Broken to Be made Whole
Stand and lift up your bible and repeat after me.
This is my Bible.
I am what it says I am.
I can do what it says I can do.
I am going to learn how to be what it says I can be.
Today I will learn more of the word of God.
The indestructible, never ending, living word Of God.
I will never be the same.
I will never be the same.
In Jesus Name.
Please turn to Luke Chapter 7 and say, “Amen” when you are there.
Each of us have certain things in life that we just accept.
Some of them end up being wounds in our life that we just accept.
Hurts... both physical or mental.
There are certain things we just go along with, and we live our lives according to these things. We pass them onto our children, and we find that these things are reinforced by the people around us. We may be taught things growing up that just are not true.
I will give an example.
I was taught never to crack your knuckles in your hand because if you do it will damage them and you will not be able to use your hands when you get older.
Sound familiar?
Several doctors were paid to do a study on this and found that it does not change anything in your hand at all if you crack your knuckles.
Some of us may have spent our whole lives missing out on cracking our knuckles because of this. If want to right now, go ahead, crack your knuckles.
It’s Ok.
I was told that I would just have enjoy life without doing some things ever because of my fear of heights. That has turned out to be false as I have stood on the edge of a walkway in Peru at 11,000 feet elevation and I was OK. I also have gone hang gliding. I have been able to overcome the fear of flying having flown to many countries over the years because of my best friend and wife. And God.
But what if?
What if we’ve just accepted some things that have much more significant implications?
What if we have just gone along with some things in our lives? We’ve just believed some things because we’ve been told them, and it’s been reinforced by the culture around us…that have much more dire ramifications.
I was brought up not knowing anybody of a skin color darker than mine and not knowing people from other countries. And I accepted the fact.
But God changed that and I know that a person’s skin color does not make a person any different than me. We all bleed red when we are cut. Amen. Most of my good friends over the years have been from other countries and have had different colors of skin and been from different parts of the world that Our Lord created.
If you studied the ministry of Jesus, here’s what you’ll find: He spent a significant amount of His time teaching as a rabbi…
He spent a significant amount of His time overcoming the myths that the people had been taught about God and about faith. A lot of what He did was to say, “You’ve heard it said this, but I’m going to tell you something different. I know you’ve been taught to look at it this way; I’m going to give you a new way to look at it.”
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.
It is kind of like having and black and white TV and then getting a color one like what happened when I was a kid.
Many of the spiritual leaders of Jesus’ day made the focus the outside.
The outside appearance.
That’s what it meant to follow God. It was that 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 it’s what’s on the outside. 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.”
But for many of us, that’s not how we understood it. We learned to kind of keep track of how we were doing on the outside. We learned to keep up appearances, to make sure everybody knew we had a smile on our face and everything was good and we didn’t have any problems. And God says, “Look, man may look on the outside, but I look at the heart.”
But that was hard for the people to accept. Jesus came along; He turns some things upside-down, inside-out. And this may be hard for us to believe, but some of the people in that culture—they had actually created this environment in the temple, in the house of God, where certain people didn’t feel welcome.
I mean, that’s hard for us to kind of imagine. But certain people felt like they weren’t good enough to take part in that worship. And it may be hard for us to kind of wrap our minds around, but they had made things…like the way people dress…a really big deal.
There are people today who don’t think that they are good enough to go to church or can worship God because of what they have done in life.
In those days it was an indication of your spiritual depth. And it’s hard for us to kind of picture this, and it may sound a little bit crazy, but they would get uncomfortable if someone would get too expressive in how they worshipped God.
But the big thing for them is…and it may be hard for us to understand today…but back then when people came to worship, they felt like they had to have it all together, like they couldn’t have problems, like their families couldn’t struggle, like they didn’t have anything hidden in their closet.
This isn’t something we have trouble with, but back then the house of God ended up being a place where it wasn’t safe to talk about your struggles, to deal with your hurts or your failures.
The people were made to believe some things that weren’t true about Jesus, and Jesus is going to address some of these commonly held myths.
Instead of looking like you and I have it all together, He wants authentic worship from us.
Instead of carefully observing all kinds of religious rituals, He wants an intimate relationship.
That instead of acting more righteous than you really are, what He wants is brokenness.
Brokenness is a word that we don’t use much these days. It is not something we aspire to. You don’t want to write “broken” on your resume. Brokenness doesn’t work very well in the boardroom. We live in a culture that’s been termed…maybe you’ve heard this before…it’s been termed “a throwaway culture.”
More so than any people who’ve ever lived, when things break, we throw them away. We don’t value repairing and fixing, making things new. We live in a throwaway culture. We throw things away.
Jesus gives us kind of this different lens to look at broken things, and here’s going to be the invitation for us as believers. Jesus is going to say, “Come here. Come here. I want you to look at the world through My eyes. Step in here, and just look at this person through the lens that I’m looking at them through.”
Because when Jesus looks at broken, He sees beautiful. He sees something that is valuable.
William McDonald in his book, Lord, Break Me—he begins it this way. He says, “Usually when someone is broken, when something is broken, its value declines.” Right? That makes sense. “It disappears altogether. So broken dishes and broken bottles and broken mirrors are generally scrapped. They’re thrown out. Even a crack in the furniture or a tear in the cloth greatly reduces its resale value.” But then he goes onto say, “But this isn’t the way things work in the spiritual realm. In the world we know, if something breaks, the value goes down. But God puts a premium on broken things, especially broken people.”
When God sees broken, He sees beautiful, and we’re going to see an example of that in Luke 7.
I’m going to just share this story with you rather than read it from the text. I’d love to challenge you to read it on your own when you go home. But Jesus has…in this story He’s been invited over to the house of Simon, who is a Pharisee, a religious leader. As a religious leader, it was Simon’s duty to invite the visiting rabbi, Jesus, over to his home to eat.
Jesus gets to this Simon’s house and Simon…his heart is just not in it. He is not really wanting Jesus there. Jesus comes in the house, and Simon doesn’t give him a greeting. We would say “shake his hand”; in those days it would’ve been a kiss on the cheek—or at least a kiss on the hand. But there’s nothing like that. And when it’s time to eat, Simon doesn’t make sure the feet of Jesus were washed, which was just kind of a minimal thing you would do if you had a guest to your house. At least you would give them water to wash their own feet, but that doesn’t happen.
In those days if you were wanting to especially honor a guest, you might give them some olive oil for anointing their head with oil. It’s an inexpensive gesture, but it was a hospitable one. Simon does none of these things. He didn’t do any of them. Jesus comes in and He sits down, and Simon doesn’t honor Him.
But then this woman comes on the scene in verse 37, and things start to get a little bit awkward because she is, verse 37 says, “a sinner,” meaning that she is a prostitute. She’s a known prostitute in this community. She comes onto this scene, and people start to…people start to get a little bit uncomfortable.
Why was she there? Well, she must’ve heard something that Jesus taught about that made her know that even though she was broken she could still be made whole, that God could somehow still do something beautiful with the pieces.
In her brokenness she shows up at this dinner party. Because of her background she would never have been invited to this party in a thousand years. This was not a safe place for her. She would’ve avoided places like this at all cost, but she had to do it…she had to see Jesus. And she knew how people would look at her: as broken beyond repair. A Pharisee would see someone who was a throwaway, but she knows that’s not how Jesus sees her.
She was going to do something here that many of us would say is impulsive. It’s embarrassing; it’s inappropriate; it’s unacceptable. The woman approaches and she stands at the filthy feet of Jesus. Everybody is quiet. She feels the stares of condemnation. Other people have their eyes down. They’re just embarrassed by her presence. Not Jesus. She looks at Jesus, and He seems to know what’s happened in her heart. He lets her know that she’s welcome. He’s delighted that she’s come.
She is amazed by this, and the tears just begin to flow. Just a few at first and then more. And she falls on the ground, and she begins to kiss His feet. And then she notices something. As the tears from her eyes land on His feet, there are these muddy feet, and it strikes her: His feet weren’t washed. His feet are unwashed. The funny thing about tears is that often it’s only when they fill our eyes that we can finally see some things clearly. And she knows what she needs to do. She doesn’t have a towel and she can’t ask for one, so she lets down her hair.
Now for a woman in that culture, this was an especially intimate gesture. In fact, you weren’t to do this in public. It was between a wife and her husband. She lets down her hair, and she begins to wash the feet of Jesus with her tears and dry them with her hair. She has this bottle of perfume around her neck. She most likely used this in her profession. You know, one drop at a time…many times with many men. But she doesn’t put a drop on the feet of Jesus. She just dumps the whole thing out. She just pours it all out. Her whole life—she just empties it out. And she is broken. Her whole life poured out. And it was inappropriate; it was reckless; it was impulsive. Jesus says, “It’s beautiful.” He sees the broken as beautiful.
In this story here is what Jesus does. He just turns everything upside-down and inside-out. He condemns—or He rather rebukes—Simon the Pharisee. You have Simon this religious leader who has his whole act together. He follows all the rules. He does everything he is supposed to, and Jesus rebukes him. And He turns around and He commends this prostitute who was a broken mess. Everything—He just turns it upside-down.
And He ends the story by just giving this lady incredible value and purpose. He says in verse 48 to her, “Your sins are forgiven.” And then in verse 50 Jesus says, “Your faith has saved you. Go in peace.” And she is made whole.
As we look at this story, I’ve got a trick question for you?
It’s a trick question. I’m telling you upfront. Who would you rather be…?
I’m not asking who you’re most like. But who would you rather be in this story? Simon the well-respected Pharisee who has his stuff together, who’s looked up to by people, dresses nice, lives in a nice house, has Jesus over for dinner? Who would you rather be in this story? Simon the Pharisee? Well-respected. Everything is right on the outside. Or would you rather be the prostitute in the story who is a broken mess but experiences the love and the grace of Jesus in a deep way?
Here’s why it’s a trick question: Because most of us in the church, most of us who have been Christians for a while—we want both, right?
We want to be well-respected and have it all together and (for) people think a certain thing about us (whether it’s true or not), and we keep our problems kind of behind closed doors. And when we’re in public, we have a smile on our face and there are no issues.
We want to be that person and we want to experience the love and grace of Jesus.
And it doesn’t work that way. If you want to be made whole, you’ve got to be broken. There is no way to wholeness except through the door marked “Broken.” If you want to know the love and the grace of Jesus deeply, if you want that kind of value and that kind of purpose for your life, it only comes through brokenness.
Here is the good news. And maybe you already know this, but in case you don’t, I thought it would be important to be super clear.
We’re all broken. We are all broken. And those of you who don’t think you are, you are the most broken.
We see that in this story, right? Because the Pharisee…he’s sitting there thinking, “Oh, she’s the one who should be embarrassed.” No, he should be embarrassed. Who’s the one who gets rebuked for brokenness, for just being broke? It’s Simon. Simon is broke. He’s not broken. He doesn’t acknowledge that he’s broke, but he is.
Here’s how broke this guy is. He spent his whole life studying the Scriptures. By the time he was twelve, he knew the first five books of the Bible. The three hundred plus prophecies about the Messiah, about Jesus in the Old Testament—he knew them by heart! And Jesus, the Messiah, this person he has studied his whole life, now sits at his table with a cheek that hasn’t been kissed and feet that haven’t been washed and a head that hasn’t been anointed with oil. That’s how broke he is. He’s so broke he doesn’t even know he’s broke. That is the thing about brokenness. The less you see it in yourself, the more you need it.
The point of the message really isn’t to be broke. You’re already broke. The point of the message is brokenness, where we…we stop trying to hide it. We stop trying to pretend like all the pieces fit together; instead we say, “God, this is it. These are the broken pieces.”
The good news is Jesus came to make things whole. The good news is that God makes the broken whole through Jesus Christ. And it’s only after being made broken that we’re ready to fulfill our purpose and to be used by God.
The only way that we really fulfill our purpose in life, the only way for God’s beauty (and) God’s power to be on display is through brokenness. It’s where God does His best work. Let us pray.
