(Sunday) God is Near: To the Brokenhearted

Life can hit hard—friendships fall apart, families struggle, seasons change, grief shows up, and sometimes you feel like nobody sees what you’re carrying. In this episode, we talk honestly about what it means to be brokenhearted and why you don’t have to walk through it alone.

Based on Psalm 34:18, this message reminds us that God is not distant in our pain. He is near. He sees you, hears you, holds you, and walks with you—even when life feels confusing, lonely, or overwhelming.

If you’re hurting, healing, grieving, or just trying to make sense of a difficult season, this episode is a reminder that God is closer than He may seem and doing more than you realize.

Transcript

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Uh, I just wanted to share a message over the next two weeks, a two-week message entitled To the Broken Hearted. To the Broken Hearted. Chances are many of you were working through some places in your own life that just feel brokenhearted. You're sad. You're heart? You're confused. Uh, for some of you, uh, you know exactly what I'm talking about because you have worked through that. And it's a difficult journey. The good news as believers, we do not have to go through that alone. The Lord is with us. And today we're gonna talk about that great truth that during these seasons of brokenheartedness, the Lord is near us. The Lord is near. And the next week we're gonna follow it up with this. Not only is the Lord near that we'll discover today in presence, but he is the healer of the broken hearts, and he binds up our womb. So, Psalm chapter number 34, verse number 18, just one beautiful passage of scripture from the psalmist. David writes, and he says, The Lord is near to the brokenhearted. Would you just let that sink in for just a moment? The Lord is near to the brokenhearted, and he saves the crushed in spirit. Father, our hearts are thankful this morning that you are near us, not only in our celebrations and in our moments of victory, but Lord, your word teaches us that you are near to us even when life hurts, when life may not make sense, when tears come more easily than praise, when confusion seems to rule the day over clarity. But it's in those moments that you step into the journey with such clarity for our own life with your presence. And I pray, oh God, that this morning you would speak to every person who is working through a broken heart, and that God, this would be a message not just from their pastor, God, this would be a message from you. And to that end, we'll give you the praise and honor and glory in Christ's good name. And together we said, Amen. We all have this experience in common. We've all experienced at one time or another a broken heart. And they come in all sorts of ways and at all different times. From the youngest among us to our most senior adults, we can all say we've experienced a broken heart at some point or another. Maybe it was because of a friendship that fell apart. Maybe there was a betrayal, maybe there was just a moving away and you lost someone in your life that was very near and dear to you, and you felt the weight of that, and you felt the brokenheartedness of that. Maybe today you're hurting because your kids are hurting. And isn't it true, the old saying, that a mom is only as happy as her saddest child? And that when our kids are hurting or our families are hurting, that we feel the weight of that. Sometimes brokenheartedness comes just because it's a change of season of life. I know that some of you started this week with your children going to school. And I hope you took a tissue with you. Because that is a moment when you realize that one season of life has just changed. And yes, we're thankful for the new season, but it will be different and we will not go back. Or when Trisha and I became empty nesters, we felt that. We felt the emptiness of our heart, and there was a heaviness, there was a sadness. Yes, we were thankful that our kids are gone. And once we got through that initial sadness, I'm telling you, there was a joy unspeakable and full of glory that came to our life after that. For some of us, it's the pain of an ended marriage, or it's the loss of a job, or it's the loss of something or someone that was very precious to us. And one of the cruelest impacts of a broken heart is this is it tries to convince us that we are alone. The grieving, they feel forgotten. The betrayed, they feel abandoned. The depressed, they feel as though they're invisible, and the lonely just feel unnoticed. And perhaps the greatest pain is when it whispers into our eyes, our ears, and our heart. See, no one sees, no one cares. You don't really matter. And we find ourselves in this place of isolation. And when we find ourselves in these moments of life, one of the first things we do is we go to God and we want God to fix it. God, take away the grief, restore the relationship, reverse the diagnosis. It's going to change so much in our world. Remove the disappointment that I feel. God, fix it. And many times God does, but usually before he fixes us, he offers us something different. And that's what the psalmist is saying in Psalm 34. Before he offers relief, he offers his presence. Before God changes the situation that has broken our heart, he enters into that situation with us to be our God in that space. God's nearness is not nearly a feeling, it's an experience through the ways by which our loving Master, our Lord, takes care of us. How is it that we know that the Lord is near us when we're brokenhearted? I want to just show you four things out of our text and out of the scriptures this morning, by which you can find comfort today if you are experiencing a broken heart. And the first way we know that he is near is because the Bible says, our God sees us. Isn't it true when we are brokenhearted, and especially when others around us may not know of the wound or the hurt or the brokenness? We just feel invisible. Like no one sees and no one cares. But notice what the scripture says in our text, in Psalm 34, verse 15, it says, The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous. And throughout the Bible, we discover that God sees our life. One of the most beautiful moments of this is found in Genesis 16 in what is one of the messiest stories in all the Bible, if I might be quite honest with you. And to take you back to that, it is the story of Abraham and Sarah and their servant Hagar. You will remember that God had called Abraham out of the Ur of Chaldees, that he was going to be the father of a great nation, his offspring would be mighty. But the problem was Abraham was an old man and Sarah was barren. And they had gone ten years into this journey, trusting God for what he promised he would do. Yet ten years in, no child, nothing was changing in a positive way. So they took things into their own hands. They wanted to begin to control or figure out how to fix the problem that God didn't seem to be fixing. And they came up with this horrible plan that since Sarah was not able to offer children through natural childbirth, they would use Hagar, her servant, and Abraham would enter into an adulterous affair with her. And they did, she conceives, and in the moment of her conception, the anger, the resentment, the heartache, the heartbreak, it rises and it erupts. So much so that Sarah begins to despise Hagar. And she goes to Abraham and says, Something's got to be done here. And Abraham says, She's your servant. You deal with it. It was your idea to begin with, anyhow. And Hagar or Sarah says to Hagar, You got to leave. You got to get out of here. This was a young lady, now brokenhearted, wounded, abandoned, full of shame and guilt, and God only knows what else. And she is an Egyptian slave, which means she has no empowerment, no forward momentum, she has no pathway in life, and she is in the middle of a desert. I don't know of a messier story in the scripture than this. And if there was ever a moment in a person's life that is so messy and their brokenness that God would probably say, you got yourself in it, you're gonna have to get yourself out of this one. But that's not who our God is. The Bible says our God is near to the brokenhearted. And the Bible says this, and they'll put this verse on the screen behind me. It says that Hagar went out weeping and crying and brokenhearted, and the Lord met her there. The Lord God showed up. And notice what it says. So Hagar called the name of the Lord who spoke to her, the God who came to her in the middle of all her brokenness. He said, You, she said, you are the God of seeing. And she gives us a covenant name of God from the Old Testament, which is Elroy. Elroy, the God who sees me, the God who sees me in my distress, the God who sees my confusion, the God who sees the miscarriage of justice, the God who sees my mistakes, the God who still yet loves me, she says, You are the God foreseen, for she said, Truly here I have seen him who looks after me. And in this beautiful, messy, horrible yet glorious story, we discover that our God is a God near to the brokenhearted, and we know he's near because he sees us. Later on in the Gospels, Jesus places his disciples in a boat. You remember the story, and he sends them on over to the other side while he goes up and he prays. And the scripture says that while he was praying, this takes place. That when the evening came in Mark chapter 6, the boat was out in the sea and he was alone, Jesus that is on the land praying, and he saw that they were making headway painfully, for the wind was against them. And about the fourth watch in the night, he came to them walking on the sea. Before Jesus walked to them, before he ever calmed the storm, he saw them, he saw their pain, he saw their hurt, he saw the darkness of their night. And I come by to encourage someone today that in your dark hour, in the midst of your storm, in all of your straining to try to make it right and trying to get it fixed, in all your sense of loneliness and overwhelming, there is a God in heaven who sees you. His eye is on the sparrow. And if eye is on the sparrow, how much is his eye on you? God sees you, and that's how we know that he is near. One of my favorite passages is 2 Chronicles chapter 16, verse 9. It says, the eyes of the Lord run to and fro across the whole earth, seeking who he may show himself strong on behalf of. I'm telling you, regardless of how dark your night is or how brokenhearted you may be, we know God is near because he sees us. Number two is this God hears us. We know he's near because he hears us. Psalm 34, verse 17. When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears and delivers them out of all their trouble. God hears us. You know, when we're brokenhearted and our world seems to be crumbling around us, there's usually a lot of noise, and we feel as though our voice is just more added noise, and we wonder, does anyone even hear? Is anyone slowing down enough to hear my cries? And the scripture says, our God does. Listen to these other verses. You may want to jot them down. Psalm 18, verse 6. In my distress I called to the Lord, I cried to the God for help, to my God for help. And from his temple, listen to this, he heard my voice. Psalms 40, verse 1. I waited patiently for the Lord, and he turned to me and he heard my cry. Psalm 66, verse 19. But the Lord has surely listened, and he has, say it with me, heard my prayer. Back in the early 2000s, there was a movie that came out that was uh uh it was just good. It was just well thought through. It was the movie Bruce Almighty. Some of you might remember that the plot was simply this. The character uh played by Jim Carrey was a newsman and he was just kind of down on his luck and he was mad because he just had all this bad luck and everything that could go wrong had gone wrong, and he just was lamenting and mad and mad at God and said, You know, if I was God, these things wouldn't be happening. And then uh God shows up in the character of Morgan Freeman. It was a clever movie. And and and Morgan Freeman's character says, Well, you know, Bruce, I'm gonna give you what you asked for. For the next five days, I'm gonna give you all my divine attributes, and you can be God. And then one of the scenes that followed was the morning when Morgan Freeman came and said, Oh, by the way, you need to start answering these prayers. And Bruce was like, Well, good, I'm ready to do some good work here. And immediately all these voices start being heard in his ears. Thousands on top of thousands. And it's like, I got a school test, I need a job, give me an out of this ticket. My dad has cancer, my mom just died, all these things. And he's like, Whoa, whoa, whoa, this is too much. I can't listen to all this. He says, So I need a better idea. We need organization, we need file cabinets, file cabinets, and immediately thousands of file cabinets just show up. And he's like, Oh, wow, that's a lot. Says, don't need file cabinets, old school. We need some, we need posties. And immediately now posties with all these prayers are all around his house on the walls, on the ceiling, on the dog. And he says, This isn't working either. He says, Oh, we got this new thing called email, and it was Yahweh, you've got mail. Here we go. And he sits down, he says, I'll bring him in on an email, and he sits down and it begins to die on 1.5 million. He's oh, hey, wait a minute, but I'm God, I can do this quick. And supernaturally he's typing all these, and he says, Okay, I should have really put a dent in there. And now there were 10 million. And I thought, boy, that was clever. Because we maybe in our moments of brokenheartedness think that our voice is just one of nine billion other from the earth, and does my voice even matter? Does my voice even matter? I mean, with all the other people that are crying out to God, all the other prayer requests, how how do I even cue up in line for that? And when I finally get to the front of the line, I better get it right, right? Because there's a lot more. And we have this imaging of God. Just the other day or a few months ago, we're in a staff meeting and we were talking about the new building and some changes, and all of a sudden, all the staff, there's about 15 of us in there, and we're talking, and everybody's talking on top of one another. Everybody's giving ideas and concerns, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I finally says, Stop, stop, stop. I'm sorry, I can't understand the words you're saying because everyone is talking on top of one another. And I wonder at times in my brokenheartedness, do I think that must be how God must feel at times? So overwhelmed by the number of requests, so overwhelmed by the number of voices that are rising up. Yet the scripture teaches us something much different. Do you realize that Jesus said that the sheep knows the shepherd's voice and that the sheep will not follow another? But there's also a truth we sometimes miss, and it's that the shepherd knows the voice of the sheep. And it's not just a nine billion that are on the earth, he knows the unique tone of your voice, and he listens, and he listens closely. And I want you to know this morning, your God hears your prayer and your voice. It's one of the first things we discover about God in Exodus chapter 2. The scripture says that the Lord speaks to Moses. Or the Lord speaks, telling the story, and it says this that the Israelites continue to groan under the burden of their slavery. They cried out for help, and their cries rose to God. Now, watch this God heard their groaning. God does not just hear our praise, God does not just hear our words of affirmation and declaration. God hears our groanings. He hears us when we're broken, and he's paid full attention. Any of you men ever done this in your marriage? You've come home and you sat down and you asked your wife how her days go, and she said fine. And because you went through premarital counseling, you've learned that fine doesn't usually mean fine in that context. And you say, wait a minute, I remember something. Hey, go ahead and tell me what's going on. And all of a sudden she begins to pour out her heart. And she begins to, and you're sitting there and you're doing what most guys do. You're funneling with the remote or you're with your phone or you're just doing something. To which she'll say at some point, what? You're not listening to me. And then we make the cardinal sin mistake. We say, Oh, yes, I am, and we quote back exactly what she just said. To which she gets mad and she stomps out. You're going, wait a minute, I thought you said I wasn't listening. I just, it wasn't that I was just hearing audibly. What she's saying, and our wives saying that moment is, I need you to look at me. I need you to give me some attention, I need you to focus in on me. The good news is we never have to say to God, God, you're not even listening. You're distracted by what's going on in the Middle East, or you're distracted by this other great need. God says, No, you have my full attention, and I'm listening to every word, and I'm listening and I'm leaning in. The reason we know God is near is because God listens. Number three is this. We know God is near because not only does He see and not only does He listen, but God holds us. God holds us. The psalmist goes on to say, I cling to the Lord and His right hand holds me. I cling to the Lord. It's like, God, I'm trying to cling to you, but it's not me holding you, it's actually you holding me. As parents, all of us remember when our children were hurting, and there was just something instinctive in us as parents that when they were hurting, we would go and we would gather them up and we would wrap our arms around them. We would hold them, we would lift them up. Even though they cling to us, they weren't the ones holding on. We were the ones holding on to them. And this is a picture of our God, actually. He says, in those moments of brokenheartedness, I am holding you. And we remember as kids when we were hurt, crawling into our mom's lap or our grandmother's arms, and they would just hold us. The amount of comfort that that brings is hard to measure, but we all know intuitively it is a priceless moment that in our pain we're being held. This past week it was a tough week around grace. Three different families facing crisis and tragedy and death. Bramlett's, the Tilleries, the Perries. It was a lot. And if it was only those three, it would have been a lot. But we're a church of over a thousand people, and there's a lot of pain, and there's a lot of sorrow, and there's a lot of crisis that we're trying to help people navigate through. And at the service on Tuesday, as I was here, I was talking to Trisha, my wife, in the back, and I said, Hey, why don't you sit with me today? She said, Well, I usually don't. I like to sit in the back because we got the care team and we need a mill and I want to make sure everything, and if there's a problem, I said, No, why don't you sit with me today? Sometimes it gets lonely on the front row. Sometimes you feel the weight of the burdens of the family that we care for. And I was sitting right there, and we were going through the service, and there came this moment, it was so precious, I haven't even shared it with her, and I'm sorry for that. She just reached over and she held my hand. She just touched me. She patted my leg. There's something about the touch that matters. And the God we serve is a God who is not distant, but he comes near and he touches us and he holds us. One of the precious stories in the Gospels is the story in Mark chapter 1 when there is a leper who comes towards Jesus. The disease of leprosy was a death sentence. It was highly contagious. Matter of fact, according to the Israeli law, if you were a leper, you were to cry out, leper Leper to those who were approaching you, so they would avoid any contact with you. But Christ came to dwell among us and show us the fullness of the Father. And Jesus, as this leper comes and he says, Lord, I know you're able, but are you willing to heal me? Jesus, watch this, in that moment could have spoken the word. And the words that spoke of the universe into existence could have cursed the leprosy at that moment, and he would have been made clean in that second by simply speaking the word. But Jesus did not just speak the word. He touched on it. The right of Hebrews says we do not have a high priest in Jesus who is not touched by the feelings of our infirmities. That Jesus knows your hurt. Jesus sees your tears when no one else does. Jesus understands your pain. And he comes so that he may touch you and hold you. Isaiah 41, verse 10. The Lord says, Do not be afraid, for I am your God. Don't be dismayed by the circumstances that are rocking your world right now. For I will strengthen you, I will help you. Watch this. I will hold you in my mighty right hand. Hallelujah be to God. He holds us. And finally, this morning is this. And not only does God hold us, but thank God He walks with us. He walks with us. From the very beginning of Scripture, we see this imagery that God is a God who desires to be with us. In Genesis chapter 3, the Bible says that in the cool of the day when God would walk with Adam and Eve, he came towards them. He didn't just come walk with them when everything was well in their life. That imaging of the living God walking with his creation happens after their fall, after their misery, after their foolishness and folly. God says, I want to walk with you. In Leviticus chapter 26, verse 12, the Lord says, I will walk among you, and I will be your God, and you will be my people. Do you see the closeness there? In Exodus chapter 33, he says to Moses, Moses, my presence will go with you. And in that presence I will give you rest. And it was the psalmist who wrote that psalm that comforts us and holds us so dear in these moments of life. That 23rd, that psalm of David. Yes, even when I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. For the Lord my God, my shepherd, he is with me. His rod and his staff that comfort me. And in the midst of all that pain and hurt, he says, He sets a table before me in the presence of my enemy, that I might sit and eat and be satisfied and know that he is good. And there he anoints my head with oil. He pours out his goodness on me in such a way that my cup runneth over. So that at the end of my life I look back and say, I have learned this great truth. Goodness and mercy followed me all the days of my life as I walked with the Lord. And when my life here is over, I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever and ever and ever and ever and ever. Amen. With the God who walked with me. It was Luke who gave us that story on the resurrection morning. When two disciples were brokenhearted. And Jesus, the resurrected King, who had just defeated death, hell, and the grave, and did everything he promised to do, he shows up, and there are two brokenhearted men there. And he does not rebuke them, he doesn't chastise them, and he doesn't abandon them. On the morning of the resurrection, he took a long, slow walk with two broken-hearted men. How do I know the Lord is near? Because he walks with me and he talks with me, and he lets me know that I am his own. And I've come by to minister mercy and grace and comfort to you. The prophet Isaiah said, Comfort, comfort my people. I've come to comfort someone today who's carrying a broken heart. Maybe it's because of some unthinkable tragedy. Maybe it's because life has just shifted. Maybe you're just in a season where sadness seems to overwhelm you at every corner. And I'm telling you, the living God says to us this morning, I am near you. I see you, I hear you, I will hold you, and I will walk with you. And I want to remind you, those two disciples with broken hearts, though Jesus was walking with them all day, it wasn't until the end of the day they looked back and said, I Jesus was here. And you may be here right now saying, I don't know if he's walking with me. I don't know. I'm telling you, he is closer than he appears, and he's doing more than you think.