The Tears of God
By Jimmy Allen, Former President of the SBC
Big Canoe, Georgia
Editor’s Note: This sermon was preached on October 28, 2001, at Parkway Hills Baptist Church in Plano, Texas, in a worship service in which the Editor baptized two of his grandchildren, Heather Burns and Eric David Beal, thanks to the hospitality of Pastor Sam Dennis.
“Jesus began to weep.” John 11:35
“As he came near and saw the city, he wept over it.” Luke 19:41
Jesus didn’t cry much. We have one picture of him in the prophet’s writing that the Messiah would be a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. There we see him as a sad figure, a person who moves with gravity and with sadness and sorrow in his life.
However, when we read through the New Testament, we discover only two passages in which the Bible says that Jesus shed tears. He may have shed tears at other times, of course. But the Bible only records these two times when Jesus wept—once at the grave of Lazarus (John 10:35) and once during the triumphal entry into Jerusalem (Luke 19:41).
I want us to look at these two passages because I would like for us to see and sense the tears of God, and perhaps also to see the ways that God is crying again in our day.
The tears of Jesus at the grave of Lazarus were tears of sadness—sadness Jesus felt over the pain that sin had created in the world. Jesus came to the home of Mary and Martha after Lazarus died. Often he had been a guest in their house. The two women were friends that he loved deeply and profoundly.
Earlier he had received word that Lazarus was sick, but he waited three days. His disciples asked, “Why are you waiting? You could stop all of this grief if you would go to Bethany.” But Jesus tarried for three days. Then he came to where Lazarus had been buried. Both sisters made the accusation: “If you had really cared couldn’t you have stopped all of this? If you had really cared enough to come, you could have kept him from dying.” In both conversations, Jesus talks about the glory of God, but he also comes to weep with those who sorrow as they go through their grief.
I want you to see that God allows sorrow in his world because he cannot step in to stop every pain that comes to us. If he did, he would be fiddling with the creation that he came to redeem. There is a moral basis for God’s creation. When we fall away from God’s intention for us, when we refuse to be what God wants us to be, when we want to make ourselves gods, not allowing the Creator to be in control, then pain and sorrow and death enter into our world.
So we live under the conditions of a world that has been damaged from the beginning. We are born into this world with an inclination to rebel. And we pay the price of our behavior as sin piles upon sin and creates suffering and finally creates death. And people who are innocent are victimized. Thus we live in a world where sorrow stalks our streets and enters our lives. Grief comes and we deal with it, and then a cry is heard, “Why don’t you stop all of this? Why can’t you keep this from happening?”
The interesting fact about God’s tears is that God will not interfere to keep bad things from happening, for that is part of the warp and woof of life. Our capacity for pain, for instance, is really the first alert system for keeping us healthy. The pain possibility is necessary for us to have health. Sorrow and sadness is the other side of gladness and joy. We all live our lives, stumbling from one step of sorrow on into a great moment of incite and joy. So God does not interfere just in order to keep us comfortable and happy. He allows life to happen, but he moves in beside us. God’s love makes him vulnerable to our pain.
I have Jack Hafford to thank for this insight about our crushing pains. Back when I was young, I was preaching in a youth revival. I was about to be ordained at Monger Place Baptist Church. Earl Anderson was the pastor. My Dad had been a member there before he started preaching. So I went over to visit with him about the ordaining council.
Earl Anderson said to a seventeen year-old preacher, “You won’t do your most significant preaching until you have been through Gethsemane.” I knew what Gethsemane was—it was the garden where Jesus suffered, wept, and sweat great drops of blood. It was the place where the grapes were pressed into wine. In the process of pressing, the pressure came from every side. But I didn’t have any idea what he was talking about. I knew in my mind where Gethsemane was, but I didn’t know what it was!
Days passed. God blessed my journey. So many good things happened and I found myself thinking, “God was smart to have chosen me to be his instrument.” But then things began to unfold and not work right in my life. I then discovered Gethsemane.
When the pressure built to the breaking point, when I found myself facing things I couldn’t control, when AIDS invaded my family, when churches refused to let my grandbaby come to Sunday School—suddenly I was walking through the valley of the shadow of death. One after another these things came into our lives. I was in Gethsemane!
I discovered that the things I had said glibly about God, I didn’t really know. Finally I got to the point that the things I knew about God, I couldn’t even say well. You discover things about God in Gethsemane that you can’t find in any other place.
Jack Hafford was speaking about that when he said, “Moses came to the burning bush to turn aside and the first thing God told him was, “Take off your shoes, you are on holy ground” (Exod. 3:5). Jack began to describe the shoes that Moses took off. Out there on the back side of the wilderness, the sands were burning hot and the stones were sharp. Moses was wearing thick shepherd’s sandals to protect his feet.
I had always thought the command from God was for respect—because Moses was on ground occupied by God, he should remove his shoes. But I came to realize that God was saying, “Moses, you are already standing on holy ground, so take off your sandals, feel the heat and the pain—this is part of your conversation with God.”
As Moses stood there in the hurting of that moment, he entered in the pain of God, and he began in that pain to hear God say, “I heard the voice of my people calling out of their sorrow and hurt, and my heart is hurting for them. I want you to go for me.”
I connected with that thought you see, because I discovered that in the very moment when you are in the deepest part of the pain that comes into your life, you are at the moment when God can self-disclose, when God can reveal the kind of pain that is entering into his heart. When “God so loved the world that he gave” means that God who is bigger than our minds can comprehend, who is greater than we can put into any kind of proposition that we can debate, who is beyond all things, that God is absorbing into himself our pain because he loves. In every bit of the suffering you are going through, God is feeling your sorrow. God is responding to your Gethsemane.
If God is doing that with me, the amazing part of God’s grace is that he is doing that for every one of the billion people that we have in the world. Can you imagine the pain God is going through? That is the vulnerability of God—God is feeling that kind of pain. No wonder God is crying over his world. No wonder God is sobbing today!
God is experiencing the pain of the starving children in Africa and Iraq and Afghanistan and South Dallas. He is feeling that kind of pain. He also feels the pain that you go through in the emptiness of your life—even surrounded by so much opulence and affluence, deep inside you are so hungry and dissatisfied, hurting because things don’t work well in your family anymore. Your best plans have gone awry. The economic pressures may be bearing down on you as your business faces downsizing. In the process of that pain, know that God is feeling that pain, also.
Why doesn’t God stop all of your misery? Because it is part of the warp and woof of life. It is part of the way in which we will come one day to a time of no more pain and no more tears. But now we live in the vale of tears.
God’s Son knew as he walked toward Lazarus grave that in a few moments he was going to take away the reason for this pain. Jesus was going to turn their pain and grief from the death of their brother into transformation and triumph, for he was going to raise Lazarus from the dead. He knew that.
But what was he doing during those three days before he came to Bethany? The Bible doesn’t tell us, but I know what he was doing. Jesus operated on the same level of access to God that you and I have. If he didn’t operate that way, he would not be God incarnate. So he had to empty himself, he had to live in relation to God as I do. The difference is that I am damaged and I am desensitized. I don’t understand what I’m dealing with. But Jesus wasn’t damaged by sin—he was exactly what God willed all of us to be. Jesus was totally in tune with the Father. But that does not mean he knew everything that he wanted to know.
So for three days Jesus was saying to the Father, “What are we going to do about Lazarus? What is going to happen to Lazarus? How can we help Lazarus?” And after three days he says to his disciples, “Come on, we are going to where Lazarus is. He is asleep.” The disciples replied, “Well, if he is asleep, he is okay and will get well!” “No,” replied Jesus, “he is dead.”
When they arrive at the grave, Jesus prays, “Father, I ask you out loud to give me this power, because all of these people need to know where the power is coming from. I know what you are going to do.” You see, during those three days while praying for Lazarus, God gave Jesus the answer, “You are going to raise up Lazarus from death.”
This is the important fact in this scene. When Jesus came and saw their hurting, when he saw their sorrow and their sadness, knowing within the hour he was going to raise Lazarus from death, JESUS WEPT! He cried! He grieved with them!
Why? Because he loved them. He saw their hurt and felt their pain. This means that the God of all the universe, who controls it all, who knows how the whole story is going to end, who knows what heaven is (not just what he thinks it will be like)—that God comes to me in my limited understanding, while I am hurting and asking what can be done. That God comes to me and cares so much for me that he cries with me, like you would with a child who brings a broken toy. For you know there are ways to replace the toy, but the child doesn’t know that. Because it is a crisis for the child, it becomes one for you.
God is weeping today because people are hurting today. He alone knows how to help you in your hurt.
God is weeping today because of suffering caused by sin and rebellion. This passage (John 10:35) says Jesus “groaned within himself.” This is not a word about sorrow. It is a word about anger. The word means that Jesus was indignant—he was really angry!
Why? Not at Mary, as she cries. Not at Martha, as she questions his tardiness. But Jesus was angry at Satan—the evil one who makes people hurt like this. He was angry at sin and the hatred and hostility that it produces. He was upset at the superficial ways some people were grieving. Jesus was angry over disbelief and destruction. He was angry at death itself. So, Jesus stood and groaned. In the tears of God, there is anger!
Some of us are experiencing a new kind of pain. Newscasters have recently discovered a new kind of tension, the syndrome of anticipatory fear—fear over what might happen! Pastors could have taught them something about this fear long ago.
Most of the fears we have are unnamed. We don’t know what they are, and they frighten us. If we can see a fear and describe it, we can deal with it. If not, we don’t know how to deal with it.
The pains that are coming from the terrorist’s attacks and the anthrax attacks and the fear of other terrorist activities are disabling. Leaders tell us to live our lives in normal ways, to return to business as usual, then we see officials closing buildings and disappearing from dangerous locations. The fact is, nobody can simply return to normal activities—we are living in that kind of fear and pain.
Christians, however, have a resource. If you really believe that God controls life, your life. If God is really on the throne. Then do you think God is going to be surprised by anything that happens to you? God is adequate for anything that comes into your life.
Dr. T. B. Maston used to say, “Christians ought to be the ones who have the greatest amount of peace about this world because we can get along without it.” Jesus comes to give us a sense of peace because he is capable of helping us get along without it!
Jesus weeps over people’s pain, but he is in charge. And he calls forth Lazarus out of the tomb and says, “Loose him and let him go—let him do all that God intended for him to do.”
The other record of Jesus weeping occurs during the great celebration—Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem (Luke 19:28-44). Jesus came down toward Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives to the East. Crowds lined the way, shouting praise and adulation. In a few days, he would be crucified, but none in the crowd knew that. In the midst of that celebration, Jesus stops the parade and looks out over the city, the capital of the nation of Israel, and he cries! Tears fill his eyes because he sees religious institutions that have missed their purpose. Israel’s religious leaders had lost their mission.
I think God is crying today, shedding tears over religious organizations that are so involved in their own affairs, so wrapped up in themselves, so worked up over their doctrinal statements, so protective of their positions of power, so busy negotiating their positions of leadership, that they have totally forgotten their purpose—their mission.
Israel’s mission was to be a kingdom of priests. Every Israelite was to be a person who could talk to God about people and talk to people about God. That was their mission. But what were they doing? Hatching a plot to kill Jesus, the Son of God, whom they saw as a threat to their power. That’s what Jesus saw, and he wept.
Jesus said, “Because you have missed the visitation, the moment for which you were made—because you have missed the moment, you have missed the mission and my heart is hurting. I’m weeping because it is all going to come apart. You missed it!”
How did they miss it? Well, they just didn’t notice what was happening in their world. They just didn’t see God in their very presence. They missed God’s greatest revelation.
Alice Gahana was one of my most interesting encounters. Her husband was a rabbi in Houston. She had been a survivor of two different consecration camps during the Holocaust. She was also an artist. I sat with her in San Antonio by the river talking about her experiences and I asked her, “Alice, of all the things you went through, what do you remember most?” She replied, “The empty windows.”
When I asked her to explain, she told this story. “I grew up in central Europe, in a little village where I lived all my life. When I was nine years old, the soldiers came to get us. They told us to pack our suitcases and come down to the village square. I walked that morning, carrying my suitcase, down our cobble-stoned street—the street that I had walked all my life, by houses in which lived people I had known all my life.
The soldiers were going to take us to a concentration camp. We did not know what was awaiting us. But as I walked down the street, I noticed the windows were empty. No one came to the windows.
My friends and neighbors knew what was happening, they knew—but they were afraid. Nobody came to the windows to see what was happening to me.” I asked Alice to draw for me a picture of that morning, and she drew a picture of three empty windows. It is a reminder of what breaks the heart of God.
The tears of God are falling today because we are not even going to the windows to see the people who are hurting today. We don’t want to know. And God cries. If we are one of those walking down the street, we may feel bewildered or forsaken by others, but we can know that God never leaves us.
Remember Heather Whitestone? The Miss America who had the disability of deafness? Remember what she did for her talent competition? She danced. The deaf woman danced. Do you know how she did it? She took a special hearing machine that she could put to her ear, played it very loud, and memorized the music—every beat. When the time came for her to dance the ballet, she moved precisely and beautifully to the rhythm of the music she couldn’t hear. But she had heard it before, and she remembered!
Sometimes I have walked through grief when the silence was so deafening, I heard nothing—nothing but the faint voice of God. But that was the music I remembered. A music I could still hear—a music I could dance to. And I kept on dancing and dancing and dancing until I found myself in the rhythm of God.
God is crying today. He wants you to sense his grief, but also he wants you to dance in rhythm to his music. The Bible says, “In the last days he will wipe the tears from our eyes.” But do you know what you can do? You can wipe some of the tears from the eyes of God. For every time you hand your life to him, as he weeps with you—every time you do the deed he wants you to do, every time you touch a life, every time you share the message of Jesus, you wipe away some of the tears from the eyes of God.*
