"I've Been Hurt By the Church" Pt. 2

Porch, how are we doing? Are we doing okay tonight? Come on, let's go. It's great to see you. The brave and the bold, man. You decided you're not going to let any cold weather keep you back. You decided to make it here in the room tonight. I'm so glad you did. Also, I'm so glad we have some friends joining us online tonight. Special shout-out to all of our Porch.Live locations…Porch.Live Indy, Porch.Live Scottsdale, Porch.Live Fresno. We love you guys. I'm so glad you're tuning in with us this evening.

Chances are, if you're going to move cities, you're more than likely going to do so because of work at some point in your life. That's the case for some of you here. You're in Dallas, Texas, because your job brought you here. You didn't necessarily choose to be here. Your job required you to be here. Or maybe you're tuning in, and it's not that you live here; you live wherever it is you are, and it's because work just required it. You decided to make the move.

This happened for me a little bit later in life than it did for many, many young adults. You see, I went to Texas A&M University, and I actually lived in College Station for a little bit of time after I graduated. I decided to hang out and catch a little bit more of the scenery, but eventually I did get an offer that took me away from the city and into Houston, Texas.

I didn't know anything about Houston. Brooke and I are not from there. We were unfamiliar with the area. All we knew was that at some point the Astros decided to cheat in pursuit of winning the World Series. That's all we knew. We didn't know much else. So we decided, "We have to get to know the landscape of the land a little bit, and we have to find an apartment as soon as possible," because my transition was coming very, very quickly.

So we took a weekend. We booked a bunch of reservations. We decided to go through a variety of apartments, and we landed on one that felt really good. The apartment we found was in a really good location, a nice pocket of town. It was near good restaurants, not far from my workplace. It was a first-floor unit, which is great if you're carrying groceries in, so we were really excited about it except there was one minor catch. That catch was we weren't actually able to tour the unit we were planning to lease.

I don't know if you've ever been in that spot, but that's a pretty uneasy feeling, because you don't necessarily know what you're going to get. Sure, you can look around and assess some of the quality of the place, but you really want to step foot into the actual apartment you're going to call your own. Our property manager understood our uneasiness, so to assuage our fears, she decided to take us through a model unit, a unit that was identical to the one we'd be moving into.

So we walked in, and it was nice. It had freshly painted walls and cleaned floors and new light fixtures, and there was a fireplace in the living area. It felt great, so we decided, "You know what? Let's take the risk. We're going to sign the lease." So, the weekend finally came. We made our way from College Station. We drove down to Houston, Texas, and we were excited. This was a new chapter of life. This was a new adventure for Brooke and me. This was a new job, yes, but it was also a new city, new people, and a new home for us as well.

So, we got to the apartment, collected the keys, and made our way to our unit. As we unlocked the door, we pushed it open, and to our horror, it looked nothing like what we had been promised. We had been promised one thing, but we were given something else entirely. In place of the walls being freshly painted, they were freshly stained with I still don't know what. It was gross to look at. Instead of the floors being perfectly cleaned, there were little hair balls floating around in the corners of the apartment, so much so that I could actually tell you the color of the previous tenant's hair.

Where we thought we were going to get an apartment that backed up to this running trail and this quaint little creek that kind of cut through the woodland forest, what we found instead was a stinking, smelling swamp. We were set into an apartment the likes of which not only missed our expectations but mocked our expectations. We had been promised one thing, but we were given something else entirely. Have you ever been in that spot? Has that ever been your reality?

Maybe it's not the place where you lived. Maybe it was, instead, a show you loved. You watched every episode. You made sure to track with the characters. You felt like you grew up alongside of them. Then, finally, the final season shows up, and you've been waiting for this moment. You can't wait for it to all drop. You sit down, and you're like, "What the heck just happened? This show did not finish the way it was supposed to finish."

Maybe it wasn't that. Maybe it was, instead, you bought a piece of furniture, the perfect final addition to your living space. It was at the perfect price. Sure, it came from IKEA, but it said some assembly would already be completed, yet it showed up on your doorstep, and you realized, "No, no assembly has been completed. All assembly is, in fact, required."

Maybe it's not something so trivial. Maybe it's something a little bit more material than that. Maybe it wasn't that you moved to a new city because of a new job, but you actually earned a new promotion. It was like, "Oh my gosh! This is everything I've wanted. I'm in a new city, sure. I'm in a new department. Great. But, man, I'm finally getting to work in the position I've longed for to a boss I actually respect." Until you realize that boss is a real piece of work and the job is not nearly as fulfilling as you thought. That's a material disappointment.

Maybe it wasn't that. Maybe, finally, you got up the courage to ask her out. You'd been reading the signs. You knew the moment had arrived, so you boldly walked across the room, and you asked her if she had plans Friday night, and to your horror, you learned she didn't have any interest in dating you; she only had interest in flirting with you.

But what do you do when the disappointment goes even farther than that, when the disappointment affects more than your life alone; it affects your soul too? The disappointment isn't just situational. It's not just out there in the world; it's spiritual. It's in here in a room like this amongst a people like us, coming from a guy like me.

What do you do when you face disappointment in the church? You trusted that pastor. You felt safe with that leader. You thought your peers, the Christians around you, were supposed to be innocent until they weren't. What do you do in that moment when you face that level of betrayal? Well, for many of you, you deconstruct. You do what we described in week one. You went through a crisis of faith that led at least to a reevaluation of your Christianity and, at most, to a total abandonment of it. And honestly, who can blame you?

I won't bore you with the stats, but if you look at the trends in our culture, more young adults today are leaving the church not because their devious, atheistic professor finally got to them but because a religious, altruistic minister failed them. Many people are leaving as a result of that, whether it was perpetuating a system of abuse instead of calling out sin, defending some political power rather than loving their neighbors, frequenting massage parlors for secret sexual favors, controlling the headlines to hide some hypocrisy, or defending a leader as opposed to holding him accountable for his actions.

Many in our generation, some of you included, just can't get on board with this. Like, "If this is what's true of them, then why would I ever want that to be true of me?" If that's you, I'm really glad you're here, because though that may be true for the ethereal them, it's not at all true of him. It's not true of Jesus. Yes, the church can hurt, but Christ can save.

So often, he saves those the church tries to hurt. You see it all throughout his life. He identified with Zacchaeus, that wee little man. He decided that despite everyone's ridicule, he wanted to go and be hosted at his house. He healed the bleeding woman, the very woman the rest of society had decided to extort. He wanted to heal her.

He touched the leper, that guy whom nobody wanted anything to do with. "Don't touch him. He'll make you unclean." Jesus said, "No, I won't only heal him; I will actually touch him myself, and I will identify with him personally." He pursued the demoniac, that guy who lived in a place no one went to and did some things nobody wanted. Jesus decided to go for that guy all by himself.

He defended Mary. When she sat in the seat of the disciple at his feet, listening to his teaching, and the rest of his disciples ridiculed her, he defended her. He welcomed tax collectors, sinners, and prostitutes. He broke bread with them, though the rest of the religious would scrutinize him for it. You see, Jesus did for them what I think he wants to do for some of you tonight.

So, if you have a Bible, turn with me to Matthew, chapter 23. Why Matthew, chapter 23? Because we've been in a series called Deconstructed, and the whole idea behind it is we want to help you rebuild your reality. We think there's a way to question your faith without losing it. I think it's possible to contend with your confusion, to face your frustrations, and not just deconstruct parts of your belief but actually reconstruct something strong instead.

If you were here two weeks ago, then you know this is part 2 of a talk rooted in this specific passage we're looking at tonight. In this passage, Jesus comes to the Pharisees and the scribes and calls them out. The Pharisees and scribes are some of the religious leaders of his day. He decides to call them out, confront them, through a series of "woes."

We know the context of this conversation is the last week of Jesus' life. It's actually a Tuesday in Holy Week. Jesus is repping Tuesdays. He decides to call out these religious leaders in the last week of his life. Now, if you had one week of life to live, what would you do with it? I could be wrong, but my guess is you're probably not exposing religious corruption, but that's what Jesus does. You think you have an issue with Christian hypocrisy? Jesus has more.

What we see as he calls out the religious leaders is he pronounces seven woes against them. A woe is a judgment. He calls them out for a variety of ways that they've led the people not closer to God but farther from God. We caught four of these woes the last time we were together, and those four, just to recap, to keep you up to speed in case you missed it, were…

You should beware of those who stress aptitude over attitude. That was the first thing Jesus warned us of. The second thing was beware of those who convert to their cause rather than the kingdom. The third of those woes was beware of those who leverage authority to escape accountability. Lastly, beware of those who emphasize small matters over big ones. Those were the first four woes. We talked about that two weeks ago. You can go catch the message if you want to hear the explanation and interpretation of all of that.

Tonight, we're going to be looking at the last three. Here's what you need to know about these seven woes. These seven woes are warnings for us against the dangers of religiosity, but it's not just that it's going to provide a warning; it's also going to provide a way in which we should walk as we move in faith. That's what we're going to see. So, the last three woes are what we're going to find here tonight.

Now, I should say this before I hop in. It is sobering for me to teach through Jesus' judgments against the religious leaders, knowing full well that I am no exception, that I myself stand in a seat where these same truths would apply to me very directly. It doesn't escape me the reality that that's the case. I'm grateful for the way God has worked to refine me even just in studying it.

So, we're all subject to what this teaches tonight. This is a Scripture of great consequence for me, as it is for you, so let's get into it together. Matthew, chapter 23. If you have a Bible, we're going to start in verse 25. "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean."

The first thing Jesus warns us tonight is we should beware of those who prioritize image over innocence. Now, I don't know about you, but when I read a couple of verses like that… I love it whenever the Bible kind of jumps into my reality. It engages me right where I am. I'm pretty particular when it comes to the dishes. You know what I mean? I'm not the guy who takes dishes with crumbs and food scum and just throws them in the dishwasher. I don't believe that works very effectively.

You may be like-minded to myself. You believe they need to be scrubbed very cleanly on the inside. Otherwise, the dishwasher is not going to get the job done. Jesus is kind of talking about that, but he's also talking about a little bit more. You see, there's a deeper layer of meaning to the analogy Jesus is addressing here. He's targeting the Pharisees very directly.

According to Jewish law, different rabbinical camps at this time argued when a cup or a plate was considered ritually clean. One camp said the cup was ritually clean whenever the outside of it was cleansed. The other camp said, "No, no, no. That's not the case. This cup is ritually clean whenever the inside of it is ritually cleansed."

Why does that matter? Because Jesus launches into that debate, and he says, "Guys, it's not so much about the cup; it's much more about you. You clean yourself up on the outside, but you are filthy on the inside. You might look externally beautiful, but you are internally wicked." Jesus wants us to know that true faith is about so much more than basic obedience.

It's about so much more than just doing the right things, saying the right things, and looking the right ways. It's about so much more than basic obedience; it's about innocence. You don't just do the right things; you mean them. They come from a pure heart within. It's not just what you do that matters; it's how you do it that ultimately matters. So, let me give you some perspective on what Jesus is trying to say here with this cup analogy.

You've read about the Trojan War. In case you haven't, what you need to know is the Greeks were squaring off against the city of Troy, and they decided to leave a surprise gift for the city of Troy. They created a Trojan horse. It's an infamous gift, because the city of Troy looked at it and said, "This is a peace offering," because it was beautiful on the outside, yet tucked away within that Trojan horse was not something beautiful but something very lethal.

It looked like it had all the trappings of innocence on the outside, but inside it was anything but innocent. It was filled with soldiers that could not penetrate the walls unless they tricked the city of Troy into letting them inside, and they raided the city from within. Jesus is looking at the Pharisees and scribes and saying, "Hey, that's kind of like you guys. You look beautiful out here. You look trustworthy, but you're actually quite treacherous."

That's why he calls them hypocrites. When you read this in the Greek (while that's not quite the original language, it's the earliest manuscript we have), the word for hypocrite is the idea of an actor or a pretender. It's someone who looks like something on the outside but is actually something very different on the inside.

They have all of the markings of good men, yet they have none of the motives. Instead, they're motivated by what Jesus says is greed and self-indulgence. They have a lust for public recognition, and they lack self-control. So much so that, earlier in the chapter, Jesus warns the rest of the crowd, people like you and me, of what we should look out for when it comes to people like this.

He says in Matthew 23, if you go back up to verse 5, "They [the religious leaders] do all their deeds to be seen by others. For they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long…" These are markings of piety. It's a way you would demonstrate your holiness. A phylactery was a little leather box they would wear on their forehead and on their arm. It contained copies of the Scripture within it. The tassels were signifying of their distinction as God's people.

"…and they love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces and being called rabbi by others." Jesus is looking at the crowds and saying, "Hey, beware of those who carefully curate their religious image. Beware of those who only associate with the influential, who love to sit in the seats of power, who want to be identified by very specific titles or professions that interact with a very exclusive group of people."

Jesus knows that, as it was true then and so it is true today, people have always used God's platform to build their own. Just to bring it all the way home for us, if the leaders in your life only ever sit in the greenroom backstage and never traverse the halls where the rest of the people are, there's reason to be careful. If they only ever repost clips of themselves, or you view their grid and it's only pictures of them and no one else, you have reason to be careful.

If they only interact with the socially significant, other influencers, you have reason to be careful. You see, Jesus wants us to know it's not so much the prosperity gospel of times past we should be concerned with; instead, it is the popularity gospel of times present we should be more concerned with. It's the fact that people will follow God to promote themselves.

Yet that's not what Jesus did. Jesus never did that in his own ministry. He never followed God to promote himself. He followed God to promote you, to move you from death to life. That's a pretty significant promotion…from enemy of God to child of God. That's a pretty significant promotion. From belittled to beloved, from lost to found, from slave to free. This was the heart of Jesus for you. He wanted to promote you out of your desolation and into exaltation. He wanted to bring you closer to God than you could ever do on your own.

Now, let me be clear. There's nothing wrong with excellent production, really impressive worship, or buildings the likes of which you're pretty awestruck by. There's nothing wrong with those things unless they only make much of the man and never make much of the King. Then there's an issue.

I had a dear friend (he was a pastor of mine) who was the best at prioritizing his innocence rather than his image. He would tell me, "Kylen, whenever you preach, don't see the empty seats; see the full seats instead." He would tell me, "Kylen, whenever you walk through the halls, move very slowly. If you're in a rush, people don't think they can approach you, but if you go slowly, they might actually come close."

And my favorite… He would tell me, "Kylen, collect uncommon badges of honor. A little makeup dust on the shoulder from hugging a widow is of much greater value to God than any number of compliments you can earn after a sermon." We should desire to live lives of innocence and not ones that promote our image.

What we need to know is what my friend knew: what matters to God is less the magnitude of our ministry and more the magnitude of our hearts, because man looks on the outward appearance but God looks at the heart. He doesn't care simply that we do the right things; he cares that we do them from the right reasons. So, what's the way we should walk? We've heard the warning. The way you should walk is you should aim to be innocent at heart and not just impressive in life. That's the first one. Verse 27:

"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people's bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness."

Here's the thing. At first glance, this woe feels very similar to the last one. They feel very similar in nature, yet there is a major difference. It's subtle, but it is there. Here's the difference. The first woe we read tonight is about doing the right things from the wrong heart. This one is about doing the right things from no heart at all.

Jesus is warning us to beware of those who teach dead religion over true grace. Now, at the time that Jesus is speaking, contrary to popular belief, tombs were not whitewashed for the sole sake of beautifying them. That was a side effect of why they actually whitewashed them. They would whitewash tombs because they wanted to make sure that as Israelites were traveling from foreign lands back to Jerusalem, they could make their way free of the danger of stepping on something that would make them unclean, namely a tomb or a grave site.

So they would whitewash them. They would try to make sure, knowing full well that the consequence of being made unclean as someone was making their journey was devastating, that they could move toward Jerusalem and do so without fear of jeopardizing their journey. You see, if you stepped on a grave, if you engaged with a corpse, it would make you unclean for seven days.

For most other ritual impurities, there were pretty quick and easy ways to find yourself clean again, but corpse impurity was kind of the granddaddy of defilement, if you will. It was the one that was not so easily resolved. So, if you and your little family, making a journey from wherever you lived all the way to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover, happened to be leading your kids, and one of them peeled off the path and decided to touch a grave, your entire journey would be fruitless. It'd be in vain.

So the Pharisees were like, "Man, we have to whitewash these things. We have to paint them up in chalk. We have to make them look like the ancient Near Eastern of skunks." Which may feel weird to you. Why a skunk? Well, think about it. What is a skunk? A skunk is a cute little animal with very stark colors that alert you to come nowhere near them. That's why they look black and white. They're alerting predators. "You don't want to mess with me. I may be snuggly, but I will defile you." That is what a whitewashed tomb is. It looks beautiful, but you don't want to get anywhere close to it.

There's a lot of whitewashing in the church today. Beautiful buildings, impressive programs, breathtaking visuals, massive ministries, but there's very little life change in those places at times. Many in the church have grown to a place where they know a lot about ministry but know little about God, because they've gotten really good at playing the Christian game, but they're actually not putting any points on the board. There's no difference in their work.

Let me just say this. I'm highly aware of the fact that I am standing on a stage in a place that is big, beautiful, and branded, and I am terrified by that reality. I'm so nervous by the fact that we could casually show up here on Tuesdays and see all of our friends, and we could share a message to the crowd, sing some songs, and sell some merch, and no real difference could actually be made; that we could spend time in this room and do all manner of other things, but we could miss the thing that matters the most: meeting with God.

I am not interested in being the weekly entertainment. I don't want this to be a place of dead religion. I don't want to spend our time professionalizing in our ministry. That would be a waste. What I want to be true in this room is a radical, redemptive movement where we meet with God, he moves among us, and we feel like our lives are forever changed. We behold his beauty, we become more like him, we belong to his family, and we actually save the world. That's what I want here. Yet we can miss it if we get swept up in dead religion.

I don't want to live a whitewashed life. I don't want to lead a whitewashed ministry, and I don't want you to be whitewashed yourself. Here's the thing: we are so prone to doing it. We quote our Bibles, pray our prayers, confess our sins, show up to group, and give our money, and we're casual about it the entire time. We think about our religious busyness, yet we feel apathy and indifference.

Let me just ask you. Do you think God is casual about you in any way? Do you think Jesus looks at you and says, "Yeah. You know what? Casual Christianity. That's something I want to reciprocate." No! He doesn't have a casual bone in his body when it comes to you. He loves you. He's wild about you. He's not apathetic. "Man, should I spend some time with him today? I'm not really sure. Yesterday was pretty tough." He doesn't approach you like that.

He's not indifferent over whether or not you should spend some time and visit with one another. "You know what? I spoke to him from the Word yesterday, but he didn't really listen to me later that afternoon, so should I do it again today?" That's not his heart. He's not indifferent. He's not passively interested in the circumstances of your life. He's not casual about you. He is enraptured by you, so much so that God would send his own Son to save you. If you don't believe me, listen to Paul. He says in Titus 2:

"For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works."

Jesus is not casual about you. He is not casual about me. He is not casual about these moments. He cares deeply. He's not interested in dead religion. One pastor said it so well. What are the differences between cemeteries and hospitals? One is peaceful, quiet, and calm because it's dead, but the other is messy, noisy, loud, and chaotic because people are fighting for life. That's what grace looks like.

Grace looks messy. It looks wild at times. It looks like wrestling through your doubts, confessing your sins, singing even if you're off-key, dancing though that might be a little bit undignified, and speaking up at the risk of people thinking you're nuts. It's reading the Bible even when you don't understand it. It's loving those who do not deserve it, and it's pursuing God, not seeking to be perfect for other people.

That's what true Christianity sounds like. True Christianity does not sound flawless; it sounds faithful. God isn't interested in you being successful; he wants you to be faithful. He wants you to buy into the grace he gives. He has warned you. "Don't worry about dead religion. Instead, the way you should walk is you should live by the grace I give, not die by the good you can do." Last one. Verses 29-32:

"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the monuments of the righteous, saying, 'If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.' Thus you witness against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers."

The last thing Jesus warns us is we should beware of those who cast judgment instead of give mercy. There's a lot of irony in this last woe, because Jesus calls out the Pharisees for their dishonesty in this moment. They look at Jesus and say, "Hey, we know what our fathers did. They killed the prophets. But we're not like them. No, no, no. We're better. We're kinder. We're wiser. We wouldn't do what they did."

Jesus is looking at them and saying, "Hey, you will not only do what they did; you will do it in a matter of a week's time, because you will kill God's greatest prophet. You will kill me." He calls them out. He lets them know, "You think you give mercy, but in fact, you give judgment." When I was studying this, I remember thinking to myself, "This is the hardest woe to identify with in our regular world, because we're not really interested in killing the prophets. That's not something we actually do today."

But then I realized we do condemn one another, and in a similar way, we kill each other all the same. We're quick to enthrone ourselves upon the opinions we have formed rather than receive mercy and extend it to people the way Jesus has given it to us. You find this issue across the spectrum of spirituality.

You can find it amongst the most contemplative of camps, leaders who, on the surface, advocate compelling theological positions, a fidelity to God's Word, and a scriptural precision that is really interesting, yet all the while they passively scrutinize other people. They openly cast judgments upon those who disagree with their doctrinal distinctives.

It's not just in the most contemplative of camps. It's also in the most charismatic of camps. You can find people who motivate your morality. They stir up your spirit. They fan into flame that spot fire of faith in your life. They're so good at it, yet they are willing to do so at great compromise to the Scripture. They'll do what they can to emotionally motivate, yet ultimately not bring about the kind of conviction God's Spirit can do through his Word and his Word alone. They are seeking to serve their own agenda, and they're willing to manipulate people to get it done.

You can find it also in yourselves. We're really quick to honor God with our lips, but in the same breath, we also tend to criticize, convict, and condemn one another. James says this himself. He says, "With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings (we curse one another), those who have been made in God's likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers, my sisters, this shouldn't be so."

I know this was a problem for me for several years of my life. I grew up in the church, yet it wasn't until I got to college that I really began to read the Bible. I got some theological exposure, and with that, as is often true, I got some theological pride. I thought I knew better, I was wiser, I had more discernment than the rest of those I had grown up alongside.

So I decided to part ways with that group. They were pretty conservative. They held fast to tradition, yet what I realized as I studied the Bible was, "Man, it feels like they're pretty inconclusively studying the Scripture." So I judged them, and I joined a charismatic group instead. I spent time around that charismatic group, and I was so motivated by the way they lived their lives, yet, over the course of time, I began to grow skeptical, because they were more interested in the gifts of the Spirit and not merely walking with Jesus.

So I judged them, and I decided to join a gospel-saturated group, a group that revered the Bible, that spent time studying the Scripture, yet, what I realized as I sat in Bible study and read through the text was this group of people, though they were really well meaning, were pretty theologically shallow. They hadn't read Luther, Calvin, Spurgeon, Edwards, and Owen the way I had, so it was good for me to part ways with them, cast judgment, and join a very intellectual group instead.

As I spent time amongst this intellectual group, I realized, "Man, you guys are stimulating. You guys are interesting, but you're actually pretty insular. You're not very missiological. You're not very interested in what's happening out in the world." So, wouldn't you believe it, I judged them and… You get it at this point. Right? This was my story for a lot of my life. This was my journey of faith during my early, early young adult years.

Though it was largely unknown to me at the time, I was quick to criticize other people, quick to condemn them, and quick to cast them aside in the pursuit of God's truth. Some of you have experienced that same thing. Some of you were that same person. Others of you have sat on the other side of the table from that guy, and you were judged for something you did.

You were silenced because that sin is just too much. You were belittled because you were a bit different. You didn't categorically fit into the regular Christian circles. You had to become individually censored or else people would think you were divisive to the rest of the body. You're here tonight, and all you can think is, "I'm done. I've had my fill. I've seen what the church offers, and I'm still wanting. I'm unimpressed. I'm disappointed. I'm even actually betrayed."

If that's you, then listen to me. Jesus has not condemned you for your mistakes, so do not condemn him for the mistakes of his people. Some of you have walked into places like this, and your experience was like my experience when I walked into my apartment that day. All you saw were stains, all you smelled was foul, all you saw was broken, and all you felt was distrust.

Jesus is not trying to sweep in and save you out of that. He wants to come in and clean the stain. He wants to purify the foulness. He wants to wash away the grime. He wants to mend your hurt. He wants to rebuild your trust, because while Jesus himself was church hurt, he didn't respond by hurting the church; he responded by saving her.

The reason we know it is because Jesus never worried about his image in life. Instead, he worried about our innocence, so much so that he himself was religiously ridiculed. Do you feel religiously ridiculed? Jesus was religiously ridiculed for the sake of you. Jesus never taught dead religion. He taught about a living grace that reaches out to the spiritually wounded through his wounds himself.

Jesus never came to condemn. Instead, he was condemned in our place. Jesus wants to save his church. He wants to save you, too, if you'll let him. I don't know how deep the wounds may go, but you need only look to his wounds and realize he can. He can save you. He can do it, and he can bring you back home. Let me pray for us.

God, we love you. I'm thankful for tonight, grateful for a chance to sit under your Word and to feel the weight of it. I don't want us to shy away from the hard Scriptures. I don't want us to just preach pleasant platitudes. God, I want us to look at those texts, those Scriptures that really weigh not just on our circumstances but even our souls. We feel that tonight.

God, there are some people in here who have been deeply hurt by your church, by religious leaders, by the spiritually significant, and they are all but ready to give up. I pray they would know while you can relate to their pain, you cannot relate to that choice, for you, Jesus, did not come to condemn your church; you came to save her. That's what you say at the end of this passage. You say, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, that you would know the things which make for peace today." I pray, Jesus, that we would lament the pain we've felt and the poor representation it is of you, but we would not give up; we would lean in.

Then, Jesus, I know there are people in this room who are religious leaders, who do the work of ministry, who faithfully follow and seek to serve your flock. I pray that you would be near to them, that you would encourage them, that you would secure them, that they wouldn't look to the watching world to find their identity but they would find it within you. You're a good king, and it's to you now that we sing. In Christ's name, amen.