Sermon Tone Analysis

*Blessed Grief*

*Matthew 5:4*

 

David Brainerd was a young missionary who evangelized the Native Americans in New England during the 1740s.

Brainerd died very young.

His diary shows us the picture of a man who communed with God.

He spent hours in prayer.

An outstanding feature of this man's prayer life was his deep sense of sinfulness and neediness.

On Oct. 18, 1740 he wrote in his diary…  /In my morning devotions my soul was exceedingly melted and bitterly mourned over my exceeding sinfulness and vileness./

/ /

I want you to note in this statement two things linked together.

First, there is a sense of sinfulness.

Brainerd even calls it vileness.

This is the quality we discussed last week.

Jesus said, "blessed are the poor in spirit."

The poor in spirit are those who recognize their spiritual bankruptcy.

Brainerd exhibited this.

Second, we notice that accompanying this sense of sinfulness is mourning.

Brainerd said he not only recognized his sinfulness, he mourned it.

When he considered his sinfulness, it brought him to grief.

The seriousness of sin and the mourning which accompanies it is becoming more and more lost on contemporary culture – even in the church.

Let me give you an example.

When Isaac Watts wrote the hymn /Alas and Did My Savior Bleed/ in 1707, he wrote,

 

/Alas and did my Savior bleed and did my Sovereign die?/

/Would He devoted that sacred head for such a worm as I?/

 

Later it was changed to “Would He devoted that sacred head for sinners such as I?” Some hymnals have even changed the language of the phrase to “Would He devote that sacred head for such a one as I?”

 

In a culture which has become enthralled in the secular self-esteem movement, we have a hard time singing “for such a worm as I?” The reason is that we have lost the sense of how terrible and twisting sin really is.

And when we lose that sense of the awful wickedness of sin, we lose the broken heart that goes with it.

I submit to you today that this sense of sin and its accompanying grief are the very things the first two beatitudes teach us.

Two weeks ago we looked at the concept of spiritual poverty.

To be poor in spirit is to realize that we are completely devoid of any spiritual merit.

We are spiritually bankrupt and totally dependent on God.

The second beatitude is the result of this realization – mourning and brokenness over our sin.

Has your soul ever been – to use Brainerd’s language – exceedingly melted because of your exceeding sinfulness and vileness before God?

 

Jesus tells us that those who see their spiritual poverty and mourn over it are blessed.

I.

Blessed are the mourners.

A.

Those who mourn over their sin.

                        1. The mourning Jesus speaks of here is not just any

                            kind of grief.

a.

Grief over losing a loved one.

b.

Grief over lost opportunities.

c.

Grief over pain or persecution.

2. The grief Jesus speaks of here is grief over sin.

a.

The Bible gives us many examples.

My eyes shed streams of water because they do not keep thy law.

/Psalm 119:136/

/ /

Then Ezra rose from before the house of God and went into the chamber of Jehohanan the son of Eliashib.

Although he went there he did not eat bread, nor drink water, for he was mourning the unfaithfulness of the exiles/.

Ezra 10:6/

 

So I gave my attention to the Lord God to seek him by prayer and supplications, with fasting, sackcloth, and ashes.

And I prayed to the Lord my God and confessed…(whole chapter is mourning over sin)

/Daniel 9:4-5/

 

Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from this body of death?

/Romans 7:24/

You have become arrogant and have not mourned instead in order that the one who did this might be removed from your midst.

/1 Cor.

5:2/

 

Now I rejoice, not that you were made sorrowful, but that you were made sorrowful to the point of repentance; for you were made sorrowful according to the will of God, in order that you might not suffer loss in anything through us.

/2 Cor.

7:9/

 

            3.

Mourning over sin includes several facets.

a/.

It is mourning over sin itself and not just it’s con-/

/                           sequences/.

It mourns because sin is an insult to the

                           holiness of God Himself.

ILL: David was confronted by Nathan the prophet over his sins of adultery, lying, and murder.

David’s psalm of mourning is Psalm 51.

In this psalm, David does not mourn the consequences of the sin (the sword not departing from his house) but the sin itself.

He grieves over the fact that he had broken God’s law and violated God’s holiness.

The prodigal son in Luke 15 says to himself one day, “I will arise and go to my father and tell him ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you…” He is not so torn by his circumstances of poverty and living among the swine.

He is torn by his sin.

Thomas Watson said, “The devil holds the small end of the telescope to sinners.”

He wants us to view our sins as small and insignificant.

We must not fall prey to this ploy.

We need to see all sin for what it is – a violation of God’s law and an assault on His holiness.

b.

/Mourning over sin leads to repentance/.

There is kind

                            of mourning which is very cosmetic and shallow.

It is

                            a grief over being caught or confronted or over the

                            losses that sin brings.

But true mourning over sin is a

                            deep and abiding sense of our sin which drives us to

                            repentance.

We mourn and turn to God in sorrow.

See 2 Cor.

7:8-11.

c.

/Mourning over sin also includes the sins of others/.

So

                           deep is the brokenness over sin it extends to the sins                            

                           of  the church and the nation.

See Paul and Daniel as

                           examples of this.

APP: Dear people, the Holy Spirit is the One who convicts our hearts and brings a sense of sin to our lives.

Let me mention two things that the Spirit uses to drive home to our hearts the seriousness of sin.

* /The cross/.