Matthew 5:4

Matthew 5:4

Mourning Sin 

1. Only responding rightly to sin in life, yields God’s blessing of comfort in Christ; so we must truly mourn our sin

1. Jesus’ Beatitudes describe and teach us who we’re to be as true disciples of Christ, make certain we understand that it’s utterly impossible to be that person through our own strength, reveal our complete need for Jesus, and describe our we receive God’s blessings in life. God’s blessings aren’t getting things we want, being happy, or escaping sorrow, and mourning, but they’re receiving His grace through Christ to live lives that He approves, affirms, and even applauds. The first Beatitude informed us of our unrighteousness, by bringing us face to face with the holy, just, righteous, and perfect nature of God, so that we would acknowledge our complete spiritual poverty, declare ourselves spiritually bankrupt, and throw ourselves on God’s mercy to receive His blessing of salvation in Christ. Now Jesus moves from conviction of our mind in the first Beatitude, to declare how that conviction of spiritual poverty in sin must convict the feelings of our deep grief in our hearts, and in turn impact our lives. When we consider mourning, sorrow, hurt, and pain in life, our minds are naturally drown to our emotional pain in life, and our natural reaction is to avoid it all cost. But those experiences and emotions of sorrow are merely superficial, and treating them produces equally superficial results. Jesus describes the deepest and severest sorrow possible, but he’s not talking about the emotional, circumstantial, and superficial sorrows of life, He’s speaking of mourning in the spiritual sense over our sin. So Jesus is telling us that the hope of blessing, God’s approval and affirmation for our lives must begin with our deep, utter, spiritual mourning, and godly grief over our personal sin as a result of the awareness and acknowledgment of our total lack of righteousness required to satisfy God’s just and perfect nature. But we must be careful because the response to which Jesus calls over our sin is opposite of that of our nature, and the influence of the world. Our human nature moves us to try to justify our sin through hiding from it, comparing ourselves to others, blaming others, or falsely believing we can control it ourselves. But all of those ways only prove that we really love our sin more than Jesus, and cut us off from God’s blessing. Jesus calls us to be grieved, heartbroken, and intensely sorrowful over the same things which grieve Him. (v. 4a; Ezra 10:1; Neh. 8:9; Ps. 32:3-5; 51:3-10; 119:136; Eccl. 7:2-4; Isa. 53:3-12; Matt. 26:75; 27:3-5; Luke 15:27-19; Rom. 3:23-24; 5:12; Heb. 4:12-15)

2. Only responding rightly to sin in life, yields God’s blessing of comfort in Christ; so we trust fully in God’s grace, comfort, and provision, and His blessing must shape the motives, attitudes, and actions of our lives

1. God’s motive in calling us to deep brokenness and mourning over our sin isn’t to condemn us, we already stand condemned in sin and blinded by darkness. God proved His motive of love for us by sending His Son to free us from sin, but we must acknowledge our lostness and desperate need, and feel the unbearable weight of its burden, so we’ll truly grasp the magnitude of His righteous perfection, love, and amazing grace available in Christ. God desires for us to feel godly grief and intense sorrow over our sin because it leads to repentance and salvation, and the blessings of comfort in Christ which restores, renews, and strengthens, and frees us from condemnation, and worldly guilt. This comfort isn’t the anecdotal comfort of pity, help, a superficial pat on the back, or the false escape from the emotional sorrows of life which the world promises but never delivers, but is the comfort of Jesus’ personal presence in our lives as He faithfully comes alongside us in true deep heartbrokenness over our sin. His blessing of comfort is His provision of encouragement, consolation, help, strength, and fortification against sin in our lives. It gives us victory over sin’s power, gives us peace and hope in the certain eternal, sinless, and perfect eternity in which we’ll live harmoniously with God, and even provides for us in the painful emotional sorrows of life. But if we’ve been brought near to Christ for salvation and comfort in our brokenness over our sin, then we must necessarily not only continue in a life which sees our own sin seriously, differently, and in which we act upon it accordingly, but we must also be convicted to see and properly respond to the crippling effects of sin in the lives of others, and in the world. This is the truest litmus test for true spiritual brokenness, and blessing of God’s comfort on our lives. The motives, attitude, and actions of our lives towards others and the world will be a reflection of the true view of our own sin and need. If we truly mourn our own sin as God does, turn to Him in complete need, and walk in His blessing of comfort in Christ, then the motives, attitudes, and actions of our lives will reflect God’s love for people, hatred for sin, and desire to see sin eradicated. Is that the characteristic of your life? (Ps. 30:1-5; 32:1-2; 34:18; 51:11-17; 55:6-8, 16, 22; 56:8; Isa. 25:8; 35:3-10; 61:1-3; Lam. 3:20-33; Ezek. 9:4; Matt. 5:4b; Luke 18:9-14; John 3:16-21; 11:33-36; 14:12-18; Rom. 5:12-21; 6:14, 23; 7:12-8:18; 1 Cor. 1:6-9; 9:16-23; 2 Cor. 1:3-11; 5:14-21; Gal. 5:16-26; Eph. 1:6-8; Phil 2:5-11; Heb. 4:16; 10:19-25; Jas. 4:7-10; 1 John 1:5-10; 3:2-24; Rev. 7:16-17; 21:1-7)