“When Crying Makes All The Difference”
As you look back over your life, what were the things that made you cry? Death. Births. Extremely joyful events: marriage. Physical pain.
What do you cry about? What do you cry for? Cry over?
It was June 1, 1991 when an officer came into my home and told me and mother that my father had just been killed in auto accident. I wasn’t much of a crier really. In fact, I didn’t cry much at all about my father’s death. I cried once that day with a friend because I was scared. I guess I was scared about what living life would be like without my dad being there. FEAR was the immediate emotion, not sadness. I was scared for my mother living the rest of her life alone and I worried about her.
Later that summer, I went off to do a internship in Greenwood, then went off to seminary and made some friends and began going to the dollar theater downtown. It was in one of those movies that I discovered something changed. Something inside me changed and it scared me again. This time I was scared because I couldn’t control myself. The movie was sad, it was about a loss and somehow on the bigscreen, the loss tied into my loss, and I didn’t like that. I couldn’t stop crying. I was feeling something I never felt before: grief. All my life was lived without a death in the family, of someone at least I was close to, until this point. And now something happened inside me that needed changed. And how I handled it would make all the difference.
And so many of you’ve been there before too. You have experienced a loss, felt the void, experienced the pain, the pain of a broken heart. And it made you cry out; sometimes alone in the night, sometimes unexpectedly, sometimes all day long. I know. I’ve done it too. There were several more movies I went to; I mean for a buck, that’s pretty cheap entertainment! But seminary and the theater counter-balanced each other: one for the head, the other for the heart.
It is an interesting study to go through the NT and see all the places where crying was taking place. As I read the final book in the Bible I am comforted yet intrigued by the words of Rev 21:4 where it tells us there will be no more crying…I wonder, how will that happen? What will that be like? Will there be nothing to cause us to cry but we will still have the potential to do so, or what? What a wonderful change must be made for heaven to be a place where there are no more tears! It’s better than Johnson and Johnson’s baby shampoo! WOW!
Jesus speaks these words recorded by John in 16:20, “You will weep, but the world will rejoice.” Why? What difference is there between the disciples and the world? What did Jesus mean? How could everyone else be joyful while others were weeping? It is such a contrast. A scary one. Because it makes me think about what I laugh about and what I cry about and are they the same as what Jesus spoke about for his disciples or would it be equal with the world?
If the world rejoiced over the death of Jesus, and the disciples wept, what would I have done? What would you have done? The two are different. The things the world cries about and the things Jesus’ followers cry about. So I ask you again: “What do you cry about?”
A little girl who was late coming home for supper. Her mother made the expected irate parent’s demand to know where she had been.
The little girl replied that she had stopped to help Janie, whose bicycle was broken in a fall.
"But you don’t know anything about fixing bicycles," her mother responded.
"I know that," the girl said. "I just stopped to help her cry."
Turn to Mark 14. The first story is about Jesus’ anointing by a woman who poured expensive perfume on his feet. Then the disciples and Jesus celebrate the Passover, they sing a hymn and go to the Mount of Olives. While there, Jesus tells his disciples they all fall away and desert him. Peter speaks up and says (v29) “These guys might, but I never will!” And Jesus says back to Peter, “Before the rooster can crow two times for morning break, you will have denied me three times, Peter.”
They arrive at Gethsemane, and Jesus invites three to go farther with him to pray: Peter, James and John. They all fall asleep, Jesus is arrested and taken before the Sanhedrin, the religious governing board like the Jewish Ad Council. Peter is outside in the courtyard warming himself by the fire with others there.
While Jesus is being questioned by the priestly authorities, there is another questioning happening; Peter is asked first by a servant girl, “You were with Jesus, weren’t you?” Peter said, “Huh? I don’t know what you’re talking about!” and left to the entryway of the courtyard, maybe to leave but he didn’t.
But the servant girl saw him there and began soliciting support from those surrounding Peter, “Doesn’t he look like one of the guys who was with Jesus!?” But Peter again denied it!
Just enough time went by for those around Peter to think about Jesus and remember where and when they saw him and then they could connect Peter being there with Jesus and his accent gave him away as a Galilean. So they say to him, “Look, it is you! You were there with Jesus! It’s gotta be you, why else would you be here all the way from Galilee!?”
Peter tried blowing it off. He tried flat out denying it. What else could he do? How about get really, really angry and swear an oath and say if it’s true, may I be cursed! So that’s what he did in his most convincing manner he could muster! And he plainly stated, “I don’t this man you guys are talking about!”
And IMMEDIATELY the rooster crowed, and Peter remembered the word Jesus had spoken to him, “Before the rooster crows twice you will disown me three times.
And Mark 14:72 records these words, “Peter broke down and wept.”
Jesus predicted Peter would deny him.
Have you ever denied Jesus? Peter said he didn’t know Jesus, was never with him. We may never come right out and say it in words, but do our actions show that we don’t know Jesus? The places we go, and the people we are with, if I did your funeral, and mentioned you attended our church, would people be surprised you attended church? Surprised you spoken of as being a Christian? Or would they say, “I didn’t even know.”
When my dad died, Pastor Dan did his funeral. I remember him holding up two of my dad’s Bibles. He held up his big blue bible and he said, “This is Orville Kessler’s Bible he carried with him to church every Sunday.” Then Pastor Dan held up a little, ragged and nearly worn off brown covered, Soul-Winner’s New Testament he got from the Gideons and said, “This is Orville Kessler’s Bible he carried with him to work every day.”
I often heard my dad talking to my mother telling me about men and women at work who hated my dad for talking about the Lord Jesus and the things they would say and do to him. I was able to meet some of those people and listen to them talk to my mother as they made their way through the line at my dad’s funeral. People who said he was faithful, and always spoke about the Lord at work.
My dad prayed and cried for those people. What do you cry for? Is it over the unbelief of you co-workers? Is it over the lost souls of your family? “Oh forgive us Lord Jesus for not crying over the things you cry for! Forgive us for how we’ve denied you in life and in the absence of our words!”
I don’t know if you ever noticed this before, but Judas and Peter both sinned against the Lord that night. But each of their responses to their sin was different. One had no hope, and the other did.
What did Judas do? He hanged himself. Did Peter? No. He didn’t. Judas heart wasn’t connected to Jesus, and so in his betrayal and disconnect there seemed to be only one option left for him: to make the disconnect final and commit suicide! As many do who have been blinded by Satan to feel no sense of hope.
Peter’s heart was connected to Jesus, and so his denial disconnected him from Jesus, but there were options left: Peter had HOPE. And crying tears when there is hope makes all the difference!
A couple took their son, 11, and daughter, 7, to Carlsbad Caverns. As always, when the tour reached the deepest point in the cavern, the guide turned off all the lights to dramatize how completely dark and silent it is below the earth’s surface. The little girl, suddenly enveloped in utter darkness, was frightened and began to cry. Immediately was heard the voice of her brother: "Don’t cry. Somebody here knows how to turn on the lights."
Jesus knew how to turn Peter back to God and restore Peter to himself. In a later passage, and with three same statements, “Do you love me?” Jesus turned the light back where his denial left darkness and restored Peter and fulfilled his hope. Peter’s heart was connected to Jesus and changed by Jesus. He was just out of fellowship with Jesus.
I ask you the same thing: Do you LOVE Jesus? Do you cry about the things he does? If you really love him you will.
When we aren’t connected to Jesus, it shows up in our life by our looking like we are on auto-pilot, just going through the motions, living a lie. We like someone who just lives each day as it comes with no special meaning or purpose. We show it in how we don’t care about what Jesus cares about, we don’t invest in what Jesus is interested in, we don’t give our lives for what HE gave his life for. So I ask you again, “What do you cry about?”
