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

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 in a sermon but but we started with Matthew 5 for 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 now

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 want to 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 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 as he wrote this through the men that actually physically wrote these 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 1st

Chronicles 16 21 through 22 and Psalm 105 15 not only that there's a little bit of a variation of it in 1st

Samuel 24 6 but the verse says this it says touch not my anointed ones do my prophets no harm and this is this is the

Word of God this is God directly speaking and he's telling us that we should not you know go to war against the 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 like God literally put these kings in place whether they were good or whether they were bad

Saul was one of these kings you know David when he ultimately had the opportunity to kill

Saul and didn't this was the reason why because you 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 or word of faith theology you know that health and wealth come to Jesus and you'll get everything that your hearts 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 well

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 then again this is a small example we just been 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 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 in the verse that we're looking at today and last week is exactly one of those verses

Matthew 5 4 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 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 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 it is something that we see 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 you know what's what's to stop you from going all the way down and sliding into complete and total apostasy and I don't

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 these one small comfort with 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 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 it's not exactly what

I'm saying but it has 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 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 that is something that will 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 it 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 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 and 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 if you not only if 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 it's the same thing as saying well they're in a better place or all those kind 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 you know the first important point that we made is mourning an 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 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 that you have to 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 2nd 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 any 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 8 the death of Moses in this one verse that 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 the that's kind of the last thing

I want to say on that type of mourning for right now I mean again we see in Scripture mourning but what we don't see it is endless mourning endless mourning suggests the lack of trust in God even when we're sad

God is still there and I want to give hopefully an equally brief review on what it is to mourn properly again this was 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 is on our website

I suggest you go check that out as well because this will 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 3 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 want to read to you something else related to David because this gives us a perfect example of this this is

Psalm 51 if we want to 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 in the innermost being and in the hidden part you will make me no 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 the 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 design build the walls of Jerusalem then you will delight in righteous sacrifices and 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 morning that brings blessing and comfort from God this reminds us of Paul's words in 2nd

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 morning 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 want to 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 want to 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 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 and some of them are even openly spiteful of God they don't want to hear about it but a lot of times people are just misguided or they're lost and sometimes even those people that are openly just despiteful of God are acting out in response to some experience they've had so I guess what

I'm what I'm saying is that the 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 want to have compassion we don't want to be on our high horse judging someone because that's not what

I'm getting at and help illustrate this as well I want to 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's still it still shows the point mark 634 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 subcontext 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 you know what he would have you do when you're more worried about someone else's sin than yours 2nd

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 this is not me affirming or accepting any one 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 is that say that Jesus loves you in spite of how you are and expects you to repent so what

I really want to guard against is giving into 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 want to 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 overweight 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 want to 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 this also takes us into the second half of our beatitude blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted so this is that was all that was all the morning stuff a brief review so what are we talking about now when we say they shall be comforted and once again

I want to 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 want to read the first question to you again just 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 1st

Corinthians 6 19 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 in 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 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 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 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 want to 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 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 4 through 5 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 as 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 has returned 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 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 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 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 morning upon the

God -centered morning of sin that we talked about last week and obviously this comfort which 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 morning which results in repentance we will never receive that comfort and I want to 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 were 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 that get put on you know posters at Hobby Lobby or whatever and 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 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 you 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 want to 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 want to mourn because it feels bad we don't want to 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 could go to food eating something amazing which is ultimately just turning to gluttony to repeat 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 happen can be used as a form of escapism even something like 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 what 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 got to go get it again but it's not enough to just have the same thing you got to have something a little better you got to keep repeating more and more of that experience to keep you satisfied and we 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 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 maybe we point to our children to gain some kind of satisfaction from their accomplishments

I'm all wrapped up in kids sports so you know we see this kind of thing all the time and do our best not to be guilty of it or maybe we blame our parents or our siblings or our spouses for how it's their fault that we are how we are once again rather than recognizing our sin rightfully mourning over and repenting of it we try to seek our comfort somehow in somebody else and the other way that this is done with people in relationships and this is more for people in the room that are a little bit younger is that we expect that a certain relationship is going to give us the fulfillment and the comfort that we're seeking we think that this friend or this boyfriend or this girlfriend or this wife or this husband if you think if we could only have this relationship then everything would be better if we could only have this relationship we would get the comfort that we're seeking and it would be amazing a lot of you already know this but it won't because if you approach relationships this way if your approach to a relationship is to seek comfort from this other person you're gonna find yourself bringing much more pain sorrow and discomfort into the relationship for both of you you will find far more heartache than you will find comfort in a third way that we seek comfort apart from mourning is sometimes we seek comfort in our own guilt or our own man -centered mourning not

God -centered mourning and I don't think this one is quite as obvious as the others but I do think it's equally real so this is when we take our past hurt or we take our past experience or baggage and we just can't let it go now this could be something that you did to someone it could be something that was done to you it could be as small as like a passing insult or it could be as big as physical or sexual abuse and I'm not trying to belittle or downplay any of these things they are traumatic that's real and trauma does need to heal but interestingly enough people can take this trauma whatever it is and they can dwell on it so much that it turns into a fundamental part of their identity people start to become defined of their own volition by their trauma and subconsciously they may not think this like in the forefront of their mind but they might even feel that there's some kind of merit and continuously grieving over it or they may even have gotten some level of attention or affirmation over being a victim of something and so we hold on to this baggage for dear life we take this baggage and we use it to protect ourselves by attributing negative motives to other people based on our past experience and while it's painful to relive our trauma or our experiences again even if they're 10 20 30 or more years old when you when you think about something or you won't let it go it becomes such a foundational part of who we are that we become scared to let it go and we're scared because then we'll have to face our own issues we can no longer blame our mourning and our sin on this thing that was done to us and again this is not about you know being blamed if you were wronged but it is about the sinful nature of wanting to hold on to something that happened to you so you can continue to feel bad about it and push other people away and it turns sinful because we take comfort in understanding our trauma as part of who we are rather than allowing the

Lord to take it from us now I want to read something that Paul wrote about this this is

Philippians 3 12 through 14 and if you know anything about Paul's biography he was somebody who spent a good portion of his life killing

Christians persecuting Christians so he had done you know some some significantly bad stuff in his life before Jesus saved him and he writes this

Philippians 3 12 through 14 not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also

I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus brothers I do not consider myself as having laid hold of it yet but one thing

I do forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead

I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus and this is for anyone who's experienced some kind of trauma if you consider yourself a

Christian hear me no one is downplaying it no one is saying it didn't happen no one is saying that you're wrong for feeling traumatized but as Paul writes in 2nd

Corinthians 5 17 therefore if anyone is in Christ he is a new creation the old things passed away behold new things have come

God is truly creating a new life for you and we talked about this last week moving on to a slightly different topic we talked about man -centered grieving as opposed to God -centered grieving because we believe that when we lose someone or something close to us somehow there's merit in in continuing to grieve and it's confusing too right because if you lose somebody who's close to you we don't always know how long is appropriate to grieve right and then we feel guilty if we stop too soon like maybe

I didn't grieve enough for somebody that I said that I loved but there's no merit in endlessly grieving because if we do that essentially we're saying that we don't believe

Jesus when he says come to me all who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest we don't believe when

Peter writes that he himself that is Jesus bore our sins in his body on the tree so that having died to sin we might live to righteousness and we don't believe when

Paul writes that God chose us in Jesus before the foundation of the world that we would be holy and blameless before him in love that is the one thing that I want everybody to understand is that we can take our identity from so many places and again this is a whole nother sermon but that that verse is from Ephesians that tells us that God chose us in Jesus before the foundation of the world and I want that to be something that you can cling to as far as your identity is concerned not what you did not what somebody did to you not what somebody said to you not what somebody whatever because we would rather oftentimes we'd rather get comfort from something immediate and something tangible and more important something that we control rather than admit any possible role that our sin could be playing in the discomfort and the feelings that we have mourning it and repenting of it before God so the next thing

I want to share with you is four ways that the comfort that comes from God -centered mourning is different ways we can tell that this comfort is from the

Holy Spirit our comforter the first one is true comfort arises out of conviction and this goes back to being poor in spirit because it's only when you recognize the poverty of spirit that you'll be led to the mournful repentance which brings about this comfort so the the comfort has to come out of a true sense of conviction it has to come out of a true understanding of what is leading to these feelings that you're having what is leading to this pain and it's the comfort of knowing that you're doing what

Scripture tells you to be a part of what Jesus did on the cross not only that but conviction can't be partial conviction can't be half -hearted conviction is all in number two this true comfort is humbling you start to see here that all these things are very closely related right they're all intertwined they all come back to each other but we've already said that pride is incompatible with poverty of spirit or with mourning and repentance pride is not something to be celebrated the comfort that God offers will be meaningless to you without the humility to understand that this is what you need the comfort that comes from this beatitude is going to be worthless to you without the humility to understand that you didn't do anything to contribute to this comfort that the comfort that comes was bought for you with Jesus's blood on the cross so you have to have humility in order to truly be comforted because there's a lot of pride and there's a lot of arrogance in the idea that ultimately you can do something to provide your own comfort that you can buy something or do something or feel something number three true comfort is pure true comfort isn't mixed with anything else it doesn't come with negative side effects we talked about alcohol and drugs earlier so alcohol for example will provide you with temporary comfort it'll provide you with temporary comfort in the form of being numb or forgetting something that happens and maybe even fake happiness but that is very temporary and it's followed by something else it'll be followed by physical discomfort later maybe in the form of a hangover maybe it'll be followed by emotional discomfort over regret for stuff that you did or stuff that you said as well as a variety of other short and long -term health effects not to mention it doesn't actually help anything it's just a temporary stalling of your bad feelings and that's in complete contrast to the comfort of God when you bring your sin to him there's nothing there's nothing negative to go with it when you truly mourn and repent the only thing that you get is forgiveness and then finally number four true comfort follows pain or mourning and I just wanted to mention this briefly because I think that we've covered this but at the risk of repeating myself the true comfort comes only after the recognition the mourning and the repentance of sins so the comfort of the

Holy Spirit is a result of recognizing the truth about your sin which should hurt and bringing it before the

Lord now the reason this is important to point out is because these whirlier material comforts they flip -flop this whole thing that just offers you the comfort straight up front you don't have to go through any pain to get it you just get what you want and then the pain comes after the false comfort offers you something that looks real this is this is like the devil's greatest temptation do this it'll feel good do this it'll make you feel better but then the pain completely comes after it it's the idea that Paul was writing about in first Corinthians 1532 you know without the hope of God he says basically we may as well eat and drink today for tomorrow we die because if God is not real and this is what a lot of the people in the church in Corinth thought then we may as well do what we want because there is no real comfort we all know that's not true but the comfort of God helps us see that there is more and that this is not all that we're living for and that there is a resurrection and a hope for us eternally that is the comfort there's daily comfort immediate comfort in the work of Jesus on the cross and the forgiveness that that grants you in real time but that all points to the hope of eternity the hope of a bodily resurrection for you in an eternity in heaven with God so how do we get this

I wish that there was like a simple way I wish I could give you the three steps now you know we did three and then four

I wish I could give you three more to do it but it's not quite like that we already went over the relationship of mourning to comfort a bunch of times but I have to tell you that the bottom line for this is that you have to be immersed in the

Word of God and the reason for this is this will help you understand who

God is who Jesus is what Jesus did why he did it why you need it and how you're to live your life as a result of all those things

God's Word clearly shows us what is a sin and it shows us what it looks like to mourn and repent of those sins and it tells us why why this is necessary but most important from start to finish the

Bible tells us all about Jesus and it points us to him as our ultimate hope it points us to him as our ultimate comfort and this hope is summed up in many places it's summed up in Revelation which

I read earlier but what I want to close with is this passage from 1st

Peter chapter 1 verses 3 through 9 that shows us our ultimate eternal and unchanging comfort blessed be the

God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who according to his great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead to obtain an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and unfading having been kept in heaven for you who were protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time in this you greatly rejoice even though now for a little while if necessary you have been grieved by various trials so that the proof of your faith being more precious than gold which is perishable even though tested by fire may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ and though you have not seen him you love him and though you do not see him now but believe in him you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory receiving as the outcome of your faith the salvation of your souls you pray with me father we thank you for your word we thank you that you show us what it means to be comforted

God I would say that every single one of us in this room in some way whether large or small significant or insignificant is suffering every single one of us feel some kind of pain that we're dying to escape from and at the same time every single one of us along with that pain probably has some kind of sin that we're insisting on we're rationalizing it away we're minimizing it as though it's not important even though even the smallest sins are offensive to you

God but the point is that we all long for comfort we all long for the pain to go away and your word tells us how it is that we get there yeah we thank you for giving us clear instruction as to what morning is but also showing us that along with that morning comes the promise of your comfort the immediate promise of the forgiveness that the cross of Jesus Christ has to offer us and the long -term promise of eternal salvation for our souls

God I pray this morning that the Holy Spirit would continue to reveal this to us that the

Holy Spirit would show us who we are which show us who you are and would show us what all of these things mean

God and that the Holy Spirit would change any heart that needs to be changed they would heat up the hearts that have grown cold and that would turn hearts back to you

God we know that you can do this because we know that you can do anything and this is our plea to you today we lift this up to you