Mourning

I think that most of us have grown up being told, in one way or other, that we are to pursue the good life. We have also been told what that is supposed to look like. Well, as with everything else, we need to examine such things using the Gospel. It helps to note that Jesus gives some pointers on what the good life actually looks like. One place He does that is in that list that we have come to call the Beatitudes. This is, in part, Jesus’ idea of the good life, the blessed life.

This morning we’re going to spend a little time exploring Jesus’ idea of the good life. We’re not going to look at all of those listed blessings - just one. And this is the one that I have in mind.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Matthew 5.4

We’re going to take a look at mourning. That may seem to be an odd topic to take a look at, particularly if we’re talking about enjoying the good life. But it’s Jesus who includes it in His list of blessings.

Now, of course, before we go any further, we should take a moment to define what mourning is. It’s not complicated. Mourning is an expression of sadness, grief, lament, regret.

A little reflection on that definition of mourning in the context of Jesus’ list of the qualities that make up the blessed life should lead to a question. Why would Jesus want us to mourn? Why would He want us to express sadness, grief, lament, regret?

Now, I’m pretty sure that a call for mourning is not what most people these days would expect to find on a list of qualities that make up the good life. And that’s why I pose my question about Jesus evidently wanting us to mourn. How is that part of the good life? It’s that question that I want to answer this morning.

Now, here’s a beginning step, a preliminary answer, when it comes to that question. Jesus wants us to mourn because God mourns. Jesus expects us to imitate the Father, and mourning is one of His qualities that we are to imitate.

Here’s an example of God’s mourning that comes from the days of Noah.

The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. Genesis 6.5-6

Here’s another example. This one is from the days of Samuel.

The word of the Lord came to Samuel: “I regret that I have made Saul king, for he has turned back from following me and has not performed my commandments.” 1 Samuel 15.10–11

And Isaiah wrote this about God’s mourning.

In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them; in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old. But they rebelled and grieved his Holy Spirit; therefore he turned to be their enemy, and himself fought against them. Isaiah 63.9–10

These are some examples of God expressing sadness, grief, lament, regret. And they provide us with the beginnings of an answer to our question. We are to mourn because God mourns.

However, we need more than just the fact that God mourns. We need to know why He mourns. The point of Jesus’ teaching is not that we merely imitate God’s behavior. He wants us to imitate His heart. So, why does God mourn?

As you look at what caused God’s mourning in those Scriptures that I just read, you can understand why God mourned. Things were not working out as He desired.

In Noah’s day, God was not getting what He wanted from His creation. Instead of people who were working at living holy lives, just about everyone loved what was evil.

Saul wasn’t following hard after God as a king should and, in that way, lead Israel. No, instead he turned away.

And then, in the last example, God cared for Israel in its suffering. But instead of responding with gratitude and faithfulness, which is what He wanted, Israel rebelled against Him.

In each case, things weren’t turning out in a way that God had desired. And so, He mourned. And that is something that Jesus wants us to imitate.

We have an answer to our original question: Why does Jesus want us to mourn? He wants us to mourn because this is an appropriate response to how sin has ruined life. Each day, to some degree or other, we experience evil. It is clear to us that life is not the way it’s supposed to be. And one aspect of our response to all of that is to mourn. And we know that this is an appropriate response because it is how the Father responds to the sin and evil that He sees. He mourns.

Jesus wants us to acknowledge the reality of a fallen world and to respond to it in the way that God does. He wants us to mourn.

But that leads to another question. What if someone doesn’t mourn? Is that a problem?

I think that it’s fair to say that most people aren’t aware that mourning, mourning like God mourns, is a good response to the evil they see and experience. And so, they don’t mourn. But that likely means that they are continually surprised by sin. They are surprised as they, once again, get to see its ugliness and are forced to experience its evil, its pain. And for many people, sooner or later, as they repeatedly are surprised by sin, they will be overcome. And that might show as being defeated by it all. Or it might show as being enraged by it all. They did not respond wisely to sin. And it overwhelms them.

Mourning over sin, mourning in a Godly way, is a protection against those pitfalls. It’s a wise way to deal with life in a fallen world. It’s a wise way to respond to the sin that we see all around us, as well as within us. That’s one reason why Jesus includes it in His description of the good life, the blessed life.

But we need to be careful. There is a right way to mourn and a wrong way to mourn. Based on what I have said thus far, you could conclude that mourning is simply an intellectual response to the state of things - something like, ‘Gee, there’s lots of sin. That’s really bad’. But that certainly not what it means to mourn. It’s certainly not how God mourns.

Consider again God’s response to the sin that He witnessed in Noah’s days. What does it say?

… it grieved Him to His heart.’

To mourn is not just a response of the mind. It’s not just thinking, ‘This is bad’. It is also a response of the soul. The affections are involved. There is an emotional element. And this is not news to any of you who have mourned because, in some way or other, things didn’t turn out in the way you wanted.  Remember our definition of mourning. It is an expression of sadness, grief, lament, regret. Those words include emotions.

What Jesus is blessing in that beatitude is not some mental acknowledgement that things are not good. He is blessing the person who laments from the heart because things are not good. He is blessing the person who expresses real mourning, the person who mourns like God does.

And as soon as we include this element of mourning, this emotional aspect, another question pops up. All that is needed to get the mind to acknowledge something is to present a few good arguments. But how do you get a heart to feel? How do you get your emotions to engage?

Doing that is easy when you’re at the funeral of someone you’ve loved. Sadness, grief, lament and maybe even some regret come without any effort then. These are almost automatic responses of the heart. But there are plenty of other kinds of situations, other expressions of evil, that also call for heartfelt mourning. How do we come to mourn in those situations like God has mourned? How do we feel with the heart?

There are those who are quite good at putting on a display of emotion. But that’s all it actually is, a display of emotion, not the real thing. That’s not real mourning. God doesn’t just put on some display. He really feels the sadness. So, how are we to imitate Him in this respect also?

And the answer to that question has to do with your passions. It has to do with what your heart cherishes. Again, when you’re at the funeral of someone you’ve loved, expressing heartfelt mourning is not an issue. Your passions are engaged. This is someone you loved. But you don’t have the same response reading the obituary of someone you’ve never met and know nothing about.

The answer to our question is tied to how our passions are already engaged. The Christian who has a passion for God will mourn when God’s desires for His creation are not met. The Christian who sincerely loves the people around him will mourn when he sees them experiencing more of the evil of this world. The Christian who cares about some unbeliever will mourn when he sees him foolishly pursuing his deadly idols. Expressing the emotions of mourning is about the resident passions of the heart.

Now, to be sure, the intellectual element is necessary. Mourning starts with understanding what’s going on. God’s world is afflicted with the evil of sin. But it is when what the mind knows is touched by the passions of the heart that true mourning will be expressed: sadness, grief, lament, regret. True mourning is something that the mind and the affections do together.

So, to mourn well, to express a Godly mourning in response to the evil that is all around us, there are things to know and things to feel. And that is what you work on to mourn like God does: things to know and things to feel.

Here is one particular place where you can work on developing a Godly mourning, your repentance.

Repentance, true repentance, begins with what you know. There is something that God has said that you have not believed. It might be a command or a promise or something else in the Word. And the Spirit has made it clear to you that you have failed to embrace that part of the Gospel. You have sinned, and you know that. All of that is the intellectual element. It’s something that your mind knows.

But true repentance is also motivated by something emotional. Listen to what Paul wrote.

As it is, I rejoice, not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into repenting. For you felt a godly grief, so that you suffered no loss through us. For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation… 2 Corinthians 7.9–10

Those Corinthian saints were moved to repentance because they grieved over their sin. They felt a Godly grief over what they had done, a grief that resulted in repentance. And what is this Godly grief? It is an emotional response to what you know. It is an emotional response to knowing that you have sinned against God.

So, consider what usually happens when you repent. There is something that you know. You know that you have disobeyed God. That much is made clear to you. The Spirit has made that clear. Good. But is there any feeling that goes with it? Do you feel sorrow, regret over that sin? Now, be careful. I’m not talking about regretting that you got caught or feeling sorrow that your high opinion of yourself has taken a hit or anything like that. Do you feel sorrow that you have insulted the God who has loved you so? Do you feel regret that you have, in that moment of sin, rejected your God and looked to some idol? That’s what Paul means by ‘Godly grief’. It’s what happens when what the mind knows is combined with holy affections of the heart. And true repentance flows out of this Godly grief. This is mourning over sin.

This doesn’t mean that we should collapse into tears whenever we need to repent. But it does mean that we all have some work to do when it comes to having our hearts touched by the evil that our minds are acknowledging. There is room to grow in our ability to mourn - truly mourn - over our sins.

I think that as we learn how to do a better job of mourning when it comes to our own sins, we will do a better job of mourning when it comes to sin elsewhere.

The key, of course, is prayer. Remember, only the Spirit can change a heart, only He can give you the passion for God that you need if you’re going to mourn over sin like God does. It is when He calls you to repent of some sin of yours that you can see the passions of your heart at work. That’s when you can see what’s most important to you. Is your sin simply an embarrassment to your high opinion of yourself? Or do you recognize it as the insult to God that it is. You can see whether you have a passion for yourself or your God when the Spirit calls you to repent.

Now, to be sure, some of you will be able to say that your mourning over sin is true mourning. You aren’t motivated by wanting to look good in the eyes of others or in your own eyes. No, you really want to honor God. There is a true passion for Him and as a result there is a Godly grief over your sin that results in true repentance. Give thanks for the grace of God granted to you so that that is the case.

But it just may be that that isn’t you. Your repentance isn’t motivated by a passion for God. Your repentance just might be an expression of regret that you got caught or the mere mental assent that you blew it and that it is something that you’re supposed to deal with. If this is you, you need to repent of your shallow repentance. You need to ask the Spirit to deal with your heart so that you would have a passion for God that results in Godly grief. This is where you need to work on growing in true mourning, mourning like God mourns.

Now, all of this talk about mourning sounds so dark - though I need to remind you that it is Jesus who brought the topic up. So, it’s important that I include another aspect to our mourning over sin so that we can mourn in a Godly manner. We mourn in hope.

Paul speaks of this with one particular application in mind.

But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. 1 Thessalonians 4.13–14

Paul speaks of mourning the death of someone you have loved. He makes the contrast between how we as Christians can mourn the death of a fellow Christian and how unbelievers mourn a death. And what makes the difference between us and them is that we can hope in a way that they cannot. Even as we mourn, we are waiting for and expecting God to keep His promises. In this case, it’s the promise that we will be re-united with these whom we have loved. Death will not win. So, while talking about mourning can be quite dark, the note of hope provides some light. Yes, there is reason for sadness, grief, lament, regret. But we know that these will not have the last word.

This explains Jesus’ promise in this beatitude.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Matthew 5.4

There is comfort in this life as we hope in God, as we expect Him to keep His promises. The Spirit sees our faith at work and responds with blessings of peace and more. There is comfort in this life. And that leads to comfort in the age to come. When Jesus returns, those evil effects of sin will not just be gone. They will be reversed. They will be completely undone and replaced. And what will replace them will be glorious, glorious beyond imagining. So, yes, we mourn over sin, over all kinds of sin, but we do that in hope, in the hope of what Jesus is doing, in the hope of what He will bring about.

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Revelation 21.3–5

So, even as we mourn with a Godly mourning, we can rejoice. In the midst of all the evil, Jesus is working on fulfilling this promise. He is even using the evil to accomplish His goal. So, we rejoice in what our Savior is doing now and how, in the future, it will result in a life where there will be no reason for any mourning. Sadness, grief, lament, regret - they will all be gone, unnecessary, to be experienced never again. There is comfort in these things as we believe the Gospel.

All of this explains why Jesus includes this mourning in His list of qualities of the good life, the blessed life. To mourn in this way is the wise response to the evil of this world. There is comfort here.