Blessed Are Those Who Mourn :: Matthew 5:4

The Sermon on the Mount as an Upside-Down Way of Life

I'm excited to announce that we are starting a new sermon series. Nathan and I were talking about titles for this, and we really like the idea of Upside Down. We're going to be talking about the Beatitudes, and we see how Jesus totally talks about a way of life that is counterintuitive to how the rest of the world wants to live.

And so with that being said, please turn with me to Matthew chapter 5. As you're turning there, I want to once again tell you, we talked about this a few months ago, but this is the greatest sermon ever preached.

Jesus preached to a multitude of people, and no doubt there were many scribes and Pharisees there, and they noticed that Jesus taught way different than anybody else. Typically, rabbis would quote other rabbis.

Pharisees would quote the great, famous Halel, who was a rabbi. They wanted to defer authority. But not with Jesus. Jesus spoke on his own authority, because he is God in the flesh. Anytime he opened up the Law of Moses, he was able to give the right interpretation.

Jesus was able to declare truth, because he is the God of truth. So as we will begin to unpack just the tip of the tip of the iceberg with the Beatitudes, I do want to talk about the context of the Sermon on the Mount.

This is where Jesus expounds on what it looks like to be a true citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven. He talks about what it looks like to have a heart's righteousness that exceeds the self-righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees.

And so I want us to look at the Beatitudes holistically. I don't want to cherry-pick and isolate just one without having all of the Beatitudes at the forefront of our minds. And so we're going to look at a list of eight blessings.

And these are qualities of life that only the children of God possess. These true citizens of the Kingdom. So let's look this morning at the very opening of the Sermon on the Mount. Verse 1 says, Seeing the crowds, Jesus went up on a mountain.

And when he sat down, his disciples came to him. And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying, Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you, and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.

Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in Heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. Let's go to the Lord again in prayer. Heavenly Father, we praise you once again for your holiness.

And we pray that you would send your spirit to illuminate our hearts and minds to be able to understand your truth. God, please give us ears to hear. God, please will we learn. Please help us to not be hearers only, but to be doers of your word.

Lord, I pray that as your word goes forth, that it would sanctify your people. And praise things in your name, Jesus. And so, as we read that, those 12 verses and those eight Beatitudes, I hope you heard a word that was repeated often there.

And that is the word, Blessed. Blessed means to be happy and content. And over time, these eight blessings became referred to as the Beatitudes. Now, this blessedness, or true happiness, is not like the world sees happiness.

It's not based on a superficial feeling that can change on circumstances. That's the only type of happiness that the world can offer you. What Jesus is talking about is a deep, supernatural experience of contentment and peace.

And don't miss this. Based on a right standing with God. This is essentially the blessed man or woman told to us in Psalm chapter 1. A blessed man or woman that does not walk according to the wicked, the ways of the world, but their delight is in the law of the Lord and on God's law they meditate day and night.

I want you to see how the Beatitudes are paradoxical in nature. Listen to how they describe a blessed man or woman with God. Happy are the poor. Happy are those who mourn.

Happy are those who hunger.

The world looks at that and says, no, no, no.

You've got to do the opposite.

You must strive to be wealthy. That will give you comfort. That will give you power. All the friends you could ever want and you will truly be happy. So the Beatitudes, they are upside down than how the rest of the world thinks.

They are completely counter to the world's system. So these eight blessings. I want you to also see that these are not a list, a practical list, that if I fulfill this list of duties, then that will give me happiness.

This is describing a blessed man or woman that already has abounding peace and joy. And all of these are descriptions that are flowing out of their character and lifestyle. I believe that this is the core of what Romans 5 .1 is talking about.

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. And so, true blessing, true happiness comes with that vertical relationship with God. Having your sins forgiven.

There is no greater peace than that. And that peace and joy continues by walking in a loving relationship with the Savior, Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Are we tracking this morning? Well, a couple of months ago, we talked about the first Beatitude. But I would like to review that and then primarily focus on the second Beatitude. So look with me at Matthew 5 .3.

Where Jesus says, Now, we went in great depth last time how Jesus is not referring to financial poverty here. But he's talking about being poor spiritually. And ultimately, this means that you recognize that you have nothing of worth to offer God.

To be poor in spirit means that in humility, a spirit of humbleness, you understand that you are a sinner. You are not just a sinner, but you are a beggar. You have nothing to offer God, and you are dependent on Him, on His grace, and His mercy.

Him beating you where you are. That's what it means to be poor in spirit. And we looked at a wonderful example of somebody in Luke 18. It was a great example of what it means to be poor in spirit. It was a tax collector.

Jesus gave a short parable contrasting a Pharisee and a tax collector. And if you remember the tax collector, he was so overwhelmed with his sin before God that he could not even look to heaven. And he beat his breast.

And he said, God, be merciful to me, sinner. He was poor in spirit. And notice, he couldn't even lift his eyes to heaven because he was so overwhelmed with his guiltiness. But I love it. The way that he says, be merciful to me, is he's saying, make atonement on my behalf.

And everybody, please hear me. That's what we need God to do. We need Him to interrupt our lives and to radically change our heart and our nature. To be poor in spirit is to understand that you are a sinner before God Almighty.

That's what the tax collector replied. And that was being contrasted with the Pharisee. The Pharisee was not poor in spirit, but he was proud in spirit. And the text says that he trusted in himself, that he was righteous and treated others with concern.

That's what the Pharisees would do. They did not see themselves being poor spiritually, but they saw themselves as being spiritually rich. They did not see their sinfulness before God. Rather, they wanted to show off their self-righteousness.

And they looked down on others and they thought themselves to be superior. Then Jesus said that the one who is poor in spirit, the tax collector, he went down to his house justified rather than the other one.

Jesus' point is that you must be poor in spirit in order to be saved. This is so crucial to the gospel. You have to understand that everybody has sinned. Everybody has shattered God's law and we are in need of His amazing grace.

You must be poor in spirit. And I think some people have a misunderstanding of what it means to be a sinner. It doesn't mean that you just mess up sometimes. That you're just pretty much a good person and you just kind of mess up here and there.

To be a sinner means that you are not good. You are not a good person. That you have broken and shattered the law of God. That's why we need our sins. The Bible is replete with reminding us that we cannot trust in ourselves, our works, our merits.

But we must look to the Savior and His finished work alone. Jesus said in Luke chapter 9, If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it.

But whoever loses his life from my Savior is saved.

That is beautiful.

We must look to Christ and deny ourselves. So with the first beatitude, I think that is the point. You must be poor in spirit and for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. You must recognize intellectually that you are a sinner before God.

And that is preparing the groundwork for your salvation. Look with me at verse 3 again. Jesus said, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Now to briefly talk about this phrase, the kingdom of heaven.

Because it's mentioned multiple times all throughout the Gospel of Matthew. And even later in the Sermon on the Mount. And every single time, context always determines this phrase. But every single time the common denominator, the kingdom of heaven, is referring to the sphere of salvation.

And perhaps the best example of this comes later in Matthew chapter 19. Where the disciples are listening to how Jesus answered the rich young ruler's question. He said to Jesus, Good teacher, what good deed must I do to inherit eternal life?

Afterwards Jesus said to the disciples, Truly I say to you, only with difficulty will a rich person enter the kingdom of heaven. And again, I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.

When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished, saying, who then can be saved? So Jesus used two phrases there. He used the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of God. And the disciples understood Him to be referring to the same thing.

And how did they respond? They said, who then can be saved? So what I want you to hang on to is that the kingdom of heaven is referring to salvation. And being poor in spirit, I think, has to be the first of all of the Beatitudes.

Because this is the foundation that everything is built on. We understand that God is holy, holy, holy. And that we have sinned against Him. We have broken His law. And upon that foundation, we can understand the rest of these blessings that Jesus has given.

So let's move on to the second Beatitude. Where this will be our primary focus for the rest of the morning. Look with me at verse 4. Jesus says, Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

Mourning Over Sin and the Meaning of Repentance

And I want to point out once again how counterintuitive this seems. Jesus is saying, blessed are those who mourn, then you will have comfort. Then you will be truly blessed. The unbelieving world looks at this and says, you mean I have to mourn in order to be happy?

That's crazy talk.

You need to avoid that in order to have true happiness. As we begin to unpack this Beatitude, we're going to see that the world has no idea how to understand this profound truth that our Lord is saying.

So the big question this morning is what kind of mourning is our Lord talking about here? And I believe with the immediate surrounding context, the first Beatitude is talking about being poor in spirit.

And recognition that you are a sinner. Now I love what Pastor John MacArthur said. He said the first Beatitude is primarily intellectual. The second Beatitude is primarily emotional. You have to understand the facts of the matter about who we are and who God is.

And when you understand that, and that penetrates your heart, that should break your spirit. I have sinned against God Almighty. He has been so wonderful and gracious to me my entire life and I continue to sin against Him.

That should begin to break down our spirits and understand that sin is a big deal. So the mourning here is a mourning over sin. Now I want to begin to help us understand this paradoxical nature of the Beatitudes.

Think about this. True joy is not found in selfish ambition, making excuses about life, or trying to justify self. The state of blessedness comes to those who mourn over their sin. Those who agree with God how bad our sin is.

And this is key.

We repent of it.

We repent of it. And once again, that is the proper soil, a heart that is ready to receive salvation. So I actually want to talk about that word repent, or repentance for a moment. I'd like to invite you to turn your Bibles with me to 2 Corinthians 7, verse 10.

2 Corinthians 7, verse 10. Paul wrote a very controversial letter to the church of Corinth. And there was a lot of sin going on in the church. So the Apostle Paul loves these people so much that he brought out their sin and called them to repentance.

Now, initially, this caused them great pain. This caused them much grief, but only for a short time. And ultimately, it produced a long-lasting joy when it was all said and done. So I want to talk about repentance in the context of what the Apostle Paul is talking about here and relate it back to the second Beatitude.

Paul says here, verse 10,. For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death. So many things here that I want to unpack. But at the forefront of your minds, I want you to see that there is a godly grief.

Some translations say sorrow. A godly sorrow. And you have a worldly grief, or a worldly sorrow. So this godly grief and sorrow is being confronted with your sinfulness. And this causes a heart, someone's soul to be broken because God, once again, has been so gracious to us and we sin against him.

David.

I'm reminded of a famous psalm by King David in his famous 51st Psalm of Repentance. I want you to listen to how he responded when he was overwhelmed with this sin.

He says,.

For God, you do not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it. You are not pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart. O God, you will not despise.

And if you're familiar with the life of King David, He wrote this 51st Psalm after he committed adultery with Bathsheba and after he killed her husband and tried to kill her. It has been said that David sinned big, but guess what?

He repented bigger. King David is a model for us of what true heart repentance looks like. And then he wrote this magnificent psalm, even though he was crying out in agony for God's forgiveness. And the reason I bring that up, because that is exactly what the Apostle Paul is talking about.

He's connecting godly sorrow with repentance. For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation. Now I want to talk about repentance for just a moment. Because I think there's a lot of confusion about what this word actually means.

And we've got to start at the very basis. We have to understand its definition. We have to understand how it fits in context. Many people think repentance means to clean up your acts. Meaning that you have to give more, pray more, or busy yourselves with more religious activities.

A lot of people do this in hopes that God will no longer be mad at them. That's not repentance. Remember King David in Psalm 51? He says God wants none of that religious activity. He wants internal heartfelt contrition.

Meaning that he wants a brokenness over sin. So the Greek word that Paul uses here for repentance is metanoia. And this is a very important word because it literally means to change your mind. Now we understand that it's not just intellectualism that God only wants.

He wants you to change your mind. And he wants that to compel you to live life differently. So this is true biblical repentance. It's a change of heart with a change of trajectory of life. Paul says once again, I want us to hear this over and over.

For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation. This is where Paul is referring to the fact that God has worked a changed heart into a person who has received that convicting work of the Holy Spirit and no longer loves sin.

This is key to understanding repentance. When you hear someone say, you must turn from your sin. Here is the biblical understanding. You must, in your heart, turn from loving your sin and turn to putting your trust in Christ and loving him alone.

Does that make sense? God doesn't want you to clean up your life before you come to Christ. In your heart, you must understand that you are a sinner and you are in need of a Savior. Repentance is not moralism, right?

The idea that you must somehow clean up your life and do really good works to please God. Repentance is that transformation of the will. This new profound love that desires obedience to God and has your heart set on a new life that is pleasing to God.

Something else I want to point out in this text. I've heard many false teachers say that repentance is not necessary to salvation. Well, it's like they didn't even read what the Apostle Paul said. That's in direct opposition to what he said.

For God, the grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation. I think it's so unfortunate when someone says, Well, repentance comes later, after salvation. I think it's nine times out of ten they just simply do not understand what repentance is biblically.

A lot of times people see repentance as a type of work.

They will say,.

Repentance is asking for forgiveness or performing good deeds or stopping to commit a particular sin.

Now all of those things are wonderful.

But listen to me. Those are the fruit of repentance. Repentance starts at the heart and it produces a change of life. It produces action. But fundamentally, repentance is that deep inward conviction that turns from loving sin and trust in the Savior.

Please, write that down. Highlight it. Make a note. We need to understand what repentance is. Because our Lord said in Mark 1 15, For the kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe the gospel. So, repentance is always, godly, biblical repentance is always coupled with faith.

Repentance and faith are two sides of the same coin. They go hand in hand. And this is the means of how somebody receives Christ and receives forgiveness of sin. So hopefully, as you're sharing the faith, you're sharing the gospel with people, after you've explained that we're all sinners in need of a Savior, the way to have your sins forgiven is by repentance and faith.

The Apostle Paul said the same thing that Jesus did in Acts 20.

He said,.

Testifying both to Jews and to Greeks of repentance toward God and of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. We must understand that repentance is coupled with a brokenness over sin, and that will lead to salvation.

So, that's in this category of godly sorrow. It's coupled with repentance and it's coupled with salvation. So, I now want to talk about worldly grief or worldly sorrow. And you might say that this results in a false type of repentance.

Listen to what Paul goes on to say. He says, Whereas godly grief produces death. Now, worldly sorrow, I would say the best way of understanding it is a feeling of getting caught. This is a feeling of you've known you've done something wrong, and now you feel really guilty about it.

You know how this is different than godly sorrow? You are not broken over your sin before God, understanding that He is holy and that we have sinned against Him. This is just a guilty conscience of being caught.

That is worldly sorrow. And I believe unbelievers go through this all the time. This is maybe somebody at work that says something mean about their boss,.

And what happens?

It eventually makes its way to the boss. They find out, and now you're constantly worried. Oh no, what's going to happen? Am I going to get fired? Now we're going to have this bad relationship.

I got caught.

I also think about children who disobeyed their parents and now feel shame and guilt that they got caught once again. This is a worldly grief that unbelievers experience. Now, there's a number one classic example of someone who felt a worldly sorrow and expressed a false repentance, and this is none other than Judas Iscariot.

I want you to hear this brief account in Matthew chapter 27. I want you to hear the process of what happened with Judas. Matthew 27, verse 3, it says, When Judas, his betrayer, saw that Jesus was condemned, he changed his mind and brought back the 30 pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders, saying, I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.

They said, What is this to us? See to it yourself. And throwing down the pieces of silver into the temple, he departed and he went and hanged himself. The thing that immediately jumps out to me, especially in this conversation of repentance and godly sorrows, we see something much different with Judas.

But the text says there that he changed his mind. Now, this is why I appealed to the Greek earlier for repentance being metanoia. The gospel writer Matthew uses a different Greek word here. This is not a biblical godly repentance, a brokenness over sin.

But this is that worldly sorrow. This is that worldly grief. And so Matthew uses a different Greek word called metamelanoia. This is that worldly grief, meaning that Judas felt remorse and he just could not cope with his guilt.

He could not cope with his guilt. So what did he do? He did the most selfish thing I think a person can do. He committed suicide. He wanted to escape his guilty conscience, and that was the only way he could go.

Notice, he didn't do what King David did. He didn't fall on his face before God and beg for forgiveness. That would have been the appropriate response. Judas did exactly what the Apostle Paul is talking about here in 2 Corinthians.

He had a worldly grief that produces death. Now, this is not just a temporal death, but this is an eternal death, an eternal punishment and hell, experiencing the full wrath of God. I hope you see that just feeling bad about doing something wrong is absolutely vain and empty if that sorrow does not produce within you a brokenness before God Almighty.

So what if you feel bad? We all feel bad. But what are you going to do about it? Are you going to go to the Creator? Are you going to pray for His provision in Jesus Christ? Or are you just going to simply feel bad because that type of guilt is going to produce death.

So I want you to ask yourself, where are you at in all of this? If I were to ask you, do you feel bad when you do wrong things, you might say, oh yes, Jeremiah, I feel bad all the time. I'm almost tempted to say, so what?

So did Judas Iscariot. And our Lord said this about Judas. It would have been better for him. It would have been better for that man if he had not. When you are aware of your sin, I pray that the Holy Spirit would move you to cry out to God, to ask for forgiveness, knowing that Jesus is just and always is willing to forgive and to cleanse us of our sin.

I pray that the Holy Spirit would move you to repentance, that deep desire to forsake sin and to live a life that is pleasing to God.

Amen?

So I hope this helps paint a picture to help us better understand our Lord's Beatitude this morning. So let's go back to Matthew 5 verse 4. Jesus says, Blessed are those who mourn. Jesus is talking about everlasting joy and blessedness comes to those who mourn over their sin.

Those who learn to mourn over their sin, they find the heart of God. They find an intimate fellowship with God and this is the very foundation of true happiness. When you do this, you will constantly be reminded of how much we have a need for Christ.

And He will be magnified in your life.

As you war against temptation and sin. And in return, you will desire less and less to magnify yourself. I believe that John the Baptist said it best. He said, He must increase, but I must decrease. So I want to take a moment and shift gears.

We've been in the Gospel of Matthew looking at His account of the Beatitudes. But Luke chapter 6 gives us a more condensed version of the Beatitudes. And then Jesus gives us a list of woes that correspond with the Beatitudes.

Let's briefly look at a couple of verses here. I believe they will be displayed on the screen. But Luke 6 verse 21. Our Lord says, Blessed are you who weep now.

For you shall laugh.

Now if you're paying careful attention, you'll realize that there's a few different details going on in Luke's account with Matthew's account.

And that's okay.

Jesus was a traveling teacher. And there's no doubt that He taught the content of the Sermon on the Mount multiple times. And He would have included different information. So here in Luke, He highlights how Jesus makes the Beatitudes more personal and tender.

He uses the personal pronoun you. He says, Blessed are you who weep now.

For you shall laugh.

Then He goes on to give a pronouncement of woes that directly correspond to each of the Beatitudes. Look now at a couple of verses in Luke 6 verse 25. Jesus goes on to say, Woe to you who laugh now.

For you shall mourn.

Now often times, the word woe means a pronouncement of judgment. This is the idea that you do not have peace with God. That you are storing up wrath for yourself.

For the day of judgment.

So, you can ease yourself. Jesus is not condemning all types of laughter here. Once again, He said, Woe to you who laugh now.

What is He talking about?

Well, He is talking about unbelievers who are dead in their sin.

Now don't miss this.

Unbelievers who are trying to enjoy life in God's universe without giving Him honor and thanks. They are trying to live life and enjoy it the best they can without acknowledging the good in it. Now, laughter is a part of the human experience.

Right?

We often times are filled with joy. We can't help but to laugh with one another. In fact, the Old Testament says in Proverbs 17, a joyful heart is goodness. But Jesus is talking about unbelievers that are suppressing the truth in unrighteousness and trying to enjoy all the common grace that they can without acknowledging God.

This philosophy of life is called hedonism. Hedonism says a person can pursue all of their life trying to indulge themselves with pleasure for pleasure's sake alone. Their common mantra is eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die.

Now what's a common way of saying it today? Maybe you've heard the term YOLO. People say live life however you want. You only live once. And this is so unbiblical. This so is going against how we were created to live life.

In fact, I'm reminded of King Solomon. He said, you know what? I'm going to try to indulge in pleasure and see what that brings me.

Then he wrote a book about it.

This book is Ecclesiastes. King Solomon said, I said to myself, come now. I will test you with pleasure and find out all of what is good. I denied myself nothing my eyes desired. I refused my heart no pleasure.

So he did that.

And guess what he concluded?

He concluded that everything was vain and meaningless when you pursue pleasure for pleasure's sake alone. He said it was empty and ultimately meaningless. Nothing was gained under the sun. So think about this.

Hedonism is empty. You pursue it for a time and it leaves you empty. It leaves you wanting. But Jesus takes it a step further. He warns that hedonism, those who laugh now, try to enjoy life apart from God, that type of life will only lead to destruction.

He says, woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep. The mourning and the weeping here refers to those who will be cast out into the outer darkness of hell, where there will be much weeping and gnashing of teeth.

I want you to see the futility of trying to live in this universe with trying to drown out God, not get him honor and thanks in the search out for truth. The truth of the matter is that we are all sinners.

We must be aware of that. We must allow that to break our hearts and simply turn to the Savior. We were not created to live life, to pursue pleasure the way that we think. We were actually created to glorify God and to enjoy him.

King Solomon concluded his book of Ecclesiastes by saying, the end of the matter, all has been hurt. Fear God and keep the commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. The New Testament, 1 Corinthians 10 .31 says, whether you eat, whether you drink, whatever you do, do to the glory of God.

Prophet Isaiah said, Yahweh, your Holy One, the creator of Israel, your King declares, the people whom I have formed for myself, that they may declare my praise. We are created to enjoy life, to have laughter, but it's in the context of glorifying God and worshiping him, to have communion with him.

That's how God first created the world,.

But what did man do?

Man sinned. Man fell. So now we need restoration and redemption in Jesus Christ. In that quote I said a second ago, about how man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him, came out of church history.

This came from the Westminster Shorter Catechism, and I love that. Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him. A part of glorifying God and enjoying him is being made aware of your sinfulness, hating that sin, and turning to the Lord.

The world laughs at sin. The world says, I'm going to indulge with whatever vanities my heart desires. So I want to ask you, do you laugh at sin? Maybe you'll be watching a harmless TV show, and then all of a sudden something vulgar happens, something sinful.

And then you hear this audience in the background start laughing. Are you someone that laughs with them at the sin? Our personal sin should break our hearts, right? But not only our sin, but the sins of others.

The sin that we see in the world, we should not be laughing with them.

It should break our heart.

Something interesting in this study of the Beatitudes and less of those who mourn, I started looking at the life of Jesus.

Guess what?

You will find nowhere reported in Scripture that Jesus laughed. But that was very interesting. Because I do think he did laugh. He was truly human, and that is a human emotion, right? But I think there's a reason we don't see Jesus laughing.

Instead, the Scripture says that Jesus is a man of sorrow, acquainted with grief. Think about the type of suffering that Jesus had. It was literally his entire life here on earth, from the cradle to the cross.

Even in Jesus' infancy, his life was in danger from Herod, and his parents had to take him away to Egypt. Jesus' entire ministry was characterized by sorrow and pain. He was constantly surrounded by the hardness of heart and the unbelief of men.

Even from the opposition of religious leaders who were attacking him at every corner. His own disciples were very fickle, weren't they? And this, not even taking into account Satan constantly tempting them.

I think about the night before his crucifixion. Jesus was exceedingly sorrow unto death as he contemplated the wrath and the justice of God that would fall upon him as he died for the sins of his people.

Jesus was in such great agony that he sweat drops of blood. And of course, the greatest sorrow of his life was when he cried out in agony on the cross to the Father, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?