I still remember the spring evening our oldest child learned to ride a bicycle. She exclaimed with delight, “It’s a lot more fun than falling down and scraping my legs!” That’s true for all of us, isn’t it? Making it through life’s good times is a lot more fun than the painful times. The trouble is, we do fall off our bikes, and it hurts.

 

The key to surviving all of life’s bike wrecks is seeing God’s big picture. And strangely enough, that big picture doesn’t begin with grace and help, but rather with a view of a terrifying, all-seeing God. Only then are we able to see the tender, sympathetic Friend, Jesus our priest. The place to start when life’s burdens weigh us down is with God’s fresh word to us (v. 12). That word isn’t dead, something from the past. It’s living. You know what I’m talking about. You come to church, hear the sermon, and think the pastor has been listening in your kitchen window or reading your private emails. How did he know? How did my Sunday School teacher know? It’s God’s word!

 

How many of you this morning have ever experienced the healing that comes from surgery? We forget sometimes that the only way healing can come is if two other realities are in place: an honest diagnosis and a very sharp, precise scalpel. God’s speech continues to have a presence in our midst. It surgically lays us open, bare before the living God, to examine our sin, our weakness, our needs, examining our motives, our will, mind and emotions (vv. 12-13).

 

Once we have experienced the surgical, honest reality of God’s word in us, then we are ready for this beautiful invitation to grace. That grace and help are sponsored by God’s Son, Jesus, who is qualified to help us for at least three reasons (vv. 14-15): 1) he’s in direct touch with God…he has passed through the heavens and is at God’s right hand; 2) he’s tender…he can sympathize with us, because he has been tested as we have; 3) he’s pure…he is morally qualified, because even though he was tested, he never failed; he never sinned. Now I ask you. Would you want your spiritual help from anyone less than Jesus? Would you want to leave out any one of those attributes? Someone who is not in touch with God, or not sympathetic, or not pure?

 

This pure, strong and tender Jesus ushers us into God’s presence when we are hurting. Do you hear those wonderful words of invitation? Read v. 16. “Let us…approach the throne of grace…” Note that it is no longer a throne of judgment, but one of grace, and we are to keep coming (the force of the Greek verb is “let us keep coming”). Through the gift of Jesus, the great Priest, the tender one who has been tested in every way we have, yet without sin, the COURT ROOM is transformed to a SCHOOL ROOM (a thought borrowed from the great 20^th century preacher, Ralph Sockman). I remember reading in a baseball magazine several years ago that when baseball scouts are scouting young prospects for the majors, they actually want to see a player fail (make an error, throw a homerun pitch, etc.) so they can see how well the player bounces back. In the same way, God cares about us during our broken times. And God wants to see how we are willing to use those broken times to grow. The pain in our lives doesn’t mean God is farther away; it means God is nearer and that grace is in abundant supply.

 

I want you to consider a quote that really touched me one day when I was doing a private prayer retreat: “Whatever my present circumstances, Christ will meet me there. However confused, bewildering, boring or chaotic my life, God is involved in it right now. No matter how little or how much I think I love and serve God, God is waiting, ready to deepen our relationship” (Norvene Vest).

 

Read carefully the second half of v. 16: “so that we receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” Let me show you a beautiful word picture of this word help. In Acts 27 we read that the Apostle Paul was shipwrecked. The narrator tells that as the ship was splitting from the force of the storm, “they passed ropes under the ship itself to hold it together…” (Acts 27:17, NIV). The Greek word for ropes is the very same word used here in v. 16 for help. During your life storm, God is roping your life together. Jesus is holding your life’s pieces and pouring out grace and mercy!

 

The Jewish rabbis used to say that it is not in our power to place the divine teachings directly into someone’s heart. All that we can do is place them on the surface of the heart, so that when the heart breaks, the teachings drop in. Now do you begin to see the connection between the first section of this text (about God’s word cutting and examining us) and the second section (about God’s mercy available in our time of brokenness)? What truth of God’s has been lying on the surface of your heart, waiting to enter? And what broken heart issue is allowing God to teach you, reach you and love you? Come, experience mercy and grace to help in time of need.