"Godly Are the Grieving" Matthew 5:4 Sunday Morning Worship Service

Matthew five, verse four.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

One of the most jarring events of Jesus' life is described in Luke chapter 7.

Luke 7 · chapter mention

Everything about the story seems bonkers, really.

Luke describes Jesus as having been invited over to a Pharisee's house for dinner.

I describe it as bonkers because normally the Pharisees accuse Jesus of eating with sinners and tax collectors.

And in the Jewish mind, there's cleanly and clean and unclean, and that divide is nowhere else is it more on display than in the fact of eating, in the action of eating.

So you would never eat with a Gentile or sinner or tax collector.

And Jesus was accused of breaking that command and often eating with sinners and tax collectors.

And so it becomes very strange then that you have a Pharisee who would invite Jesus over for dinner.

Even stranger, Jesus goes and sits at the Pharisee's table and eats with him.

After the meal, Luke describes them as reclining at table together.

And we've talked about this before.

That's not where you would eat, of course, but that's where you would go after dinner.

In the Jewish world, they didn't have that transport.

In the Jewish world, you would eat sitting down on the floor, around a table that's low, like knee height or so.

And after eating, you would recline at the table.

Normally the guest of honor would recline with his head on the host's chest.

He would lay down and put his head on the chest of the person next to him.

And this is what happened with Jesus and the Pharisee.

And so you have Jesus laying down on a Pharisee named Simon after dinner, reclining and talking.

That in and of itself is one of the more interesting and notable events of Jesus' life.

However, a woman comes in and is weeping and crying and wetting Jesus' feet with her tears and drying Jesus' feet with her hair and putting perfume and oil on Jesus.

So that's crazy.

And then Jesus brings it up to Simon as if he didn't notice.

Jesus says, Simon, have you noticed the woman at my feet?

Who's wailing?

And Simon's response is kind of indicative of the strange situation.

Like, oh, what, her?

Oh yeah, I did, I did notice her.

Simon thinks in his heart, if only Jesus knew what kind of woman this was, he wouldn't let her touch his feet.

And Jesus exposes Simon's hypocrisy by telling a story about two people that owed money.

We'll return to that story later, but it's just a it's a story, it's a scene, it's a situation entirely out of our lived experience.

We don't have Pharisees, we don't have women walking around weeping on your teeth, yeah, on your feet and drying it with their hair and anointing you with perfume and oil.

I mean, all of this is out of our experience.

So it's difficult to know where to enter into that story.

But Jesus helps us by identifying the woman's tears as being connected to her debt before God.

Jesus says that this woman is indeed a great sinner, and that's why she is weeping so much, and that's why she will end up loving Jesus so much.

Whereas Simon, on the contrary, the Pharisee, he does not view himself as a great sinner, so he sheds no tears and he has no oil and no perfume for Jesus.

The result of which he has no love for Jesus.

The woman will leave with her sins forgiven.

Simon will leave with his heart hardened.

The woman's mourning was virtuous, it was good, it was salvific even, because she was mourning over her lack of righteousness, she was mourning over her great sin, or to put it in the language of Matthew chapter 5, she was mourning over her spiritual poverty.

Matthew 5 · chapter mention

She was spiritually destitute, and it rocked her world.

At the same time, Simon the Pharisee is also spiritually destitute.

He's not spiritually rich, yet he's not aware of his poverty, and so he does not have any commensurate mourning.

That's the dynamic that's at play around that table.

Two people who are poor.

One who is broken over it, one who is living off of his credit cards.

You know what I mean by that?

Two people can have no money in their bank account.

And one person might say, Oh, I don't know how I'm gonna live, I don't know how I'm gonna eat, and they weep and they're broken, and they have no confidence, no security in how to how to live because they don't have any money.

Whereas the other person also doesn't have any money but has a credit card with a$20,000 limit on it.

So their poverty doesn't bother them.

They'll take out loans, they'll flex their credit cards.

Both per both people are equally poor.

They're both equally poor.

On the outside, the person who's floating everything on debt, you know, might dress nicer and drive a nicer car and live in a nicer house and everything, but both people are equally poor, and only one of them is mourning over it.

Jesus focuses on that person mourning and says, because she is aware of her sinful condition, she is broken over it, and she will receive forgiveness.

This lets you know a little bit of the shortcoming of taking these one beatitude at a time, is that none of these beatitudes are sufficient in and of themselves.

Last week we looked at Matthew 5, verse 3.

Matthew 5:3

Blessed are the poor in spirit, uh, for they will inherit the kingdom.

But being poor in spirit and being aware that you are poor in spirit are not the same thing.

It's not enough to be poor in spirit.

We are all poor in spirit.

Jesus goes beyond that to talk about those who mourn over their lack of spiritual capital, over their lack of righteousness.

It should produce grieving.

Now we didn't talk about that this last week, but this week I want to point out to you that so much of these beatitudes are drawn from Isaiah 61.

Isaiah 61, a very well-known prophecy about the Savior.

The Messiah, when he comes, will be identifiable by a string of apparels in Isaiah 61.

I put a few of them on the screen for you.

The Spirit of the Lord Yahweh is upon me.

This is the Savior, the Messiah talking in the first person in Isaiah.

The Spirit of Yahweh is upon the Savior and the Messiah because Yahweh has anointed him to bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, the Savior says, to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of the prison to those who are bound, to proclaim the year of Yahweh's favor and the day.

This is what this is what's described in Isaiah 61.

This is the verse that Jesus goes to in the synagogue for his first Sabbath reading in Nazareth, the synagogue he grew up in.

Once he is unveiled as the Messiah, he goes there, he unrolls this scroll and reads this passage in that synagogue, identifying himself as the Messiah.

It's not ambiguous.

At the end of his reading, he declares for everybody in the synagogue, this scroll is fulfilled in your hearing.

He is identifying himself as the Savior because he preaches the gospel to the poor, he binds up the brokenhearted, he is the embodiment of Yahweh's favor.

And the people in the synagogue understand that, and they take him to the cliff to throw him off.

They want to kill him because of it.

That's this passage.

The passage goes on, of course, in Isaiah 61, verse 3, to grant to those who mourn in Zion, to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes, oil of gladness instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit, so they can be called oaks of righteousness, an allusion to Psalm 1.

Isaiah 61:3

The planting of Yahweh, that he may be glorified.

So this is a very well-known prophecy of the Savior.

When Jesus comes, he says, I'm fulfilling this.

I am preaching the good news to the poor.

I am binding up the brokenhearted, I am comforting those who mourn.

Jesus is taking that prophecy and unpacking it, preaching it really.

He just read it in Nazareth, but here in Capernaum, up on the in the plains here in the mountain where the sermon is preached, he unpacks it and he's explaining to them what it means.

There's a logical connection here.

I put it in red on the screen so you can see it.

There's a logical progression here between being poor and then mourning and then being comforted.

You have to recognize your spiritual bankruptcy.

You have to realize you don't have a righteousness of your own.

In light of that, you mourn.

In light of mourning, the Savior can comfort you.

There's no comforting unless you're mourning.

You don't comfort a happy person.

You see somebody in the hallway, how was your week?

Oh, it was great.

I'm stoked.

Best week ever.

I'm so sorry, brother.

Let me pray for you.

There's a grief that leads to comfort.

Without the grief, no comfort.

This is not a worldly grief like you know, a friend died or a referee doesn't know what past interference is if his life depends on it.

It's not this kind of grief.

This is a kind of grief.

It's spiritual.

You're grieving over your lack of righteousness.

That's a logical progression.

Now it should produce mourning.

I tell you, not everybody mourns over their spiritual poverty.

People compare themselves to others, they shrug their shoulders, they say, okay.

I'm a sinner, I get it.

Other people are sinners also.

I'm better than some people, better than most people even.

That's the way we tend to deal with sin.

You know, the person who cheats on their taxes says, Alright, I may cheat on my taxes, but at least I don't get drunk.

And the person who cheats on his taxes and gets drunk says, okay, I may cheat on my taxes and get drunk, but at least I don't commit adultery.

The person who cheats on taxes and gets drunk and commits adultery says, Oh, it's okay.

I cheat on taxes and I get drunk and I commit adultery, but at least I don't kill anyone.

And the murderer comes along and says, At least I don't cheat on my taxes.

That's where most people are morally speaking.

They don't allow themselves to be broken over their sin because they look around and they see other people that are spiritually bankrupt as well, and so they excuse themselves.

In fact, they even elevate themselves a little bit.

I can be a sinner, but we're all sinners, aren't we?

That's the logic.

That kind of deflection guards the heart from being broken.

It's the person who says, I don't have anything to be sad about, because we all have something to be sad about.

Since we're all in the same sinking boat together, I may as well be happy.

That's the way the majority of people think it's logically, you know, it's logically ridiculous.

If you're on a boat that's sinking, do you say, hey, we're all gonna drown together, so we may as well let the music play?

But that's where people are.

The reality is when you die, you'll stand before God for judgment.

You do not have any righteousness of your own.

You do not have any, there's no way to bail you out of this.

So you have nothing to present to God as justification for your sin or as an excuse to go to heaven when you die.

You're spiritually bankrupt.

Now, the person who is aware of that should mourn over it rather than make an excuse about it.

But this gate keeps getting narrower.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, is where it begins.

And when you understand that, you recognize everybody from Adam and Eve is poor in spirit.

We all just are, because of Adam and Eve's sin, our own spiritual depravity.

We are all spiritually bankrupt.

That's true.

But not everybody's aware of it, not everybody deals with it.

And even of those who are aware of it, not everybody mourns over it.

So that's the second beatitude.

This is not confined to Matthew chapter 5.

Matthew 5 · chapter mention

This is all over the Bible, even in the Old Testament.

Those who mourn over their sin are those who repent over their sin.

There's no salvation without repentance.

There is no repentance without mourning over sin.

It's not an isolated truth.

It again, as I mentioned, is taught everywhere.

Psalm 119, verse 136, for example.

Psalms 119:136

The psalmist said, My eyes shed streams of tears, because people do not keep your law.

And when he says people, he's not pointing out, he's including himself.

His eyes are filled with tears because his people don't keep Torah.

They do not keep the old covenant with God, and it breaks him.

It breaks him.

That's the kind of breaking that leads to repentance.

When you recognize that sin leads to exile, exile can lead to the return, but only in repentance.

This happens with your own individual life.

You see your sin and you can repent by lamenting it.

The person who doesn't lament their sin doesn't repent over their sin.

Blessed are the poor in spirit.

I mentioned last week the word for poor there.

It's the most extreme Greek word for poor.

Lots of Greek words for poor.

This is the most extreme one.

This is the one for a beggar who won't make eye contact with you because he's so ashamed over his sin.

He begs, but he looks away.

The same thing is true in the next verse.

Blessed are those who mourn.

The word for mourn here is the most extreme of all of the Greek words for mourning.

It's the word that's used for the death of a loved one.

It's the word that's used in Mark 16 for the women who were with Jesus when he died and watched him be buried.

They go back to the house together and they do this word.

They mourn together.

This is a very extreme word.

They're broken over the death of a loved one.

It's a deep grief.

It is a shaking kind of grief.

And it is the kind of grief that, if it is godly, leads to repentance.

Repentance is exactly what Jesus has been preaching.

Before the Sermon on the Mount, he attracted the massive crowds to himself in Matthew chapter 4 through his preaching.

Matthew 4 · chapter mention

And his preaching is just distilled, not a whole sermon in Matthew 4, it's distilled to one word.

Jesus was preaching, repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

That's what John the Baptist was preaching before they killed him.

Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

This is what the prophets of the Old Testament were preaching.

Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.

Now the kingdom is here in the person of Jesus Christ, and he declares to them, Blessed are the poor, for they lack righteousness, if they mourn over their spiritual bankruptcy.

But not everybody mourns.

And not everybody who mourns mourns in a real way.

It's so hard to tell on the outside.

When I was in Chad, the nation of Chad, maybe a year ago, I got to go to a funeral for a Christian woman.

This is a part of the country where it's not majority Christian, but this lady was a believer, and uh the funerals in Chad are very public.

And this particular funeral, she was well known.

There were well over a thousand people that were there, and the people gathered outside, they gathered around the body, and they were singing.

Many of them were believers.

They were singing hymns, they were singing Christian songs, joyful songs.

They're dancing around the body, and it was really a celebratory time.

It was unreal.

And not everybody there was believers.

There were a lot of Muslims that were there, and you could tell because they weren't really singing, they were in the more in the scowling category, I would think, at the very loud and boisterous dancing happening around this woman's body.

As they moved the body up to the burial site, up the mountain, there were professional wailers that came.

These wailers, I talked to one of them, they were they were paid.

I don't know how much they were paid, but they were paid, and I actually saw them warming up before the funeral.

They're behind a fence dressed in all black, walking around wailing very loudly, uh getting in the mood, I guess.

And they come around the fence as the body is moved, and they are shrieking and wailing, and it was a cacophonous contradiction.

You had the celebratory singing of the believers and this loud, mournful wailing.

In fact, when they got to the burial site, the the Christians stopped their singing to let the mourners take center stage, and you know, they fell on their knees, and just the shrieking that's that sears in your mind, it stays with you.

But they were paid to be there.

Is that real mourning?

Maybe they knew the woman, she was well known, but if it was authentic mourning, would it have to be given to the professionals?

I want you to appreciate the dynamic because the same dynamic is true in people's hearts spiritually.

Not everybody who cries over their sin is demonstrating godly sorrow.

Not everybody who's spiritually bankrupt mourns over their sin.

That's true.

But not everybody who mourns over their sin has godly mourning over their sin.

Not everybody who mourns in a real way will get the last part of the verse, they'll be comforted.

And so it's critical.

It's so important for you to understand the difference between godly mourning and worldly mourning.

Godly sorrow and worldly sorrow.

Because one of them is an indication of authentic salvation, and the other is an indication of self-deception.

But true salvation is always accompanied by godly repentance and godly sorrow.

I want you to turn over to, I think, the most profound teaching on this in the Bible.

It's 2 Corinthians chapter 7.

2 Corinthians 7 · chapter mention

So turn right in a few books.

If you're in the Pew Bibles, it's page 967.

967 in the Pew Bible, but 2 Corinthians, right?

Just a handful of pages, chapter 7.

2 Corinthians 7 is where Paul is appealing to the Corinthians to repent from their sins.

He wants to go visit them, but he's afraid that if he goes, it will be too sorrowful for them.

He says earlier in the book.

And he doesn't want to produce a worldly sorrow in them.

He says in chapter 7, he's okay producing a godly sorrow in them.

Look at chapter 7, verse 9, he says, if you felt a godly grief, you would suffer no loss through his visit.

In other words, if I came and you actually repented over your sin, it'd be great and be rejoicing.

But he's so nervous about it only being a worldly sorrow that he can't bear to go see them.

That leads to this verse, so precious, verse 10, 2 Corinthians 7, verse 10.

2 Corinthians 7:10

Godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.

You don't get a bigger gulf right there.

There's no bigger gulf in all of the Bible than that gulf right there.

Godly grief, salvation.

Worldly grief, death.

How do you tell the difference?

If Paul is looking at the Corinthians and he can't tell, how can you tell?

Well, that's verse 11.

Verse 11 goes on to describe godly grief.

That's the phrase used in chapter 7, verse 11.

What earnestness this godly grief has produced in you.

What eagerness to clear yourselves, indignation, fear, longing, zeal, punishment.

Proven innocent through all of this.

I want you to understand the difference between godly sorrow and worldly sorrow.

I'm gonna put a couple distinctions on the screen for you.

Godly sorrow comes with conviction.

Conviction over sin.

The ESV translates it earnestness, but it's the it's the word for conviction.

It's being aware of your spiritual poverty, it's being aware of your guilt.

That's godly sorrow.

That's godly grief or good grief.

Being aware of your sin, being aware that you have no righteousness of your own.

That's gonna bring an earnestness or a conviction to you.

It comes from knowing your sin.

So many people are quick to mourn the sins of others, but do not mourn their own sin.

This requires humility.

It requires making yourself low, which is where the sermon on the mount will go in the next few weeks.

When Jesus says, for example, he's gonna send the Holy Spirit into the world, he doesn't say, I'm gonna send the Holy Spirit in the world to help you feel good about yourselves or to boost your self-esteem.

He says, I'm sending the Holy Spirit into the world, and he will convict you of sin.

That's godly sorrow, where you feel convicted of your sin.

Conviction just means you're aware of it, you look at it, you recognize it, you realize it, you call it what it is, it is sin.

That's conviction.

Godly sorrow produces an eagerness.

An eagerness that says to clear yourselves.

Now, the phrase clear yourselves in English might sound like to be acquitted.

Like to clear your name by proving your innocence.

That's not how the idiom functions in Greek.

In Greek, this idiom means that you want to get this resolved.

You're so burdened by your sin you want to deal with it.

You have a desire to be face to face with God and just deal with your sin.

Knowing you have nothing to offer for it, knowing the charges against you are true, knowing that God will judge you, you just are so aware and convicted by your sin, you want to bring it before the Lord now and you want help.

A desire to have your sin dealt with.

Thirdly, godly sorrow has an indignation.

I like that word the SV uses there.

Indignation, it's a it's in a word for anger.

You're angry about your sin.

You're angry for the shame that it causes you for what it did to Jesus.

It's a conviction, not just that your actions are sin, but the results of those actions are your fault.

It's the awareness that your actions are loathsome to God and it vexes you, it bothers you, it breaks you.

You hate the totality of your sin.

You don't just hate the poison, but you hate the meal that the poison is served in.

That's this word.

You're angry that you have sin in you.

You're angry at yourself, and you don't have anybody else to blame.

Like, this is not like I'll do better next time.

This is the awareness that I can't do better anytime.

I think sometimes we excuse sin by, I call it the AYSO soccer mentality.

Doesn't matter if you win or lose, just try your best.

That's all that counts, right?

Orange slices for everybody.

People have the attitude with God.

God knows I tried my best.

That's probably the most common excuse towards God.

When I die, it's okay that I'm a sinner because God will know that I tried my best.

That is a lack of awareness.

Listen, sometimes, regardless of what your parents and your coaches and your teachers may have told you, sometimes your best is not good enough.

Your best, you play your best and you still lose.

And you you can do better next time.

The fact of the matter is you're not good enough to win.

Let that sink in.

And that applies to God.

You're not good enough to have righteousness before God.

You're not good enough to stand before God.

You can say, I'll try better next time, or you can tell God, look, I did my best.

That's the problem.

Is that you did your best and it's still lost.

You're still a sinner.

And so, where is your anger directed at then?

With godly sorrow, it's directed at yourself.

I'm so angry at my sin, at who I am.

That produces a fear.

Godly sorrow is a fear, not of others.

Godly sorrow is a fear of God.

This is the beginning of wisdom, Solomon writes, to fear the Lord.

That's godly sorrow.

You're aware of your sin and it produces this fear in you.

A holy and healthy fear of the Lord.

That fear comes from the word of God, not just from your conscience.

When your conscience convicts you, that helps you fear sin.

No, a holy fear, a godly grief, a godly sorrow, and you fear the Lord.

That produces a longing.

A longing is the next word Paul uses in verse 11, a longing to be restored, a longing to, as I said earlier, to have your sin dealt with, to confess it before the Lord.

To come clean about your sin, to confess it before others, to just have it dealt with and bring it before God.

Not to avoid it, to recognize that God is confronting you because of your sin, and you want the work of the heavenly surgeon to happen in your heart.

That's the godly grief.

Which leads to his zeal to be made right.

That's where he ends in verse 11.

The word zeal in the middle there.

I just zealous, like an eagerness, an urgency.

This is Samuel who finds Agag and hacks into pieces.

He's not going to let Eggag go back to the castle and do whatever egg ag does.

He's not like Saul who is content to drag Eggag around and, you know, for whatever excuses he had to delay it.

This is the kind of eagerness you want your sin dealt with.

You want it done now, you want it thoroughly vanquished, thoroughly destroyed.

That's this word here.

It's a zeal to just be made right before the Lord.

That's what you want more than anything else.

You want to deal with your sin.

And it vexes you that you will be dealing with it your whole life.

You know you're not going to cross it off your list.

You know you're never going to get to the point where you're like, deal with sin and it's crossed off your day planner.

It will always be with you, and yet you're so zealous for it to be dealt with.

That leads to punishment or justice.

What punishment, Paul just declares in the middle of verse 11.

What zeal, what punishment.

Godly sorrow wants sin punished.

Godly sorrow says, I know it deserves God's wrath.

It's so loathsome, it's so vile against God.

I know how loathsome sin is.

God must deal with it.

I want him to punish sin.

That's godly sorrow.

We've gotten to the point where you actually know it deserves punishment.

And the only one who can punish sin is God.

That's godly sorrow.

Now, as I mentioned, there's so much at stake for you in your ability to identify godly sorrow from worldly sorrow.

So I want you to look at this list.

We'll spend a few more minutes on this.

I want you to look at this list.

And now I want you to appreciate the corollary, the opposite of each one of these things.

You can go down the same list and see what worldly sorrow is.

For example, if godly sorrow is conviction, worldly sorrow has despair, like giving up.

The person who mourns over their sin and mourns over how their sin has destroyed their family and their sin has destroyed their life, and they just get helpless and hopeless.

That's worldly sorrow.

On the outside, it can look like godly sorrow.

On the outside, the husband who left his family might be broken over sin and weep and weep and weep, and it could be worldly sorrow or it could be godly sorrow.

The tears are not the indication.

This requires heart surgery.

It requires knowing why the guy's weeping.

What's his motives?

What's actually going on in his heart?

Is he convicted over the nature of his sin?

Or does he have despair about how he has crashed his life into the ditch?

On the outside, it looks the same.

Worldly sorrow has an eagerness to vindicate.

If godly sorrow had an eagerness to have your sin dealt with, worldly sorrow has an eagerness for everybody to know it's not as bad as they might think.

After all, the only reason I sinned is because this other person did that.

And if you would have seen what that other person did, you would have done exactly any normal person would have acted exactly how I did.

That's worldly sorrow.

Yeah, you're sad about your sin, but if only other people would understand why you did what you did, it would explain it away.

Worldly sorrow, an eagerness to be vindicated.

That's because worldly sorrow functions from a fear of reputation, not a fear of God, but you don't want your reputation hurt.

You want to cover your sin because if other people knew about it, man, that would really harm your reputation.

That's worldly sorrow.

That's of course true because worldly sorrow operates out of fear of man, not fear of God.

What will people think?

Worldly sorrow is often provoked by conscience, but provoked by head knowledge of the Bible, but not a heart experience with the resurrected Lord.

Worldly sorrow is focused on loss.

All that you've lost because of your sin.

That's what worldly sorrow focuses on.

Not on a longing for your sin to be dealt with like godly sorrow, but just on how much you've lost.

How much it's cost to you?

Notice the man-centered nature of worldly sorrow.

You're focused on what it's cost you.

Worldly sorrow has a zeal to move on.

Like, can't we just forget about this?

I said I was sorry, okay?

Can't we just move on?

That's worldly sorrow.

In worldly sorrow, confession becomes a means to an end, and the end is getting over it.

Worldly sorrow implies repentance is easy work.

Hey, I said I'm sorry, that's done.

That's worldly sorrow.

That's not godly sorrow.

Worldly sorrow leads to bitterness.

Bitterness.

You get bitter at others, you get bitter at yourself, you get bitter at the Lord, of course.

He's the one that gave you this husband or wife, or he's the one that gave you these kids, or he's the one that gave you this job.

You're angry at your husband for how he treats you, your wife for how she treats you, your kids for how they respect you or don't, your boss for how he treats you, you're angry at your life.

That's worldly sorrow.

Bitterness, sadness, hopelessness.

I hope you see the distinction.

Because there's a lot writing on this.

It is Jesus who said, Blessed are those who mourn, but understands that there is a mourning that the world has that does not produce comfort, but only exponentially exasperate sorrow.

When Jesus says, godly are the grieving, he means godly are those who experience worldly or godly sorrow.

Worldly sorrow does not produce the comfort of the Lord.

As I mentioned, this is all over both the Old and New Testament.

James 4, verse 9 says it this way: Be wretched and mourn and weep.

James 4:9

Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy into gloom.

That's the narrow gate to salvation.

And these gates keep getting narrower, don't they?

The narrow gate is spiritual bankruptcy, spiritual poverty.

The next wicket on that gate is even more narrow.

That you mourn over it with a godly sorrow, a godly mourning.

That's why James, James is probably the first New Testament book written.

And it has that command in it be mournful.

Weep over your sin.

There's no true salvation without this experience.

And this is why I really do fear that so many people are deceived about their salvation because so much energy in Christianity is geared towards convincing people not to have this kind of sorrow.

To feel good about themselves, to lead their best life now, kind of thing.

I get mailers sometimes from other churches inviting me to church.

You know, it's of course generic mailers to everybody, but I you know, they always have smiley people on the front.

I recognize that you're not going to invite people to church with a picture of sackcloth and ashes.

I get it.

But still, there's this huge delta between the Beatitudes and between Christianity as it's marketed.

Do you want to be you want a happier marriage?

You want a happier blah blah blah?

Come with smiley people.

People go, they believe in Jesus in some sense, but they're not saved.

They're not saved.

They've never been broken over their sin.

They'll go to, you know, the altar call kind of thing.

You'll be at an event, a concert, or a stadium, and the concert is happy music, and the gospel message is, you know, two minutes long and Jesus died and resurrected, and do you you're lucky if you get the resurrection in there?

And then do you believe that if so, come forward and you're saved?

And there's been no, there's nobody broken over sin.

There's nobody aware of their sin, but there's a lot of people who are now told that you're a Christian, don't let anybody ever question it.

You know, do you understand the demons believe that Jesus died on the cross and rose from the grave?

Do you get that?

Judas knew that Jesus was gonna go die on the cross, and Judas was the one who was gonna put him on the cross.

It's not a lack of knowledge of the death and resurrection of Christ.

Judas understood it.

The demons understand it.

And Judas had worldly sorrow too, didn't he?

The dude hung himself.

Oh, he was broken.

Broken.

You don't get much more broken than that.

It's not salvation.

There's got to be an awareness of sin.

You know, somebody says, I've been saved since I was a little kid, but I don't, and I got saved when I was five, but I didn't have any brokenness over my sin then.

I wasn't aware that I was a sinner.

I just knew about Jesus.

Have you ever been broken over your sin?

Because if that's your story and you've never been broken over your sin, then it is right for you to question your salvation.

Have you ever mourned over your sin?

Has the weight of your sin ever brought you low?

Because without being brought low, you can't be lifted up.

This is how the word of God is the hammer that breaks the hard heart.

Your heart has to be broken before it can be bound up.

Joel 2, verse 12, yet even now, declares Yahweh, return to me with all your heart, with fasting and with weeping and with mourning.

Joel 2:12

And then he says, Wrenge your heart and not your garments.

God isn't after the external expressions of mourning.

I think of the king in 2 Kings chapter 6, who's a pagan king, idol-worshiping king.

2 Kings 6 · chapter mention

He has a death sentence on Elisha, and yet he's walking along the wall of Samaria, of Israel, and he rips his robe and he has sackcloth underneath it.

That guy was mourning and he was worshiping idols.

And when everybody sees the sackcloth, the king gets embarrassed and commands that Elisha be executed.

That is worldly sorrow.

You'll weep over your sin and you'll mourn over your sin and you'll rend your clothes.

I want your heart broken.

Because then God can comfort.

Those that mourn will have their tears wiped away.

Matthew 5 says, those who mourn will have their tears wiped away.

You have to be poor in spirit before you can be filled with the Holy Spirit.

Amen?

You have to mourn before you can be comforted.

I think the best example of this in the Bible, I know you might be still in 2 Corinthians, but we're going to go one more place.

Go to Zechariah chapter 12.

Zechariah 12 · chapter mention

Zechariah chapter 12.

Zechariah 12 · chapter mention

I just want you to see this.

Page 799 in the Pew Bibles.

Zechariah chapter 12.

Zechariah 12 · chapter mention

This, as I mentioned, this is probably the most powerful picture of this in all of the Bible.

Zechariah 12 is talking about the return of the Lord.

This is the end times.

This is the end of the tribulation.

This is the future event.

Jesus is going to return and he's going to establish his kingdom in Jerusalem.

And when he does, those Jews that had survived the tribulation are going to be radically saved.

And what does their salvation look like?

Jesus is going to pour out his spirit on them, it says.

Verse 10, I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace.

He's talking about the Holy Spirit.

This is regeneration.

God is going to pour out his spirit on them.

You know this is Yahweh talking.

The only one who can send the Holy Spirit is God Himself.

You don't get to send the Spirit.

Only God can send the Spirit, it's His Spirit.

So verse 10, God is going to pour out His Spirit on the house of David.

They'll look on me whom they pierce.

They will mourn for Him, it says, as one mourns for the only child, they'll weep bitterly for him as one weeps over a firstborn.

On that day, mourning in Jerusalem will be as great as the mourning from the plains of Megiddo.

This is after the battle of Armageddon.

Millions of people will die.

The valley of Armageddon, the valley of Megiddah will be laid waste with human bodies.

And here, Yahweh says, the mourning in Jerusalem over their sin will be greater than all the mourning in the world over millions killed in battle.

The hearts of husbands and wives and children, the feeble people, will be broken over their sin, and their mourning will be more profound and greater than all those widows from the battle.

The land, verse 12, will mourn.

Each family by itself, the family of David by itself, the wives by themselves.

And you think, why is it focusing on the wives here?

Because it's letting you know this is not just some nationalistic conversion like every Jew gets saved.

No, this is every individual there.

The salvation is coming one at a time, person to person.

The husband doesn't get saved and bring his family with him.

It's starting with the wives here, and with the children it said earlier, the feeble in the household being the children, the wives, husbands, each individual person saved one at a time by the Holy Spirit, and each person mourns over their own sin.

It goes to the tribes there, Levi, etc.

Even the priests get saved.

But go back up over to verse 10, Zechariah 12, verse 10.

Zechariah 12:10

What are they mourning about?

They're mourning over their sin for sure.

But do you see the phrase?

These are Jews.

See the phrase that's used in verse 10?

They're looking upon me, whom they pierced.

The speaker is Yahweh.

The speaker is God.

They're going to look on God, whom they pierce.

In reference, of course, to the crucifixion of the Savior.

That's why it's important to remember these are Jews.

The pieces get put together here.

They realize that the sinless Savior was killed by us for our sin.

And it wrecks them.

That's Israel in the future.

Have you had this experience?

Has your sin been impressed on your heart to the point where you're confronted by it?

And you recognize that it was your sin that crucified the Lord.

This is the grief that they have in Zechariah 12.

They exclaim, they look upon me whom they perish.

They exclaim, My God, it's my sin that killed you.

My God, I did this.

My God, I killed my God.

That's the kind of language they have.

They're broken and they're exclaiming, I did this to God.

It's me, it's my sin that held him there on that tree.

It's me that crucified him.

It's my sin that killed the Holy One of Israel.

That's their experience.

That's what Jesus puts out there in the Beatitudes when he talks about mourning.

Have you had that experience?

And Jesus doesn't leave you there, of course.

You see even in Zechariah, the Spirit comes in them and comforts them.

You see this in Isaiah 61, that Jesus binds up the brokenhearted, he takes off their sackcloth and puts on a headdress.

He takes away their ashes and gives them beauty.

He takes away the mourning and anoints them with oil and with perfume, which is what happens to the woman in Luke's gospel.

She's anointing Jesus with perfume and oil.

Revelation 7, verse 17 happens where Jesus wipes away every tear from their eyes.

Revelation 7:17

But you can't have your tears wiped away from your eyes unless you're mourning.

It's worth returning to the woman who is anointed at Jesus's, or who is anointing Jesus' feet.

She was aware of her spiritual poverty.

Jesus tells a story.

Simon, he says, I'm gonna ask you a question.

Two people.

They both take out massive loans.

One person$250,000 of loans.

500 denari, I do the math today.

It's denari a day weight,$250,000.

The other person is$12,000 of loans.

Neither can pay.

The moneylender looks at them.

What does he say?

Does he tell the guy who owns$250,000, hey, save$10 a month?

If you save$10 a month, you can pay off your loan by the time you're 4,000 years old.

That guy's hopeless.

That guy's not paying off the loan.

He's hopeless.

The guy who has$12,000, you know, he's not losing sleep over this.

He's just going on with life.

But the moneylender forgives them both.

And then Jesus asks Simon, which do you think will love the moneylender more?

Simon's answer is so recalcitrant.

Do you remember?

I suppose.

I suppose the first one.

You can almost get Luke's describing the eye rolls.

I suppose.

You suppose the first one?

And then Jesus points at this woman.

That's her.

She's that woman.

She's the one who owes more than she could ever pay.

And she's the one who will go away forgiven.

What about you?

Which one are you?

Are you aware of your spiritual debt?

You're just drowning in it and you can't pay it.

And you're broken over it and you mourn over it.

It's that person who will be comforted by the Lord.

Again, none of these beatitudes stand by themselves.

You need the rest to fill out the picture.

But as the Lord tarries, we'll get to the rest in the next few weeks.

God, we're thankful that you are saving and forgiving God, who is so generous.

From your heart, you have purpose to give salvation from before the foundation of time.

Before sin even entered the world, you wrote our names in your book.

You decreed life.

You decreed your son who would die.

You decreed that you yourself would be crucified before you even made Adam.

That fountain of salvation, Zechariah 13 describes, the fountain of salvation that comes into our lives, it flows into our hearts now through our own spiritual bankruptcy and our own spiritual mourning.

But we're grateful that you are saving God.

We give you thanks for that in Jesus' name.

Amen.

And now for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to TMS.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.