A Heavy Heart
- Stephen Phelan
- Feb 15, 2009
- Series: Luke
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We’re going to be talking about what you do with a heavy heart. Why? 2 reasons—It is Valentines and a lot of you have not only heavy hearts, but broken hearts. We all have dreams of romance and Valentines is supposed to be this magical, romantic night with the love of your life. It almost never lives up, does it. I remember when I was in college and I wasn’t dating anybody. I went to the cafeteria and they really tried to make it special. I think they served meatloaf…in little hearts. And they even tried to make the sauce pink. Pink table cloths. Little paper hearts on the table as a centerpiece. And I looked at my friend and said, “No offense, but I think this might be the worst Valentines of my life.” Others of you have had some pretty bad Valentines and they can leave you with a heavy heart, full of broken romantic dreams.
But it isn’t just Valentines that motivated this talk. We’re moving through Luke and Jesus began to talk to his disciples about heavy hearts. See in the text we just heard read He was preparing them for what was to come when He was gone and He wanted them to know that some dark times were coming that would lead to some heavy hearts. Now Kristina read for you the entire text that picks up right where I left off last time and I had her do so to serve as a backdrop. We’re not going to cover all of it in detail, but really focus on the ending: v34-36 where Jesus deals with this heavy heart issue. Specifically, We’re going to look at….
- Why 1st century followers of Jesus had heavy hearts
- Why we have heavy hearts in 2009
- What to do about our heavy hearts
(1) Why 1st century followers of Jesus had heavy hearts
So, first, let’s consider the people in Jesus’ day. In v34 he says, “Be careful or your hearts will be weighed down with dissipation (hangover that forms from partying), drunkenness and the anxieties of life, and that day will close on you unexpectedly like a trap.” Dissipation and drunkenness are pretty obvious, but the anxieties of life is another aren’t.
What were the anxieties of life for the first century followers of Jesus:
(a) Circumstancial Anxiety: Jesus knew what was coming their way. Suffering. And anytime suffering rolls around, for most of us, heavy hearts are soon to follow. In v20ff Jesus predicts some pretty awful stuff that is going to happen to Jerusalem. There is going to be a siege by an invader and the city is going to be decimated. And he tells them to get out if you can. Don’t go down with the ship out of some false sense of loyalty to your country because this will be apart of God’s judgment. So, obviously, this is unsettling to his followers and creates heavy hearts to think about what is coming for them and their loved ones and their precious city of Jerusalem.
(b) Theological Anxiety: But there is another situation that Jesus knew would create a heavy heart and it was this: His 2nd coming was going to take much longer than you think and this was going to create some real theological anxiety, or, to put it another way, some spiritual tension or unrest. See He says all this stuff will happen in v32 in your generation, but notice that in v28 and in v31 he says, “This just means redemption and the coming of the kingdom is drawing nearer, not that I will be coming back to establish the kingdom in fullness.”
So this text is right before the end, Jesus knows his time is drawing near, and he wants to clue his disciples in on something that He knows they haven’t been getting: I am going to die and I’ll be physically gone for a long, long time. So get ready. And it will cause some of you, 20 or 30 years from now, will begin to say, “Did that really happen? Did I really see Jesus resurrected? Why is it taking so long for him to come back and put the world back to rights?”
(2) Why we have heavy hearts in 2009
But now let’s consider how those some things that Jesus was warning his disciples could lead to heavy hearts in them can also lead to heavy hearts for us in 2009.
(1) Spiritual or Theological Anxiety: For those of you who are not yet a follower of Jesus, then you’re spiritual anxiety is going to be a little different than for those of you who are followers of Jesus. First, for those of you who are not yet following Jesus, then you’re anxiety stems from the search. Is Jesus really real? Did he really live in history and die and was there such a thing as the resurrection? Why do I need Jesus—can’t I just be a good person and connect with God? Do I even want to connect with the God of the Bible given all the problems I have with him? All these questions can create spiritual anxiety and a heaviness of heart.
For those of you who are followers of Jesus, you’re asking different questions. Like in my community group someone honestly asked last week, “Have any of you ever heard the voice of God? Because I haven’t and I want to know if I am missing something. And I thought, “What a great, and real question?” Or maybe you just feel absolutely stuck in a relationship or in a pattern of sin in your life—you’ve tried giving it to Jesus, and nothing has changed? Lots of different questions can create spiritual anxiety or theological tension for us, just like the disciples trying to figure out—now you’re going to die, be resurrected, and go away for a long time??
(2) Circumstancial Anxiety: But our heaviness of heart, like those in the 1st century, isn’t limited to theological issues. We have all sorts of circumstancial anxiety, as v34 says, just like they did.
Now anxieties of life can come from any number of different things. Part of what Jesus had in view here is that just the everyday stuff of life is going to start happening and you get distracted from what he has told you is coming and from what you’re to be about in the world in the meantime. An article from CNN this past week said this, “If you're lying awake at night, feeling angry or fatigued, because of stress, you're in the majority. 8 out of 10 Americans are stressed about their personal finances and the economy.” Stress at the office, stress with the kids, stress in a relationship, stress from financial strain, stress from uncertainty about the future….I am stressing you out. I came to church to get away from stress Stephen. Would you be quiet! Some of you are going to start sticking your fingers in your ears and humming. But that is our lives as Americans. Stressed out. See what happens is that all these things mount up in our lives and we have, as v34 says, heavy hearts that are weighed down with the anxieties of life.
I am a visual person, so images help me. Here is what we’re like. When I had an office downtown, I used to see an elderly man who would break my heart. He didn’t just have curvature of the spine, but something was physically wrong, to the point that he walked bent over horizontal to the ground. And though many of us may not physically walk around this way, our emotional, psychological, and spiritual posture very much reflects the weight of the burdens that we carry. We have heavy, heavy hearts weighed down by the anxieties of life. We try to fake it, mask it with alcohol, or just act like we’re good, But the reality is you’re walking like this.”
The question is what to do about our heavy hearts. Jesus answers for heavy hearted followers in v36…….”Be always on the watch…”
(1) Watch for the coming of Jesus: Now, what is it about fixing your gaze on the coming of Jesus that can change the heaviness of your heart in the present. It is simply this: when you see Jesus,
For instance, here is how it worked for me this week.
Sick……LICE…….BACK……….Pantry Bugs
At home, Bradford and I have just been having all these random things crop up that have put us so behind. It started when she first returned with all the kids—we just passed sickness around to each other. Then I got a call from Ford’s preschool and they said, “Would you come pick Ford up?” Why? Well, b/c he has lice. What? Then I found out we all had it. Then last Sunday, her back went out when she picked up Milly. So she was literally on the couch for a couple days and a whole new level of appreciation sank in for me as I tried to be Mr. Mom this past week. I wish I could say it was easy, but it killed me. Laundry piling up, food everywhere. Then, on Tuesday night during our Curious Discussion Forum, we noticed that bugs were flying around in our house. And somebody in the group said, “Oh, yeah, you have pantry bugs.” “What?” I said. “Oh yeah, you have pantry bugs. Come here and I’ll show you.” And he proceeded to pick up boxes in my pantry revealing that we had bugs that have cocooned their way into the cracks of almost every box we have. Makes you want to come hang out our house—lice, pantry bugs, all sorts of fun stuff.
Then I had a number of counseling situations this week that didn’t go quite like I wanted them to and they started to weigh on me. Not to mention that Bradford and I hadn’t been connecting at all last week b/c we were both just trying to keep our heads above water. All of a sudden, it was Friday and I knew I was running way behind on my message. And here I am preaching on what to do with a heavy heart and mine feels like a lead balloon. Stress mounting and I am going to a marriage retreat with my wife for Valentines weekend thinking, “This is going to be a disaster. I am going to be physically there but not mentally there. Which always works really well for a retreat built around connecting with your spouse.”
Some of you are starting to think. Man, I am not so bad after all. At least I am not as jacked up as my pastor. You’re probably right that you aren’t, but let me tell you at this retreat things changed for me. Not so much my circumstances, but my gaze. I took it off of my circumstances and put it on Jesus and things changed.
The speakers—Scotty and Darlene Smith---did it for me. Surprise, surprise, but they’re jacked up like me, but they kept talking about their ultimate marriage to Jesus and what it was going to be like in the New Heavens and New Earth. The more they took me there….to His presence…to the glory of what He will do one day…the lighter my present burdens became. See as I began to reflect on my future with Jesus, He began to work His way into my present. Maybe this is why Jesus reminds us to be watchful for Him in about a million different ways in the Bible. In Mt. 25 he tells about ten virgins, five who fail to remain watchful for the coming of the groom—Jesus. In Lk. 12 he tells the parable about the faithful and wise manager who does the master’s will even though the master is delaying in coming and the unfaithful manager, emphasizing, “Be watchful for Jesus.”
2 Cor. 4:16-18, Therefore we do not lose heart. 17For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. 18So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
See the way you keep from losing heart is by fixing your eyes on Jesus. And the troubles you brought to him seem light and momentary. Your task is to be watchful—for His second coming, yes, but for His coming now and making more of that world—that new heavens and new earth world—a present reality for you. So, the first thing you have to do with a heavy heart is fix your gaze on him.
(2) So that you may be able to stand before the Son of Man
V36 “and that you may be able to stand before the Son of Man.” Now what in the world does standing before the Son of Man have to do with lightening our hearts. If anything, this sounds pretty scary…like judgment…and leads to an even greater heaviness of heart.
Unless, my friends, you understand the gospel. See standing before the Son of Man is either something that causes you to tremble or to rejoice. If I were planning on standing before him based on my own record, my own moral performance, then I don’t think I would get much sleep at night. I have already told you how jacked up I am, and I was just getting warmed up. But, on the other hand, when I consider what it means for me to before the Son of Man, not in my own merit, but in His, then things change. My heart doesn’t get heavy, but so much lighter.
See being watchful for Jesus and fixing your gaze on Jesus won’t change anything unless you know what Jesus has done for you. See when you’re standing before the Son of Man, you’re on trial. It is just as if you entered the courtroom and they said, “All rise for the honorable…..” In the same way, your in God’s courtroom, but His courtroom is His throne. And you’re standing before the Son of Man giving account for your life.
Rev. 5 play out this exact picture…. of the final judgment before the throne. In v1 you have the judge sitting on the throne with a scroll in his hand. And there is weeping b/c no one can open the scroll, but then in dramatic fashion in v6 the Lamb, and the text says “looking as if it had been slain,” comes And v9 says, “You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.”
My friends, don’t you see the gospel good news. None of us have any hope to stand before the Son of Man who sits on the throne. But the gospel is that the one seated on the throne in judgment—the judge—got down out of the box and he comes to stand in the place of the accused. See on Calvary, Jesus said, “Your honor, I will stand in their place, and God’s judgment fell on Him, instead of us. And as then in His resurrection, Lk. 20 and so many other text say, “He was seated at the right hand of the Father on the throne.”
But all of a sudden, the seated Savior, according to Rev. 5, stands up on one occasion. It was when the scroll couldn’t be opened. See that is when the Lamb, looking as if He had been slain, stands as your advocate, and unrolls the scroll, and reads your name in the Lambs Book of Life, and most likely points to his wrist and says, “Father, His name is written here (on my wrists).”
See my friends, this is why Charles Wesley wrote his great hymn saying,
Arise, my soul, arise; shake off thy guilty fears;
The bleeding sacrifice in my behalf appears:
Before the throne my surety stands,
Before the throne my surety stands,
My name is written on His hands.
This gospel makes your heart rise. What takes heavy hearts and makes them light. May we fix our eyes on Christ Jesus.
