Good Grief!
Matthew 5:4
Introduction:
The eight beatitudes should be viewed as stepping stones that are all building on each other, ultimately culminating in a powerful position and blessed state. In the business world we call this the corporate ladder: you start in an entry level position, work and claw your way up and by the time you reach that last prong, you are rewarded with: that corner office, a giant pay raise, position, popularity, promotion and power. I like to view beatitudes as our Lord’s version of the corporate ladder, a “beatitudnal ladder”: as we start at entry level, we work our way up through faith and maturity so that by the time we reach the top we are well equipped to enjoy the reward at that last rung.
The first rung of this ladder was found in Matthew chapter 5 verse 3 where Jesus states “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Remember this word blessed does not mean happy, happiness is subjective (sun/rain, check/bill). Blessed speaks of an inner satisfaction tethered to salvation in Christ, not subject to emotions, feelings and fear nor dependent upon circumstance.
So, when God blesses us, he is actually approving our lives. This is a lesson that we all need to hear today: stop seeking approval from creation and solely align yourself to the approval of the Creator. How freeing it is when you stop trying to please everyone around you and simply live for the One within you!
Friend you can go around exhausting yourself trying to please everyone that comes into your life, as for me, I will endeavor to find rest in simply seeking the approval of God in my life.
So, if you are seeking the approval of God this morning that first step is to acknowledge that you are poor in spirit, or spiritually bankrupt. Admit today that salvation is not based on what YOU do, or who YOU are but what He has done and who He is!
Salvation is a very personal matter between you and the Lord, to come to a place in your life where you recognize your beggarly poor state, need for rescue and run to the cross to find there is still room for you!
That is the first run on this ladder, it must start here.
Our next beatitude is found in Matthew chapter 5 verse 4, so standing if you will when you find it so that we can show reverence as we read His Word.
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”
PRAYER
1. To recognize our sin is to mourn over our condition.
I believe the reason that so many churches have lost their power is because so many Christians have lost their focus. And, when you take your eyes off of Christ they fall on people. So many “Christians” are in the church causing so many problems because they are so focused on everyone else.
You know what…some of the meanest, bitter, critical, cynical, unforgiving people you will ever meet sit next to you in church Sunday after Sunday. That is the result of taking your eyes off of Christ. I believe this is the main reason 4000 churches close their doors ever single year in our country. No wonder Billy Graham when he looks into the American church sanctuary states that as many as 70% of church members are not regenerated, not true Christians. They might have walked down an aisle, said a prayer, been baptized and are now singing there is Power in the Blood but there is no power in their lives because they have never been transformed and regenerated through the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
How do we fix this? Matthew 5:4 by mourning over our sin.
To recognize our sin is to mourn over our condition.
I was watching a Mark Lowry video the other day and he stood before a full house and talked about how Jesus started the church with the outcasts of society (prostitutes, drunkards, fornicators, adulterers, tax collectors, smelly fishermen, even a Samaritan woman! And, the church grew! It grew because one beggar would tell another beggar where the food was! Now that the church has grown, we are inside holding the doors closed not letting anyone else in because we are judging those outside because they sin differently than we do. It is time we fling those doors open, let them in so that they can experience the peace, position and power we have found through the Gospel of Jesus Christ!
Mark then stated that he has hatted the sin and loved the sinner too long. He said, “I don’t have time to hate your sin, hate your own sin! How about, you hate your sin, I’ll hate my sin and then we just love on each other!
And, there it is, the key to our text: RECOGNIZING YOUR OWN SIN AND MOURING OVER YOUR OWN CONDITION!
Ohh Pastor I don’t have “sin” in my life. OH YES YOU DO!
“As it is written: ‘None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.’”-Romans 3:10-12
Did you notice that statement “no one seeks for God”? You DID NOT find God. You CAN NOT find God. You are a sinner, you are the one that is lost and it is God that must find you. And the only way he can find you bobbing around life’s ocean of trials is for you to send up the Matthew 5:3 beacon, confessing you are spiritually bankrupt in need of rescue. To believe in your heart, confess with your mouth that Jesus Christ died and rose again and to willfully and purposefully surrender to His will for your life by repenting of your sins and following Him.
Once we are redeemed and rescued we can’t help but love our Father, and now we have a desire to please Him we mourn over our sin. Listen, there was a time I did not mourn over my sin but celebrated it!
(In southern talk) I was a drinkin, smokin, cussin, fussin, haten heathen who was lookin for love in all the wrong places, hopeless, lost, defeated and broken in need of a fixin…but then…I heard an old, old story:
How a Savior came from glory,
How He gave His life on Calvary
To save a wretch like me;
I heard about His groaning,
Of His precious blood's atoning,
Then I repented of my sins
And won the victory.
(Say the chorus with me)
O victory in Jesus,
My Savior, forever.
He sought me and bought me
With His redeeming blood;
He loved me ere I knew Him
And all my love is due Him,
He plunged me to victory,
Beneath the cleansing flood.
Listen, now that I know what it took to reconcile this sinner man to a Holy, Almighty God. Knowing that He knows me better than anyone yet chooses to love me more than everyone, I surrender, completely surrender all to His love. That is why when I look at my sin, I mourn, for I am now aware that it hurts the very heart of the ONLY one that has loved me with an everlasting love.
2. To see others in sin is to mourn over our Father’s hurt.
“My eyes shed streams of tears, because people do not keep your law.” –Psalm 119:136
The words David chose to use, streams of tears, speaks of utter distress and weakness. In other words, the psalmist is saying that he is crippled, in deep grieving, not the kind of crying one does when a toe is stumped but the kind of mourning that occurs in the loss of a child. Why is David THAT upset? Because when someone you love is hurt, you hurt and our Father hurts when His creation sins. We hear plenty about the judgment of God, that God hates sin and punishes the wicked evil doer. But there is another element found in Ephesians chapter 4 verses 29-30: “Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers. And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.” –Eph. 4:29-30
Firstly, this text reveals that what grieves the heart of God more than anything within the church of God is the disruption of unity caused by the sin of gossip, slander and contention.
But don’t miss what these sins do: they GRIEVE the Holy Spirit of God. Grieve…This word means “to afflict with sorrow, to cause pain and anguish, to trouble and to torture”. Keeping this in context, according to Eph. 4:29-30, people speaking against each other or against God are torturing God. Let me simply ask, in light of what Jesus went through (rejected, beaten, whipped, forced to carry a cross, nailed to that same cross on a hill called Mount Calvary, where He suffered, bled and died)…Has He not been tortured enough. Should we live in such a way as to crucify our Lord again and again, God forbid. So, it does hurt me when “Christians”, the Children of God sin because I do not want my Lord to suffer anymore.
And, we should mourn over the sins of others because we are motivated by the supernatural love of God to actually care for others. Jeremiah looked at the sins of humanity and wept so much that he was known as the weeping prophet. Likewise, Jesus Christ was thought by some to be Jeremiah because as He looked at the sins of humanity He wept. The Apostle Paul revealed his care for others when he stated in Phil. 1:23 “I am in a straight betwixt two, having a desire to depart and be with Christ which is far better, never the less to remain here is more needful for you”. He was willing to postpone heaven for others. Even more care for others was evident when he stated in Romans 9 “For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, those of my own race, the people of Israel." Don’t miss that, not only was Paul willing to postpone heaven but he was ready to replace someone in hell. Paul, Jeremiah, Jesus really looked at the sins of humanity and cared.
When was the last time you really LOOKED at the sins of humanity through the lens of Matthew 5:4 and wept because you cared? For:
3. To see others in sin is to know the separation they face.
The reason that so many churches have lost their power is because so many Christians have lost their focus. And what is our focus? Matthew 28:16-20, the great commission, to GO out into this world and make disciples! To leave the doors of this building, enter the mission field and boldly proclaim that Jesus Christ has been resurrected, that our Lord lives!
The church is full of people that have become quite proficient in letting this world know what we are against but tragically leaving them wondering who we are for.
In the recent SBC Life magazine our president revealed some appalling news. The number of folks that are making decisions for Christ and following that decision with believer’s baptism has not been this low since 1948. The challenge last year was that for every 11 active Southern Baptists we would see one person reached each year, an 11/1 ratio; we are now at a 51/1 ratio. How many Baptists does it take to share the Gospel and win one for the Kingdom each year? Apparently 51.
Too many in the church today have lost focus and are content with where the church is. Having the attitude, “I’m saved, my wife is saved, our children are saved and we just don’t give a rip about anyone else!” But Pastor we do care? When was the last time you presented the Gospel to a lost man, woman, boy or girl? If I were to ask your classmates, co-workers, neighbors and friends about the last time you told them the story of that Old Rugged Cross, how would they respond?
I am glad you’re saved and your household is all set, I really am. I am excited that you can proclaim that all of your friends and family are saved that your circle of influence are all accounted for on the train to glory! If that’s the case, the reason you are not sharing the Gospel anymore, that your harvest has been reaped, let me challenge you… it’s time to move on to another harvest. All your friends saved? Then get new friends! I am thankful that you have experienced the power and grace of God that He was able to save you to the uttermost, and if your any kind of sinful like me, you know that we took a whole lot of saving! But it’s time to get busy!
We are surrounded by a world full of lost people, many of whom do not even see themselves as lost. Yet even more tragic is that with all of these folks facing eternal damnation, we do not have enough born again, Holy Spirit filled, transformed believers making much of Jesus by bringing them the good news. WE have the light, the hope, the power, the peace, the way the truth and the life INSIDE OF US, yet in spite of folks all around us with a desperate need to hear eternal good news, we are refusing to “give an account of that hope that is within us”.
Oh we are signing in the choir, teaching Sunday School, preaching sermons – We are in church every time the doors are open and claim our lives are being changed, yet the harvest is still full of people on their way to eternal separation because we simply do not have laborers for the field.
Do we really care about the clerk, the waitress, the mechanic, our nurse or doctor, our exterminator, our neighbors, classmates and co-workers?
We have sat down, shut up, laid out, played around long enough, it’s time for us to Go out, look around, reach down, open up and let the Gospel Go forth.
4. Only through mourning can we hope to receive comfort.
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”-Mt. 5:4
In closing, I would like to share some words from Chuck Colson from his book Who Speaks for God?
INV.
In sin we carry around baggage, scars, fear, guilt, shame and doubt. Yet Jesus Christ tells us all today that when we mourn over that very sin He will give comfort. He is telling you today to look to yourself, acknowledge your sin, mourn over it, and immediately you will see your baggage dropped, scars healed, fear replaced with trust, shame changed to boldness and doubt converted to faith.
Aren’t you tired? Isn’t life hard enough without the internal struggles? Don’t you long for a safe place to fall, a time when you are so overwhelmed with acceptance, power, joy and love that you just want to leave your tears in the valley and dance on the mountain top? Mourn over your sin. This is the paradox of the beatitudes, “truth flipped on its head”. Come to the altar; If you want comfort, you must mourn. Come to the altar and weep over your sins and the sins of those around you as we cry together for the comfort only our God can give.
May there be showers of blessings for His church today!
You see…Greif can be good.
