If Jesus announced to you that he was going to stay at your house tonight, what rooms would you be sure to show him and what rooms would you close off hoping he’d never see?  If you’re like the Schmuckers, you probably have at least a couple of closets where you stuff everything that won’t fit anywhere else and that look pretty embarrassing.  Are you going to show those closets to Jesus? 

More personally, what if Jesus announced that, during this one hour of worship this morning, he was going to visit your heart and take a personal tour?  What rooms in your heart would you be certain to show him?  Are there any you’d be sure to nail shut while Jesus was there?  Would you show him your heart’s trophy room where you store the memories of all your victories?  Would you show him the photo gallery, that place in your heart where you’ve stored the pictures of all the special people in your life and special places you’ve been and memories you’ve made?  Remember, you only have one hour.  What would you show him?  Would you show him your dream room, where what dreams you still have are sitting around half-finished on workbenches waiting for you to come back to them?  Or, would you show him that room in your heart where no one else has ever gone but you, that place that knows only your footprints?  That place where you keep your secret sins and your worst temptations hidden away.  Would you take Jesus to that room?  Remember, you’ve only got hour.  What rooms would want Jesus to visit?  I know without a doubt what room I’d want him to see first.  Do you?

As we explore this short passage of scripture from the book of Hebrews as a part of our conversation about living from the inside out, this is what it tells us about the God we’ve come here this morning to worship.  He is, for sure, God, high, holy and lifted up.  He lives in the highest high place in heaven, the holiest of holies.  This is the image of holy God, the one and only God to whom every creature who has ever lived will give account.  But, he is also the God who has visited us, in the person of Jesus, in the lowest places, the saddest places, the very weakest places we’ve ever lived.  When God came to visit us in the person of Jesus, he didn’t come asking for a tour of only the best we have to offer.  He came for a tour of the dark backcountry of our souls. 

Here are the fundamental principles this scripture teaches that are at the heart of everything we know about the gospel.  First, there is nothing that God doesn’t know about us, no place in our souls hidden from his view. 

That’s one reason it’s sometimes hard to keep reading the Bible, isn’t it?  It can feel like we’re undergoing spiritual surgery without anesthesia.  “The word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”  Isn’t it true that sometimes we’d just rather not know what God knows about us?

My brother-in-law, Pat, rebuilds antique cars.  He buys these old cars and tears them down and, starting with the engine, rebuilds them from the inside out.  By the time he finishes he can tell just by listening to the hum of the engine if something is wrong or if everything is running smoothly.  He knows everything there is to know about his cars because he built them.

Before the Holy God of the universe, “no creature is hidden, but all are naked and laid bare to the eyes of the one to whom we must render an account,” Hebrews tells us.  Creature implies creator.  We are the handiwork of God.  He knows us from the inside out.  His word reads like an owner’s manual of the human soul because it is.  Reading the Bible can be difficult because when we do we know what God knows about what we know.  Sometimes, we’d rather not know what God knows.  We’d rather keep some things hidden.  We’ll try to fool others, even God, by covering up.  But, God knows.

Even as believers, there is what we do and what we say for others to see and hear.  Then, there is what we really believe and what we think.  We’ll say that we trust God for all that we need and yet worry over material things is really the energy that drives our souls.  We’ll say that we believe it is important to share our faith with others but mostly keep it to ourselves.  The Bible reveals to how God sees beyond what we do and say to what we believe and even what we mean by what we say.  Too often, we profess certain beliefs that are not really ours but which gain us acceptance in the Christian community.  God sees through it all.  There is nothing God does not know.

Second, God is sympathetic with our weaknesses.  Living from the inside out means learning to trust that the Jesus who already knows us better than we know ourselves is interested in helping us with the darkest secrets of our souls.  Otherwise, we’ll forever keep them hidden, hoping he’ll never know about us what the scripture tells us he now knows.  We’ll spend all of our energy covering up our weaknesses instead of getting help with them.

Covering up our weaknesses can get real expensive.  Ask Rush Limbaugh.  Whether you agree with his politics or not, he’s arguably the most influential radio host in American history.  How difficult do you think it was for him to admit to his nationwide audience this week that he is addicted to prescription painkillers?  The good news is that he’s already taken the most difficult step toward actually killing the pain that kept him addicted to the painkillers that didn’t kill the real pain.  In the middle of all of this, if he can have an honest with God about his weakness, he may well discover something that eventually surprises all of us when we do. 

When we go to have that conversation with Jesus about our weaknesses, we’re speaking a language he understands.  He can finish our sentences.  That doesn’t mean that Jesus knows what it’s like to be addicted to OxyContin.  But, if you want to take him on a hike in the backcountry of your soul you’ll find that he’s very familiar with that territory. 

What is your single greatest weakness?  You may well be the only human who knows about it.  You may have never told your wife or husband or your best friend.  Maybe it’s too embarrassing.  Not just some secret sin from the past that still haunts you.  But, the weakness in you that tempts you to commit it again and again.  Would it surprise you to learn that Jesus not only knows about it but that his response to you is one of sympathy?  Listen to the root of the word “sympathy” in the original language of the New Testament.  See if doesn’t feel like it sounds, sumpatheo.  To say that Jesus sympathizes with us in our weaknesses means that he comes alongside us in our weaknesses and, instead of responding in judgment, responds with compassion. 

In fact, Jesus identified with our humanity so closely that it got him in trouble with people who thought that being spiritual means being something other than human.  Wasn’t Jesus accused of being “‘a friend . . . of sinners (Matthew 11:19)’”?  Do you remember the old gospel hymn, “What a Friend We Have In Jesus (Joseph Scriven)”?  One line in particular stands out.  “What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear.”  More often than not, our greatest griefs in life are not the sadness others cause us but the grief that comes with knowing our own frailty.  Not the grief caused when someone we trusted abandoned us, but the grief like no other grief, the grief of betraying ourselves and our own true convictions.  No one can ever truly be your friend who does not know you at your weakest and love you still.  Jesus is that kind of friend.

Do you want proof?  Listen to Jesus in Gethsemane.  Facing the cross in just a matter of hours he prays to his Father, “‘If it be possible, let this cup pass from me (Matthew 26:39).’”  If you’ve been led to believe that being faithful to God means always experiencing immediate joyful gratification and instant victory over every spiritual challenge, think again.  Jesus knows what it means to be in such agony just thinking about faithfulness to God that you’re willing to beg him to give you a pass.  If you’ve ever just wanted to quit, just wanted to give up, if you’re greatest weakness is making bigger promises to God than you know how to keep or knowing how to start more than you can finish, Jesus is sympathetic. 

Then, as Jesus is dying on the cross, the greatest agony of his soul was his fear that his own father had abandoned him.  “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me (Matthew 27:46)?”  If your greatest weakness is the tendency to define the ultimate in terms of the immediate or to believe that not even God cares whether you live or die because of how badly you’re suffering, Jesus is sympathetic.  He’s climbed inside that pain and lived there. 

Jesus knows, is personally acquainted with, our every weakness.  Think about the enormity of what that means.  There is no weakness in your soul Jesus cannot personally identify with.  There is nothing God does not know about us.  There is nothing he knows about us that doesn’t gain his sympathy.  A mystery of the gospel I may never understand is that he got that close to what tempts us to abandon God, “yet without sin,” without succumbing to the same weaknesses we stumble in every day.  There is nothing God does not know about us.  There is no weakness of ours he doesn’t not sympathize with. 

Third, because of all that, we don’t have to be afraid to tell God the truth.  “Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”  We can tell God that now, finally, we know that he knows what we know about ourselves.  We don’t have to be afraid of a God whose greatest concern is helping, not hurting us and there is no need in our lives his grace cannot supply. 

I’ve really been working on my prayer life lately.  I’ve always wanted to pray more than I do although I’m hard pressed to think of a time during the day that the presence of God is a very distant thought for me.  But, it’s more than just wanting to pray more.  I’ve wanted to pray more openly.  To talk to God like the friend the Bible tells me he is.  To take him on a tour of those rooms and closets in my life where I’ve kept things hidden too long and have more honest conversations about what we find there.  Most of us learned to pray by mimicking the prayers of others.  Mimicking phrases and words we never use at any other time in our life, vocabulary that is far removed from the true feelings and needs of our lives.  I want to learn to pray like Jesus.  Honest, open, confessional.  I want to learn to pray like John Donne.  His words are from another century and they sound like it.  But, the pathos in them is as real as my morning paper.  Listen to Donne’s prayer. 

“Wilt thou forgive that sinne where I begunne, which is my sin, though it were done before?  Wilt thou forgive those sinnes, through which I runne, and do run still:  though I deplore?  When thou hast done, thou hast not done, for I have more.  Wilt thou forgive that sinne by which I have wonne others to sinne?  And, made my sinne their doore?  Wilt thou forgive that sinne which I did which I did shunne a yeare, or two:  but wallowed in, a score?  When thou hast done, thou hast not done, for I have more.  I have a sinne of feare, that when I have spunne my last thread, I shall perish on the shore; Swear by thy selfe, that at my death thy sonne shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore; And, having done that, Thou hast done, I feare no more.”  (John Donne, Hymne to God the Father)

By the way, John Donne lived in the 16^th and 17^th centuries.  He was rector of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London.  That’s pretty far up there, as church leadership went in his day.  But, he wasn’t so far up that he didn’t know what it was like to be down.  Neither is Jesus.  Jesus is a friend of sinners.

All of which means, if Jesus were to ask you if he could take a personal tour of your heart this morning, there is no room you couldn’t show him.  Think of that room in your heart where your deepest darkest secrets are kept, and invite Jesus to visit that one first.  What difference would it make in your life if, when you opened the door to that room and showed Jesus what you’ve kept hidden there all these years, the next thing you felt was his arm around your shoulder? 

Would you be willing to open your heart’s door to Jesus today?