Blessed Are Those Who Mourn — Tim Conway

The Beatitudes: Mourning and Comfort

Chapter 5 and verse 3, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. We looked at last week. Verse 4, Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Let's pray. Father, I pray that you would cause this portion of your Word to be alive, living, abiding.

Lord, you say that you have a people that you dwell with, a people that you look to. You specifically say that those people tremble at your Word. Lord, we recognize we're not dealing this afternoon with just simply the words of a mere man.

This is a message from heaven. We recognize that Christ said that He came from outside this world, into this world, to bear witness to the truth. And He said that His message was not His own. It came from you.

This is what you want us to know. These are words from heaven, from outside this world. We have a Word. Lord, the greatest thing you could do for us is not just give it to us, but also give us ears to hear it.

The Christian Paradox of Mourning and Joy

Give us the ability to ponder it, to reason through it, to understand it, to know it, to believe it, and to walk in the reality of it. I pray this in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. I think we have to admit, there is a lot about Christianity that is seemingly paradoxical, oxymoronic even.

What you find is you find realities about the Christian like, you've got to lose your life to find it. That kind of thing. There's just no question about it. The Christian is an odd bird. Because on the one hand, you've got verse 4, blessed are those who mourn.

But right in the same portion of Scripture, when you just simply move down the page, if you drop down to verse 12, rejoice and be exceedingly glad. So isn't that interesting? The Lord sits down. Can you imagine if you're listening to Him?

On the one hand, He says, blessed if you mourn. But then on the other hand, rejoice and be exceedingly glad. Now, when I say the Christian is an odd bird, it's because we have these competing realities that are true about us.

And if you're a Christian, you know it. Your own experience tells you there's reality here. So as a Christian, when you sit down and you're reading through the Psalms, and in one place you find David says something like this, I'm troubled.

I'm bowed down greatly. I go mourning all the day long. But then you jump right over a few Psalms later, the same psalmist says, you've turned for me my mourning into dancing. See, we feel that. We feel that.

And I'll tell you one of the reasons we feel it is because we're people of truth. And the truth grips us. And see, this is the problem. There's aspects of truth that draw mourning out of us and tears out of us.

And there's aspects of truth that draw dancing out of us. That's why we get this strange mixture. Even Christ was a man of sorrows, we know. But then we know that when we run over to the later chapters of Hebrews, we find that for the joy set before Him, so He felt that because of all, He came to bear witness of the truth.

And see, He was guided by truth. He was compelled by the truth. And that's as Christians, see, that's we break out of our darkness. We're transloaded over in this kingdom of light. And suddenly it is light.

See, if you walk in darkness, you don't have fellowship with God. We come out into the light. And light means truth. And so you've got this... I mean, if there's anything that's a reality about the Christian, it's this.

There are truths that pull us to the right, and there are truths that pull us to the left. There are truths that cause us to mourn, and there are truths that cause us to dance. And we find ourselves in that tension as Christians.

The World's Flight from Sorrow

And the world, well, you know the world. Look at their advertising. Look what they sell. Look what they're all about. If anything the world tries to run from, they don't want anything to do with mourning.

They don't want anything to do with sorrow. I mean, I remember that. I remember being lost and going to a funeral. It's like I was like Samson coming out of there. Not that I was strong like that, but I wanted to shake myself.

You know how he shook himself? The Philistines were... But we come out of those funerals and we want to shake ourselves. It's like, let's go get drunk. Let's go eat. Let's go. You just want to shake that off.

That's how the world is. The philosophy for the world is what? Have fun. What a cheap word. You ever heard John Piper talk about the word fun? I think he's right. Fun is just a cheap word. And we say it all the time.

Somebody's going somewhere. Well, have fun. Have fun? That's just so worldly. Have fun? Christ never talked that way. Why? Because it's so cheap. It's so shallow. It resonates with the world. What's the world like?

Pleasure mania. Let's go get drunk and drown our sorrows. Or, you know what? You can drown your sorrows in a lot of things. It can just simply be a movie. It doesn't have to be alcohol. It doesn't have to be drugs.

But you know what Scripture says. Let's eat and drink for tomorrow we die. That's basically the mindset of the world. Let's live it up. You know it's true. This was me lost. I live for the weekend. But you know what?

Here in the UK, you guys really like your holiday. That's a big thing here, right? I mean that's one of the things I saw when I was comparing life in the UK with life in the United States. They said people in the UK really like their holidays.

And they typically get a whole bunch more than what they get in the United States. People live for that. Or they live for their retirement. But that's, you just look around. Good times. Entertainment.

How much does the world throw into entertainment? How much money? How much effort? And then, I don't know if you really use this term here. We've got our amusement parks in the United States. You probably use the term amuse.

Muse means to think. Amuse, you've got that negative article at the front. You know what? That is the way the world is. That's what happens when you walk out of that funeral. You don't want to deal with it.

You don't want to deal with the fact you're going to be that body in there in a few more rolling suns at most. Going to land me right in that coffin too. You don't want to think about it. For you, nope.

Let's eat and drink. Yeah, another day, tomorrow maybe, I'm going to die. But not today. Let's live it up today. That's the mindset of the world. Stop, amuse yourself. Stop thinking. Let's sit down and watch the movie.

Parents, you don't do a favor to your children if you park them in front of the television all the time and you just let them amuse themselves. Listen, there's profitable things. You can learn. You want to use your computer and your TV to learn.

To learn good things. To learn things about the truth. Things about God. But the philosophy of the world, amuse. Stop thinking. Let's have another round. So I can just forget my troubles. But you know what the Gospel says?

Blessed are those who mourn. Now that's truth. Our Lord speaks even more startlingly when He talks this way in Luke 6. Because there He says, Blessed are you who weep now. And He says the opposite. Woe unto you who laugh now.

Do you know woe? That's a curse. Do you know what Jesus does? He condemns. Woe unto you that laugh now. People like to go see the comedian. Do you know what happened? I don't know if there was a corresponding, I imagine there was a corresponding depression in your economy back before World War II.

But you know, you go look. What I find, what I've heard is that in seasons of war, in seasons of depression, recession, people watched a lot of movies. Do you know why? They want to break with reality.

Because reality is full of problems. Reality is full of pain and death and sorrow. And people want to forget it. But Jesus comes, you know, people like to come in and they sit in front of that big screen and they laugh.

They go watch the comedian. They have amusement. Have you ever seen an advertisement for an amusement park where everybody had frowns on their face? You see, laugh it up. Laughter. I don't know why, when I was preparing this, back in the 70s, they had a show called The Love Boat.

And I remember the captain used to say, smiles everybody, at the beginning of the show. That's so characteristic of the smiles everybody. It's all put on. I mean, you don't say that to people who just are already smiling.

It's like, fake it. We want to make everybody happy. Oh, for our 25th wedding anniversary, we had a cruise bought for us. If you could see the depression on the last day, the people were in a cloud of gloom.

Why? Because they've been looking forward to this cruise. Oh, you should have seen them when they were boarding, compared to how they were when it was over. Ruby and I are looking at that and we're thinking, we're Christians.

Our hope is ahead. We didn't live for this cruise. In fact, there was a whole lot we could not do and would not do, and had to stay away from on that cruise. But I snorkeled. I saw more ale. Now I'm diverging.

But brethren, this is the world. We know it is. It's their philosophy. And Christ comes along and he pronounces his curse on it. Whoa. And you know what? That's not to say Christianity is morbid, or that Christ was morbid.

That's not true. Because there was a joy set before him. He came to do his Father's will. There was a joy in that. He came to redeem a people. He suffered the shame because of that joy that was before him.

He was moving towards that. Christianity does not produce morbidity, because on the other hand, we're told to dance. We're told to rejoice and be exceedingly glad. We're told in one place, jump for joy.

Sorrowful Yet Always Rejoicing

Because again, we face the tension. In fact, Paul, I think, sums it up as well as anybody. In 2 Corinthians 6, you know these words. It's so concise. But he said, as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing. Don't you love that?

Because that should describe the Christian. Because we are people of truth. Because there are things genuinely worth sorrowing over, and there are things genuinely worth rejoicing over. I mean, you just think about it.

Sorrow. See, we're people that deal with truth. We know what it means when they go out from us. We feel that sorrow. And I'll tell you, I feel it. You pour into somebody for years, or even a decade, and then they walk away.

And then John's words are there. They went out from us because they weren't of us. But see, then, an eternal weight of glory. So you see, there's the tension. Or our daughter walks away. I mean, and yet, Ruby and I still have a hope of eternal glory.

It's there before us, shining like the sun in the kingdom of our Father. You see, there's tension. On the one hand, there's sin in the church. There's disunity in the church. There's error in the church.

God is dishonored. We see that. It causes us to sigh. It causes us to groan. So few people want to even take the track from us. It causes us groan because we know we're likely going to see that person on judgment day, and they're going to be cast away because they were so foolish and blind and hard in their sin.

And we feel for them. We feel more for them than they feel for themselves. There's that reality. We feel it. We look at our children, and they're yet lost, or grandchildren, or our parents. We feel that.

Or then they die, and we know they died without Christ. And we feel that. See, these are the tensions. These are the things. There's so much evil in the world. We look around, and it causes us to groan.

It causes us to sigh. And there are things that draw forth tears. Why? Because we're people of truth, and we recognize how it really is. And we recognize that few there be that find it. And we recognize many of our family members, and many of our co-workers, and many of the people that live around us, and our neighbors.

They are perishing, and very likely they are going to die without Christ. And hell is fiercely... It's a fierce damnation. It's a forever reality. And yet, at the same time, we know to be absent from the body is to be present with Christ.

Mourning Over Personal Sin

And He's going to wipe away every tear. See, the hope. Tim talked about the hope. We want to talk to people that are thinking of committing suicide. See, we have the hope. It doesn't go away. But listen, the mourning of Matthew 5, verse 4, is primarily, you can see the flow of the Beatitudes.

It's the mourning that we feel over our own sin. Because it comes right on the heels of being poor in spirit. It's the mourning that flows from being poor in spirit. It's the mourning that flows from being spiritually bankrupt.

It's nothing other than the sorrow that attends a conviction of sin. And that's not something that just happens when we first get saved. That's something in an ongoing fashion that is a reality. But you want to pay particular attention to the order of things.

Notice this. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Now, there's a truth here that is so important. This is massively important. Mourning precedes comfort. Say, okay, we see it. No, no, no.

You need to really see this. Do you know what I find? There are many people, many people, who come to a head knowledge of truth. They have some idea about doctrine. They have some academic understanding of the gospel.

They know enough about hell to fear it and not want to go there. And they are trying to find assurance. They are trying to find comfort. They are trying to find joy without ever having traversed the veil of tears.

And there is an order here. And I'll tell you, if you get people, and they're in the church, and they've been subject to the truth, and they fear hell, and that makes them very uncomfortable. But they've never really faced the conviction of sin.

And they're looking for the comfort. They're looking for the joy. It's totally out of order. It's not going to happen that way. You see it here. Mourning first. Comfort after that. A real sense of sin has to come before there can be true comfort and joy of salvation.

And so many people spend their lives trying to find the joy without first. Knowing anything about that deep conviction of sin that clearly is here. Jesus shows the essential order. You see, the apostle Paul says this.

This is the reality about the Christian. He said, we know that the whole creation groans. But he goes on and he says, it's not just the creation. He says, not only that, we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit.

Even we ourselves groan within ourselves. And you want to make that connection. The firstfruits of the Spirit. Because you know what Jesus said? When He comes, He convicts. Sin, righteousness, or a lack thereof.

That's really the issue. It's God has a standard of righteousness and you don't have it. You have sin. And He convicts you of judgment. And that it's real. You deserve it. You see, the firstfruits of the Spirit result in a person groaning within themselves.

Why? Because we're longing for when we're going to be set free. Why? Because we're attached to this body. This body, the flesh. This is where sin tries to reign in our mortal body. That's what Romans 6 says.

This is the place. This is the flesh. This is where... You see, if you put to death the deeds of the body, it's by the Spirit. If you put to death the deeds of the body by the Spirit, you will live. You see, it's the deeds of the body.

See, we're connected to this body. That's the issue. And we groan. We feel it. Why? Because we're renewed. We're new creations in Christ. And suddenly there is. We're going to get to it. We hunger and thirst after righteousness.

But we see there is a competing something within us. And it causes tears. It causes grief. 2 Corinthians 5 .4. We who are in this tent groan being burdened. You have this. Listen to this. God actually said something concerning the new covenant that we don't quote a lot.

Or I don't. And I don't hear it quoted a lot. But listen to it. Ezekiel liked to tell us about the new covenant. Just like Jeremiah did. I will establish. This is Ezekiel 16 .62. Don't turn there. But I just want to give you that address.

In case you're interested where it comes from. God says this. I will establish my covenant with you. Okay? Then you shall know that I am the Lord. That you may remember and be ashamed. And never open your mouth anymore.

Because of your shame. When I provide you an atonement for all you have done. Says the Lord God. What I find very interesting. This is a covenant of atonement. I'm going to provide a sacrifice to atone for your sins.

But when I do that. When you're an object of this covenant. One of the things God is promising. Is I'm going to cause you to remember your shame. I'm going to cause you to remember and be ashamed. Remember what?

Well obviously things that we should be ashamed of. And you're never going to open your mouth anymore. Because of your shame. In other words you're going to be a person. That is not constantly trying to vindicate yourself.

That somehow you're righteous. Either before men or before God. You're not going to be parading all your goodness out there. God puts His finger on it and says. You have to remember. For the joy that was set before Christ.

He endured the shame of the cross. That is our shame. And God convinces us of that. That's what the Spirit of God does. Convinces us that's your shame. And we feel it. There's a groan. And we go on feeling it.

There is a groaning. There is a burden. There are tears. Listen when a man truly faces himself. Examines himself. Examines his life. Her life. It's a man who of necessity is going to mourn. If they see.

Again I come back to this. If anything is true about this first and second beatitude. It is this. It is a people who are coming face to face with truth. And when a person really looks at themselves. And they recognize who they actually are.

Listen pride is a blinder. Pride puts people's eyes out. The proud man cannot acknowledge that he is bad. And ought to be ashamed. The proud man is ready to throw out there. Lay all his credentials out.

Say I'm not that bad. I'm okay. I'm not as bad as so and so. No this person. Jesus is saying blessed are those who have this kind of sensitivity. I'll tell you. If Jesus is saying anything about anything in this beatitude.

It is this. He designs his people to feel. And not just I recognize. Not just feel about anything. But we are people who feel. We are people who suddenly. We have emotions that get opened up. That maybe were just not there before.

They were quenched. They were squelched. They weren't given freedom to blossom. And he causes. We begin to feel things that we didn't feel before. We can actually feel for the lost. But we have this keen awareness of.

How can I? How could I do that? How could I think that? Where could that come from? What is it in me? And the thing with the Christian is there's suddenly a warfare. There's a battle. And see the battle creates the groan.

If you live according to the flesh you will die. But if by the spirit. You put to death the deeds of the body. You see there's a killing. And it's by the spirit. And there's groaning. And it's fierce.

And we take the kingdom by force. And there's something radical begins to happen. There's this turmoil. And we begin to recognize the sin. And we try to kill it by the grace of God. And the power of God.

But it's. Listen it's fierce. And yes we cry out. That's the reason why there's so much discussion. And debate about Romans 7. What we know it. Wretched man that I am. We feel that. No matter what the truth about Romans 7 might be.

We know that those words resonate in the child of God. Or the song. We sing it prone to wander. Lord we feel it. I would have sang it. But we sang it last week. But that's a reality. We feel it. And the groaning.

Like how. It's like just when you think. I ought to be mature enough. I ought to have advanced enough. I ought to be some point in my life. To have matured to the point. Where you'd think that. That wasn't going to be an issue anymore.

I remember Ruby's sister. I have always counted Ruby's sister. As an extremely godly person. And yet I remember not too long ago. Hearing that her greatest complaint. Is that after all these years of walking with the Lord.

She is still struggling with certain sins. That she struggled with the whole time. For decades. And that she doesn't have more victory. I mean you see. Listen. This is an imaginary. This happens with the Christian.

The sighs. And the groans. And this is actual to our experience. It's true to the fact. God what. I mean what is this terrible thing within me. That would. You know we can think about. We can go and remember the Lord in the Lord's Supper.

And we can think about Him being jealous for us. We can think about Him laying down His life for us. We can think about Him putting the cup to His lips. And drinking it in our behalf. To purchase for Himself a bride.

Of which I am one. And we can have this appreciation. And then how could such a rebel thought. Or something come into. How could I be suddenly gripped by this unbelief. Or not trust Him. How could I be so shaken.

Jesus obviously by this beatitude. Again you remember no imperatives. He's not telling us. Thou shalt mourn. He's basically saying this. He's saying the same truth that Ezekiel's saying. That if you're a partaker of this covenant.

This is what's going to be true of you. This will be true of you. And I know we exhibit sensitivity differently. Some are far more prone to weep than others. I recognize that. But you know you can weep without a tear running down your cheek.

There's a way to groan. There's different ways that we can express it. But I'll tell you this. These people alone are blessed in this world. And you see I say it to you again. We all have to confront this Sermon on the Mount.

I can't hide from it. Because you know I'm not up here telling you my invention. Blessed are those who mourn. And they are the blessed ones. And that's it. And you know the truth is in a lot of churches.

Mourning, Joy, and Entertainment in the Church

Laughter. You talk about the entertainment thing. The amusement thing. How much that's come into the church. And I know Reformed churches. You know the problem with the Reformed church is a false mourning.

You know the long-faced. That's so typical of at least where I was in Michigan before I moved to Texas. There's this very stoic form of Christianity. Morbid. It reeks more of pride and Phariseeism. Because one of the things that you find where you have people that make up this reality.

Is they are people that grieve. And they sigh. And they can shed tears. But then you know you can also see them full of joy. And dancing. Why? Because again there's this tension. When you talk to Ruby about the fact that her daughter walked away.

Was she shed tears? But then you know what? We can shift. And we can talk about our hope. And what Christ. We begin to talk about Him. And there can be tears. And then there can be joy. And that's where we're at.

And this is the kind of people that Jesus produces. That's what this second beatitude is all about. And these alone are the blessed ones. These in the churches. I'll tell you. You either have this morbidity on the one side.

Or you've got you know they're trying to introduce entertainment. They want to entertain people in the churches. And it's brethren. What we find in the second beatitude is this. Grief and joy correlate.

I mean there's a relationship. A healthy relationship between them. And you can you know you recognize this. What the comfort comes from God. And so basically what happens is the Spirit produces the mourning and the grief.

And then the Spirit moves the eyes of the mourner to Christ. And to the healing. And to the hope. And that's where the comfort comes from. Our comfort here. I know there's going to be comfort and glory.

Where the tears are wiped away. And the veil is totally drawn back. But here there's comfort as well. And the Spirit is in the business of this. The Spirit is in the business of glorifying Christ. And what happens is when we feel ourselves broken.

And weep. And mourn. And sigh. And groan. That Spirit is in the business of then lifting up our eyes upon the cross. And finding light and life there. And hope. And comfort. And joy. And like I say, you don't want to pursue the comfort without this path first.

A Healthy Doctrine of Sin

We need a healthy doctrine of sin in the church. And so I just want you to think about your sin for a second. I'll tell you where a lot of the proper response. Where a lot of the second beatitude is going to find its foundations.

Is if we simply have a healthy doctrine of sin in the church. Because I'll tell you these churches that are all about entertainment. The churches that are seeker sensitive. They don't want people to feel bad.

They don't talk about sin. They don't talk about hell. Why? Because they don't want to make people feel uncomfortable. People don't want to. Because they're trying to appeal to the lost man out there.

Of course they don't want to hear about that. Brethren, let's think about our sins. Because the truth is a lot of times we can just minimize. We can count these things trivial. Sin. Have you ever? You just, there's none good.

And you know in that portion of Romans 3? You find us, you find sinners. Venom of asps. You know what an asp is? It's a snake. Basically sin is like venom. Sinners are compared to snakes in scripture.

But that's not where it ends. We keep going. Sin is called vomit. And you know full well Peter uses that. A dog, you've seen a dog. A dog will throw up and then eat it. Been around dogs. You've seen that happen.

They eat nasty things. Worse than vomit. And you know Peter has no problem using that very imagery. Sin is like vomit. And sinners like a dog. And he also uses mire. The filth. Have you ever seen the kind of stuff pigs love to roll in?

That's what sin is like. And sinners like the swine. Or our throats are open sepulchres. Or Jesus could look at the Pharisees and say you're like sepulchres. You've basically got rotten decaying people inside you.

Our throats are open sepulchres. You see we could just read across this. This is just the average guy. This isn't Hitler. This is just our lost children. Rotten sepulchres. Sin is called, you know this in Isaiah, oozing sores.

You're covered with sores from the top of your head to the bottom of your feet. We know full well. Don't often like to admit it or say it. Sin is like a filthy menstrual cloth. That's what Isaiah says.

Paul likens the things, his idols that he trusted in to dung. To excrement. Unclean. Impure. Have you ever read Hosea? Basically, the idolater is called a whore. Over and over and over. Whores. This is the sinner in Scripture.

Wicked. Evil. Twisted. Perverse. And the thing about it is, no matter how trivial you might take that sin to be, the soul that sins will die. And that's why Christ died on the cross. Because no matter how small we may think those sins, God doesn't think them small.

And Christ had to die for the small ones. The wages of sin is death. There's no getting around it. I'll tell you this. You think about this. Pride was found in one angel one time. And God threw him down from there.

And a third of the angels came down with him. When one man sank his teeth into one fruit, that seems pretty small. Like a child taking a cookie out of the cookie jar when he was told not to. By the one man's offense, many died.

By the one man's offense, death reigned through that one. Through one man's offense, judgment came to all men resulting in condemnation. By one man's disobedience, many were made sinners. You think it's small?

You think yourself okay? You've been pretty good. I'm not that bad. You're going to have that argument with God? You're going to have that? I mean, are we going to put that on the table? Is that the credential you want to throw out there?

I'll tell you this. You start looking. Israel. They were out there in the wilderness. You know what they found? They found a man picking up sticks on the Sabbath. They locked him up. Lord, what should we do?

He said, I want you to kill him. And I want the whole lot of you to come out. And I want you to stone the man. Have you ever seen somebody stoned? I haven't. Craig over in San Antonio told me he came across some Muslim YouTube video of a woman being stoned.

He said it was massively disturbing. Picked up sticks. Small sin? In fact, the ox stumbled. Uzzah is trying to keep the ark out of the mud or the dirt or the dust. God killed him on the spot. The Corinthian church.

We saw this just recently. Christians. They begin to despise the church. 1 Corinthians 11. And Paul says, you know why some of you are sick and why some of you are dead? I think it's a small sin. See, earlier in 1 Corinthians, he said a little leavens the whole lump.

See, what's that? A little leaven. You let a little leaven, it spreads. It infects. This is the way sin is. Sin in one man infects the whole. Sin in one angel, a third of them come crashing down. This is the reality of sin.

Our iniquities separate us from God. And God comes along and He says, Christian men, just act in a sinful way towards your wife. And watch how fast I will not answer your prayers. But it's a small thing.

I just said something mean to my wife. And God says, you want your prayers hindered? You want something to come between me and you? You know what Scripture says? Covetousness. I know it's couched in some other sins.

Covetousness. Just you have an inordinate desire for something. The Apostle Paul says, because of sins just like that, the wrath of God is coming. Really? I just desired that little thing? You think Adam's fruit was sweet?

How about he saw his bowl of porridge that he sold his birthright for? How about the quail? Still in the teeth. You think it tasted good? After their complaining out there in the wilderness? See, the Scriptures are too clear on this.

Sin, even the things we think are small. Jesus said, let me tell you, there's a place where the worm does not die. There's a place where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. And the fire is eternal.

And it's forever. And this is real. And is there not a place for us to look and say, ought we not to mourn over the fact that we so cheaply? Do you know what sin does? They walked with God in the cool of the day.

They forfeited fellowship with God. People who go after sin, do you know what the Bible says? There is joy. I mean, joy. Peter says, joy that is unspeakable and full of glory. And men, they want to be angry.

They want to be proud. They want things. Their heart goes after. Ought we not to mourn that we so easily tolerate this? I'll tell you this, sin is never one bit less filthy and vile and abominable to God just because we count it insignificant or want to forget it or want to even put a spin on it to make it seem righteous.

So, I mean, do you recognize that, Lord, what's the greatest commandment? The greatest commandment is to love God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind. And all your strength and love your neighbor as yourself.