is the diagnostic question: did you cry first?
Jesus was right. And He still cried.
You can't weep with someone you've already filed a verdict on.
Hear me.
The conviction is not the problem.
Your problem is not that you believe what the Bible says about that issue.
Your problem is that somewhere along the way you decided that because you were right, you were excused from being moved.
And there is a name for that. It is not courage. It is not boldness. It is pride.
The pride that says I have the answer, so I do not have to feel anything.
That pride looks Christian on the outside, and it has nothing to do with Jesus on the inside.
Because Jesus had the answer too, and He wept anyway.
That is failure number one. Truth without tears.
There is a second Christian in this room, and you know who you are too.
You have a heart that breaks easily. You feel everything.
The hurt of the niece,
the pain of the friend, the wound of the family member — you carry all of it.
And somewhere along the way, the carrying got heavier than the conviction, and the conviction quietly slipped out of your hands.
You did not mean to set it down.
You just kept being told that to love this person you had to stop believing what you used to believe.
And it was easier to lay the truth down than to keep watching them hurt. So you laid it down.
You softened. You said who am I to say?
And the people you love thanked you for it.
But hear me. The tears were honest. They didn't raise Lazarus.
The grief at the tomb was real, but it was not the thing that brought Lazarus out.
What brought Lazarus out was the One who had the truth walking to the tomb with tears in his eyes.
Take the truth out of that picture and Lazarus is still in the ground.
Mary is still on the floor. The grief is still real. Nobody is alive.
And there is a name for that failure too.
It is also pride.
It is the pride that says I would rather be liked than useful.
The pride that decides the approval of the person across the table is more important than the resurrection their soul actually needs.
That pride looks loving on the outside. It has nothing to do with Jesus on the inside either.
That is failure number two. Tears without truth.
And now look at what is underneath both.
Truth-without-tears pride says I am right, so I do not have to be moved.
Tears-without-truth pride says I would rather be liked than tell the truth.
Different sentences. Same root.
Both refuse the third verb. Neither one is walking humbly with God.
One is too sure of itself to grieve.
The other is too afraid of the room to stand.
Pride wears both costumes.
And the cure for both is the same.
Walk humbly. With your God.
The God who walked into a graveyard with the answer and with tears.
Some of you came in this morning convinced you had the right position and you were going to leave with that confirmed.
You may have the right position. Did you cry first?
Some of you came in thinking the most loving thing you could do was lay your convictions down for the sake of the people you love.
The people you love do not need a Christian who has stopped believing the gospel.
They need a Christian who walks toward their tomb with the truth in their mouth and tears on their face.
You don't have to pick. You never had to pick.
But you do have to walk humbly.
Because that is the verb that holds the other two together.
What This Will Look Like Tomorrow
What This Will Look Like Tomorrow
So now what.
You walk out of this building this morning and on Tuesday you are going to be sitting across from somebody.
You know who.
You have been thinking about that person the whole sermon.
The niece. The grandson. The sister. The neighbor. The coworker who said the thing at lunch last week and you did not know what to do with it.
What does any of this look like when their face is six feet from yours?
Let me name the conversations.
The niece who came out and is bringing her partner to Christmas. Truth and tears.
The grandson who has changed his name and his pronouns and you do not know what to do with it. Truth and tears.
The friend in your church who had an abortion twenty years ago and has never told another soul. Truth and tears.
The neighbor whose family came up in this country in a way yours did not, and whose experience of the last ten years is nothing like yours. Truth and tears. Same Micah. Same Jesus. Same tear-stained walk to the tomb.
Think about this for a second…
We have not always cried at the tomb.
There have been stretches where we have stood back from the grief, sure of our position, certain we had nothing to learn from the people we were so sure about.
We have hurt people we were supposed to love.
That is true, and pretending it is not true does not make us more Christian, it makes us less Micah 6. Walk humbly.
But I do not want to spend this morning cataloging the failures of the church. instead, we need to be talking about what we do now.
Because the people in your life on Tuesday do not need you to apologize for somebody else's church on the news.
They need you to be different in their kitchen. So here is what different looks like.
One. Sit longer before you speak.
Most of the damage we do in these conversations happens in the first ninety seconds, when the topic comes up and we are scrambling to get our position on the table.
You do not have to get your position on the table in the first ninety seconds.
Jesus delayed two days.
He listened to Martha accuse Him before He gave her any doctrine.
Sit longer. Let your face actually move while they are talking.
They are watching to see if anything they are saying is reaching you.
If nothing is, they are going to stop talking, and you are going to congratulate yourself for telling the truth in a room that has emptied out.
Two. Refuse the false choice.
The culture is going to keep telling you that you have to pick.
Some Christian voices are going to keep telling you the same thing from the other direction.
Both of them are wrong. You are not picking.
You are walking humbly with the God who held both at the same time, in the same body, with the tearful face.
When somebody tells you that loving this person means abandoning the truth, you smile and say you have not met my Jesus.
When somebody tells you that holding the truth means hardening your heart toward this person, you smile and say you have not met my Jesus either.
Three. Engage your heart first. Before the conversation. Get on your knees. Pray about the person, not about the issue.
The issue does not have a face. The person does.
Pray for them by name long enough that your heart actually breaks for them, and then go have the conversation.
You will be amazed what changes about your tone when you engage your heart.
Four. Do not aim to win.
Aim to walk them toward the tomb.
Lazarus did not come out because Mary made the right argument.
Lazarus came out because Jesus was there.
Your job is not to be the resurrection.
Your job is to walk the person you love toward the One who is.
That takes pressure off you and puts it back where it belongs.
You are not the rescuer. You are the witness.
Same as Friday night. Same as every night this weekend.
That is what Monday morning looks like. Sit longer. Refuse the choice. Open your heart. Walk them toward Jesus.
That is truth with tears. That is convictions without contempt.
That is the third verb doing its work.
As We Close
As We Close
Let me give you a test before we wrap up.
This is a different test. Two questions.
Whose face do you need to see when you think about that issue you've been so sure about?
Not the issue. The face. The person. The name.
Because the moment that issue has a face attached to it, your conviction has to learn how to walk with your tears.
And if it can't — if the face does not change anything about how you carry the conviction — then somewhere along the way you stopped following the Jesus of John 11 and started following somebody else.
Second question.
Whose name have you stopped praying because you've already decided how the conversation goes?
You know who.
There is a person you used to bring to God on your knees, and somewhere along the way you stopped.
Maybe because it was too painful. Maybe because you decided they were too far gone.
Maybe because praying for them required you to feel something you did not want to feel anymore.
Pick that name back up this week. Bring them back to God. Cry first. Then go have the conversation.
In the next hour we come back together for worship and we talk about the kingdom that cannot be shaken.
Hebrews 12. Philippians 3.
Where we actually belong when everything around us is moving.
But I want you to remember a kingdom that cannot be shaken is not a kingdom of hard people.
It is the kingdom of the King who walked into a graveyard with the answer in His mouth and tears on His face.
That is the King we serve. That is the kingdom we belong to. That is the conversation we walk into on Tuesday.
Truth with tears. Convictions without contempt.
The third verb holding the other two together.
You can't weep with someone you've already filed a verdict on.
So go weep first.
