Broken To Be Made Whole

The Title for this morning’s message is - Broken to Be Whole (glow sticks)

• I had done a series a few years back and one of the other topics was emptied to be filled.

• Another was humbled to be exalted. Each actually a teaching of Jesus to his followers.

My point is there are things we’ve just accepted. And we kind of live our lives according to these things. We saw ourselves through that prism, or we saw others threw a flawed view.

We pass them onto our children, generation after generation, and that carries over into our spiritual life. Traditions has often replaced what God really is asking of us.

If you studied the ministry of Jesus, here’s what you’ll find: He spent a significant amount of His time teaching. He spent a fair amount of His time debunking the myths or man-made concepts that Pharisees had taught the people. And he prayed a whole lot.

A lot of what He did was to say, “You’ve heard it said but, I’m going to tell you something different. And so He came on the scene, and He confronted some false beliefs about faith, about religion, about God that many people had just kind of accepted.

An example of that is found in Luke 18:10-14 Pharisee and the Publican.

10 “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other men—extortionist, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I possess.’ 13 And the tax collector, standing afar off, would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner!’ 14 I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be [a]humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

Among the Phariscitial religious – there was a pecking order of who was great, and what made them great, and who was lowly and unimportant to God.

The spiritual leaders of Jesus’ day made the focus the outside of a man.

That on the outside you look like you have your act together and that you keep up your appearances; and you follow all the right rules, and you keep the rituals.

And Jesus came along, and He says, “Look, I know you’ve been taught that.

But that’s not what it’s about. It’s what’s on the inside, and then what’s on the inside comes out. It’s an inside-out way of following God.”

We see that also in I Samuel 16:7 regarding David - "But the Lord said to Samuel, "Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart."

But for many maybe that’s how you were raised. So we’re taught to keep a facade on how we look on the outside.

• We had a smile on our face and looked as if everything was good and we didn’t have any problems. Or we responded well when asked how things were going.

• But God says, “Look, man may look on the outside, but I’m looking at your heart.”

That was hard for the people in Jesus day to accept. The Pharisees put all the emphasis on the outside. AND that might be hard for you to accept this morning if you were raised to give an appearance of success, or feeling or being well. Woman with the issue of blood. Woman at the well.

A few years back Casting Crowns wrote these lyrics - It’s Crowded in Worship Today

As She Slips In Trying To Fade Into The Faces The Girl’s Teasing Laughter Is Carrying Farther Than They Know Farther Than They Know The second vs continues A Traveler Is Far Away From Home He Sheds His Coat And Quietly Sinks Into The Back Row The Weight Of Their Judgmental Glances Tells Him That His Chances Are Better Out On The Road

Maybe you were the victim like this or the one doing the damage. Maybe things happened in your life that made you feel dirty, or unlovable, unacceptable.

But Jesus comes along and turns some things upside-down, inside-out. Some of the people in that culture had actually created this environment in the temple, in the house of God, where certain people didn’t feel welcome. And others felt superior.

Certain people felt like they weren’t good enough to take part in that worship. It still happens. People who will look down their nose at someone who doesn’t match up to what they think on the outside.