we have prayed earnestly that, Lord, you would meet with us, Lord. Father, Lord, the purpose
of worship is to describe worth and honor and reverence to your holy name. And, Father,
Lord, we don't just come so that you hear from us, but, Lord, we come so that we might
hear from you. Lord, you have given to us your word, and the entrance of your word gives
light. Lord, might you give us your spirit today, illumined hearts, and, God, help us,
Lord, to understand the holy text that is set before us. We pray this in Jesus' name,
amen.
As you read through the pages of the New Testament, I don't think you can help be struck by some
of the things, and I wouldn't even dare to say outrageous things, that our Lord said.
Let me give you two examples. In Luke 14, Jesus said, if anyone comes to me and does
not hate father, mother, wife, children, brother, sisters, yeah, in his own life, he cannot
be my disciple. I mean, that's a very strong statement. It's somewhat difficult to understand,
and certainly difficult to swallow. Is Jesus saying that we must absolutely hate our family
if we are going to be his disciple? Another occasion, he's talking to people who are
dealing with sin, and he said, if your eye causes you to sin, well, pluck it out. Cast
it from you, for it is better for you to enter into life with one eye than to enter it with
two eyes and be cast into hellfire. Now, obviously, in both of these examples, our Lord is saying
these things to capture the attention of those who are listening to him. He's using what
we know as hyperbole, but in the text today, in Matthew 5-4, there's no hyperbolic statement
here, and he's not even using language for dramatic effect. Instead, in Matthew 5, what
we find at the very beginning is a benediction. Our Lord is pronouncing a blessing upon his
people, but what is surprising is that this blessing comes in the most unexpected ways.
Now, when we're talking about a blessing, we're talking about the blesser, God, he is
pronouncing a state that is bestowed upon his people. These are not commands. It's not
comparatives. This is not something you and I do. This is the indicative mode. You are
blessed, he says. But admittedly, if we look at him on the surface, these seem very strange.
Notice what our Lord says. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. If
we wanted, we could translate this several ways. Happy are the sad, because blessed is
mercadios in Greek. It just means happy. Happy are the sad. Happy are the unhappy. Favored
by God, because that's what it means to be blessed, are those who are mourning and in
sorrow. Now, if we look at it that way, it just doesn't make sense. I mean, how is that
even possible that those who are favored by God find themselves in mourning? We might
expect to find just the opposite. Blessed are those who are in grand celebration. Blessed
are those in mirth. They have been adopted by God. But Jesus, speaking of his kingdom
and life in his kingdom, on this side of heaven, says blessed are those who mourn. Now, this
goes without saying that not all who mourn are blessed. You might find a thief and he
may be mourning sitting in a jail cell lamenting the fact that he was caught. That's not blessed
state. Instead, our Lord is pronouncing a blessing on those who are mourning and they're
doing so for the right reasons. Back in our country in 9-11-2001, 2,996 people lost their
lives due to terrorist activity. Just this past year, on October 7th, 2024, Hamas led
an attack on Israel where 1,139 people were slaughtered. You and I live in an age of terrorism.
All around us we see senseless killings. We live in an age with a threat of nuclear war.
We live in an age of disease. You and I have experienced a pandemic that killed millions.
We live in an age of cancer. And sadly, we even see children get cancer. I mean, who
among us has not been moved by watching the commercials that's put out by St. Jude's
Hospital? We see many people who desire to get married and yet they remain single. We
see couples who have a tremendous desire for children and who would make great parents
remain childless. And we are left scratching our heads because our world really does not
make sense. We live in an age of injustice. The poor are exploited. The righteous are
persecuted. And the seemingly evil are exalted. We live in an age of political corruption
at the highest levels. We live in an age of debauchery and filth. Just look at the beginning
of the Olympics and I know how they've explained it away. We live in an age of death. Young
and old, rich and poor, all die. And so when we live here in this age, in your soul, don't
you long for something more? Don't you find yourself mourning, truly mourning over the
fallenness and rebellion of our world? We lament. We lament the present and we long
for the future when the cursed world will be but a distant memory. That's what God's
people do. Because right now we live in an age that stands in opposition and defiance
against God. So the people of God mourn. We mourn in this present age and we long for
something more. What are we longing for? What's that existential angst that's in your soul?
It is for the kingdom of God to come in its fullness. This is why the saints have always
prayed as our Lord taught us, thy kingdom come. That's what we're waiting for. That's
what we're longing for. Our Lord says, bless, now you're favored by God. If you find yourself
in mourning, sorrow, for you will be comforted. Because the reason you're going to be comforted,
there is coming a day when there will be a great reversal of fortune. Do you see that
by faith? The wicked is going to be judged and righteousness will be honored. The kingdom
is coming and one day it's going to arrive in fruition. But that day's not yet come.
And so we what? We lament. We sorrow. We grieve. Or we mourn. Because we understand this world
this age, it's not as God intended. Childhood cancer is not blessed. Nuclear wars, innocents
being slaughtered. But friends, we did this. In our sin, we have destroyed shalom and brought
in chaos. And our Lord says, if you understand that and you're mourning, it's a good thing.
Because ultimately, one day, you will find comfort. The ultimate consolation is coming
because the King is coming and he's bringing the kingdom with him. Now we're in Matthew
5 and we're in this section known as the Beatitudes. The Beatitudes is simply a Latin word for happy.
That's why we call it this. Now these Beatitudes, some people will lift them from their context
and they make them mere pithy statements that all you should seek to emulate, be meek, be
poor in spirit. But that's not what our Lord is saying. These are not commands. I love
what Lawrence Farley in his commentary, he said, these Beatitudes, like the rest of the
sermon, are not moralistic maxims for the world at large, but they are promises to Christ's
disciples. They were never meant to be seized on by the world as bits of Christian folk
wisdom, as if they could be applied apart from saving faith in the Lord. It is here
that Christ, God's Messiah, is pronouncing a blessing on his people and he's going to
show us through this great sermon, 5, 6, and 7, what life in his kingdom looks like but
on this side of heaven. Now admittedly, these Beatitudes, they're paradoxical. At first,
they don't make any sense. They seem very strange. They are opposite of what the world
would say. Because if you would go out into our culture, the world says the way to happiness
is for things to go your way, to get what you want. The blessed person in the world
is not mourning. He's living life to the fullest. In fact, the society in which we
live says, you are blessed if you can fill your life with pleasure and passion, however
that may look. YOLO, right? You only live once. That's the mantra of our culture. And
yet ironically, the most miserable people on the planet this morning are those who are
self-absorbed and they cannot deal or cope with anything that doesn't go their way. That's
life in the kingdom of man. So people assume that if you can avoid pain, if you can avoid
heartache, if you have no trouble and you have no disappointment, well, that's a surefire
way to being happy, to being blessed. And our Lord says, nope, that's not true at all.
There's an old Arab proverb, I think it's so wise, it says, all sunshine makes a desert.
It's true in our lives as well. Now here our Lord comes on the scene as the King, John
the Baptist called him the Lamb of God, and he turns conventional wisdom upside down.
And he says, hey, if you want to know who God's favor rests upon, look at those who
are currently mourning, not those who are in revelry. We mourn because our society is
unjust and we live in an unjust culture. As Isaiah said, I live as an unclean man in the
midst of an unclean people. And yet there's another mourning this morning, mourning this
morning that our Lord is also pleased with. This is the mourning over our sin, grieving
over the way in which we daily fail the Lord and we fail to honor Him in obedience. Do
you feel like that sometimes you just feel like a failure? Lord, I want to please you.
I fail. I see this, there are days I start out my day in prayer and I'm like, Lord, help
me, help me. And two hours later between Adar and Gabi, that battle has been lost. So three
weeks ago we looked at Matthew 5.3, blessed, happy are those who are poor in spirit. Not
poor, not financially, it could be. The spiritually bankrupt is what the word literally means.
So there's poor in spirit are those who have come to the realization that we possess nothing
in and of ourselves that can commend us to God. The poor in spirit realizes we have no
righteousness. As good as you are, worldly speaking, you are not good before God. And
Jesus opens and says blessed are you because the kingdom is for you. It's a realization
of our true spiritual condition. But that's an intellectual awareness. Verse four is the
emotional response we have to that. We have come to understand that we are spiritually
bankrupt. We have nothing to offer God. And so we grieve and we mourn over that condition.
We've been humble to see our need and we now have holy sorrow over it. That's good. The
Anglican Bishop, J.C. Ryle, he said, a right knowledge of the way to heaven is to feel
that we are on the way to hell. To be sensible of our own corruption and abhor our own transgressions
is the first symptom of spiritual health. We must know the depth and malignancy of our
disease in order to appreciate the great physician. Basically he's saying before you can ever
really lavish and revel in grace, you must understand your sin. We see the pattern that
Christ is discussing. It's antithetical to the normal worldview. Everything in the kingdom
of God is antithetical to the kingdom of man. In fact, the values of God's kingdom are vices
in man's kingdom. And the vices in man's kingdom are actually the virtues of God's. Remember
as I said earlier, the world says no, bless if you can be entertained. If you can keep
yourself amused constantly, if you can numb your pain, if you can forget your misery.
Our world doesn't like to be on mourners, people who are sad. It's not fun. It brings
them down. And if life's not fun, well life's too short, right? That's our culture. Fun,
recreation, carpe diem, that's the gods of our world. And friends, listen carefully.
Sadly, too many profession Christians are seeking the same hedonistic lifestyle. Our
Lord Jesus Lord, Master, he says, you are fortunate and favored by God if you are now
in a state of mourning for it's coming a day of ultimate comfort. The blessed by God, we
feel this weight of sin and we lament over it. John Stott said, this mourning that is
blessed is not the sorrow of bereavement like death to which Christ refers. It's a sorrow
of repentance. It's a second stage of spiritual blessing. It is one thing, he says, to be
spiritually poor and acknowledge it, but it is another to grieve and mourn over it. Or
in more theological language, confession is one thing, contrition is another. The psalmist
David in Psalm 51 says, the sacrifices of God, not lambs, not bulls, not goats, it's
a broken spirit. A broken and contrite heart. These, O God, you will not despise. Far from
despising these, O God, you take delight in. The broken heart and the contrite spirit.
I'm sorry for quoting so much, but I just couldn't leave them out. Spurgeon, let me
say what he said. Let a man once feel sin for half an hour, really feel its tortures,
and I warrant you, I guarantee you that he would prefer to dwell in a pit of snakes than
to live with his sins. If you can look on sin without sorrow, you have never looked
on Christ. But the problem in our day is the culture has made inroads into the church.
We're not in mourning. We laugh at sin. We laugh at godless humor. Far too many people
are entertained by that which God hates. Not only do we laugh at the wrong things, we don't
mourn for the right things. There is a godly mourning or sorrow and there's a worldly
sorrow. Paul talked about it in 2 Corinthians 7. Godly sorrow, well, that produces repentance.
That leads to salvation. You're never gonna regret that. But the sorrow of the world,
it produces, it leads to death. We mourn, we grieve like the world does when we are
in mourning because circumstances do not come out in our favor. Events don't turn out like
we'd hoped and then we're sad, we're despondent. Well, that's what the world does. That's not
the blessed mourning our Lord is speaking of. That's in fact very self-centered. The
mourning our Lord blesses is those who are grieving over their sins and their offenses
against God. You see God. Godly sorrow leads to repentance. That leads to salvation. Sorrowing
over sin, mourning over sin, and not just a sin before we are saved, daily we feel the
weight, Lord. Lord, I feel I'm prone to wonder, prone to leave the God I love. That's your
experience. It's mine. Alexander McLaren says, there are a few things which the so-called
Christianity of this day needs more than an intenser realization of the fact and the gravity
of the fact of personal sinfulness. There lies the root of the shallowness of so much
that calls itself Christianity in the world today. It is a source of almost all the evils
under which the church is groaning. And I am sure that if millions of the people that
complacently put themselves down in the census as Christians could but once see themselves
as they are and connect their conduct with the way God thinks about it, they would get
shock waves or shocks that would sober them. Friends, judgment begins at the house of God.
We need to do soul searching. It is time not morbidly but it is time to search the recesses
of our hearts, look for the idols that have been erected there and repent. It's a good
thing to repent. It's a good thing to confess our sins like as Jamie led us in. We need
to do so. Part of this repentance is grieving over how wayward we are, how sinful we are.
But one of the things that is so very evident is that we don't grieve the way we should
is the way that we do not take Lord's Day worship seriously enough. Far too many of
God's people have other priorities and they will forsake the worship of the triune God
in order to follow their own agendas. It is sinful. Jesus in the sermon will tell us in
Matthew 6 verse 33, seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these
things will be added unto you. Seek first. Se teo primacy. First. That means nothing
has priority over the worship of God. Nothing, friends. Not sports, not a golf game, not
a hobby, nothing. We find God's people, they get a boat, they miss every weekend because
they're out celebrating on the boat. That is sinful. And it needs to be mourned and
grieved. That's your agenda over God's. Seek first. And you have to do something with the
text. Don't explain it away because in the day of judgment it is not explained away.
Seek God's kingdom and the primacy of his agenda in our lives. But there's a lowering
commitment towards the worship. I feel we're doing a great, as a pastor I truly lament
this. We're doing a great disservice to our children. I think we're leading them away
from the faith. The more our kids used to get not being in church, the more we teach
our kids not to be Christians. David, Solomon, Rehoboam. Look at the progression. David's
full-hearted devotion to the Lord. Solomon had half-hearted devotion to the Lord. Rehoboam
didn't even know the Lord. But as Americans we pursue hobbies with vehement passion, offering
lukewarm worship to the living God. As though God is satisfied that we're merely here and
we'll offer up our paltry praise. Mourn, repent, grieve over that. Spiritual poverty, verse
three, leads to godly mourning, verse four. It's just a natural outflow of it because
we have sinned grievously against God. Psalm 51 that we looked at earlier, this is David's
great psalm of repentance over he was confronted with sin of adultery with Bathsheba and he
writes, I acknowledge my transgressions. My sin is always before me but against you and
you only have I sinned and done this evil in your sight. That's it, friends. David knew
he sinned against Bathsheba. He knew he sinned against Uriah. But he said, no, it's against
you, Lord. I've broken your law. This is a humble heart. It's a spirit of contrition.
Isaiah wrote this, but on this one while I look, God says on him who is poor and of a
contrite spirit. And notice this last phrase, and who trembles at my word, tremble to be
in fear to shake. We need a reverence for the living God, a holy reverence, one that
trembles there. That's the one that God looks at. This word for mourn in verse four of Matthew
five, it's a Greek word, pantheon, it literally means to wail. It's like the wailing or the
grieving over the loss of a loved one. I mean, this is a deep hearted, a guttural grief here.
There are several words that can be used. This is the highest one that our Lord is using.
Wail loudly, Jesus said. Sinclair Ferguson said, it is emphatically not to be equated
with a heavy and depressive spirit. This is not being melancholy. Some of us by nature,
he said, are more melancholic and sink more easily into our spirits. By contrast, the
man who genuinely mourns because of a sin has been drawn out of himself to see God in
his holiness and grace. It is this, his side of God that has made him mourn. Paradoxically,
it is the same side of God that will bring him comfort because the God against whom he
has sinned is the one who forgives sinners. Amen. The good thing about God is he's holy,
but he's merciful. And it's of his mercies we are not consumed. And Jesus said, listen,
God's blessing is upon you, you grieving ones. You've sinned against God and you realize
it and it produces contrition. That's favor. But there are scores of people in the church
of Christ who never mourn. They don't, they don't want that. This doesn't make sense to
them. Sin is taken in a glib manner. And friends, there is no comfort to those who do not go
to war with their sin. The one who truly does is blessed by God because it's evidence of
a Holy Spirit born repentance. Now this blessing, it's not because you're sorry, it's not because
you're grieving. There's no merit in that. It's what the Lord does in response to it.
What does the Lord do in response to it? He gives comfort, the comfort of forgiveness.
Godly sorrow brings divine forgiveness, which brings divine blessing. Those who mourn can
be truly happy because they are the ones, only ones who will ever experience the forgiveness
of God. Brings freedom, friends. But you and I feel it, even after we're saved, we continue
to sin. But we ought to grow more deeply in our mourning because of our sinfulness. We
really should. We also should understand more deeply of God's love and mercy. We ought to
shout at this. I mean, every Lord's Day ought to be just a triumphant celebration and then
also a mourning. And I know that's paradoxical. We mourn and yet we rejoice. We mourn because
who we are, we rejoice because of who he is. But see, to grow in grace is growing in awareness
of our sin. The world says, eat, drink, and be merry. Tomorrow you die. There's no inventory
of themselves. They don't try to see if they're taking sin too lightly. They don't even believe
in sin. So I'm not saying being golfed in despair or swallowed up in self-pity. That's
a false humility. True mourning over sin does not focus on us. It does not even focus on
sin primarily. It focuses on God, the one sinned against, and who alone can forgive
us of our sin. Don't stay here, go there. Don't stay in lament, go to worship. But worship
is preceded by lament. You and I are never going to be sinless in this life. But the
mark of the mature believers, we're growing in the awareness of sin in our life. Do you
feel like the longer you walk with Christ, the more sinful you are? Because you start
to see it even more. Because when we're first starting out, we're like, we don't see sin
the way God sees sin. But the more we grow in holiness, the more we grow in who he is,
the more sinful I become. I think that's the prophet Isaiah there in Isaiah 6. Isaiah was
a righteous man. He saw God and he said, whoa, I'm undone. Now what's the result? Verse
4, they, those who are mourning will be comforted. Every tear you shed will be wiped away by
the hand of God himself. Comfort is the Greek word parakeleo. And you know the Holy Spirit,
this is the noun that's used in the Holy Spirit in John 14. The Holy Spirit is called our
periclete, the one who comes alongside us to bring comfort, to bring help. Here the
mourners are promised comfort, future comfort. Present sorrow, future comfort. Isaiah 61,
writing of the Messiah. Man, this is an incredible verse. Here's what Isaiah wrote. And again,
our Lord quoted this, Isaiah 61, beginning of verse 1, the spirit of the Lord God is
upon me because the Lord has anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor. He has sent
me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of
the prison to those who are bound, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord and the day
of the vengeance of our God. That's not comfort. And it goes on. What else has the Lord sent
you to do, Jesus? To comfort all who mourn, to console those who mourn in Zion, to give
them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, and the garment of praise for the
spirit of heaviness. Man, friends, think about this. You and I are not just promised forgiveness.
Verse 3, you were promised entrance into the kingdom of God, but the ultimate treasure,
the ultimate, I mean the absolute ultimate is the presence of God Himself. We will be
with God. So now what? Just check yourself. See if there's anything. Is there a love of
sin there? This is the primary hindrance to godly mourning. Holding on to your sin, holding
onto it, will make you more resistant to the work of the Holy Spirit. This is when you
know something is not right in your life. It could be a relationship. It could be a
habit. It's wrong and yet you refuse to forsake it. You love it too much. You can't call Him
Lord. Second would be conceit. You try to cover your sin. You choose to believe, well
there's nothing to mourn over here. Listen, there's nothing to see here. You explain it
away. The Proverbs says, he who covers the sins will not prosper, but who so confesses
and forsakes them, they find mercy. Third is presumption. Presumption is pride. Pride
says, yeah I need grace, but I don't need a lot of grace. This is the attitude that
says I will sin, but God will forgive me anyways. I've had several people through my 20 years
here at Mamrie now who sat in my office, crossed on me and they said, will God forgive me if
I do this? And I'm like, you're asking them a question. They're like, well I'm going to
do it anyways. Usually it's in reference to leaving their spouse, choosing another person
to be hooked up with. I'm going to do this and I know that God will forgive me. It's
not true. This is a minimization of sin and seriousness. There is no pardon offered to
the one who sins presumptuously because there is no repentance in that man or woman. You
don't say I know it's wrong and I'm going to do it anyways. That's not repentance. That's
arrogance. That's defiance. That's a willful sin against a holy God. Those who arrogantly
presume upon the grace of God are not mourning over their sins. Procrastination. Well, I'll
do this at some point. I'll get serious about this stuff. It's foolish because you don't
know what a day may bring forth. What's the key here? To look at the holiness of God,
to see our sinfulness, to see the great sacrifice of his son that was offered for our sin, and
seeing God's sinfulness and our, God's holiness, excuse me, and our sinfulness and the grace
that's offered to us in Christ will thaw a cold heart like nothing else can. It's the
only thing that can. Friends, if you come to the table and you cannot have your heart
warmed by the thought and remembrance and communion of Christ, pray. Beg God that he
would give you a contrite heart not to take sin flippantly. So how then do I know if I'm
mourning in a godly way? Do you laugh at sin? Do you take it lightly? Do you take it flippantly?
Are you entertained by it? Now again, I want to caution. This is not being a Pharisee,
one who looks good on the outside, has no internal brokenness over it. The Pharisee
never mourns over his sin. He mourns over the loss of prestige. He mourns over the loss
of reputation. But the godly mourner is one that's concerned with the harm that our sin
does to God's glory. We're not worried about being exposed. In light of all that God has
done for us, church, I mean, think about it. Stop for a moment in this day of worship.
In the light of all that God has done for you to bring you out of sin, certainly you
cannot go on sinning willfully and tolerating it in your life. It is time to make holy war
with it. Focus on the promise that Christ gave. Focus on that promise and receive it
in faith. What is the promise? Happy, blessed are those who mourn. Why are they happy? Why
are they blessed? Verse four, look at the promise of Christ. Here is just God's grace.
You will receive comfort. There's coming a day, guys. It will all be behind you. It'll
be a day of rejoicing, a day of feasting, a day of celebration on earth. Chris Miller
in his commentary, he says, Christ will provide freedom from the guilt of sin, resurrection
from the sting of death, justice for those oppressed by a violent world, disciples who
view the brokenness of their own lives and of others' lives as God does. Oh, they will
find many reasons to mourn, but they also look forward to the future when God will set
this world straight and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning. He's
quoting there Revelation 21, Revelation 21, verses three and four. And I heard a loud voice
from heaven saying, Lord, make this reality. Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men
and he that is God will dwell with them and they shall be his people. God himself will
be with them and be their God. Amen. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.
There shall be no more death. That's gone. Nor sorrow, nor crying. That means no more
mourning. There'll be no more pain for the former things have passed away. How long,
oh Lord, till this day becomes a reality. Before we prepare for communion, we're going
to sing that song, How Long, Oh Lord, How Long. Brian, Shelby, Kirsten, when you come.
Junior Church is making their way back in. Children, go ahead and sit with your parents.
And I'm gonna ask you to go ahead and stand as we sing this song as a way to prepare our
hearts to enter into time of communion with our Lord.