When A Heart Breaks with Pastor Clayton Tyner

Welcome to the MetaCurch Podcast.

My name's Clayton.

I'm the pastor here at Medichurch.

And my hope is that today's podcast finds you at the perfect time in your life that God uses it to inspire and enlighten you.

I hope that you enjoy today's message.

Well, welcome to Baptism Sunday and to the final week of our Win a Heart Breaks series.

In this series, we've been organizing our sermons around a very unique Greek word.

It's the word splogchinzomi.

And this word is translated moved to compassion.

But what makes it an interesting word is if you translate it literally, it's more like to be eaten alive from the inside.

It's a very intense word.

And it's this kind of compassion that is gut-wrenching, heartbreaking.

It's the kind of moment that compels you to take action.

The way that we've been saying it in this series, to kind of put it in our context, is when a heart breaks, love breaks out.

That's Jesus' form of compassion.

And all series long we've been seeing this, and the thing that really makes this word unique, it's used 11 times in scripture, and every single time it refers to Jesus, Jesus being moved to compassion.

So by focusing on this word, we've had like a window into Jesus' heart for you and for me.

And that's a really, really beautiful thing.

And it's one of the most important things that we could know.

And many of you have responded to that today by signing up to get baptized.

You've put your faith in Jesus, and we're so excited for those of you who have come ready today.

And I just want to say this as a disclaimer before we get into the rest of the message that some of you came today not intending to get baptized, but here's how we roll at MetaCurch.

Even if you didn't come ready for us, we always come ready for you.

And every time we do baptisms, there are a number of people, we saw it even in our 945 service, who God moves on their heart and they courageously move in return.

And so if by the end of today's message you feel God calling you to take this next step in your faith journey, I want you to know that we have everything you need.

We have shorts, we have a shirt for you, we have towels, we have everything but your chonies.

You have to take care of that, okay?

Everything else, we are ready for you, and you will know if God has gripped your heart and he is moving you to this water, you will know it.

And my prayer is that you will have the courage to follow through.

Today we're going to get really personal as we look at Jesus' compassion for us.

Uh baptism sermons, we keep them a little bit shorter than most weeks, but I do want us to take a minute and I want us to get really real.

And if you're new with us, I'm so, so glad that you're here.

Metachurch is a place for all people on all different parts of their faith journey.

And what we do here is we come and we get brutally honest.

Anything less than that, and we're really wasting our time.

And so I want to ask you to go on that journey with me today as we look at how we respond to the heartbreak in the world and the heartbreak in our own life.

We're gonna be in the gospel of Luke.

This is a historical account of the life of Jesus.

It says this in Luke 7, starting in verse 11.

Afterward, Jesus was on his way to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd were traveling with him.

Now we're gonna kind of build verse 12 over a couple of different slides because that's the way Luke presented it to the audience that first read this.

Just as he neared the gate of the town, a dead man was being carried out.

I think it's probably safe to say in the congregation today, all of us have experienced lost.

We have all lost someone that we love.

And it's interesting because right at the beginning, Luke is setting like the highest stakes there are when it comes to grief.

There's really nothing that can match the grief of losing someone that you love.

And death is kind of the ultimate physical goodbye for those of us who believe in heaven in the afterlife, that we're losing that proximity, we're losing waking up with them, and we're we're losing that relationship right here and now, and there's almost nothing that breaks a heart like that.

But this is just the beginning of the problems in verse 12.

It says, just as he neared the gate of the town, a dead man, the highest stakes, that was being carried out, and he was his mother's only son.

Now, 2,000 years ago in this ancient context, your sons were incredibly important, not just to carry on the name and not just for your legacy.

But at that place and at that time, only men had any earning capacity in the culture.

Women could not provide their own income.

In most circumstances, women could not hold property.

And so having sons guaranteed that when your husband was past working age, or if your husband passed before you, that you would still have a life.

You would still have a home, you would still have food to eat, you would still have clothes to wear.

Losing not just your son, but your only son was devastating, devastating in a way that even in our culture we can't fully appreciate.

And Luke isn't done twisting the knife.

Just as he neared the gate of the town, a dead man was being carried out.

He was the mother's only son, and she was a widow.

As she walked this path out of town with her only son, this was the worst kind of deja vu.

She had walked this path before.

She had already buried her husband.

And what that meant is she no longer had a husband, and she no longer had a son.

So she was not just burying her son, she was burying her hope, she was burying her future, and she was burying her access to the bare necessities of navigating this life.

She knew that the rest of her life would be lived in poverty and destitution.

This is the worst of the worst scenarios that you could find yourself in in the ancient world.

This is kind of like uh when it rains, it pours kind of a situation.

It is just trauma on top of pain on top of heartache.

How many of you saw Black Panther opening weekend?

Anybody get to Wakanda forever?

A few of you.

You have no idea how bad I want to spoil this movie right now, but I'm not, but I want to, but I'm not.

And so here's my spoiler-free review.

Um, it's a superhero movie.

I think it's safe for me to let you know.

It's good guys versus bad guys, okay?

Like every superhero movie.

But if you watch the movie, you really have to pay attention because the main plot is not the main plot.

The actual plot of the movie is a journey of managing grief.

It is what to do with overwhelming pain and heartache.

And so I'm not gonna spoil the movie, but for those of you who have seen it, or for those who are going to see it, you will recognize some significant overlays in that story and in the story we're going to read out of Luke today.

And God just kind of shows off sometimes because I wrote this sermon about four weeks ago, and I watched Black Panther two nights ago, but it really overlays this journey of intense, intense grief.

And so here's what we do we come here and we get brutally honest, and so I need to ask you a question.

I'm gonna ask you to be brutally honest with yourself.

Here's the question: what is the last thing that really broke your heart?

It's interesting how the world has changed over about the last three years, because three years ago, if I asked that to a room full of people, about 70% would be like, really, right now, I'm kind of good, you know?

My heart does not feel broken, things are rolling, everything's fine.

But after going through a global pandemic, after going through nationwide political unrest and racial unrest, after going through the last three years, now it's about 70% of people who will say, Yeah, my life, it's pretty rough right now.

And so maybe you're there, maybe you're not, maybe things are good, maybe things are bad, maybe they're just kind of in between.

But here's what you need to understand about carrying pain in your life that all of us, as just a part of being human and living out the human experience, all of us carry with us broken hearts as a result of living inside of a broken world.

A good question to consider is what is the last thing that broke your heart?

A better question to consider is what is the first thing that broke your heart?

And here's how we believe life works that at some point, usually before 10 years old, something happens in your life.

Many would call it the loss of innocence.

What we call it here is an inciting incident.

It's like a door that you walk through in life that shuts and locks behind you, and once you're on the other side, you can never go back.

This is the first time you really experience the kind of pain in your life that makes you realize that the world is not always a safe place.

That the people who have authority over your life don't always get things right and may not even have your best interest in mind.

It's the moment you realize that words can be weaponized against you, that one moment, one act, one attack, one phrase can break you down to the core of who you are.

This is what creates a primary pain in your life.

And that primary pain, without having something to do with it, something transcendent, something significant, that primary pain will take the driver's seat of your life and it will drive and it will derail your life until you have an answer for it.

This primary pain, the first time we realize that the world isn't always a safe place, that there are bad things, that there are bad circumstances, that sometimes there are bad people in this world.

At that moment, we begin to create our worst ways.

Our worst ways are all of the coping mechanisms, all of the ways that we learn how to deal, suppress, ignore, numb, self-medicate.

These are the ways that we try to protect ourselves in life, and our worst ways always lead us away from God's design for his world and God's design for our life.

You see, even if right now you're on the mountaintop of life and everything's going well and you're making all of the money and having all of the marital bliss and enjoying your kids to the maximum, everyone lives with a heart that is fundamentally broken because of the broken world around us.

We all have pain.

This primary pain is what causes us to believe that we'll never actually be good enough, or we'll never really make it, or no one will ever really love you, or that the only way to find worth is to have as many sexual partners as will take you, or the only way to prove to someone who doesn't actually care about you that you're worth something is to continue and continue to achieve, and your achievement never satisfies and it never fulfills, and it never has any impact on the world because you're not actually achieving out of a sense of purpose, you're achieving to try and mitigate your pain.

We all have broken hearts, and the story of the widowed mother matters because every one of us knows the pain of a heartbreak, and we know what it's like to be in a season where it feels like trauma and pain and suffering are compounding on top of one another.

And for so many people, they've convinced themselves they don't need Jesus, they don't need a spiritual experience, they don't need to consider God, and if that's where you are, more than likely it's because you have convinced yourself that the pain that is in your life doesn't actually have the power that it wields.

And so to get real and to get ready for what we might discover in God's word today, the question for all of us to consider is what is the last thing that broke your heart?

To really understand the story in Luke, this moment with Jesus, we have to try and get the picture of what's happening in our mind.

It says afterward, he was on his way to a town called Nain.

His disciples and a large crowd were traveling with him.

Now, Nain is like the middle of nowhere.

It's a town that nobody really cares about.

It's not even clear if the news of who Jesus is and what he's all about has even made it to this remote village.

It says Jesus is traveling with a large crowd.

Jesus is probably at the front as the leader, and it's kind of like a Super Bowl atmosphere.

They were just in a different town where he had healed a Roman centurion's uh servant.

I mean, they're seeing incredible things, they're hearing incredible sermons.

Everyone's kind of trying to figure out who Jesus actually is and how he has all of this power.

As he goes about his public ministry, the crowds following him, they grow and grow, they swell in size, and they're on their way into Nain.

In verse 12, it says, just as he neared the gate of the town.

And so really try to imagine this with me.

Towns and villages were largely built inside of a walled fortress.

And so there was a gate in every town, which was the one way in, the one way out.

That's how it was constructed.

To continue, as he neared the gate of the town, a dead man was being carried out.

He was his mother's only son, and she was a widow, and a large crowd from the town was also with her.

Jesus has his large crowd, and the mourning mother has her large crowd.

They're headed in opposite directions, one in and one out.

Now, in the Jewish custom, you never buried someone inside of the city.

That's why they were headed out of the gate.

Not only that, but this is 2,000 years ago.

There was no way to embalm or preserve the body, which means that this son probably was pronounced dead hours before this.

No time to mourn, no time to grieve, no time to process.

This had just happened.

And now this widow who just lost her only son is walking the same path that she walked as they buried her husband.

She's remembering the heartache that is now being compounded by the loss of her son, the loss of her social status, the loss of her income, possibly the loss of her property, everything she had ever known, and everything that she looked forward to.

In the Jewish scriptures, losing an only son was a special kind of grief.

We see that, for example, in Jeremiah 6, it says, My dear people, dress yourselves in sackcloth and roll in the dust.

Mourn as you would for an only son, a bitter lament.

Everything about this is just pure heartbreak.

The Jewish people didn't use caskets.

What they used would look more like a stretcher in our day.

They would carry it on long poles and they would cover the body with a sheet.

And no one would get close to the body because once it was pronounced dead, the worst thing you could do in the Jewish cleanliness laws was to touch a deceased body.

And so let's get the picture.

The widow is leading a procession of mourners and they are headed out of the gate.

And Jesus is leading a procession of rejoicers, and they are headed inside the gate.

One gate, one way in, one way out, two crowds diverging and meeting together at the gate.

And we have no idea if they had any clue who Jesus was.

But John, one of his disciples, who wrote the Gospel of John, this is how he described Jesus.

In John 1:4, he said, In Jesus was life.

John 1:4

And that life was the light of men.

They had no idea as they carried a dead son outside of the gate, that they were about to be interrupted by the author of life itself.

Death meant life at the gate of the city.

And this is so significant because this is where Jesus meets us.

He meets us at the gate.

And every one of us has these gate moments in our life.

On the other side of that gate, she's not just burying her son, she is burying her hope, she's burying her future, she's burying her resources, she's burying her joy, she is burying her life.

Everything will change when she walks out of that gate.

Maybe you've had some gate moments in your life, moments where you realize on the other side of that decision, or on the other side of that court date, or on the other side of that breakup, on the other side of that firing, that everything would change.

And this is often where people meet Jesus.

You see, we we just heard the song and it says, it isn't easy, it isn't clear, you don't need Jesus until you're here.

And that's not factually true, because factually we need Jesus everywhere, all of the time, every moment of every day.

We rely on him, whether we recognize it or not, for every bit of breath in our lungs and every beat of our heart.

But it's true in how most people experience Jesus.

That we're very comfortable relying on ourself, that we're very comfortable resourcing ourselves, that we're very comfortable putting our hope in ourselves until the bottom falls out.

And when we get to the gates in life, when we lose the job, when the illness comes, when the divorce papers are filed, when the text messages get discovered, when it all falls to pieces, then all of a sudden we are keenly aware that our hearts are in fact broken on a fundamental level that we cannot do anything about, and there's nothing in this world that has anything to offer us for the brokenness inside of us.

And look, these coping mechanisms and worst ways that your primary pain has driven you to throughout your life, they seem to offer the answers to life.

But all they are doing is masking the problem.

And the real problem in life that we don't know what comes next, and we don't have an answer for what comes after death, and we don't know how to deal with the pain inside of us.

You cannot actually drink that away, you can't sleep it away, you can't achieve it away, you cannot ignore it, suppress it, deny it.

You can't do anything that actually changes anything in your life.

And Jesus meets you, and he meets you at the gate.

And the author of life who can actually take your pain and turn it into purpose and potential, who can take your suffering and use it for something significant in your life.

Jesus meets you exactly, exactly where you are.

And maybe you came up in religious environments that have convinced you that before you get to Jesus, you need to clean yourself up and you need to act right, you need to dress the right way, speak the right way, sing the right way, say the right words, go to the right classes, have the right marriage, raise the right kids.

You gotta get it all together, and then maybe, just maybe, maybe Jesus will have some time for you.

And I'm telling you over and over and over again in scripture, what we see is Jesus looks at his children and his heart is broken on our behalf, but it is not broken from a distance.

When his heart breaks for you, his love breaks out to you.

Amen.

And you need to know this: Jesus is pursuing you everywhere all the time.

Jesus is pursuing you everywhere all the time.

And Jesus will meet you at the gate of your life, at the lowest of your lows.

And for some of us, the barrier to faith isn't what Jesus could do for you.

The first thing that you need to realize is how Jesus feels about you.

In verse 13, when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her.

That same Greek word, that very intense, guttural, deep, heartbreaking, gut-wrenching feeling, he had compassion on her.

And when a heart breaks, love breaks out.

That's how Jesus operates.

And we've seen this all throughout the series.

When the compassionate Samaritan saw the man beaten and lying, dying in the ditch, he met him where he was.

And when he met the man with leprosy, ostracized and marginalized from society, he met him exactly where he was, and when he saw the crowd lost like sheep without a shepherd, he met them exactly where they were.

This is Jesus' kind of compassion that he meets you where you are, he meets you at the gates of your life, and yet his love meets you where you are, but does not leave you where you are.

He did not leave the man dying in the ditch, he did not leave the man suffering from leprosy, and he did not leave the crowd suffering, lost and purposeless.

Jesus is ready to meet you where you are at the gates of your life, where on the other side everything will change forever.

He uses those opportunities, and so often people wait until they hit rock bottom to finally lift their eyes and wonder if there is something that can actually do something about the state of their life.

And maybe you think that's not quite fair.

It's not quite fair to live like hell and then ride on your deathbed and turn it all around.

Maybe you feel like that's not quite fair.

That some people get to just live wild lives the whole time, taking in all that the world has to offer and then turn it around at 50 or 70 or 90 years old.

There's a parable that Jesus tells us at one point, and we call it the parable of the prodigal son, and we put a lot of attention on this prodigal young man because he's wild.

He takes his inheritance and he spends it all on prostitutes and gambling, and then all of a sudden he's, you know, dirt poor, he's he's living out, he's like tending to pigs, he wants to eat their food, he's so hungry, there's a famine in the land, and finally he comes home, and you know what?

This is another one of those moments that we see this word, the father, saw him from a distance and was moved to compassion.

You know what's so interesting about that story?

That story is not about the prodigal.

We like it because let's let's be real, we're kind of the prodigal a lot of the time, you know?

We like to be the star of the story.

The story of the prodigal son is actually the tale of two brothers.

The point of the story is the older brother didn't think it was fair that the younger brother got to come home.

And let me just tell you right now, for the Christians in the room who are gonna see people go through the water, and you're 75%.

Rejoicing, but 25% feel like it's not fair because they got to sin a little bit longer than you got to sin.

Jesus is moved to compassion.

And when we think it's not fair that Jesus is ready to wait till someone hits rock bottom to pull him into the family, it only means that we misunderstand the weight of our own sin against God.

God was moved with compassion for those, the leper, the dying, and for the people who all they were missing was a purpose in life.

If all you have is a lack of connection to your heavenly father, that is enough.

Jesus doesn't need you to have a testimony that could make 60 minutes, 20-20, or dateline.

He just needs you to realize that until you are connected to your heavenly father, that you are missing the key to living the life that he created you to live.

Jesus is ready.

He's ready to meet you exactly, exactly where you are.

It's incredible.

Anytime we understand the gospel, that's the good news of Jesus.

Every time the gospel is presented, which it is being presented here in your presence, those online, it's being presented here in your presence.

Every time the gospel is put in front of you, it's a gate.

And Jesus is meeting you at that gate, and he wants to take you from where you are.

And what scripture says is those who are in Christ, who have believed that Jesus is who he says he is, and he's done what he says that he's done, he actually came to earth, actually lived a perfect life, actually died the death that we deserve, actually defeated death itself, and has promised to return for his people.

If you put your faith in Jesus, then the old things have passed away.

And it says, Behold, all things have been made new.

That's the promise that Jesus gives to us.

He meets you at the gate, but he doesn't leave you where you are.

And look, Jesus and his large crowd, and the widowed mother and her large crowd, they met at the gate.

And in verse 14, Jesus came up and he touched the open coffin.

And the pallbearer stopped, and Jesus said, Young man, I tell you, get up.

And the dead man sat up and began to speak.

And Jesus gave him to his mother.

Jesus displayed power over death itself.

And it says in scripture, everyone was amazed, and of course they were.

Who is this guy that opens the eyes of the blind and makes the lame to walk?

Who is this guy that speaks with authority that can only come from heaven itself?

Who is this uneducated carpenter who seems to know the scriptures better than the ones who wrote the scriptures?

It says they were amazed.

It also says they were terrified.

What kind of power is this here on the earth that can raise the dead to life?

And I think it's an appropriate response.

They were terrified.

And the question they had, because at this point in Jesus' ministry, nobody actually understood yet who Jesus was.

And the question that they had to wrestle with 2,000 years ago is still, to this day, the most important question you will ever consider in this life.

And that question is who is Jesus?

The grieving mother made it to the gate, but she never went out of it.

She had faith that Jesus was who he says that he is.

Everything turned around.

Who is Jesus?

This is the one question for you that has eternal ramifications.

Who is he?

If he's just a great historical figure, if he's just a wonderful teacher, if he's just a world-class philosopher, then he's got some good information for you.

It could be a nice TED talk.

You can get inspired like listening to a podcast.

But that kind of Jesus cannot do anything to take the pain of a broken heart and turn it in to something beautiful.

But if Jesus is who he says that he is, God in human flesh, the God of the universe who looked down on the broken hearts of broken people and was moved to compassion to such a degree that he stepped out of heaven and into our broken world.

Scripture says he was tempted in every way, he felt every pain that you and I feel, and yet was without sin that he actually died, that he actually rose again.

If Jesus is who he says he is, and he's done what he says that he's done, then it changes everything.

And the world's gonna offer you plenty of things to try and deal with the pain that is deep inside of you.

But the pain in you came from this world.

And the world that created that pain cannot also offer the solution.

It takes something outside of this world, bigger than this world, transcendent in your life.

And Jesus is the one person who can take the broken pieces of your life and put them back together in something more beautiful, more purposeful, more powerful than you could ever imagine.

Jesus came as the solution to all problems, even the ultimate problem of death itself.

And when we baptize you, that's why we say that you are buried with Christ.

And we put you in the water, and this is a symbol that your old self, the sin that held you back, that was counted against you in heaven's courts, it is no longer, it stays in the grave.

And we pull you up and we say, You're raised to walk a new life.

It's a public declaration that I met Jesus at the gate, and Jesus turned my life back around.

I believe some of you are at the gate today.

You haven't made the most important decision in your life, and maybe today is your day, and maybe today's the day you begin seriously wrestling with it.

I think that would be a huge win.

Some of you are ready, and Jesus, even in this service, has gripped your heart.

And it's time, it's time to do work.

And maybe for some of you, you didn't come intending to get baptized, but God showed up ready to get you in these waters.

And I need you to know we're gonna give you a chance in a few seconds to stand up and go to the back and get changed.

But you also need to know that until the last note is played in the last song today, today can still be your day.

At any point in this service, if God moves in your heart, you can get out of your seat, go back to the lobby, get what you need, and come and get in the water.

Right where you're at, if you'd close your eyes and bow your head, just create some space for yourself and for the people around you.

And I want you to consider, if you're here today and you've never put your faith in Jesus, that today might be your day.

And so if that's you and if you're ready, I want to invite you to acknowledge your faith in Jesus through a very simple prayer.

You can repeat this out loud with me, or you can repeat a version of it in your head where God can certainly hear your thoughts.

You pray something like this.

Jesus, today I choose to put my faith in you.

I believe you are God.

I believe you died for me.

And I believe you rose again.

I thank you for a new life.

I thank you for taking my pain.

And I trust you to show me my purpose.

I love you and I thank you.

For those who just prayed that prayer, you just made the most important decision you'll ever make in your life.

You made a decision that has changed not just your life today, you now are connected to Jesus and your heavenly Father.

You now have the power of the Holy Spirit residing inside of you.

Doesn't mean everything will be perfect, it doesn't mean life won't be hard.

It means you no longer have to do life alone.

Not only is today changed, but you can live forever with the security that one day you will spend forever with your Heavenly Father.

Thanks so much for listening to the message today.

If this was helpful to you and you want to help us get the word out, you can subscribe to this podcast, you can rate and review or share it with your friends.

If you want to get connected further with what MetaCurch is doing, you can go online to metachurch.tv.

There you can learn how to take next steps, you can learn where our different venues are at if you ever wanted to visit, and you can also give financially to help push this movement forward.

And I love you guys, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.