Blessed Are Those Who Mourn (Matthew 5:4)

Here’s my message from this past Sunday, as I looked at the second “Beatitude” from Matthew 5:4. Subscribe to our podcast here. You can also see both the video and hear the audio on our website.

Stephen Curry of the Golden State Warriors will surely go down as the greatest shooter in NBA history. Recently ESPN shared a photo of Curry holding his three-year old son, Canon, with this quote from the all-star:

“He’s got a hoop on his wall, and he’s been testing his range a little bit. And I try to give him some pointers on how to shoot, but then he won’t listen. And he’ll tell me, ‘No, this is how I’m doing it.’” (Stephen Curry)

Cute, right? But wouldn’t you say little Canon Curry sounds quite a bit like us? Last week, Aaron kicked off this look at the Beatitudes with the first, found in verse 3 of Matthew 5, “Blessed are the poor in Spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Too much of the time, aren’t we like stubborn little kids? We’re not poor. We don’t need help. We’re strong. We’re good. We got this. 

But children of the kingdom don’t think that way. Do they? We know we’re fallen. We know we’re frail. We’re spiritually bankrupt. We can do nothing on our own. We’re in desperate need of God and His grace. We understand that, if we’re followers of Jesus. We’re poor.

But today, we’re gonna see that we have to go beyond even that realization. We’re going to see how this next Beatitude challenges us - especially today, as well as what would change if we really grasped it. But before that, I want us to again think a bit more about how these opening verses of the Sermon on the Mount are meant to function.

What the Beatitudes Are

Now after my first sermon in this series, one of my kids asked me about this word I kept repeating, one they didn’t know, that had left them completely confused. Beatitude. What’s that? Well, it refers to each of these eight pronouncements Jesus makes here. Pronouncements about what people are truly blessed. And that’s where we get that term, from the Latin word for “blessed.” 

But “blessed” is a word that’s overused and under-understood today. Wouldn’t you say? Author Christine Gordon reminds us in a TGC article that “#Blessed May Not Mean What You Think.” It may not look like what we see on Instagram. She says, imagine a mom who just lost her job, who’s worried about paying her mortgage, actually sharing that on social media. Would she use the hashtag notblessed? Or what about a mother posting online about her child who “lives with a myriad of birth-related problems?” Should she end it with the #cursed?

Gordon, pointing to Luke’s similar list of those who are blessed, says this: 

“As we read Jesus’s description, we notice… the blessing he describes isn’t shallow, passing, or temporary. It’s a deep, enduring sense of satisfaction. This isn’t the good feeling that warms us for a moment and then fades. This is a rooted, deep-in-your-gut joy that doesn’t shift with circumstances.” (Christine Gordon)

This blessing blows the beach pics or the OOTD snapshots away. But what Jesus describes here may not even sound like blessings at all. Today, those who are blessed, those who as Aaron put it last week, “are experiencing the fullness of His favor,” will actually shed a lot of tears.

But I’m jumping ahead. For each of these, we see a formula, don’t we? You see the qualities of those who are blessed. As well as the promises for those who are blessed. This week, we see the blessed mourn. And they’ll be comforted. When we get to the end, we even see that “those who are persecuted for righteousness sake” are among the blessed. Because they’ll receive a kingdom. So catch this: there’s someone hungry and cold in a Russian prison right now. And he or she may be the most blessed person on earth. 

But I also want us to talk about the function of these words. They first describe the citizens of the kingdom of heaven. They paint a picture - a beautiful one - of what followers of Jesus look like. Not what super-holy, all-pro Christians look like. But what should describe all those who are blessed. 

And they’re not meant to be a checklist - one where you hit all the boxes and earn your way to heaven or give yourself a reason to be proud. These are what the Holy Spirit of God does in those who are is.

These words second drive us to the King of heaven. To the One who exhibits all of these characteristics perfectly. To the One who rescues us completely, as we struggle to live them out at all. The Beatitudes drive us to the King. For the first time. Throughout our lives. 

These are the two main functions of these verses. To describe the citizens of the kingdom of heaven. And to drive us to the King of heaven. Let’s humbly sit before these words for the next several weeks and fast and pray that God would work them powerfully among us. 

How This Beatitude Challenges

I want to turn now to how this Beatitude, Matthew 5, verse 4, challenges us. Christians look up at their Father and say, “I could never make a shot. I need so much help. I need you to lift me up to the rim.” Isn’t that what we learn in verse 3? We’re “poor in Spirit.” But as that truth works its way from our heads to our hearts, it begins to make our stomachs churn. 

In Ray Ortlund’s fantastic book, The Death of Porn, that I can’t recommend highly enough, he quotes Festo Kivengere, a Ugandan pastor, who speaks of a man who grasped just how poor he was. He writes,

“I could tell you a case of a man back home, forty-five years old – a pagan, illiterate, who knew nothing about Christ. Then he was brought by grace, through the preaching of the Christians, into the presence of Jesus and Him crucified; and that man was so changed that within a month, when impure thoughts came into his heart he literally went outside from a meeting and vomited. What a standard, what sensitivity! A man steeped in paganism, with no Bible training, no background. And now in the light of Calvary, in that smashing, invading love, this man is taken, re-created, renewed, his conscience is so clean that when impure thoughts came he even went and physically vomited. A sensitivity had been created. The Holy Spirit had renewed the personality. Is this your case?” (Festo Kivengere)

There is a progression here in these Beatitudes. Children of the kingdom, as verse 3 teaches us, comprehend their great poverty. And as verse 4 shows us, it leads them to feel a certain way. Healthy people get sick. Or as it’s put here, they get sad.

Now that’s the meaning of the word here used in Matthew 5:4, but it’s stronger than that. The blessed grieve. The blessed, yes, “mourn.” But that’s a feeling, one today we try to avoid at all costs. Don’t we? We distract ourselves from suffering, what’s going on in here, as well as what’s out the window. We numb ourselves rather than face ourselves - our sin - that we see in the mirror. And the injustice that’s all around us. Rather than own our wrongdoing, we go right to calling out wrongdoers. Now there’s a place for that. But as Jesus is going to say soon, we’ve got to get the log out of our eye first. Before we judge our neighbor. Before we condemn our brother. And that hurts. A lot. 

We don’t like to mourn these days in America. Over sin. Over suffering. And where it all leads  - to death. We don’t like to think about it. Or talk about it. We like closed caskets. To throw around euphemisms. We’re not good at mourning. But the last couple of years have made that pretty hard, right? As systemic injustice hit the news ticker seemingly every day. As COVID rocked our world really hard. 

In 2020, the Harvard Business Review posted an article entitled, “That Discomfort You’re Feeling is Grief.” It interviewed grief expert David Kessler. And he tries to help the reader comprehend what it is she’s experiencing. But the title is so striking. We’re not used to that feeling, are we? We avoid it at all costs. Grief, sadness, mourning - it’s all so foreign to us. 

But Jesus says here that it’s a characteristic of someone who’s healthy, of someone who’s blessed. “Blessed are those who mourn.” But before I get to that, here’s where we can’t take this. Christians aren’t meant to walk around with long faces. Acting like we’re Eeyore from the Winnie the Poo. No. 

We have the rest of the verse! But we can’t bounce around all the time like Tigger, either. In this fallen world. There’s too much sadness. No. There’s something wrong if we don’t mourn.

Well, what kind of mourning are we talking about? First, sins inside us. The sins in our lives. As individuals. Those in thought, word, and deed. The things we do or don’t do. The things we feel. If we’re going to learn anything in the Sermon on the Mount, it’s that the real problem is in the heart. If we’re disciples of Jesus Christ, we mourn over our sin. We don’t minimize it. Justify it. Shift it. Or deny it. We own it. And we grieve it. The Holy Spirit grieves over our sins, Ephesians 4:30 tells us. And it follows - if we don’t grieve, He grieves all the more. 

Christians fall on their knees, like Isaiah, before God’s holiness, and cry out, “Woe is me!” We call out, with Paul, “I’m a wretched man!” We don’t laugh off our sins. We weep over them. 

Second, sins among us. Here in the church. Among the people of God. In this covenant family. In all those who call Jesus King. We have to grieve. Or something is tragically wrong. That’s what Paul feels, when he’s trying to shake the Corinthians into reality in 1 Corinthians 5. Sexual immorality is running rampant in their church, and they’re not that concerned. He cries out, “And you are arrogant! Ought you not rather to mourn?” Whether we’re talking about lust or gossip or disunity or blasphemy - in our midst - it should make us grieve.

Third, sins around us. Out there. In the world. How does the apostle Paul view lost people, out in the world, hurting themselves and others? Yes, it makes him mad. But even more, it makes him sad. Look at what he says, and models, to the Philippians, and to us. He speaks of false teachers. Of sinners. And he says, 

Phil. 3:18 For many, of whom I have often told you and now tell you even with tears, walk as enemies of the cross of Christ. 

Phil. 3:19 Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things.    

Whether we’re watching the evening news, scanning through Instagram, listening in at the water cooler, or chatting at the mailbox with a neighbor - we are going to come face to face with sin. And our reaction mustn’t be to rage, but to grieve.

Too much over the last few years, we’ve given free rein to our sin. We’ve not grieved our own. And then we’ve looked at our neighbors’ with glee. Instead of with sorrow. And that doesn’t look good on a disciple of Jesus. We are to mourn over sin.

But that’s often where talk over this Beatitude stops. But we have to get to where all sin leads. To suffering. Again, back at the beginning, the fall happened. Sin entered the world. And, although we still see God’s good creation, everywhere we turn, sin has affected it at all. This is not the way things are supposed to be. And as we look at it all, it should make us mourn. 

Yes, that includes death. Of course, Christians that die go to heaven, and we take some comfort in that. But the pain is real. Death isn’t natural - no matter what any funeral director tries to get you to think. 

But this includes all suffering. Suffering you’re going through as a person. It’s ok to grieve. My wife’s cancer that we never saw coming. Your divorce that you tried hard to prevent. It grieves Jesus. It should grieve you. It’s ok to cry. It’s fitting to cry.

Suffering that’s in our body, that’s in the church. We’re to “weep with those who weep.” A miscarriage. A car accident. Mental illness. Domestic violence. It should make us mourn.

Suffering that’s out in the world. There was no injustice in the garden at all. And there won’t be any in the new world that’s to come. No more war. Like what’s going in Ukraine. And the other ways we humans make others hurt. But we’re not just talking about what theologians call “moral evil,” what we fallen people do, but also what flows out of a fallen world - “natural evil.” Destruction from tornadoes and earthquakes and fires and floods. It should make us grieve.

We’re in the season of Lent, the time leading up to Easter, where we’re told by the church calendar to sing the blues. Where we reflect on our sins and the suffering all around us. And we grieve in preparation for the hope of Easter. This is what the children of the kingdom do. They grieve. It should feel natural to us. With all the talk about emotional intelligence and emotional health that’s going on in our day, we still don’t seem to get this. Sin and suffering should result in sorrow or something’s really, really messed up.

Musician and author Michael Card reflected some time back on the two English homophones - words that sound alike but with different spellings - morning and mourning. And he wrote this:

“Perhaps what links the two words together is the fact that they both represent moments when we ‘wake up.’ Clearly morning is the time when we open our eyes to the hope of a new day; but in another, deeper sense, a time of mourning can also be an occasion when we ‘come to our senses’ and with new, tear-cleansed eyes see the world as we have never seen it before.” (Michael Card)

As Christians, we’ve been made new. We see the world with new eyes. And hear me: that means those eyes should often be filled with tears. I love the way it was put by Don Carson.

“The Christian is to be the truest realist. He reasons that death is there, and must be faced. God is there, and will be known by all as Savior or Judge. Sin is there, and it is unspeakably ugly and black in the light of God’s purity. Eternity is there, and every living human being is rushing toward it. God’s revelation is there, and the alternatives it presents will come to pass: life or death, pardon or condemnation, heaven or hell. These are realities which will not go away. The man who lives in the light of them, and rightly assesses himself and his world in the light of them, cannot but mourn. He mourns for the sins and blasphemies of his nation. He mourns for the erosion of the very concept of truth. He mourns over the greed, the cynicism, the lack of integrity. He mourns that there are so few mourners.” (D.A. Carson)

But because we’re Christians, we certainly don’t stop there. Because there’s the rest of the verse. “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” We have this hope, don’t we, church? Of Psalm 30:5 — “Weeping (our mourning) may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning.” 

Now I have to give another caveat before I go on. The fact that there’s joy, and comfort to be found, doesn’t mean that we take on the other common Christian persona. We throw on a cheesy grin. We sing only happy-clappy songs. 

No. If you’ve heard anything I said, this much should be obvious. Christians can’t play the fiddle while the world is burning. But we have this fire within us. This living hope.

That we’ll be “comforted.” In both sin and suffering. We have this hope of salvation for our sin. Comfort, forgiveness. For you and me. We take our sins to Jesus. And we experience the forgiveness found in Him. His perfect life given to us. Pronounced righteous in His sight. His sacrificial death given to us, as well. And we’re forgiven of sins, past, present, and future. We run to Jesus just like the prodigal son, away from the pigs, away from the slime, and into our Father’s arms. And there we experience His welcome, and His comfort.

We also experience comfort in our suffering. Do we not? In our pain? We have the Holy Spirit with us. The presence of Jesus who will never leave. Not just in our sin, but in the effects of living in a fallen world. Illness. Addiction. Abandonment. Depression. Whatever we go through. Comfort is promised to us. Not to those who dull or deny their pain. But to those who face it. They see His face right there in it with them. And that brings such hope!

We look around us, among the people of God, and we see people who also need His embrace - in their suffering and sin. And we want to share it with them. "This comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.” We want to tell them about it. We want to show it to them. We seek to be Jesus’s hands and feet. 

And we also are compelled as we look out into our world, to take the healing, comforting message of Jesus, out there, as well. Mourning doesn’t have to last forever. There’s rejoicing to be found. Jesus calls out, “Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” We come - even run to that - and we seek to share that. We point to it. We carry that rest to those around us. In our sin, in our suffering, we say, “Run into His arms! There’s comfort there! Come see what we’ve found!”  

Now, yes, this is a rest that lies in the future. It says, “They shall be comforted.” One day, sin will be no more. All suffering will cease. We’ll be in a new heavens and a new earth. There will be perfect peace and justice. As Revelation 7:17 says, “God will wipe every tear from their eyes.” And as chapter 21 of that book goes on, “Death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” That’s in our future - if we are His - full, forever, comfort.

But that “shall be” in verse 4 - it’s not just communicating that this is in the future. It’s communicating that this is certain. We can bank on it. If we’re a mourner, we’ll have His embrace. And that’s talking, yes, about down the road, but also about here and now. The Kingdom is coming. But it’s also come. 

And all those who trust the King get to experience His embrace here and now. Not just in the “not yet” but in the “already.” In our sin and suffering, we can feel His comfort today. 

I don't know about you, but this has felt like the most difficult period of my life. And I’ve felt His comfort. I know you have, too. I’ve told people recently, the last couple of years - heck, the last couple of months - have been brutal. But I am still walking around with joy! I don’t know how to explain that other than that His comforting presence is real and near. This, my friends, is what our dear king provides. 

But we don’t get to the morning - where joy is found - before the mourning over sin and suffering. Paul Miller says, “The very thing we are afraid of, our brokenness, is the door to our Father’s heart.” I like the way Jemar Tisby has put it: 

“It feels counterintuitive, but the more acquainted we become with our brokenness and woundedness, the more we open up the possibility of wholeness and healing.” (Jemar Tisby)

Brokenness and wholeness. Woundedness and healing. Healthy people. Christian people. Experience them both. We live in that tension that ultimately feels like rest. Every week in the Columbia Tribune, there is this page written by the science director of CPS that’s geared toward kids. And I always read it. Because it’s awesome. This week he talked about throwing up. Since I know you want to talk about it more. And why our bodies do it. 

Mike Szydlowski explains that it’s our bodies doing us a favor. They’re helping us “get rid of something (our) body feels is harmful to (us).” Healthy bodies vomit. And that thing we all hate to do actually protects us. Only “rodents”, he says, “lack the ability to throw up.” And he explains that’s “why rodent poisons work so well.”

If sin makes us sick, if it makes us weep, it means we’re not dead. And not heading that way. It means we’re alive. We can feel. We’re healthy. We’re not rats. And that’s a really good thing. To cry and not just be smiling all the time. But the kindness of Jesus fills us up. And gives us joy! 

But sometimes I fear in America we don’t live in that tension at all. We are caught somehow between. That’s why we decided to preach a Psalm once a month in Karis. Because in God’s song book, you get songs of praise, where we express joy in the Lord. Along with Psalms of lament, where we express sorrow over sin and suffering. And beg Him to help us trust. 

But we tend to struggle with both of those songs, I’m afraid, in America. One thing we can learn from the black church is the ability to sing both and from the heart. The black church has a long history of spirituals calling for freedom from suffering - where we ended up getting the blues. Along with a treasure trove of jubilant gospel songs of praise. It’s in the place of ease, of privilege, of earthly comfort where we can’t really comprehend lament and also, of course, can’t fully experience joy. I like the way Henri Nouwen once put it:

“We tend to stay away from mourning and dancing. Too afraid to cry, too shy to dance… we become narrow-minded complainers, avoiding pain and also true human joy… while we live in a world subject to the evil one, we belong to God. Let us mourn, and let us dance.” (Henri Nouwen)

COVID has been an equalizer, has it not? It’s brought suffering to nearly every door. It’s pulled sin out of each of our hearts. It’s hit us with grief, an emotion we’ve avoided too long. And with it, and opportunity to run to His comfort. David Gibson writes, “Death invites you to be a person of depth. Only someone who knows how to weep will really know what it means to laugh.” Let’s embrace both, shall we? And find Jesus there.

How This Beatitude Changes

I want to end by going back to what I said was the function of these Beatitudes, and apply it specifically to the verse at hand. It describes citizens of the kingdom of heaven. It drives us to the King of heaven.

It describes citizens of the kingdom of heaven. It paints a picture of this countercultural community Jesus is calling to Himself. If these words are true that we see here in verse 4, what should we look like? We should be characterized by humility, first of all. We know we’re poor. And it makes us sad. We have no need to defend ourselves. We’re even worse than others think. We’re in over our heads. We know that’s true.  

And second of all, we should be known for compassion. We need God’s grace, so we’re gracious with others. We know our hurts, so we want to relieve others’, too.

Third, we should be known for justice. Don’t you think? If we know that comfort is coming, and has broken in to today, we should be dispensers of that healing. And defenders of the hurting. We want His kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven. Right?

Fourth, we should be characterized by hope. We know this world is broken. But a new one is to come. Therefore, we don’t despair. And we can’t be fully broken ourselves. We point others to His kingdom. And the rest in His arms. We’ve been blessed. And to bless, after all. I love this quote from Yale philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff:

“Who then are the mourners?” …those who have caught a glimpse of God’s new day, who ache with all their being for that day’s coming, and who break into tears when confronted with its absence… the mourners are aching visionaries” (Nicholas Wolterstorff)

This verse also drives us to the King of heaven. Jesus grieves. The fun fact most of you probably know is the Bible’s shortest verse. “Jesus wept.” When? When His friend Lazarus had died. And He knew He was about to raise him from the dead. Jesus didn’t cry without hope. He cried because it wasn’t the way things were supposed to be.

When else do we see Jesus grieve? At the end of Matthew, when He looks over Jerusalem. He laments over her sin. Jesus is about to die, to bring forgiveness from the cross, but He still grieves. That sin still remains. And that many would reject His salvation. He weeps for those who die, and for the sin that brings it about.

Jesus is the “man of sorrows.” Who is “acquainted with grief.” Who knows our pain. And also has provided a way out of it. And He brings us through it to comfort. We can’t finish this message without looking at the passage that Christ’s words no doubt point back to - in Isaiah 61. 

Is. 61:1  The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me,

because the LORD has anointed me

to bring good news to the poor;

he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,

to proclaim liberty to the captives,

and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;

Is. 61:2 to proclaim the year of the LORD’S favor,

and the day of vengeance of our God;

to comfort all who mourn;

Is. 61:3 to grant to those who mourn in Zion—

to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes,

the oil of gladness instead of mourning,

the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit;

that they may be called oaks of righteousness,

the planting of the LORD, that he may be glorified.     

Elsewhere, in Luke, Jesus quotes of this passage and says that it’s fulfilled right there in Him. Let this Beatitude drive us to our king - to the One who knows what it means to mourn, who offers us deep and lasting comfort.

Those heartbroken over suffering and sin experience the fullness of His favor, because they have the hope and promise of the consoling embrace of God. This is what Matthew 5:4 means. Lent is here. Lamenting is healthy. But it gives way to rejoicing. Easter is coming! Those who mourn will be comforted. Let’s pray, Karis.