Sermon on the Mount: Who Wants to be Sad?

Matthew 5:4: "Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted."     

"Wisdom possesses counsel, sound judgment, and insight, and grants health, long life, wealth, and righteousness. Folly brings sin, disease, death, destruction, poverty, and misery (Prov 9:18; compare Prov 7:5–27). Folly and wickedness are linked (Prov 10:23; 16:17), as are wisdom and righteousness (Prov 8:20)." [1]

Divine Comfort

Few of us enjoy mourning, yet the truth is that spiritual poverty (Beatitude 1) leads to godly sorrow. The philosophy of the world is to put on a happy face and smile. But Jesus calls us to mourn. Jesus is not talking about mourning over loss, being sad that someone died, or that something bad happened.

Jesus is speaking of mourning over sin. He’s talking about godly sorrow. We must also grieve over our sin—our individual sin, our sin as a community, and the world’s sin. Mourning over sin includes grieving over injustice, immorality, racism rampant across our world, and all sin that dishonors our God. We need to experience deep remorse over our sin and others’ sin—even to the point of shedding tears. There is no comfort that can compare with what God gives to those who mourn.

I can’t get over the sense that Christians in America have a defective sense of sin. We are not poor in spirit, and we don’t mourn over sin. There is not enough sorrow for sin. We should mourn the greed, the cynicism, the perversion in our communities, and maybe we need to mourn that there aren’t more mourners! I love the song lyric that says, “Break my heart for what breaks yours.”

This mourning is the agonizing realization that it was my sin—our sins—that nailed Christ to the cross.

Those who mourn will be comforted because our Father is the God of all comfort. He comforts us with total forgiveness. That is what the gospel is all about: saving us from the horrendous guilt of our sin. If we never taste the sorrow of repentance, we will not feast on the comfort of salvation. Have you ever felt deep remorse over your sins or the sins of others because they have dishonored God? Maybe God is convicting you to mourn over sin, or it may be the next Beatitude that really grabs you.

[1] Nettelhorst, R. P. “Wisdom.” Ed. Douglas Mangum et al. Lexham Theological Wordbook 2014 : n. pag. Print. Lexham Bible Reference Series.