Drop the Bricks

Today marks the 6th week in a series titled, “Let Hope In.” Up until now, we’ve talked about what it means to discover hope, to take the next steps in receiving hope through confession, losing hope, hope in family, hope in death, and now this morning, I want to discuss the significance of finding hope through forgiveness.

When Steve asked me to teach on this topic 2 months ago, I immediately started praying for you. All of us have wrestled with this subject on some level. Perhaps some of you more so than others.

And my desire for you over the next 30 minutes is for you to let the wall around the hurt place of your life to peek open just a little bit to let hope in. And together, let’s discover what Jesus wants to do with you as a whole, healed, and reconciled person.

Let’s pray together…

Introduction: Story about Judgment

What do you think of when you see this word? Some may think, justice, fairness. Others of you might think violence, condemnation.

Some of you may even feel a visceral reaction to this word.

You wanna know what I see? I see a misspelled word! I see a misplaced “e!” I kinda threw a curve ball at you.

During my Sophomore year of college, I enrolled in a class with a larger than average number of non-traditional students, meaning students who did not take the traditional path of college right out of high school. I was 19 at the time, and more than half the class consisted of folks my mom’s age and older.

On this one particular day, I sat behind an older lady - somewhere in between the age of my mom and grandma - kinda like a great-aunt. I remembered that I could always tell that she colored her hair because some hairs would be zebra-like - part brown, part gray, part brown. She never told me her name, but she always sat in the front seat of the middle row.

On this afternoon, my professor taught on the topic of how other religions perceived the concept of judgment. And I’ll never forget this, he went to write judgment on the board, and he stopped after the g, paused, and then asked the class: is the word judgment spelled with or without an “e”?

Now, let me stop there and rewind to 6th grade. I loved spelling, which makes the case that I am not a genius, and my favorite part of spelling was getting a 100% so that my paper would be placed on the A+ wall. During the difficult words section of the book, I remember so vividly the word that I missed which kept me from the A+ wall: judgment - because I spelled it WITH an “e.”

So, fast-forward back to my college classroom. My professor asked how to spell the word judgment, and my hand shot up in the air like a rocket ship. In fact, before he even called on me, I blurted out, “without an E. Judgment is spelled without an E.” So he finished spelling the word without an E…

Until, the lady in front of me, said, “Wait a minute. Dr. Stull, Judgment is spelled with an E.”

Dr. Stull, looked at me, and I said, “No! I know for a fact that it is spelled without an E.”

To which the lady in front, turned around, looked at me in the eye, and said, “Young Man, judgment is spelled with an E!”

I sat there shocked and furious, and then Dr. Stull, preceded to write in a tiny E in between G and M that I had to stare at for the rest of the 3 hour class.

I felt so belittled and disrespected by this lady.

After class finished, I knew in my heart that I needed to forgive her and seek forgiveness for causing her pain and embarrassment. But in my mind, I thought to myself, if I forgave her for how she treated in my in class, then who would pay for the cost of my pain?

A wrong costs something. Pain costs something. We live in a world where things like our emotions need to zero out one way or another.

If someone causes hurt to us, does that emotion magically disappear? If someone breaks their relationship with us, do the memories just fade?

No, of course not! Hurt does not simply disappear into the far reaches of our universe never to return or reappear.

Pain is kinda like the IRS in that regard, no transaction goes unnoticed. :) The emotions need to complete.

Each one of us carries around reminders and emotions of past hurts. If I asked each of you to think right now about an unresolved place of pain in your life, then I suppose that all of you could do it… instantly! All of you! Every single one of you can point to a place of unresolved pain.

I want you to think about the place, and I want you to hold onto it for a few moments.

That means currently at this moment, every person in this room is thinking about a place of pain. And I think this fact alone breaks the heart of Jesus more so than anything else in the world.

Because unresolved pain steals from you.

It steals your joy. It steals your peace. It steals your relationships It robs you of your own humanity And ultimately it steals your faith and your relationship with Jesus.

Each one of us carry pain from past hurts, and we store them inside and carry them around like bricks in a backpack.

Pain comes from three different kinds of hurt:

Hurt caused by others. This hurt steals our trust, our significance, and robs us of our joy.

Maybe you were abused by someone you trusted Perhaps some guy took advantage of you in a relationship that broke your heart. Maybe your business partner made a commitment to you and broke it, which caused your reputation and financial stability to suffer Or maybe you were bullied by people who didn’t even know you for no other reason than you were just there at the wrong time

MYTH: Time heals all wounds. Time may ease the sting, but it does not resolve your pain.

Each time someone wronged you, in went a brick.

2. Pain comes from another hurt - Hurt caused by you.

The pain that you cause others robs them of their trust in you, which in turn, steals your integrity and character.

If you are the abuser or the one causing pain, then not only do you steal something from the person receiving your offense, but you also rob yourself from the one you offend placing any sort of trust in you. The offender both tears down his own integrity, as well as steal the offended person’s joy.

You see, when the offender causes pain to someone else, that person offends 2 people: the person receiving it, and his or her own self.

MYTH: when we cause pain to others, when we can walk away from it, not address it, pretend it never happened, and deceive ourselves into thinking that emotions do not zero out at the end of the day.

And practically speaking, when we buy into this myth, then not only do we cause pain to another person - and potentially create unresolved pain that may result in more bricks in their backpack - we also cause a void within our life because we participate in tearing apart our own integrity and character.

When you hurt others, you hurt 2 people: yourself and the other person. And that unresolved pain means another brick in your backpack.

3. Last, pain also comes from When you hurt yourself.

Addicts know well the depth and breadth of the pain caused by this hurt. And the tragedy of this hurt is that no one else in the world knows about the pain you cause yourself, except you.

You carry it by yourself. You confront it by yourself. You try to run from it by yourself. You try to run from it by yourself.

And all the while, the pain caused by this hurt is stealing your hope.

MYTH: when we hurt ourselves in private, it is a victimless crime. It’s the ultimate getaway. You can move on from personal pain so long as no one knows about it.

That’s why pornography is in such high demand. According to CovenantEyes.com In 2012, consumers purchased as much pornography as iTunes downloads. And if the majority of porn wasn’t pirated for free online, then it would have been the highest grossing media platform in 2012, ahead of movies and music.

Talk to anyone whose recovered from abusing porn, and they will tell it is not a victimless crime. Talk to a recovering alcohol and drug addict, and they will tell you that it is not a victimless crime.

Each time you hurt yourself and pretend that it’s not a victimless crime, then in goes a brick.

And over the course of a lifetime, we end up amassing a collection of bricks, every one representing unresolved pain, that we carry with us everywhere we go.

We wear these oversized backpacks and then question the existence of a good God.

We wear these crazy backpacks and wonder why we cannot sustain healthy friendships.

We wear overloaded backpacks and then struggle with why we hate our spouse or fight with our kids.

I think it’s because you are exhausted, and you have no more capacity in your life to offer to God or anyone else. All of your energy gets directed to carrying around your backpack.

We lost our trust when we got hurt.

We lost our integrity when we hurt others.

We lost our hope when we hurt ourself.

So, how much more do we lose our faith in God when we carry around a backpack full of bricks?

All of a sudden, believing in God becomes an impossible task because how can one believe when trust, integrity, and hope disappear due to unresolved pain.

Without trust, integrity, and hope, God becomes the enemy, a myth, or just plain non-existent.

And then as a result, church, God, and the Bible all become obsolete, or worse yet, places onto which we project the hurts of our unresolved pain and the agony from carrying around our backpack all these years.

And the irony of this is that some people still do well. Some people get used to carrying their backpack, some people even thrive in it. They convert their pain into productivity, and it drives them to succeed and accomplish great things.

Some people even carry around their backpacks, bring them to church - no one can see it - but they function well. They serve their family well - at least on the outside.

But at some point, the one truth that everyone must confront whose ever carried backpack is this: the weight and burden of your backpack, even when you deal with it well, always steals your freedom.

Unresolved pain always steals your freedom - no matter how good everything looks on the outside and how well you still function - unresolved pain always steals your freedom.

I want you to take a risk with me. I want you to imagine what it would look like for you to set it down and discover your freedom in Jesus!

One story, in particular, that I want to share with you.

Some of you know about the life of David, and others of you may not.

David lived a long time ago, and for a period of his life, he ruled over the nation of Israel. Despite all of the connotations attached with that name, the one think you need to know about this nation is that God chose them and invested into them in order to build them up and send them out into the rest of the world to share about the goodness and salvation of God. Awesome task, right! Well, they failed over and over, but still God showed them grace and mercy.

Even to this day, the nation of Israel still regards David as their greatest King. He was a successful, strong leader, who chased after the heart of God. You can read all about David in the books Samuels, Kings, and Chronicles. Great books, great history!

During the height of David’s success, as we all do, he began to think that he lived above the consequences of his actions. In other words, he bought into the myths that we discussed a few minutes ago: that he could escape the consequences of his actions and not pay the debt of the pain that he caused others and himself.

So, he’s walking on the roof of his palace one night and spots a woman bathing in her home. One author I follow called David’s actions an ancient way of surfing the internet.

David sees this women named Bathsheba, calls her into his palace, sleeps with her, impregnates her, and now faces the dilemma of how to cover his tracks without paying the consequence.

Thus, he sends her husband to the front lines of the battlefield to have him killed, and then makes Bathsheba one of his wives.

All in all, not a bad way to over up his actions. He commits murder without getting his hands dirty and marries his mistress to hide his illegitimate son.

He put some hefty bricks in his backpack, but he’s doing ok. He’s still the King and Israel’s still successful. He still wines and dines his people without letting onto the weight of his bricks. His crimes aren’t totally victimless, but not many people got hurt, and let’s face it, Bathsheba’s husband probably would have died in battle anyway. And as one his main wives, she lives a better life than she did with her husband.

If you read the story in 1 Samuel 11, David essentially got away with the entire event.

Except the very last sentence in 1 Samuel 11 says this, “But the Lord was displeased with David had done.”

He got away with murder with everyone except God. God noticed. God notices when people hurt others and themselves. It breaks his heart.

If you read this, you would see that God desires only one thing: to live in a healthy, loving, restorative relationship with you.

We know this not just because the Bible says it; we know it because I can point to a real, historical person named Jesus who claimed that God loves everyone and desires to become reconciled to all people.

Paul wrote to a church in Colosse, known as the Colossians, this statement in chapter 1:15-22 -

Christ is the visible image of the invisible God.     He existed before anything was created and is supreme over all creation,

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for through him God created everything     in the heavenly realms and on earth. He made the things we can see     and the things we can’t see— such as thrones, kingdoms, rulers, and authorities in the unseen world.     Everything was created through him and for him.

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He existed before anything else,     and he holds all creation together.

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Christ is also the head of the church,     which is his body. He is the beginning,     supreme over all who rise from the dead.     So he is first in everything.

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For God in all his fullness     was pleased to live in Christ,

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and through him God reconciled     everything to himself. He made peace with everything in heaven and on earth     by means of Christ’s blood on the cross.

21 This includes you who were once far away from God. You were his enemies, separated from him by your evil thoughts and actions. 22 Yet now he has reconciled you to himself through the death of Christ in his physical body. As a result, he has brought you into his own presence, and you are holy and blameless as you stand before him without a single fault.

God wants nothing more than to reconcile your relationship with him and restore you to freedom.

It is in this truth and desire that God confronts David through a man named, Nathan. Essentially, he tells David: drop the bricks, God sees you for who you are, seek his forgiveness, and make it right.

David was so moved by the truth of God and the hope for freedom and reconciliation that David did exactly what God asked him to do.

Because even kings can only wear backpacks for so long.

David wrote about what it looked like for him to take off his backpack in one of his poems called Psalm 51.

Let me sum up his poem in 10 seconds:

He got real about his sin and confessed it He asked God for forgiveness And then he left rejoicing

Taking off the backpack and dropping the bricks is that easy. Freedom is literally 30 seconds away.

David writes in Psalm 51:

Have mercy on me, O God,     because of your unfailing love. Because of your great compassion,     blot out the stain of my sins.

Step 1: God sees for you who you are. See God for who God is. He wants to forgive and reconcile your relationships with both him and others because he LOVES you. His unfailing love erases your fault, not his wrath, so quiet the voices in your mind or silence your friends who tell you that God will punish you for what you did. God will forgive you because he loves you. Period.

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Wash me clean from my guilt.     Purify me from my sin.

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For I recognize my rebellion;     it haunts me day and night.

Step 2: David gets honest with himself. He stops the deception.

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Against you, and you alone, have I sinned;     I have done what is evil in your sight. You will be proved right in what you say,     and your judgment against me is just.

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For I was born a sinner—     yes, from the moment my mother conceived me.

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But you desire honesty from the womb,     teaching me wisdom even there.

Step 1 - Acknowledge God as one who loves you with unfailing love.

Step 2 - Get Honest with yourself

Step 3 - Take responsibility, seek forgiveness, and make it right.

But some of you may still be wondering: who pays my debt if I forgive?

I want to responded with how Paul responded in his letter to the Colossians.