Matthew 5:4

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

Matthew 6:33

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.