thank you good morning everyone I um I don't do this very often but I want to give a trigger warning to a sermon today um and know I'm not joking I'm serious that um we're g to we've been talking this month about um in this world you'll have trouble and we're going to talk a bit about Brokenness today and I know that when we talk about Brokenness it can actually do some stuff to us so I really want you to look after yourself today okay I don't I'm not going to
intentionally try and say stuff but if I say stuff that triggers you in a way feel free to go and sit outside for a minute or throw something at me or whatever you want to do but um I said to my church once years ago I was preaching through a really difficult theological concept to understand I gave them Nerf balls and I said if I say something today that you don't understand just ditch Nerf po at me and I'll stop and we'll explain that a bit more uh I'm never going to do that again but someone
suggested afterwards I should have given them eggs and I'm not sure what they meant by that but I really mean it like let's um just make sure you have some space to look after yourself today but let's pray Jesus we thank you that you love us and that your word promises us that as we gather together you you are in our midst you walk amongst us you are here present with us now whether we feel it or not whether we owledge it or not you are here and so Lord this time is yours Holy
Spirit would you speak to us would you would you minister to us would you would you get past the surface stuff and speak deeply to our to our heart and to our soul today we ask it in your name Jesus our King Our Savior our Lord amen in this world you will have trouble has anyone here anyone to this point in your life never experience trouble one yeah well see me afterwards we can sort that that's fine pain is unavoidable right this is this is the life we live it's
unavoidable it's part of our human experience pain and difficulty and struggle emotional pain physical pain spiritual pain struggle and and these feelings that sometimes we don't know what to do with some of you know that I had a really busy busy year last year um I I took stock of it at the end of the year actually I went and saw my counselor because I really needed to it just to unpack it all let me give you a brief rundown of my year last year um uh just before Christmas
2023 both my boss and my boss's boss quit which C created some instability at work early last year um I got a I got a promotion I got a new role and I um uh those of you don't know I work for Baptist World Aid and U my job now is that I manage the national team that does Church engagement for over a thousand Baptist churches in Australia with the work that we do overseas so it's a big job I I flew 30,000 kilometers last year so quantis tells me in my app you you know the end of year wrap-up
congratulations 29,800 something oh really no wonder I feel tired new job I was supposed to do a new job and lose my old job but um they didn't replace someone in my old job either so I did my new job and my old job flew 30,000 K we had a family wedding we had a um uh baby grandchild born which is not not terrible but it's also just changed right between June and about August or September I've sort of lost track of it 13 people that we know died 13 Vicki's mom has dementia Vicki's her
primary career and uh near in September and October she got sick she had covid and it became very clear she wasn't able to go home and look after herself so she went into care and we spent time cleaning out her house and putting her house on the market and all those all at the same time when I was unpacking that with my oh and I studied halftime I did a halftime uni course last year as well and it was just pressure always something going on never quite settled and what that time did for me
was it made all the stuff that I had kept buried for a long time the pressure sort of just squeezed that stuff out um when I was seven seven or eight back in the 1920s or whatever that was I um I was diagnosed with ADHD and um my parents were the sort of parents with oh okay that explains a lot and then forget about it right so I was like this is who you are this is what you've got but just get on and do it and so that's what I did I just went on with life and for a long time I had some
coping mechanisms but I realized um like I didn't even talk about it in fact last year in about August was the first time I told Vicki I was diagnosed with ADHD married 33 years she say you've never told me that before because I just didn't think about it I just thought I was strange but the pressure got to me and the all the things started happening and one of the things that um ADHD does is it I I don't process emotion well there's this disconnect between thinking and feeling
and I live a lot in my head and not a lot here so I don't like quiet I don't like I go on silent Retreats once a year but I me the first silent Retreat I went on it was horrendous because I stopped for a second and all this stuff that was going on sort of bubbled to the surface I didn't like it one little bit because the other part of my personality is I have a personality type that wants to at all costs avoid pain most of us are like that but my my personality type is is heavy into that
space so um what I do is I just move on I just don't process it so you put the ADHD and this personality type thing together I don't process pain I want to ignore it and move on and make out it never happened and just tell a joke and be happy and everything's good don't make me think about that but when 13 people die in 10 weeks or so and like family friends people that we love and know you can't contain it anymore and all this stuff started to pop out we all none of us like pain I don't think
we mask it and we we push it away I had a year last year where I had to actually try and confront it I want to talk about that in a minute but I want to look at today with all of that as the background look at um the Beatitudes Sermon on the Mount St of The Sermon on the Mount it's and we just really quickly some context this is this is Earth shattering um the Theologian NT W in his introduction to his commentary um talking about the beatitude says tells this story of um uh the movie is
it the right stuff is that the movie where they they're trying to break the sound barrier is that that movie I think you one of those you know and there's some sort of there's some conjecture about how true the movie is but in the movie you have uh the all these American Air Force and Military Pilots trying to to break the sound barrier to go faster than sound and um they can get up to the sound barrier they get there and when they cross over that threshold the planes were just exploding and the
planes were crashing and lots of people either ejected just in time or lost their lives it was one of the riskiest things and then there was this guy called Chuck Jager you may have heard of him he in the movie now whether whether this is really true or not is is conjecture but in the movie what he's watching in this and suddenly realizes that when the planes go through the sound barrier the controls all work differently and so you in a normal plane you'd pull back to make the plane go up
once you crush the sound barrier you have to push the joystick forward to do the same thing the controls work in Reverse there's this boom and then everything switches and this is a great picture of what Jesus is doing when he starts to um talk this the whole sermon on the out but in particular the Beatitudes there's this sonic boom that would have been felt and he's turning everything immediately upside down the controls work the other way now and and The Sermon on the Mount is really
interesting because Matthew in his gospel you you may know this but Matthew in his gospel mirrors the Old Testament experience of the Jews so when Jesus stands up on the mount in Matthew Chapter 5 and gives this sermon there's a couple of things that have happened in deliberately the Matthew the way he tells the story the first thing is that Jesus and his family when when Jesus was a baby you remember there was a persecution and they fled to Egypt and so Jesus comes out of
Egypt and then the next thing that happens is he meets John the Baptist and is's baptized and then he's on the mountain teaching which is an exact mirror of the Old Testament story of Israel where they were captive in Egypt where they come out of Egypt where they cross the Jordan across the river through Red Sea through the waters and then Moses stands up on the mountain and gives them the law can you see the parallel and so Jesus is doing Matthew is telling the story in exactly this way
want you to understand what's going on is Jesus is redefin in everything the and the the Beatitudes are a really interesting thing The Sermon on the Mount was thou shout thou shout Thou shalt not you know all that sort of stuff it was the rules by which you live by if you do these things then everything will be okay what Jesus does in the Beatitudes is he flips that as well the Beatitudes are not meant to be a picture of this is how you live if you live like this then you're close to God
if you live like this and everything's okay the Beatitudes and The Sermon on the Mount are actually an announcement that this is how it is now this is not a list of things to ascribe to this is what is happening let's see if this works turned it on that works this is from uh the message version when Jesus saw his ministry drawing huge crowds he climbed a hillside those who were apprenticed to him the committed climbed with him arriving at a quiet place he sat down and taught his
climbing Companions and this is what he said you're blessed when you're at the end of your rope with less of you there is more of God and his rule let's just hold off for just a second let's just talk about that word blessed because is perhaps one of the most misused misunderstood words in our modern culture and in our church World blessed does not mean that everything is great and we all we all have our you know house and two cars and enough money in the bank to
save a retirement and the 3 to six month emergency fund and all those other things right that's not what blessed means blessed does not mean happy it gets translated sometimes as happy happy but it's not happy the the Old Testament idea of blessed plenty of examples of it think of um you know the story of Jacob where Jacob has a night wrestling with God and in that process God touches his hip and dislocates his hip or does something to his hip so he walked with a
limp for the rest of his time but also in that moment God renames him he renames him and he sets him on a different path and that is the idea of being blessed about being called by God acknowledged by God brought into God's family often renamed often giving a new purpose and a new Destiny that's the idea behind this Old Testament idea of blessed right that's different to like I'll bless you I'm so blessed today because like my wife's away on a weekend of retreat
she may watch this afterwards so maybe not that that's not what I meant but you know what I mean we we see blessed is something that makes us feel good and happy but it's not that it's a whole lot deeper than that you're blessed when you're at the end of your rope you're blessed when you feel like you've lost what is most dear to you only then can you be embraced by the one most dear to you you're blessed when you're content with just who you are no more no less
that's the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can't be bought it's great phrasing isn't it you're blessed when you've worked up a good appetite for God he food and drink in the best meal you'll ever eat you're blessed when you care at the moment of being careful you find yourselves cared for you're blessed when you get your inside World your mind and your heart put right then you can see God in the outside world this is a pronouncement of
Jesus that if you are like this if you are hurting if you are broken if you are grieving if you are feeling like you're at the end of your rope and there's nothing else to give you're actually blessed already not because of your circumstances it's not like oh you know I heard someone preach this once what I should do is I should try and become more poor so I could be more blessed like it's not a list of it's not a to-do list this is a pronouncement this is the reverberation
the sonic boom of the Kingdom everything is flipped from here everything is flipped and God is with you imagine the crowds that heard this right when Jesus is delivering The Sermon on the Mount imagine the crowds the the poor the broken the rejected the the people who live in an occupied country the people who are paying crazy taxes to the Romans all these other things and what they hear is I'm blessed by God God hasn't forgotten me God is here with me in the midst of
this and T WR says this is a call to live in the present in a way that will make sense in God's future to live in the present in a way that will make sense just after this Jesus goes on and we have the Lord's Prayer you know your kingdom come your will be done on Earth as it is in heaven that this is God's intention for us to live this way even if it doesn't feel like it's making sense now see the problem with pain is that if we avoid it and we do the avoidance of
pain is now really commonly accepted in Psychology and therapy as the path to addiction that addiction and I'm you know like drug addiction alcohol addiction porn addiction eating addiction shopping addiction whatever the addiction is like you know we find all sorts of things but the the outworking of undal with pain and undal with trauma often leads us to seek comfort in other things we don't want to deal with the pain so we just find something to soothe the pain does that make
sense that can be work that can be binging Netflix it can be seriously it can be Ministry it can be serving God or thinking we're serving God but what we're really trying to do is get that hit to make ourselves feel better and not actually deal with us it can be in relationships it's a temporary Escape but the problem is that temporary escapes often become permanent escapes just stop and think for a minute when you are at your worst you know the bits that you don't talk to other people about
right but when you are stressed or when you are feeling abandoned or lonely or rejected or hurt or traumatized or whatever what's the thing you do to make you make yourself feel better you know what it is I'm not I'm not asking you to write it down on your survey form and hand it into B any none of that stuff this is you and God's stuff right but what's that thing you see what we do is we develop attachments because we might do something once oh that feels better our
brain gets a dopamine hit and we all feel good and we do it again and we do it again and we do it again and we do it again and soon it becomes a thing the Bible has a word for those things the Bible has a word for places we go to be self soothed to feel better when we don't want to deal with our pain and we don't want to confront god with it you know what the Bible calls those things Idols that's what an idol is it's somewhere where you go when your life is
out of control and you need to get some sort of sense of what's going on this is what you know in the Bible it's really clear we create this poll and we'll go and pray there and that that'll fix our rain issues or what you know what the things that are stressing us but we all have Idols we all have these attachments anything we go to to support our pain that is not God is an idol now I am discounting therapy and those things because you have to do that like seriously I have a relationship I
pay a lot of money to go and see a therapist who tells me I'm being stupid and uh rolls his eyes at me and says we've talked about this before Steve I go yes I know we have just tell me again Dallas Willard who's a he died a few years ago now but was a writer in spiritual theology he says that even wanting to know God's will for our Liv lives is idolatry I'll just let that sit I'll explain it in a second no one's got up and walked out but he says it's because of this because
most of us want to know God's will for our lives for the next 5 years or 10 years not because we're so desperate to serve God in the way that he wants to call us to but we just want to feel sure that it's okay our life's going to be okay I tell you if God told me 10 years ago where my life would be today I don't think I would have wanted gone on that journey to get there right who's like that so let's be honest if we're saying God I just need to know what's going to happen in the next five
years most of the time that is because we want to feel better about ourselves and that's idolatry that even God can become an idol in place of God that's scary isn't it instead of finding healing we become ins slaved to what once seemed like relief in Romans uh chapter 6 it says you are a slave to the one you obey you're a slave to the one you owe so if you are obeying something else if you are focusing on something else there something else even in the deepest
darkest places where you just feel you need to be seen and need love and and need comfort if you're finding that anywhere other than in God then you're a slave to something else and you're not free yeah let me say this again this is not about judgment right this is a pronouncement that if that is you then Jesus says then you are blessed because the father is with you in this and so often in churches so often in religion we focus on the externals ah they're like that they're doing that
again they should just stop that you know if you want God to love you just stop that thing if you want if you don't want to feel the shame of doing that thing again well just stop it and what we don't do is deal with what's actually at the root of that which is the the trauma and the pain and the difficulty that we carry that we're actually not willing to talk about but the Beatitudes are an invitation to bring our pain to God and to sit with him with it because true comfort and true true
healing and true transformation is possible but often it's not magic and instant it actually means confronting some stuff that's going on for us Psalm 34:8 the Lord is close to the Brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit the Lord is close to the broken heart often when we feel that the place we go is anywhere but God because so often the behavior that sits over the the trauma and the pain and the emotion leads us to shame all the time I've done it again I've blown the credit
card again I had a bad day day and I shopped or had a bad day and I went and ate all the things I shouldn't eat or drank the things I should whatever whatever the thing is spent too much time playing online games or spent too much time B binging Netflix or spent too much time at work and neglected my family because it's easier to just keep that at work than actually deal with the stuff that's going on at home that's causing me pain whatever those things are right you know what yours is we'll
do a survey afterwards and you can we'll get everyone to we'll name them and get you toway there's no shame all right I really want you to hear there's no shame and no judgment I'm I'm talking to you today as someone who is exploring this harder in this part of my life than I ever have before it's been really really tricky to do so I want to give you four steps of what this is what I'm doing what I'm learning but hopefully it's it's helpful for you as well first one is this to
actually honestly acknowledge your pain actually naming it that may be childhood trauma that may be broken relationships who knows knows what the thing is you know what your thing is and some of you right now are going I don't want to talk about that there's resistance already if you feel that resistance that's okay that's actually a God thing what I've had to do in the last six months working with my my counselor and my spiritual director is I've done a lot of
journaling and a lot of actually not avoiding pain but sitting with it in small small doses CU you know I don't like it um but actually finding Qui time to sit down and think about those things that have been traumatic in my life and bring them before God and just Journal how I'm feeling something happens just in the actually naming it there's this biblical idea of lament right lament is biblical of of actually sitting in the pain and the grief and actually allowing it to to Bubble Up
there's all sort different ways of doing it you can use the Psalms there plenty of Psalms that are just crying out to God God I can't do this anymore I often if I really need to feel the feels I'll tell you what I do um I I go into a room I turn all the lights off and light a candle and I play Leonard Cohen music especially his last album the one that was released just after he died just before he died around the time of his death like it's there's there's a song
called you want it darker like it's depressing music but it is so cathartic for me that's what I do and then I just write and it's good that I write because my handwriting is terrible so I can never go back and read what I was actually trying to say it's just gets it out so first acknowledging your pain secondly turn to Jesus in The Suffering in the pain turn to him take it to him we've already talked about that this morning we've sung about it we've experienced it
in communion that Jesus understands suffering he suffered more than any of us think about what Jesus went through on the cross that he took all the Brokenness all the pain all the sin of every human being that has lived did live and will ever live just think about that you know when your pain feels unbearable to Bear when it's like I can't do this Jesus took it for billions of people and the broken systemic structures of the world took all of that pain on himself
and he bore that and he suffered with that so if anyone knows what suffering is it's him he's the place we should be running to not not avoiding and yet we do I'll just deal with this myself because then once I get myself sorted then I'll feel like I can go and talk to Jesus about it that's the shame talking and it's a lie it's a lie of the enemy Ben talked about last week and one of the reasons that we have this Brokenness is because we're in a war we're in a
battle those of you who have kids think about how much you hate your children being in pain right moms especially dads yeah you know bit of Pain's good for them every now and then but you know what I mean right the way that you can hurt parents is to hurt their kids and I honestly believe this is one of the key tools that Satan uses to try and to try and needle God is to hurt his kids Satan loves hurting you because he thinks it's hurting God and creating distance between you and
God the cross is the ultimate example of pain leading to Redemption thirdly seek community and support the the the solution I believe this with all my heart the solution to addiction solution to those unhealthy attachments is community it's actually doing life together the way we're meant to be authentically being with you know I had a pastor who used to say dirty washing should be washed not aired right and so you know this is we're not talking about let's all get up and share
our deepest darkest stuff without find some people who you trust that can go on the journey with you I've got I've got a friend who works in um lives in Vancouver in Canada in the downtown east side it's one of the roughest uh roughest places in all of North America there are um about eight or 10 city blocks with about 10,000 addicts in that space um open open drug dealing I visited him spent a week with him it was amazing open drug dealing going on you just walk in people just handing cash
over um open prostitution on the street some of the women even have clothes on there are women who just disappear from the neighborhood the police don't hardly ever go into the neighborhood it's too scary for them the but there are there are stories over and over again of women who are off their faces on drugs selling themselves into prostitution and a car will come up they'll get in the car they'll go off with a guy and they're never seen again that's a regular story
he wrote a book about this about addiction and and um and attachments um it's a challenging book because the F whole first half of the book is okay before we talk about how to deal with it in other people we need to deal with it in you first so I first time I read it I read the first seven or eight pages and put it away for a few months because I didn't want to face it right one of those sort of books but he says the way that we deal with this is in community with other people
that's through small groups through church find a spiritual director if you don't know what it is come and talk to me or tell you about that find a counselor find someone that you can start to do this with with no judgment and no shame James 5 says confess your sins to one another pray for each other so that you may be healed there's something that loses its power when we speak it out and when we know someone else knows and loves us anyway and then fourthly embrace the blessing in
Brokenness our suffering is not wasted our Brokenness isn't wasted God uses us uses it to shape us God uses it to change us when we surrender surrender our pain to God he transforms it into his purpose because that's who he is because that's what he does God gives good gifts you know there's that in part of The Sermon on the Mount if I ask God for bread will he give me a give me a stone or whatever it is and if I ask for a fish will he give me a snake to you know
like God doesn't do that what God gives us actually when we ask for that what God gives us is himself what we find is that in the pain and in the Brokenness and in the trauma God is actually there transforming it and I think one of the most uh one of the things that holds us most captive especially if you've been in church for a long time especially if you've been a Believer for a long time and experienced pain and difficulty in that space whether the church has hurt
you whether people who are supposed to know better uh hurt you whether whether um uh whether there's been broken relationships with friends or family or anything in church is that we ask God for stuff and it doesn't seem like anything changes and we become disappointed with God I've tried this God you didn't come through for me I cried out for you for years to save my marriage and it didn't happen I cried out for you for years to help my kid and it didn't happen whatever the thing is I
don't know if I can trust you anymore God the world is broken and it happens inside the church I pulled literally I pulled up in the car this morning in the carp Park and I got a text message from a friend in another state who uh is a pastor being a great pastor Pastor for a lot of times saying I'm just sorry to dump this on you on a Sunday morning I'm just letting you know that I'm separating from my wife being in the church being a Christian does not exclude us from the suffering of the
world but so often we take that on as disappointment and so I want encourage you maybe to start to take a step to trust God with it again just it's really hard I know how hard it is you know I'm preaching to myself as much as I am to you today but maybe one more go I've trying to maybe put that disappointment aside putting that stuff aside I've I've tried this 100 times maybe it's just the next time here's what I want to do to finish off just want to would you just close your eyes just sit for a
minute and just think about what what's going on for you I don't want you to think about the idols I don't want you to think about the attachments oh just if I could just stop doing this if I could just none of that stuff today where's the seat of it and that if you are game would you just invite Jesus to sit with you in that pain in that trauma in that rejection anger bitterness grief whatever the whatever the thing is you just sit with it holy spirit would you come and just begin
to minister to your people to bring your healing today thank you that we can trust you God we can trust you would you begin to bring freedom to your people today Lord just ask God what he wants you to do with that pain maybe maybe there's a prompt to go and see a counselor I know this counselors here talk to Ben about that maybe it's somewhere else maybe you need to talk to them maybe you need to pray with someone maybe you need to tell someone for the first time actually all
this stuff is happening because this happened that's what I mean by triggering right so please I want it to be safe don't want you to walk out of here and feel like it's got worse I actually want you to move towards healing today we're just going to play a song the song is Beautiful it's called lean back just going to lean back in the loving arms of a father we just hold on to that stuff and just during this song just do that he lean back and allow God to start to speak to you comfort you