Latest / Reformed Thinking / Blessed Are Those Who Mourn (Matthew 5:4)

Transcript

Blessed Are Those Who Mourn (Matthew 5:4) · Reformed Thinking

• 0:00
  Welcome back to Reformed Thinking.
• 0:01
  We are doing another deep dive, this time into a section of
• 0:05
  scripture that, well, it can feel a little jarring if you're
• 0:08
  not ready for it. It certainly can.
• 0:10
  It turns our whole value system on its head.
• 0:12
  We're in the Sermon on the Mount, of course, Jesus's
• 0:15
  foundational teaching for life in his Kingdom, and he kicks it
• 0:19
  off with the Beatitudes. These these declarations that
• 0:24
  just seem to invert everything the world values.
• 0:26
  And we're landing on one of the most inverted of them all.
• 0:29
  That's right, our focus today is Matthew 5.4.
• 0:32
  Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
• 0:35
  A statement that seems like a complete contradiction.
• 0:37
  It does joy that starts with sorrow, happiness that begins
• 0:41
  with tears. It doesn't compute.
• 0:43
  So our mission today is to really unpack this.
• 0:45
  We want to figure out what kind of grief Jesus calls blessed.
• 0:49
  And just as critically, how it's different from, you know,
• 0:52
  regular worldly sorrow or just feeling sorry for yourself.
• 0:56
  Exactly. And then how does God actually
• 0:58
  fulfill this incredible promise of comfort?
• 1:01
  You know, if you miss the specific nature of this grief,
• 1:04
  you really miss the heart of what Christian character is
• 1:07
  supposed to look like. The world says get comfortable
• 1:11
  so you can avoid mourning. Christ says the path to real,
• 1:15
  lasting comfort is through a certain kind of mourning.
• 1:19
  All right, let's start with that first word.
• 1:21
  The condition itself. Jesus calls the mourners
• 1:24
  Macarios, which we translate as blessed.
• 1:28
  But in our culture, blessed is all over the place.
• 1:31
  It can mean anything from having a nice day to getting a new car.
• 1:34
  It feels a lot like just being happy.
• 1:37
  And that's the first hurdle we have to get over.
• 1:39
  The sources we looked at are all very clear on this.
• 1:42
  Macarios is not a feeling, it's not a passing emotion.
• 1:45
  It's a settled spiritual status. OK, a status.
• 1:48
  Unpack that for us. Well, if you look at how the
• 1:50
  word was used in classical Greek, it was often for the
• 1:52
  gods, they were macarios, or maybe for the Super wealthy.
• 1:55
  You know, the people who were so rich and secure, they were
• 1:57
  totally free from the normal worries of life.
• 2:00
  It meant having an untouchable kind of good fortune.
• 2:03
  So it's a state of being completely secure above the
• 2:06
  fray. Exactly.
• 2:07
  So think about how radical it is when Jesus takes this word, this
• 2:10
  concept reserved for the gods or the untouchably wealthy, and
• 2:14
  applies it to the poor in spirit and to those who mourn.
• 2:17
  It's a total subversion. He's saying that the real status
• 2:21
  of divine favor, the settled approval from God, isn't tied to
• 2:25
  your circumstances at all. Right.
• 2:26
  It's tied to your spiritual state, your absolute dependence
• 2:29
  on Him and, as we'll see, your sorrow over sin.
• 2:32
  So it's not about how I feel when I wake up on a Tuesday
• 2:35
  morning. It's about my actual standing
• 2:37
  before God. That's it it.
• 2:38
  It's a verdict. Macario's means you stand under
• 2:41
  God's smile because you've been justified.
• 2:44
  And to really get that, you have to look back at the Old
• 2:47
  Testament roots. You're talking about Psalm 32,
• 2:49
  right? The source is all pointed there.
• 2:50
  Yes, Psalm 32, verse one. Blessed is the one whose
• 2:54
  transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.
• 2:56
  See the blessedness. The Macario state is the direct
• 3:00
  result of sin being dealt with. It's tied to justification.
• 3:03
  It is. The blessing isn't about
• 3:05
  avoiding pain. It's about being forgiven, it's
• 3:08
  God's declaration of approval, and that stands firm no matter
• 3:11
  what difficulties you're facing. So the world pities the person
• 3:14
  who is mourning, but Jesus looks at that person, assuming it's
• 3:18
  the right kind of mourning, and says that person is secure.
• 3:21
  That person has divine favor. That's the upside down Kingdom
• 3:24
  right there. True goodness, true blessedness,
• 3:27
  is measured by spiritual realities, not by physical
• 3:30
  comfort or emotional ease. OK, so that's the blessed
• 3:33
  condition. Let's move to the action itself.
• 3:37
  Morning Jesus doesn't use a mild word for sadness here.
• 3:40
  The sources really stress the intensity of the Greek verb
• 3:43
  penthuge. Yeah, that word choice is so
• 3:46
  important. In Greek, you have a lot of
• 3:48
  different words for sadness. You have mild distress, you have
• 3:50
  deep physical pain. But penthes is one of the
• 3:53
  strongest. It means a serious, deep lament.
• 3:56
  It's often the word used for mourning a death.
• 3:58
  Mourning a death that's profound loss.
• 4:00
  So what's the spiritual equivalent?
• 4:01
  What has died that requires this level of grief?
• 4:05
  It's grief over the death that sin causes, the death of
• 4:08
  righteousness, the spiritual loss.
• 4:10
  This isn't just a general vague sadness about the state of the
• 4:13
  world or feeling bad that you made a mistake.
• 4:16
  It's more specific. Much more specific panties is a
• 4:20
  sorrow that is weighty. It's a conscious grief over what
• 4:23
  sin has actually done, what it's done to God's glory first and
• 4:28
  foremost, what it's done to your own soul, to others.
• 4:31
  It's a total rejection of sin and its effects.
• 4:34
  It sounds like this is the emotional reaction to the
• 4:37
  intellectual realization in the first Beatitude.
• 4:40
  Exactly, Matthew 5.3 Blessed are the poor in spirit.
• 4:43
  That's the moment you realize I am spiritually bankrupt before a
• 4:47
  holy God. And Penthes is the proper
• 4:50
  emotional response to that bankruptcy.
• 4:52
  It's the grease that follows the diagnosis.
• 4:54
  And we see this word used elsewhere with that same kind of
• 4:57
  intensity. The sources pointed to James
• 4:59
  Chapter 4. A critical cross reference, Yes,
• 5:01
  James tells these worldly minded believers be wretched and mourn
• 5:04
  and weep. It's a command he's telling them
• 5:06
  to have, this heart wrenching visible turning away from their
• 5:09
  love of the world and back to God.
• 5:11
  So it's not a personality type, it's not that some people are
• 5:13
  just more melancholy, It's an active spiritual response.
• 5:16
  An active, sharp spiritual lament.
• 5:19
  It's the recognition that your sin is a spiritual catastrophe,
• 5:24
  and you know that seriousness is what makes the promise of
• 5:27
  comfort so incredible. If you treat your sin lightly,
• 5:30
  you'll treat the comfort of forgiveness lightly.
• 5:32
  To the depth of the morning is proportional to the appreciation
• 5:36
  of the comfort. That brings up the structure
• 5:38
  here. These beatitudes aren't just a
• 5:40
  random list, they flow 1 into the next.
• 5:43
  Matthew 5.4 about morning comes right after 5.3 about being poor
• 5:48
  in spirit. The sources say this is an
• 5:50
  intentional sequence. Absolutely.
• 5:52
  There's what some call an inner line here that reflects the
• 5:55
  order of salvation, of conversion.
• 5:57
  The link between the 1st 2 is just unavoidable.
• 5:59
  First comes a recognition of your state.
• 6:01
  I am poor in spirit. I have nothing.
• 6:03
  The objective. Fact, the objective fact.
• 6:05
  And the second beatitude is the necessary emotional response to
• 6:08
  that fact. And my bankruptcy grieves me to
• 6:10
  the core. But why must it lead to that
• 6:12
  kind of grief to Penthege? I mean, couldn't someone just
• 6:15
  realize they're spiritually bankrupt and just be resigned to
• 6:18
  it or indifferent? A natural person would be, and
• 6:21
  that's where the work of the Holy Spirit comes in.
• 6:24
  A person who is spiritually dead doesn't care about their
• 6:26
  spiritual poverty. When the Spirit of God opens
• 6:30
  your eyes to see God's perfect holiness on the one hand, and
• 6:33
  the true ugliness of your sin on the other, indifference is no
• 6:37
  longer an option. So it's not just recognizing a
• 6:40
  lack, it's recognizing an offense.
• 6:42
  That's the key. Poverty of spirit is knowing you
• 6:45
  lack the righteousness God requires.
• 6:48
  Mourning is grieving that your lack is a direct offense, a
• 6:51
  transgression against the God you were made to love and obey.
• 6:55
  The Beatitudes are a portrait of a converted heart.
• 6:58
  It sees its poverty, It grieves its offense.
• 7:00
  And then in the next Beatitude, it bows in meekness.
• 7:03
  So this isn't a checklist where some Christians are mourners and
• 7:06
  others are meek. It's one cohesive character
• 7:09
  portrait. It's a single portrait of every
• 7:10
  true citizen of the Kingdom. You can't separate the parts.
• 7:13
  The person who has the Kingdom in verse 3 must mourn in verse 4
• 7:16
  because they now hate the sin that once kept them out of.
• 7:19
  It that makes perfect sense. And it also seems that the
• 7:22
  promise of future comfort is what makes the present grief
• 7:25
  even possible. Yes, how could you possibly face
• 7:29
  the crushing weight of your spiritual bankruptcy without
• 7:32
  being annihilated by despair? You can only do it because the
• 7:35
  promise of comfort, the guarantee of forgiveness in
• 7:38
  Christ is already there. So knowing you're forgiven
• 7:41
  actually frees you to mourn your sin properly.
• 7:44
  It does. You can look at the ugliness of
• 7:46
  your sin without flinching because you know it's penalty
• 7:48
  has been paid. Your grief isn't punitive
• 7:50
  anymore, it's restorative. Without the Gospel, this kind of
• 7:54
  mourning would just collapse into despair.
• 7:56
  Which brings us to a really critical distinction.
• 7:58
  We have to separate the morning Jesus blesses from the kind of
• 8:02
  sorrow the world is full of. The sources all go to 2nd
• 8:05
  Corinthians 7 point sin. Worldly grief produces death.
• 8:09
  This is probably the most important distinction to make in
• 8:11
  this whole discussion. Worldly grief is sorrow, but
• 8:14
  it's sorrow without faith, sorrow without any hope in
• 8:17
  Christ. It's fundamentally
• 8:19
  self-centered. How does that play out
• 8:21
  practically? How can you tell the difference?
• 8:22
  I mean, if someone messes up their life with sin and they're
• 8:25
  weeping over it, it all looks like sorrow.
• 8:28
  How do you know if it's worldly sorrow over the consequences or
• 8:32
  godly sorrow over the sin itself?
• 8:34
  You have to look at the direction of the heart.
• 8:37
  Worldly grief is all about lamenting the consequences, the
• 8:40
  broken reputation, the financial hit, the ruined relationship.
• 8:43
  The person is grieving the disruption to their own comfort,
• 8:46
  their own security, their own ego.
• 8:48
  So the focus is still inward. I'm sad because my life is
• 8:52
  harder now. I'm sad because people think
• 8:54
  poorly of me. Precisely.
• 8:56
  The person might feel terrible, but deep down they may still
• 8:59
  love the sin, they just hate what it costs them.
• 9:02
  If they could have the sin without the painful fallout,
• 9:04
  they do it again in a heartbeat. That kind of grief never turns a
• 9:08
  person to God. It just leads to despair or
• 9:11
  bitterness or self pity. It's a dead end road.
• 9:13
  And the classic chilling example of this is Judas Iscariot.
• 9:16
  The perfect illustration. Judas felt deep remorse.
• 9:20
  He returned the money. He even confessed I have sinned
• 9:23
  by betraying innocent blood. His pain was absolutely be real.
• 9:27
  But his sorrow was over the mess he had made of his own life, the
• 9:30
  exposure, the guilt. And crucially, it never drove
• 9:34
  him to the one person who could offer mercy, Jesus.
• 9:37
  It drove him to despair and self destruction.
• 9:40
  His grief produced death because it was entirely self focused and
• 9:43
  had no faith in forgiveness. And you contrast that with
• 9:46
  Peter. After he denied Christ three
• 9:48
  times, he also wept bitterly. Yes, but his sorrow led him back
• 9:52
  to Christ. It led to repentance and a
• 9:54
  restored life of service. That's the difference between
• 9:56
  life and death. Both men sinned grievously.
• 10:00
  Both felt terrible sorrow. One's grief was self lacerating
• 10:03
  despair. The others was hope filled
• 10:05
  confession. OK, so if worldly grief is
• 10:08
  inward focused, let's define the focus of blessed morning.
• 10:10
  You said it's God word. The chief sorrow, The primary
• 10:12
  focus is God Word. The main reason for the grief is
• 10:15
  that God's honor has been dragged through the mud.
• 10:17
  His glory has been diminished. Sin is seen first and foremost
• 10:21
  as an assault on God. Like David in Psalm 51, after
• 10:25
  everything he did to Bathsheba and Uriah, his confession is
• 10:28
  against you. You only have I sinned.
• 10:31
  Exactly. He's not ignoring the horrific
• 10:33
  damage he did to other people. He's recognizing that the
• 10:36
  ultimate offense, the root of the sin, was against God's
• 10:39
  holiness. The personal guilt is real.
• 10:42
  It's weighty, but it's seen through the lens of God's
• 10:45
  perfect standard. Now, the sources say this grief
• 10:48
  extends beyond just our own personal sin.
• 10:51
  It does. Once your heart is softened to
• 10:53
  mourn your own sin, you can't be isolated.
• 10:56
  It extends outward to communal sin.
• 10:58
  You start to lament the sins of God's people, the spiritual
• 11:01
  decay in the church. So like Ezra or Nehemiah, who
• 11:05
  wept and confessed the sins of the whole nation as if they were
• 11:08
  their own. Yes, they didn't stand off to
• 11:10
  the side and point fingers. They took the broken covenant of
• 11:13
  their people personally. They grieved over the
• 11:15
  worldliness and compromise they saw creeping into the community.
• 11:18
  And then there's an even wider circle, what the source is
• 11:20
  called cosmic sorrow. Cosmic sorrow is grieving over
• 11:24
  the general brokenness of creation that sin caused.
• 11:27
  It's resonated with what Paul talks about in Romans 8, the
• 11:29
  groaning of creation. It's mourning over injustice,
• 11:32
  sickness, oppression, death, all the disorder that sin unleashed
• 11:36
  on God's good world. That sounds like an incredibly
• 11:39
  heavy burden to carry. Personal sin, Communal sin?
• 11:42
  Cosmic sin? How does a person not just get
• 11:45
  crushed by all that? It doesn't crush you because
• 11:48
  it's always tied to hope. This sorrow isn't just despair
• 11:51
  over the brokenness. It's a lament that's brought
• 11:54
  before God with an eye fixed on His promise to make all things
• 11:58
  new. And this is critical.
• 12:00
  This kind of comprehensive mourning is not natural.
• 12:02
  The sources are emphatic about this.
• 12:04
  It is the fruit of the Holy Spirit.
• 12:06
  Only the Spirit can give you a heart that hates sin this much
• 12:09
  and loves God's holiness this much.
• 12:11
  So this God word Greece is also productive.
• 12:14
  It's not just a state of being sad.
• 12:16
  It's meant to do something. The sources place it right at
• 12:19
  the heart of repentance. Yes, it produces a turning.
• 12:21
  It's the engine of repentance. Again back Second Corinthians 7
• 12:24
  point turn in godly grief produces a repentance that leads
• 12:27
  to salvation without regret. The grief is the spiritual and
• 12:31
  emotional force that actually initiates the change of
• 12:33
  direction. That phrase without regret seems
• 12:36
  really important. It is.
• 12:37
  It contrasts perfectly with Judas's regret.
• 12:40
  Worldly regret is often I regret I got caught, or I regret the
• 12:45
  pain this brought me. But this repentance that leads
• 12:48
  to salvation is regret over the sin itself.
• 12:51
  It's a change of mind where you finally agree with God that your
• 12:54
  sin was wicked, and at the same time you believe His mercy is
• 12:59
  big enough to cover it. So the repentance process is
• 13:01
  something like seeing your sin for what it is, grieving it, and
• 13:05
  then turning from it to God in obedience.
• 13:08
  That's the sequence, the intellectual part seen the sin,
• 13:11
  the emotional part grieving it. That's the pantheish.
• 13:14
  And then the volitional part, the actual turning.
• 13:15
  The morning is what bends the soul away from the sin and
• 13:18
  toward God. That's why it's blessed.
• 13:21
  It doesn't leave the Sinner paralyzed in shame.
• 13:23
  It moves them toward new life. The tears aren't earning God's
• 13:26
  favour, they're evidence that you've received His favour and
• 13:28
  now your heart is soft enough to hate the thing that offended
• 13:31
  Him. That's the Reformed
• 13:32
  understanding in a nutshell. Repentance isn't penance, it's a
• 13:35
  gift. And godly grief is the proof
• 13:38
  that the gift is at work, that God's kindness is leading you to
• 13:40
  that turning. But the Beatitudes aren't just
• 13:43
  about the moment of conversion. They describe the ongoing
• 13:46
  Christian life. So this morning has to continue.
• 13:49
  For a believer. How does that work?
• 13:52
  Becomes a key instrument of sanctification.
• 13:54
  It's part of how we die to sin and live to righteousness.
• 13:58
  The ongoing grief over the sin that still remains in US is what
• 14:01
  keeps us humble, what keeps us dependent on Christ.
• 14:06
  That seems counterintuitive though.
• 14:08
  Wouldn't you think that as you grow more mature as a Christian,
• 14:11
  you'd more and less because you're sinning less?
• 14:13
  You would think so, but it's actually the opposite.
• 14:15
  The sources use a great analogy. Imagine you're in a pitch black
• 14:18
  room. You can't see any dust in the
• 14:20
  air and someone opens the door a crack and a little beam of light
• 14:24
  comes in. Now you can see a few dust motes
• 14:26
  floating around. The more you open the door, the
• 14:29
  brighter the light gets and the more dust you see.
• 14:32
  The light is the light of God's holiness.
• 14:34
  As we grow closer to Christ, that light gets brighter in our
• 14:37
  lives and we start to see specks of dust, sins of attitude,
• 14:42
  subtle pride, selfishness that we were completely blind to
• 14:45
  before. So the holier the Saint, the
• 14:47
  more aware they are of their own remaining corruption.
• 14:49
  Exactly. And that heightened awareness
• 14:52
  triggers fresh grief. It's like a spiritual alarm bell
• 14:56
  that sends you running back to the cross for cleansing and
• 14:58
  gives you the resolve to fight that sin.
• 15:00
  But again, doesn't that get discouraging to feel like you're
• 15:03
  seeing more sin in yourself? It could be, but this is where
• 15:07
  the pastoral side of this comes in.
• 15:09
  The grief doesn't crush the believer because it exists
• 15:12
  alongside the joy of being justified.
• 15:15
  When your sorrow over sin is joined with faith in Christ,
• 15:18
  that very sorrow becomes evidence of grace.
• 15:21
  Fact that your sin bothers you so much is proof that the Holy
• 15:25
  Spirit is alive and working in you.
• 15:26
  It's a confirmation that God hasn't left you alone in your
• 15:29
  sin. An unbeliever can grow
• 15:31
  comfortable with their sin, but a true believer can't.
• 15:34
  So if I find myself genuinely grieving over a recurring sin,
• 15:38
  that act of mourning itself when I take it to Christ is actually
• 15:41
  a sign that I'm one of the Macarios, one of the blessed
• 15:44
  ones. It's powerful confirmation.
• 15:46
  It shows you have a new heart that hates what your old heart
• 15:50
  loved. This ongoing morning is one of
• 15:53
  the most reliable marks of a true citizen of the Kingdom.
• 15:56
  All right, let's turn to the promise for they shall be
• 15:58
  comforted. This is the great payoff.
• 16:01
  The sources are very specific that this comfort comes from one
• 16:04
  place and one place only. It is entirely divine, and you
• 16:08
  can see that right in the Greek grammar.
• 16:10
  The verb is paracleatheosonti. It's a future passive verb.
• 16:14
  That passive voice is so significant.
• 16:16
  Why passive? Because it means the mourners
• 16:18
  aren't comforting themselves. They're the ones being acted
• 16:21
  upon. They're being comforted.
• 16:22
  God himself is the one doing the comforting.
• 16:25
  They are the recipients, not the source.
• 16:26
  It's a gift they receive. A gift, and it pulls on all this
• 16:30
  prophetic hope from the Old Testament.
• 16:31
  Think of Isaiah 40. Comfort.
• 16:34
  Comfort my people, says your God.
• 16:37
  The comfort is a sovereign act, a promise from God to meet the
• 16:40
  tears of His people. And the whole Trinity is
• 16:42
  involved in delivering this comfort.
• 16:44
  Let's start with Jesus. The comfort is secured entirely
• 16:47
  by Christ's work on the cross. The only reason the mourner
• 16:50
  isn't crushed forever by their sin is because Jesus was crushed
• 16:53
  for it. The comfort begins with the
• 16:55
  objective fact of justification. The penalty has been paid.
• 16:59
  And he's not some distant deity, he's uniquely suited to give
• 17:04
  this comfort as a man. Yes, Scripture calls him a man
• 17:07
  of sorrows and acquainted with grief.
• 17:09
  He knows what human suffering feels like.
• 17:12
  He wept. He was tempted.
• 17:14
  He felt that ultimate spiritual anguish in the garden and on the
• 17:17
  cross. As the Book of Hebrews says,
• 17:19
  he's our sympathetic high priest.
• 17:21
  So he meets us in our morning. He does with mercy and strength.
• 17:24
  He suffered so we wouldn't have to suffer eternally.
• 17:27
  He mourns so that we could be comforted.
• 17:29
  Then you have the Holy Spirit who applies that comfort to our
• 17:32
  hearts. Right.
• 17:33
  The Greek word for comfort, paracleteasanti, is from the
• 17:36
  same root as the name Jesus gives the Holy Spirit in John's
• 17:39
  Gospel. The Paracleteus, The Nulper, The
• 17:43
  Comforter, the Advocate. So it's the spirit specific job
• 17:46
  to make this real for us. It is the Spirit take the
• 17:49
  objective comfort that Christ won on the cross and makes it
• 17:52
  subjectively real to the believer's heart.
• 17:55
  He assures us we are adopted children of God, prompting us to
• 17:58
  cry out ABBA Father. He uses the means of grace, the
• 18:02
  Word, prayer, the sacraments to steady our hearts and remind us
• 18:06
  that our forgiveness is secure even when the grief feels fresh.
• 18:10
  OK, but the promise is in the future tense.
• 18:13
  They shall be comforted. We've talked about comfort now,
• 18:16
  but the verse points forward. How do those two things fit
• 18:19
  together? It's a now and not yet reality.
• 18:22
  The fulfillment is twofold. It begins in part right now, the
• 18:25
  moment you're justified. But it reaches its absolute
• 18:27
  fullness in the future, in glory.
• 18:29
  So what does the now part of the comfort look like?
• 18:32
  The now comfort is grounded in our peace with God.
• 18:35
  Romans 5.1 Because Christ has covered our sin, we are no
• 18:38
  longer God's enemies. That's the foundation.
• 18:41
  We may still mourn the presence of sin in us, but we are no
• 18:43
  longer under its condemnation. The indwelling of the Spirit
• 18:47
  provides real tasted comfort day by day.
• 18:49
  So even in the middle of grieving a sin, I can have the
• 18:51
  comfort of knowing I'm forgiven for it.
• 18:53
  That's the partial fulfillment. But the future tense points us
• 18:57
  to the last day for the full, complete comfort, because true
• 19:01
  total comfort means the complete and final end of sin, death, and
• 19:05
  pain. The removal of the very cause of
• 19:08
  mourning. Exactly.
• 19:09
  The final comfort comes when our sanctification is complete.
• 19:13
  Revelation 21.4 gives us the picture.
• 19:16
  God will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall
• 19:19
  be no more. Either shall there be mourning,
• 19:22
  nor crying, nor pain anymore. It's incredible.
• 19:24
  The deepest sorrow Jesus blesses is guaranteed to end in a future
• 19:28
  where sorrow itself doesn't even exist.
• 19:30
  That is the scope of the promise.
• 19:32
  The comfort isn't just a Band-Aid to make us feel better
• 19:34
  while sin remains, it's a pledge that sin itself will one day be
• 19:38
  destroyed. The tears we shed today over our
• 19:40
  sin are noted by God and they will receive a final eternal
• 19:44
  answer in the new creation. Now, having this precise
• 19:47
  definition of blessed morning helps us see what it stands
• 19:49
  against. There are a lot of ideas out
• 19:51
  there, both in the culture and sometimes in the church, that
• 19:54
  this verse directly rejects. It does.
• 19:56
  It stands as a strong polemic against several errors.
• 20:00
  First and foremost, what you might call therapeutic
• 20:03
  spirituality. What?
• 20:04
  Do you mean by that? The modern idea that guilt is a
• 20:07
  sickness, that feeling bad about your moral failures is a
• 20:11
  psychological problem to be fixed with positive
• 20:14
  affirmations, self forgiveness, and messages about your own
• 20:17
  innate goodness. And Matthew 5.4 turns that on
• 20:20
  its head. Completely.
• 20:22
  Jesus calls the person whose conscience is pierced blessed.
• 20:25
  He gives divine favor to the one who feels the weight of their
• 20:28
  guilt. The therapeutic model wants to
• 20:30
  remove the conviction to make you feel better now.
• 20:34
  Jesus says the path to true, lasting blessing runs right
• 20:37
  through that conviction in the grief it produces.
• 20:39
  It also pushes back against a kind of shallow cheerfulness.
• 20:42
  Doesn't. It Oh, absolutely.
• 20:43
  It rebukes any theology that says Christians should just be
• 20:45
  smiling all the time, that there's no place for genuine
• 20:48
  sorrow over our ongoing sin. That kind of thinking creates a
• 20:52
  false choice between joy and our justification and grief over our
• 20:55
  sanctification. Jesus says the blessed person
• 20:58
  holds both. What about prosperity teaching
• 21:01
  the idea that being blessed means health and wealth?
• 21:04
  Prosperity teaching has no category for this verse.
• 21:07
  It's whole system is built on equating God's favor macarios
• 21:11
  with earthly comfort and success.
• 21:13
  Jesus redefines blessing entirely.
• 21:16
  He gives it to the mourner, the one experiencing the exact
• 21:18
  opposite of worldly ease. This Beatitude proves that your
• 21:22
  bank account and your health chart have zero bearing on your
• 21:24
  standing with God. And finally, what about
• 21:26
  antinomianism, the idea that since we're under grace, we
• 21:29
  shouldn't really dwell on our sin anymore?
• 21:31
  Antinomianism just gets grace completely wrong.
• 21:34
  It claims that because Christ has pardoned us, we are freed
• 21:37
  from the need to mourn sin. But this verse shows that
• 21:40
  genuine grace doesn't harden the heart to sin, it softens it.
• 21:44
  The clearest sign that you are truly under grace is that you
• 21:47
  have begun to hate the very sin that nailed your Savior to the
• 21:49
  cross. That ongoing grief is what keeps
• 21:52
  you from growing complacent. When you put it all together,
• 21:56
  the contrast is stark. Whirly grief is self-centered.
• 21:59
  It focuses on consequences. It leads to death.
• 22:02
  Godly grief is God centered. It focuses on the offense
• 22:04
  against Him. And because it's mixed with
• 22:06
  faith in Christ, it leads to life and a guaranteed divine
• 22:09
  comfort, the tears of a believer shed out of hatred for sin or a
• 22:13
  sure sign of the Spirit's work. It's the great paradox.
• 22:16
  The people who are the saddest over their sin are the ones who
• 22:18
  are made most glad by Christ's forgiveness.
• 22:20
  And that promise that they shall be comforted is God's own pledge
• 22:23
  to one day destroy the very source of those tears, sin and
• 22:27
  death and all corruption. So here's a final thought for
• 22:30
  you to consider. What does it mean for your daily
• 22:32
  fight against sin to know that the tears you shed now, that
• 22:35
  very grief over offending a holy God, are not only seen by him,
• 22:39
  but are guaranteed an everlasting total answer in the
• 22:41
  new creation? Thanks for joining us for this
• 22:44
  deep dive.