SPEAKER_00: Well, a great theologian once said that our hearts are idol factories.
SPEAKER_00: Well, my office is an anti-lament factory.
SPEAKER_00: And here's how you know: as soon as you walk in my office, you turn to the right, what do you see?
SPEAKER_00: Adult Legos.
SPEAKER_00: And then you turn your head just a little bit, kids.
SPEAKER_00: I still have these.
SPEAKER_00: I have some fidget spinners on my desk.
SPEAKER_00: And if that's not enough, you turn your head just a little bit more and you see Jeff.
SPEAKER_00: You're thinking, who is Jeff?
SPEAKER_00: Jeff is a five-foot banana who smiles at you as soon as you enter into my door.
SPEAKER_00: All of that to say, lament is something that does not come naturally to me.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to venture to say that it doesn't come naturally to you either.
SPEAKER_00: When we think about the holiday seasons, everyone thinks, what are we going to do?
SPEAKER_00: Where are we going to go?
SPEAKER_00: How much fun are we going to have?
SPEAKER_00: What joy are we going to have?
SPEAKER_00: Kids, opening presents.
SPEAKER_00: That's a blast.
SPEAKER_00: But if we just skate through life and all we think of are the good things, we are missing a critical part of the Christian journey.
SPEAKER_00: So this journey that we're asking about, and I'm asking you this question as much as myself as it is to you, we see in this passage that Jesus wipes away the tears from our eyes.
SPEAKER_00: My question for you is how can Christ wipe away tears that you haven't let yourself cry?
SPEAKER_00: How can Christ wipe away tears that you haven't let yourself cry?
SPEAKER_00: And so to look at this today, we're going to be looking at three different views.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to see the purpose of tears, followed by our types of tears, and then followed by the best part, the end of tears.
SPEAKER_00: So the purpose of tears, why do we cry?
SPEAKER_00: There was a Pixar movie that came out around 2015 called Inside Out.
SPEAKER_00: And Inside Out is this movie where there's this girl named Riley, and there's all of these emotions going off in her head.
SPEAKER_00: And they have some really original names.
SPEAKER_00: So the little angry guy, his name is Anger.
SPEAKER_00: The happy person, their name is Joy.
SPEAKER_00: You get the point.
SPEAKER_00: Well, a lot of us as Christians, we think our lives is to be like joy inside of Riley's head.
SPEAKER_00: And here's what joy does.
SPEAKER_00: Anytime a sad emotion, for some reason they look like little globes.
SPEAKER_00: One of those little globes shot up into Riley's mind, Joy thought, Oh, here's what I gotta do.
SPEAKER_00: I immediately gotta get rid of the sadness emotion and make it happy.
SPEAKER_00: Because if I were to ask you, every single person, when I asked, when I they walked through the door and I asked them how they had or how Christmas was, it was great, fantastic, never been better.
SPEAKER_00: Well, if you would have seen our house Christmas morning, we would give you the same answer, but it would have looked a little bit differently.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so I would say everything went great, but it was a mess getting out the door, you know.
SPEAKER_00: My sister, she was supposed to be there an hour earlier, and then she just comes strolling in late.
SPEAKER_00: And then my mom's for some reason is obsessed with these baked beans, and she's got to make sure they're perfect.
SPEAKER_00: It's like mom there in a can, they're not gonna be perfect.
SPEAKER_00: You know, that's every single one of us.
SPEAKER_00: But if you ask us, if you were to really get down and get down with people, we all want to make it seem like we have it all together.
SPEAKER_00: And part of lament, part of tears, the purpose of tears is realizing that we aren't supposed to have it all together.
SPEAKER_00: And if you do have it all together, you can come up here and teach instead of me.
SPEAKER_00: I would love to hear it.
SPEAKER_00: Just how great everything is going.
SPEAKER_00: So when we cry and when we allow ourselves to cry, the purpose of those tears is saying, we see in verses one through three that there's a theme of a new heavens and a new earth.
SPEAKER_00: What does that mean?
SPEAKER_00: Well, it means there was something old.
SPEAKER_00: And this something old is something that's not perfect anymore.
SPEAKER_00: You see, the the first time where death enters in the Bible, it just doesn't make sense.
SPEAKER_00: When we allow ourselves to cry, we aren't groaning to God saying, Why did you do this?
SPEAKER_00: When we cry, when we lament, we are saying this isn't the way it's supposed to be.
SPEAKER_00: People shouldn't have cancer.
SPEAKER_00: People shouldn't get Alzheimer's.
SPEAKER_00: None of these things should happen.
SPEAKER_00: They don't fit in the order of creation.
SPEAKER_00: Friends, allow yourself to cry because when you are crying, you are actually agreeing with God.
SPEAKER_00: Did you know that?
SPEAKER_00: When you're crying, you're not saying, God, why did you do this to me?
SPEAKER_00: You're saying, God, I want back to the garden, back the way things were supposed to be.
SPEAKER_00: This whole death thing, it doesn't make sense.
SPEAKER_00: I don't want it anywhere near my life.
SPEAKER_00: That's the purpose of tears.
SPEAKER_00: It's allowing ourselves to agree with God in a way of saying things are supposed to be new, they're not new yet, and because of that, I can be sad.
SPEAKER_00: Allow yourselves to cry.
SPEAKER_00: But the another aspect of that is that tears unite us to the full humanity of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Tears unite us to the whole humanity of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: So when I was little, and honestly, if I'm being truthful still now, sometimes I think of Jesus as a very OCD man on a mission.
SPEAKER_00: So he is going to this location, he's healing people, he's casting out demons.
SPEAKER_00: No time for emotion.
SPEAKER_00: Gotta go to this area, go heal people, cast out demons.
SPEAKER_00: No time over there.
SPEAKER_00: I gotta go over here, I gotta deal with Judas.
SPEAKER_00: You know, we have all these things that we think Christ does, but if we were to actually look through our New Testaments, we see that Jesus cried way more than he rejoiced.
SPEAKER_00: Did you know that?
SPEAKER_00: When Jesus went through the old or went through the New Testament and he was going through places, he spent much of his time crying and not much of his time rejoicing.
SPEAKER_00: So why do we feel like we have to put on this nice, happy face when we come into church?
SPEAKER_00: Here's what the author of Hebrew says about Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: We all know that Jesus wept.
SPEAKER_00: That's one of the most famous verses in the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: But do you know the depths of Jesus' weeping?
SPEAKER_00: When you think that Jesus wept, is it just, okay, Jesus cried?
SPEAKER_00: Let's let's let's move on here.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus cried from his friend's death, from rejection from his hometown, from anticipation of future suffering.
SPEAKER_00: And this is how he cried, Hebrews 5, 7.
SPEAKER_00: In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus Christ Himself, I think we would all agree he's stronger than us, right?
SPEAKER_00: Everybody, yeah, Jesus was stronger than us.
SPEAKER_00: This man who was stronger than us cried out with loud tears because he knew that God the Father was the only one who was going to be able to save them from death.
SPEAKER_00: All of that to say, why aren't we doing the same?
SPEAKER_00: I've only been to a few community groups while I've been here working with youth, and there's never been a time where we sit around and we lament.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying make it a weekly practice because then community groups will go away like that.
SPEAKER_00: But occasionally, it is good for us to connect to the humanity of Christ, knowing that Jesus himself cares way more about the future than we ever could.
SPEAKER_00: You see, Jesus himself, he hated death.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus gets the full humanity experience way more than we give him credit for.
SPEAKER_00: Just think how it would be to have your own hometown betray you, your friends betray you, friends die, and you're being the only one who can save humanity.
SPEAKER_00: When you cry, you are uniting yourself to the humanity of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: But you're also uniting yourself to others.
SPEAKER_00: And here's what I mean.
SPEAKER_00: After every big American tragedy, and I'm sure this happens other places as well, did you know that there is a visible uptick in church attendance?
SPEAKER_00: I've seen as much as 30% increase after a national tragedy.
SPEAKER_00: And then my question is, why do you think that is?
SPEAKER_00: Like, why after something happens and people say, Where is God?
SPEAKER_00: Do they automatically start going to church?
SPEAKER_00: When we allow ourselves to cry and when we lament, we are asking questions that have been asked since the beginning, and that is, God, do you got me?
SPEAKER_00: In the most country way possible.
SPEAKER_00: Do you got me?
SPEAKER_00: You know, is are you going to save me?
SPEAKER_00: Where are you in this tragedy?
SPEAKER_00: I don't see you.
SPEAKER_00: I have no clue where you are.
SPEAKER_00: What am I supposed to learn from this?
SPEAKER_00: When we cry rather than having joy, we're able to have conversations with God that are a whole lot more candid and truthful than we ever give credit for.
SPEAKER_00: Because here's the alternative.
SPEAKER_00: If everything was going good, if your life was going great, and you had no tragedy at all, why would you why would you worship God?
SPEAKER_00: Really?
SPEAKER_00: Why would you?
SPEAKER_00: It seems like, well, you know, Lee, Lee has everything going for him.
SPEAKER_00: Everything is going perfect in his life.
SPEAKER_00: He is, he's just an awesome guy, and there is there's nothing wrong in his life.
SPEAKER_00: He's only experienced good things in his life.
SPEAKER_00: He was born on third base, as they say.
SPEAKER_00: He has everything going for him.
SPEAKER_00: When would I ever need to cry out to God?
SPEAKER_00: Never.
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
SPEAKER_00: I would never have to cry out to God.
SPEAKER_00: You see, when we lament, this allows us to come together collectively and talk to each other in ways that we are maybe afraid to normally.
SPEAKER_00: We may have those doubts creeping in the back of our mind of God's goodness, and then an event happens, something happens in our life where we say, okay, I've got to talk about this with my closest friends, my community, the people that I'm here with.
SPEAKER_00: Because this is the way that Christ has designed us.
SPEAKER_00: We are supposed to be communal beings.
SPEAKER_00: John Claude and I are reading a book about grief, and they say that a shared burden is an easy burden.
SPEAKER_00: When we are in the depths of despair, that's the time when we are tend to withdraw, but we should be in community with other believers, because that's the only thing that will help us endure it.
SPEAKER_00: So next we have our types of tears.
SPEAKER_00: And so for our types of tears, I boil it down into two categories.
SPEAKER_00: I have our tears of death and then our tears of anticipation.
SPEAKER_00: So for our tears of death, I'm going to start out with a story from a man named Tony Hawk.
SPEAKER_00: And if you are of a certain age, you may know that name.
SPEAKER_00: If you are a child, you probably know that name as well because he is the most famous skateboarder ever.
SPEAKER_00: And so Tony Hawk was so popular that he brought skateboarding into the mainstream.
SPEAKER_00: In the 90s, people were wearing huge pants and these skateboarding shoes, even though we never skateboard because Tony Hawk was that cool.
SPEAKER_00: And Tony Hawk even had a video game after him that brought him even further into the spotlight.
SPEAKER_00: So Tony Hawk was a man who burst on the scene in the 90s and he became popular because of one trick.
SPEAKER_00: And this one trick is called a 900.
SPEAKER_00: And for those of you who are maybe not as adept in math like myself, that is four complete rotations on a skateboard and then a half one.
SPEAKER_00: And he did in the 90s, and everyone lost their mind.
SPEAKER_00: Well, as what happens with all of us, Tony Hawk started to age.
SPEAKER_00: And then at 48 years old, he's like, I'm gonna do this again.
SPEAKER_00: I gotta get a 900 again.
SPEAKER_00: And so Tony Hawk, you see the video, you can look at this online.
SPEAKER_00: He's going up the ramp and he's just eating it time after time.
SPEAKER_00: He's getting down.
SPEAKER_00: And then you see the frustration on his face.
SPEAKER_00: And then he gets up, and it is not a pretty 900, but that 48-year-old man landed it.
SPEAKER_00: And then you see Tony Hawk.
SPEAKER_00: He beams.
SPEAKER_00: But then he starts crying.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because at 48 years old, Tony Hawk knew he was foolish to try it in the first place.
SPEAKER_00: And he realized that he experienced a death.
SPEAKER_00: A death of a dream.
SPEAKER_00: A death of an ability.
SPEAKER_00: When I say tears of death, there is the obvious.
SPEAKER_00: If a family member dies, that is a death we should lament.
SPEAKER_00: If a close friend or relative, if any of that, if any of those people die, we all should lament.
SPEAKER_00: But I'm going to venture to say that many of us experience these smaller deaths on a daily and weekly basis.
SPEAKER_00: So there was a time when me and Mary Brooke, when I had first started seminary, that we thought we were going to do van life.
SPEAKER_00: If you know van life, we thought she was going to do travel occupational therapy, that I was going to be the you know, blogging seminary dad on just riding around in a van across the country.
SPEAKER_00: And then it wasn't too long until we started thinking about it.
SPEAKER_00: It's like, well, we can get into some pretty good fights.
SPEAKER_00: But if you do that in a van, it's a little bit harder to escape.
SPEAKER_00: I guess one person could just drive away.
SPEAKER_00: But the amount of community and everything that we would have lost at that time, it wouldn't have been worth it.
SPEAKER_00: We experienced the death of a silly dream.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you might have bigger dreams that have died.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe, just maybe, this holiday season's hard for you because you have relatives and they seem to be doing everything they want in life.
SPEAKER_00: And you're looking at another mundane week of getting the kids to oboe practice and skateboard practice and everything that they have going on, and you think, I just thought my life would be different.
SPEAKER_00: It's a death of a dream.
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe the holidays were hard for a different reason.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe they were hard because you have a death of a relationship, a family member, a sibling, friend, somebody you were really once close to.
SPEAKER_00: They have decided they want nothing to do with you, and it's because you were marked by Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: You see, when Jesus talks about tears, don't just think of it as it's a one-time event, but it's oftentimes a lifetime of going through something, of death, of pain.
SPEAKER_00: But there's another type of tear as well.
SPEAKER_00: If you see in the second half of verse four, he talks about pains and miseries and mourning and crying.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm boiling these down and making them into one word, and that's tears of anticipation.
SPEAKER_00: So these are the things that you think may happen, but may never happen.
SPEAKER_00: So these have no definite end date.
SPEAKER_00: When a dream dies, our van life, we knew right when that dream was dead.
SPEAKER_00: If you are somebody who's waiting for a baby, that dream can come a little bit longer, or it may never come.
SPEAKER_00: William Stabler recently told me that in Navy SEAL training, that it's not the long events that get people to tap out.
SPEAKER_00: So if you're told that you have to run 20 miles and you know that there's a definite end spot, you know, after 20 miles, I'm done.
SPEAKER_00: I can go sleep, drink some coffee in that order, and then I can get ready for my next events.
SPEAKER_00: But it's when they're told to do something that has no definite end time, like just run.
SPEAKER_00: When do you want me to stop?
SPEAKER_00: Just run.
SPEAKER_00: That is when people have the hardest time completing their training, and that's when people are most likely to tap out.
SPEAKER_00: Tears of anticipation are hard because they don't have an expiration date.
SPEAKER_00: There's a man in the book of John, and there was he was an invalid, is a word that was used.
SPEAKER_00: And he went and he sat by this pool every day, and he just wanted to be healed.
SPEAKER_00: And eventually Jesus came up and healed him.
SPEAKER_00: But what this man was missing and what he was wanting, he didn't just want this physical healing to make him better.
SPEAKER_00: This tears of anticipation that this man had extended way further than what you or I could realize.
SPEAKER_00: So let me let me give you some examples.
SPEAKER_00: So he was a man who was paralyzed, he was by the pool, got it.
SPEAKER_00: His limbs weren't working, so he was physically limited.
SPEAKER_00: He was suffering in that way.
SPEAKER_00: But he was also a social outcast.
SPEAKER_00: Back in biblical times, they didn't really know what to do with people who had disabilities.
SPEAKER_00: So they just left them there.
SPEAKER_00: He had no friends, he was lonely.
SPEAKER_00: Things that all of us experience today.
SPEAKER_00: So my question for you is what tears of anticipation are you not letting yourself cry?
SPEAKER_00: The tears of death, those are the easy ones to categorize.
SPEAKER_00: But what dreams do you have that you hope Jesus answers for you that hasn't been answered yet?
SPEAKER_00: Because when we really start digging down into those types of things, that's where we really have our questions about God and God's goodness.
SPEAKER_00: Of God, I thought I would be further along in life at this point.
SPEAKER_00: I thought I would have my sixth promotion.
SPEAKER_00: I thought I'd be CEO of Amazon.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever it is that you are desiring.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's you're single, and the holidays were hard for a different reason.
SPEAKER_00: It's those well-intentioned relatives who are always like, ah, so is there a Mrs.
SPEAKER_00: or Mr.
SPEAKER_00: around?
SPEAKER_00: And you have to give them a curt?
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: Shut them down real fast.
SPEAKER_00: But you're praying and you're crying out to God in time and time again, and knowing that the answer may never come.
SPEAKER_00: Friends, it's during those times where I encourage you to have these tears of anticipation to be honest with God in ways that you've never been honest before.
SPEAKER_00: So really cry out, talk to your community, ask the ask God the hard question you want to ask Him, and that is, God, do you got me?
SPEAKER_00: And that brings me to our last point, and that is the end of tears.
SPEAKER_00: So we've seen that we should cry, we've seen ways that we cry, but the answer we haven't asked, or quest uh the question we haven't asked is, well, what happens to those tears?
SPEAKER_00: The psalmist says it well.
SPEAKER_00: It says that God has bottled up our tears.
SPEAKER_00: So those tears that you have cried, they don't go through evaporation.
SPEAKER_00: They aren't there just you know in the dirt somewhere, they're not forgotten.
SPEAKER_00: If you have ever been a at a funeral and people are people are coming to console you, there are a list of bingo items that you can know that people will say.
SPEAKER_00: None of them are helpful.
SPEAKER_00: First one being, it's in a better place.
SPEAKER_00: Thanks, really helps me right now.
SPEAKER_00: There is God needed him more than I did or than you do.
SPEAKER_00: And then there is he's walking on streets of gold right now.
SPEAKER_00: All people who say that are having well intentions.
SPEAKER_00: People aren't saying that to try to make you feel bad or try to disparage your pain.
SPEAKER_00: The problem is tears indicate death, and we don't know how to.
SPEAKER_00: Deal with death.
SPEAKER_00: We just don't.
SPEAKER_00: But what does it say that Jesus does?
SPEAKER_00: I want you to think about this.
SPEAKER_00: So we haven't talked really about the book of Revelation and its importance, but a short summary of the book of Revelation is Revelation is a book of victory.
SPEAKER_00: Where we see the powers of death destroyed and we see Christ reign.
SPEAKER_00: And what do we see that Christ does in verse 4 with all of his power, all of his glory, he doesn't have a parade, he doesn't go next to you and say, Oh, I'm so glad that you endured, let's go party.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't go to you and say, Hey, it all turned out okay, didn't it?
SPEAKER_00: No, no, no.
SPEAKER_00: When Jesus meets you after judgment and he's wiping away a tear from your eye, he's doing that with his power.
SPEAKER_00: His first act as a ruler in this new heavens and new earth is to wipe away your tears.
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever thought about that?
SPEAKER_00: Mind blown.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus could do anything at this point, absolutely anything he wanted to do, and what he chooses to do is to look you directly in the face and say, This life that you lived was hard.
SPEAKER_00: I'm acknowledging it, death is gone.
SPEAKER_00: Wiping away the tears from your eyes.
SPEAKER_00: When Jesus healed the man at the pool, he asked him a question that was, do you want to be healed?
SPEAKER_00: That's my question for you.
SPEAKER_00: Is do you want to be healed?
SPEAKER_00: For those of you who know me well enough, you know that I have some scars on my legs, and that's because I've dislocated my kneecaps three times.
SPEAKER_00: And every time I went to the doctor, I went in walking, and they said, Hey Lee, we can do surgery on you.
SPEAKER_00: You can walk around right now, that's fine.
SPEAKER_00: Or we can do surgery on you.
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna be down for a little bit, but eventually you're gonna be better.
SPEAKER_00: So my question for you is is do you want to be better?
SPEAKER_00: Do you want to have the healing that Jesus offers?
SPEAKER_00: Because if you do, I'm gonna suggest three things to you.
SPEAKER_00: There is uh a music artist who has a song, and the the song says, Yes, I'm a mess, with an S on my chest.
SPEAKER_00: So we're all walking around like we're Superman, but we're all very messy on the inside.
SPEAKER_00: The first thing that you can do if you want to be healed is to admit that you're messy.
SPEAKER_00: Just admit it.
SPEAKER_00: Admit it to God, admit it to your family, admit it to your community group.
SPEAKER_00: It is okay to be a messy people.
SPEAKER_00: We are people who need healing.
SPEAKER_00: We need the good physician.
SPEAKER_00: We got great physicians in here.
SPEAKER_00: There's a better one.
SPEAKER_00: We need Jesus, we need ourselves to admit that we are messy because when we do, we're just like me going in for that surgery and realizing that I'm okay, but I want to be better.
SPEAKER_00: The next thing that you can do is get in a community group or a community of people where you can share your burdens with one another.
SPEAKER_00: I cannot emphasize that enough.
SPEAKER_00: Shared burdens are easy burdens.
SPEAKER_00: What have you been carrying for so long?
SPEAKER_00: What has been on your heart that you have hoped to share with somebody that every time you think about it, it makes you sad, it makes you sorrowful.
SPEAKER_00: What is that thing that you have in your life?
SPEAKER_00: Because what the enemy wants us to do is to think that we got to carry this by ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: That we have to have it all together because everyone else has it all together, too.
SPEAKER_00: And then the final thing that we can do is we can realize that Christ hates death way more than we do.
SPEAKER_00: And when we think about our sorrow and pain and tears in that light, we realize that we aren't just, we don't just hate what has happened to us, we don't hate the death, we don't hate the anticipation nearly as much as Jesus does, and it connects us to the humanity of Him.
SPEAKER_00: So I opened up and I talked about Inside Out, so it's only fitting that we close with Inside Out.
SPEAKER_00: So this character that I had mentioned, Joy.
SPEAKER_00: Joy goes through every Disney journey where they learn something magnificent at the end.
SPEAKER_00: And here's what Joy learned about her and Riley.
SPEAKER_00: So Riley's the girl who has all these emotions.
SPEAKER_00: What Joy realized was that joy and sadness, they're not enemies.
SPEAKER_00: That joy and sadness are allies.
SPEAKER_00: For us to be complete Christians, allowing ourselves to be redeemed by the Holy Spirit, we have to let sadness into our lives.
SPEAKER_00: We have to allow ourselves to be messy.
SPEAKER_00: We have to stop thinking about how we want to have ourselves portrayed, but how we actually are.
SPEAKER_00: Allow yourself to cry.
SPEAKER_00: Because here's what happens.
SPEAKER_00: After judgment day, when Christ is coming and he's there wiping away those tears in your eyes, that day will be so much sweeter.
SPEAKER_00: Allow yourselves to cry.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_00: God, we are thankful for having a full spectrum of emotions in our lives from joy to sorrow to pain to excitement.
SPEAKER_00: Everything that you have given us is joyous, even the things that don't seem that way, because tears will eventually be turned into joy.
SPEAKER_00: And because of that, we pray that you show us the areas where we are trying to be too strong, where we aren't crying enough, where we are trying to be too strong, where we're trying to hold an entire burden by ourselves, where we have brothers and sisters who are just waiting for us to share that burden with them.
SPEAKER_00: We pray for those who are traveling and those who may or may not be estranged with their family.
SPEAKER_00: We pray that all of our Cahaba Park people show your light to those around us.
SPEAKER_00: Pray all this in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.