I am a part of a group of five ministers who get together about once a month as a support group. Our intent is simply to share what is going on in our lives and let the others comment with any wisdom they may have.
At the last meeting of the group, one of the members was talking about the way he was treated by the members of his church. He observed that the ones he had the hardest time with were the elderly ladies. Try as he might, he said, whatever he did always seemed to be misunderstood by the elderly women in the congregation. The men understood him; he felt good about the youth; he gloried in the young adults; but no matter what he said or did, somehow it seemed that the elderly women in the church took it wrong or got their feelings hurt.
As we tossed that one around a bit, one of the other members of the group, who is a professional counselor, suggested an answer. She said, "It sounds like you are trying to get your mother’ s approval. It’s not so much that you have a culture clash or a values conflict with elderly women. It’s that you are trying to get your mother’s approval. Maybe you never did get it when you were a child."
Well, that made for a very productive discussion. The pastor who had first presented this problem admitted that when he was a child, his mother had usually communicated to him only in snippy, irritated commands; that when he had been a teenager, she had made him feel like a little child; and that when he wanted to get married, she had communicated her disapproval of his marriage, his bride, the whole business. And he was still working on pleasing her or people who reminded him of her.
Yes, it is true, that what we do so often hurts somebody. And it may not always be our fault; but somebody does get hurt by so much of what we do. Most of us have some group to which we answer, some person or some group to which we feel responsible. A small child answers to his parents and a little later to his teacher, and there is nothing more important in all the world to little children than that they not hurt these important big folks. Has there ever been a first grade boy that did not have a crush on his teacher? Pleasing these people and not hurting them is important.
And teenagers have their peer groups and young adults their spouses and so on. Many of us, most of us, are driven in our behavior by making certain that we do not hurt those who mean something to us.
In fact, you can tell when a person’s behavior is turning sick when he or she no longer cares about what others feel. That’s called a sociopath -- a person who just doesn’t care at all what anybody feels or whether anybody gets hurt by what they do. Sociopaths tie up their victims with duct tape and execute them out on the streets because they do not care in the least if anybody else is hurt by what they do.
I submit to you that what many of us, when we make moral decisions, forget this. What I hear is, "What I do is nobody’s business but my own." I may not hear us saying, "I’ll just go out and take somebody’ s life", but I do hear us saying, ’’What I do is nobody’s business but my own". And there isn’t much difference. I may not hear any of us suggesting, "I don’t care what anybody else feels", but I do hear us saying, "What does it matter what I do as long as no one gets hurt."
And I want to answer that by insisting that when we drop off the deep end, somebody does get hurt, even if we don’t think so. I want to counter the question, ’’What does it matter what I do as long as nobody gets hurt?" by suggesting to you that there are some very jmportant somebodies who do get hurt by immoral and unthinking behavior.
Jeremiah, God’s prophet, stood in the middle of the city of Jerusalem about 609 BC, watching the people come and go and do their thing. Their king, Josiah, had restored the Temple and had rediscovered God’s law. Not only had he rebuilt the house of worship, but, more important, he had brought to light and personally pledged to keep the laws of life which God gave and which you and I know as the Ten Commandrnents. All of this excited Jeremiah.
But what Jeremiah saw as he stood there in the Temple square was a very disturbing business. He saw plenty of men and women going into the Temple to attend services and to offer sacrifices and to sing psalms, the whole bit -- but he also saw what they did on the outside of the Temple. He saw adultery and murder, he saw theft and idolatry, he watched them perjure themselves and cheat one another -- and he fairly exploded! Let me share his own words:
Jeremiah 7:1-19
I
If you ask the question, "Who gets hurt by what we do?", Jeremiah would say to you, "God gets hurt.” God gets hurt.
"Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, ’Amend your ways and your doings, and let me dwell with you in this place. Do not trust in these deceptive words, "This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord" Here you are, trusting in deceptive words to no avail. Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely ... and then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, "We are safe!" ... You know, I too am watching, says the Lord. ’"
You know, I too am watching, says the Lord. Let me dwell with you.
Who gets hurt by what we do? The first answer to that question is that God gets hurt. God gets hurt. How could it be any clearer? When God’s children go astray, God gets hurt. I too am watching, says the Lord.
You see, something that is very important to understand is that God is personal. God is not a set of ideals, God is not a table of rules, God is not a cold abstraction. God is personal, God has feelings. And when you and I defy Him, our God gets hurt.
Now Jeremiah points out in this passage that what we do to get ourselves off the hook is to substitute religion for God and try to avoid recognizing that God has feelings. We substitute religion for God. It’s a whole lot easier if you just avoid thinking of God as personal and you just think of Him as some kind of grace machine, handing out forgiveness. No feelings, just a grace machine.
It is rather like the way I do banking. I never, never go inside and deal with a real live teller any more. I just put in and take out from the ATM, the automatic teller machine. And as far as I’m concerned, the bank has no feelings. It is just a money machine.
Some of us do our religious mumbo-jumbo and treat God as if He were a grace machine. No feelings. Nothing personal.
But Jeremiah says, "You people of Jerusalem, you lie and steal and commit murder and adultery -- all these things -- and then you come to the Temple and you say, ’Oh, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord. We are safe.’ But you are substituting religion for a relationship with the living God. And it won’t work." God is not a grace machine; God is personal, God cares, God gets hurt.
Some folks think, "If I just get baptized, I’ll have it made; eternal life". But no; what we did a few moments ago was to allow these four persons to give witness to the relationship they have with God. It was not magic; being baptized didn’t save anybody. It was a sign that they have made things right with God. What counts is not religion, but relationship.
Some parents want to bring their children for dedication in hopes that their child will be protected from harm and will be looked on with favor by God. But the parents with whom I have counseled will tell you that I remind them that a dedication service is a time of solemn promise by the parents to teach this child the ways of God. And we always pray during those services for the day to come when that child will accept the Lord Jesus on his own. Dedication services are not magic, baptism is not magic, attending church is not magic, putting money in the offering plate does not turn on the grace machine. Not religion, but a relationship.
Who gets hurt by what we do? God gets hurt. And there is no way in which just being religious will substitute for a relationship with Him. There is no way in which we can have our cake and eat it too. God gets hurt by what we do, and cries out, "Amend your ways and your doings, and let me dwell with you in this place." Let me dwell with you, let me live with you, let me be in a relationship with you. For I too am watching, says the Lord..
II
But now let me show you something else. Somebody else gets hurt by what we do; somebody besides God is injured when we shatter God’s commands and live without a moral reference. And that somebody is ourselves. We hurt ourselves by what we do. And if it doesn’t matter to us whether somebody else gets hurt, and if we can even forget about almighty God getting hurt, then at least this ought to shake somebody up: we get hurt by what we do. We hurt ourselves.
Jeremiah was called the weeping prophet; his tears were for the hurts inflicted on the people of Judah by themselves. He found it so hard to understand why people would damage themselves. And Jeremiah understood God’s compassion for us as the compassion of a Father whose pain is compounded because His children damage themselves. "Do not go after other gods, to your own hurt". Did you catch that phrase - to your own hurt? "They pour out offerings to other gods, to provoke me to anger. Is it I whom they provoke, says the Lord? Is it not themselves, to their own hurt?" To their own hurt.
Listen to that: Jeremiah’s tremendous prophetic insight into the mind of God is that when we decided that we don’ t even care what God feels, and we do things to defy Him, we are actually hurting ourselves.
"Is it I whom they provoke, says the Lord? Is it not themselves, to their own hurt?"
I want you to see this morning that morality is not arbitrary; morality is simply recognizing the way the world is put together so that we can avoid getting hurt. Do you suppose that God sat down up in heaven one day and said, rather arbitrarily, ’’Well, look at them down there. They’re having too much fun. I think I’ll put some restrictions on them. Let’s see, they like money, so I’ll say, ’’Thou shalt not steal’. And they really like sex, so I’ll make that tough, too, ’’Thou shalt not commit adultery’.
No, I don’t think of it like that. I don’t think of morality as God being arbitrary. God has given us the commandments to protect ourselves, and He is saying, "if you keep these, you won’t get hurt. But if you violate them, you will not find it so pleasant. This is just the way the world is, and these Commandments I give you for your own protection.
You see, I might tell you, after church this morning, I’m going to fly off this roof and break the law of gravity. But you don’t break the law of gravity; it breaks you!
This is like the highway engineer who constructs a magnificent span across the river and then puts up a sign to tell us ahead of time that the road surface may be slippery when wet. If you speed across that wet bridge and have an accident, don’t blame the engineer. He has told you what will happen.
Who gets hurt by what we do? We do! We hurt ourselves.
Someone says, "Look, a little casual sex with no obligations ... what does it hurt. It’s just all in fun." But listen to Jeremiah’s insight "You break God’s law and provoke not just Him, but provoke yourselves to your own hurt." And so when AIDs or unwanted pregnancies or unexpected hurt feelings come, do not be surprised. And do not be angry at God for that. He told you not to do it. We get hurt by what we do.
Someone says, "Look, I can handle my drugs, I can handle my alcohol, I can handle the gambling -- it’s all in fun, and it’s under control. It’s nobody’s business but my own what I do with my life." And that may be true. But then do not be surprised and do not blame a loving God when you wake up one morning to the tragic discovery that this little dalliance has become a habit that has taken you over. And you don’t control it, it controls you..
Who gets hurt by what we do? We do. We do. We hurt ourselves. "Is it I whom they provoke, says the Lord. Is it not themselves, to their own hurt?"
Close
But I want to finish by seeing beyond what Jeremiah could have seen. I want to conclude by pointing you to something Jeremiah saw only dimly but you and I see clearly. And that is the cross of Christ.
For if the cross means anything, it means that God gets hurt by what we do. God in Jesus Christ is no unfeeling set of laws and rules, God in Jesus Christ is not some religious system that you can payoff. God in Jesus Christ is flesh and blood, bone and sinew, and when they nailed him to that cross, it hurt. It hurt His body, but it also tore His heart and soul. The cross stands in the middle of the world reminding us that God gets hurt by what we do.
But the cross means something else too. The cross means that a loving God so cares about us that He is willing to take the pain we suffer into himself. A loving and caring God puts Himself in the person of Jesus Christ on that cross and pays the price we should have paid. He takes into His heart the pain we should feel. He accepts as His own the responsibility for the sin we have committed.
Oh, how I wish I knew exactly how to make this totally clear. I’m afraid this mystery is beyond the power of my language. But I can say that Jesus paid it all. All to Him I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain, He washed it white as snow.
And I can say that this morning no matter what we have done, no matter how much hurt we have inflicted on others, no matter how much pain we have shoved on to God, and, most of all, no matter how much anguish we have caused ourselves, it can be washed away. It can be cleared out. There is a new life. There is a fresh start.
Who gets hurt by what we do? Even if you think no one else got hurt, God did. And even if you do not suppose that God feels this, you feel it. You know in your heart you do feel it. But lift up your hearts. Lift up your eyes to the cross and see how much God hurts, yet how much God cares -- for He adds to His own hurt all the hurt we bring on ourselves, and says, I’ll take it. Let me take it from you. Just come and receive, just come into a relationship of love and acceptance. "Amend your ways and your doings, and let me dwell with you in this place."
