©2005 Larry Huntsperger Peninsula Bible Fellowship

06-05-05

Redeeming The Wounded

6/5/05 Redeeming The Wounded

I started something three weeks ago

that I thought I could walk away from

but found out I could not.

And so this morning we are going to return to it once again.

In fact, some of what we will look at during the next few minutes

are thoughts that I jotted down

while Sandee and I were on our way to California a few weeks ago.

Normally when we go on vacation

I don’t even think about writing anything.

But this past trip

I did something I have rarely done before -

I wrote some of the notes for what I will share with you this morning.

And I did it because, following our time together three weeks ago

I had thoughts going on in my mind,

thoughts I simply didn’t want to walk away from,

and definitely didn’t want to loose.

If you were here,

you may remember

that, as one of my many side-tracks from my comments on parenting,

we spent some time looking at the kind of attacks

that Satan uses in his efforts to blind us to the love of our God for us.

I mentioned in that talk that, just as God has placed within each child

a basic faith response to Him,

so Satan’s strategy is to bombard us during childhood

with his “proofs” that God cannot be trusted.

In effect

he attempts to wound our childhood spirits

with wounds of such a nature

as to make it much more difficult for us to reach out in faith to God in our adult years.

And the question is not,

“Who has been wounded

and who has not?”,

because the truth is

we have all been wounded in childhood.

Some of us were wounded

by being given the message

that “love” and acceptance are things we are given

in exchange for a certain level of performance,

and of course

it was always a level of performance

that we could never seem to achieve.

And once that message was recorded within us in childhood

it now replays itself in our minds with absolute authority

over and over again in our relationship with God as adults.

Some of us were wounded

by an adult in our life

who used us for their own pleasure, or their own gain, or their own ego goals.

Such wounds may have come through something as socially acceptable

as a parent driving a child to “succeed” so that the parent can then feel good about themselves,

or through something as hideous and blatantly evil as physical or sexual abuse.

But once that wound is inflicted in childhood

we then transfer it right over to our relationship to God in our adult years,

and we see this God of ours

as always having His own hidden agenda

and we know there is no way He can ever really be trusted.

Some of us were wounded

through our receiving messages that said, “You never do it right”,

or “I can never trust you”,

or “you’re so ugly”,

or “you’re so stupid’,

or “you should have been a girl”,

or “you should have been a boy”,

or “you should never have been born”.

And now, as adults,

those authority messages that came to us as children

are, in our minds, transferred over to the ultimate Authority - God,

and our God seems so distant,

and so unpleasant,

and so continually displeased with us.

Or we may respond by finding ourselves driven to prove ourselves to the world,

driven to prove, at any cost, that we do have value.

But somehow, no matter how much we do,

it’s never enough to bring us peace with ourselves,

or an awareness of peace with our God.

Some of us were wounded

by a parent who simply abandoned us,

walked out of our lives either physically or emotionally.

And, as children, we very likely assumed that it was our fault,

that they left because we were so unlovable,

so unworthy of their faithfulness to us.

And now, as adults,

we anticipate the same abandonment from our God

for exactly the same reasons.

Some of us were wounded

through adults who created within us

tremendous fears of forces in this world over which we have no control,

forces that we were told have the power to destroy our lives.

They may have done this indirectly

through they themselves always living before us

a life filled with fear.

Or they may have done it directly

by giving us well intended messages

that were misunderstood in our childhood minds,

messages that taught us to fear-

to fear people,

or to fear governments,

or to fear those in authority over us,

or to fear germs, or diseases, or darkness, or wilderness, or the future, and on and on.

And my point here with all of this

is simply that those wounds that are inflicted during our childhood years

are the ones that create the stage and the mental characters

upon which we then play out our entire adult lives.

But that, of course,

is only half of the picture.

That is the system software we bring with us into our adult years.

It is the mental environment

in which we then play out our responses to

and our understanding of everything else that enters our lives.

When I first shared some of these thoughts with you three weeks ago

I did so in the context of our adult relationships

with those children whose lives we have input into,

urging us to stay sensitive to the wounds Satan is seeking to inflict on their lives,

and then doing what we can

to protect them from those wounds,

and to disarm the power of them when they occur.

We do that

by replacing the lies with the truth -

the truth about our God,

and about the nature of His love for us.

Everyone of those wounds

derive their destructive power

through some powerful lie

that is imbedded within them.

“Your value as a person is based upon your ability to perform.”

“Your value is based upon your sex, or your appearance, or your behavior.”

“You have no value except as someone to be used by others for their pleasure or gain.”

“There are forces in this world over which God has no control.”

And on and on.

And tragically,

sometimes one of the greatest offenders

in the perpetuation of some of these lies

is the religious community we enter into when we come to Christ,

a community that all too often tells us,

“Your value to God is based upon your ability to perform for Him.”,

or “God loves you when you obey and rejects you when you do not.”

Many such messages are given, of course,

with the hope that they will then motivate the people of God

to perform better

and to behave better,

but in the end

they create such a sense of tension between us and our God

that it becomes all but impossible for us to hear His love for us

and respond to it.

And we, like Adam and Eve in the garden,

spend our lives hiding from Him in our shame and fear,

peaking out at Him from the shadows of our lives.

I really do not want to make this whole thing

more complicated than it is,

so let me summerize it this way.

The only thing in life

that truly has the ability to transform us

in a way that produces within us

both true righteous living

and true, healthy productivity

and the ability to love God and to love those around us

is our growing discovery of the love of our God for each of us.

Satan’s primary strategy in our lives

is to blind us to that love

through wounding our spirits in ways

that make the love of God for us appear absurd,

and then by his pointing us toward performance-based religious systems

that make it even more difficult for us to hear the truth.

But whenever the human spirit

can break free from the lies

to the point where we can gain even a tiny glimpse

of the true nature of God’s love for us

the result will be a hunger and a thirst deep within us

to live a life that brings honor to our God.

And whenever we have contact with children,

if we understand the kind of battles that are taking place

and think in terms of those wounds Satan is seeking to inflict on them,

wounds designed to blind them to the depths of God’s love for them,

our goal is to trust that God’s Spirit will show us

how to disarm those lies

before they become destructive.

But there is another whole aspect of this thing

that I want us to look at.

It concerns not our relationship with children,

but rather our relationship with ourselves.

Because, of course, all of us have been wounded as well.

And no matter how skilled our parents and teachers may have been

in their efforts to diffuse those lies in our lives as we grew up,

the truth is

that all of us enter our adult years

with many wounds that have gone unhealed,

and lies that blind us to the heart of our God.

In other words,

we all enter our adult years

in need of a healing work at the spirit level

that only God Himself can accomplish within us.

We need a Savior,

we need a healer of our souls.

And in the rest of the time we have together this morning

I want to take us to a remarkable passage in the book of Isaiah.

It is a passage in which God reveals to us

the kind of work He wants to accomplish in our lives through Christ.

It doesn’t say much about how He does it,

but it reveals a great deal to us

about what He is seeking to do.

And that, I think,

is the doorway through which we can then begin finding the how.

You do see our situation, don’t you?

We all have within us these wounds

that blind us to the true nature of Christ’s love for us.

And we can only find healing from the wounds

through our discovery of His love.

But the wounds themselves

are the very things

that keep us from seeing the love we need for our healing.

So what does our God do?

He reaches out to us, His creation,

with a demonstration of His love

designed to blast through our fears,

and our wounds,

and our lies at such a level

that we can begin hearing the true nature of His heart for us.

ROM 5:8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

1JO 4:10 In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

JOH 3:16 For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.

And we could spend the rest of the morning

looking at statements given to us by our God

that tell us the same thing over and over.

But He doesn’t stop there

because He knows how confused we are,

and how difficult it is

for us to accept the true nature of His love for us.

So, after telling us that Christ is His greatest expression of His love for us,

He then goes on to explain

exactly what it is that Christ seeks to accomplish in our lives

so that there will be no confusion

about how He defines “love”.

And that’s what we have going on

in this passage from Isaiah.

And we know with absolute certainty

that the passage really is talking to us

about Christ

and about what He wants to accomplish in our lives

because He Himself said so.

Listen to this!

LUK 4:16-21 And He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up; and as was His custom, He entered the synagogue on the Sabbath, and stood up to read. And the book of the prophet Isaiah was handed to Him. And He opened the book, and found the place where it was written, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, Because He anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim release to the captives, And recovery of sight to the blind, To set free those who are downtrodden, To proclaim the favorable year of the Lord.” And He closed the book, and gave it back to the attendant, and sat down; and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed upon Him. And He began to say to them, "Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."

You do see what’s happening here, don’t you?

Jesus takes a passage of prophecy written by Isaiah,

reads it to those in that synagogue,

and then tells them, “When Isaiah wrote these words more than 700 years ago

he was writing about Me.”

Now, the whole passage actually takes up three chapters in Isaiah’s writing,

chapters 60, 61, and 62.

The specific words read by Jesus

come from the first few verses of chapter 61.

And I would like us

to look more closely at that 61^st chapter

because it will give us a remarkable picture

of the things Christ will seek to accomplish

in the lives of those who come to Him.

And don’t go getting religious on me here.

Don’t switch into your nonpersonal doctrinal mode

and miss what’s really being said.

Remember those wounds

inflicted on you during your own childhood.

And then set this description of the work that Christ seeks to do in your life

next to those wounds.

And listen closely

to what it is

He is seeking to do within you.

 ISA 61:1 The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,...

And let me stop right there

so that we do not miss

the most important part

of everything else that is happening in this passage.

Folks,

this is God the Father,

and God the Spirit

speaking through God the Son.

Let me say it even more simply.

This is God Himself

speaking with clarity and simplicity

to us, His creation.

This is a clear,

perfect view

into the heart of God.

And listen to what He says.

...because the Lord has anointed me To bring good news to the afflicted; He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, To proclaim liberty to captives, And freedom to prisoners;

ISA 61:2 To proclaim the favorable year of the Lord, And the day of vengeance of our God; To comfort all who mourn,...

OK, we know who’s speaking - God Himself.

And now we also know who He’s speaking to.

He’s speaking to the afflicted,

and the brokenhearted,

and the captives,

and the prisoners,

and all who mourn.

That is a perfect description

of the end result

of that vicious wounding process

brought about in each of our lives by Satan,

those wounds that have left us afflicted in spirit,

and brokenhearted - filled with sorrows for which we don’t even know the causes,

captives of our weakness,

prisoners of the lies we have believed,

with spirits that mourn for the loss of who we might have been,

who we could have been

had our lives not been damaged by our own sins,

and by the sins of others against us.

But look at the offer He’s making.

Look at the exchange He wants to make.

To the afflicted He wants to bring GOOD NEWS.

To the brokenhearted He wants to bring healing.

To the captives He wants to bring liberty.

To the prisoners He offers freedom.

And He wants to comfort all of us who mourn.

From there

our God then goes on to offer us visual images

with which to help us picture

these exchanges He’s seeking to offer us.

ISA 61:3 To grant those who mourn in Zion, Giving them a garland instead of ashes, The oil of gladness instead of mourning, The mantle of praise instead of a spirit of fainting.

What a bargain, huh?

And then He goes on

to give us powerful word pictures

of the end result of His involvement in our lives,

and of the work His involvement will accomplish within us.

So they will be called oaks of righteousness, The planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified.

ISA 61:4 Then they will rebuild the ancient ruins, They will raise up the former devastations, And they will repair the ruined cities, The desolations of many generations.

Now there is, of course,

one aspect of this prophecy

that is targeted specifically

at the literal restoration of the Nation of Israel.

But the Lord’s reference to this passage

as a description of His work in the lives of His people

makes it clear that He is also talking about the rebuilding of our lives

that He will accomplish within those who come to him.

He knows our lives, or spirits have been ravaged

by the attacks we have suffered

and the lies we have believed.

When He talks about “the desolations of many generations”

I believe He is talking

about those patterns of wounding

that are so often handed down in our families

from one generation to the next.

And what He offers us

is His rebuilding of the ancient ruins,

His restoration in our lives,

His rebuilding within us

of a quality of life that may not have been seen in our blood line for many generations.

And then He goes on to talk with us

about the way in which His healing within us

will recreate us into a unique people on the earth,

a people who proclaim His truth with our lives,

and serve a vital role in His redemptive work in the world.

ISA 61:6 But you will be called the priests of the Lord; You will be spoken of as ministers of our God. You will eat the wealth of nations, And in their riches you will boast.

ISA 61:7 Instead of your shame you will have a double portion, And instead of humiliation they will shout for joy over their portion. Therefore they will possess a double portion in their land, Everlasting joy will be theirs.

He continues on in the next few verses

with comments about the impact His healing within us

will have on the generations that come after us,

and then He ends the chapter

with a concluding picture

of the impact His healing will have on us.

Is. 61:10-11 I will rejoice greatly in the Lord, My soul will exult in my God; For He has clothed me with garments of salvation, He has wrapped me with a robe of righteousness, As a bridegroom decks himself with a garland, And as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. For as the earth brings forth its sprouts, And as a garden causes the things sown in it to spring up, So the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise To spring up before all the nations.

Now, I know this passage does not answer the question

of how our God accomplishes this work within us.

But that is not what it is intended to do.

What it is intended to do for us

is to forever strip away our fears

of our God’s intentions in our lives.

Are you still afraid of Him?

Do you churn over what He might do in you

or to you if you risk reaching out to Him?

If so,

then I urge you to begin with these three chapters in Isaiah,

and accept them as they were offered to us by our God,

the pure and perfect window

into those things our God seeks to accomplish

in the lives of all those who reach out to Him.