Upside Down Living: Blessed are those who mourn
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This is the second sermon in the Upside-Down Living series in which we look at Jesus' second beatitude, Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. We will explore the ways in which God comforts us, both during times of profound loss and times of conviction over personal and shared sin. We will also look at the way that God uses our fellow believers to comfort us in these same areas. The key challenge is to make ourselves available to God so that we can become a source of comfort to others.
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Upside Down Living: Blessed are those who mourn
- 1. Those who mourn Blessed are…
- 2. Why do you hit yourself in the head with a hammer?
- 3. Because it feels so good when I stop!
- 4. Matthew 5:4 Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
- 5. First Point When we mourn, God blesses us with a sense of His presence.
- 6. Many words for mourning •Klai-ō – sob aloud; wail. •Ex. Widow of Nain •Dakrū-ō – Weep silently; shed tears. •Ex: Jesus weeping over Lazarus.
- 7. Many words for mourning •Lupe-o-mai – general word for mourning; opposite of rejoice; heaviness; sorrow •Ex. “Grieving the Holy Spirit” Eph. 4:30
- 8. Many words for mourning •Koptō – word used to describe a beating of the chest as a demonstration of grief. •Ex. The women grieving for Jesus along the pathway to his crucifixion.
- 9. Many words for mourning •Thrā-ne-ō – word used to describe the mourning of those singing dirges; paid mourners. •Ex. “Children in the marketplace”
- 10. What type of mourning? Πενθέω/ Pen-the-ō To be sad; to weep; to mourn
- 11. William Barclay’s Definition of Pentheo It is defined as the kind of grief which takes such a hold on a man that it cannot be hid. It is not only the sorrow which brings an ache to the heart; it is the sorrow which brings the unrestrainable tears to the eyes.
- 12. God is present… In times of profound loss.
- 13. Psalm 23 4 Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
- 14. 1 Thessalonians 4 13 But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.
- 15. 1 Thessalonians 4 14 For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep.
- 16. God is present… In times of profound conviction of sin.
- 17. 1 Corinthians 5 1 It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans, for a man has his father's wife.
- 18. 1 Corinthians 5 2 And you are arrogant! Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you.
- 19. Psalm 51 17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.
- 20. Charles Spurgeon “I must confess that I never realize Christ's preciousness so much as when I feel myself still to be, apart from Him, an undeserving, hell-deserving sinner.”
- 21. Billy Graham “The Christian life is not a constant high. I have my moments of deep discouragement. I have to go to God in prayer with tears in my eyes, and say, ‘O God, forgive me,’ or ‘Help me’.”
- 22. Second Point When we mourn, God blesses us through the presence of His people.
- 23. Matthew 5:4 Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
- 24. Fellow believers extend comfort… In times of profound loss.
- 25. 2 Corinthians 1 3Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort,
- 26. 4who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.
- 27. 3 New York Friends Jack Kratzer Darren Sherland Bob Hague
- 28. Fellow believers extend comfort… In times of profound conviction.
- 29. Hebrews 3 12Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God.
- 30. Hebrews 3 13But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.
Editor's Notes
- Last week we began our series on the beatitudes of Jesus. I described these beatitudes as the set of behaviors that are appropriate for those who identify with Jesus’ kingdom. Last week we looked what it means to be poor in spirit. We saw that poverty of spirit is closely related to humility. I shared a quote by Charles Spurgeon, in which he suggested that humility, or poverty of spirit is the first beatitude because it is an essential first step. We cannot begin to embrace the values of Christ’s kingdom until we humble ourselves. This week we will look at the second beatitude. But before we do I want to start out with a joke. It’s an old joke. In fact, I’m counting on the fact that many of you will be able to shout out the punchline. Two guys were watching TV together. All of a sudden, one of them pulls out a hammer and hits himself hard on the head 5 times, and then he resumes watching the show. Ten minutes later he does the same thing… pulls out the hammer, clocks himself on the head several times good and hard, and resumes watching the show. A few minutes later, he does the same thing… and this time his friend turns to him and asks.
- Why do you hit yourself in the head with a hammer? Now, let’s see if you’ve heard the joke. And the answer is…
- Because when I stop, it feels so good! Today’s beatitude sounds at first a bit like this joke. Turn with me in your Bibles to Matthew 5:4:
- Matthew 5:4 Look with me at Matthew 5:4: Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. It is the wording here that conjures up images of the guy with the hammer. It would make easy sense to us if Jesus said, comfort those who mourn. That makes sense to us… that when we are in deep mourning, we need someone to comfort us. Jesus called his followers to weep with those who weep… to share their sorrows. So sharing grief as a means of extending comfort makes sense. However, the way this beatitude is worded, it suggests that mourning IS a blessing… that there is positive value in mourning. That’s where the words become a bit confusing. We see mourning as a necessary evil… a consequence of the Fall that we cannot evade and must overcome. Jesus suggests that mourning is one of the ways that God blesses us. Is He saying that we’re blessed when we mourn because when we stop it feels so good? Or is there something far deeper in mourning… a treasure that God has for us in the most difficult of times? That is what we want to look at this morning. I would like to suggest that there are several distinct blessings in mourning., and the first is this:
- First Point When we mourn, God blesses us with a sense of His presence.
- Klai-ō – sob aloud; wail. Ex. Widow of Nain Dakrū-ō – Weep silently; shed tears. Ex: Jesus weeping over Lazarus.
- Lupe-o-mai – general word for mourning; opposite of rejoice; heaviness; sorrow Ex. “Grieving the Holy Spirit” Eph. 4:30
- Koptō – word used to describe a beating of the chest as a demonstration of grief. Ex. The women grieving for Jesus along the pathway to his crucifixion.
- Thrā-ne-ō – word used to describe the mourning of those singing dirges; paid mourners. Ex. “Children in the marketplace” Luke 7:32: "They are like children who sit in the market place and call to one another, and they say, 'We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not weep.'
- However, the word used in our second beatitude, πενθέω, is used to describe a profound sadness. It is the strongest word for mourning that the Greek language has.
- Bible commentator, William Barclay, says of “pentheo” It is defined as the kind of grief which takes such a hold on a man that it cannot be hid. It is not only the sorrow which brings an ache to the heart; it is the sorrow which brings the unrestrainable tears to the eyes. Pentheo refers to the profoundest of griefs, like the grief that Jacob carries for 17 years when he believes that his most beloved son Joseph was torn apart by a wild animal. It is that kind of grief.
- God is present… In times of profound loss. Today is the tenth anniversary of my Dad’s death. I
- 13 But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.
- 14 For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. Today is the tenth anniversary of my father’s death. But rarely do I speak of his death. I speak of his going to be with the Lord. I think that those outside of the Body of Christ may think that we, as believers, are uncomfortable with death… so we hide behind religious terms. Nothing could be further from the truth. We grieve deeply and profoundly, but our grief is different because it is surrounded with promises like this one… promises that give us hope. I can honestly say that these last ten years would have held a lot more sorrow if I truly believed that all that my father was is lost. He was an incredibly kind and gentle man. He was incredibly smart, but you’d never hear it from his lips. Over these past 10 years there are so many exciting things that I have wanted to share with him. So many difficult challenges where I wish I had the benefit of his wise counsel. And there have been moments of disappointment where I truly missed his broad shoulders. But through all of this, I have had this calm assurance that he is in Jesus’ arms and that some day I will see him again. So many of you know what I am talking about. You have lost parents and grandparents, siblings and best friends, aunts, uncles and cousins. And some of these losses came suddenly or prematurely and you were not at all ready to say goodbye. It is painful beyond description and this idea that time heals is nonsense. Jesus shows up in our grief and carries us through.
- God is present… In times of profound sin. The second beatitude’s promise of blessing for those who mourn has not historically been interpreted as a mourning for loss, but as a mourning over sin. Going back to the earliest Church Fathers, this is how this beatitude has been understood. I think that the blessing for those who mourn is broad, but certainly it includes mourning over personal sin and even community-wide sin. Such mourning is encouraged. In fact, the lack of such godly sorrow is rebuked. Consider these difficult words that Paul directed at the believers in Corinth.
- 1 Corinthians 5 1 It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans, for a man has his father's wife.
- 2 And you are arrogant! Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you. The Greek word for mourn here is pentheo… the same word in our beatitude; that word signifying a deep feeling of profound sadness. The lack of godly sorrow accompanied with godly action is described as an arrogance. The Corinthians had dismissed God’s morals and God’s correctives. They thought they knew how to run their lives and their church better than God. That is arrogance. When I think of David, I see a man who made some huge mistakes. He sinned some really big sins. But no one showed more genuine expressions of remorse and godly sorrow than David.
- Psalm 51: 17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. Notice the strange contrast between brokenness and confidence. David’s sins of sleeping with Bathsheba and murdering her husband as a cover-up filled him with a guilt so profound that he describes it in Psalm 32 as a wasting of his bones. But then, in the closing words of this verse we see David’s confidence in the mercy of God. God will not despise a truly broken and contrite heart. Let me share some reflections from some of the most notable of Christians concerning their own sin.
- Charles Spurgeon “I must confess that I never realize Christ's preciousness so much as when I feel myself still to be, apart from Him, an undeserving, hell-deserving sinner.”
- Billy Graham “The Christian life is not a constant high. I have my moments of deep discouragement. I have to go to God in prayer with tears in my eyes, and say, 'O God, forgive me,' or 'Help me.” Last week I shared one of my least favorite quotes… “My Bad.” I shared that I hated that quote because it dismisses an offense and prevents us from sincere apology. Let me share another phrase I am not fond of… “No Big.” It’s short for “No big deal.” I don’t like this phrase because it is overused. If someone steps on my foot accidentally. That’s no big. Slap my daughter… It’s big and there will be consequences. I think we get that difference. But I am concerned that we have developed a “No big” attitude concerning sin in our lives. We don’t see ourselves like Spurgeon did, as hell-deserving. We don’t experience deep discouragement like Dr. Graham describes. We shoot up a quick prayer and move on. We have lost godly sorrow in our lives. And in doing so we have lost that preciousness that Charles Spurgeon referred to. We have lost the blessing that comes when we mourn our sin.
- Second Point When we mourn, God blesses us through the presence of His people. Let’s look at our beatitude again:
- The second half of the equation is where our brothers and sisters in Christ have a huge role. God uses godly people as one of His chief means of extending comfort to us.
- Fellow believers extend comfort… In times of profound loss. We have seen that God provides us with the greatest comfort because He can offer us a hope of seeing our loved ones again in heaven. However, as comforting as this is, God knew that, as human beings, we would also need comforters whom we could see and feel. And there is no doubt that the greatest comforters are people who have experienced the same types of troubles or losses.
- 2 Corinthians 1 3Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort,
- 4who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.
- Here is a picture of three of my closest friends. All are from New York, two fellow Long-Islanders and one Staten-Islander. Jack and I grew up together. Our parents were best friends. Neither of us remember a time when we were not friends. Darren was in my wedding party. We met when I began attending the Dix Hills Evangelical Free Church shortly after I came to Christ. The most recent friend is Bob. Bob was the chairman of the Deacon Board that called me to serve my first church, the Bethel Evangelical Free Church in Staten Island. This week, 10 years ago, we were all together in Ocala Florida, at my Dad’s funeral. All three flew from New York in order to be with me at that difficult time of loss. There is one thing that these three friends shared in common. Each of them had lost their fathers before me. I was at Jack and Darren’s dads’ funerals. Bob’s dad died a few years before we met. But these three were able to comfort me in a unique way because they really knew what losing a father feels like. Two were believers. Jack prayed the sinners prayer when I preached at that funeral service. If you’ve experienced a profound loss, I hope you understand two things. First, God will surround you with comforters if you’re open to it. I have qualified this statement because some of us are so private that we don’t let people into our lives. I want to go on record as saying, “Don’t deprive yourself of the ministry of others.” In a moment of extreme grief, you’re gonna need somebody. Second, I hope that you will be somebody’s Jack, Darren or Bob. You are somebody’s childhood friend. You have friends from your teen years. There is someone who looks up to you as a mentor. God can redeem your greatest pains and losses and leverage them in a powerful way, if you will only extend yourself the way these friends did for me so many years ago. You can’t begin to know the comfort you can bring in a time of profound loss.
- Fellow believers extend comfort… In times of profound conviction. A few minutes ago we saw that God comforts us when we are genuinely sorrowful for our sin, whether it be our personal sin or the sin we share as part of a family or country. Yet, as I look at both life and scripture, I can’t miss the fact that just as God has a role for believers in comforting us at a time of loss, He also uses our brothers and sisters in Christ to share in the process of coming under conviction for sin and being comforted in those times of conviction.
- Look with me at Hebrews 3, starting in verse 12: 12Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God.
- 13But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. This week there was a bad smell in our house. It was so bad that not even heavily scented candles could cover it up. Cindy thought a mouse had died in the basement. Honestly, I couldn’t smell anything. However, I went downstairs and found that the basement was fine. But when I came back into the house, I couldn’t miss the smell. Ultimately, we tracked the smell to the fridge. There was a container holding some forgotten vegetables. They were crusty and nasty. This was not the first time we lost something in the refrigerator. The cause was the fact that the shelves on the upper right side were too close together… you couldn’t see the stuff in the back. So, I removed a shelf. We are better off with a bit less shelf space, but being able to see what’s in there. Time is not always a good thing, especially when something has a shelf life. When we sin, the clock is ticking. Our hearts begin to get hard and nasty. Time does not improve this… it exacerbates the problem. The sooner we deal with sin, the better. That is why it is important to be in Christian community. All of us are experienced sinners. And if you are a brother or sister in Christ, you also have profound experience with repentance and forgiveness. That is what exhortation is all about. It is like having visibility in your refrigerator. Sometimes we stack our sin so neatly that we don’t realize what is happening to our hearts. We don’t see the crustiness. And although sin stinks to high heavens, when we spend a lot of time steeped in it, we lose our ability to smell it. Our spiritual noses just acclimate to the smell. There are times when we need a Christian brother or sisters eyes, ears and noses. They often see the crustiness before we do. They hear the bad attitudes and smell the stink that we’ve gotten used to. God uses fellow sinners saved by grace to help you deal with sin. They understand its deceitfulness because they too have been duped by the devil at one time or another. If we withdraw from Christian community, we remove ourselves from an important way in which the Holy Spirit brings conviction into our lives, through the quickened conscience of Christian friends.