"I've Been Hurt by The Church" Pt. 1

All right, Porch. How are we doing tonight? Are you doing okay? It's great to see you. Thanks for making the time to join us. I never take it for granted that you would step away from whatever else you could be doing and would be in the room with us. I think God has something special in store for tonight, not just for the people in Dallas, Texas (though I think that's true), but also for all of you who are tuning in online all over the place.

Thanks so much for being a part of The Porch. Special shout-out to Porch.Live Midland, Springfield, and Greater Lafayette. We love you guys. We think God genuinely can meet with anybody at any time and in any place, and that includes you. So we're really grateful that you're here with us tonight.

A couple of years ago, Brooke and I took a cruise where one of the stops along the way was to the island of Belize. Has anybody been to Belize before? Okay. If you haven't been, which we had not, what you need to know is that in order to get to the island, you have to take a ferry from the ship to arrive at the port. You can't just dock the ship right against the shoreline. You have to catch a ferry.

So, knowing we were going to have to catch a ferry to get there, the recommended pathway is to know what you're going to do should you go to the island. We didn't have any plans, so we thought, "Okay. We need to figure it out. We don't want to miss out on an opportunity to experience a new country, so let's go visit with the excursion guide. Let's figure out what they would recommend we do, assess our options, and pick something that could be really fun."

So, we go and visit with the tour guide, and they tell us all of the different things, a smattering of opportunity that exists within the cruise that you can participate in on the shore. As we finished our conversation with them, they shared with us one very critical rule to live by, which was "Do not go to shore unless you book an excursion through us." Naturally, we chose to book an excursion through someone else entirely. No offense to the cruise line. It's just way cheaper to book through something like Expedia.

We were excited. The day arrived. We had made this incredible plan of what we would do when we got to the shore. So, we get up, and the sun is shining, and the birds are singing. The weather is perfect. We go down and get on the ferry. We make our way to shore, and as we take a look around the town square of Belize for our reputable tour agency, they were nowhere to be found. Instead of a tour agency, there was one Captain Tom waiting for us with his "company van," which was suspect, to say the least.

You see, we had been duped. We had shown up expecting one thing, promised the experience of a lifetime, yet here we were in the middle of a foreign country about to journey into a random jungle with a total stranger we knew nothing about. How do you think we felt in that moment? "Betrayed" would be a really good assessment of the situation, because that's what we felt. We were expecting one thing, but we'd received something else instead.

I'm not judging Tom. I don't know the guy. I want to believe the best about him. Yet, what I know is this is the stuff of 60 Minutes. It's a young married man with his newly betrothed wife in the middle of a foreign country, journeying into a jungle of unknown proportion in the back of a serial killer van with a stranger we know nothing about. Right? This is the kind of stuff that makes the headlines back home.

So I was having no part of it. We were not going to take this trip. Have you ever been in a spot like that, where you thought you were going to get one thing but ended up getting something else? You were promised something, but you received something else instead. Maybe it was that product you ordered off of Temu. It showed up, and it was a couple of sizes too small when it finally arrived. It looked promising, but it just didn't deliver.

Maybe it was the perfect car at the perfect price. You'd been searching for a long time, and you finally make your way. You see it, and you start to look it over. They hand you the Carfax, and you realize it's a lemon. It won't even crank up. Maybe it's not a product you bought. Maybe it's someone you matched with online. That never happens. You show up expecting them to be one person, yet they're a completely different person in real life.

Maybe it's not that. Maybe it's a three-carat diamond ring that, in your responsible adulting, you decided to go and get appraised, only to learn it was the highest quality CZ on the market. We've all been there. While the cost varies depending on the situation, the reality is it's costly nonetheless. But what if it isn't just something physical? What if it's something spiritual? What if it's something you didn't just lose money on that you bought? What if it's some part of yourself you lost because of someone you believed in?

What if you placed your trust in that pastor or that religious leader or that parent or that student leader from your childhood or some spiritual seeker who was giving you guidance, and what you realized was, though you had placed your trust in them, they did not deliver what you expected. They betrayed that trust. If that's you, then this night is for you.

See, last week, we shared that we're in the middle of a new series called Deconstructed where we're trying to rebuild your reality, because the truth of the matter is many of us have had our reality totally wrecked by somebody at some place at some point in the past. Often, it's most tragically done by those who should have been building our reality, boosting our belief, constructing our faith…Christians.

What do we do when we find ourselves in the midst of something like that? Well, according to Pew Research just last year, they found that many people choose to unaffiliate with religiosity entirely. In their study, they found that 28 percent (meaning, over a quarter) of Americans religiously identified as "nones." They were religiously unaffiliated. What's surprising is it actually made them the largest religious group in America today, bigger even than Protestants or Catholics.

When asked why people had become irreligious, their responses ranged between one of two things. Either they didn't like the religious organization or they had a bad experience with that religious group at some point in the past. Meaning, we no longer live in a post-Christian age; we actually live in an anti-Christian age. People are no longer just indifferent to Christians; they're actually antagonistic toward Christians. They've had some experience with us at some point where they look and say, "Man, I just don't know that this is worth it." Oftentimes, they have good reason.

Many people have tried Christianity and found antiquated answers for modern problems, yet whenever they pushed up against the real world, they found those answers were lacking. Others found that the religion they were ascribing to demanded their obedience, and in the process, it distorted their personality and damaged their mental health forever, and they're still working to this day to pick up the pieces.

Others ended up getting betrayed by someone they trusted because they played the part of the hypocrite. They hid something in secret. They did something egregious. They abused someone innocent. At the sight of all of that, once exposed, they said, "I have to get out of this, because this does not seem like something I want to be a part of."

Others just look at Christianity and think it's synonymous with political idolatry or they think it's the stuff of hysterical conspiracy theory. In 2021, there was a survey conducted that found one in four Christians agreed with this statement: "The government, media, and financial worlds in the US are controlled by a group of Satan-worshiping pedophiles who run a global child sex trafficking operation." One in four Christians agreed with that statement.

We hear stuff like that, and we don't know how to feel about it. Like, "If that's what these people think, I don't know that I want to be a part of these people, because it sounds like their way of thinking is too narrow. It's too violent. It's too imperialistic. It seems pretty toxic. It's probably homophobic. It's likely patriarchal in some sense, and I don't know that I find it believable."

If that's you, and you're here tonight, and you've thought one of those things at some point in the past and would honestly identify that you're on the road to deconstruction at some level…maybe you're at the beginning, maybe you're in the middle, maybe you're at the final stop…what you need to know is you're in good company, because nobody defended the religiously ridiculed and the spiritually traumatized like Jesus.

You see, when you read the Gospels, you find Jesus stands up for those whom the religious would beat down or push aside. He defends the woman caught in adultery. As she's thrown at his feet, he kneels down beside her and tells the people to cast stones, yet none of them can, because none of them are without sin. He defends her. We find that he protects the woman of the city as he's sitting at Simon the Pharisee's house.

We know that the woman at the well… He takes time to listen to her story, which catches her so off guard, because he's a religious leader and, typically, her experience has proved that those people are harsh. We know there was a scene where a man was brought to him and Jesus decided to heal him on the Sabbath, which violated one of the Old Testament observances, yet Jesus raises the bar and identifies what that rule was always intended for.

We see that he sits with sinners and tax collectors over dinner despite the fact that the religious ridiculed them, and what we know is Jesus himself was even religiously wounded by those who claimed to love the same God he came to promote himself. Jesus knows a thing or two about church hurt. So, if you're here, and that's your story, then you're in good company. I think he wants to meet you in yours.

This is not a message of hype. This is not a series of hype. These are evenings of help. We just want to read through the Scripture, and we want to see the heart of God, and we want to have him meet us in whatever it is we find ourselves in, because many of us tonight are in the middle of church hurt. My belief is that he wants to restore your relationship to the church. Just because you've had bad doctors doesn't mean you give up on the idea of hospitals altogether.

Yet, before Jesus restores your relationship to the church, he wants to restore your relationship to himself, because he is the one who leads the church. He wants you to have a right relationship with the bride, but he wants to get a right relationship with the groom, first and foremost. To do it, he's going to talk to us through Matthew, chapter 23.

We are catching up with Jesus on what's traditionally understood to be a Tuesday in the midst of the Holy Week. The Holy Week would have been the last week of his life, meaning, he's in the final two-minute drill of his existence. Every play he makes, every conversation he has, and everything he does matters a lot, because there's still some work that needs to be done at this point in his life where he decides to die, rise, and ascend to the Father in heaven.

So, we find him in the middle of a conversation with the religious leaders of his day. You have issues with the religious leaders in your day? Just wait until we read what we're going to read tonight. Jesus takes massive issue with the religious leaders of his day. In the conversation we find him in, he is going to confront all of them in the areas that they have failed miserably.

As we do, we're going to see that he pronounces seven "woes," or judgments, against them for the ways they have misled the people, that they have taken the people farther from the heart of God and led them farther into empty religiosity. As we read these seven "woes," here's what we're going to try to pick up.

I think we're going to find a series of warnings that we should pay attention to that will tell us what we should be on the lookout for as well as ways we should be looking for in ourselves. So, here's what it says. We're going to take it verse by verse, starting in verse 13. "But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people's faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in."

1. We should beware of those who stress aptitude over attitude. That doesn't exactly raise any eyebrows until you realize who Jesus is speaking to in this moment. He is talking to the Pharisees and scribes. What you need to know about the Pharisees and scribes is they are one of four religious sects in ancient Judaism that actually would have theologically aligned closest with Jesus and, most likely, closest to all of us. They believed in things we believe in, things Jesus believes in.

They believe in the resurrection from the dead. They study the Old Testament Scriptures, and they agree with the reality of a spiritual realm. They believe God is going to send a Messiah who's going to deliver the people of God, the nation of Israel, from their oppressors. They believe the same things we believe. They are theologically precise, so much so that they're the kinds of friends you'd cheat off of in high school just to get a good grade.

They know better than you. They know better than all of us with respect to their religion, yet Jesus is judging them because they're shutting the door on the kingdom of heaven in people's faces. Why is he judging them because of that? Because while they know much about the study of God, they do not know much about the God of their study. While they know much about the doctrine of God, they don't know much about the God of their doctrine.

Again, these are the spiritual leaders of the day. These are the kinds of people you would have followed on social media, gone to conferences to hear speak, and read their books at night. You would have tuned in to see what new insight they had to offer. You would have made sure to follow them on social media. They had great things to say about who God is, they had great things to say about the Word of God, and they had great things to say about the kingdom of God.

Yet, we learn, though they knew who God was, they didn't recognize him when he stood face to face with them in the person of Christ. Though they studied the Word carefully, they did not recognize the voice of God when he spoke to them from Jesus' own mouth. Though they anticipated the coming kingdom, they didn't receive it when Jesus actually came to bring it to them. They thought they knew so well, but they didn't know anything at all.

They had more of a relationship to religion than a relationship with God. The consequence is they not only failed to enter the kingdom but also kept others from entering the kingdom themselves. It's kind of like movie critics and famous films. You see, they're experts in the field of cinema who make great judgments on a variety of different options, yet what you find is scattered throughout the history books are a variety of criticisms that are pretty unjustified.

Some famous critics, the experts in their industry, have looked at some of the most famous movies of all time and have given mixed reviews, if not scathing reviews…movies like Forrest Gump, Star Wars: A New Hope, Casablanca, The Wizard of Oz, and The Sandlot. They looked at these films and initially gave really poor reviews upon their debut.

What we realize is the people who know everything about movies actually didn't know anything about the most famous movies of all time. That's who the Pharisees are in this moment. They misjudge Jesus completely. They write a scathing review, and sadly, because others listen to them, they cause them to miss out on the kingdom as well.

Porch, it's not enough that church leaders, Christians in general, have theological proficiency. We want that, to be clear. We want to be theologically precise. We want to be accurate. We don't want to have cheap grace in our services. We want to be theologically proficient, but that's not enough. Theological proficiency is insufficient without relational proximity to God.

It's one thing to love the teachings of God, the doctrine of God, the history of God, the study of God, and the Word of God, but not love the person of God himself in Jesus Christ. That makes no sense. As Christians, we're called to look at the world and say, "Hey, I don't just have the appearance of religion; I demonstrate the reality of a relationship to God. You can look at me and see I've been marked. I've been changed. I've been transformed…not just informed but transformed in my life." This is who Jesus is calling us to be, yet so often, Christians miss out on it.

Dallas Willard said it like this in The Spirit of the Disciplines: "How many people are radically and permanently repelled from The Way by Christians who are unfeeling, stiff, unapproachable, boringly lifeless, obsessive, and dissatisfied? Yet such Christians are everywhere, and what they are missing is the wholesome liveliness springing from a balanced vitality within the freedom of God's loving rule… Spirituality wrongly understood or pursued is a major source of human misery and rebellion against God."

Some of you are miserable at the thought of God and rebelling against all of his ways because you have been given a spirituality that is wrongly understood. So, what does a spirituality that is rightly understood look like? Well, Zechariah tells us. He says, "This is what the Lord of Heaven's Armies says: In those days ten men from different nations…" Meaning, people who do not know God. "…will clutch at the sleeve of one Jew. And they will say, 'Please let us walk with you, for we have heard that God is with you.'"

Porch, let me ask you… Have people heard that God is with you or have they just heard about God from you? There's a massive difference in those two things. One is intellectually acquainted; one is intimately acquainted with Jesus. The world is wondering, "What is true of the Christian faith? What's characteristic of the church?" What they should see is not just knowledge but genuine belief; not just learning but lives meant to be lived and, thus, give convincing. That's what they should see.

Jesus tells us what to look out for, and then here in this moment he's saying, "Look. There's something you should look like. You should not merely look intellectually informed; you should look intimately transformed. That's what should be true of my people." That's the first way he intends us to look. The second is in verse 15. "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves."

2. We should beware of those who convert to their cause before the kingdom. According to Jesus, leaders can not only dissuade you from believing the right things; they can persuade you to believe the wrong things. That's what the Pharisees and scribes are doing in this moment. When Jesus uses the word proselyte, that's just another word for convert. It's to take somebody who believes one thing and lead them to believe something different instead.

This was actually a really important thing to the nation of Israel, because God had called them in the Old Testament to be a light to the nations. They were meant to present a convincing case to the watching world that God is true and is worthy of walking with. So, the Pharisees and scribes are living into this command. They know, "This is what's meant to be true of us," yet they give a different kind of light than the light God intends us to give.

You see, the kind of light we should give to the world is sort of like a space heater. What does a space heater do? When you see it, you move out from the cold and into the warmth. As you spend time in the presence of that space heater, near that light, you feel good. It takes away the chill, it dusts off the cold, and it comforts you in its company. That's what the people of God are meant to be like.

The Pharisees and scribes are not really a space heater; they're more of a bug zapper. They have a magnetizing effect. They're drawing people in, yet the closer you get, you get not life; you get death. You get electrocuted. You find out, "This is not actually going to lead to my flourishing; this is going to lead to my perishing."

That's what we find with these Pharisees. They have a similar magnetizing effect, yet their light leads to death, not life, like God intended. That's what Jesus is getting at in this verse. He's telling the Pharisees that rather than convert people to the kingdom, they have chosen to convert them to their cause.

So, what's the cause they were converting them to? The cause the Pharisees and scribes were trying to convert people to was a set of oral tradition they had developed, over 1,500 commands known as fence laws that surrounded God's own Mosaic law to protect people from doing what they shouldn't do. It was a preventative measure, yet it was so cumbersome.

While the idea seemed to make a lot of sense, it actually perpetuated something really damaging. It led people to think they could make themselves righteous through man-made legalism, and if not that, it would dissuade people from going all in with Jesus and following after God and, instead, indulging whatever it is they wanted in their selfishness. It had a repulsive effect, and it damaged people in ways that were never meant to happen.

We may not adhere to the oral traditions of the Pharisees, but many Christians, nonetheless, advocate personal projects or social causes that are similarly damaging. Some of you have lived through that. Whether it's seeing your church compel people to vote a certain way or watching a religious system perpetuate poverty, racism, or sexual abuse or seeing Christians tolerate brokenness and sin out of a desire to love other people or advocating social reform at the expense of biblical truth, religious people, and leaders most of all, frequently convert people to their cause and not to Christ's kingdom.

We're not called to convince people of the merits of our passion points. We're meant to convince people of the passionate pursuit of Christ for them. That's what we're called to do. So many people are disillusioned with what we believe, as the people of God, because we have given them poor reason to follow him and a reason God never intended to be offered in the first place.

Everything the world is looking for, everything many of you are looking for…freedom, fullness, purpose, love, acceptance, community, and a deep sense of abiding joy…all of that is actually found in God. It's not found anywhere else. It's not going to be achieved through some other cause. It's going to be found in Christ.

The amazing thing is, while none of us could receive that on our own, he came to bring that and give it to you as a gift if you'd step into relationship with him and walk with him today, tomorrow, and the rest of your life. This is what's available. There's a beauty to the character of God that affords for us all the luxury we want in life. Not material luxury but intrinsic luxury, a luxury that's characteristic of heaven and not earth.

That's what he comes to give, yet many of us look to some sort of earthly social cause to achieve that end instead. Jesus comes to rescue us from that. You see, the second way he intends his people to look is as a people passionate for the kingdom and not just passionate for our causes. But he doesn't stop there. He keeps going in verse 16.

"Woe to you, blind guides, who say, 'If anyone swears by the temple, it is nothing, but if anyone swears by the gold of the temple, he is bound by his oath.' You blind fools! For which is greater, the gold or the temple that has made the gold sacred? And you say, 'If anyone swears by the altar, it is nothing, but if anyone swears by the gift that is on the altar, he is bound by his oath.'

You blind men! For which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred? So whoever swears by the altar swears by it and by everything on it. And whoever swears by the temple swears by it and by him who dwells in it. And whoever swears by heaven swears by the throne of God and by him who sits upon it."

3. We should beware of those who leverage authority to escape accountability. At first, this "woe" can seem pretty confusing, because things like swearing on the altar versus swearing on the gift on the altar or swearing on the temple versus swearing on the gold of the temple seems pretty irrelevant to our day and age, yet it would have been totally commonplace for the people Jesus is speaking to in this moment, not just the crowds but particularly the Pharisees and the scribes.

You see, they would often make a binding oath… They would commit by way of their word by swearing to something of special significance. It would intensify and legitimize the fact that they really meant what they were saying. We do this today in a similar modern equivalent when we're sworn in for testimony at court.

What do you do? You place your hand on the Bible, something significant, and you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God. Right? That's what we do today. We do something similar. We commit our way and legitimize our word, our vow, and our oath by swearing upon something significant. That's what they're doing. That's what Jesus is referencing in this moment.

Yet, the Pharisees are not just giving their word; they're actually creating a loophole to get out of whatever their commitment may be. The way it worked is they would swear to something of significance, yet if they decided a better offer came or they wanted to get out of their binding oath, they would swear to something of even greater significance. "Because it is more significant, this previous oath is invalidated, and now I have a new commitment."

Jesus is looking at them and saying, "No! Let your 'yes' be 'yes.' Let your 'no' be 'no.'" God is faithful, so we should be too. We don't have to base our integrity upon something of significance when all the significance we need is found in the fact that we're made in God's image. As he is, so we too should be.

Yet, just as the religious leaders of Jesus' day used their authority to escape accountability, Christians do this today. We've all seen it, particularly a lot in the last decade…leaders covering up some kind of scandal, pushing away some sort of habitual sin, doing their best to control a narrative or blame-shift some accusation they don't have to take accountability for. This is not the way of Jesus.

Psalm 15:1-2 says, "O Lord, who shall sojourn in your tent? Who shall dwell on your holy hill? He who walks blamelessly and does what is right and speaks truth in his heart…" Then, if you jump to verse 4, it says, "…who swears to his own hurt and does not change…" Who gives his or her word, and even when the going gets tough and this becomes really inconvenient, they don't bend, they don't break, they don't flake.

I remember, when I worked in college ministry, I would meet students all the time who were so excited to hop in with the things we were doing. They would learn about the ministry and the opportunities therein, and they would apply and come to orientation and learn all of our expectations and be super geared up until a better offer would come. Then, as they proceeded to try to flake out, there would be a series of conversations we would have with one another that always went one of two ways.

They would come to me and say, "Kylen, I've really been praying about it, and I think God is calling me to this," or they would come to me and say, "Kylen, I've really been praying about it; I think God is telling me to do that." And I, with love in my heart and kindness in my eyes, would graciously tell them they were wrong, because God will not say something now that disagrees with something he said then.

He tells us, "When you make your commitment, you hold fast to it. When you say 'Yes,' you let it be yes. You keep your oath even to your own hurt." We should be faithful because he's faithful. God has never not kept his word, has he? He has always kept his word. He has never covered up some kind of evil, has he? No, he exposes it. He has never snuck out of a commitment he had at some point in the past. No, he honors it. He keeps it.

This is who our God is, and this is who the people of God should be, yet so many of us become disenchanted, disoriented, and disappointed by the fact that, "Man, the Christians I know and the leaders of God's people don't look like this. They sneak around. They act more faithlessly than faithfully. They do what they know they should not, yet they don't own up to it. They don't take accountability."

Jesus is looking at it and saying, "Don't let this be true of you. This is not the way of God, nor is it the way of my people." We're meant to walk in transparency. We don't hide aspects of who we are. We walk in the freedom the gospel has afforded. We walk in transparency, but we also express authenticity. We say what we mean and mean what we say.

We don't just do that. We also embrace accountability. We bring people into our lives and give them permission to hold us accountable, to keep us to task, to make sure we're honest, to help us remain reliable. This is what we do. We try to walk in transparency, express authenticity, and embrace accountability, because this is what Jesus intends for his people. He wants us to be knowable, not hidden. The last thing he warns us is found in verse 23.

"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel!"

4. We should beware of those who emphasize small matters over big matters. Jesus' criticism here is not that the Pharisees and scribes have tithed dill, cumin, and mint. He's not getting on to them for doing that. He's not belittling their observance and obedience to the law. What he's doing is bemoaning the fact that they have honored the smallest of things yet have dishonored the weightiest of things.

They pay attention to the things that are so individually insignificant, and in light of doing that, they have missed out on what is eternally significant instead. He's not getting on to them because they're doing what the Old Testament requires. They're giving a tenth of what they have to God, even to the degree of measuring out the smallest garden crop possible. He's not getting on to them for that.

He's getting on to them because they've forgotten the important things, things that today, here in our world, we too, as Christians, have forgotten ourselves. How much of our witness has the church lost because it's focused on immaterial, meaningless, and irrelevant matters while the world is burning around us? I'm not trying to shame anybody here, and I am certainly not trying to make myself the moral example to follow. I have plenty of room to grow in this too.

Yet it looks odd to the watching world when we disagree over doctrinal distinctions and denominational differences while there are refugee crises in places like Syria and Ukraine. It looks odd to the world when they watch us squabble over social causes of insignificant matter when they know we're called to love the widow and the orphan instead. It's odd to the world that we would follow God's allegiance less so than the allegiance we hold to some political party or social issue. It's confusing. It doesn't make sense.

Now, to be clear, I'm not saying we shouldn't wrestle for theological precision and advocate for objective morality in life or pursue kingdom values for our country. We should do all of those things, but here's the thing: when Christians lose their minds over small things, the world loses its faith over big things.

Woe to us if we strain out the gnat yet swallow the camel. What's Jesus saying there? He's saying, "Woe to you…ugh!…if you choose to be clean in the smallest of matters yet allow yourself to be unclean in the areas of life that matter most, which are justice, mercy, and faithfulness." The prophet Amos recounts it like this from God:

"I hate, I despise, your feasts! I can't stand the stench of your solemn assemblies. Even if you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; I will have no regard for your fellowship offerings of fattened cattle. Take away from me the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps. But let justice flow like water, and righteousness, like an unfailing stream."

What good is our religiosity if we forget God's priority, Porch? What good is it if we're so focused on the things that matter to us we forget the things that matter most to God? What does God care most about? He cares most about people, that which will never perish, that which will go on for eternity. Everything in this room, all the material in your life, the things of this earth… They will fade and grow to dust except for the people next to you.

God cares about people. That's why he calls us to justice, mercy, and faithfulness. He cares about justice, about righting the wrongs that have been afflicted against people. He cares about mercy, about lavishing love where those cry the loudest. He cares about faithfulness, about leading people to truth, that he wants a relationship with them so much he would have great compassion to race toward them wherever it is they are. This is what he cares about, and it's what we should care about too. We should be purposeful of what's important and not neglectful of it, the last thing Jesus cares to see.

You know, when Brooke and I were sitting in the middle of Belize on the curbside right next to Captain Tom and his suspect van, I was so convinced there was no way we were going on this ride. I thought the whole thing was a farce. I felt totally betrayed by the fact that we were showing up for one thing but got something else entirely, and I was out. I was ready to walk away. I was ready to swim back to the ship if that's what it took for me to get as far away from this situation as possible…that is, until a fellow traveler walked up, someone who had a similar credential from the same cruise that we had come from.

He looked at us in the midst of our uncertain situation, in the face of the distrust we were feeling, and he assured us. "Hey, this may all look pretty odd. It may even feel untrustworthy, but what you need to know is the journey is worth it, that the adventure ahead is everything you hope, and you don't have to go there alone. I've been there before. You can trust me, even if you don't trust this, and we can go there together."

So we did, and we had an amazing time. It was an experience we speak about to this day, not because the circumstances around or the situation itself seemed trustworthy but because someone showed up who we could trust in who had been where we were and had gone where we were going. If you're here and you feel religiously ridiculed, spiritually traumatized, what you need to know is Jesus is not asking anything of you that he has not done himself.

You may be here, and you're like, "Man, I feel so betrayed. Everyone I trusted ruined everything for me. I thought this was one thing, and it ended up being something else, and they showed up to be the most untrustworthy and unlikely of people. I feel betrayed." Jesus looks at you and goes, "I get it. I was betrayed too, not just by those I trusted but by those who trusted in me. They were the ones who sold me out. They were the ones who changed my situation. They were the ones who left me broken."

Some of you are here, and you feel like, "I'm so hurt. I was taken to places and brought to points I never thought I would be at." Jesus looks at you and goes, "Hey, I've been hurt too. I've been hurt by the religious, the spiritual, the leaders. I've been hurt not just at some point in the past; I have been hurt even to the point of death."

Some of you are here, and all you see in your story are religious scars. Jesus comes to you and says, "I have those too, for these scars were the price of a people such as you." If you're here, and you're religiously wounded, then know this: Jesus heals our religious wounds by his wounds himself, and he wants to do it with you tonight. Let me pray that he would.

God, I'm grateful. When we've all but given up, when we feel totally betrayed and are ready to walk away, you chase us down. When we feel hurt, you bring healing. When we feel wronged, you come to make it right. This is your heart, God, and it's a heart we want to be reacquainted with if we have grown distant from it at any time in the past. God, I pray that you would do it here tonight. I pray that you would do it right now in this moment.

I think about the opportunity for healing in this place, and I'm asking you, God, please, would you do that? Would you provide a healing balm to the broken parts of our lives? Would you lead us back to a place where we have restored relationship in you and a restored relationship to your people? We love you, God, and we want to deal with you now. It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen.

Hey, Porch, let's stand to our feet really fast. One thing I realized as I was making my way through that sermon was there was no way we were going to get through all seven "woes," so we took four tonight. We'll clean up the last three the next time we are all together. I think this is a topic that deserves a little bit more time anyway.

Some of you are really wrestling with some of the ideas we've spoken about tonight. Some things have resonated with you, yet you're not really sure how to process them. What we want to encourage you to do is to wrestle well, which often means you don't wrestle alone. Maybe a conversation, an internal dialogue has stirred up within that you need to get out.

We have a team down here to the front that would love to process with you. You will not tell us something we haven't heard before. You will not tell us anything that catches us off guard. This is an opportunity for healing, so we want to give you a place where you can do that at whatever pace feels most helpful as we sing together. So let's do that together now.