Matthew 5:4
All right, reading from Matthew’s
Gospel. This is Matthew chapter five,
begin at verse one. It says, speaking of Jesus, seeing
the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down,
his disciples came to him. And he opened his mouth and taught
them, saying, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is
the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn,
for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they
shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger
and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. Blessed
are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the
peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. Blessed are
those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for
theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when others revile
you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you
falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your
reward is great in heaven. For so they persecuted the prophets
who were before you. Amen, this is God’s word for
us, his people. And may he bless it to our hearts
and our minds. All right, so tonight we have
Matthew chapter five, verse four. Blessed are those who mourn,
for they shall be comforted. So the subject of mourning and
comforting. Now, first of all, we have to
decide how we are to interpret mourning. Okay, there are lots
of things in this world that Christians ought to be sad about.
We ought to be sad about war and famine and dictators and
persecution all around the world. That’s something we should mourn
over. We ought to be sad about the state of Christianity in
America. The evangelical world in America
has gotten off the rails. We ought to be sad about that.
But we also ought to be sad about our own personal sin, our own
personal, wickedness, our own personal hatred of God, our own
personal rebellion against God, our own personal evil deeds. So which one do we choose? Do
we mourn over our personal sin? Do we mourn over the state of
the church in America? Do we mourn over the state of
the world and the events of things around the globe? Well, anytime
you have a question about how to interpret something in the
Bible, how do you interpret it? Well, you look at the whole of
scripture and say, what does it mean? And the way we can interpret
Matthew chapter five, verse four, is we can go to other places
where the Bible speaks of mourning and comfort and see what God
means. So we read earlier from Isaiah chapter 40, Isaiah chapter
61, and it speaks of Jesus coming and comforting individuals who
are sinful. It speaks of coming and bringing
comfort to those who are bruised and broken and bent and radically
changed by the effects of sin and the fall of man into sin. It doesn’t say Jesus is going
to come and he’s going to make this happened culturally and
that happened and we need to elect this president and that
president. Are those things we should mourn about? Absolutely. But the Beatitudes are very personal. A lot of times in the Bible,
it’s speaking to all of us together. You Christians do this, you Christians
do that. But here it’s being rather personal. Blessed is the person or the
one who is poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforting.
So this is one of the places in the Bible where it is talking
about you. Now very often, when we read
a passage in the Bible, it’s talking about us, but it’s more
indirect. It’s talking about us and the church as a whole.
Or sometimes we come to a passage like David and Goliath, and how
do we make the story of David and Goliath go? David fought
a giant. I have giants in my life. So
if I fight the giants in my life, It’ll all be good, and somehow
we make ourselves David, and that’s really not how that works.
But here’s a case in the Bible where you’re fully allowed to
say, this is about me. The only problem is we don’t
like it. Because it says, blessed are those who are poor in spirit.
Me? What? Poor in spirit? I don’t like the sounds of that.
Or blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
So this is a very personal, self-examination sort of passage. Blessed are those who mourn,
for they shall be comforted. In Luke’s gospel, where the same
sentiment is expressed, Luke’s gospel chapter six, verse four,
it has a very interesting translation. Luke six, verse four, or maybe
it’s four, verse six. I think I got it wrong. Nope, I wrote it down wrong.
Oh well, never mind. I’ll have to figure that out
later. But it speaks of, blessed are those who mourn, for they
shall have laughter. Isn’t that interesting? Blessed
are those who mourn, for they shall have laughter. They will
have joy afterwards. Well Jesus, in Luke chapter 4,
And I got that passage right in Luke chapter 4 There’s a there’s
a place where we’re told Jesus enters a synagogue. This is during
his early earthly ministry He enters a synagogue. And what
does he do? He takes up the scroll and well,
what do you know? He reads from Isaiah I’ve been
sent to give good news to I’ve been sent to release captives.
I’ve been sent to minister to those who are poor and needy. And so we have Jesus fulfilling
those prophecies we read earlier in Isaiah 40 and Isaiah 61. He
reads the scroll and guess what he says? It’s being fulfilled
right before your eyes, meaning I, Jesus, who just read the Bible
to you and fulfilling what Isaiah spoke about 700 plus years ago. And so Jesus preached. personal deliverance from sin.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Now what does it take for us
to know of our sin? The other week when we looked
at blessed are the poor in spirit, we recognized and we realized
that to be poor in spirit means I’ve got nothing. I’m empty.
I’m bankrupt. I’ve come to my wits end. You
know, you can have it all in the world and have nothing spiritually.
You can have all the money in the world, all the houses in
the world, all the vacations in the world, all the resources
of the world, but you can have nothing spiritually. And God
says, yet blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom
of heaven. And now he moves to the next thing we should realize. There’s a logical progression
in the Beatitudes. If we’re poor in spirit, we should
also mourn over our sin. We should be sad about our sin. In our Westminster Confession
of Faith, and in our larger and shorter catechism, it speaks
about repentance unto life. And this is what it says, listen,
it says, repentance unto life is a saving grace, and it is
worked out or wrought in the heart of a sinner by the Holy
Spirit, and by the Word of God. So God, by His Word and His Spirit,
moves in you to let you understand that you’re a sinner, and that
you’re in need of God’s grace. Then out of a sight and a sense,
not only of the danger, but also of the filthiness and odiousness
of his sins. You all know what odiousness
is? You all ever speak to each other in the house about one
another’s odiousness? You wash your clothes or take
a bath, that kind of thing. But out of a sense of the odiousness
of his sins and upon the apprehension of God’s mercy in Christ as such
as are penitent, Listen to this, this person grieves for and hates
his sin so that he turns from them unto God. And he purposes
and endeavors constantly to walk with God in all the ways of new
obedience. So the person who is poor in
spirit then begins to recognize his sin as a stench in the nostrils
of God. It is filthy. It is dangerous. It is deadly. It is poisonous.
And he wants to turn from it. He wants to run away from it. Repentance, remember, is I’m
going this way and it’s the rebellious way. I recognize that. And so
we turn and we go the correct way. Repentance is a change of
mind, a change of heart. One of the things we must do
with our sin is grieve it. We must hate it. We must, here
as Matthew 5, 4 says, we must mourn over it. There was a fellow
who was a ruling elder in our Presbytery down in the Charlotte
area, and he’s since passed away, had Parkinson’s disease, and
probably been gone four or five years. But the story was, any
time that session that he was a member of would interview someone
for church membership, he would sit quietly and listen to all
they had to say, and listen to the other elders ask questions,
Listen to the people petitioning for membership, answer the questions.
And finally at the end, they would look over at this man,
his name was Bruce. And they would say, Bruce, do you have
a question? And he had one question and one question only. And he
would say to the person, do you hate your sin? That question
and the answer given is a plenty, isn’t it? It gives us a sense
of how we feel about our sin. There’s a proverb. I think it’s
in Proverbs chapter 30. And it’s a proverb that stands
out to me, stood out to me for years since I first read it.
Proverbs chapter 30, it speaks of the way of the adulterous,
the way of the unfaithful person. It says the, oh, where is it? Okay, here we go, 31. No, Proverbs
30 verse 20, it says, this is the way of an adulteress, she
eats, And she wipes her mouth, and she says, I have done no
wrong. That’s a picture, isn’t it? She eats, she wipes her mouth,
and she says, I have done no wrong. That is a person who does
not mourn their sin. It’s a way of life. It’s sanctified
in their mind and their heart. And so we should have a grief,
a hatred, a mourning for our sin, for our bankruptcy, for
our debt, for our sinfulness. Let’s think of some examples
of grief over sin. Now we could come up with some
examples of grief over other things, grief over death, grief
over moral chaos in culture, grief over injustice. Yes, we
mourn over those things, but this specific passage teaches
us that we should mourn over our personal sin. Think about
King David. Did David initially mourn over
his sin after he committed adultery with Bathsheba, had her husband
Uriah murdered on the battlefront. He didn’t, what did it take?
It took Nathan the prophet coming to him and telling the story
about the man who had a prized possession, the little sheep,
it’s his only animal, loved it, cared for it, it slept in his
house as if it were his own, and goes on to tell the story
about some rich man who had plenty of sheep, came and took the man’s
one sheep, Cooked it and ate it or something like that. And
what does David say? Oh, I can’t believe it. And then
what does David, and he says that man ought to pay for his
sin. And what does Nathan say? Thou art that man. And so it took a faithful man
of God coming to David and saying, you’re out of your mind. You’ve
sinned upon sin. And what had David done? David
was like the adulteress who ate, wiped his mouth and said, I’ve
done nothing wrong. Yet he committed such grievous sin. But David
eventually mourned his sin. We read of the mourning of a
sin, particularly in Psalm 51. Also Psalm 32. God be merciful
to me, a sinner. So there’s David showing grief.
How about Israel? Think about in the time when
the exiles returned. Returned to Ezra and Nehemiah
just before, after Kings and before, Esther and all, Nehemiah,
Esther, Jo, there you go. I think it’s Nehemiah. Oh, what
chapter is it? Nehemiah chapter nine, it says
the people of Israel confess their sin. That’s sort of the
chapter heading. So the people of God gathered,
they assembled together as they were often to do. They were back
in Jerusalem, they were rebuilding the temple under Nehemiah’s leadership. And many of them had married
foreign wives. Now what did God want the Israelites
to do? He wanted them to marry other Israelites. What happens
if you marry a foreigner? You worship their gods, you take
on their customs, and then no longer are you the peculiar people
of Yahweh. And so they had a period of worship
and confession. And it rained. It rained there. It rained so much so that they
could not stand outside at rain. And so they arranged for times
and places and periods where they could go to their priest
and confess their sins. They could divorce their foreign
wives and they could get back to living properly. But they
mourned their sin. And that’s an example of, it
was corporate. God was not blessing Israel because
of their collective sins that they had individually done in
marrying of the nations. All right, how about Peter? What
did Peter do that was so bad? It was probably a lot of things.
But he denied his master. How many times? Not once, not
twice, three times. And what did he do? He wept. He cried. He knew exactly what
he’d done. Remember what it says in the little story? Read it
in the Gospels? Made eye contact with Jesus. a rooster crowed as it had been
prophesied, and he mourned over his sin. Can’t you imagine for
those 40 days afterwards until he was reinstated? It was a little
tense in the camp. But God nevertheless heard his
angst and his grief. How about Jesus? Now, Jesus,
did he ever sin? Did he have to mourn over his sin? But whose
sin did he mourn over? Remember when he cried over Jerusalem,
he wept as he was riding? He said, oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem,
would that you would come to me. I’m like a hen who would
love to gather his chicks, but you would not. You would not
come. And so he mourns over the sins
of his people. How about the Apostle Paul in
Romans chapter seven? I know what I ought to do. But the thing I know I ought
to do, that’s not what I do. But the thing I know I ought
not to do, that’s the thing I do. And then what does he say? Oh,
the wretched man that I am. He mourns over his sin. And we
could go on and on. Can you imagine though, just
think big picture. Adam and Eve after they’d been caught. You
know, they covered themselves. They put the fig leaves on and
were trying to cover their shame in a man-made way. But God came
and clothed them. He issued out the curses. Can
you imagine, though, as they stumbled from the garden into
the jungle, how they mourned over their sin? And it got to
be less blame. Honey, why’d you give it to me
to eat? Why’d you take it, honey? You took it so willingly and
ate it. You know, they quit that stuff.
They just grieved their sin. You can imagine what it must
have been like. We have to remember sin is not
trivial. That’s the thing we have to get through our minds
and hearts as Christians. The world thinks it is, if they
even have a definition of sin, but it’s getting that way in
the church. But sin is not trivial. And so how do we have comfort?
First, we have to mourn. If there is no mourning, why
do we need to be comforted? We’re just like the adulteress
who eats and wipes her mouth and says, I have done no wrong.
And so why does a person like that need comforting? They don’t.
But those who mourn do need comforting. And so think for just a moment
about mourning and different people’s responses to it. Some
people say, don’t be so introspective. You overthink it. You’re just
melancholy. You’re just overthinking your
sin. You’re just overthinking this harm that’s been done to
you or that you have done. Some people say that. Others
say if you mourn your sin, oh, you’re just being legalistic.
They’ll say, don’t we live by grace? And yes, of course we
do. But we live by grace and you
should have permanent joy. And you look at the modern American
church. It has no room for mourning. Pick a modern church and go to
it. When do they ever sing a sad song? When do they ever sing
a sad song lamenting sin? When do they ever sing a sad
song lamenting God’s righteous judgment? When do they ever sing
the full breadth of the emotions of the Christian? It’s a happy, what do we call
it, sentimental world we’re living in now, and the church has adopted
it. But there’s a point where we must realize our sinfulness
and the trouble it has brought upon us, and we must mourn it
in order to find comfort. And so, yes, we can be too introspective. We can sometimes tend to be too
legalistic. We can ignore grace and we can
not be people full of joy. But there’s gotta be some balance.
We don’t want to live a life apart from the law of God, so
much so that we wipe our mouths and say we’ve done nothing wrong.
But we also don’t want to be like those monks of the, I forget
what century they were, but they walked around beating themselves
on the back for their sin. They were called the flagellants
because they, flagellated, they beat themselves with cords in
order to punish themselves for their sin. What does the Bible
say? The Bible says all have sinned
and fallen short of God’s glory. So if we are sinners, we should
mourn. But the Bible also says there
is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
That’s ought to bring us some joy. We don’t want to be those
who sin and wipe their mouth and say I’ve done nothing wrong.
We also want to understand that sin has been conquered. and that
sin must be mastered in us. It’s something we will daily
wrestle with, we will daily struggle with. So a question for you,
is your heart toward the things of God and towards sin, is it
tender or is it a hard heart? Have you become so calloused
that you are unable to weep and mourn for your own sin? In Ezekiel
chapter nine, I hadn’t really thought of this passage for a
while, but in Ezekiel chapter nine, read it later, it’s an
interesting one. God says, go through the city,
go through the people of Israel, and find in the children of Israel
those who no longer have a view of sin. Put a mark on their head. And after you’ve marked out all
the people who no longer care, about sin and its wickedness.
Go through and kill them all. Spare only those who still have
a hatred of sin. And you know how that little
command to God’s servant who’s supposed to carry out this act
ends? It says, start at the temple.
Start at my sanctuary. That’s a little scary, isn’t
it? Start in the church. Start on the front pew. Maybe
third row. Don’t want to start too high.
Second row, yeah. That’s a little scary. That hits a little close to home.
But that’s what God says to his servant in Ezekiel chapter 9.
Now we also live in a time where, compare this to the charismatics
who say, oh, if you’d just be full of the Spirit, you don’t
have to be mournful. In fact, some charismatics will
even say, you can be perfect, you can never sin again. Well,
that’s a bunch of baloney. Or how about now we’re in the modern
day of prosperity gospel. You just believe God and he’ll
give you all these blessings and you’ll have a happy life.
In fact, you can have your best life now. But that’s not the
way it is either. We have to know and understand
our poverty of spirit, our need for deliverance from sin, And
we have to understand that its power over us is gone, its penalty
is gone, but we struggle with the practice of it. And so as
we live daily lives, waiting until God brings us to heaven,
or comes and gets us and takes us to heaven, we have to continually
hate our sin, love our Savior, understand God’s word, and figure
out what it means to live a life of obedience. But notice what
this beatitude promise is. Blessed are those who mourn,
for they shall be comforted. Isn’t that a wonderful, wonderful
promise that in the depths of our sin and misery, God can and
He will comfort us. But we first have to come to
our senses and recognize the sinfulness of sin, the danger
of sin, the stench of sin, the penalty of sin, the wickedness
of it and what God has done in Christ to deal with it. And when
we rest in Jesus alone for our salvation, we then can be comforted
in forgiveness. One of the things we do every
week in our service is we confess our sin. But what if we stop
there? What’s the next thing we do?
We hear God’s assurance of pardon. Yes, we confess, but we hear
also his assurance, and then we sing of his redemption. That
middle hymn in our service is always, almost always, a song
of redemption, that Jesus saves his children. So blessed are
those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Let’s pray together.
Our great God, we thank you for your gracious mercy and kindness
to us that comes to us through the person and work of Jesus.
We thank you that your Holy Spirit shows us who we are, and shows
us who Jesus is and how we can come to faith in him and rely
on him and receive him alone for our salvation. We thank you
for the forgiveness of sins, for the blessing of mourning
for a short time, but joy which comes in the morning. Thank you
for this, and we pray that we lay hold of it and use it to
live our lives faithfully. In Christ’s name we pray, amen.