Matthew 5:1-12 Now when he saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, 2 and he began to teach them, saying: 3 "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 4 Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. 5 Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. 6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. 7 Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. 8 Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. 9 Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God. 10 Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 11 "Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. 12 Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you
Review
Would you ever say this to an unbeliever: “If Jesus didn’t actually rise from the dead, then you would have to be out of your mind to live like I live”? I have heard Christians say the exact opposite. They are trying to persuade someone to become a Christian and they say, “You might as well, because even if Christianity isn’t even true – the Christian life is still so wonderful. It is a life of joy and happiness and positive things – so you really don’t have anything to lose.”
Living in a country where there is so much wealth and so much comfort and so little persecution is incredibly dangerous, because it lulls us into living lives of such comfort that there is no difference between us and the world. But the real Christian life is a life of voluntarily choosing so much hardship and pain that you would have to be insane to go that way if this life is all there is.
1 Corinthians 15:19 If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.
13 if there is no resurrection … 30 why do we endanger ourselves every hour? … 32 If I fought wild beasts in Ephesus for merely human reasons, what have I gained? If the dead are not raised, "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die."
Paul made decisions in his life because of his faith that resulted in so much suffering that only a madman would live that way if this life is all there is. So if you and I are living in a way that does not bring us any suffering, we are not living the Christian life. In this age, the citizens of the kingdom of heaven mourn.
We are studying the second beatitude.
Matthew 5:4 Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
That language is taken from Isaiah 61, and the primary idea there is the mourning of repentance. So we talked about that last time. However I think Jesus intended the application of this beatitude to extend beyond just the mourning of repentance. Jesus states this in a very general way. And if you read the beatitudes in Luke’s gospel you find them stated in a different form.
Luke 6:21 Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh 25 ... Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep.
In Luke’s account the emphasis is on the reversal that will take place in the age to come. Things are one way now and will be the opposite then.
And in this present age, the godly weep while the ungodly laugh. Here the focus is not limited as much to the weeping of repentance – although that is part of it; but here the scope widens, I believe, to encompass all the weeping that is associated with being one of God’s children in this present age. All the suffering and sorrow that the people of God experience because they are the people of God.
Wailing Wall
To belong to God in this age means to have special suffering. One of the most famous sites in Israel is a place called the Wailing Wall. That is not the Jewish name for it – they just call it the West Wall of the Temple. But it has become known by those outside Israel as the Wailing Wall because it is the place where the Jews gather and weep and wail and mourn over the destruction of the Temple. Can you think of any other people group in the world that is known for their wailing? It should not come as any surprise that it is the chosen people of God who are famous for their mourning. That has been true of the Jewish people, and it is also true of the Church.
Life in the kingdom of this age is a time of weeping while the world laughs. That does not mean we only weep. It points specifically to the times when we weep in the very same contexts in which the world laughs. When is that? When is our sorrow unique to us?
Christian Sorrows
I can think of six examples. There are at least six different ways that we suffer hardship and grief because of our relationship with God, so that we weep while they laugh.
1) Repentance
The first is the one we talked about last week - the sorrow of repentance. The only people who have to endure the pain of having grieved God are the people who love God. And those who have that kind of sorrow will be comforted with forgiveness.
2) The Sorrow of God
The second is similar. It is any pain you suffer as a result of having affections like God’s affections. Grieving over your own sin is one example of grief that you experience because you love and hate the same things God loves and hates. But there are other examples too. For instance, the grief you feel over the sins of others. The more you love God the more distress the evil of this world will cause in your heart.
Psalm 119:136 Streams of tears flow from my eyes, for your law is not obeyed.
That is the mark of a righteous man.
2 Peter 2:7-8 [God] rescued Lot, a righteous man, who was distressed by the filthy lives of lawless men 8 (for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard)
While they are laughing we are weeping over the very things they are laughing about. That is what happens when you develop affections that are like God’s affections – when your heart is drawn close to His and you are conformed to His image- you go through the anguish of seeing disobedience to His law.
And you also go through the anguish of compassion. When you share God’s affections and you love people like God loves people, watching people suffer is agony – much more so than it is for the unbeliever.
And on top of that is the pain of waiting for the full glory of His kingdom to arrive. The more you love the kingdom of God the more you will groan in this present, evil age where sin and suffering and sickness and death continue to exist. You will pray, “Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” and you will pray that because you deeply desire that. And when you deeply desire the fullness of God’s kingdom and the elimination of this present, evil age, then as long as that desire is unfulfilled and this present age persists, there will be a kind of groaning in your heart. The more you want it the more painful it is every day that it does not come. So when are the times when they are laughing and we are weeping? When our weeping is due to sharing the affections of God.
3) Persecution
Another source of the sorrow of the people of God is persecution. When the Lord teaches about life in the kingdom in this era, He has a lot to say about persecution. He wanted us to know – life in the kingdom is a life of persecution.
John 15:18-19 If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. 19 If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you.
And that is how it will be all the way until the Second Coming. It is a characteristic of this age.
Mark 10:29-30 "I tell you the truth," Jesus replied, "no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel 30 will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age (homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields--and with them, persecutions) and in the age to come, eternal life.
In the age to come we get eternal life. In this age we get persecution.
2 Timothy 3:12 everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted
When Jesus spoke of the end He spoke of wars and famines and earthquakes, and then said:
Matthew 24:8 All these are the beginning of birth pains. 9 "Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me.
Because of the Christian influence on the founding of this country we experience very little persecution compared to most places in the world. That is a situation that is unusual and temporary. It will not be that way for us forever. It is clear from Jesus’ teaching that He did not expect all of us to experience the most extreme forms of persecution all the time. There will be more or less in different times and different places. But there is always some. Even for us, if we live a life of love for Christ, the world is going to be unhappy with us.
4) Deferred Reward
So we grieve in repentance, we grieve over the sorrows of God, we grieve because of persecution, and then fourth, we grieve because of the suffering of deferred reward. There are some pleasures and rewards in this world, and unbelievers do not have to hold back on seeking those pleasures. Unbelievers are laughing it up as much as they can right now because this is their time. They are not deferring any satisfaction for the next life – this world is all they have, and so they are spending all their resources to make themselves as comfortable as possible in this age.
They get all their rewards here and now.
Psalm 17:14 O Lord … save me … from men of this world whose reward is in this life.
Devote yourself to getting rich, and you will enjoy the benefits right now –in this life. Devote all your energy to having a beautiful body, and you do not have to wait until the age to come to enjoy the benefits that come from that. People in this world will reward you handsomely here and now in this age. Make it your goal to become powerful, or seek physical pleasure, or recreation, or fame, or success in your job – the rewards are all here and now in this life.
Now, we all know that living that way never ultimately satisfies the deep cravings of the human soul. But it does feel really good temporarily. And while they are feeling good, we are waiting. You give up the enticing pleasures that appeal to your flesh – you pass up sexual sin, say no to all kinds of pleasures right now, and you have to wait for the age to come for the payoff. You decide to be a missionary because you care more about the souls of men and women than about your own comfort, and in this life everyone around you enjoys the pleasures you are passing up, and you do not see the benefits until eternity. You become generous with what you have and you give away the things that could bring pleasure, you pass up the satisfaction of getting revenge, you forgo the benefits of lying to get ahead, you lose out on the fun of partying, drinking, popularity – you have to stay in a hard marriage, you have to humble yourself in relationships all the time, you are a doormat for everyone because the Lord called you to be the servant of all, people take advantage of that – you give up all the things this world thinks are most important – the best things this world has to offer – all for a reward you have never seen and never will seen until after you are dead.
Imagine you inherited an entire island in the Caribbean (or some prime mountain property – or wherever you think of as paradise) and you are working on building your dream home there. But before moving there you have to spend six months working in some crummy place you don’t like at all. You have to do it, because the only way to earn enough to retire is to work this really hard job there for six months and save every penny you can save.
And during those six months you are living in a cheap studio apartment in a bad part of town with no furniture. Meanwhile all the people around you are spending all their money on luxurious homes. And they think you are crazy to live in that lousy apartment. (And if it turns out there really is no island – the whole thing was a scam, then they are right – you would be crazy to invest everything in that.) So you suffer while they laugh because you pass up all the pleasures that could be had right now.
And if I could build on the illustration, it is like you have two salary options: $10/hr cash or $800/hr deposited in your bank account down at the island – which you cannot access until you move there. If you choose the $10/hr rate you get your money right now. If you choose the $800/hr you have to wait to enjoy it. That is basically the choice everyone has: The world is a little tiny payoff now, and God offers a huge reward in the future. But you can only have one.
One reason some Christians have so little longing for heaven is because they have everything invested here. They have become like the world and have worked so hard to alleviate their sorrow with the comforts of this world that the promise of comfort in the age to come means very little. Benny Hinn: “Years ago they used to preach `O we are going to walk on streets of gold.' I would say, `I don't need the gold up there. I've got it down here.'” He is in no hurry to go to heaven. That is the message of the prosperity preachers. “Jesus wants you healthy and rich in this age. No need to mourn – you can laugh right along with the world.” Do not ever fall for that – it is a false gospel.
5) On the job suffering
Now maybe you are sitting there thinking, “I’ve got suffering that isn’t in any of those categories. It’s unrelated to the kingdom. They’re just the normal sorrows of living in a cursed world – a bad back, joint pain, financial struggles – the exact same kinds of things my non-Christian neighbor suffers.” If you are following God’s guidance in your life it is not the same. All your suffering is suffering for Christ.
Philippians 2:25 I think it is necessary to send back to you Epaphroditus … your messenger, whom you sent to take care of my needs. 26 For he longs for all of you and is distressed because you heard he was ill. 27 Indeed he was ill, and almost died. … 29 honor men like him, 30 because he almost died for the work of Christ, risking his life to make up for the help you could not give me.
Epaphroditus traveled to where Paul was so he could assist him in his missionary work. And while he was there he contracted some illness. Was that illness related to the ministry? I don’t see how it could be - what disease is caused by assisting an Apostle? The sickness was not caused by the work – it was caused by the fact that he came in contact with some germs while he was serving Christ. And so Paul says his sickness was suffering for Christ, and that he almost died for the work of Christ.
So from that passage we see that any time you catch a cold, break your leg, get a headache, throw out your back – any kind of sickness or injury, if it happens while you are in a place where God sent you, then it is suffering for the kingdom. If you get hired as an engineer, and your job is to design bridges, and one day at work you go out in the hall to get a drink, trip over your own feet and fall and crack your head open on the drinking fountain, your employer pays the doctor bill even though walking to the drinking fountain has nothing whatsoever to do with designing bridges. They consider it their responsibility because it is an injury you sustained while on the clock for them. The reason you were there in the building was because you were working for them. And what we learn from Philippians 2 is that it is the same way in the kingdom of God. The Lord considers it suffering for Christ if you get hurt or sick while doing something He called you to do – even if the illness or injury is unrelated to ministry. If you live here in Colorado because you sought God’s guidance and this is where you ended up, then until He calls you to go somewhere else, your whole time here in Colorado is on the clock for Him. And if you catch a cold here, it is suffering for Christ.
And that is true whether you can see how the suffering honors Christ or not. Sometimes in order for some suffering to bring glory to the Lord Jesus Christ it is essential that you not be able to see how it could possibly be a good thing – like the suffering of Job. Job’s suffering had nothing to do with sin in his life. It was testing, designed to expose the genuineness of Job’s faith, and to demonstrate that God was worthy of worship even when He sends bitter hardship into our lives. If Job would have known what the purpose was it would have spoiled the purpose. It was essential that he did not know. So the suffering came, and it did not make any sense at all from what Job understood, and he responded by saying, “Shall I accept good from God’s hand and not trouble? The Lord gives, the Lord takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord.” And that response brought glory to God (and is still bringing glory to God to this day).
Jesus had no sin at all and yet He suffered. He was being tested. The normal bumps and bruises and sicknesses and injuries and disappointments and sorrows of life that every human being goes through – for the world they are meaningless but for us they are tests designed to bring glory to God. So when you get the flu it is not exactly the same kind of suffering as when your unbelieving neighbor gets the flu.
6) Training
“But what if I’m suffering because of my own sin? It’s not persecution for the gospel, it’s not an injury sustained while doing God’s will – it’s something that’s happening to me because I didn’t do God’s will. I was off the clock when I should have been on the clock and now I have the consequences of sin in my life.” We already talked about the sorrow of repentance – the sorrow that you feel when you realize you have offended God and alienated yourself from Him. But after you repent and are forgiven there are still some hard consequences. You commit a crime, you repent and are forgiven by God, but you are still in jail for ten years. How are we to think about the sorrow of lingering, ongoing consequences of our own sin?
First of all, do not mistake ongoing consequences with God’s anger or displeasure or estrangement from God. When God allows you access to the nearness of His presence once again then you are restored, and God’s anger has passed. The reason the consequences linger on is simply because those consequences teach and train us.
There is a huge difference between consequences of sin that are purely punitive – just punishment, and consequences of sin that are remedial – designed to fix what is wrong in your heart. Unbelievers get punished. The consequences of their sins in this life do not necessarily do them any good – they are just getting what is coming to them as a punishment. But Christians never, ever receive that kind of punishment. All the consequences we receive for our sin are one hundred percent remedial. They are corrective. They are redemptive. They always benefit us. They always do something to fix the problem.
Hebrews 12:10-11 Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness. 11 No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.
That passage says four things about the consequences of our sins as believers: The consequences of our sin are discipline. This is training (the word translated discipline means training – not just punishment). It is always for our good (v.10). It is so we may share in his holiness (v.10). It produces a harvest of righteousness and peace to those who have been trained by it (v.11). So do not lose heart. Do not get discouraged.
5 you have forgotten that word of encouragement that addresses you as sons: "My son, do not make light of the Lord's discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, 6 because the Lord disciplines those he loves
Revelation 3:19 Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline.
The pain and sorrow of the consequences of our sins can actually be a source of encouragement and joy, because it is not just any pain and sorrow. It is special, custom-designed pain and sorrow designed by your Maker to be just what the Doctor ordered to fix what is wrong in your heart. Those sufferings and sorrows you are experiencing are like seeds that are designed by God to produce a harvest of righteousness and peace. Raise your hand if you are interested in your life producing a harvest of righteousness and peace. That is what the Lord’s discipline will do to all those who have been trained by it.
And that training takes place not just in the consequences of our sins, but in all our suffering. Jesus never sinned, yet He suffered for the purpose of being trained in obedience.
Hebrews 5:8 Although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered
Following in the footsteps of Christ means learning obedience through suffering.
Remember what Paul told the disciples in Antioch?
Acts 14:22 We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God.
Suffering is necessary in our growth process.
Job 23:10 when he has tested me, I will come forth as gold.
That is why the psalmist said:
Psalm 94:12 Blessed is the man you discipline, O Lord!
People can change!
And as a side note – keep this passage in mind when you have trouble believing a person can change. The psychology world has drilled it in to everybody’s thinking that no one can ever really change. You are messed up because of what you are, and while it can be medicated up to a point, you can never really be transformed. That kind of thinking has affected a lot of people in the church. And so there is a great deal of pessimism about sanctification. Sometimes you hear a wife who was lied to and betrayed by her husband say, “I could never trust him again.” When someone says that what are they saying? They are saying, “I do not believe God is capable of transforming his character. I do not believe God’s discipline can bring about a harvest of righteousness in his heart.” The Lord’s discipline is a wonderful thing – it transforms us in ways nothing else can.
Summary
So when Jesus said Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted, it applies to all godly mourning – all mourning that we experience because of our faith in Christ, all the circumstances in which we are weeping while the world is laughing.
Loss and gain
The world and the people of God laugh and mourn in opposite circumstances because we have opposite value systems. We have a totally opposite way of thinking about loss and gain. In Philippians 3 when Paul describes the basic difference between what he was as an unbeliever and what he was as a Christian, it is all about what he considered loss and what he considered gain. All the things he used to consider gain he now considers loss.
Philippians 3:7 But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ.
And the things he considered gain were things the world cares nothing about. Gain, for Paul, was to…
gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ--the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. 10 I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.
The world is not interested in any of that. But for us that is true gain. What they consider riches we consider loss. And what we consider riches they consider worthless. And so it is no surprise that when they are laughing we are weeping.
You can go through all six points and see that. The world laughs at their sin. The world does not share God’s affections, and so they do not have to go through the agony of having to grieve over the things that grieve God. When persecution takes place, we are on the grieving end and they are on the laughing, mocking end. When there is a choice between the pleasures of this age and rewards in the age to come, they choose the pleasures of this world while we choose to suffer now and laugh later. They do not ever experience any “on the job” suffering while serving Christ, because they are not serving Christ, nor do they experience the pain of discipline and training.
Different responses to suffering
So our mourning is fundamentally different than the world’s mourning, because the grief we suffer is grief that comes to us because of our love for the Lord. And not only is the cause different – our response is also different. The world responds to their sorrows by turning away from God. But we respond to our sorrows by turning toward God. They shake their fist at God; we run to Him as our only hope. The sorrow of repentance is a sorrow that makes us return to God after we have strayed.
When we feel the anguish and torment of seeing evil around us every day, that makes us long for His kingdom to come and His will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. When we are persecuted, or we suffer the pain of injuries and diseases and hardship and trials that go along with carrying out our calling – that causes us to run to God as our refuge and fortress and the supplier of our strength. When we experience the pain of chastisement and discipline and training, we respond by humbling ourselves under His mighty hand and accepting what He is doing rather than resisting it. When we suffer the pain of having to say no to the flesh and pass up the pleasures of this world we respond by looking to our future reward and storing up treasures in heaven. All our suffering makes us move toward God and all the world’s suffering makes them move away from Him. (In fact, that is how you can tell when the Holy Spirit is drawing a particular person to the gospel – when instead of his suffering driving him farther away from God it starts to drive him toward God.)
One of the most fundamental marks of the godly man in the book of Psalms is the fact that he makes God his refuge. Those who do not are lost because they make something else their refuge.
Psalm 2:12 Blessed are all who take refuge in [the Son of God].
Psalm 10:4 In his pride the wicked does not seek him
They will be comforted
So who are the mourners? They are the people who suffer what they suffer because of the kingdom – because of their love for the King. And they are the people who respond to suffering by turning toward the King. Blessed are those people, because they and they alone will be comforted.
This word translated comfort, when it is used in the context of mourning, means, very simply, to bring an end to the mourning. But it is a very personal word. The word literally means to approach, or to be next to the person. It is not just to bring them from sorrow to joy – it is to do it by being near them.
Easy for God
If you have ever been around very many people who have suffered real tragedy you know how hard this is to do. We usually have very limited success when we try it. But when God draws near a grieving person to comfort him or her, He never fails. One of the sweetest titles for God in all the Bible is the one in 2 Corinthians 1:3 where He is called the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort. It is easy for Him.
Luke 6:21 Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.
If you are like me ninety-nine percent of your laughing is in response to humor. Not often do we laugh out loud just out of pure joy and delight. Even the best things on this earth usually are not that good. In the age to come they will be. You will laugh.
Happiness
Jeremiah 31:12 They will come and shout for joy on the heights of Zion; they will be radiant over the goodness of the Lord
Isaiah 60:5 you will look and be radiant, your heart will throb and swell with joy
We will be beaming over the goodness of the Lord.
Created Delights
And that goodness will be communicated to us through created delights.
Jeremiah 31:12 they will be radiant over the goodness of the Lord -- the grain, the new wine and the oil, the young of the flocks and herds.
That was a description of riches back then. God’s goodness will be lavished on us through created things that are wonderful and delightful. I hope you do nt think of heaven as some wispy, ethereal, kind of ghostly, dreamy, abstract realm where there is nothing like football or skiing, or rafting, or beaches or mountains or castles or race cars or Golden Corral. Scripture constantly uses physical, created things to describe what the age to come will be like. Heaven will not be in the clouds. We will have resurrected, physical bodies and will live on a physical earth forever. And there will be all kinds of fantastic things there – things a lot like the things we love about this earth, except much better.
Thriving
12 …They will be like a well-watered garden, and they will sorrow no more.
In this life you and I have had some tastes of what thriving and flourishing feels like when you are young, but only in very limited measure. Even when we were young we were groaning under the curse. Even youths grow weary and even young men stumble and fall. But when our comfort comes we will flourish and thrive in ways far beyond what you experienced in your twenties.
13 Then maidens will dance and be glad, young men and old as well. I will turn their mourning into gladness; I will give them comfort and joy instead of sorrow.
Comfort here and now
So our comfort is in the age to come. However, as we saw last week, the age to come is already breaking in to this present age. And so to the degree that we experience closeness to God in this life we can experience tastes of the rewards of heaven even here and now. That is why we can have joy even in this life of suffering.
Jesus said Blessed are the mourners, not “Blessed are the mopers.” Even in the midst of our mourning our lives are to be characterized more by joy than by sorrow. That is why in 2 Corinthians 6:10 Paul said he was sorrowful, yet always rejoicing. The comfort we experience in this life is such that the godly sorrow and the godly rejoicing exist simultaneously. And the rejoicing is greater than the sorrow.
To the degree that we experience closeness with God we experience the age to come here and now. And to the degree we experience the age to come we can experience the comfort of that age.
Psalm 23:4 your rod and your staff—they comfort me.
That is not in talking about heaven – it is comfort in the valley of the shadow of death. God comforts us even now in the midst of our suffering with His rod and staff – the implements of His shepherding.
Comfort through Scripture
I got an email from my sister in Russia last week about their youngest daughter Bree, who had taken in a stray kitten that was close to death a while back and nursed it back to health. The cat became the family pet. They named it Sugar, and Bree just loved it. My sister said morning, noon and night Bree would say something about how cute Sugar was. Last week a dog attacked Sugar and killed her right in front of Bree. Bree is 10 years old. Afterward she told her mom she knew it was God’s will, but still she was just crushed by it. And the first thing she did was to go into her room and open her Bible and read Psalm 34 about how God is close to the brokenhearted. A couple nights later they were praying with her and she said, “God, thank you for giving me that feeling you gave me in my heart when I asked you for comfort.”
The rod and staff are the implements, or tools, of His shepherding. And the Scriptures are His primary tool, but there are many other tools He uses as well. He uses the creation, through His hand of providence. He uses the Church – a whole kingdom of priests working with spiritual gifts to deliver grace to you. He uses your spiritual gifts. He uses the angels, who are all ministering spirits sent to serve us. He uses the Holy Spirit Himself, who He calls the Comforter. There are a lot of tools God uses to comfort us, but the reason I say His rod and staff are mainly Scripture is because none of them are used apart from the truth of His Word. It is a soothing balm to the troubled soul.
Conclusion: The purpose of comfort
One last question: Why does God do this? Why does He comfort us?
2 Corinthians 1:3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.
For years I read that passage and completely misunderstood it. I thought it meant when I have suffered something I will be able to comfort other people who suffer that same thing. So if I lose a loved one I will be able to empathize with others who lose loved ones. Or if I go through a painful battle with cancer, I will be able to help others who get cancer.
I do not think that is what the passage is saying. Nor is it even true. There are plenty of people who have lost a loved one who have not the slightest clue how to comfort someone else who goes through the same thing. The same goes for cancer victims and every other category. Going through a specific kind of suffering does not automatically make anyone able to comfort someone else.
The only way you will be enabled to comfort others who go through what you have been through is if when you are crushed in your sorrow you find comfort from God. That is what the passage is saying. Most people never do that. They suffer some terrible thing, and they do not find comfort from God. They drown their sorrows in some indulgence or distraction, or they find comfort from some other source, but they do not know how to take their Bible off to some quiet place and seek hard after God and receive comfort from Him. And as a result they will have no idea how to help anyone else find comfort in God. We all want to be like Jonathan, who went to David when David was down and helped him find strength in God. But you will never be able to do that effectively until you succeed in finding strength and comfort in God in your sorrow. There are millions of people around the world who watched their beloved pet die when they were 10 years old who have no idea how to comfort anyone, even though they went through it themselves. But if I am crushed with sorrow because I have lost something precious, you know who I want to come knock on my door? Not just anyone who has suffered a loss. I want someone like little Bree, who will be able to come alongside me in my grief, show compassion because she understands what it is like, but then not just stop at showing compassion, but to then put a Bible in my hand and say – “Here’s what I did.” And open it up to Psalm 34 and say, “Here’s the passage the Lord showed me” and point me to verse 18.
Psalm 34:18 The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.
“And after God reminded me of that verse I prayed and poured out my heart to Him and asked Him for comfort. And when I did I felt a feeling of peace inside me. And even though I was still sad, I could feel God comforting me and giving me strength and hope. And I could tell the presence of God was close to me, and He was drawing near and touching my heart and healing it.” When I suffer a loss I don’t just want someone who can empathize. I want someone who has succeeded in finding comfort from God and who can take me by the hand and show me how to find it.
Blessed are those who mourn in this present age, because they will be comforted by God in the age to come. And to the degree the age to come is already here, we can begin to be comforted by Him even now. And with that comfort we can comfort others.
Benediction: Philippians 3:19-21 Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on earthly things. 20 But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, 21 who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.
