Stress strengthens. That is a physical fact. It is also a spiritual truth. Stress strengthens. When we face opposition, we grow. When we deal with differences, we become stronger. Strange as it may sound, give thanks when you are opposed! For stress strengthens; enmity empowers; and hostility helps growth.
Some while ago my wife damaged a muscle coming down a ladder. Once she hurt that muscle, she started to baby it. She tried to rest herself into health. That’s what we normally do, isn’t it? Rest and recover. But guess what? If you rest a muscle too long, it gets weaker and weaker, and so when she went to a physical therapist, he said, “You’ve had things too easy! Your muscle has not had enough opposition!” That’s how muscles get stronger – with opposition, stress. And so her therapy now involves lifting five pound weights on each leg. Stress strengthens. Opposition builds us up. That is a physical fact. And it is also a spiritual truth – stress strengthens, enmity empowers, and hostility helps us grow.
But before we can use that truth, we have to learn several things. First, we have to learn the true nature of hostility – what really is going on when you face an enemy. And, second, we have to learn how hostility spreads, we have to see how unchecked enmity splatters all around. And, finally, we have to learn how to respond when we are the objects of hostility – what to do when we are attacked. All this we can learn best from Jesus. From this most authentic self who ever lived – how did He respond when He was attacked? If we can learn what hostility really is and can discover how it spreads, we can find out from Jesus how to deal with it. And we can be greatly strengthened. Because, again, stress strengthens, enmity empowers, and hostility helps us grow.
Go now to dark Gethsemane with me, to that dramatic scene of the arrest of Jesus. You will discern demonic destruction. But, praise God, you will also discover divine determination.
I
First, what is the true nature of enmity? What can we learn about what hostility really is?
Judas. His very name is synonymous with betrayal. Judas Iscariot, who had walked the lanes of Galilee with Jesus, and had watched Jesus heal. Judas, who had sat at the Master’s feet and had listened to words about loving enemies. Judas, for his own reasons, is now bent on destruction. He has one and only one purpose in his heart this night in Gethsemane, and that is to destroy Jesus. He will lead the Temple guards to Jesus’ place of prayer, and he will identify the victim so that there will be no mistake. Judas on this night has become an example of focused hatred: determined, implacable, set in concrete. I’ve been using the word “hostility.” Hostility is opposition that goes beyond mere disagreement. Hostility, enmity, means the desire to destroy.
Sometimes, you see, personal feelings gets so deeply entrenched that they focus on only one thing, and that is the ultimate defeat of another person. Sometimes hostility becomes unreasoning and reckless and therefore ultimately self-destructive. Remember what happened with Judas shortly after the betrayal of Jesus? Judas destroyed not Jesus, but himself. He took his own life. When we get totally focused on destroying someone, that energy, will turn in on us and will eventually destroy us.
Beware if you find yourself obsessing on punishing somebody. You are headed in a direction that will only be self-destructive.
Have you ever felt total hostility rising in your heart? You decided you were going to remove someone from his job. You determined that you would spread whispers to smear someone’s character. You got into a struggle in that committee meeting, you took on an argument in that neighborhood association, you nursed a grudge within your family; and the only thing that was important was that you win, and in winning crush your opponent. Have you ever felt that intense hostility?
Oh, some of us are really good at this; like Judas, we do it in the sweetest way. Kiss, hug, and smile, saccharine sweetness! I learned a long time ago that when folks smile at you and say, “Well, bless your heart”, they really mean, “Curse your bones”! Look out for the sickly sweet ones!
I know of churches where this has happened. I know of homes where ths is going on. I know of interpersonal relationships where out-and-out enmity is ever-present. Judas wants to win at all costs, even if it means damaging somebody deeply. Obsessed, compulsive, totally focused on hostility. If you’ve felt that in your heart, be warned! Be alert! For it is nothing but Satan himself at work. And when you have determined to become somebody’s enemy, that will destroy not only the object of your feelings; it will destroy you. Hostility is more dangerous to the hater than it is to the hated. It is more destructive to the schemer than it is to the victim. What is enmity? Not just hating others; it is self-hatred.
II
Now what happens next, as we begin to ventilate hostility? What else happens when we let our anger take hold? Not only does it eat at us, but it also spreads to others. It spreads like wildfire, without rhyme or reason. One person expresses hatred, and suddenly, without warning, war breaks out somewhere else. Judas kisses Jesus, and someone – one of the Gospels says it was Peter – someone draws a sword and lashes out at a common soldier. Why? Why would one of Jesus’ friends strike a soldier who had done nothing? Because hostility breeds hostility. Because anger generates more anger. Because when we get caught up in an atmosphere that is out of control, even the best-intentioned of us become destructive.
Are you old enough to remember Richard Nixon’s enemies list? The President of the United States, an obsessively hostile person, drew up a list of people he wanted desperately to damage and destroy. And so Nixon’s aides found in that list permission to join the club and carried out all sorts of dirty tricks. An unworthy heart, you see, is an infectious thing. It draws into its orbit people who would never otherwise think of such terrible sin.
I have found, over the years, that there are chronically unhappy people. There are those for whom nothing is ever good enough, nothing is ever quite right, and who cannot be pleased. Believe me, as a pastor, I have dealt with people like this. And the problem is that the chronically unhappy person cannot just be unhappy by himself. He needs to bring others into the circle of discontent. And so, like a virus infecting everything it touches, a profoundly unhappy person, who may mouth all the right doctrines and have all the correct Bible answers, uses that seemingly spiritual identity, to attack everybody else in sight. There’s something about religion that draws people like this and gives them a place to stand and create havoc.
I have seen churches where this took hold. I know of a church where there was a man so determined to beat down his political enemies and push everyone into his ideas that before long members were sniping at one another, pastors were coming and going rapidly, and what had once been a strong church dwindled down to a mere handful. One of their several short-term pastors sat down over lunch with me one day and absolutely wept because he could not escape that one infectiously unhappy person’s influence, that man who drew his sword and whacked away at every other leader in that congregation. Did you know that sometimes pastors pray that there will be a funeral and that right early!? Another sign, I guess, that hostility spreads out of control.
Oh, brothers and sisters, beware if you find yourself in some tension-filled setting! Beware, lest you be drawn into the trap and lash out at the nearest innocent bystander. Beware of that chronically unhappy, always hostile, always conflicted person, especially the one that quotes the Bible at you! Before you know it, that will infect you, and you too will hurt somebody. You will destroy something precious.III
But now how does Jesus respond to all this? What can we learn from this most authentic self about how to deal with hostility? What does Jesus do with the Judas kiss? Simply put: Jesus got real with His enemies. Jesus got very real with His enemies. How? Two things: Jesus first named the absurdity, and then Jesus placed Himself entirely in God’s hands. Jesus got real with His enemies: He interpreted what He saw, named it for what it was; but instead of fighting it, He put Himself into the hands of God.
You see, Jesus knew that you do not defuse demons by defending yourself. That will only inflame your enemy more. You just witness to how over-the-top the whole thing has become, and then you put yourself into God’s hands. Listen to Jesus in that garden: “Have you come out with swords and clubs to arrest me as though I were a bandit? Day after day I was with you in the temple teaching, and you did not arrest me. But let the scriptures be fulfilled.”
Jesus first named the madness. “Guys, here I was in the temple, day after day, and you could have moved against me then. But you didn’t say a mumblin’ word. You didn’t raise any issues. You just let your feelings fester. You let your hate get larger and larger, and then you came after me.” Jesus pricked the balloon of this great big dramatic scene in Gethsemane – “You brought out swords and clubs to arrest one unarmed Galilean teacher?” Sort of like attacking an Iraqi camel caravan with a million-dollar Cruise missile! Absurd, out of proportion.
But then Jesus just rested His case with God. “Let the scriptures be fulfilled.” He would not fight, He would not argue, He would not degenerate into defensiveness. He would let God take care of it. He would let go and let God’s justice rule. He would stand back and let God’s will be done. He would believe in the purposes of God. He would believe that ultimately God’s way will win. He would trust God. That’s the core of it. He would trust God to deal with His enemies.
The sooner we learn that we do not have to win every battle, nor do we have to be applauded all the time, the sooner we will find happiness even in the midst of conflict. It can be done only by trusting both the mercy and the justice of God. I don’t know about you, but that is a hard lesson for me to learn. I have to be right. I have to win. I have to be applauded. I cannot lose. I do not deal well with criticism. Either I want to lash out in retribution or I want to absorb it all in defensiveness. I have a hard time leaving hostility alone and letting God work it out.
But, brothers and sisters, here is why Jesus is our redeemer. This is why He is worthy to be our savior. He shows us what trust in God is. He teaches us the power of restraint.
What did we say earlier about stress? We said stress strengthens, enmity empowers, and hostility helps us grow. And that is exactly what Jesus demonstrates here in Gethsemane.
For He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before it shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.
Oh, I don’t know that I am ready to hear this. I want to defend myself. I want to make speeches and write letters and shower you with a hundred emails to prove my point. I want to be vindicated. I haven’t learned from my Lord how to get real with my enemies. But I’m so glad He stands there, in Gethsemane’s garden of aggression, and gives me an example. I’m so glad He shows me how to get real with my enemies. For then it helps me to understand why:
.. He was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed.
He got real with His enemies.
I understand that recently some of you came over here and cleaned out trash from the rooms that are being renovated. Bags and bags of trash. Now did you put that trash there? No, you did not. By rights it was not your job to clean it out. But you removed it because this house belongs to God and it must be cleaned if it is going to be used for the Kingdom. You hauled out the trash.
Our lives are like that. Full of trash, replete with garbage, stacked with uselessness. We spend too much time and too much energy cluttering ourselves up with hopeless hostility and eviscerating enmity. But I know a great Savior who didn’t have to pick up my trash. He didn’t deserve to deal with my debris. But He did it anyway. Without complaint He suffered on the Cross for me. Dying for sins He had not committed, suffering the worst of human hostility. Trusting God completely, my Savior got real with my hostility. And removed it, not in part, but the whole.
He is worthy to be praised!
