Matthew 5:4

Matthew 5:4

You know when you come to the Book of Matthew and you get here in chapter 5, and your reading what Jesus is saying here on the sermon on the mount. You get the realization, that what Jesus was preaching here was so different than what anyone had ever heard at this time. I mean even today, the things we read here are hard to swallow and hard to realize. But Jesus was sharing with a people the principle of Christianity. What it meant to be who God wanted us to be.

You know we want God to bless us and keep us happy all the time. But the first beatitude was to have a broken spirit and now we come to what we read here in verse 4:

“Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted”

Now let’s be honest, we rather not go through life with mourning. Wouldn’t it be just wonderful if we could go through life, happy and never have any pain, no sorrow, never shedding a tear. But let me tell you, that wouldn’t make life wonderful. Listen to this poem that Robert Hamilton wrote:

I walked a mile with Pleasure

She chatted all the way;

But left me none the wiser

For all she had to say.

I walked a mile with Sorrow,

And ne’er a word said she;

But, oh! The things I learned from her,

When sorrow walked with me.

Listen, sorrow may be hard, and we may want to avoid it all cost. But we today have a lot to sorrow over. We have a lot to mourn over.

Now don’t misunderstand what the Lord is saying here, he is not talking about moaners. He’s not talking about that person who goes around saying woe is me, and has that cloud over their head. Jesus is talking about mourners. The word for deepest sorrow, like the grief you feel at the graveside of a love one. A broken heart, that aches in anguish. That is what the Lord is referring to here.

Now what is it that we have to mourn over? What sorrow fills our heart today, that causes us to be in anguish and deep sorrow? Well, can I say that Jesus was a man of sorrows. One of the most emotional verses in the Bible is found in John 11:35 “Jesus wept”.

Can I ask you the question today; does the things that break the heart of Jesus break yours? Are we weeping today for those who are heading to hell? Are we even concerned anymore, have we come to the place where we don’t mourn?

Let me say, it ought to break our heart for what is going on in this world today. But like I said earlier, we don’t want to mourn. We don’t want to be sad; we try to make every effort to keep us from weeping and mourning.

· We go to psychologist to numb our minds to our problems.

· We go to counselors so we can be absolved of our guilt.

· We go to doctors to sedate our pains.

· We go to insurance agents to take away our worries.

· We even have the mortician beautify death, so we are not sad when death comes.

Listen these are not solutions; these are just band-aids for a greater problem. What is it that should cause us to mourn?

The Guilt that Convicts Us.

Do you know the number one cause that we should be mourning today? Sin. It ought to break our hearts when we see the sin in this world taking place, it ought to break our hearts when we commit sin. But you know, we have numbed ourselves to sin, that we find it hard to weep or mourn because of it. You know why? Because Sin is deceptive.

· Now we may go through our life, and we look at ourselves at the end of the day, and we get the mindset, that hey, I’m a good person. I didn’t commit any sin today. I’m doing okay. I went to church, I took my Bible, I sung the songs, hey, I even put money in the offering box.

· Then we leave the church, we get out there in the world and we have someone do us wrong, or we have a falling out with someone we know. Oh, we want to go and hurt them, just tear them down with our words, but we don’t. Because we’re good people, right?

· Listen to what Jesus said about this:

o Matthew 5:21-22 ““Ye have heard that it hath been said of them of old time, thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment: but I say unto you, that whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment.”

· Now we may say, I didn’t go and hurt or kill anyone, but God looks at your heart and he says, you committed murder. Now we say, huh, I didn’t commit murder, but God says you thought about it and that is just the same.

· Now you might be saying, brother Eric, that’s pretty bad, yeah it is, but listen to what Jesus said in verses 27-28

o Matthew 5:27-28 ““You have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: but I say unto you, that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.”

· Now you might be here right now saying, I’ve never committed adultery, but God says you have when you looked at that website, when you watched that tv program, when you looked in that magazine.

· When you realize that we are guilty of these things, it ought to make us mourn, for we have sinned!

· Paul was a great man of God, but Paul knew he was not perfect. He said in Romans 7:7 “What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, thou shalt not covet.”

· Paul was saying I never broke the law, until I realized that I had thought about doing some of those things. You may have never committed murder, stole or committed adultery, but can we say we’ve never have in our minds?

· This is how sin is deceptive, we think we are okay because of how we live on the outside, but sin is not just outward, it is also inward.

· Now this is what we have to weep over. Because sin is defiling. Our hearts are ruined because of sin. Jeremiah 17:9 says “Our hearts are deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.”

· Sin defiles, and it has defiled us. What should we do then? Listen to what the Lord said in Matthew 5:29-30

o “And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast if from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.”

· There are things in our life that sin has defiled, things that we see, and things we can touch. And some of these things need to be removed, to prevent us from falling deeper into sin.

· I want you to know that sin ruins lives and the Devil will pervert the things of this world to temp you to sin. He wants you to go to hell.

· Sin has ruined the lives of many people, and it ought to break our hearts that we are mourning over this.

· Now when the Lord said to pluck out your eye and cut off your hand, this was not a literal statement. What the good Lord was saying was that it is better to get rid of that temptation than let it destroy you.

· You tempted to look at things you shouldn’t, get rid of that phone or that computer. Are you tempted to take a hold of something you know you shouldn’t, throw it in the garbage and get it out of your life.

· The Devil is a pervert and he will take the things that God has created and will twist them to get you to give in to sin. And we have to take a stand, we have to get rid of it. Listen, it is better to be a maimed saint limping into heaven, than a healthy sinner dancing into hell.

· Sin destroys, and it is because of the sin that we have committed that Jesus was nailed to a cross. It ought to move our hearts, not just our heads, that because of sin, Jesus died, we ought to be on our knees mourning to God.

The Grief that Consumes Us

Now we have seen that we are guilty people, and that guilt convicts us. But I want you also to see the grief that consumes us. This word here “mourn” this is the deepest word most touching word for sorrow, so much that we lament, that we are consumed with grief.

· One of the saddest things that happens today, is when a person joins with the church, but they are not really broken over their sin.

· They are not sorrowful for the sin that they have committed. They just come and sit and they never feel sorrow for anything they have done. Listen we need to have godly sorrow for what we have done. Listen to this verse:

o 2 Corinthians 7:10 “For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death.”

· Now what is godly sorrow? Well, godly sorrow is not just regretting something we have done. There were things I regretted when my parents found out, because of what it did to me.

· So, godly sorrow is not just mere regret, and it is not just remorse. Now listen to this closely, because having remorse without repentance is dangerous.

· There are people in the world who are filled with remorse. They hate themselves for the sin they love. You might be one of those persons, you hate yourself because there is some sin that you love and you can’t quit committing. You have remorse, but you haven’t repented.

· You know who was like that? Judas. Judas was remorseful after he betrayed the Lord, after what was happening. He was so filled with remorse that he went and took his own life. He never repented from what he had done, and he stepped out of the hell that he was going through into the literal hell on the other side.

· Listen, remorse without repentance is dangerous, and you might be like that right now.

· Now we should feel regret and remorse for when we sin, but what needs to happen is repentance. Because we realize it doesn’t just break our heart, it broke the heart of Jesus.

· Peter was a man who cursed, swore, and denied the name of Christ, and when his eyes met the Lord’s he went out and wept bitterly. You know why he wept? Because he had broken the Lord’s heart. And he repented from it and went on to live his life for the Lord, even giving his life for Jesus.

· We mourn because our sin broke the heart of Jesus.

The God who Comforts Us.

· Now I have good news for you. We may be sad and mourning for the sin we have committed, but Jesus gives us more to this verse. What did he say? – They shall be comforted.

· Now that word comforted is a marvelous word. We often think that it is a word of sympathy, but it is so much more than that.

· When Jesus is talking about comforted, he’s not talking about a pat on the back saying there, there.

· The word comforted is a word of strength. Think about the word and how it is made up.

o “Com” means “With”. And “Fort” means “Strength”, just like fortress, or fortification, or fortify. So comfort means with strength.

· So what God is saying here is I will put my strength in you. I will be your strength. You will be comforted!

· David experienced that and he wrote about it in Psalm 138:3 “In the day when I cried; blessed are they that mourn thou answeredst me, and strengthenedst me with strength in my soul.”

· Now how does the Lord comfort us? I’m glad you asked.

o John 14:16-17 “Jesus said, “And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you forever. Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.”

· You know who gives me comfort? The Holy Spirit of God. When I mourn, it is the Holy Spirit who comes and gives me strength.

· Are you weeping over your sin today? Listen, the Holy Spirit will come and comfort us. I love what Horatio G Spafford wrote in his song:

My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought!

My sin, not in part but the whole,

Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more,

Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!

· It is comforting in knowing that Jesus is there as my advocate for the sin I have committed and making intercession for me.

· The word for comfort here, is the same word that is used in 1 John 2:1 for advocate. That’s right my comfort is having my advocate.

· It’s the word parakletos that is used, and that word when you break it down, para meaning “alongside of” and kletos “to call”. So, the word means “someone called alongside of you”.

· When you go into a courtroom you have a lawyer, he comes and stands alongside you. And what does he say, he says just be quiet and let me handle this, I am your lawyer.” That is the strength you have, that is the comfort you have.

· The Devil is the prosecutor, and he is accusing the brethren of the sin that we commit. He’s trailing us and pointing out to God, hey look, here he is, he just sinned. How can you claim him to be your child? And the devil looks at us and says, you miserable failure, you’ve sinned! Deny it! Do you know what I say to him? See my lawyer, he’ll handle it.

· This all begins when you see yourself poor in spirit. When we say, “O God, it is not just what I have done, it is what I am; not just what sin has done to me, but what it has done to you. O God, with a broke heart, I repent of it. Not just regret it, not just remorse over it, but God I repent from it.

· And you know what God will say to that? I forgive and give you peace.

· Let me ask you, are you broken over your sin? Do you want to be broken from your sin? Are you mourning what you have done to the Lord? The Spirit of God is here to bring you comfort, if you will come and repent.