Matthew 5:4 (Part 2) - June 9, 2024

The Danger of Twisting Scripture

And last week, we hit either a new high or a new low, depending on how you look at it. We got one half of one verse in, in a sermon. But we started with Matthew 5, 4, the first half of the verse, the second beatitude of Jesus.

But the reason that we spend so much time on this is because these things are important, right? I know I keep telling you this. This stuff is important, but it's also easily misunderstood, and I would say probably often misunderstood, which is why we have to really dig in and we have to really focus on it.

Because one thing that I really, really, really wanna make sure that we understand and that we internalize is that when it comes to scripture, we have to take it for what it actually means. We can't take it for what we want it to mean.

And we can't even take it for what it sounds like it might possibly mean. But we have to really understand the intention of the Holy Spirit as he wrote this through the men that actually physically wrote these verses.

And Matthew 5, 4 is one of those verses. So I don't know if I've used this term here before, but sometimes you might hear me using the term twisting scripture. And what this is is when someone misrepresents the actual meaning of a passage of scripture.

Now, a lot of times this happens intentionally. People are trying to accomplish something very specific when they do this sort of scripture twisting. And I'll give you just one small example. So there's a verse that we see in 1 Chronicles 16, 21 through 22, and Psalm 105, 15.

Not only that, there's a little bit of a variation of it in 1 Samuel 24, 6. But the verse says this. It says, touch not my anointed ones. Do my prophets no harm. And this is the word of God. This is God directly speaking.

And he's telling us that we should not go to war against, or he's telling Israel, rather, that they shouldn't go to war against these kings because the kings that he's talking about, the anointed ones that he's talking about were kings that were officially chosen by God.

God literally put these kings in place, whether they were good or whether they were bad. Saul was one of these kings. David, when he ultimately had the opportunity to kill Saul and didn't, this was the reason why, is he were not supposed to touch the anointed ones.

Do the prophets no harm. But what people do with this verse now is they take it and they apply it to pastors. And most often, pastors apply it to themselves. And the reason they do this is to get out of accountability for teaching things that are wrong.

Now, you're gonna hear this most often from people that are preaching something along the lines of the prosperity gospel or word of faith theology, you know, that health and wealth, come to Jesus and you'll get everything that your heart's ever desired, that kind of gospel.

All that sort of stuff that's leading people astray on a regular basis. So when you see somebody teaching something like that and somebody comes along and they say, hey, that's not right. You're leading these people astray.

You're teaching them a false gospel. Or they just say, I think what you're saying is wrong. These pastors will come back with, do not touch the Lord's anointed as though they are the Lord's anointed. So they're taking, and again, this is a small example.

We could spend all morning talking about that, but I don't want to. But that's just one example of taking scripture and twisting it in a way that's deliberately deceitful because it's a way that's deliberately skewing the actual meaning of the verse.

And again, this is something that is really not good. But even that example aside, scripture can be twisted unintentionally and scripture can be twisted unintentionally by people that have good motives, by people that are simply trying to help.

And the verse that we're looking at today and last week is exactly one of those verses. Matthew 5, four, blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted. So obviously we bring this verse out in funerals on a regular basis in an attempt to help people who have lost someone.

However, that would be a misuse of this passage, however well-intentioned it is. And when we come to something like this, you might ask, what's the harm in using these words or these verses to try to provide comfort for somebody?

If it makes them feel better, how is it hurting? And what I would say to that is that it's never a small thing to misrepresent the word of God, even with the best of intentions, even if it seems like it's really insignificant, but it might make somebody feel better.

And there's a lot of reasons for this. And one reason is something that we've seen play out over and over again in churches and denominations, especially recently. And it's this whole slippery slope idea.

Now I know that sometimes people will say the slippery slope is a logical fallacy, but we actually see this play out. So the slippery slope is when you take one step in the wrong direction, for example.

What's to stop you from going all the way down and sliding into complete and total apostasy? And I think the Methodist Church is an example of how this has happened. You make one compromise on something that's part of God's word, even if it's decades ago.

And then next thing you know, things are completely off the rails. And that's what happens when we make this one small compromise because when you make one compromise, what's to stop you from making just one more compromise?

And then, well, if we did that, maybe there's something else that we don't like. So maybe we'll just change this as well. And because of our sinful nature, we just keep crossing the line. We keep crossing that line and we get further and further and further from where we started.

And even if it takes multiple generations, you can deviate a long way from where you ultimately should be. And there's a couple of other reasons for this as well. So, you know, maybe it's a little bit alarmist to say, if we take this one verse out of context to help somebody, the whole church is just gonna implode, right?

That's not exactly what I'm saying, but it has kind of happened in the past. But on a smaller scale, if you're using a verse like this to comfort somebody or any verse to comfort somebody, you can ultimately give that person a false sense of their own salvation.

Because if you tell somebody that their mourning will result in blessing and comfort from God, then they might think that, you know, again, that is something that'll contribute to their salvation. Or we'll twist Scripture in a slightly different way to tell somebody that we believe they're saved, even if there's no other evidence of this, because it's just easier than having a hard conversation.

It's easier than telling somebody the truth about what they're doing or what their situation is. So a false sense of salvation is dangerous. And as a Christian, that's probably one of the worst things you can do is to insist that somebody is saved when there's actually no way to be sure and when there's no evidence of that actually being true.

Now, on a slightly less severe note and more related to this very verse, but still important, if you tell somebody who's mourning a loss, if you tell somebody who's just had a family member die that this mourning will lead to comfort from God, there's a couple things that could happen.

The first is they might lean into the mourning expecting that, you know, the worse they feel, the more likely they are to get this comfort from God. And if the comfort doesn't come, they might think, well, maybe I'm not mourning enough.

So we keep mourning and we keep mourning and we get stuck in this cycle. And they just persist in the idea of mourning because you told them that they'll be comforted. If they mourn, they'll be comforted.

So if it hasn't come, they keep expecting this kind of supernatural relief. And I think a lot of us know that that's not actually how it works, especially anybody who's lost somebody. Anybody who's had to experience that kind of mourning.

But the second thing that could happen in that situation is let's say that the comfort or the relief that they're expecting doesn't come. That causes some people to completely turn away from God because you have just told them using the words of the Bible that if they mourn, they will be comforted.

And when they don't feel any better, you have all of a sudden become a liar. But not only have you become a liar, but you've made God a liar. And we all know that's not possible. And then these people often will, they'll put up a wall.

They'll stop believing in the promises of God. They'll stop praying. They'll stop reading the Bible. They'll stop going to church. They'll start saying that they don't trust people from church because these people from church told us this thing and it didn't happen.

They told us this thing God said and it didn't happen. Because no matter how hard they mourn, God didn't seem to be there anywhere. So you have to be careful because you can ultimately put up a pretty significant barrier between this person and God.

Now we know that salvation only comes through the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit can change anyone's heart, but that's still not a good reason for anybody to put up roadblocks between somebody else and the Holy Spirit, not to make him jump over some kind of obstacle.

Because you're not helping anything by hardening that person's heart, even though you did it with the best of intentions. You know, it's the same thing as saying, well, they're in a better place or all those kinds of things that we say when somebody's mourning because we don't know anything better to say.

When the secret is, a lot of times, the best thing to say is really nothing at all. The best thing to do is simply to be there for a person. It's not to give them false hope using the words of Scripture.

So once again, this goes back a little bit to what we talked about last week because it makes the definition of mourning very important for us to understand. And I'm gonna review this really briefly, but the first important point that we made is mourning and earthly loss is not the mourning that this verse is referring to.

It's not the type of mourning that will bring the blessing and comfort of God. And again, we have to be careful because it's very easy to take this kind of mourning too far and turn it into something sinful.

This is what we saw with David mourning over the death of his son Absalom when we read about that last week. But two quick examples of mourning that are appropriate along these lines before we move on.

Because again, I also don't want it to come across like I'm saying that you have to just put on a happy face and pretend everything's okay and not mourn. So what I want to read to you is from 2 Samuel 12, 15 through 23.

This is also about David. So it says, and Nathan went to his house. Then Yahweh smote the child that Uriah's wife bore to David so that he was very sick. So this is the child that was a result of David's affair when he slept with Uriah's wife and then had Uriah killed.

She was pregnant, she had a child. David therefore sought God about the boy and David fasted and went and spent the night lying on the ground. And the elders of his household stood beside him in order to raise him up from the ground, but he was unwilling and would not eat food with them.

So he's mourning, he's mourning the sickness of this child. Then it happened on the seventh day that the child died and the servants of David were afraid to tell him that the child was dead for they said, behold, while the child was still alive, we spoke to him and he did not listen to our voice.

How then can we tell him that the child has died? He might do himself harm. And David saw that his servants were whispering together. So David discerned that the child had died. So David said to his servants, has the child died?

And they said, he has died. So they're expecting something really bad. Verse 20, so David arose from the ground, washed, anointed himself and changed his clothes. And he came into the house of Yahweh and worshiped.

Then he came to his own house and he asked and they set food before him and he ate. Then his servants said to him, what is this thing that you have done? While the child was alive, you fasted and wept, but when the child died, you arose and ate food.

Then he said, while the child was still alive, I fasted and wept for I said, who knows? Yahweh may be gracious to me that the child may live. But now he has died. Why should I fast? Can I bring him back again?

I will go to him, but he will not return to me. And what that shows is a recognition from David that as tragic as this was, and as awful as the losses this was for him, this was still God at work. God still existed.

God was still part of this situation. So he mourned while the child was sick. But ultimately, that time of mourning comes to an end. And the second example of this is Deuteronomy 34, eight, the death of Moses.

In this one verse, it says, so the sons of Israel wept for Moses in the plains of Moab for 30 days. Then the days of weeping and mourning for Moses came to an end. So that's kind of the last thing I wanna say on that type of mourning for right now.

I mean, again, we see in scripture mourning. But what we don't see is endless mourning. Endless mourning suggests a lack of trust in God. Even when we're sad, God is still there. And I wanna give, hopefully, an equally brief review on what it is to mourn properly.

Again, this was very much the focus of last week's sermon. We went into great detail on this, so if you didn't have the opportunity to watch it, it is on our website. I suggest you go check that out as well because this'll just be a really short overview.

But essentially, proper mourning grieves the sin that you have committed against God. Proper mourning stems from the poverty of spirit that we talked about two weeks ago from Matthew 5, three. So this means understanding the offense that your sin is to God and having the appropriate response to that, which is mourning.

Now, David, obviously, has provided us almost all of our examples about these topics. So I wanna read to you something else related to David because this gives us a perfect example of this. This is Psalm 51.

If we wanna talk about what it is to mourn our sin, this says, be gracious to me, O God, according to your love and kindness, according to the abundance of your compassion, blot out my transgressions.

Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you only, I have sinned and done what is evil in your sight so that you are justified when you speak and pure when you judge.

Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity and in sin my mother conceived me. Behold, you delight in truth and the innermost being and in the hidden part, you will make me know wisdom. Purify me with hyssop and I shall be clean.

Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. Make me to hear joy and gladness. Let the bones which you have crushed rejoice. Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.

Do not cast me away from your presence and do not take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and sustain me with a willing spirit. Then I will teach transgressors your ways and sinners will be converted to you.

Deliver me from blood guiltiness, O God, the God of my salvation. Then my tongue will joyfully sing of your righteousness. O Lord, open my lips that my mouth may declare your praise. For you do not delight in sacrifice, otherwise 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 I think we read just that verse last week. By your favor, do good to Zion, build the walls of Jerusalem.

Then you will delight in righteous sacrifices. In burnt offering and whole burnt offering, the young bulls will be offered on your altar. See, I didn't even know what verse to cut that off on, so I just had to read the whole of Psalm 51 because the entire thing is a lament, but it shows us in very clear language what it means to mourn our sin against God.

Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from sin. Against you, you only, I have sinned and done what is evil in your sight. This is the mourning that brings blessing and comfort from God. This reminds us of Paul's words in 2 Corinthians 7 .10.

He says, for godly sorrow produces a repentance without regret, leading to salvation. But the sorrow of the world brings about death. That mourning is about mourning our own sins. And we also talked briefly about how it's appropriate to mourn and pray for the sins of others.

And I really do wanna remind you that it's important that we do pray and we do mourn for the sins of the lost. And they may not want your help. And they may be blind to their true spiritual condition.

And they may even hate you for it. But that's okay. Because I really wanna drive this point home. And it's been said that this is why it's good to preach through books of the Bible this way. Because it's been said that what a pastor preaches on is something that he is working through, right?

And this is something that I've been convicted of lately. Because it's so easy to go out and to look at somebody who's doing something against the word of God and to condemn them. And it's easy to, you start to get these feelings of maybe even hate, you know, in your heart.

Because you see these people that are clearly living out sinful patterns. And some of them are even openly spiteful of God. They don't wanna hear about it. But a lot of times people are just misguided.

Or they're lost.

And sometimes even those people that are openly despiteful of God are acting out in response to some experience they've had. So I guess what I'm saying is that the response that we probably need to have as Christians is one of remorseful compassion.

And I almost wanted to say pity, but that's not right either. Because pity almost implies that you're looking down on somebody that you're better than. So we wanna have compassion. We don't wanna be on our high horse judging someone because that's not what I'm getting at.

And to help illustrate this as well, I wanna read just a small scene from the ministry of Jesus. And there's a lot of these to pick from. And this one is fairly general, but it still shows the point. Mark 6 .34 says, "'And when Jesus went ashore, "'he saw a large crowd and he felt compassion for them "'because they were like sheep without a shepherd.

"'And he began to teach them many things.'. So when Jesus saw lost people, he felt compassion because he saw that they were confused. They were misled. They were just wrong about stuff. And I think that part of the reason that I think about this a lot is because I have heard people say stuff like, man, I hope Jesus comes back soon.

And in the sub-context of that is I hope Jesus comes back soon to destroy these people that I disagree with. But if that's where you are, you should be very careful about wishing that Jesus would come back and destroy the people who aren't doing exactly what he would have you do.

When you're more worried.

About someone else's sin than yours. 2 Peter 3 .9 tells us this.

It says,.

"'The Lord is not slow about his promises. "'Some consider slowness, but is patient towards you, "'not willing for any to perish, "'but for all to come to repentance.'". So it's not the will of the Lord to destroy people.

It's the will of the Lord that people would repent.

They won't all.

But understand this too. You might say, Matt, he's getting soft. But this is not me affirming or accepting anyone's sinful lifestyle. Jesus felt compassion for these people, and Jesus ate with sinners, and Jesus forgave the woman at the well and the adulterous woman, but he expected them to change.

Jesus went to sinners, but Jesus never accepted that people would continue in the sinful lifestyle that he found them in. Jesus, some people say Jesus loves you as you are, but I think the more accurate way to say that is that Jesus loves you in spite of how you are and expects you to repent.

So what I really wanna guard against is giving in to hatred and condemnation because what we should want is to see people saved. Again, everyone would be welcome, but you aren't welcome to continue in your sinful lifestyle.

So this is where it all starts for other people's sins as well. It starts first and foremost by mourning your own sin. We wanna mourn all sin, but you really have to start with yourself. You have to understand what your sin means in the face of the glory of God.

And when that happens, it'll be hard to think about other people and what they're doing because you will probably be overwhelmed with yourself. But thinking about your own sin, mourning your own sin, this is one of those countercultural ideas, right?

This is something that goes very much against what we're taught.

Because positive thinking,.

Self-esteem, affirmations, don't dwell on the negative. These are the things that we learn. We teach our children that the most important thing is that they feel good about themselves, that they have self-esteem and that they can accomplish anything that they ever wanna accomplish no matter what it is.

But what we really have to teach our kids is that they're sinners that Jesus died for. But this also takes us into the second half of our beatitude. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

The Christian's Only Comfort

So that was all the mourning stuff, a brief review. So what are we talking about now when we say they shall be comforted? And once again, I wanna give the answer to this right up front before we spend more time digging into the details.

Now I got a little bit ahead of myself last week and I put these two questions from the Heidelberg Catechism as our call to worship because I thought that we would get to this and ultimately we didn't.

But I wanna read the first question to you again just as a refresher. So the question is, what is thy only comfort in life and death? And the answer pulled from a compilation of scripture is that I with body and soul, both in life and death, am not my own, but belong unto my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ, who with his precious blood has fully satisfied for all my sins and delivered me from all the power of the devil.

And so preserves me that without the will of my heavenly Father, not a hair can fall from my head. Yea, that all things must be subservient to my salvation and therefore by his Holy Spirit, he also assures me of eternal life and makes me sincerely willing and ready henceforth to live unto him.

So that was a lot of words. Hopefully you still have last week's bulletin. But we can break this down a little bit into the component pieces of it. So the first four lines tell us who we are according to God.

And this is important. We have to know this as we mourn our sin. And one of the scripture references is 1 Corinthians 6, 19 through 20. And Paul writes, or do you not know that your body is a sanctuary of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God and that you are not your own for you were bought with a price.

Therefore glorify God in your body. And again, that verse and that section of the response to the catechism question helps us understand that we belong to God and we belong to God in a very direct and specific way.

Now the context of that verse is a call to flee from sexual immorality because doing otherwise is to disregard what Jesus has done and to really ignore how closely someone who has experienced salvation and claims to be a Christian is tied to Jesus.

Your body is not your own. Now the middle section of that answer basically amounts to a recounting of the gospel, including the fact that God cares for each and every one of us individually. And that he has knowledge of each and every one of us, each and every one of his children.

But the last little block is where we really get into the meaning of what it is to be comforted as Jesus is teaching in the beatitude. So that part says this, because I belong to him, Christ by the Holy Spirit, assures me of eternal life.

Because I belong to him, Christ by the Holy Spirit assures me of eternal life. That is the big picture comfort that the beatitude refers to. It doesn't refer to removing your earthly pain right now when you want it to.

And there are several scripture references, but I wanna focus on one. It's Ephesians 1, 13 through 14. Paul writes this, in him, you also, after listening to the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, having also believed, you were sealed in him with the Holy Spirit of promise, who was given as a pledge of our inheritance unto the redemption of God's own possession to the praise of his glory.

So again, big picture, highest level, this comfort that we read about in scripture, in the beatitudes, in the catechism, wherever we find it, refers to the comfort of being assured of the ultimate eternal state of our soul.

And this is a state where we won't see mourning anymore. Listen to these words from Revelation 21, verses four through five. And he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and there will no longer be any death.

There will no longer be any mourning or crying or pain. The first things passed away, and he who sits on the throne said, behold, I am making all things new. But this is a picture of a world where sin has been completely eradicated.

This is a picture of a world after Jesus's return, where everyone has been perfected, and that mourning is gone. But again, this is the ultimate comfort that we are, as Christians, to set our eyes upon.

It's the ultimate fulfillment of the promise of scripture and the words of Jesus. And that's amazing, right? Yes, yes it is. It's amazing. But it's amazing with a but. Does this mean, you know, I'm talking all these high-minded concepts of some unknown day in the future when all our mourning will be gone and we'll be comforted.

But does that mean that, as Christians, we have to expect that our comfort will be delayed until we see Jesus face-to-face? Does it mean that, as Christians, our lives are gonna be nothing but a constant cycle of mourning and suffering, mourning and suffering, sinning and mourning?

And thankfully, the answer to that is no. I won't leave you in suspense. However, this is why we have to very clearly understand the relationship of mourning to this comfort. This is why we spend two weeks on, you know, 10 or 12 words.

Because there actually is a cycle that occurs with all of us, a cycle that constantly shows up in all of our lives. But it's not the cycle that we mentioned just a second ago. So one of my favorite pastors, and you'll hear me say this name amongst other names, is Dr. David Martin Lloyd-Jones.

And he is writing about this cycle. And it's about the joy that comes from salvation. But he says this. Now, not only is, now, this is not only true at conversion, that we have this joy. It is something that continues to be true about the Christian.

He finds himself guilty of sin, and at first, it casts him down and makes him mourn, just as we read about in the Beatitude. But that, in turn, drives him back to Christ. His peace and happiness return, and he is comforted.

The mourning drives us to the foot of the cross. And when we see at the foot of the cross that Jesus is there, having died for those sins, and saying that when you repent, you're forgiven. It doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter what that sin is. That's the comfort. And you have the opportunity to experience that. Like, it's so unfortunate that we sin so consistently and so frequently, but that drives this cycle.

It's a reminder of Jesus and what he's done, if you approach it the right way. He goes on to say, but that, in turn, drives him back to Christ. His peace and happiness return, and he is comforted. So that here is something that is fulfilled at once, not in the future.

The man who mourns truly is comforted and is happy. And thus, the Christian life is spent in this way, mourning and joy, sorrow and happiness. And the one should lead to the other immediately. So this comfort is applied by our comforter.

The comforter is the Holy Spirit. And it's applied immediately upon your godly mourning, upon the God-centered mourning of sin that we talked about last week. And obviously, this comfort, which ultimately comes to us from Christ, the Holy Spirit reminds us and points us to Christ, but it points us at that future comfort as well.

But we have to emphasize that without the step of true God-centered mourning, which results in repentance, we will never receive that comfort. And I wanna ask you this, too. If this idea of mourning and comfort is not appealing to you, what would you consider to be the alternative?

So hopefully nobody pushes back against this idea, but if you do, I'd ask you this. What hope is there for a world apart from Jesus, for a world that seeks nothing more than its own instant gratification, no matter the cost, no matter the economic, moral, social, emotional, or spiritual cost?

What comfort does the world ultimately have to offer you? And I would answer that apart from God, you are offered material comfort, but you're offered material comfort that will never satisfy your soul because that soul was created for infinitely more than that.

So ultimately, it offers no hope. Like, I always think about these things that I hear, these things that get put on, you know, posters at Hobby Lobby or whatever, and things that people say. Like, you have a God-shaped hole in your heart that has to be filled, you know, but it's so much bigger than that.

Like, the idea, and that's also the idea that you have all these other things that exist that you just need to add God to them to make everything right. But God is all of it. He's not something that you add.

Everything comes back to, everything is about God who created all of it, and Jesus who died so that you could be part of it. But all these worldly comforts that don't offer any hope, a lot of times, that's exactly where we seek our comfort.

So what I wanna do for just a minute is briefly discuss three ways that we seek comfort or relief from our mourning apart from God. These are the ways that we look for comfort because we don't wanna mourn because it feels bad.

We don't wanna think about the things that we've done because it makes us feel bad. The first is physical and material pleasures. And this one is almost so obvious that I feel like I don't even have to say it.

It's almost a given, right? But we'll discuss it anyway. We're all sinners. That's just the first thing that we have to come to terms with. We have to accept. So rather than recognize that the bad feelings that we have are a need to mourn over our sin, what we do is we attempt to mask those feelings with something else.

You could go to alcohol or drugs to numb the feelings. You could go to food, eating something amazing, which is ultimately just turning to gluttony to replace that pain with a temporary pleasure. It's the same thing with any kind of sexually immoral act as well.

You're dedicating a few minutes of your life to feel something pleasurable, to ignore the pain that you have or to try to make it go away. We buy things so that we feel better about ourselves. And it doesn't even have to be big things.

It could be something small like new clothes or dare I kind of indict myself here, it could be books or something like that, right? I've got a whole bunch of books upstairs on the bookshelves. But it could be anything else.

Phones, tablets, computers, TVs, grills, just about anything can, doesn't have to be, can be used as a form of escapism. Even something healthy like exercise can be a form of evading the true reason for the uncomfortable feelings that we have.

So just our nature tells us that we can turn good things into something bad. We can create sinful uses for things that are healthy. But ultimately what I'm saying is that we seek comfort in these things and it's ultimately unsatisfying.

And I think that I can say with a pretty high degree of certainty that the comfort that you receive from every single one of these things that I listed is ultimately unsatisfying. Because what it does is it just sends you back after more and more and more.

That fleeting, momentary feeling of comfort just gives you that little dopamine spike. But after that, you gotta go get it again. But it's not enough to just have the same thing, you gotta have something a little better.

And you gotta keep repeating more and more of that experience to keep you satisfied. And we talk about that with stuff like drugs, right? But even social media gives you that same kind of dopamine hit.

All these things are addictions, they just affect you in different ways. The second way we do this is with people in relationships. So oftentimes, we try to force other people to provide us with our comfort.

And maybe a lot of times, this is not even something that we say, it's unspoken. But it's very real in our minds. Maybe we look for validation from another person to help us feel as though we were good in the face of our sin.