Sermon Tone Analysis

Blessed are those who mourn...

It was in 1962 that Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons had a hit song called “Big Girls Don’t Cry”

And that seems to be the idea for guys doesn’t it?

We tell our sons to “suck it up” and crying is almost seen as shameful for men unless

I think the most poignant example of this comes from the movie “A League of Their Own”

Tom Hanks says “There’s no crying in Baseball!!!”

In fact I think it was Ron Swanson who said the only time it’s acceptable for a man to cry is at: funerals, the grand canyon and at the end of Old Yeller

That’s just how we are: chin up, chest out, buck up, suck it up buttercup!

That’s just how we are as men

As ladies, y’all have it easy, you don’t need a reason to cry, you can just feel like it and y’all can have a good cry.

But contrary to that belief, it is acceptable for not just women but also men to cry

There are all sorts of reasons for crying.

And in scripture we’re given many examples of tears being shed.

There are tears of devotion, like Mary shed on Jesus’ feet.

There are tears of concern, like the Apostle Paul cried as he preached to the Ephesians.

There are tears of regret, like those shed by the Ephesian leaders as they said good-bye to Paul.

There are tears of anguish, shed by the Jesus as He wrestled over the will of God, and tears of compassion, which Jesus wept as He gazed at the city of Jerusalem.

And of course there are the tears of sorrow that accompany death and disappointment in this life.

And of course there are the tears of sorrow that accompany death and disappointment in this life.

In fact, says that God bottles our tears and keeps them, and they are special to our Heavenly Father.

The Bible never asks us to pretend that life isn’t hard and we don’t hurt.

It doesn’t tell us to pretend sorrow is not real.

You cannot make truth disappear merely by wishing it so.

And because of choices and circumstances beyond our control the only response we may know is to weep

There are times when the devastating result of choices and circumstances that are consequences of our sin should lead us to not only tears of remorse but tears of repentance.

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Last week we began our focus on the sermon on the mount

What’s unique?

- Jesus’ first recorded message given to His disciples

Relevant then and relevant now because...

It shows us what repentance needs to look like in the Kingdom of God

It shows us what righteousness needs to look like in the Kingdom of God

Ultimately it shows how we’re to live our life before God and with others

There is a personal level and a community level to our living

There is not one paragraph in this message from Jesus that does not show us the contrast between how a Christian should live vs. how a non-Christian lives.

And while we spent a good bit of our time last week looking at the setting of Jesus’ message this week I want to dive into the second beatitude

But to do so we need to keep it in the context of the passage

So if you’ll look back at vs. 3 we saw where Jesus begins with the word “blessed are the poor in spirit”

And if you’ll remember we’re using D.A. Carson’s definition for blessed here to help us understand the true meaning

Because translating Blessed here as “happy” doesn’t cut it.

So when we see Blessed here in this passage (9 times) we can understand that as :

“Fundamentally approved by God.”

So looking at vs. 3 we can understand that the one who is broken over their condition before God is fundamentally approved by God and their reward is the kingdom of Heaven.

And you may have missed it, but as I was winding down last week I made the comment that Jesus begins with this because it is the starting point for His disciples.

The beginning point for any follower of Christ is to recognize their own depravity, that apart from God, we are all deserving of the wrath and judgment of God, we have nothing to offer, nothing to plead, nothing to warrant the favor of heaven,

That person is fundamentally approved by God!

This is what it means to be poor in spirit.

We belong with the tax collector that stood there with his head bowed beating his chest pleading his case saying “be merciful to me God, I’m a sinner!”

So that’s our context

Now look at vs. 4

It’s easy to look at these beatitudes and see a checklist, thinking that they have no relation to each other, and maybe Jesus was just making a “grocery list” randomly choosing things

But Christ was intentional here

These Beatitudes are building off of each other ( want you to keep that in mind)

So when Jesus says “Blessed are those who mourn”, it should cause us to ask the question “How does this relate to being poor in spirit?”

Well as we did last week and as we’ll do with many of these beatitudes I want us to look at what they are not, what they are and what the result/reward is for exhibiting the quality/characteristic

What mourning is not:

If you were to ask a random person off the street “What is mourning” , while the definitions may vary, almost every response would deal with death

Go to google, and almost every article will focus on those who are mourning the loss of someone (articles on Barbara Bush 92 and Avicii 28- aveechee -swedish dj)

But as I scanned the pages, mourning was associated with death and you’re probably no different when you hear the word mourn

So, at first glance, this beatitude from Christ, we can be tempted to associate the mourning that Jesus is talking about refers to the death of a loved one

After all so much of Scripture puts an emphasis on mourning those who have died

It even prescribes how to mourn

And this morning you may know someone who is personally dealing with the death of a loved one and this topic of mourning is all to real to them

And while they may just be entering into a season of mourning or maybe it’s even turned into years of mourning - they don’t appear to be comforted at all

In fact mourning can often lead to the opposite of comfort - resentment, anger, despair

Some say that if the loved one who died was a follower of Christ - then we shouldn’t mourn but if they weren’t a believer than that’s why you should mourn

Not true - on both accounts, mourning is a much needed release of emotion,

You can deal with the death of someone without mourning

And I’d like to say that if the death of a loved one was a believer that mourning is only temporary for some it can last for far longer than it should.

So while mourning does refer to bereavement and grief, and by all means God does comfort those who mourn those who have died...

Also what Jesus isn’t saying here is that as Christians we’re not expected to walk around in a depressed state all of the time

Or that we’re to have this morbid, doom and gloom, downcast attitude as believers

But in this context, Jesus has something else in mind

And after all

What mourning is here:

Just as we saw last week that “poor in spirit” was not material but spiritual

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“Poor in spirit” is the recognition of our brokenness before God and an understanding of their need for a dependence on God

And with that as our foundation(starting point) to applying these beatitudes(blessings) to our faith

When Jesus says “Blessed are those who mourn” the idea is that if you recognize your condition before God than what causes you to be broken/separated from Him should cause you to mourn

This is how the beatitudes begin to build off of each other

Just as “poor in spirit” is spiritual so is the mourning that Jesus teaches on here

And if we’re going to mourn what it is that has us broken/separated before God then we’re going to be broken over our sinfulness before Him

Now I don’t know about you but have you ever thought about mourning for sin

Usually when we mourn the death of a loved one, the underlying reason of pain is the loss of relationship and the loss of the physical person

But doesn’t it make sense that we mourn over our sin because it is sin that severs our relationship with God

We should mourn the fact that sin has robbed us of our innocence

Generally in our culture, we simply don’t deal with sin.

The famed psychologist Carl Menninger, who studied the effects of sin in his famous book Whatever Happened to Sin?, noted that when an individual fails to deal with the wrongs in his life, he never takes a step toward getting better.

We call ourselves victims, always blaming someone else for our faults.

A thief doesn’t own up to his sin; he blames it on his deprived childhood.

A murderer doesn’t admit his sin; he blames it on abuse.

But when a man faces up to the things in his life that he knows violate the holiness of God, he mourns over his own sin.

When was the last time you shed tears over the sin in your life?

Generally in our culture, we simply don’t deal with sin.

Psychologist Carl Menninger, who studied the effects of sin wrote in his famous book Whatever Happened to Sin?, noted that when an individual fails to deal with the wrongs in his life, he never takes a step toward getting better.

Instead we call ourselves victims, always blaming someone else for our faults.

Jeremiah, David.

How to Be Happy according to Jesus: Study Guide.

Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1996.

Print.

And we know this to be true don’t we?