The Darkness Shall Turn to Dawning--Sermon on the Mount Series

            If we had the opportunity to never again feel physical pain, I imagine we would all be tempted to take advantage of that opportunity. Just imagine—never having to deal with aches and pains again. No more sore muscles, no more creaky joints. That sounds great at first—doesn’t it?—but in reality, not being able to feel physical pain is a dangerous situation.

            There is actually a very rare medical condition known as CIPA, which describes people who were born without the ability to feel pain. Again, that might sound nice, but think about how dangerous that is. You could sustain a serious injury and not realize it because you couldn’t feel the pain. You know how you can sometimes get a small cut and not realize it until you see yourself bleeding? Imagine that on a much larger scale. Imagine if you couldn’t feel a deep, serious cut. Imagine if you touched something hot and left your hand there because you couldn’t feel the pain. While it might sound nice to feel no pain, pain actually plays a very important role for our bodies.

            In the same way that pain plays an important role for the body, grief and mourning play an important role for the soul. These emotions arrest our attention and force us to deal with things that we would not naturally choose to deal with, but just as physical pain tells us that there is a problem and drives us to deal with it, grief and mourning do the same.

            Our text for today is the second Beatitude, which you’ll find in Matthew 5:4—“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” This is another statement from Jesus that turns worldly wisdom on its head, but it has such an important lesson to teach us. Let’s take a look at the two halves of this verse.

“BLESSED ARE THOSE WHO MOURN…”

            We often hear this verse at funerals, but that’s not exactly the kind of mourning that Jesus is talking about here. Don’t get me wrong—God is the source of our comfort when we lose a loved one, that’s just not what this particular verse is talking about. In all of the Beatitudes, Jesus is talking about our spiritual condition and spiritual character traits. Jesus must be talking about mourning over something in our spiritual condition, and that naturally brings up the idea of sin. So Jesus is apparently talking about mourning over sin, and I think we could say that such mourning would include our own sins and the sins of others that we see all around us.

            So, blessed are those who mourn over sin. That is the proper response when we become aware of sin within ourselves or within the people around us. What a challenging and humbling thought this is! An awareness of sin should produce within us a response that may be likened to the grief of losing a loved one. This word for mourning is also the normal word in the Bible for mourning someone’s death.

            This is no light or casual response to sin. This is not, “the devil made me do it.” This is not, “Its no big deal—I’m already forgiven.” This is not “boys will be boys” or “everyone makes mistakes” or “that’s why pencils have erasers.” This is a sense of loss, a sense of brokenness and disruption and dysfunction in the way that things are supposed to be. According to Jesus, this is the kind of response to sin that God approves of.

            Now I will be the first one to raise my hand and admit that I do not always respond to sin this way, and I’ll go out on a limb and say that I’m probably not the only person in this room who needs to admit that! So why do we have this other response to sin? Why do we tell ourselves, “it was no big deal?” Well, the major reason of course is our sin nature. We are attracted to sin the same way that magnets are attracted to your refrigerator, so when we sin that part of us certainly doesn’t feel like anything is wrong or broken.

            Our sin nature is certainly the over-arching reason why we may not mourn over sin, but there are some other factors that are less obvious but still play a big role. Let’s spend some time thinking about them.

WHAT FACTORS MAY DISCOURAGE US FROM MOURNING OVER SIN?

1. Cultural Factors

            a. Heritage

            Many of us in this room can trace our heritage back to Europe—more specifically, to northern Europe; countries like Germany, England, Norway, and Sweden. Within this cultural heritage there has often been disapproval of strong emotions. They have sometimes been seen as signs of weakness and thus have been discouraged. That’s very different from the Middle Eastern culture in which Jesus walked and talked. That’s not to say that mourning over sin would have been natural for His audience, but they didn’t have this cultural barrier that many of us have in our background.

            b. Contemporary Factors

                        1) Fear and disapproval of grief and sadness

            Our culture fears and disapproves of mourning in virtually all its forms. The psychiatric community literally wants to treat grief like the common cold—its okay if it hangs around for a few days, but after that we better start to medicate it! Just last year, the official handbook for American psychiatrists revised its guidelines so that now you could be diagnosed with a mental illness if you grieve the loss of a loved one for longer than two weeks! A number of psychiatrists correctly protested that change, but nevertheless it is now enshrined in the “Bible” of American psychiatry.

            Our society struggles to see how any good can come out of grief, especially something like grief over sin. We are so concerned about having a positive self-image that grieving over our actions sounds dysfunctional and harmful. Yet it is precisely the response that Jesus encourages us to have. Considering that the Devil is active in our world today, it should not surprise us that society points us in a different direction than Jesus does.

2. Factors Within the Church

            a. Misunderstandings about Happiness and Joy

            Within our church and with our church friends, we can feel a lot of pressure to appear happy all the time, but this pressure stems from a misunderstanding about happiness and joy. As we discussed last week, happiness is a good feeling that you get when you like what is happening around you, but joy is more of an attitude that we can choose to embrace. It is an attitude of optimism in light of what God has done and what He has promised to do.

            That is an attitude that we can adopt at all times, but it doesn’t mean that we will always feel happy. For example, in Philippians 4:4, Paul writes, “Rejoice always,” and in the same letter, he tells the Philippian believers that he is writing to them with tears! So was Paul breaking his own command? No, and that’s because happiness and joy are not exactly the same thing.

            I think the pressure to appear happy is also reinforced by some of the songs that we sing. For example, consider the refrain of the hymn, “At the Cross:”

At the cross, at the cross, where I first saw the light,

And the burden of my heart rolled away

It was there by faith, I received my sight

And now I am happy all the day.

Have you ever sung that song even though you felt like you weren’t being totally honest? I’m not always happy all the day, and if I confuse happiness and joy in my mind, it is easy to feel like something is wrong with me. In reality, there are times when I most certainly should not be happy, like when I become aware that I made a sinful choice. I can still have an underlying optimism because of God’s grace, but I should grieve over the dysfunction of my heart.

            b. A sense of pressure to put on a good face for those who don’t attend church

            We want to present our church in an attractive light to people in the community, but in our efforts to do this we can feel pressure to exude a fake happiness that is just a show. Sometimes we compound this with our outreach efforts. I can remember times when I have invited someone to church by saying, “You should come sometime. I think you’ll enjoy it.”

Now, what kind of pressure does that create if the person comes to a service? Well, I’m going to feel pressure to make sure things are enjoyable for them. After all, that’s what I told them they would find, so now I want to deliver! As part of that, I certainly don’t want them to see me grieving over sin, because that doesn’t seem very enjoyable.

These days, when I invite someone to church, I just try to say, “Why don’t you come sometime? We’d love to have you.” I feel like I can say that with total honesty, and I’m not promising them anything more than perhaps a friendly reception.

So how can we overcome these factors that discourage us from mourning over sin? Let’s talk about a few ways to cultivate this response.

HOW DO WE CULTIVATE THIS RESPONSE?

1. Make the effort to reflect on your life

            We cannot mourn over our sins if we’re not aware of them. Some of our sinful choices are very obvious to us, but perhaps many of them are not, and sinful attitudes can be even more difficult to diagnose. Therefore, we must learn the Word of God and allow it to point out our sins so that we can then respond to them properly.

            Reflecting on our lives is a crucial step for Christian maturity, and I dare to say that this step cannot be fully taken in just a short devotional time each day. We must build a structure into our lives that brings the Word of God back to mind and that allows some time for reflection. With the schedules that we so often sign up for, we cannot afford to have our hearts and minds arrested by grief over sin. We have to keep going on to the next thing and the next thing, and our attention has to be given to the next project. Where are the quiet moments that allow for reflection? We must make an effort to create those moments.

2. Pray for sensitivity toward sin

            I think King David’s prayer in Psalm 139 is a model prayer for us all: “Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!” David’s prayer acknowledges the deceitfulness of sin. Sinful attitudes in particular do not just announce their presence in our lives, and even when we suspect that we may have sinned, it is easy to justify our actions. So we must pray for God to point out our sins and lead us down the proper paths.

3. Reflect on the sacrifice that was necessary for your sins to be forgiven

            When Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane on the night before He was crucified, He prayed, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me…if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done (Matt 26:39-42).” Jesus was talking about God’s wrath toward sin, and He received a clear answer to His prayer the next day—it was not possible for sin to be forgiven except through Christ’s sacrificial death. If any other means of forgiveness were possible, surely God would have chosen it, but there was no other way. Christ’s sacrifice reveals how serious God considers sin to be, and reflecting on His sacrifice can help us avoid a flippant or non-chalant attitude toward our sins.

“…FOR THEY SHALL BE COMFORTED.”

            We must also remember that mourning was not the final word in this Beatitude. Jesus said, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” How would this comfort come? Well, first it would come through the Holy Spirit. When Jesus spoke those words, the Holy Spirit did not yet live in the hearts of men and women, but when Jesus taught the apostles about the coming of the Holy Spirit, He called Him “the Comforter.” That title comes from the same Greek word that Jesus uses in this Beatitude.

            Romans 8:16 says, “The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.” The Holy Spirit confirms in our hearts the truth of the Gospel—that we are forgiven by trusting in the crucified and risen Lord. This is why joy can remain even as we grieve over our sins. “Though sorrow may last for a night, joy comes in the morning!”

            And yet, the fullness of this comfort will not come until the kingdom of Christ is established on this Earth. Any comfort we receive today can be nothing more than a ray of sunshine breaking through an otherwise dark sky. We are comforted by the forgiveness of our sins, but we will continue to struggle with its temptation. We rejoice to see kindness in our world, but we will continue to see senseless acts of terror. But one day, “the darkness shall turn to dawning, and the dawning to noon-day bright, and Christ’s great kingdom shall come to Earth, the kingdom of love and light!” Then, we will see the fullness of this comfort, as the Prince of Peace reigns on His throne!