The Beatitudes: Blessed are those who mourn.

Introduction: It’s been a week.

Let’s start with some celebration. Spiritual Emphasis week was awesome for both the mid/high and elementary. The fall retreat at Mt. Gilead was another fantastic example of students being challenged to not just believe but to become greater representatives of Christ.

The past 2 days I joined the fusion youth at Gracepoint Church in Alameda for Ignition NorCal 2025. An awesome time of worship.

Something that I really appreciated about the worship leader that our worship leader Tim also understands is that the whole service is worship.

We often divide the service into the worship and the sermon. But at the end of each musical portion she would say, “Now let’s transition to worship through the word.”

That’s beautiful when we understand that it’s all worship.

So if you haven’t already, let’s transition to worshipping God through His Word.

Let’s pray.

It’s always amazing to me how often when I just plan ahead for what our sermon series will be that it often lines up with current events.

While we have a lot to celebrate, it’s been a rough week for the world.

We remembered the tragedy of 9/11 which continues to shape our culture.

We have ongoing war throughout the world in Ukraine and Israel.

We’ve had multiple school shootings in the last few weeks.

Many people witnessed in real time Charlie Kirk shot on the campus of Utah Valley. And then the aftermath of people even celebrating his death as a good thing, like he had it coming.

But let’s not get it twisted, it seems like every day we are reminded what the Bible teaches us: we live in a broken world.

If you aren’t in mourning for our world, you should be and as we dig into God’s Word, we’ll learn more why that should be our posture.

Transition to the Text: Turn with me in your Bibles to Matthew 5:4. We are continuing our study of the beatitudes. The beautiful attitudes of citizens of the kingdom of heaven.

Now we talked about this last week but I want to be clear that in this, Jesus is offering us something GREATER than the world has to offer. In everything Jesus says in this sermon, there is a contrast to the ways of the world in which Jesus is saying, “I offer you something greater.”

Each one of these beatitudes is Jesus’ offer of something greater in comparison to something lesser that the world offers.

For example, last week, we learned that in contrast to the world’s call to be full of self, Jesus calls us to be poor in spirit and humble. That the world’s offer of greatnesss is about making yourself big in the world. True greatness is about making Jesus big in your life. And the blessing you are promised is the kingdom of heaven.

Today we continue our journey to something both fitting for our time but incredibly difficult for us to embrace.

Let’s get to it.

Read: Matthew 5:4

Matthew 5:4 ESV

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

Beatitude #2: BLESSED ARE THOSE WHO MOURN.

Now we often think about mourning in terms of funerals. A loved one dies and we gather to celebrate their life.

But something I have noticed about the seemingly many memorials/funerals/celebrations of life is that there is a big difference between those of unbelievers and those of believers.

When we are talking about believers, while there is sadness, over the course of the service, it turns to celebration as we remember how amazing God’s grace is. We are comforted. Which is why I think it’s often selfish when people pass and say they don’t want a service, just bury me. Don’t deny people the opportunity to be comforted.

We literally see this played out in real time, “They will be comforted!”

We are blessed to have known that person. You can only mourn when you had something worth mourning over. And that makes you incredibly blessed.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg for us.

Death is temporary for the faithful. And while we mourn for death, we get to see in real time that God comforts us.

2 Corinthians 4:17 ESV

17 For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison,

But this goes beyond what we are talking about when it comes to mourning.

Because if Jesus comforts us in the mourning of our loved ones who go to be with Jesus, how much more will He comfort us with respect to the fallen nature of the world.

So how should we mourn.

1. MOURN over your SIN.

The Apostle Paul rights concerning our salvation:

2 Corinthians 7:10 ESV

10 For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.

Explanation: One of the biggest issues that Jesus had with the Pharisees, Sadducees, and the religious leaders was they had a tendencies to treat certain sins as more or less bad than others. That others needed repentance but not them.

What they would do is essentially say that your sins are worse than mine. Your sins need a savior, mine just need a small offering. And in so doing they are justifying themselves while vilifying others.

Let’s look at an example in Matthew 15:1-9

People celebrated those who abandoned their parents to serve God. Serving God is good, but in doing so they disobeyed God’s Word to honor their parents.

If the good you do, violates God’s Law and God’s word, it is to be mourned not celebrated.

Let me say that again:

If the good you do, violates God’s Law and God’s word, it is to be mourned not celebrated.

We our going to get to mourning the sin of the world…

First we mourn our own sin.

Even in our salvation, we still sin. Even in our own salvation, we recognize that each sin we commit nailed Jesus to the cross.

We ought to mourn that. I’m not talking about shame and guilt.

Romans 8:1 ESV

1 There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

But we mourn nonetheless.

Illustration: This is the problem with our world. We aren’t often honest with ourselves and others. And Christians sometimes are worse in that we hide our sin because we somehow feel like our sin as Christians will cause others to think negatively towards Christ.

If you truly believe in Jesus, why do you still mess up? Why do you still sin? And we feel like will dismiss Jesus because of us.

That might happen sure. But more than that often what happens is they will dismiss Christ because of our response to sin.

When we hide or pretend to have it all together, we fail to tell the Gospel of God’s grace in our lives.

But when we mourn our sin, and humbly present a Gospel that is just as much for us as it is for them, we can make an authentic connection.

I once had a well meaning member of another church I was a part of tell me, don’t be too honest about your past with young people because it will give young people permission to sin because they see you as turning out alright. Now most of us know that’s rediculous. But she had a point in this.

Many do recount their past as a celebration of all that we have been saved from. And in doing so we do celebrate sin. Where sin abounds grace increases.

We need to make sure in recounting our sin, we mourn our sin. What we celebrate is Jesus and His grace.

We have a tendency to minimize our sin by celebrating God’s grace. We must do both. Mourn sin, celebrate grace.

Some people mourn grace. This is also bad. If I weren’t such an awful sinner, God wouldn’t have had to send Jesus to die for me.

It was Jesus joy to die for His people! But that doesn’t minimize sin.

Sin was wicked and evil the moment it entered into Adam and Eve’s mind to violate God’s command.

We need to mourn our sin. We need to celebrate grace.

We also need to mourn the sin of others. In this order.

Application: Many of us how never taken the time to truly mourn our own sin and it shows. Because when we haven’t mourned our own sin and then try to tell the world about their sin, we come across as angry and combative. Those are the people we often decry as judgmental.

But when you first mourn your own sin. When you look intently at the cross and truly understand it, then you truly understand the grace that you have received is available to everyone….apart from works and fixing themselves.

When we mourn our own sin, only then are we are in a better place to mourn the sins of others.

When we truly mourn over sin, it gives us the credibility to…

2. MOURN over the WORLD.

Explanation: The world celebrates sin. Even in the church and we shouldn’t be surprised.

2 Timothy 4:3–4 ESV

3 For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, 4 and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.

We have been lied to by the world, the flesh and the devil that we don’t need to call out sin. And we have been lied to by so-called preachers. Just love people and tell them Jesus has a wonderful plan for their life.

But Jesus tells us that the does have a wonderful plan and the first step in that plan is repentance.

Like we said last week, Jesus never calls us to do anything He doesn’t do Himself.

And I know some might say, is mourning really about sin and the world?

There is one clear place in Matthew where Jesus models mourning. And everything Jesus says, Matthew gives us an example elsewhere.

It is in Matthew 23:37. Jesus is approaching Jerusalem for the final time. His final mission. And while we know He’s been there many times in his life, this one feels different. He stops to mourn.

Matthew 23:37 ESV

37 “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!

Jesus is mourning over the wicked city of Jerusalem which has turned from God and gone after their own sins.

So Jesus weeps.

But the beatiful thing about this is that Jesus knows that He will enter that city and they will beat Him and bruise Him. They will crucifiy and kill Him. Their sin and willful disobedience leads to them killing Jesus. But rather than running from it, Jesus goes into the city and willfully dies for some of the very people who will crucify Him.

It is through Jesus’ mourning over the world that it leads to the greatest act of love of all.

Jesus shows us that you can’t truly love people without occasionally and often mourning for them.

Illustration: Sports analogy time. I do not love the Chicago Bears. I don’t hate them. I feel nothing for them. I don’t have a single one of their players on any of my fantasy teams. So I do not care when they lose.

But when the Ravens lose after being up 15 points with 5 minutes to go in the game, I mourn because as dumb as it is sometimes, seems, I love that team that so often rips my heart out.

There’s another sermon there for another day.

But something strange has happened in the last 15 years that I’ve been in California.

I don’t love the 49ers or the Raiders or being from Baltimore even more so the Former Baltimore Colts. But some of my best friends love these teams. So now, when their team loses, they mourn, so I find myself mourning with those who mourn.

Even when the Ravens beat the 49ers in the Superbowl and on Christmas day. The victory, as awesome as it was, was a little bittersweet because in that victory, my friends were hurting.

And that is just sports.

Application: But the same is true about my faith in Jesus. Jesus has won AND because I have put my faith in Him, I join in the victory and look forward to my eternal reward.

Christ is victorious and we victorious with Him.

But while Christ’s victory means victory for me, I know it means destruction for all who perish apart from Christ.

And right now, people that I love continue to live in rebellion against Christ. So I mourn their sin and I commit to doing what ever I can to make sure that my wife and kids have been washed in the blood of Jesus. I can’t imagine eternity without them with me, worshipping Jesus with me.

My family on the east coast, I have questions about their salvation. I mourn that they might die apart from Christ.

My friends.

This is what Jesus means later in the sermon on the mount when he says:

Matthew 7:3–5 ESV

3 Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? 4 Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.

This is the context of Matthew 7:1

Matthew 7:1 ESV

1 “Judge not, that you be not judged.

It is our responsibility to take the speck out of the eyes of our brothers and sisters.

We are responsible to call out sin in other people, but if you don’t mourn over your own sin first, your judgement of the sins of others comes across as pharisaical and legalistic. That’s the problem.

But we are to judge:

1 Corinthians 6:1–3 ESV

1 When one of you has a grievance against another, does he dare go to law before the unrighteous instead of the saints? 2 Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases? 3 Do you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more, then, matters pertaining to this life!

And that starts with mourning over our own sin.

Application: I’ve often pondered this verse. Is it possible that when we are judging the world, that there will be people in our lives who will stand before us at judgement.

And is it possible that they will look us in the eye and say, “Why didn’t you tell me?” “Why didn’t you warn me?”

I don’t like social media. I don’t think it adds a whole lot of value to our lives. It’s eliminated the face to face conversation.

The only social platform I care about is this one and I will proclaim the word of God unapologetically.

Paul’s words are the rallying cry of every preacher:

Acts 20:27 ESV

27 I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God.

No one will ever lead this place on a Sunday morning uninvited or unwarned of what is coming.

But only after I mourn my own sin with a biblical mourning. And after I have been comforted with a godly comfort.

What does that comfort look like that Bible promises.

Those who mourn over their sin are comforted with forgiveness and salvation in Christ Jesus.

Those who mourn over their sin are comforted with the confidence of eternal life.

Those who mourn over their sin are comforted with new meaning and purpose.

Now mourning over the sin of others and lovingly telling them their sin (in the humility that only comes after you have mourned your own sin) is our primary purpose.

And we don’t comfort them with:

Try harder!

Do better!

Sin less!

Or even worse, if you don’t agree with me you aren’t welcome here. If you disagree with me, then we can have a conversation or agree to disagree. If you disagree with the Bible, you’re in the right place, because my prayer is that the Holy Spirit will change your mind as He convicts you of your sin and leads you to mourn over it.

And then comforts you by leading you to the cross where there is salvation, eternal life, and meaning and purpose that begins and ends with Jesus.

3. MOURN in hope of COMFORT.

Explanation: And it has to be more than this. WE MOURN IN THE CONFIDENCE THAT WE WILL BE COMFORTED!

Now I do believe this applies to mourning over the loss of loved ones as we’ve already seen.

Paul talked about this in light of the death of the early church.

1 Thessalonians 4:13–14 ESV

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.

The problem was they didn’t understand eternity. The Thessalonians heard about eternal life and took it very literally. They thought they would live forever.

And then people they loved started dying. And they didn’t understand.

So Paul says these words:

1 Thessalonians 4:13 ESV

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.

And if these words apply something that we are clearly comforted about how much more the state of our world.

We don’t mourn as others do who have no hope about the death of loved ones.

We don’t mourn as others do who have no hope over our sin.

We don’t mourn as others do who have no hope over the world.

You don’t have to be a Christian to know the world is a broken and messed up place.

The difference is as Christians we know:

That the world is broken because of sin regardless of who commits it. The world is broken and hurting and messed up

We also know that the only answer to the world’s brokenness is the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Some people would argue that people like me who say this are oversimplifying the extremely complex issues of our day. And perhaps you are right. There is more work to be done, but until you bring the gospel to bear on our society, the sins that plague us:

Paul says:

1 Corinthians 6:9–10 ESV

9 Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, 10 nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

There are a lot of sins that we must call out, not just the politically charged ones. And for many preachers who have to get up each Sunday and preach a message that is more and more unpopular, this is the heart of why the Charlie Kirk killing was so disturbing. Because regardless of how much of Charlie Kirk’s overall message we agree with or don’t agree with, we know that there are people that will rejoice when they start killing pastors for standing firm on the word of God because the Bible has become hate speech.

Well just don’t be political. I won’t. I’ll never endorse a political candidate or party. But the third rail issues in our culture are not political issues but moral ones. Homosexuality, God created male and female.

The sanctity of human life from the womb to the tomb. That’s what’s unpopular and that is what the bullets will start flying for.

But what about school shootings. We should be as equally outraged and mourn.

What about the Melissa and Mark Hortman who were gunned down in their home in June. We should be equally outraged and mourn.

We need to stop being numb to the violence of our world and we need to mourn. But we also need to remember:

All of those things find their antidote in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. So until you get to the heart of those issues with the Gospel, no matter the policies you pass in government. No matter the good that you do in humanitarian aid. No matter the things you decry on Facebook, Instagram, Tic Tok, or whatever social media you use. Without the Gospel we are doing nothing more than putting a little bandaid on a knife wound.

Illustration: But what if we fail? What if people reject the Gospel? Does that mean I have failed God?

First of all, when we ask those questions, we have the wrong attitude.

The effectiveness of the Gospel is not dependent upon whether someone receives it or not. It’s effectiveness was already completed at the cross.

Jesus said, it is finished. Telestai

What if I told you that the world becomes a better place every single time a Christian shares the Gospel regardless of the response?

A light does not cease to shine just because someone refuses to open their eyes and look at it.

Isaiah 55:11 ESV

11 so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

When we share the Gospel rightly, we share the word of God.

And who knows if what appears to be a rejection later blossoms into faith.

Again, Paul said 1 Cor 6:11

1 Corinthians 6:11 ESV

11 And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

Such was Paul, murderer and reviler, transformed by the power of the Gospel and no one thought it possible.

It may not always mean that the person will live. It may not always mean that God will remove the longterm consequences of our sin. God may not always lead that person we share the Gospel with will be changed. It may not mean that racism, hatred, sexual immorality, wickedness.

But every time we bring Jesus into our world through our words and actions, the light of Christ shines brighter and the world becomes a better place.

Be comforted with these words.

Response: Are you MOURNING in HOPE?

Summation: Blessed are those who mourn.

Mourn over sin: yours and others.

Mourn over the world.

Mourn with hope.

Closing Illustration:

In closing, I want to challenge you to embrace mourning.

First mourn over your own sin. If you are a Christian, take time to consider what you have been saved from.

If you are not a Christian, please consider the invitation that has been presented here today and the warning. Look to Jesus and find salvation and grace.

And then take some time to mourn for the world.

If you were to walk up to the top of our hill by the crosses, you can pretty much see the entire city.

Sometimes I walk to the crosses and I look out over this city that for nearly 10 years has been my home. It’s especially beautiful at night. A city that I have come to love. And that love has led me to deep mourning. A city filled with brokeness because of sin. It makes me emotional.

I want to encourage you to go to the crosses and look at this city. Let your heart break. Weep and be moved to love.

But we don’t mourn without hope. We mourn in hope that God will move for his purposes or for His glory?

Let’s pray.