Nudged - Part 3
Notes
Transcript
Sermon Tone Analysis
A
D
F
J
S
Emotion
A
C
T
Language
O
C
E
A
E
Social
Outline
Outline
Read the Text from Hebrews 12:1-3
This passage should be set to the Rocky theme song, “Eye of the Tiger.”
For me one of the greatest problems in religion and with religious people is use sanitized use of shame or shaming.
For me one of the greatest problems in the secular world is the corporate use of shaming to keep a good employee down.
And, my favorite stories are the stories of people who were openly and publically shamed but despite that they did not give up.
Abraham Lincoln
Ulysses Grant
Albert Einstein
Oprah Winfrey
Michael Jordan
Jerry Seinfeld
Everyone of these people had: Shame Resiliency.
Define shame as “You are not enough.”
Shame has the power to make you a victim twice.
Externally: You are not enough
Internally: I am not enough
Brene Brown the most current expert in this field said she defines shame as “the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging – something we’ve experienced, done, or failed to do makes us unworthy of connection.”
Through much of my life I have struggled with shame and its effects.
Sometimes it was not intentional: overhearing mom’s comment.
Other times it was deeply internal: I did not feel like I was enough and then I interrupted everything that way.
Still other times I hid my fear of shame through high performance until someone took the shame away: Dr. Almann and take a B.
Yes, at other times the hurtful kind of shaming like when my wife was told by someone she respected and looked up to that she was not a good singer or worship leader and she would have to spend the rest of her life in voice lessons. Or when I was called the devil and was asked to go get demons cast out of me by a deliverance ministry.
We have all had to wrestle with shame. Whether it is the internal shaming of ourselves and all those messages of “I am not enough” or the external shaming that comes from someone we love or respect: a peer, a spouse, a child, a boss or colleague.
Dr. Brene Brown says that shame feels the same for men and women but it is organized by gender.
I agree that men and women experience shame for different reasons but the underlying message for both is the same:
I am not enough and therefore, unworthy of love or belonging.
You are not enough, and therefore, you are unworthy of love or belonging.
Shame, if it has its way, at a minimum will detour your life at a maximum it may lead to a total shut down.
Shame works on your heart; it is highly, highly correlated with addiction, depression, violence, aggression, bullying, suicide, eating disorders.
People often confuse guilt and shame.
Guilt is accepting responsibility for my bad choices and or failures. That is not what shame is. There’s a huge difference between I did not study for the test (guilt) and I am a failure (shame). The former is acceptance of our imperfect humanity. The latter is basically an indictment of our very existence.
Of course guilt over things you have no control or is not my responsibility can be and is very unhealthy.
Shame will put a cap on what you do with your life.
You will find that in the Scriptures the practice of shaming others is something that is not just strongly discouraged (Pro 12:4) but that believers should not have to face this experience: 1 Peter 2:6
For it says in Scripture, “Behold, I lay in Zion a stone, a chosen, precious cornerstone. Whoever trusts in Him will never be put to shame.”
Which makes our passage in Hebrews 12:1-3 all the more interesting. This appears like a contradiction. If I trust in him I will never be put to shame and yet at the same time we are told we will face shame and must face it the same way as Yeshua Hebrews 12:2
focusing on Yeshua, the initiator and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before Him, He endured the cross, disregarding its shame; and He has taken His seat at the right hand of the throne of God.
And just human experience has taught me that shame does not go away.
Transition: The good news is that I believe there is an answer that makes sense of the experience of shame and gives us a better path forward. And, I believe it because people just like you and me experienced radical shaming for their faith, friends and families in the first century and somehow this message in Hebrews 12:1-3 helped them to not be nudged by shame in the wrong direction, it created a shame resiliency.
Therefore, since we have such a great cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also get rid of every weight and entangling sin. Let us run with endurance the race set before us,
τοιγαροῦν this is the strongest way of saying “I am about to drop some real wisdom on you that can change your life.”
μάρτυς martus means a “witnesses” not a spectator. We tend to draw up images of the Johnny Cash song, “Family Reunion in the Sky” and some use this passage at funeral to assure people that your family members are in heaven looking down on you. Maybe that is true but it is not true from this passage. These are court witnesses. These are the kind of people you can call to the bema of God, to the courtroom of God where in a real ironical twist as Walter Brueggman did in his OT Theology God is on trial and these are the witnesses testifying on his behalf.
What are they testifying?
Faith in who God said they were and He told them to do was the only thing that pushing back the tide of who shame said they were and what shame said they could not do.
Noah testifies
Enoch testifies
Abraham testifies
Sarah testifies
Moses testifies
David testifies
Deborah testifies
What right do I have to say that faith is what sets us free from the shackles of shame? The text says Hebrews 12:1 ...
Therefore, since we have such a great cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also get rid of every weight and entangling sin. Let us run with endurance the race set before us,
Let’s get rid of every weight and entangling sin.
This is the image of an athlete stripping himself of any cothing that would impede his performance. Like a boxer taking off his robe before he enters the ring. And, anything that might entangle the athlete like a belt, necklace et.
Here is the clue, this kind of sin is the kind of sin we wear, it is placed on us.
I know this may sound like a contradiction but in the Bible not all sin is is the same sin.
This kind of sin is
not the sin of moral evil though it can lead to it.
not the sin of idolatry though it could go there.
not the sin of atheism though it might leave you wondering.
This kind of sin is the kind that is pecking at you from without to destroy within you what is good.
It is what Yeshua described in the parable of the Sower. That “When anyone hears the word of the Kingdom and doesn’t take it to heart, the evil one goes to work immediately” (Matthew 13:18-23). Some give up because they are not secure in themselves (rocky ground folds) some give up because of the thorns of worry (Matthew 13:22).
This is the attack on your personal faith in who God says He is and who He says you are.
But, there is another clue. I have been hiding it right there in plain sight. Hebrews 12:2
focusing on Yeshua, the initiator and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before Him, He endured the cross, disregarding its shame; and He has taken His seat at the right hand of the throne of God.
The author says these witnesses are amazing. They all ran an amazing race on their own. But he does something in this passage with the person of Yeshua that is “wow” level.” He makes Yeshua into the model disciple, not the Lord of the disciples but the star athlete we are supposed to all look up to.
The race set before us: this is a marked out race. We have stay in the lines.
Illustration of runner stepping on line by millimeter.
Our line are in good places.
We run “focusing” on Yeshua’s race because we realize that he is the initiator and perfecter of our faith. In other words, He is the paradigm for how we work out our faith.
He was so absolutely convinced in Himself that he was love and belonged and that his purpose on earth was God’s purpose for him that he was not deterred by the cross.
Remember the old saying: no pain, no gain. For Yeshua, the pain of the cross was the gain of humanity. It was the ultimate win for all who trusted in him.
What makes Yeshua’s race so stunning are the next words: disregarding its shame.
You see it is one thing when you are enduring pain in a Marathon race. The race itself is considered noble and it is an event that many people consider a bucket list items.
No one in the ancient world consider death on a cross as a noble sport. No one saw it as a good way to die.
Yeshua not only bore the cross, but he also showed us how to not let bearing a cross break our spirit.
Hebrews 12:2 - Endured the Cross.
focusing on Yeshua, the initiator and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before Him, He endured the cross, disregarding its shame; and He has taken His seat at the right hand of the throne of God.
Endured the Cross.
Think about the shame of the cross. Think about how powerfully the cross was used as a tool to not just kill Yeshua but to send a clear message to him. A message that said, “You are not loved or wanted here. You will never be enough for us.” The cross put shame filled labels on Him:
Blasphemer
Deceiver
Criminal
Hebrews 12:2 Disregarding its shame.
focusing on Yeshua, the initiator and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before Him, He endured the cross, disregarding its shame; and He has taken His seat at the right hand of the throne of God.
Disregarding its shame.
All that external shame pointed right at him. It says he “disregarded” it. In Greek it says he kataphroneo its shame.
BDAG - to consider something not important enough to be an object of concern, p 529.
Let me illustrate this for you a little more. Because what Yeshua does is shrink shame down to a non-existent state. This word means something like the way you would feel about the mail in your mailbox if your house was on fire and your wife and children were inside. It does not matter.
All of the shame of the cross. All of the you are not enough statements thrown at him from the High Priest, the Scribes, the Pharisees to Him it carried no emotional freight.
All of the we are embarrassed of you actions of the apostles the night he was betrayed, it was like a vapor.
He was not nudged externally nor internally by shame; rather, his faith created a shame resiliency.
Hebrews 12:2
focusing on Yeshua, the initiator and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before Him, He endured the cross, disregarding its shame; and He has taken His seat at the right hand of the throne of God.
The author’s choice of words here is powerful. The cross was the lowest form of capital punishment in the Roman world, reserved for slaves and criminals and involving both torture and public humiliation.
On the cross Yeshua was treated as valueless, being mocked and ridiculed—in short, being “scorned” or “shamed.”
He, however, turned the experience inside out, “scorning the scorn,” or in the author’s words here, “scorning the shame”; the shame attached to the cross was nothing compared to His faith in who God said He was and what God had told him to do.
Blasphemer - The Way
Deceiver - The Truth
Criminal - The Life
Hebrews 12:2
focusing on Yeshua, the initiator and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before Him, He endured the cross, disregarding its shame; and He has taken His seat at the right hand of the throne of God.
Right Hand of God Exaltation
The end result of its shame was his exaltation to the right hand of God (Ps. 110:1).
He sits as the victor.
My friend and a board member of this synagogue Michael Rydelnik once told me, “Time and truth walk hand-in-hand.”
Do you know why 1 Peter 2:6 says
For it says in Scripture, “Behold, I lay in Zion a stone, a chosen, precious cornerstone. Whoever trusts in Him will never be put to shame.”
Here is it what its context says 1 Peter 2:4-5
As you come to Him, a living stone rejected by men but chosen by God and precious, you also, as living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house—a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Messiah Yeshua.
Your faith in Yeshua guarantees you that God will never ever make you feel like you are not enough or that you don’t belong.
If that matters to you, really matters to you. Well that is like holding a 500 million check from the lotto while somebody is screaming at you that you owe them three dollars.
We are encouraged to not be nudged by shame but to be nudged by faith.