PURSUING HAPPINESS : Sharing the Sorrow of God
Matthew 5:4 and 2 Corinthians 1:3-11
1. Last Sunday we commenced an 8 week journey through the Beatitudes that will take us up till the end of August.
2. Just a few reminders about this passage which forms the opening statements of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount:
• This sermon is addressed not primarily to the masses, but specifically to His disciples. This is instruction for those who have chosen to follow Him. It is His instruction manual for entry into and living of the Christian life. You want to know what it means to be a Christian? Here in Matthew 5-7 is the definition and description of what it means to be a member of the church.
• These opening statements on what constitutes true happiness are progressive in nature – they are God’s stairway to abundant living. They start by pronouncing God’s blessing on those who recognize and acknowledge their own spiritual bankruptcy – that is the ground floor entrance to the Kingdom of God – admitting that we do not have within ourselves what it takes to please God. We are dependent on His mercy, His forgiveness, and His grace. Then what follows, builds on that initial attitude.
• And that attitude of humility and total reliance on God must always remain foundational. We will never arrive at a point where we can say to Him, “OK God, you can let go now. I can now live this life on my own.”
3. Now, building on that initial step, we move up to the second Be-Attitude – “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”
• Again, how upside down and strange this sounds to the world’s ears!
• The world would say, “Blessed are the cheerful”, “Blessed are the partygoers”, “Blessed are the potheads” who know how to use the substances, systems, and secrets of this world to numb the pain or keep themselves oblivious to it for they will have a good time.
4. Just before we launch into examining this Beatitude, I should make it clear that the believer’s experience of the Kingdom of God – the full realm and reign of God – needs to be understood in terms of our living between the “no more” and the “not yet”.
• We’re on a journey – like the Israelites of old during their years in the wilderness who were no longer captives in Egypt but were also not yet living in the Land of Promise. Yes, they received manna from heaven and water from the rock, but were not yet enjoying the milk and the honey.
• We still have to endure some of the limitations and sufferings and heartaches of this world, but are already starting to experience some of the blessings, some of the abundance, and refreshment of the life that is to come.
• And so the outcomes stated for each of the Beatitudes also needs to be seen in that light – while the full deposit has already been placed in our account through the finished work of Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection on our behalf, we are only able now to enjoy some of the interest on that account. But there is a day coming when we will experience it to the full.
• Right here and now, as we come to God in humility and repentance as “poor in spirit” – acknowledging and confessing our spiritual bankruptcy, we become citizens of the Kingdom of God. But our experience of the full benefits of that citizenship has to wait till “every knee has bowed and every tongue confessed that Jesus Christ is Lord” and all “the kingdoms of this world have become the Kingdom of our God and of His Christ”.
• You can compare the experience to being an American citizen traveling abroad in a foreign country. The language, the culture, the currency, the lifestyle, the scenery of that foreign land is all very different to home. The only place where you can catch an occasional glimpse of home and be refreshed in the values, the priorities, the people and foods you know is to go to the American Embassy – there you can hear your language spoken, eat foods and drink beverages with which you are familiar, see the Stars and Stripes. It’s a little sample – a little foretaste of home.
• And that’s what church is all about – this is an Embassy of the Kingdom of God in the middle of foreign and often enemy territory. This is where we come to hang out with and encourage the other Kingdom citizens each week by speaking the language and being refreshed in the lifestyle of home as we persevere in our objective not just of “surviving” in this foreign land but of working to expand the boundaries of God’s Kingdom and open new embassies wherever possible.
5. So with that frame of reference we hear Jesus say, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”
• Now we all know mourning at one level or another. Each one of us has experienced losses and grief of various kinds. I can still clearly recall my very first experience of a death as I witnessed my first puppy, Spotty, a little fox terrier, being run over and killed by a huge truck. I was around 7 years old and was just devastated – I wept my heart out for days. The thought of never having him around again was too much to bear. I am sure that many of you can identify with those emotions.
• Others have had to endure the loss of a parent, a spouse, a child, a close relative, a very dear friend – and we can recall the pain, the emptiness, the hollow feeling in the pit of our stomachs, the sense that a vital part of our life has just been ripped away and that things can never “just return to normal” – this life can never again be the same without that person.
• Still others have mourned the loss of a limb or other body part. The loss of health as you have to battle a debilitating disease and the knowledge that life can never quite be the same again. The loss of a job and accompanying anxiety and fear over how to make ends meet. The loss of youthfulness and the independence of being able to come and go as you please.
• Anne and I have mourned the loss of our country, South Africa – a very different kind of loss and grief. Though our hearts ached over the horrors and injustice of Apartheid, and we are glad that that system is gone, what has replaced it is far from being good and blessed. There is a marked deterioration in quality of life, quality of health care, proliferation of drugs and crime, escalation of violence, lowering of public morality – it is no longer the home we knew and loved. We remember it with tears.
• We mourn the loss of every soldier in the battles this country has fought and is presently engaged in. It grieves our hearts each time we hear the news of yet another death on the battlefield. We weep over the strife, the hatred, the violence, brutality and terrorism that is engulfing our planet now on so many fronts – Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Lebanon, North Korea to name just a few. One report states, “At any given time, it’s a sure bet that there are anywhere from 50-100 wars going on somewhere in the world. Most of them would be insurgencies or internal security problems, in places often described as "flashpoints," "hot spots," or "trouble spots" -- all synonymous language for the same thing -- political violence.”
6. All of these losses cause us to grieve and mourn – even as believers – for we are not spared the sufferings and heartaches that are common to all people. But because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ we are able to face the losses of this life with a hope and confidence that there is a day coming when sickness, suffering, and death will be no more and God will re-unite us with all the faithful who have gone on before us.
• Paul writes in his second letter to the Corinthians how God is “the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction” – in all the losses we have and continue to experience.
• And let me add here my belief and trust for all the pet lovers that He will also re-unite us with all the animal friends we have lost in this life.
• The prophecy of Isaiah speaks of the new heaven and the new earth where the wolf and the lamb shall dwell together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox, the young child will play by the adders den and there shall be no more hurting or destruction in God’s Kingdom. And if God saw that it was very good to provide animals for us in His first creation, then I have good grounds for confidence that He plans to restore them to us in the new creation.
7. God brings His comfort into our lives in many and various ways:
• Through His word that reminds us that nothing can ever separate us from His love
• Through worship that enables us to fix our gaze on Him, the source of all our comfort and hope
• Through fellow believers who rally around us in our times of loss and bereavement and just by their presence help stabilize us
• Through the gift of time and His resources within our spirit that eventually give us a new sense of courage and confidence to move forward.
8. Having said all this, there is one more type of mourning that is very different from all the rest and I believe lies at the heart of Jesus’ words here in Matthew 5:4.
• It is the mourning that would naturally follow the acknowledgment of our spiritual bankruptcy and the admission of our sin and guilt before our holy and righteous God.
• It is the mourning and sorrow that takes place when we start to see our own sinfulness and wickedness from God’s perspective and not simply our own. When our heart begins to break over the things that cause His heart to grieve.
• You see our God is not some cold, impersonal force that governs the universe. He has a heart and emotions just as you and I do – for He made us in His image. And so He loves and rejoices, and is grieved and gets angry. In Genesis 6:6 as God saw the wickedness of people on earth in the days of Noah, where “every imagination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually” – that God could not find a single redeeming feature except in the life of Noah, we read “And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.”
9. As God looks on your life right now – not just the outward actions, but the inward motivations, the thoughts, the imaginations, the attitudes – what is it He sees? I know that none of us is perfect and none of us has “already arrived”. But does He have more cause for rejoicing than for sadness and sorrow?
• When last did you express your love for him? When last did you and He have more than just a fleeting “Hi there”?
• When last did you spend time just giving to Him – your thanksgiving, your honor, your praise for His worth, His goodness, His faithfulness and mercy instead of just asking Him for things?
• Did you see him flinch as you responded with those sharp and snippy words to your spouse or close friend?
• Did you feel his sadness as you ignored the invitation he gave for you to extend his love to the neighbor in need?
• Did you see his tears when you chose not to forgive the one who had offended you?
10. And so we could go on. Take a moment now and ask God to let you see some of the things in your life that break His heart, that lead you to prefer and choose your way rather than His, and ask Him to let those behaviors and attitudes break your heart in the same way – that cause you sorrow as they cause Him.
• And then as you begin to experience the sorrow such awareness produces and respond with true repentance, notice how your heart begins to be flooded with the comfort of His loving presence and peace and your cup of well-being and happiness begins to overflow.
• And you experience for yourself the truth of His word, “How richly blessed, how truly happy are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”
Amen.
