Let's read again in Psalm 69. Psalm 69. And verse 20. Reproach has broken my heart, and I am full of heaviness. And I looked for some to take pity, but there was none, and for comforters, but I found none. It's especially the words beginning our text, reproach has broken my heart. Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me. You've all heard it. You've maybe said it, and it is a lie. It is so untrue, and all of us know it as well. Anyone who's been a victim of verbal bullying, of online abuse, of ridicule, mockery, sarcasm, knows that words go deeper than any number of sticks and stones. They affect us longer. They affect us deeper. They impact a far bigger part of our being. than a stick or a stone. Most of us were in scrapes or fights or skirmishes growing up of one kind or another, and we may even in our bodies have some scars to prove it. We don't think about them every day or every week or maybe at all. However painful they were at the time, they're almost forgotten, and you might see the odd scar now and again, and, oh yeah, I remember that. But words that were spoken 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago can be with us every single day of life. in one way or another, insults, reproaches, mockery. There's a wide range of examples we could give of this. A reproach, an insult might involve just a total lie about you. It's completely untrue. Somebody just decides one day to just make something up and say it to you or about you to others. Or it may be an exaggeration of what is true. So, you might have someone who is slightly overweight and They get called all sorts of names, fat, shaming names. For myself, I was very skinny as a kid, as a boy growing up, and as all the young boys know here, that's just about the worst thing that can happen to you. I was called names at school, such as the Cambodian, the Kampuchean kid. And that might not mean anything much to you, but at the time, these countries were all over the news because of famines. And pictures of kids with big bloated stomachs and bones sticking out of their bodies, that went deep. And there was a truth in it, but of course it was an exaggeration that became an insult and a reproach. It might be a distortion of something that you have said. So you say something in one context, and somebody takes these words and completely distorts them, takes them out of context, presents them in a totally different way, and the effect is that you are a victim of mockery, sarcasm, insults, hatred even. Perhaps one of the worst examples of a reproach or an insult is when somebody takes something that you really view as the core part of your personality, your being, your existence, something that you really value about yourself, and somebody calls you the exact opposite. So, for example, for myself, One of the things that I really, like it's number one in my life is truth, to be truthful, to be thought of as someone with integrity. I hope it's number one in all of our lives, that you're willing to stand for the truth and suffer for the truth. I remember one time in my life where somebody called me to my face, you're a liar. It was in front of a number of other people. I still feel that to this day, because it was like, if you wanted to give me the biggest insult you possibly could, that would be the area that you would work in. And it might be different for you. Today, it might even just involve telling the truth. I don't know, maybe the younger people have heard of this new activity called Doxxing, D-O-X-X-I-N-G, and what that means is basically hackers hack into your computers, your online activity, your finances, your medical records, and they put them up on the internet for public view. It happens to celebrities usually, more than ordinary people, so that everything there is true about them. It's all a factual record, but it's been done to shame them, to bring disgrace and contempt upon them. So, you see, the human race is remarkably creative and imaginative in how it reproaches others, insults others, and it can be done by one person. It can be done by a small group of people. It can be done by a big group. It could even be a whole year group. And again, I'm sure the young people here at school, they know that in every year group of school, there's one person that seems to be the person everyone picks on. Everyone decides to exclude and isolate and belittle and humiliate. It can be done face to face. reproaches, face-to-face. It's often done behind the back, though, of the person, isn't it? The effect is the same, but the nature of the offense is different. In fact, it doesn't even need to be words. It can be expressions, facial expressions. We can walk past somebody and have a facial expression that effectively reproaches them and belittles them, even body language. You can do this by just walking past somebody and deliberately ignoring them, and the effect is exactly the same. And what's the aim? What's the aim of all these reproaches, these insults, these expressions, that body language, that silence? The aim is shame. The aim is shame. The aim is to belittle, to humiliate, to demean, to degrade, to isolate, to exclude. The aim is that that person feels afraid to show their face, to come into contact with you and with others. It makes them want to hide, to run away, to cut themselves often, or even to take their own lives. Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will break my heart. That's a far more accurate statement. It's a far more biblical statement. And it's a statement that we find on the very lips of Jesus Christ. In this Messianic Psalm, in verse 20, he says, "'Reproach has broken my heart.'" Reproach has broken my heart." He himself was the victim of reproaches, reproaches that led to shame. Because notice it says in verse 19, thou hast known my reproach and my shame. Verse 7, "'Because for thy sake I have borne reproach, shame has covered my face.'" You see, the aim of reproaches is shame. The aim is power over another person, to weaken that person so much that you actually have a sort of control over them, that you can turn other people against them and make them feel so inferior that they don't even want to exist. They want to hide their faces, they want to hide themselves. There's not a person here above a certain age that has not been shamed to some degree. In fact, maybe we can go further. There's not a person here who has not shamed another person, if we're honest. Looking back in our lives, we have shamed, we have been shamed, and the causes of that shame has been reproaches. Reproaches have broken our heart. And I want to come back to give healing and hopeful words for all victims of shame and disgrace later in this sermon. Before we do that, and as a way towards that, we want to seek to understand the reproaches that fell upon Christ. I believe the key to healing and hope for our own shame is understanding the reproaches and the shame of Christ. If we are to have our own hearts rebuilt, mended, we have to look at Christ's broken heart. As expressed here, reproach has broken my heart. And we do this as part of our series on the Westminster Confession of Faith. You'll notice in your bulletin that the section we're looking at in this grand section on Christology is the spiritual sufferings of Christ. There are physical sufferings in Christ's life, but they are I don't want to say nothing, but they are small in comparison with the spiritual sufferings of Christ. Usually, the spiritual sufferings of Christ are divided in three. The sufferings of the sense of God's wrath in his soul. The sufferings as a result of the devil's tormenting temptations. and the sufferings as a result of these human reproaches cast upon Him. And that's what we want to focus on, the third of these today. And we want to look at the reproaches, we want to look at the reason for them, and we want to look at the reaction to them and then come back to apply this. to our own sense of shame and disgrace. So first of all, the reproaches themselves. In what way was Jesus reproached? In what way was He insulted? Well, in every way possible. If you look at Psalm 22 together with Psalm 69, you can put together a catalog of ways in which Jesus was reproached. And then you can add to that the Gospels and it expands it even more. In Psalm 22, he talks about how they laughed at him. He talks about how he was pained by even the facial expressions. He says, they shot out the lip at me. That was a Middle Eastern insult that was reserved for the lowest in society. He says, they shook their heads at him. just mocking, shaking of their heads at him, dismissive shakes of their heads. There was body language, there was ridicule, there were taunts, there was sarcasm, all kinds of reproaches. They said to him, he trusted in the Lord. Let him save him if he delighted in him. If you be the Son of God, come down from the cross. If you're the King of Israel, save yourselves and us, said the thieves. And even above him, mockingly, a statement of truth, but put there with a mocking intent, this, this, this is the King of the Jews. Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And instead of people's hearts breaking, what did they respond? He calls for Elijah. Let Elijah come and save him if he has any concern for him. Oh, you that said you were going to destroy the temple and raise it up in three days, save yourself. How many reproaches were cast upon him. He was called a sinner. He was called a Samaritan. He was called a drunkard. He was called a devil. He was called a deceiver. You talk about getting to the very heart of what was most prized in him. That's what they went for. And spoke of him in exactly the opposite terms. They took his virtue and they called it a vice. They took his truth and they called it falsehood. They took his wisdom and they called it foolishness. They took his law-keeping and they called it law-breaking. They looked at his peacemaking and they called him a troublemaker. They looked at the savior of sinners and they called him the sinner of sinners. How many reproaches were cast upon him. So much so that in Psalm 22, which together with Psalm 69, gives us an x-ray of Christ's heart, a look at the inner life. It pulls back the curtain on his sufferings and enables us to see the sufferings of his soul, which were the soul of his sufferings. And in Psalm 22, one of the expressions that is evoked from this broken-hearted Savior is, I am a worm. and no man." That's how shamed he felt. That was the cumulative impact of all these reproaches as they belittled and humiliated and demeaned and disgraced and dishonored, eventually got to the level of a disgusting creature that people would only stamp on and kick out of the way. I am a worm. and no man, despised by the people, someone just to be trampled upon." This went deep, deeper than any whip, any spear, any crown of thorns, especially because it was coming from the very people that He came to save. You look in this Psalm 69, look at, for example, 10 and 11, where he's speaking of his sufferings and people's reaction to it. He said, when I wept and chastened my soul with fasting, people really sympathized. People came alongside and put an arm around me. No, he said, that was to my reproach. They made a mockery of that. They looked at my deepest sufferings, my tears running down my face, and they laughed. They thought it was hilarious. I don't know if you saw in the news this week the horrific hidden camera footage of the nursing home, I think it was in Georgia, where it was a, I think it was an 89-year-old veteran was dying. And his family had hidden a camera in the room because the vet was complaining about being mistreated. And what the hidden camera footage revealed was that as this vet was dying, those who were meant to care for him were laughing at him. They were making pathetic attempts to save him, a few pumps in his chest, forgot to turn on the ventilator, they could see him gasping, they could hear him crying out for help, and one nurse was literally doubled over on the bed with hilarity, laughing at his suffering. They laughed at his sufferings. And then he goes on, for example, in verse 12, to say that he had become the song of the drunkards. In other words, as he passed the pubs in Jerusalem and he heard songs coming out, he heard his name in the lyrics, but not in terms of praise, in terms of contempt and mockery. The lowest of the low, the lowest of the earth took the Lord of glory and made Him into a pub song. How many? How constant? How long? How deep? How awful? It doesn't get worse than this, does it? Why? Let's look at the reason for these reproaches. Why was this happening to Jesus? Well, for two reasons. One was for God's sake, and the other one was for sinners' sakes. And I want to look at the second one a bit later. Let's just focus on what this psalm focuses on, and that is that these reproaches, the reason for them is given as it was for God's sake. For example, in verse 7, "'Because for thy sake I have borne reproach, shame has covered my face.'" He's saying here, as he turns to heaven, God, this is agony, but it's for you. It's for you. I'm doing it in service to you. I'm doing it for your honor, and I'm doing it for your glory." This was consciously going through the mind of Christ. This is what kept him going. I'm doing it for God. I'm doing it for my Father. It's for His sake, for His cause, for His kingdom. There's a purpose in this. That kept him going. It was for God's sake in that sense of for God's cause. But it was also for God's sake in this sense of being a substitute for God. Yes, he was a substitute for sinners, as we'll see, but he was also, we might say, a substitute for God. You look, for example, at verse 9. The zeal of thine house has eaten me up, and the reproaches of them that reproached thee are fallen upon me. So here is Jesus saying, he's looking throughout the whole of history, and he's looking at all the reproaches that were sent Godwards in history. All the insults, all the mockery, all the sarcasm, all the vile things that were said about God. And he's saying, I've now come to this earth to become the target, to get in the way, to put myself in the path of these arrows from earth to heaven and to let them sink into me. He's standing, as it were, in the place of God or as God. The reproaches of them that reproach you are sinking into me. So it's for God's sake. And we'll see in a moment how it's for sinners' sakes. But let's look thirdly at the reaction of Christ to this. How does He respond to all of this? It's in our text, reproach has broken my heart. And that word broken, it's a very graphic Hebrew word that means crushed or shattered or ruptured. That's the kind of pain. This is not somebody with, as we might say today, somebody with the skin of a rhinoceros. You know, we say that of some people. It doesn't matter what you say about them. It's like water off a duck's back. No, not Jesus. He was the most tender-hearted, the most sensitive person that ever lived. If you and I feel what we have felt when we've been reproached, it's nothing compared to how He could feel. I mean, I'm sure some of us have felt, it feels like a literal heart pain at times, doesn't it? Maybe some of the children know this, or some of you remember it from being a child at school or whatever. It's as if your heart really is being wrung. It's as if it's being torn apart, as if somebody's come to just crush you in the core of your being. Well, Jesus knows this far, far more. Not just because he had far more thrown at him, but because he could feel this far more deeply. You know, some people, you might say of them, well, he's got no shame. She's got no shame. It seems like they can do anything, be anything, and they stand proud and tall. and untouched, not Jesus. Shame, he says, has covered my face. There's another reaction, not just the sense of a maimed, crushed, ruptured heart, but he looks for help. He looks for help. Isn't that what we do when we've been reproached? Maybe children, you think of this at school, a gang, some people have ganged up on you and you run away and you just want somebody somewhere, just one person to come alongside you and say, look, I love you. You're my friend and you'll be my BFF forever. You just want someone to come and put their arms around you. Maybe just to be a shoulder to cry on. Even one person would make the world of difference. I'm not alone. Jesus didn't have that. He didn't have that. You look at verse 20. Reproach has broken my heart. I am full of heaviness. It's so depressing. And I looked, I looked for some to take pity. there was none, none. And for comforters, but I found none, not one, wherever he looked, nothing. You know, mass murderers, Even mass murderers usually have somebody in the world, usually some kind of crazy person who falls in love with them. Even Charles Manson had that. It's been in the news recently. These mass murderers have strange people that contact them and seem to want to marry them and things like that. Mass murderers have someone to pity them. Mass murderers have a shoulder to cry on. Mass murderers are people that will communicate to them, I love you, but not Jesus. The mass life giver, not one. One of his best friends denied him, another betrayed him, and they all, the rest, forsook him and fled. He's here on the cross, and it's just a barrage, a tsunami of reproaches, and this shame that He's feeling, and He looks around. He scans wherever He can look. Is there even one person? There's no one, none, totally. alone, totally abandoned. As Isaiah wrote prophetically, he trod the winepress alone, and of the people there was none with him. The reproaches, the reason, the reaction. Now, let's come back to our shame. First thing we have to say is, I want to speak to perpetrators. I want to speak to the shamers. I want to speak to those among you who have inflicted this on other people. I want to speak to those of you who are doing it even now in your life at this time. Those of you who even in the past week have spoken words intended to be of reproach and insult, intended to belittle, humiliate, and demean, intended to isolate and exclude, intended to make people run away, hide, be afraid to go to school, afraid to show their face. Those of you have caused others to cut themselves and harm others. Look at the impact of this on Christ. You don't see the impact of your words, of your expression maybe. At least you don't see the full extent of it. You just, you have no idea the impact it's having as you cold shoulder someone day after day after day. As you have cultivated this expert ability to just have a cutting word or a cutting look But here, in the sufferings of Christ, we're enabled to see behind the scenes. We're enabled to draw back the curtain and see the deep, the long, the wide impact of reproach and shame upon humanity. And this is given to us to scare us to warn us, to show that the horrendous damage that can be done by, yes, mere words and mere looks. There's a frightening correlation or connection between bullying, between shame and addiction, anxiety, depression, eating disorders. cutting and relational breakdown. And it can be a one-off thing that you do to someone. That's how dangerous this is. You say, well, you know, I said this or done that. Yeah, sure. But I mean, I didn't do it for long. Well, again, I encourage you to think back in your own life. at just even one sentence that was said, it might have been by a father even. Fathers have incredible power, even more than mothers in this area. Mothers, too, have a responsibility, but fathers especially. One word, one sentence can, yeah, rupture a heart forever. Think about why you do this to others, young people especially, I'm talking to you, especially maybe your online habits. Why are you shaming? Why are you bullying? Why are you trying to make someone look inferior? Why are you doing this? Do you know one of the reasons why maybe? Because someone's done it to you, isn't it? You know the pain of it. So why do it to others? Sticks and stones only break bones. Words break hearts. This is evil. This is offensive to God, but it's forgivable. That's the wonderful thing about this. No matter even how many lives you have shattered and destroyed, it's forgivable. The very people who did this to Jesus, Jesus speaks words over their heads, "'Forgive them, Father.'" In other words, there's an offer of forgiveness to those who will repent, to those who will come to God and say, I have done this, I have done evil, I have broken hearts, and go to your victims. and do the same. Fathers to children, mothers to children, brothers to brothers, sisters to sisters, friends to friends, let's banish this from our churches, our homes, our communities, our workplaces. Let the suffering of Christ under this reproach and in this shame deter you from ever doing this again. I want to speak secondly to the victims. What's been done to you is evil. It's evil, it's horrendous, it's forbidden by God, and it's offensive to God, and it's not your fault. The aim and the end of reproaches and shame is often that the person feels, I deserve this. No. The fault and the blame is on the offender, the perpetrator. is watching a TED Talk by Brené Brown. She is a lifelong researcher into shame and vulnerability. And she said the most powerful antidote to shame is empathy. Empathy. She said if you put shame in a Petri dish, there's only one thing that can kill it, and it's empathy. somebody that comes alongside and says, I understand, or that says, me too. And often the best empathizers are those who have experienced this too, aren't they? Who better to empathize with you than Jesus? Because who has suffered this more than Jesus? Go to Him, victims of this, take your shame to Him. Brene Brown also said, if you want to grow shame in a Petri dish, add these three ingredients, silence, secrecy, and judgment. How do we get rid of silence, secrecy, and judgment? We take our shame to Jesus. We talk to Him about it. We make it public to Him. And He removes the judgment of it, as we'll see. It's not your fault. You're not to blame. But thirdly, I want to talk about good shame. Good shame. There is such a thing. Just as like there's bad fear and good fear, bad love, good love, there's bad shame and there's good shame. There's good shame. There's appropriate shame. There's shame that should be sought and cultivated, and that's the shame that results from our own sin. In that sense, when we sin, we are both perpetrators and victims of shame. We are shaming ourselves. You think, well, what's the difference between guilt and shame? Well, you might distinguish them like this. Guilt says I have done something wrong. Shame says I am something wrong. Guilt says I've made a mistake. Shame says I am a mistake. Guilt deals with individual transgressions. Shame deals with our identity, who we actually are. It deals with our sense of who we are. And sin therefore results both in guilt and shame. Daniel says, to us, confessing the sins of Israel belongs confusion of face. Ezra said, we blush to lift up our faces to you. And God said, no, don't worry, you shouldn't be ashamed. No, he welcomed it. This was appropriate. Sin does result in guilt and shame and so it should. We should feel a confusion of face and we should blush to lift up our faces before God. We should feel not just I have sinned but I am a sinner. The way to get rid of shame is first of all to confess it, to own it, to see this as appropriate and right. And so, when we sin and we reflect on our sin, we're convicted by our sin, we feel shame, we feel disgrace, we feel dishonor, we crave secrecy, we crave silence, we run away from judgment, and we need again. to get rid of these ingredients, to stop trying to keep this secret, stop being silent, stop imagining there's no judgment. It's all there. Therefore, bring your shame and your guilt to God. bring it out into the open, talk to him about it, take it to Christ, and have him take it away. Because Christ bore not only the guilt of sin, but the shame of it. That's what this psalm brings before us. God accept us, his shame for our shame, his contempt for our contempt, his disgrace for our disgrace if we are believers. In other words, not just as believers do we not need to feel guilt anymore, we don't need to feel shame when we embrace Christ as our Savior. And when sin comes and convicts us, makes us feel guilty, makes us feel ashamed, makes us feel we want to run away from God, we want to hide, come back to the Psalm that draws us to Him with our guilt, with our shame, and says, I'll take it. I've taken it. It's gone." He was shamed for the shameful. As the hymn goes, bearing shame and scoffing rude, in my place condemned He stood, sealed my pardon with His blood. Hallelujah! What a Savior! But without a Savior, without a Savior, not only will you have shame all through your life, Daniel tells us, you will be raised on the last day to shame and everlasting contempt. In other words, everlasting shame. Your shame can end now, it can end today, it can be totally removed. Or it can go on forever and ever and ever. A sense of utter worthlessness, a sense of no value, unloved, uncared for, unpitied, uncomforted, reproaches and shame for eternity. That's hell. It's a place of shame and disgrace and dishonor and contempt. Heaven's the exact opposite. It's a place of honor and glory. And this is what Jesus does in the gospel. He not only takes away our shame, He gives us a new identity. He gives us a new identity. No longer do we need to say, I am nothing. I'm a worm. I'm not worth it. Jesus comes along and says, I've made you. Worth it. I've invested in you heaven's resources. I've given you heavenly titles. Think about what God actually calls you, child of God. He calls you that, a child of God, a daughter of the king, a son of the king, so that you can say, I am adopted. I am accepted. I am loved. I am cared for. I am justified, I am forgiven. I have the identity of Christ before God. When he looks at me, he sees Jesus. How honorable, how uplifting. Banish all the reproaches and all the shame that have been heaped up on you through the years or that your memory have kept alive in your mind, both the unjust shame and the appropriate shame. And let Jesus rebuild your identity, giving you a new name, a new nature, a new future, a new eternity. Yes, we turned His glory into shame, but He turns our shame into glory. And it begins here. It begins here. Part of the Christian life is growing in that building sense of who Jesus now looks at us as. Who are we in His sight? What memory says, what other people say, it doesn't matter at all. It's what He says. It's how He views you. It's where you are in His heart. Reproach broke His heart to mend yours. Amen. Let's pray.