The Tears of God--When God Cried

When God cried. Jesus wept, John 11:35. Christ is touched with our infirmities, Heb. 4:15. He wept about three things.

God spoke from heaven three times in Jesus' ministry. He spoke with pride, confidence, boldness. He spoke with compassion and care. He spoke with tears in his eyes at the necessity of the cross. Our study is about the tears of God.

I really began preaching in Penalosa, KS. Fall 1967, sophomore at WSU, three Sundays each month. Great people. This is year 37--hard to believe. I have preached in 5 decades, two centuries, and two millennia. Preaching is like pushing a car to get it started--don't do that much any more, but here is the parallel. Once you get the car started, it regenerates itself. Preaching is like that--it keeps building and producing energy.

My first full-time work was in Howard County, AR. Bible Belt. Those people loved preaching, whether it was good or bad. Country churches--4 or 5 congregations with a Dierks address. I learned so much there. I was being changed. Rejoice in the Lord, praise God. I still believe the local church is where the action is. It is in local soul-winning churches.

Where is all of this going? In the 1/3 of a century I have preached, I have been in rural and urban churches; southern and northern, mission and Bible belt. I've never preached for an extremely large church--about 400 max. But I have seen in all of that a transition from tears and weeping to a dry-eyed version of Christianity. I remember when people wept when someone was restored. When we had revivals and wept for sinners. We worked hard, prayed for husbands, wayward children, wayward brothers and sisters--the entire church. Wept because people were lost. But deadness is about to overtake us, and may I say, there is nothing quite so dead as conservative dead. The only thing worse than a liberal church with nothing going for it is a conservative church with nothing going for it. I am glad this is a church with a heart for the world, a heart for prayer, a heart for this community.

OT says, sow in tears, reap in joy. Sometimes we do not reap because we do not weep. Tears water the crop. Who will cry? Where are the weeping prophets like Jeremiah? Not artificial tears, but real care. David said he watered his couch every night with his tears. Also Isaiah. Paul, ceasing not to warn night and day with tears.

We ought to cry because we are dying people preaching to dying people. Someone told a preacher he was like a little baby, crying all the time. When a baby matures, he gets quieter. The preacher said, it's not because they are maturing, but because they are dying.

Jesus wept--because of death, because of sin (Matt. 23; Luke 19).

God cried from heaven three times in Jesus' ministry. At his baptism, at the transfiguration, and just before the Last Supper. The text is in John 12.

In Mel Gibson's movie, The Passion, there was a wonderful touch, although not in the Bible per se. One of the interesting things about artistic endeavor is the subtle ambiguity. The Mona Lisa's smile, a poetic phrase, a musical refrain, a visual metaphor in a movie. Such ambiguity creates multiple interpretations.

During the cross scenes, an out of focus image, crystal like, appears. Toward the end of the movie, with Jesus on the cross, there is a distant, new, strange camera angle. Not a panoramic view, not the crowd through Jesus' eyes, I frankly couldn't tell what it was. It was eerie, perhaps a view of earth from outer space, the mind disoriented, raced to figure this out.

Then it became clearer that something other than a line of sight was closing in on Golgotha. The camera was focusing little by little, it was following something. A crystal sphere, the first drop of a rainstorm. Neither.

It was a single tear. Falling from millions of miles away, landing at the base of the cross, initiating a shudder on Planet Earth that rattle temple, courtroom, marketplace, home, living, and dead. It was a tear from God Almighty--seeing, caring, grieving from his throne. That tear is subject to interpretation. Is God crying for his Son? I believe God is crying for his world.

Listen now to our text. Jesus had received his reassurance. He could confidently call out to God even though asking about feelings of forsakenness. God turning his back on sin, but never turning his back on the world. Crying out in loud voice, crying out with tears, for me and for you.

Why? Because we are so prone to pride, to conceit, to arrogance. Because for us humility is so hard, as is admitting our frailty, failures, and frustrations. The cross is always about overcoming. Overcoming is not our job alone, overcoming is God's power in us. It is the power of dying to self to rise to his life. This world appears futile, fatal, and final. But it is not.

Newness is possible in Christ. That newness we celebrate every Sunday in remembering the resurrection. We have not deviated today--we have merely celebrated anew that which is always before us.

Resurrection implies death. You will never know the resurrected life until you are willing to die. And when something/someone dies, we bury it. So also spiritually. Some today need to be baptized into Christ, to die to self to live to God. Some need to come home. This is the time, it is time to respond to the cry of God who says, Come...


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Last updated March 20, 2005.