Blessed Are Those Who Mourn

All of us, I'm sure, were shocked and saddened this past week with the news of still
another school shooting, this time in Nichol Mines, Pennsylvania, where 10 young Amish
schoolgirls were shot. Five have died, were buried in recent days. A sixth is still on life support,
not expected to live, and the other four continue in hospital seriously and critically wounded.
What makes this particular episode particularly disturbing, I think, is that the shooter,
a man by the name of Charles Carl Roberts, not only meticulously planned this shooting for
at least a week we know, but he was also a professor in Christian, did you know that? He was a church
goer. In fact, when the shooting took place, his wife was at her church leading a prayer meeting.
Now, I don't know what you do with this, but when I hear a story like this, and then the story
a couple of days earlier of that overpass in Level, Quebec, collapsing, killing five people in
two separate cars, when I hear those kinds of stories, I say to myself, where do you go with
all that pain and grief? What do you do with it? How can anything redemptive ever come out
of situations like that? And that in part is what we want to try to address this morning as we prepare
for the celebration of communion as we look at the attitude number two in Matthew 5 verse four,
blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will
be comforted. Now, to mourn, as you know, is to feel or express sorrow or grief over loss or misfortune.
And if we're to understand what it is that Jesus is getting at here when he talks about
mourning and about being comforted in our mourning, I find it very helpful to understand that in
scripture there are at least three kinds of grieving and not all grieving is redemptive in nature.
In other words, not every grief is ultimately going to be comforted. There is what we could call
a natural grieving. That's the pain of the sorrow we experience when we lose a loved person,
place or thing. It's what parents feel when they bury their child. It's what a husband or a wife
feels when a significant relationship falls apart, whether by death, divorce or some other tragedy.
It's what a child feels when a close relationship is severed or his favorite puppy dies.
Grief and pain are a part of living in a fallen world. Nobody will ever escape it entirely.
And while it's true that sometimes God uses natural grieving to bring us to our knees,
to teach us biblical wisdom, to show us the frailty of life, and thus it can have a spiritual benefit.
It is equally true that not all natural grieving automatically produces any benefit.
There are many people who die in their sorrow and they never experience significant comfort.
There is a natural grieving not only, but there is also a sinful grieving. And sinful grieving is
the pain or the sorrow that we experience when our desires are not mapped or our plans are thwarted.
Sinful grieving is what your child does when it wails its head off because it's not getting its way.
Sinful grieving is what you and I do when we rail against God and rail against other people
because our hopes and dreams collapse and our desires are thwarted. And sinful grieving is
what all of us do outside of the grace of Jesus when our sins and our transgressions overtake us,
life spirals down and we are overcome with the sadness of a life that is broken.
And again, while God can redeem that and while sometimes the consequences of our sins
bring us to our knees and cause us to turn to Jesus, truth of the matter is that just as often
people get bitter rather than better, the Apostle Paul says that worldly grief produces death.
So there's a natural grieving, there is a sinful grieving. And then there is what we could call
a spiritual grieving. And this is the pain and the sorrow we feel when it dawns on us that our sins
not only offend and hurt Almighty God, but they also hurt and offend the significant people
in our liars. Sinful grieving or rather spiritual grieving is what David does when he cries out
in Psalm 51 after his adultery with Bathsheba and the subsequent murder of her husband,
Euraya, I know my transgressions and my sin is always before me. Against you, you only have I
sinned and done what is evil in your sight so that you are approved right when you speak and
justified when you judge. Spiritual grieving is what the public and does in the temple when he
beats his chest and hangs his head and cries out, "Be merciful to me, O God, a sinner."
Spiritual grieving is what the Prodigal Son does in the Gospel according to Luke chapter 15.
What a long last he returns to his father when he cries out, "Father, I have sinned against heaven
and against you. I'm no longer worthy to be called your son." And spiritual grieving is what the
crowd does in the day of Pentecost. When it finally dawns on him that this Jesus whom they have
crucified, "God, the Father has exalted it his right hand and given the name that is above
every name." And the Bible says they were cut to the heart and they sent a Peter and the other
Apostles' brothers, "What shall we do?" And it's this kind of grieving, this awareness of sin
and the problems that it causes relationally between God and ourselves and each other,
that Jesus is talking about here in the servant of the Mount when he says, "Blessed are those
who mourn, for they will be comforted." It is in our ability to face our sin and our shortcomings
and only that paradoxically we discover not only God's forgiveness but God's comforting presence.
And in that way, of course, Beattitude No. 2 builds on Beattitude No. 1.
"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." How do we get into the kingdom
by the realization of being poor in spirit? Not be all the clever things I know,
not be all the clever doctrines that I can recapitulate, not by knowing all the right doctrine
or living the right kind of life, but by that heartfelt realization that who I am and what I have to
offer falls far short of the glory of God and I am so desperately dependent for my salvation.
On Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ alone. As I pointed out for that reason, when the Holy Spirit
begins to work in your life and in my life, he brings us to an awareness of our sin and as we
become aware of our sin and as we see how far short we fall of that which God stands for,
I discover ironically the comforting presence of God's Holy Spirit. See, the world doesn't understand
this. The world doesn't like to hear about sin. The world doesn't like to hear about its failure.
And even in the church sometimes, we try to push away those negative emotions. Tell me that I'm okay.
Don't rub my nose and my failure, but Scripture says it is those who mourn for their sin. That is to
say, who grieve over their failure, who grieve because they're not what God is calling them to be,
who grieve because they have failed each other, who own the fact that they are a hopeless case
outside of and apart from Jesus. They are the ones who experience the comfort of God.
Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted. What does it mean to be comforted?
It means that God draws near. He takes note of our grief. He wipes away our tears. He kisses us
better. He holds us in his arms. He holds us in his lap. He tells us that he still loves us
in spite of the mess that we have made of our lives and the failures that we not only commit,
but are. And he lets us know in a whole new way what it is to live by the grace of God.
Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted. Now, let me try to flesh that out a little
bit because it's my experience that this comfort that God provides for us as we own our sin and as we
own our failures is experienced by you and me typically in three areas of our lives. Let me try
to spread those out in the time that it remains. Number one, we experience that comfort
particularly at the time of our Christian conversion. Again, how does a person become a Christian?
Not by learning to jump through all the right loops, not by learning how to echo all the right
confessions. We become a Christian when God has shown us how far short we fall and how much
I need Jesus. And whether this happens through a crisis experience or a gradual dawning of truth
in my heart, the fact remains that as I embrace what God says is true of me in Adam. That is to say
I am a sinner. I have fallen short of the glory of God and I need the grace of Jesus. It is
precisely at that point when I most own my hopelessness when I have exhausted every other avenue to
try to be better. That God comes along by His Word and through His Spirit and He breathes life
into me and I discover paradoxically His comforting presence as He not only forgives me but accepts
me in Christ just as I am. John was talking earlier about that video presentation that we're going
to be starting next Sunday night featuring Bill Hybles and his presentation on just walk across
the room. This is the book that he uses for that. And in part of the introduction he tells a
little bit about his own conversion. And he tells this story in the context of sailing on Lake
Michigan and feeling the prompting of the Holy Spirit to revisit the place in the Bible camp
where he first gave his life to Jesus. Let me read you a couple of paragraphs
of his story. Here's what he says. "By age 17 I had already packed a lot of living into life.
Even then I knew enough to recognize that the accumulation of more toys, the desperate search for
approval, and the ceaseless striving for success just weren't cutting it. My spiritual experience
that night at camp wasn't prompted by someone delivering a stirring message or by someone asking me
three deep questions. I met Christ because while walking from a mess hall gathering
back to my cabin one night I was suddenly penetrated by a single verse of scripture that I had
memorized as a child. Not by works of righteousness which we have done but according to God's mercy
he saved us. Just after 9 o'clock that night the words I'd read so many times before
hit me in a fresh way. Could it really be true that God cared enough about me that he would make
provision to save even me? For the first time in my young life I faced my biggest doubt hit on.
There is no way I could matter so much to God that he would make salvation available to me
as a gift free of charge. To that point everything about my existence could be summed up in two words
urn it. My father had built into me a monstrous work ethic and had reinforced my urnied mantra daily.
You urn every penny you make. You urn your way into the starting line up. You urn good grades. You
urn it all. There is no free lunch. I have been trying my entire life to impress God I remember
thinking. I've poured all my effort into proudly presenting my good ideas to him, my righteousness,
my hard work, my striving, but I felt skeptical all the while would it ever be enough. Truthfully I
wondered if I would ever reach God's quota and be found acceptable by him.
On that night and Eastern Wisconsin the Holy Spirit imparted to me whatever presence of mind
I needed to understand Titus 3.5 that Bible passage I quoted earlier and I met Jesus in an
authentic way. I remember throwing open the doors of my heart to him and what at that time felt
like some sort of amazing grace attack. He says I felt the impact of my salvation and I experienced it
physically. Jesus says blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted.
profound implications because not infrequently even in the church. When we feel bad over our sins
or we meet somebody else who feels bad over their sins the first thing we do is we try to make them
feel better. But feeling better is a bottomless pit somebody who is convicted of sin ought to be
convicted of sin and when we're convicted of sin the antidote to the conviction of sin is not
to be told oh you're okay. Now the antidote to that is the blood of Jesus and so for ourselves and
for each other we need to understand the biblical truth blessed are those who mourn. Morning over
your sin is not the worst thing you could do because it'll drive you to Jesus who's the only one
who can take care of you and to heal lightly the sins of my people was one of the characteristics of
the false prophets in the Old Testament and in the New Testament. So there's Christian conversion
and then of course there's the whole business of living the Christian life. It would be wonderful
if after I came to Christ all awareness of sin would be gone and I could be
happy all the day long and there are some Christians who picture the Christian life that way
but it's not what scripture teaches because just because I have come to Christ and my sins have
been forgiven that doesn't mean that all areas of my life as we've often talked about here
are now automatically lining up with God as a matter of fact most of us will not have known
what is the conviction of sin until after we came to Jesus isn't that true we come to Jesus and we
know that we've got some baggage that we need to get rid of we have no idea of how deeply our
depravity runs the Holy Spirit comes to live in us we start reading the word we start being exposed
to it we start seeing models of Christian living and all of a sudden by the word and through the
Holy Spirit he begins to speak to me and he says you thought that was bad in you let me show you
what is really bad in you and he is now no longer convicting me just of a couple of bad things that I
do out here he's starting to show me the places in my heart where I am falling short of the glory of
God and he is showing me how perfectly incapable I am of measuring up to the standards that God has
said before me and I begin to grieve because of my sin and because of my failure and again the
temptation and the tendency even in the church is the likely heel to wounds of my people and we
tell ourselves and we tell one another are you're not so bad but telling each other we're not so bad
does it make the pain go away because the convicting power of the Holy Spirit is always there
to underscore the brokenness of my life and the places where I am falling short and when the Holy
Spirit convicts me that way I can do one of two things I can just try to push it off try to outrun
it discovering that God's always on my case that I'll never know his comfort or I can just come
to him as I am and I can say you know Lord I'm not the husband that I ought to be I have a
temper I am thoughtless I am impatient I'm not the wife that I ought to be I'm not the church
God that I ought to be I'm not you know I'm but a pale and poor reflection of everything that you are
asking of me because there are things in me I don't even know what they are I can't even fight
to myself I don't understand how I'm ever going to get in top of that but oh God I'm sorry because
I know that my sin hurts my husband it hurts my wife it hurts my children it hurts my co-workers
it dishonors your name oh God what a wretched man I am in the words of the Apostle Paul
and it's in the middle of that kind of mourning that kind of owning of our sin
that God comes along with his amazing comfort because what happens when I own my stuff God says
well at least we're on the same plane now you understand what my issues are with you and you
understand how Jesus Christ is the full provision so that your sin can be dealt with and your life
can be transformed and God comforts us because by the power of the Holy Spirit shows us that he
still loves us that in spite of all our missing up we are still his kids and that he's going to
work in us from glory to glory and one day he is going to present us before the presence of his
glory with rejoicing without any spot or ankle or blemish there isn't a one of us no matter
how badly we're put together or what passions drive us or what sins continue to hold us in bondage
but through faith in Jesus we will one day be completely and totally transformed now that is
comfort that lasts I'll never forget when as a youth there was a particular sin that I was struggling
with before God the Holy Spirit convicting me of it didn't matter what I did or how I try to do
it couldn't get rid of it until one day God in his grace touched my life and I remember being
so incredibly awestruck at his power to touch and to transform and to change that would later
in the song of response that our music group is going to do you're going to catch a glimpse of
Steve's baptism at the river and those of you that know Steve and Nicole's story will know
what an amazing demonstration of God's grace their life has been lived together for 15 years
afraid to commit a relationship that began to fall apart until they met up with Jesus
and Jesus not only led them into marriage but it's now blessed them the brand new baby girl is
a testimony of God's amazing grace he blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted
so God comforts us in a Christian conversion he comforts us to live in a Christian life
and then he comforts us as we bear each others pain and grief this morning of which Jesus speaks
is not only a morning of our own sin and shortcomings it is also a morning of the sin the brokenness
and the shortcoming of the world all around us there was nobody more perfect than Jesus
and yet the Bible describes him as a man of sorrows acquainted with grief and a lot of us think
that Jesus experienced suffering and pain particularly in the latter part of his life as he went
through dark Gethsemane and then faced the agony of the cross and truly that was pain beyond
understanding and beyond comprehension but I think his pain began long before that
because here is the darling of heaven as we sang earlier this morning the perfect son of God
came out of heaven where God is honored above all where the will of God is done by every creature
and God is central to everything sin has no foothold and he gets born into this world
and he rubbed shoulders with the likes of you and me and faces a world of pain and tragedy can you
even begin to imagine what that would have felt like for the Lord Jesus Martin Lloyd Jones
and his commentary on the servant of the man makes the observation that while the gospels tell us
many emotions of Jesus they never tell us that Jesus laughed now you can't argue from the argument
of silence and scripture but you can well imagine how much of his life was a burden
because he comes to his own people and his own people don't want to receive him
he gathers a select group of disciples around him but when push comes to shove they turn their
backs on him and of course ultimately he experiences the abandonment of God the Father himself he
was a man of sorrows acquainted for a grief with grief who for the joy that was said before him
endured the cross and today is seated at the right hand of God in glory and the message of
scripture is that when by faith we're joined to Jesus and Jesus comes to live in us
we begin to experience the pain that is in the world in proportion to the degree to which we
come alive people don't understand that always the more you come alive in Christ
and the more you can experience the positive emotions of God's presence the more also you feel
other people's pain and part of mourning is sharing in the grief that is in the world isn't that
your experience doesn't your heart wrench within you when you hear the news of that shooting that
we talked about earlier ten young girls lined up at a blackboard ready to be raped and shot
when you hear the story of two cars sitting under an overpass and the overpass comes comes crashing
down I don't know if you saw any pictures in the news about one of those cars but it was crushed
to this high that car had three people in it never knew would hit them and those are but examples
of suffering and pain doesn't your heart burn when you have invested time and effort in a spouse
or in a child and willingly and rebelliously they walk away from you and they don't care
about how they cut your heart or you hear the stories in the news of God being dishonored
and sin being celebrated and the world does everything it can to keep the pain away
they drink and they don't and they do whatever they need to do
in order to protect their own comfort zone but Jesus says you're blessed
when you mourn you know why because it is in mourning that you're going to be comforted
how well first of all because as you embrace the pain there are those moments when God breaks through
and brings about redemption how many stories haven't you heard how many stories haven't we shared
together where God breaks through at the last moment and you get a glimpse of God's love in God's
power because he has grabbed hold of us and he has made a transformation those are the things that
give us hope that in the Lord our labors are not in vain though we sow in tears we will come
reaping with shouts of joy and God knows to put enough oasis in the wilderness
to help us to keep on moving towards the promised land and then of course there is the promise of
Scripture that one day when Jesus comes again every wrong is going to be righted every tear is
going to be wiped away and there will no longer be any crying or mourning or pain anymore
that's why we can live with our hearts wide open that's why we don't have to retreat into places
of protection and places of pain and that's why we don't give into hopelessness because no matter
how dark the world gets no matter how victorious evil seems to be the victory has already been
one by the person of Jesus Christ and he reigns at the right hand until every enemy will be made
as a foothold for his feet and on that day I'll tell you those of us that have fought the battle
those of us that have shared in the sufferings of Christ and have agonized with his grief
over a broken and a wounded world I'll tell you a never seen no party but that day
because we're going to shout with joy at Satan's destruction and the fact that God is making all
things new blessed are those who mourn for as surely as God is God they shall
become for that and that's what communion is about because as we draw near to Jesus the man
of sorrows acquainted with grief who took our place so that we might share in his benefits
he draws near to us by the power of his Holy Spirit and it may well be that you're here this morning
and the Holy Spirit convicts you you know you're not the man the woman that you ought to be
you come to church but you're just going through the motions because you know that
whatever it is the God is inviting you to and you just don't have what it takes to get there
and you don't know how to get there and so you give up when you quit trying
but Jesus says it's not in trying harder that we're going to know his presence and his comfort
it's in coming to him as we are with a brokenness and with our sin and with all of our
shortcoming because it's in the middle of all that morning it's in the middle of facing the pain
that we cause him and the pain that we cause each other and taking full responsibility for it
that we discover Jesus comes to us in his own way and he greets us and he provides a comfort
that nobody can take away
to the world I am going bringing sons I cannot bear
come and close me come forgive me Lord I need to meet you there
in these waters healing mercy flows with freedom from despair I am going to that river
Lord I need to meet you there precious Jesus I am ready to surrender every car
take my hand now leave me closer Lord I need to meet you there
to the river I am going bringing sons
I cannot bear come and close me come forgive me Lord I need to meet you there
in these waters healing mercy flows with freedom from despair I am going to that river
Lord I need to meet you there precious Jesus I am ready to surrender every car
take my hand now leave me closer Lord I need to meet you there
come and join us in the air come find life beyond compare he is calling he is waiting
Jesus wants to meet you there he is calling he is waiting
Jesus wants to meet you there precious Jesus I am ready to surrender every car
take my hand now leave me closer Lord I need to meet you there
take my hand now leave me closer Lord I need to meet you there
to the river I am ready to surrender every car