Mark it down. Memorize this. Engrave it somewhere. It is an ironclad rule. This will always happen: when it is the least convenient for you to respond, someone will want you to respond. When it is nearly impossible for you to get up and do what someone wants you to do, that is the very moment when they will want you the most. When you just can’t go, that’s when they want you to go. When you just can’t handle it, that’s when they ask you to take it on. When your agenda is full, that’s when they ask you to do one more job. When your calendar is jammed, that’s when somebody does something that blows your time away. Yesterday afternoon, when there was already plenty to do, more than enough, I waited an hour and a half for a key person to show up for a wedding rehearsal. I didn’t have that kind of time; that’s why he took it away from me. When it is the least convenient for you to respond, someone will want you to respond.
Here I am, helping in the kitchen. I get to do the really fun jobs, like peel onions. Married nearly forty years, and I am still a pushover for teary hazel eyes and that British accent, “I cahn’t, I just cahn’t.” So I am peeling onions, my eyes are streaming with tears. I want this to be over. And the phone rings. It rings loudly, over and over. I’ve got to get to the phone. I must answer it. Why?
Oh, you know why. It might be something important. Who knows, Bore or Gush might want me in the next cabinet? Who knows, the pulpit committee of Mega Baptist Church might be calling? Who knows, Ed McMahon said I may have already won a million dollars? Who knows? I must respond.
So with my eyes streaming with tears, I rush to the phone. And in the process I stumble on something I couldn’t see. I stumble, I step on the dog’s foot, I bang my shin against the table leg, and I knock over a jar of sticky syrup. What a mess I’ve made! But I got to the phone.
And when I have told the Visa woman for the five hundred and twenty-ninth time that I do not want another credit card, thank you very much, because mine gives to missions and hers does not, I hang up the phone and survey the damage. It looks a lot like life itself, this mess.
My eyes are streaming with tears, over nothing really. An onion. But it made me weep. And the floor underfoot is a horrible mixture of spilled syrup, splintered table leg, hair from the dog’s leg, and blood from my leg – all from one little stumble. And all from reaching out with my grasping hands to get something. Get, get, get. In my eagerness to have and to hold, look what I’ve done.
I say it looks a lot like life, my life, your life – our eyes stream with tears, our feet stumble, because our hands grasp and do not give. Because our hands want to have and not to share. Because our hands hold on rather than let go. Teary eyes, stumbling feet, and hands.
The psalmist must have had days like that. Many such days. He was brought low, he says. He felt awful. He speaks about distress and anguish. And it was about more than one little phone call interruption, about more than a tough day here and there. It was about a whole pattern of life. For the psalmist, it was about certain habits he had fallen into. Habits like being suspicious of everybody else – did you catch it when he told you that he got so upset he thought everybody else was a liar? That’s pretty serious. Or habits like feeling sorry for himself? He admits that he used to sit around and hold pity parties and say, “I am greatly, greatly afflicted.” This man had some problems. Or shall I say this man gave himself some problems. He spent too much time sitting around in the blame game. Negative stuff.
But the good news is that in the middle of all of that he found the Lord. He first found the Lord, and then he discovered how to respond to what the Lord did. Teary eyes, stumbling feet: they were in the past. And hands? Hands responded to what God had done.
I
What did God do for the psalmist? “You have delivered … my eyes from tears.” So many people live joyless lives. So many people suffer depression, some of it on the surface, manageable; and some of it very deep, clinical. So many people live such joyless lives. So many live with a deep, deep sadness, and a hurt. Why?
My life, your life – our eyes stream with tears, our feet stumble, because our hands grasp and do not give. Because our hands want to have and not to share. Because our hands hold on rather than let go. Teary eyes, stumbling feet, but what about the hands?
You see, there’s healthy guilt, and there’s unhealthy guilt. Healthy guilt is a recognition that we’ve done something wrong, so we repent of it, we do what we can to fix it, we accept God’s forgiveness, and we move on. That’s healthy guilt.
But there’s unhealthy guilt. It’s that nameless dread, that I’m-not-okay feeling, that deep-rooted anxiety that just won’t let go.
Some of us are walking around with unhealthy guilt because when we were children we had parents whom we never could please. Nothing was ever good enough. If we brought home good grades from school, they wanted to know why they weren’t better. If we cleaned our rooms as asked, they weren’t clean enough, and why did we get them dirty in the first place?! Some of us had parents who projected their own shortcomings on us and wouldn’t let us be children. They didn’t let us make mistakes, even though making mistakes is the way you learn. Some of us are walking around with unhealthy guilt right now because we were taught that we were bad kids, meant to be seen and not heard, and generally just in the way.
Would it shock you if I were to tell you that I cannot remember my mother ever telling me that she loved me? Would it trouble you if I were to report that my memories of my childhood are mostly of my mother snapping at me because I was never quite good enough for her? I wonder just how many children have been set on the road to depression and unhealthy guilt for no other reason than their parents couldn’t get out of their own stuff long enough to give something to their children. There is an unhealthy guilt.
But, you know, the psalmist experienced deliverance from his unhealthy guilt and his depression. “You have delivered … my eyes from tears.” He found a close relationship with the Lord; he was able to see how the Lord intervened in his life to make a difference. This man could see that a God of infinite mercy and of overriding compassion had embraced him and had loved him. He felt like a new person. He felt new life surging through his heart, and he no longer felt lonely and isolated. Somebody loved him; somebody cared for him. And that made all the difference. “You have delivered my eyes …from tears.” And as a result, his hands did something. We’ll see about that in a minute.
Do you know that the beginning of redemption is just to know that somebody cares? Sometimes the issue with people who’ve gotten into depression is that they believe the rotten stuff on the inside, and then take it outside. They don’t like themselves, so they don’t think anybody else does either. There are folks who will call me and say, “Pastor, you’ve haven’t talked to me for a month. I guess you don’t like me anymore.” Now I know that’s not true; I do care about them. But if I am slow to show it, that stuff inside kicks up. They don’t really think anybody loves them, because they don’t love themselves. I understand; I’ve been there too.
But the beginning of redemption is to know that somebody cares. The beginning of salvation is to find out that God cares. God cares. In Jesus Christ God has expressed the depth of His love for us. He has cared enough to enter our world and live like we live. He has loved enough to go to the Cross and to take on all its shame. And we are saved when we discover that love and receive it. We are saved when we find out that there is a Father who loves us unconditionally, who gives Himself for us without hesitation, and who whispers to us, “You are my child”. Salvation means knowing that God’s love in Jesus Christ has my name on it and your name and yours and yours and yours. “God so loved the world .. God so loved A and B and C and D … that He gave His son .. for God sent not His son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.” Doesn’t that make all the difference? Doesn’t it change everything to know that God loves us like that?
The psalmist thought it did. Even before Jesus came, the psalmist felt an exuberant joy because he saw the love and mercy of God. And out of that joy he wanted to do something. He wanted a hands-on way to thank the God who loved him like that. And so he says not only, “You have delivered my eyes from tears”, but then he goes on to proclaim, “What shall I return to the LORD for all his bounty to me? I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the LORD”. How do I respond to the God who dries my tears? I will lift up the cup of salvation .. I will use my hands-on energy to tell others what God has done and what God will do. I will lift up this gift of salvation and show it to others. Out of gratitude to the God who dried my tears I will do all I can do to point to the gift of salvation.
Men and women, if God has delivered you from your own sense of shame … if the love of Christ overpowers your not-okayness … if the warmth of the Spirit of Jesus has convinced you that you are worthy … if you have been saved from a destructive way of thinking about yourself, then what is the right response? What do you do about that? You do all you can to help others see it too. You do all you can to teach others of the great, great love of Jesus. You can work in the life of this church to be sure that every ministry, every program, everything we do gets to somebody who needs to have it. If you feel the love of God, then the right response is to get in here and work and give and share and do, so that everything we are about is done well and is done with salvation as its purpose. All your hands can touch ought to be directed toward that one great purpose. “He has delivered our eyes from tears .. so we will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord.”
II
But not only did God deliver the psalm writer from his tears. God also dealt with another deep issue. God dealt with the psalmist’s straying, stumbling feet. When he made a mess by wandering off in all the wrong paths, God offered him forgiveness and direction. The psalmist says, “You have delivered … my feet from stumbling.”
Remember my theme: My life, your life – our eyes stream with tears, our feet stumble, because our hands grasp and do not give. Because our hands want to have and not to share. Because our hands hold on rather than let go. Teary eyes, stumbling feet, but what about the hands?
Folks, how we feel about ourselves is not always shaped by what others have done or not done to us. Sometimes how we feel about ourselves is shaped entirely by what we have done. Sometimes we deserve to feel rotten about ourselves, because we’ve done rotten things. There is a harsh reality about life, and that is this thing called sin. Sin is our willful disobedience to God’s ways. Sin is our defiant rebellion against what God wants to do for us. Sin is our nasty “No” to all the guidance the Lord gives us.
My wife and I sat in the doctor’s office the other day and watched a father and his small daughter while the mother was in the examining room. As long as mom was with the doctor, the little girl was fine. True, she did ask every thirty seconds where mommy was and why. But she did what daddy asked her to do. But when mommy came out, the climate changed. Let’s put on your coat; “NO”. Let’s put this chair back where you got it: “NO”. It’s time to go now: “NO”. You can smile at a three-year-old doing that to her parents, but it’s not so funny when it’s you and me doing that to God. We don’t want His guidance. We don’t want His constraints. We want to go, each and every one of us, into his own way, like lost sheep. That’s called sin. And we know it’s a mess. We know it doesn’t work. But there we go, just the same. Wallowing in our waywardness. Steeping ourselves in sin. Not really happy with it. Making ourselves miserable. But not knowing how to get out of it. Just saying “No” to everything God asks of us.
Then one day you wake up and you see Jesus. You see Jesus turning the other cheek when he is struck, and it makes sense! You see Jesus going the second mile when he is asked for something, and it adds up! One day you look at the life of Jesus and you see that the gift God has given us is one who not only knows how to live life, but who will also forgive us of the botched job we’ve made of it! One day we wake up and find out that the real joy, the real excitement, is in living Jesus’ way and not our way. One day we repent of all the mess we’ve made and turn to Him and ask Him to forgive us and to show us how it can be done.
And He delivers our feet from stumbling. He picks us up from the mess we’ve made and cleans us up and sets us out on a new path. Oh, if I didn’t believe that, I’d quit preaching! If I didn’t believe that in Jesus Christ we can find a way to live in a positive, joyous way, I’d put my energies and my money and my heart into something else. I wouldn’t teach Bible classes and counsel people with problems and pray at besides if I didn’t believe people could learn a new way through Jesus Christ. And when I actually see it happen, I notice that these folks are really sold out for the Lord. They get excited and they do things. They put their hands to the work and get it done. I remember, years ago, one young woman came forward one Sunday and professed Christ as savior. Two days later she was in my office saying, “Ok, what’s next? What do I do now? I am grateful to God for saving me; what’s next?” Today she’s teaching a class, she’s working with an age group, she’s chairing a committee, she’s got energy to burn. Hands on.
Just like the psalmist, who saw what he had to do. “What shall I return to the LORD for all his bounty to me? … I will pay my vows to the LORD in the presence of all his people.” Hands wide open, to pay his vows, to work, to give, to serve, to share. When your life is a mess, and you don’t know which way to go, in Jesus Christ you find direction. In Him you find a path to follow. He delivers your feet from stumbling. How can we respond with anything less? “I will pay my vows to the LORD in the presence of all his people.”
III
As a church, we are about to enter into an exceptionally challenging time. We’ve seen some real progress in recent weeks and months. We’ve seen people come to know the Lord. We’ve prayed intensively for renewal and revival, and it has come and is coming. We’ve labored to reduce and ultimately retire our debt, and it’s happening, it’s actually happening. We’ve seen our children’s ministries multiply. We’ve been studying what we want to do to minister to families. We’ve just started several new discipleship groups. This is real progress.
But it’s a challenging time, too, because there is so much more we need to do. There are so many opportunities we must not miss. We are getting closer to calling a full-time Assistant Pastor; this will help us grow our ministries with children and with youth and will help us do some new things. We are very aware that our properties need to be rethought and redeveloped – that this whole corner needs to be rebuilt. We know that a city, a nation, and a world need more missions involvement from us. More. Shall I cry out for more money? Shall I chastise you because some give little or no time? Shall I push you harder to do what you do not want to do? I will not. I am not into inducing guilt.
But I will say that if He has delivered your eyes from tears, then the only response is to lift up your hands and help others receive the gift of salvation. “You have delivered my eyes from tears … I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord.” I will say that if He has delivered your feet from stumbling and taught you how to live, then the only response is to put every resource at His disposal, so that the Kingdom can go forward. “You have delivered … my feet from stumbling … I will pay my vows to the LORD in the presence of all His people.”
Teary eyes, stumbling feet … and what about the hands? What shall my hands do for Him, when I know what His hands have done? When I know that His hands, pierced with nails, have touched me. Oh, He touched me.
Shackled by a heavy burden,
‘Neath a load of guilt and shame –
Then the hand of Jesus touched me,
And now I am no longer the same.
He touched me, O He touched me,
And oh, the joy that floods my soul.
Something happened, and now I know
He touched me and made me whole.
