Happy Are the Sad
Matthew 5:4
Matthew 5:4, says, "Blessed are they that mourn for they shall be comforted." In one of the great Psalms of David he recites the depths of pain that the heart knows in the disappointments and sorrows of life, and then this is Psalm 55, he cries out and says, "Oh that I had wings like a dove, for then would I fly away and be at rest, lo then would I wander far off and remain in the wilderness. I would hasten my escape from the windy storm and tempest." Well, David echoes a cry that has come from the lips of all men at one time or another when they face sorrow, when they face disappointment, when they face tragedy, when they face discouragement, they say like David, "Oh if I could only escape, if I could only fly away and be at rest." David echoes the cry of fallen humanity, a cry for freedom, a cry for life on wings, to fly away and be removed from the pain and the sorrow, the anguish.
Anybody who's ever been through those kinds of things knows what it is to yearn for comfort in a life of pain or a life of sorrow or disappointment or bitterness. We all have longed to run away, to look away, to flee from sorrow to the place of comfort that is always so hidden and so elusive and the deeper the sorrow and the deeper the disappointment and the deeper the pain the more elusive that place of comfort is. And I guess that's the paradox of this beatitude, because here it says, "Happy are the sad." We never thought that was true. Comforted are the mourners. That's contrary to everything we know.
The whole structure of our life, the pleasure madness, the amusement park mentality, the entertainment mania, the constant thrill seeking, the money, and the energy, and the time, and the enthusiasm expended in living it up are an expression of the world's desire to avoid the mourning and to avoid the sorrow and to avoid the pain. But Jesus said, "Happy are the sad, happy are those that mourn."
In fact, Jesus also said in Luke 6:25, "Woe unto you that laugh now for your laughter shall become weeping." Now that's different. Woe to you that laugh for you shall mourn and weep? Happy are you that mourn for you shall be comforted? Just the opposite of the world's philosophy. A new approach to life and that's just exactly what Jesus is doing isn't it in the Sermon on the Mount? He's offering a new approach to life. It condemns the apparent laughter and happiness of the world. It pronounces blessing, it pronounces happiness, it pronounces joy, peace, and comfort on those who mourn.
You say, "Well John what in the world does this mean?" Let's answer that question first of all and we'll cover four questions tonight and give you answers to them, hopefully. First of all what does it mean blessed or happy, marikos, are those that mourn? In what sense is that true? Let's talk about it. There are in the Greek language nine different verbs used in the New Testament that speak of grief. This is the strongest of the nine. This is the most severe. But the very fact that there are nine different verbs in one language to express the concept of grief is a pretty good indication that it is a way of life, that it is part and parcel of just living, and in fact the whole of man' history is the story of tears and it's the story of sorrow, and by the way, we have had a lot of it but we haven't had anything like what is yet to come.
In the 24th Chapter of Matthew and the 4th verse, "Jesus answered and said unto them, 'Take heed that no man deceive you for many shall come in My name saying I am Christ and shall deceive many and ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that ye be not troubled for all these things must come to pass but the end is not yet for nation shall rise against nation, kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines, pestilences, earthquakes in various places.'" Now if you know anything about Matthew 24, you know that Jesus was talking about a time at the end of the age and He follows it up in the next verse by saying, "All these are only the beginning of sorrows." You haven't seen anything yet. The history of man is the history of sorrow. It's a history of tears. It's a history of pain and grief, and man has only seen the beginning of it.
Now just what kind of mourning is Jesus talking about? What does He mean when He says, "Blessed are they that mourn?" What kind of blessedness is available for what kind of mourning? Well the Bible talks about all different kinds of mourning, by the way. There are a lot of different kinds of mourning. Let me just share a couple with you. First of all there is what you might call general sorrow, just the sorrow of life, a kind of a proper sorrow, if you will. A kind of a sorrow that is acceptable, that is very normal. Weeping and mourning in this sense is a part of human life. In fact, it's a gift of God. Did you know that? Did you know that the ability to cry is a gift of God? The pain and the anxiety that you hold in would be poison your entire emotional system if it couldn't be released in tears, if it couldn't be released in sorrow.
You see weeping and sorrowing is like the releasing of a pressure valve that lets all of that out of your system so it doesn't poison your whole emotional character. It's a gift from God. It releases pain. It permits a healing process and when pain is kept inside and when remorse is kept inside, and when sorrow and mourning are kept inside they poison the emotions. It's very natural to mourn. It's very natural to do that. Abraham wept when his wife died. He had every right to do that. That's how he dealt with his grief. It came out in tears and mourning.
In Psalm 42:1-3, we hear the Psalmist mourning and this is what he says. "As the hart," h-a-r-t, it's a small deer, "As the deer panteth after the water brooks so panteth my soul after Thee O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God? My tears have been my food day and night while they continually say unto me where is Thy God." In other words, the sorrow and the grief over the absence of God was released in the heart of the Psalmist through the tears that came coursing down his cheeks. And you see that he was suffering from loneliness and loneliness is reason enough to cry. It's reason enough to have some tears. And for even a child of God who may at one point in his life feel lonely and estranged from God, tears are a very normal way to deal with such sorrow.
In II Timothy 1:2-3, Paul said to Timothy, "I thank God whom I serve from my forefathers with a pure conscience that without ceasing, Timothy, I have remembered thee in my prayers night and day." Listen to this: "Greatly desiring to see thee, being mindful of thy tears." Timothy was weeping because of terrible discouragement and defeat. I've shed some tears sometimes of loneliness, sometimes of discouragement and defeat. That's normal.
The 9th Chapter of Jeremiah, the prophet who had been called by God to preach to Israel about a coming judgment, came and preached with tears. This is what he says in Jeremiah 9:1, just listen, "Oh that my head were waters and mine eyes a fountain of tears that I might weep day and night for the slaying of the daughter of my people." The psalmist wept because he was lonely; Timothy wept because he was discouraged; Jeremiah wept because he saw the judgment of God about the fall of the people he loved. He was disappointed, disappointed, tragically disappointed and he had so much of it inside of him that he wished that his whole head was like a river so it would get out of him.
In Acts Chapter 20, the apostle Paul met with the Ephesians elders and he talked about his tears in verse 31. "Therefore, watch and remember that for the space of three years I ceased not to warn everyone night and day with tears." The psalmist had tears of loneliness, Timothy had tears of discouragement, Jeremiah had tears of disappointment, Paul had tears of concern, tears of care, tears of anxiety.
In Mark Chapter 9, a father brought his demon-possessed son to Jesus and the tears were running down the father's cheeks as he said, "If Thou canst believe all things are possible to him that believeth and straightway the father of the child cried out and said with tears, 'Lord, I believe, help Thou mine unbelieveth.'" You say, "What kind of tears were those?" They were the tears of earnest love for a son that wanted to see a son delivered from a demon.
Something, I suppose, like Psalm 126:5, "They that sow in tears shall reap in joy. He that goeth forth and weepeth bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him." Earnest love, and in the Psalm 126 it's that earnest love for the lost that makes you weep.
In Luke 7:37, a woman came into the Pharisee's house where Jesus was reclining and resting and she brought an alabaster box of ointment, you remember the story. Luke records for us that the woman stood at His feet weeping and she wept all over His feet and then she washed His feet with her own hair. And when the Pharisees questioned why Jesus would you ever allow a scarlet sinful woman like this to do that to You? And Jesus gave them a little lesson on how people who have been forgiven are very grateful. What kind of tears were those? They were the tears of devotion; they were the tears of worship; they were the tears of heartfelt gratitude.
Sometimes people cry when they're thankful. Sometimes they cry out of earnest love. Sometimes they cry out of concern. Sometimes they cry out of disappointment, sometimes out of discouragement, sometimes out of loneliness and sometimes just out of love. Love makes people cry.
Our Lord wept at the grave of Lazarus because He loved him and He had compassion. He wept over the city of Jerusalem because He loved them and had compassion. Mary Magdalene wept because Jesus was dead and those are the sorrowing tears of death and that's very normal and that's a God given way to release that terrible pain that's in your heart, nothing wrong with that. So there is a sense to mourn in a very normal human way can be a blessing because you release those kinds of things. It's as if tears are a gift from God for the release of pain, and there's a time for that. Ecclesiastes Chapter 3, "A time to be born, a time to die, a time to laugh, a time to cry."
But in addition to that there's another kind of human weeping that is different. It is not proper; it is improper; it is illicit. This is when a man mourns because he can't satisfy his lust. It's when he's got the tears of an unmet evil desire. This is the tear of Ammon. You remember that Ammon in II Samuel 13 wept and mourned until he became sick wanting to defile his own sister sexually. Thus did Ahab mourn. He wanted Naboth's vineyard. He coveted it so much that it says in I Kings 21:4, "He laid on his bed, turned away his face, and wouldn't eat any bread." He went into mourning because he wanted what wasn't his. That's an illicit wrong kind of mourning.
And then also sometimes there is the mourning, the foolish extended mourning of people who can't let somebody go. You see it very often when somebody dies and a person becomes a literal basket case. It happens even in the case of Christians. Recently heard of such an individual who's in our vernacular lost his mind because of the loss of a partner who went to be with Jesus Christ. That's pure selfishness. The depressing sorrow of one whose so selfish he cannot rejoice in the exaltation of the one he loves so deeply.
Now there's another kind of illicit sorrow and that's the sorrow that's over done because of guilt. You know there are some people who just get super sorry and super mournful as a way of atoning for their own sin. A good Biblical illustration of this is David. Absalom, you remember, had tried to dethrone his father. You can read II Samuel Chapters 15 through 20 and get the whole story, but I'll just give it to you in a little short vignette here. Absalom tried to dethrone his father. Absalom was proud, he was egotistical, he particularly like his hair, and Absalom plotted against David, he plotted against him to dethrone him and he drove David right out of the city. He drove his own father out of Jerusalem. He took over the palace and he planned a coup that would wipe out David's forces. So the battle came off. Unfortunately for Absalom his side lost and he was slain.
David had told his soldiers, "Now when the battle starts," David said in 18:5 of II Samuel, deal gently for my sake with the young man, even with Absalom." Be easy on Absalom. You say easy on a vile, sinful, evil, rebellious man. Be easy on him. And when David was told that he was dead he said, "Oh my son, Absalom, my son, my son Absalom, would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son." Now his love admirable, his idea is stupid. Who wants Absalom to run Israel? The nation needed David, not the sinful proud, egotistical Absolom. Why was David sorrowing like that? Because David was full of guilt because he'd been such a terrible father and his sorrow was something like a catharsis to wash his own soul from its obvious failures. There's no doubt in my mind that Absolom's death was part of the payment for sin with Bathsheba.
You remember, if you go back in II Samuel 12, God said to David, "You will pay four times for this sin. As the Lord liveth," he said, "The man that hath done this thing shall surely die. He shall restore four fold." There were four great tragedies that came to David: the baby died born of Bathsheba, his daughter Tamar was sinfully violated, his son Amnon was slain and Absalom was slaughtered, and the mourning over Absalom was kind of an atonement. And in II Samuel 19 it tells us that the soldiers were actually ashamed they won because David was so sad. And Joab says, "I perceive if Absalom had lives and all of us had died it would have pleased you well." You see then there is an improper kind of mourning.
Some people say well in general this beatitude is just true, you know, when you weep you feel a lot better. Sorrow has a way of just sort of building you up and strengthening you and they even write poems about it. You remember the old poem: I walked a mile with pleasure, she chatted all the way; but left me none the wiser for all she had to say. I walked a mile with sorrow and nare a word said she; but oh the things I learn from her when sorrow walked with me. It's a very nice poem. The Arabs used to say, "All sunshine makes a desert." Sorrow does teach us a lot. It's a nice sentiment, but this is not what this is talking about. It is no talking about the sorrow of the world, whether licit or elicit. It is not at all. It is talking about a godly sorrow that is very different.
I want you to look at II Corinthians 7 and see the difference. In II Corinthians 7:10, the apostle Paul helps us to understand it. He says this: "For godly sorrow," now it's not the sorrow of the world, "godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of, but the sorrow of the world works death." Listen, you can cry your eyes out about your problems and you can weep all you want about loneliness and about discouragement and about disappointment and out of earnest love, and you can weep all you want about all those things, and you can cry your head off about your unfulfilled lusts and when you're said and done every bit of that worldly sorrow will not bring you life.
There's only one kind of sorrow that brings life and that is godly sorrow, which leads you to what repentance; therefore, we can conclude that it is sorrow over what, sin that is the issue. Godly sorrow. It is godly sorrow, sorrow over sin. The sorrow of the world is useless. It works death where godly sorrow works repentance, which brings salvation, which brings comfort. That's the whole idea. That's the key. Godly sorrow is linked to repentance and repentance is linked to sin.
The issue, beloved, go back to it, Matthew 5:4, the issue here is not being sorry because you're lonely, not being sorry because you're discouraged or disappointed or because you have such an earnest love, or because somebody died. It's not being sorry because you don't get what you want. It's not being sorry because you feel so guilty. It's being sorry because you're a sinner. That's the issue.
You're not mourning here over circumstances, human circumstances. Over sin is what you're mourning about. Remember verse three where the beatitudes all began? Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. What does it mean to be poor in spirit? I told you it's a sense of being spiritually bankrupt. It is the thing that says in my flesh there dwelleth what, no good thing. That's what it is and that's the intellectual part and verse 4 is the emotional part, because your mind is convinced that you are spiritually bankrupt, your emotion takes over and you mourn that bankruptcy. Such are kingdom people: poor in spirit is a recognition that we have nothing and that we are nothing and that we can do nothing and it results in being a crouching cowering beggar who has no resource, no capacity to help himself, and what He is saying, our Lord is saying in verse 3 is happy is the man who is absolutely destitute spiritually, who is nothing but a beggar who has to plead for mercy and grace because it's that kind of man who gets the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven.
So what are we saying, people? Listen to it. Entrance into His kingdom begins with an overwhelming helpless feeling of spiritual poverty. It begins with a sense of the bankruptcy of the soul. That's where it begins. As long as you live on this earth you will never enter God's kingdom unless you have a sense of spiritual bankruptcy and if you are a child of the kingdom you'll never loose that sense, but in your flesh continually dwells no go thing. As long as we live we have the same sense of spiritual poverty. If it wasn't there at the start you're not a Christian. If it's not there now it's questionable whether you are a Christian, because it's part of kingdom people.
George McDonald refers to this principle in his exposition on the Sermon on the Mount. He says this: "The poor, the beggars in spirit, the humble men of heart, the unambitious, the unselfish, those who never despise men and never seek their praises, the lowly who seek nothing to admire in themselves; therefore, cannot seek to be admired of others. The men who give themselves away these are the free men of the kingdom. These are the citizens of the new Jerusalem, the men who are aware of their own essential poverty, not the men who are poor in friends, or poor in influence, or poor in requirements, or poor in money, but those who are poor in spirit, who feel themselves poor creatures who know nothing to be pleased with themselves for and desire nothing to make them think well of themselves, who know they need much to make their life worth living, to make their existence a good thing, to make them fit to live. These humble ones are poor, whom the Lord calls blessed."
McDonald says, "When a man says I am low and worthless then the gate of the kingdom begins to open to him." Such poverty in spirit, beloved, in verse 3 will lead to mourning in verse 4, true mourning over sin. Only the beggar can say, "Woe is me for I am undone." Only the beggar can say, "Depart from me for I am a sinful man, O Lord." Look at David. After his terrible sin with Bathsheba, after he had managed Uriah, her husband, was murdered, he not only saw how poverty stricken he was, he not only saw he was absolutely hopeless, that in sin did his mother conceive him in Psalm 51, but he mourned so deeply that it wrenched his soul to its very depths.
Look at Job. Job had everything. Do you know how rich Job was? Job was so rich that in Chapter 29:6 it says he washed his doorstep with butter. That's rich! Also makes your doorstep very slippery! Job had everything, but the man was never really made a man until he comes clear to the 42nd chapter after having God flatten him, until he realized he was nothing and he says, "I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth Thee," and his response, "I abhor myself and I repent in dust and ashes." Anybody whoever gets a true picture of who he is related to God has that same reaction. That's the only way to the kingdom. You've got to crawl. The word mourning here in this verse is the strongest of all the Greek words. It is reserved for mourning for the dead. The passionate lament for one loved deeply and lost.
In the Septuagint it is used of Jacob's grief when he believed Joseph, his son, was dead, Genesis 37. It's used in the gospels in Mark, for example, in Chapter 16:10, "And she went," and this is, of course, after the death of Christ, "And told those who had been with Him as they mourned and wept." It's the same word. It's the strongest word that you use when someone is bewailing the death of one greatly beloved. You find it in Revelation 18, as the evil system bewails the death of its commerce in the great Babylon's destruction in the