Happy Are those who Mourn
CCCAG September 10th, 2017
Scripture- Matthew 5:4
Today we are going to talk about the idea of Mourning
This is one of those topics that is very misunderstood in the church of the 21st Century.
We have two extremes-
We have one side that says that if you are a Christian, then you should never be sad, lonely, depressed or grieve because Jesus took all of that away at Calvary’s cross.
Then there is the other side that says that Jesus wept over Jerusalem and all of her sins, and we should always be in mourning over the sin in our own hearts, and the sins of the world we live in.
Couple that with an outside culture, particularly here in the rural setting that tells men, in particular, that you need to be strong and never ever cry at all or at least not in front of other people.
My earliest experience with morning came when I was about 7 years old. I had a favorite great-uncle die. Uncle Delmar used to watch me when I was in Hayward and my grandparents had to work, and we’d go fishing and hiking a lot. He died in the winter shoveling snow, so we made the (at the time) over 8 hr trip from Kenosha to Hayward to attend his funeral. Even though my parents had separated, they were both there as my dad knew Delmar very well and like him.
Before we went into the viewing my dad pulled me aside, put both hands on my shoulder, and said, “No crying. Men don’t cry, especially in front of woman. Your job is to be strong for them so they have someone strong to cling to during these times.”
My grandfather echoed his words as he held my hand and lead me to the casket. He as a strong Norwegian man who had that same idea of manhood as my father.
I still carry some of that to this day, even know I know how foolish and prideful that thought can be, and it definitely does not reflect who Jesus is or was when He was on this earth.
Ecclesiastes chapter three tells us there is a time and a season for everything under heaven, and that includes a time for mourning, and a time for weeping
I want to study this idea of mourning that Jesus introduces to us here in Matthew Chapter 5, which list the beautiful attitudes of Jesus.
Mat 5:4 “Blessed (or happy) are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Prayer
Synoposis- today I want to look at the biblical idea of mourning and it’s place in our lives. We are going to start with the difference between a fleshly or sinful morning, and a godly spiritually healthy mourning. WE will then move to discuss the value and spiritual benefits of mourning, and then finish with how God uses mourning to bring us into a comfortable place within HIM.
I. The difference between sinful Versus Godly Mourning
2nd Cor 7:10 Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.
There are two different kinds of mourning or sorrow that we can express- one is healthy and God centered and inspired, and the other is deadly, me centered and devil inspired.
We are going to focus on the latter first- 1 Kings 21
There is a story in the bible about a King in Israel named Ahab. Ahab was one of the most wicked kings in the history of Israel or Judah, and his wife was so wicked the bible refers to the spirit of wickedness and spiritual rebellion with her name- the Spirit of Jezebel.
Ahab is in his palace in the city of Samaria and decided that he wants to expand his gardens a bit. He looks over and sees that the person owning the property closest to the palace is a man named Naboth. Ahab goes to Naboth and offers him a deal- sell me your land, or let’s do a trade- I will give you a much better land than the one you currently own.
Many people in this county have had this deal thrown at them recently by the sand mines- some people have made really good money by selling off their land, even land that had been in their families for several generations.
The difference in Israel is that God had commanded that land was to be kept in the families forever. They could sell the land, but every 50 years the land would automatically be returned back to the family it was supposed to belong to.
Naboth, knowing the character of Ahab and that if he sells him this land, it will never be returned to his family despite what the law had to say, refuses to violate the law by selling his land and moving away from the land that God had given his family.
The bible records Ahab’s response-
“ So Ahab went home, sullen and angry because Naboth the Jezreelite had said, “I will not give you the inheritance of my ancestors.” He lay on his bed sulking and refused to eat.”
Ahab has a pretty extreme reaction to a person that actually does the right thing.
This is the act of a sinful mindset that is only focused on personal gratification. Sorrow has been produced by another person’s refusal to meet a selfish want.
It wasn’t even a need- Ahab is the King! HE already had huge gardens, large swaths of property, an iron fisted control over his whole domain, and a beautiful if evil wife. HE had everything a man could ever want, except this small patch of land, and he goes back to the palace, kicks the dog, yells at the servants, and sulks in his room.
His wife sees his reaction, mocks him, and conspires to have Naboth killed and his land stolen.
This is an example of worldly sorrow producing death.
You might be thinking that’s a pretty extreme example, but how much depression, anger, guilt, and bad attitude comes from not having our wants met?
I would dare say that most of the sorrow we have in life comes from a want not being met in our lives. Notice I use the word “Want” and not “need”.
A want is a selfish desire, while a need is something that provides life.
The line between these two can become very blurred can’t it?
I had a Christian coworker who was newly married, and he and his new wife were both in college studying for their bachelor degrees. Every time, we took a patient to Milwaukee we had to stop at a particular car lot because he was trying to buy a brand-new Hummer.
In 2003, a brand-new Hummer cost about $30-40k depending on how many toys you wanted with it.
As a paramedic working for the company we worked for, he made about $11/hr. His wife worked part time at a local Dr. Office, and made about $9/hr. They are both in college, and living in a fairly nice apartment.
There is no way that he can afford to buy a $40k vehicle, right?
I talked to him about it and advised him against getting it at this time. I told him wait until you guys finish school and start earning the money to afford something so expensive. I said you will not a be a good steward of your income if you spend every penny you earn in a truck you barely drive, not to mention it gets horrible gas mileage and you live 20 miles away from work.
He got really spiritual on me and he said that as an American Christian, God wanted him to live in prosperity, and that God knows that he needed a nicer car so that God would supernaturally provide the money for it.
So, they went and bought it anyway. He told me that they did the math, and if he worked 2 overtimes shifts a month they could afford the car payment. That works out to an additional 48 hrs a month, so two of his 24 hr shifts would turn into a 48 hr shifts.
He did pretty well with that for awhile- he was young and could go for extended periods of time with little sleep and he handled it pretty well.
Then we got an operations manager who actually knew how to run a company and the first thing he did was slash overtime and hire part time medics to fill the open slots.
Suddenly he has a $600 car payment he can’t afford, and he had to take
another almost full time job to make up for the hours he lost.
He got grumpy, sullen, and burned out as he tried to make enough money to make the payments on his beloved hummer, but with college tuition and the other costs of life, he ended up loosing it to repossession. That made him even more crabby, and he actually ended up loosing his paramedic job because of his bad attitude with the public, hospitals, and other EMS people we served.
My coworkers experience isn’t all that unusual. All of us have probably been guilty at one time or another overspending on something you really didn’t need.
That’s focusing on possessions, but let’s take a moment, quiet our spirits so we can hear the Holy Spirit, and think-what gets you depressed? Angry? Anxious? Fearful?
Jesus’ little brother James said this-
James 4:1-3
1What is the source of quarrels and conflicts within you? Is not the source your pleasures that wage war in your members? 2You lust and do not have; so you commit murder. You are envious and cannot obtain; so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. 3You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.
Confusing a want with a need is the source of most of our sorrow, which produces a mourning within us that leads to more wanting. It’s a trap of the devil to keep our eyes on what we do not have and convince us that our happiness or joy would just be complete if we could have that one thing-
It might be a possession
It might be a person
It might be a position
It might be a situation.
It could be health
It could be wealth.
Whatever hole that exists within your personality and character that satan can exploit he will in order to take your eyes off of God.
That’s the worldly sorry that leads to death, because it takes our eyes of off the eternal and places it on the temporary.
Godly sorrow and Godly mourning brings repentance and life.
Godly sorrow starts and ends with God. It causes us to take our eyes of the created and puts them back on our creator.
It’s the mourning that ends with peace. It’s God saying, “Give that burden to me, and I will give you rest. Take my burden upon you, and you will find peace, for my burden is easy because I carry the load.”
That leads us to the-
II. The Value of Mourning
All of us go through life looking for ways to avoid sorrow and mourning. One of the tenets of psychology is that most of our lives revolve around avoiding pain- whether that be physical or emotional pain.
That’s why when Jesus says, “Happy are those who mourn” it creates within us a confusion because we don’t understand how two things that are opposites can coincide. It’s a paradox that needs explaining-
There is a spiritual truth we need to believe and understand-
The Holy Spirit is always speaking to us- there is no where, no time, or no situation where HIS voice is silent. Most of the time, we can’t hear Him, or don’t want to hear HIM, or just flat out ignore HIM.
That is why very often mourning is the best teacher. It shuts out all the extraneous noise of life so that our souls become empty, and we long to be filled with something.
Mourning and Sorrow exposes what we really treasure- both the good and the bad
This is really in our faces today as we watch the news.
Illustrate- Recent hurricanes- some people crying over loosing every possession they own
Some people praising God that their loved ones were safe.
These bad times, this time of mourning, clarified that within them what was important in life.
That’s the value of mourning on the personal level.
It also clarifies to us what is important to God.
There is a social media meme right now that shows pictures of the
Pacific northwest and California wildfires in it- 220 square miles on fire
It shows Houston and Louisiana devastation
It shows the upcoming Florida and Caribbean damage from Hurricane Irma. St. Martin in the Caribbean have 90% of their structures completely destroyed.
This meme asks you to pray for these people, and we should. There was something about it though that made me take a step back and think about the effect of these storms on our society-
#1- how many news stories have you heard in the last week about how racist we are, or the need to remove a statue?
The mourning from these disasters are really clarifying what is important to us isn’t it? During these hurricanes, we saw what our country really is-
White people saving black people, black people helping Hispanic people, Asians risking their lives for white people. Color didn’t matter. Culture was swept aside. All that didn’t matter anymore. We had Republicans saving a person from a car with a Bernie bumper sticker and Democrats saving a person from a roof who is wearing an “America First” hat.
I heard a commentator say he thanked God for the hurricanes- because God smashed a pie in the face of the media elite and showed them who America is when the chips are down.
Isn’t it amazing that humanity needs the negative to appreciate the positive?
#2- The second thing that meme made me think about is “Yes, we should pray for these people. If I was in their shoes, I’d want people praying for me 24/7”
However, the bible teaches us a principle that is hard for our American prosperity minded theology to really understand.
God says in 2 Chron 7:14-15 (God speaking)
13 “When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command locusts to devour the land or send a plague among my people, 14 if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”
What this verse teach is that times of mourning can come from God.
These times can come for a variety of reasons. They can come to us individually, or to a family, or a community, or a church, or even an entire nation.
For those who mourn or are going through a time of mourning, Jesus gives us 2 promises-
1. You are blessed (remember that when says blessed here you can change that word to happy), particularly when you respond in a way that honors God
2. You will be comforted.
III. Our Comfort
“They will be comforted”
1. We learn the value of a closer walk with God.
Mourning strips away the noise and brings the clarity that we need to see clearly. That allows sin to be removed from our lives, and Godliness is formed.
What is Godliness?
I brought this up Wednesday night, and gave it some thought and came up with my own definition.
“An increasingly focused awareness of God in our lives, and letting His nature and His character override our natural dispositions and attitudes toward the things of this world.”
Godliness is produced by mourning in the right way- trusting that God is using it for our benefit and for forming HIMself in our spirits and our lives.
The second comfort we find in mourning is it reminds us that this is not our home. When you accepted Christ and LORD and savior, you became an illegal alien in a world ruled by satan.
I used to think it was odd that the bible focuses so much on our future reward in heaven. I used to think that we should just be content to serve God just because Jesus is awesome.
But the bible teaches us that God is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him. The bible encourages us to focus on those eternal rewards that
cannot be stolen,
will not rust or decay,
and we will be able to enjoy forever.
A modern way of putting this would be don’t trade all the gold in Ft Knox for a few crumbs of rotten moldy bread that will only make you ill and never satisfy you like God can.
Those are our comforts in times of mourning- focusing on the one who gave up everything to give us eternity.
Altar Call
Conclusion- Isa 61:1
When Jesus revealed who HE was to his local synagogue, He used this bible passage from Isaiah to summarize His mission here on earth-
Isa 61:1 The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;
Isa 61:2 to proclaim the year of the LORD's favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn;
Isa 61:3 to grant to those who mourn in Zion— to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit; that they may be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that he may be glorified.
Let’s all rise-
God has that for you this morning.
Prayer for depression
Prayer for besetting sin
Prayer for salvation
