(Sunday) To the Brokenhearted: God Heals

In this episode, we explore what God does with a broken heart. Using the powerful story of Desmond Doss from Hacksaw Ridge and Psalm 147, this message reminds us that God doesn’t ignore our pain or tell us to “just get over it.” He comes near, heals what’s broken, binds up our wounds, redeems our hurt, and uses our story to bring hope to others.

If you’re dealing with heartbreak, betrayal, grief, shame, disappointment, or wounds from your past, this conversation is a reminder that your pain is not the end of your story. God is still healing, still restoring, and still able to turn even the darkest chapters into something meaningful for His glory.

Transcript

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In the movie Hatsaul Ridge, uh, we find the incredible story of Desmond Doss, who was a World War II veteran who was awarded the United States Medal of Honor. What makes his Medal of Honor so remarkable is that he was the first American soldier who was a conscientious observer to be awarded this honor. Doss, a devoted Christian with a deep, deep abiding conviction that one man should not take another man's life, found himself in this paradox, also knowing that America was at war and freedom was being challenged. And he knew he needed to do something. So he joined up in the army and he chose to be a medic, a medic that would not even carry a sidearm. At first he was ridiculed, he was considered a coward, but his story takes on a remarkable story of courage in Okinawa. As the American army was taking Hacksaw Ridge, it was a devastating battle, one of the bloodiest battles in all of World War II. And the American forces were taking incredible casualties. Matter of fact, we would end up withdrawing from this. And as people were running down the hill, running for safety, it was Doss who ran towards the hill without gun, without weapon, to fulfill his duty to give aid to those who had been wounded who had been hurting. And he began to pray as a believer, Lord, send me to someone. Send me to someone who's hurting. And as he was seeing the shrapnel and the bullets buzzing by his head, he heard the cry of a guy and he ran to him and immediately he told him, Hey, I'm here, I'm with you, don't be afraid. I'm here, I'm gonna get you out of here. And this young man picked up these wounded soldiers and he carried them down to a place where they could be healed and they would find a place of safety. He didn't just do it once or twice, he did it 75 times, placing his own life in peril, as he went to those who had been wounded and broken, comforted them, and then lifted them up and carried them to a place where they could find healing. As I watched this story and this movie, I thought that's a picture of our God. Our God who in the battles of our life finds many of us, his image bears broken and wounded and shattered, scared and fearful, unable to get out of the mess ourselves. And it is the goodness of God that brings him to us. But he doesn't just come to us to let us know that he is there, he comes to us that he might heal us in our place of brokenness. And that's what the psalmist is saying in our text this morning. Psalms 147. Would you notice this with me? David writes, and he says, That our God heals the brokenhearted and he binds up their wound. Our God heals the brokenhearted and he binds up our wound. Last week we answered this question: where is God when my heart is broken? And we looked to the scripture and we discovered that when our heart is broken, the Bible says, God comes near to us. That in the middle of our hurt and heartache, it is a God that we serve who comes near and he sees us and he hears us and he walks with us and he holds us. But God does not just come to sit with us in our pain that we may remain in that place of pain forever. No, God comes to do more than just be present. And what we discover in Psalms 147 is this it's what God does with our broken heart when he comes near. The psalmist gives us two dynamic pictures. He says, number one, he heals our broken body, and then number two, he binds up our wounds. He heals that which has been broken, and then he begins to bandage up the wounds that came out of that brokenness. And this morning I just want to talk to you for a few moments about a God who, in the midst of our brokenheartedness, not only comes near to us to be with us and to comfort us with his presence, but he is a God who comes near that he may bring healing to our broken hearts and that he may bind up and bandage up our wounds. You may want to take a few notes today. Here's four little things I want you to know about your God. Number one is we discover in the scripture that God is a healer, that the God you and I serve is a healing God. Throughout the scripture, we discover this from the Old Testament through the ministry of Jesus and the ministry of the apostles and the early church. Healing is woven into the story of God. It is a part of our God's nature. In Exodus chapter 15, when God is revealing himself to the children of Israel after he brings them out of 400 years of slavery and they had lost sight of God, he said to them, I want you to know this about me. I am the God who heals you. Friends, you and I, we do not come to a God who is indifferent to our pain. We come to a God who is longing to heal every place in our life that is hurting, physically, emotionally, spiritually, relationally, that there is not one place in your life that he does not want his healing touch to encounter. What does God do with our brokenhearted? What does God do for us? Psalms 147 says, well, first of all, he doesn't ignore it, he doesn't tell us to move on, and he certainly doesn't just say, Well, you just need to get over it, move on. This is life. Rather, the Bible teaches us that when God sees our brokenhearted and broken lives, he comes near it to heal it. See, the broken heart that you and I face throughout life is not evidence that we don't have faith in a healer, it's evidence that we're part of the human experience. Jesus said these words. None of us place these on our refrigerator, by the way, but these are words from the master when he says, In this life you will have problems. In this life you will have struggles, in this life you will have setbacks and difficulties and heartaches. But he says, Do not be afraid, because I have overcome the world. And because I've overcome the world, I'm going to come to you and I'm going to give you my overcoming power that you too may walk in this. And what we discover throughout the pages of our scripture is that God encounters some of his giants of faith in moments of brokenheartedness. Jesus Himself, we see when he there were moments in which he was brokenhearted. You remember there at Lazarus' tomb, right? Where he sat, stood there outside the tomb of his dear friend who had died. And the Bible says that Jesus said with me. Jesus, he wept. He's identifying with that pain. He steps into that pain. But he doesn't just sit there and weep and cry. He brings healing. He brings healing. He says to Lazarus, Lazarus, come forth. And Christ comes to us today in the places of our brokenness, those places that are wounded, that have confusion, that may even feel as though they have died. And he doesn't just come in compassion, though he does. He also comes that he might bring healing and call us by name and bring out new life in our life. David, the psalmist, that great praiser that we are just so thankful for. We also discover that in his life he experienced great anguish. Or Jeremiah, he's known as the weeping prophet. And there we discover that Jeremiah knew grief, and Paul, well, he was deeply acquainted with sorrow, he said. It's a part of the human experience. Now, healing when God comes to heal us doesn't always mean that God changes our circumstances. But how many of you are thankful when he does change our circumstances? Sometimes he changes us in the circumstance. Sometimes healing happens quickly. Don't you love that? Kind of get an amen there. That when God just does it and it's just like a supernatural outpouring of his grace and mercy, and God just heals. But oftentimes God heals over time. The promise is not that only that God is a healer, but he is a healer of our broken hearts. And we can participate in this. You and I get to participate in the work of God as He's bringing healing to our brokenness. We seek wise counsel, we pray, we forgive, we grieve, we process, and as we move forward, we make healthy decisions under the leadership of the Holy Spirit. But ultimately, in all of that, we still sit back and we declare, God, in my brokenness, you are my healer. David says, Our Lord is the healer of the broken hearts. If you're here this morning and your heart is broken, we just heard that there are many in the scriptures who've had to experience that and did experience that, but God came. I can promise you on this, in this large congregation this morning, and the yarn large congregation that will follow, on every row of chairs, there are people who have stories of a broken heart. Where the relationship fell apart, where the marriage didn't make it, where the business failed, where the kids disappointed, when a relationship was broken, when there was a betrayal, there was something that wounded your heart. And the Lord says, I just don't come to you to comfort you in the sense that I am there. I am coming to you that in my presence with you, I am gonna bring healing because I am the Lord thy healer. Hallelujah be to God. God is a healer. But notice number two here. I want you to notice not only is our God a healer, God binds up our wounds. God binds up our wounds. The psalmist says, the Lord is the healer of the broken heart, binding up their wounds. Another way we could say it is this that he bandages our wounds. Wounds need attention, don't they? The imagery here that we see is that of a physician or a medical personnel who comes along, the injured, and they begin to bind up or they begin to cover, they begin to cleanse, they begin to care for, they begin to protect, and it gives the wound an opportunity to heal. It's not that he just heals us, but from the moment, but now the wound that arose from that wound, that event, God says, now I want to bring healing to. How many of you know you can belong beyond the event or whatever hurt you and still have a festering wound? Festering wound of anger or hatred or unforgiveness, a need of revenge, a sense of shame or grief that is overwhelming. That is almost the wound is almost as bad as the event itself. At times it's even worse. And all of us have wounds. Some of the wounds we have are very obvious, others are invisible, and sometimes the wound is still affecting us long after the event is over. And sometimes we tried to hide our wounds from God and from everyone else. And sometimes healing, though, means that we're gonna allow God to heal those things and deal with those things that we have hidden or we've tried to bury or we've tried to walk away from or we will not let anyone come near into. But God says, I've come to you that I might heal you, but I also want to bandage up the wound that is festering in your life, which means at times we may have to work through grief and disappointment, that sense of betrayal that took place, the unforgiveness that we feel towards someone, or the regret of a mistake that we made that we would give anything in our life to go back and redo. The good news is this the Lord sees it even if we try to hide it. And if we will simply come clean and say, Here it is, God, would you begin to heal this wound that is in me? Can I tell you, he is not afraid to touch the wound of your life? He is not afraid to step into the messy of your world. He is not afraid to get into the places where you want no one else to go. And when he gets there, he is not there to wound or to hurt or to cause more damage. He is there to bring healing to that which is wounded. Years ago, uh when I was in college, I was working for a company, and while on the job, I had cut myself pretty substantially. Uh, so much so it took about 20 stitches to tie me back up. Uh and I remember uh the wound itself hurt, but after a few moments and pressure, the wound stopped hurting. And I thought, well, maybe I'll be all right. And then the boss man came around and said, uh, yeah, we're going on down to uh uh urgent care. And I got there and they said, Yeah, well, you're gonna have to have a bunch of stitches, but before we do that, we got to clean it out. And it's like, all right, do what you need to do. So, well, you may want to look aside. I said, I'm pretty strong. And that doctor, because he was so good and he cared so well and he was so well trained, you know what he had to do? He had to open up that wound. He had to dig out some of the stuff that had gotten in there. And that's part of the healing that the Lord does in our life. I am thankful on the other side of it that the Lord just doesn't put a band-aid on our wound and say, go to pestilite. But the Lord says, I'm gonna go in there as the great physician, and I'm gonna dig out that which is festering, that which is causing disease, that which hurts us. Not only does he heal us, but in those wounds that we have carried from that event, he says, I have come to bring you healing. Wound care may involve confession in our life, forgiveness to someone who has done us wrong. It may mean letting something go that we have held on to as we have sought revenge. It might be just speaking the truth of God over that, receiving counsel, asking for help. But there is healing available for you. There's this passage in Jeremiah that Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, who I mentioned earlier, experienced a lot of pain and wounds. In a nation of Israel that had turned their back against God, and because of that, there was a lot of mayhem and chaos that they were having to sort through. And they finally come to the end of their play, their themselves, and they're crying out and they're thinking, where's God in all this? Where is God? God, I'm hurting, I'm wounded, I need you. And the prophet Jeremiah asked him this question. He says, Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no balm? A balm would have been a salve, an ointment that could have been placed on a wound. And Jeremiah is saying, The Lord our God is that balm of Gilead. The Lord Himself comes and He sits down on that place that is wounded and hurt. He touches it and he brings his healing touch, his healing anointing, his healing virtue to that place. He rubs it in. Thought about that yesterday as uh we are finishing up our honey harvest for this year. Chandler decided that we would do, uh my son Chandler decided that we would do honey from the mountains this year. Like we didn't have enough honey already, he decided to go raise another 400 pounds of it. And so yesterday we were processing it, and I was thinking about honey and its medical benefits. Did you know that during the Civil War that they would take honey, and when there was an amputee in a battle, that they would pack that wound with honey because it was antimicrobial and it would keep infection from so they would take it as a salve and they would rub it all over it and then they would bandage it up. And I was thinking about that as we were working through our honey yesterday. I thought, thank you, Lord, that you were the balm of Gilead. Thank you, Lord, that you didn't just drag me off the battlefield and just put a tourniquet on there, and I hope it works out. But like those medics in the Civil War, they would bring that wounded soldier, they would take care of the injury that took place, but they would also bind it up with that honey and with bandages. And I'm thankful that we serve a God who gives us that very same imaging. I will bring you out of that place, and I am not only gonna heal you from the event and bring you out of that event, but the wound that is resulting from that, I'm gonna put my sweet Holy Spirit upon there. I'm gonna give you my grace and my mercy and my strength and my compassion, and I'm gonna give you my joy, and it's gonna become that balm that covers those wounds in our life. And he says, Then I'm gonna wrap it up just right, and I'm gonna hold you near because he's not just a God that heals, but he is a God that binds up our wounds. What wound are you carrying today? What event from some point in your life today still impacts your life? So we see that God is our healer, that he binds up our wounds, and number three is this God redeems our hurts. God redeems our hurts. It would be marvelous if he was our healer and he bound up our wounds, and we were able to move on and just look back and say, Yes, that was a very dark chapter of my life. The Lord brought me out of it, and I've just moved on and forgot about it. But God does more than that. God says, in that chapter of your life, and that season where you were broken and wounded and hurt and brokenhearted, he says, I'm gonna redeem that time for my glory. Romans 8 28 gives us this great promise. Sometimes we hear this and it feels cliche. But can I remind us, beloved, that there is nothing in the Word of God that is cliche? They are the promises of God to his people in every season, in every moment of our life. And the Apostle Paul gives us this word. He says, For we know that those, for those who love God, all things work together for good. All things work together for good. Paul, listen, what Paul is not saying is that all things are good. Some things that come in our life are terrible. Some of those events are unjust. Some things break our heart. Cancer is not good. Betrayal is never good. Divorce is not good even when it's necessary. Abuse is not good. And so often in our life, loss is not good. But Paul is not saying those are good things. He's saying no, in those bad things, our God is able to step into those moments of our life because we love God and are called to his purpose, and he is able to turn good out of bad. Paul doesn't have to call the wound good in order to bring something good out of it. I need you to hear me say that again this morning. God, Paul's saying God doesn't have to look at what's happened in your life and say, well, that was good and I'll bring something good out of it. He can see what happened in your life, be it evil, perpetuated by someone else, or a mistake that you have made in your own journey, that may be a mess, maybe a disaster, maybe a catastrophic thing to your relationships and your present-day reality. But God says, regardless of how bad that is, I am a God who is bigger than that chapter of your life, that that story, that event, and he says, if you'll love me and trust me, I will turn it around and I will turn it around for good. Hallelujah be to God. It means that my pain doesn't win the day, my wound does not define me, that there is a God who, in the midst of all of that, says, I will turn it for good. Hallelujah be to God in this house this morning. Joseph may be our greatest example of that in the scriptures. Joseph, a young man who loved God and just tried to serve the Lord well. You know the story, his brother sold him into slavery. He was manipulated, he was thrown into prison, there was all this, and it would have been so easy for him to say, God, where are you in all of this? And the list of his hurts and the list of his wounds would have filled pages and pages. But Joseph would say to his brothers, he said, What you meant for evil against me, God has turned for good. God has turned for good. Can I give you this big truth? And I wrote it down. I want to read it just as I wrote it down. What happened to you may very well be part of your story. But it doesn't have to determine your story. It ha it doesn't have to determine your identity, your value, your purpose. It no longer has to hold you and bind you. Because God says if you'll trust me with it, I Will redeem it. Here's the fourth and last thing is God now uses what he heals. God will now use what he has healed in our own life. God doesn't simply heal us so we can say, Whew, I'm not hurting anymore. God says, I'm going to turn that wound into healing for my glory, so that through that your life will bear fruit for my glory. Listen to what 1 Corinthians chapter 1, verse 3 and 4 says. I love this passage. I just love this so much. I use this so often. Paul says, now to the God of all comfort, say those words, all comfort, all comfort. Aren't you thankful he didn't say some comfort? Occasional comfort? Earned comfort? Eventual comfort? He says, now to the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all of our discomfort. Whatever you're discomforted in today, family, relationships, failure, shame, grief, whatever brings you discomfort, the God of all comfort wants to comfort you in that place of affliction and discomfort in your life. And if we could, we could just put a period there and say, hallelujah, let's move on. But notice what it says. So that we may be able to comfort those who are in affliction themselves. With the comfort with which we ourselves have been comforted of God. God says, Listen, I'm going to heal your heart, I'm going to bind up your wounds. I'm going to redeem that story. And then that redemption, I'm going to comfort you in the midst of your affliction, so that in time when you've experienced me, the God of all comfort, that comforted you in all your discomfort, you're going to walk out of that season and you're going to find other people who are discomforted just like you were. And you're going to be able to comfort them with the comfort that I gave you through you. God says, I am not wasting your pain. I am not wasting that moment. You may see it as a dark, dark moment of your life, a chapter that you want to put on the shelf, but God says, I am the God, the healer of the broken heart. And he says, not only will I heal it, not only will I bind it, not only will I redeem it, but I will use it for my glory that you might comfort others who are going through the same exact experience that you did. That you may tell them God is with you. God will not fail you. He will not abandon you. He'll be your strength. He'll be your joy. He'll be your peace. He'll be your strong refuge. He will be a place of hiding for you in the season of your calamity. He is for you and he is a healing God. He's not going to just sit there and weep with you, but he's going to put his hand of healing on your life. And he's going to put his bandages of protection around you so that he might redeem that which has been lost in the story, so that through it all he may receive glory. And you'll be able to give that story. That's a whole different story than just laying around wounded all the time. Pained all the time. You remember that story with Thomas and Jesus on the resurrection? Thomas in a crisis of his own faith. Said, unless I see his nail-pierced hand on his side, I won't believe. And then Jesus appears. You know what he appears with? He appears with scars from a wound. But the scars don't only testify that there was a wound. The scar testifies that there was a healing and an overcoming that came. And for some of us, God has done that and he has healed us and he has brought us out. And we're just doing all we can. I can't let you see my scar. I can't let you see this. I can't, you can't see this. But it may be the very scar of God's breakthrough healing in your life that brings healing. Because it was when Thomas saw the scars on the wounded, resurrected Savior. He fell to his knees and said, My Lord, and my