REVIEW
“The Sermon on the Mount is Jesus’ description of what Christ wants his followers to be and to do” (John Stott, 15).
FLIP CHART: Spiritual Formation happens when we Concentrate on a sin problem or character flaw; Choose biblically; Reflect on our choices; Confess failures and celebrate successes.
We must avoid being “paralyzed by grace.”
FLIP CHART: SOM’S KEY VERSE, GOAL, MOTTO
But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness …. (Matthew 6:33a).
The law sends us to Christ for justification; Christ sends us back to the law for sanctification.
FLIP CHART: Show “window pane” of the 8 beatitudes.
“The Beatitudes do not come at the end, they come at the beginning of the Sermon, and I do not hesitate to say that unless we are perfectly clear about them we should go no further.” (MLJ, 23)
LAST WEEK – Mt. 5:3:
Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of God.
Free translation of the first beatitude: “God applauds the shrinking, cowering, beggarly poor in spirit, the spiritual zeroes who realize they are empty before God, spiritually bankrupt and cannot save themselves for theirs is membership in the Kingdom of Heaven that is present wherever what God wants done is done, around us and within us (the range of His effective will).”
INTRODUCTION:
OUTLINE FOR TODAY:
1. Defining Biblical “Mourning” Over Sin
2. Why Don’t Christians Mourn Over Sin Today?
3. An Example of Biblical Mourning
4. What Comfort Comes from Mourning?
TABLE ACTIVITY: List the 8 Beatitudes in the exact order they are given in Matthew 5 – pure in heart, hunger and thirst for righteousness, merciful, poor in spirit, peacemaker, meek, persecuted, mourn.
Why do you think “Blessed are they who mourn” is placed second?
READ THE BEATITUDES:
3“Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
4Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
5Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the earth.
6Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be filled.
7Blessed are the merciful,
for they will be shown mercy.
8Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they will see God.
9Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called sons of God.
10Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
11“Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. 12Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
I. DEFINING BIBLICAL “MOURNING” OVER SIN
“Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted.”
“Of the nine terms used for sorrow, the one used here (pentheo, mourn) is the strongest, the most severe. It represents the deepest, most heart-felt grief, and was generally reserved for grieving over the death of a loved one. It is used in the Septuagint for Jacob’s grief when he thought his son Joseph was killed by a wild animal (Gen. 37:34). It is used of the disciples’ mourning for Jesus before they knew he was raised from the dead (Mark 16:10).” (MacArthur, 152)
This is the most intensive of the nine verbs employed in the New Testament for mourning, and it is continuous. (Hughes, 30)
The first Beatitude is intellectual. We are to understand, confess, admit and acknowledge a fact about ourselves, that we are spiritual zeroes, that we have nothing to bring to God. The second Beatitude is emotional. Here we mourn over our sin.
FLIP CHART ACTIVITY: Write “Mourn” in big black letters in the center of the chart. Then ask, “What words come to your mind when you think of “mourning?” Write those words around mourn, use green or blue.
The “mourning” in this verse refers to “mourning for sin.” How bad is sin?
QUESTION: What verses from the Bible indicate the sinfulness of sin, the ugliness of sin?
Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned. (Romans 5:12)
Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me. (Psalm 51:5)
How much less man, who is vile and corrupt, who drinks up evil like water! (Job 15:16)
We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. (Isa. 53:6)
But we are all as an unclean [thing], and all our righteousnesses [are] as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away. (Isa. 64:6, KJV)
I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. (Romans 7:18)
As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins . . . All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. (Ephesians 2:1, 3)
At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another. (Titus 2:3)
You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. (Rev. 3:17)
No One is Righteous Jews and Gentiles alike are all under sin. As it is written: (SOUL) “There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.” (WORDS) “Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit.” “The poison of vipers is on their lips.” “Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.” (DEEDS) “Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know.” “There is no fear of God before their eyes.” (Romans 3:9-18)
So it appears that we are not only a “worm” as we saw last week but we are dirty, filthy, sickly, putrid worms. We are the worst kind of worms.
ILLUSTRATION: Charles Colson, in his brilliant book of essays Who Speaks for God? tells of watching a segment of television’s 60 Minutes in which host Mike Wallace interviewed Auschwitz survivor Yehiel Dinur, a principal witness at the Nuremberg war-crime trials. During the interview, a film clip from Adolph Eichmann’s 1961 trial was viewed that showed Dinur entering the courtroom and coming face to face with Eichmann for the first time since being sent to Auschwitz almost twenty years earlier. Stopped cold, Dinur began to sob uncontrollably and then fainted while the presiding judge pounded his gavel to order. “Was Dinur overcome by hatred? Fear? Horrid memories?” asks Colson, who then answers: No; it was none of these. Rather, as Dinur explained to Wallace, all at once he realized Eichmann was not the godlike army officer who had sent so many to their deaths. This Eichmann was an ordinary man. “I was afraid about myself,” said Dinur. “I saw that I am capable to do this. I am … exactly like he.” Wallace’s subsequent summation of Dinur’s terrible discovery – “Eichmann is in all of us” – – is a horrifying statement; but it indeed captures the central truth about man’s nature. For as a result of the Fall, sin is in each of us – – not just the susceptibility to sin, but sin itself.” (Hughes, 25).
II. WHY DON’T CHRISTIANS WEEP OVER SIN TODAY?
“We need, then, to observe that the Christian life, according to Jesus, is not all joy and laughter. Some Christians seem to imagine that, especially if they are filled with the Spirit, they must wear a perpetual grin on their face and be continuously boisterous and bubbly. How unbiblical can one become? No. In Luke’s version of the Sermon Jesus added to this beatitude a solemn woe: ‘Woe to you that laugh now.’ The truth is that there are such things as Christian tears, and too few of us ever weep them” (Stott, 41).
TABLE ACTIVITY: Why is it that generally we do not mourn, shed Christian tears, over our sins, the sins in the church, the sins in society?
A. A LOW VIEW OF THE SINFULNESS OF SIN
B. A LOW VIEW OF THE HOLINESS OF GOD
We see sin mainly as it effect us.
ILL: Nekhlyudov, a Russian prince, while on leave from the army commits fornication with a young peasant girl being raised by his two aunts. Ten years later, while in public life, he sits on a jury that tries this young woman, and though innocent, finds her guilty of murder and sentenced to Siberia. The plot of the book tells Nekhlyudov’s struggle to find forgiveness for this sin. He tells her that he has found God and says, “You cannot imagine to what extent I feel guilty towards you.” He asks for her forgiveness and says that he wants to marry her to atone for his sin. She responds, “You go away. …. You have no business here …. You want to save yourself through me. You’ve got pleasure out of me in this life, and you want to save yourself through me in the life to come. You are disgusting to me — the whole of your dirty fat mug. Go! Go!” she screams. (Resurrection, 179-180)
In the book I don’t see any indication of the main character reflecting on the holiness of God, the greatness of God or the affront his sin has been to God and mourning his sin because he has offended God.
GOD IS HOLY:
This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. (I John 1:5)
Exalt the LORD our God and worship at his footstool; he is holy. (Psalm 99:5, 9)
The LORD is righteous in all his ways and loving toward all he has made. (Psalm 145:17)
HIS HOLINESS IS SOMETIMES REVEALED IN WRATH
God is a righteous judge, a God who expresses his wrath every day [angry with the wicked every day]. (Psalm 7:11)
The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness. (Romans 1:18)
SEEING HIS HOLINESS OVERWHELMS MANKIND
In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted …., “Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty.” (Isaiah 6:1, 5)
“My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.” (Job 42:5-6)
C. A MISUNDERSTANDING OF OUR STANDING WITH GOD
But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:7)
As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. (Ephesians 3:1)
For if, when we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! (Romans 5:9)
D. CHRISTIANS MISUNDERSTAND THE HEART OF GOD
Yet they rebelled and grieved his Holy Spirit. So he turned and became their enemy and he himself fought against them. (Isaiah 63:10)
And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. (Eph. 4:30)
The LORD saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain. (Gen. 6:5-6)
III. AN EXAMPLE OF BIBLICAL MOURNING
ACTIVITY: Reading – Narrator, Pharisee, Tax Collector
To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’ “But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’ “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.” (Luke 18:9-14).
QUESTION: What words could we use to describe the mourning of the Pharisee? The tax collector? (Write the adjectives that describe the mourning of the tax collector on the flip chart.)
IV. WHAT COMFORT COMES FROM MOURNING?
“Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted.”
QUESTION: Ask, “What comfort comes from mourning?” (If I have time, this can be a table discussion or a two-minute discussion in groups of 2 or 3.
FLIP CHART: Use the flip chart and write down the answers re comfort.
COMFORT, BECAUSE OUR SINS ARE CLEANSED:
Justification: “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. (Luke 18:14)
Pardon and Forgiveness: Who is a God like you, who pardons sin and forgives the transgression of the remnant of his inheritance? You do not stay angry forever but delight to show mercy. (Micah 7:18)
Blotted out / not remembered: “I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more. (Isa. 43:25)
Swept away: I have swept away your offenses like a cloud, your sins like the morning mist. Return to me, for I have redeemed you.” (Isa. 44:22)
White as Snow: “Come now, let us reason together,” says the LORD. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool. (Isa. 1:18)
Purified: But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. (I John 1:7)
Removed completely: As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. (Psalm 103:12)
COMFORT, BECAUSE WE HAVE GOD’S PRESENCE
“This is the one I esteem: he who is humble and contrite in spirit, and trembles at my word. (Isaiah 66:2)
The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. (Psalm 34:18)
For this is what the high and lofty One says — he who lives forever, whose name is holy: “I live in a high and holy place, but also with him who is contrite and lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite. (Isaiah 57:15)
SO WHAT?????
1. We are not only worms, but worms infected by sin and our horrid
condition should cause us to be broken-hearted.
2. As Christians we must continue to mourn when we sin, because we have not only gone against His holiness but also grieved Him and caused His heart to be filled with pain.
3. God hears us when we are broken-hearted, contrite and mourn over our sin and He forgives us and wipes our slate clean.
4. God not only forgives us but is pleased to dwell with us, be close to us when He sees us truly contrite because of our sin.