Scroll down to view sermons in this series, week by week.  If you wish to view or print individual sermons, click Archives to make your selection. 

This page was last updated 05/05/08

Week of: November 4, 2007
Title: Will I be hurt again?
Series: Hallmarks of Great Relationships – Part 5
Scripture: Matthew 10:11-17

          Any time a wrong is done, forgiveness given, and an attempt made at reconciliation, there usually raises the question: Will I be hurt again? This question can, and usually does, come up in any and all relationships in which a person is trying to make up their mind about reconciliation. Many people take the approach to life and relationships like this old saying: “Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me,” and in doing so they decide not to give a person another chance to be a part of their lives.  However, if you do decide to allow a person another chance, the question remains: “What guarantees do I have that I will not get hurt again?” None! Forgiveness and reconciliation is risky business. There is an illustration, that could be the story of most families in any town or any city.

          He was the chief of police, entrusted with the safety of a town’s citizens. He was faithful to his job for a number of years, doing everything possible to protect the people under his charge. One afternoon he met, shot, and killed his wife, and then himself, in a crowded downtown parking lot. People were stunned (How could something like this happen?), until the local news reporters found out that his family had a long history of domestic violence. He was a peace officer but his own family was anything but peaceful.

          It is estimated that there are over 4 million families in America which experience physical and psychological abuse. At the turn of the century, family violence accounted for 11% of all reported and unreported violence. Twenty-two percent of all murders that occur in America do so in the so-called safety of home. Of the 500,000 men and women in the State prisons for violent crime, 15% are there because of family abuse. And many of their victims, when given the chance, were repeat victims who had no doubt asked themselves the question: “Will I be hurt again?”

          Being hurt again is not just something that is only tied to domestic violence and abuse; because we can be hurt anytime we trust someone enough to care about them. C. S. Lewis wrote in his book, The Four Loves: “Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken.” The only way to prevent the risk of being broken is to refuse to love at all. However, if we do so then we take the risk that “it will not be broken; it will (then) become unbreakable, impenetrable, and irredeemable.”

          So, given these possible extremes: continued hurt and pain on one hand, or cold-heartedness on the other, is there any alternative? Yes, let’s consider what the scriptures say this morning. In Matthew 5, Jesus tells his followers to “turn the other cheek.” This scripture is hard to take for most of us because it has the imagery of someone who is standing before another person and letting that person hammer away at them. It is so painful you want to ask, “how many times to I have to allow someone to hit me or punish me?” Well, if you’re like me, you think of Matthew 18: 21 when Peter came to Jesus and asked: “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?” And Jesus answered: ‘I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.’” Well, even if I take this as a literal 77 times, that’s rather scary and painful to think that Jesus wants me to take that many hits to my ugly mug. Is this what Jesus wants us to do?

          Jesus wants us to forgive. A child of God is supposed to forgive. We really don’t have a choice about forgiveness if we want to be spiritually healthy. And there is no way that we can become hard-hearted and cold toward others, if we want to be like Jesus. Besides, not forgiving another person is bad, very bad for us. It hurts us a lot more than it hurts the other person. However, Jesus doesn’t necessarily say we have to stand still and let another person slug us again and again. I don’t have to be a stationary target, with a sign on my chin that says: “Hit me.” Look at our scripture this morning, in verse 16 He says to His disciples: “I am sending you like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes, and as innocent as doves.” The phrase “sheep among wolves” speaks volumes on how difficult life can be at times. We live in the best nation on the face of the earth, we have liberties and rights that none before us have had, but life still can be very tough and dangerous at times. Jesus saw his followers like helpless and docile sheep, wandering out away from the flock into the jaws of four-legged predators. However, He says don’t be stupid and foolish; it is not time for all of my followers to go to heaven. I don’t want you to suffer and die needlessly, “be on your guard against men; they will hand you over to the local authorities and whip you in their places of worship.”

          At times, Christians are called upon to suffer for their beliefs, but needless and foolish suffering is not God’s will. Therefore, be smart, not foolish, and let God tell you when it is time to take it on the cheek. To illustrate this teaching, Jesus did exactly that. Please turn to the Gospel of John. In the Chapter 2, John has Jesus cleansing the temple at the time of the Passover. He literally drives out the sheep and the cattle, overturns the tables of the money changers, scatters their coins, and disrupts their business. He angers a lot of people. Anyway, as He continues to stay in Jerusalem, he does many miraculous signs and many people believed in His name. Despite all the authorities of Jerusalem and the temple that he ticks off, he impresses a lot of people for the good as well. But John adds this, “Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all men. He did not need man’s testimony about man, for he knew what was in man.” Jesus was smart enough and wise enough to know what was in the hearts of people. He, therefore, wants us to be wise enough to know what we are getting ourselves into. Look, as Christians, what we do or don’t do is not supposed to be because we are stupid or cowards, but because we hope that it serves the greater good—the greater good being the will of God, the good of the church, and the good of other people.

          Now remember, forgiveness is not an opinion. Treating people decently is not an opinion, but when thinking about full reconciliation, you might want to consider the following: Is full reconciliation possible? It might be that the relationship can never go back the way it was? Is reconciliation worth the risk? Am I prepared to put myself back in that situation again? Has the person ever expressed any remorse for their previous behavior? Have they expressed any desire to change? Is there any evidence of change for the better? What is this relationship doing to me, physically, emotionally, and spiritually? Can I take more of the same?

          Based on the answers to these questions and more, is God expecting me to give that person another chance? If you decide He is, then still try to act wisely. Set limits and conditions on which your relationship might continue. For example, to the alcoholic husband, you might say: “I am not going to put up with this again, you either get help or you cannot come back.” To the irresponsible son or daughter say, “I love you, but I am not going to bail you out of trouble the next time.” I know this is a lot easier said than done, but say it and mean it—practice tough love. For many chronic offenders, it is their only hope aside from the grace of God.

          For those seeking the trust of others, or those who are seeking to trust another again, remember… once trust is lost it must be earned back. It doesn’t sound very Christian, but it is the truth none the less. Trust, if it comes back at all, is very fragile and comes back very slowly, often inch by inch. It takes time to restore trust, and if it is broken again, again, again, it becomes almost, aside from the grace of God, impossible to renew again. Will you be hurt again? If you forgive and try to reconcile again you will be. If you let people in, then you will be again. The only option, aside from being “as wise as a serpent and harmless as a dove,” is to let you heart become a heart of stone.

Week of: November 11, 2007
Title:  Hardened Heart and Broken Relationships
Series:  Hallmarks of Great Relationships – Part 6
Scripture:  Ezekiel 11: 16-21

          Cardiologists tell us that when the human heart hardens, it becomes inflexible and loses its ability to move life-giving blood throughout the body. The heart’s increasing disability eventually causes death or certainly takes its toll on one’s overall physical health. Something similar happens to our spiritual health when we refuse to forgive and practice reconciliation. Hardened hearts and closed relationships cannot receive and give sustenance we need.

          In our scripture today, Ezekiel is saying that Israel is suffering from the effects of a long term heart problem. They have the hardened heart syndrome because they have divided their loyalties and love between two different lovers. The best way to understand this is to say some relationships are so deep and personal that they are meant to be primary in nature. That simply means that while I say that I should love everyone, there is no one that I should love like I love my wife. She and our children are my primary loves.

          According to the Bible, there is an even deeper relationship that is not only primary in nature but is ultimate in nature, and that is my relationship with God. It is ultimate because it is so deep that it involves worship, and even though I might love my wife and family, I do not and should not worship them. Right?

          Israel, like many people today, got confused and decided not only to make things primary that should not be primary, but also make things ultimate that should not be ultimate. Consequently, they got this warning from God, “but as to those whose hearts are devoted to their vile images and detestable idols, (in other words who are worshiping false gods) I will bring down on their own heads what they have done.” Many people don’t realize that once love gets so deep, personal, and intense that the focus becomes so narrow and so selective that it eliminates other concerns, other soothers. Let me illustrate it this way, how many of us would buy this line: Your spouse comes in one evening as says “Sweetheart I love you, but I also love someone else.” To which you naively respond “of course you do, you’re supposed to love everyone. Jesus wants you to love everyone.” To which your spouse says “No, you don’t understand. I really do love someone else.” To which the previously clueless begins to catch on: And your response, after much yelling, screaming, crying, gnashing of teeth, and contacting your lawyer is “you’ve got to choose, you cannot love me and someone else.”

          It is just accepted in our culture that when you love one thing that much, you harden your heart toward the other. The other then takes second, third, fourth, and even last place in your life. Do you remember how much the Bible says we should love God? God wants us to love him “with all of our heart, soul, and mind.” In doing so, there is no room for another lover, because when I love another, I hardened my heart toward the other. Israel was loving another and hardening their hearts toward God. I have the feeling that even today God walks about saying: “Sorry you cannot love me and another; if you try to love another you will harden your heart toward me. There is only room in your heart to worship only one God.”

          Another way the heart becomes hardened is when it refuses to love others. God is supposed to be our ultimate love, our spouse and families are supposed to be our primary loves, but then everyone else is supposed to experience our brotherly or sisterly love. When we start cutting out or closing our hearts to other people, we develop heart disease. The symptoms of this heart disease are the cold, hard statements that we make toward others like: “I’ll never speak to him again. If you do that then don’t bother to come home again. She will never change, so I have nothing to do with her. They are crazy if they think I’ll ever forgive them.” Hardening of your heart occurs when you repeat these cold, hard statements over and over in your mind, to the point it gets easier and easier to believe and accept them. According to Ezekiel God is wanting to us to stop the hardening process and create in us a new heart by His Spirit. But in order to do this, we need to give the Spirit the chance to soften up our hearts. We can do so by practicing some of the following things:

          Stop rehearsing the hurt—or, another way of saying it, is to stop obsessing about the hurt. It is normal, to a certain extent, to play the painful occurrences over and over in our minds. It is normal to tell a trusted friend about our hurt, but after a while it becomes counterproductive to our emotional, physical, and spiritual health to keep on keeping on about what has happened to us. We’ve got to let it go, and stop going over and over the hurt. Because if we don’t, the wounds will never begin to heal. We become a hard-hearted victim of what has happened to us. Forgiveness starts when we refuse to rehearse the pain. One way of refusing to rehearse the pain is to substitute prayer for negative thoughts. Praying for people on a regular basis fosters a spirit of forgiveness in us. It is hard to hate someone and pray for them, assuming you are not praying for them to die. Kathleen Fischer, in her book, “Forgiving your Family: A Journey to Healing,” suggests that if you’re serious about praying for someone in your family that has hurt you, you might take the family photo album and pray for your family member. She suggests that you “focus on each person in the picture trying to regard each one with God’s appreciation for that individual’s struggles, gifts, and contributions to your life and the life of the family.” In other words, try to maximize the positive things about them.

          John Gottman, a professor at the University of Washington, spent decades trying to determine why marriages succeed or fail. He observed that couples in lasting marriages experience five times as many positive exchanges as negative ones. Positive exchanges are things like saying “I love you,” or “thank you for opening the door,” or saying “thanks for filling the gas tank,” or “the dinner is very good tonight dear.” Kissing one another before going to work, bringing home flowers, doing the dishes when you’re not suppose to, fixing dinner when its not your time to do so are all positive exchanges. Anything that can sincerely or genuinely create positive energy in the relationship or in our thinking can make it easier to handle the negative events like anger and hurt.

          I know it is hard, but isn’t there something that is good about the other person that you could give the devil its due? The problem is that we demonize people who hurt us and it’s really hard to see them any other way. Ok, but what does it matter if I demonize and characterize one person as the very devil himself or herself? I have other family members and certainly other friends. I hope that’s true. However, refusing to forgive and reconcile with just one person hurts you. Let me illustrate it this way: In your house you have at least two doors, and usually as many windows as you do rooms in the house. On cold days it is very important (contrary to people who don’t have to pay the electric bill) to keep the doors and windows closed. If there is a door open then obviously the house will get cold. When you refuse to forgive, it is like opening a window or a door in your heart, and allowing the cold air to come in. It chills your heart, your soul, and makes you a colder person. Yes, not all the windows or doors are open, but if you adjust to the cold temperature of who you are, it makes it easier to resent and not forgive the next person who does you wrong. Until one day, you become the cold, heartless person you vowed you’d never become.

 Week of: November 18, 2007
Title: Thanksgiving and Peace of Mind
Scripture: Philippians 4: 4-9

There is an old Swedish Hymn that goes like this: