We began our study of the Sermon on the Mount last week, and in that message we talked about the importance of the context of the message and how it is relevant for today in that it is the message of the Kingdom of Heaven which Jesus was preaching at the beginning of His ministry. I believe this message was the basis for much of the preaching that He did as He traveled through Judea and Galilee. Chapter 4 tells us that Jesus traveled through those regions preaching “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.”
I explained last week that what Jesus was preaching was that the Kingdom of Heaven was a spiritual kingdom of God which was being presented to the world by it’s King, Jesus the Messiah. And in these messages, Jesus presented the characteristics of those who would become citizens of His kingdom. The Kingdom of Heaven was misunderstood for the most part by the Israelites to whom Jesus preached, because they were looking for a physical, material kingdom which would come about through military conquests. They were looking for a reinstatement of the worldwide dominance of the throne of David and that the Messiah would take that throne.
Over in the 4th chapter of the Gospel of Luke, we read that when Jesus began his public ministry he stood up in the synagogue at Nazareth, and there was delivered to him the book of the Prophet Isaiah to read, and he opened the book, and he opened it to Isaiah chapter 61 verses 1, 2 and 3. And in that passage there was an account of his ministry which he would accomplish.
And so he stood up and said, “the Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he hath anointed me
to preach the gospel to the poor”— that is the poor in spirit, primarily. “He has anointed me to heal the broken-hearted”—those that mourn; “to preach deliverance to the captives”—spiritually unable to save themselves, afflicted by the fallenness of man;” the recovering of sight to the blind”—to those who are blind spiritually; “to proclaim liberty those to the captives—disturbed by the experiences of life, shattered by the tragedies and trials through which they’ve passed; to preach the favorable year of the Lord, and to comfort those who mourn. That was Christ’s messianic message of the kingdom of heaven.
Jesus came from heaven to earth to present a spiritual kingdom, in which God rules in the hearts and minds of His people. It was a kingdom which was inaugurated by the incarnation of Jesus Christ, and which will be consummated at the second coming of Jesus Christ. In the time in between, it is a kingdom which is being populated by the salvation and conversion of those who once were held captive by the kingdom of darkness and now by faith in Jesus Christ have been transferred to the kingdom of God’s Son. As Col. 1:13 says, “For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son.”
At the birth of our country, the founding fathers crafted the Declaration of Independence, which delineated the benefits and the nature and scope of our Republic. In a similar fashion, the Lord gives in the Sermon on the Mount a Declaration of the Kingdom of Heaven. However, in this statement we stand not on our independence, but on our dependence upon God for life, liberty, and happiness.
At the beginning of His declaration, the Lord uses the word “blessed” which is the hallmark of what we call the characteristics of the kingdom citizen, known as the Beatitudes. The common interpretation for the word “Blessed” is often translated as happy in many modern Bible translations. I happen to think that is the wrong interpretation. At least, I think it’s a poor choice of words in light of how happiness is defined in our culture. Happiness is more often correlated to hedonism than to a state of being blessed.
To quote a line from the band Switchfoot, “happiness is a yuppie word.” Happiness is basically circumstantial. Happiness is an emotion which is produced on the basis of things which please you in some way - it could be good things or not such good things. And happiness is fleeting. I think of Jonah, who was happy when the plant grew to give him shade, and unhappy a moment later when the plant wilted and died. Happiness is transient. And the pursuit of happiness is a trivial pursuit.
I believe that the state of being blessed by God is much more than mere happiness. I believe that being blessed includes joy, contentment, satisfaction, fulfillment. I believe it is the abundant life that Jesus speaks of. It’s life with God. It’s God in you. I think one way of relating it would be to look back at the reign of King David, or King Solomon. And for the people living under their reign, they were considered a blessed people. Their kings ruled with wisdom in righteousness and justice. They had peace in their world. They had a life that was the envy of the world because they lived in the kingdom of David or Solomon. That’s similar to the idea of being blessed in the kingdom of heaven. It’s having the righteous rule of Christ in our hearts and lives and reaping the benefits as a citizen of the kingdom of God.
But I believe there is another aspect of being blessed. It is known in theological terms as the beatific vision. It’s being in the presence of God. To be in the presence of God, to be bathed in His glory, is the ultimate source of life and goodness. That may be hard to comprehend, but as Christians we are told that we shall one day see Him face to face. As 1John 3:2 tells us, “Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.”
That’s going to result in glory for us as we are changed into His likeness. To know God in that way is to achieve the greatest joy, the highest glory, the most perfect state of being that is possible for man. And I believe that idea of the beatific vision is included in this benediction of blessedness that Jesus talks about here. That as a future benefit of our inheritance, we will enter into a state of blessedness that is beyond our comprehension which will emanate directly from communion with the Lord Himself. I think that beatific vision resulting in eternal state of blessedness is referenced in vs 8, when Jesus said, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”
In the Greek language, I am told that “blessed” was commonly used in reference to the gods. Makarios is the word the Lord uses for blessed. It refers to the life of the gods. So the reference then is to the blessedness of complete satisfaction. It has nothing to do with the contemporary idea of happiness. Sometimes we think that the true value in life is happiness. The English word should tell us that is not true. The English word, “happiness” comes from an old English word hap, which means “chance.” It’s found in “happenstance.” It’s a word that refers to chance.
Happiness is something that depends upon our circumstances, and so if we were to receive a financial windfall, we would be happy. At least for awhile. But when it goes, so goes our happiness. Jesus is speaking about something far deeper than the happiness that depends upon material circumstances. He is saying blessed is the man who has the kind of life that characterizes the gods, or in the Christian sense, the life that characterizes the one who is born of God. But it’s more than happiness. It’s not something that depends upon circumstances. It satisfies us in all the circumstances of life, even the tragic circumstances of life.
Now we are studying the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, in a section which is called the Beatitudes. And last week we covered the first Beatitude, which is “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.” And we said last week that this is the first because it’s foundational. If you would enter the Kingdom of Heaven, it’s first required that you recognize that it’s a spiritual kingdom, and you must recognize your spiritual poverty. You must come to God as a beggar, realizing you have nothing to trade, nothing to refer you to God, that the chasm between you and God is too great because of your sinful condition. That’s a prerequisite. “It’s not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saves us.”
So the first is recognizing your poverty, then the next Beatitude is related to that. “Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.” Once again, we must be reminded of the spiritual nature of this characteristic. Jesus is not saying that you somehow have to turn the sorrow of mourning for a dead loved one, or mourning for a friend into some sort of happiness. Even as the Beatitude of being poor in spirit was not talking about financial poverty but spiritual poverty, so this mourning is not a mourning for the dead, but a mourning over our spiritual condition. In particular, mourning over sin.
Notice Jesus doesn’t say blessed are those who are sorry for their sin. But those who mourn, like the mourning for the dead. There is an anguish over sin that is needed which is like the sadness over death. Because sin is immeasurably tied to death. And we mourn over that which causes death.
This mourning over sin is the basis of repentance which is one of the founding pillars of our salvation. Repentance is a sorrow over your sin which is equated with a sorrow unto death. There must be a willingness to die to sin. When you mourn over sin to the point of being willing to die to it, then you have the kind of repentance which leads to salvation. 2Cor. 7:10 says, “For the sorrow that is according to [the will of] God produces a repentance without regret, [leading] to salvation, but the sorrow of the world produces death.”
So this attitude of spiritual mourning is not only essential for salvation, but it’s something that is characteristic of the life of a Christian, the life of those who are blessed of God. And yet I am afraid that many in the church today have departed from the correct teaching of this doctrine in favor of alternate views. One being the attitude which is to put on an outward appearance of mourning, an attitude which is characterized by false humility, or false suffering, as an attempt to appear pious. Not so much in favor today in the church as it once was. The second view, which is much more prevalent today, is an almost forced happiness, a show of being happy that is supposedly a mark of a Christian. It often appears to be a superficial type of happiness that is in effect “put on.” I saw a video recently by some so called Christian musicians which show smiling, happy, “cool” Christians clapping and signing along. It looked like everyone in the audience was on prozac or something. Everyone was smiling and laughing all through the song. I don’t think that kind of forced happiness is what Jesus is talking about either.
Perhaps the real problem in the church today is a lot of people don’t have a correct understanding of the nature of sin. There is a dismissive, defective sense of sin which does not really comprehend the horror of sin that the Bible teaches. When you combine a shallow, superficial happiness working together with a defective doctrine of sin, then you end up with a superficial, inadequate Christian life.
The fact of the matter is that a proper recognition of your spiritual poverty must be followed by a deep conviction over our sin. Conviction must precede conversion. A real sense of mourning towards our sin must come before there can follow the joy of our salvation. David in Psalm 51 cried out over his sin, mourned over his sin, before he asked for the Lord to restore the joy of his salvation. So many people seem to hate hearing about the doctrine of sin. They resent it being preached. I have actually heard people bemoan the preaching of sin as the reason for a lack of joy in the church. In fact, the opposite is true. If sin is not truly repented of, not truly dealt with, it makes it impossible to experience true joy.
In order to properly understand this teaching, we need to consider what the Bible teaches concerning this subject. And it will be beneficial to look at Jesus Himself. After all, we are created in salvation in HIs image, to be conformed to His image, to be remade in His likeness. So let us look at Him. It’s interesting to notice that it never says in the scripture that Jesus laughed. I’m sure that there were times when He did laugh. He was fully man after all, and that is a common expression of the human spirit. But it’s noteworthy that the Bible never records Him as laughing.
On the other hand, we are told that He wept on at least three occasions. We are told that He became angry on several occasions. We are told that He suffered from hunger, from thirst, from sleeplessness, but never that He laughed. Isaiah 53 says that He was a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief, and like one from whom men hid their faces. Jesus mourned over sin, and that is attested to three times in the record of Him weeping.
Another example in the Bible which is given for us to emulate is that of the Apostle Paul. And we are reminded of Paul’s cry “O wretched man that I am, who will deliver Me from this body of death?” Paul knew what it was to mourn over his sin and the sinful weakness of his flesh. He said “in me dwells no good thing.” He went on to mourn over the fact that the good that I would do, I do not, and the evil that I would not do I do. He speaks in Romans 8 about a groaning within his spirit, waiting for the redemption of his body.
To mourn is something which follows naturally the recognition of poverty of spirit. It is to mourn your sinful condition, to mourn your absolute hopelessness before God. As we go through our day to day activities, we need to examine ourselves at the end of the day and recognize where we fell short, recognize our sinfulness, and mourn over it, confess it to God, and repent of it. It’s a good thing to mourn over your failures, over your weakness, over your lack of real success. I would urge you though to respond to such examination in the right way. Don’t let it cause you to surrender to despair so that you give in fully to temptation and wallow in your sin and say it’s hopeless, I might as well give up. That’s the wrong response. But to recognize your poverty, and mourn your sinful condition, that you might then repent and call upon the Lord to help you, to change you, to remake you in His image, that is the right response and the way to go forward in a life that counts for Christ.
The Christian does not only mourn for himself and his sinful nature, but he mourns over the condition of the world. Romans 8 even speaks of creation groaning under the curse of sin and waiting to be released from corruption that is the the world. The other day, I was watching a wild turkey in the field behind my house, which had just had her chicks taken by a fox. And the turkey was walking back and forth looking for her chicks and making these clucking sounds, as if she was calling for them. And I understand that the fox has to eat or he will die. But the turkey chicks had to die in order for him to live. Thats the way of nature, the law of the jungle. But it’s not the way that God created nature originally. Death came by sin, and it came upon all of creation. Sin has caused even the animals of the field to bare their fangs and fight each other to the death so that they can live. And all of creation groans under the weight of sin, looking forward to the new heavens and the new earth, when the lion will lie down with the lamb.
And of course we see the effects of sin in our societies. We see men rising up against men, hurting one another, robbing one another, killing one another. We see people enslaved to sin, trapped in destructive lifestyles of alcohol abuse or drug abuse or sexual abuse. It’s impossible to live in this world as a Christian and not be practically overwhelmed by a mourning over sin.
Mourning over sin was why Jesus wept. He mourned at the grave of Lazarus because He understood the effect of sin in producing death. He mourned over Jerusalem because He saw the Israelites love their sin which resulted in their rejection of the life that He offered, and He foresaw their consequent destruction because of it. He wept in the Garden of Gethsemane because He understood the weight of the sin of the world that had to fall upon Him, the Holy One of God who had never sinned, and the death which He had to undergo as payment for that sin.
A Christian mourning for sin is the antithesis of the world’s outlook towards sin. The world says, according to Jesus, “laugh now.” In Luke 6, another version of this sermon was given by Jesus and he said this concerning the attitude of the world. Luke 6:24-26 "But woe to you who are rich, for you are receiving your comfort in full. "Woe to you who are well-fed now, for you shall be hungry. Woe [to you] who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep. "Woe [to you] when all men speak well of you, for their fathers used to treat the false prophets in the same way.” The attitude of the world is “laugh now, live for today, eat, drink and be merry.” But the attitude of the citizens of the kingdom of heaven is to mourn over sin.
The man who truly mourns over his sin is the one who is blessed, because he is given a new life in Christ, and a righteousness that is perfect, that is not of his own merit, but is a gift from God. Such a person will find joy in their salvation. He will be comforted with the comfort of the Holy Spirit, in knowing the love of Christ and knowing that because of Him he is accepted by God.
There is that immediate comfort in salvation, and the present comfort in repentance and confession knowing that Christ is willing and able to forgive us, but there is also a future comfort. It’s called by Paul the “blessed hope.” It’s looking forward to the day when we will be comforted in full, when we receive a glorified body and live with the Lord forever. When the troubles and trials of this world are no more, and time shall be no more, and we are forever with the Lord. Then we shall receive the ultimate comfort because this body of sin and this world of sin and the prince of sin will be done away with. That is when we shall be truly comforted, even as Abraham said concerning Lazarus; that he was being comforted in Paradise.
But for those like the rich man in the story of Lazarus, who after he died found himself in Hell, there is no comfort. For those who enjoy the things of this world, without any thought of their sins before God, without any thought for eternity, but live by the motto eat, drink and be merry, there will be no comfort. There is no comfort in your money in eternity; heaven does not recognize that currency. There is no comfort in your prestige in eternity, heaven has another realm that you have not ascertained. There will be no comfort in the wealth of your possessions in eternity, because you cannot take them with you. James says in James 5:1-3 “Come now, you rich, weep and howl for your miseries which are coming upon you. Your riches have rotted and your garments have become moth-eaten. Your gold and your silver have rusted; and their rust will be a witness against you and will consume your flesh like fire. It is in the last days that you have stored up your treasure!” Listen, it is much better to mourn for your sins in this world, than to mourn for your hedonism in the next. There is no comfort for the wicked.
But there is comfort in store for the Christian. There is a hope that endures beyond the grave. There is a life that endures for eternity in heaven’s kingdom. And the good news is that God has extended an invitation to all that they may enter, if they would only repent of their sins and trust in the substitutionary death of Jesus Christ for their righteousness. For that person, there is a promise of being blessed, of having an abundant life, becoming a new creation, and a comfort that comes now, and will be even more fulfilled in the future when we shall see Jesus. That invitation stands with your name on it. What is your response? Will you accept Jesus as your Savior and live, or reject Him as your Lord and be condemned? You have a choice. I pray that you will choose Jesus today. Call upon Him while He waits for you now.
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