The Beatitudes #3

So this morning we're going to be picking up our study of the Beatitudes. Last week we focused on the first of the Beatitudes in verse 3 and what it means to be poor in spirit. And this week we're going to be moving on to verse 4 where Jesus addresses the issue of mourning and being comforted. My hope is that this sermon will be used by God as medicine to comfort us and also to teach us what we ought to mourn over. Our text is Matthew chapter 5, verses 1 to 12. Would you please stand as we read the word of the Lord? This is the word of the Lord, and it is eternally true. When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. He opened his mouth and began to teach them, saying, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great. For in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. This is the word of the Lord. Again, you may be seated. Now, when we started our study of this section last week, the Beatitudes, we started off by saying that these are...

spiritual statements. These are not statements about our personalities or our inclinations, but that the blessings that are promised here are spiritual blessings. And so last week when we applied that to what it means to be poor in spirit, we saw that those who tend to be down on themselves and tend to feel bad or to take the blame are not the people Jesus is talking about, but rather those who know themselves and see their sins and are aware of them. Those who don't think more highly of themselves than they ought to are those who are poor in spirit and who will inherit the kingdom. Today we come to the second blessing, which is that those who mourn shall be comforted. Now this is a paradox. This is a weird thing. This doesn't seem to follow. It doesn't seem that mourning would lead to comfort. They don't add up.

And this reminds us that the blessings that Jesus is speaking of here are spiritual blessings and not the sort of things that naturally make sense to us or are naturally the sort of things that we would seek out. One of the strange things, you know, in connection with this is where the Bible says it's better to be in the house of mourning than to be in the house of rejoicing. And if you read that, you scratch your head and you're like, why? That doesn't make any, like, what do you mean, Lord? Like, why would it be better to be in the house of mourning than in the house of rejoicing?

It seems to us that rejoicing is desirable or more preferred to mourning, that one we should pursue and one we should avoid. We should pursue rejoicing, we can pursue comfort, but mourning we should work to avoid. And so it doesn't make sense to us. Another way of saying it is that God's blessings don't occur in the sort of circumstances that the world admires, or the sorts of places that we would seek out ourselves. Which one of us, when we look at a house of mourning or a season of sorrow and say, in there, that's where God's blessing is. And as a result, would we enter into it? I think many of us would look and say, that's a house of mourning and I don't want to go into it. And then the Bible says there's blessing in there and we'd say, well, I hope to find blessing in the house of rejoicing or in some other place because I don't want to mourn. And so by the world's standards, mourning is something to be avoided.

Something that doesn't lead to comfort. They're mutually exclusive. They're not connected. But this passage teaches us the opposite, that mourning does lead to comfort. So what is the mourning that Jesus is talking about? It's an intense grief or sadness. It's the sort of thing that you feel when a close loved one dies. That's the sentiment or what's going on here. It's not like, oh man, I didn't make it through the red light, or oh man, you know, we're... We're having something I don't prefer for dinner. Like, nah, I'm kind of bummed out about it. That's not the kind of thing it's talking about here. Here it's talking about the sort of intense grief, that first wave of sorrow. When someone comes and says, I need to talk to you and you should sit down. That sort of sorrow. It's not the sort of sorrow or grief that you can conceal or that will go away with a little passage of time. It's intense. It's guttural. It's uncontrollable.

It's the sort of thing that if you were to think of someone passing away, it's the sort of grief you have when you hear that they passed away, not the sort of grief you have when you get to the funeral. Many times by the time you get to the funeral, you've had the initial sorrow wash over you. And now you're able, while you're still sad, you're able to contain yourself. It's the first type of grief and not the second type of grief. And so we could use this passage to remind us of God's comfort. when we go through circumstances like death. We could say to someone who's grieving, who's just lost a loved one, that those who mourn are blessed and will be comforted. The Bible does, after all, teach us that God comforts the brokenhearted, that the Holy Spirit attends to us and intercedes for us when we don't have words of our own. And so that's not a bad application here. But the mourning that's being spoken of here is not actually the mourning of the death of a loved one.

We understand that sort of mourning, but that's not what Jesus is talking about here. That's not the context. That's not the object of our grief. Maybe a way I could get you to think about it is if I just say, when you think of mourning or intense sadness, what are circumstances come to your mind is when that happens? When is it that you get really upset? I think for most of us, we'd say, yeah, the death of a loved one. That's probably the most obvious one. Maybe some tragic news, some sort of illness. Some sort of relational breakdown. You know what I don't think comes to our minds when we think of intense grieving and sorrow is our sins. And that reality is an indication of how far our hearts have wandered from God. That when we're asked or when we contemplate the reality of mourning, we think of death. We think of some terrible circumstance happening.

where bodily harm or a breakdown, you know, there's a divorce or there's cancer or there's some really bad thing happens. But the idea that we would have that type of response over sin doesn't come to our minds. I'm convinced that one of the lessons of the sorrow that we face in our lives through death or through tragic circumstances, I think one of the lessons God means to teach us is to mourn over our sins. That when we have occasion to weep and mourn in this world over death, over tragedy, that our thoughts of our own sins and the consequences of them, what they deserve, shouldn't be far from our minds. That when someone dies, our thoughts shouldn't simply be aimed at our loss or our sorrow, but of their standing in the presence of God and one day our standing in the presence of God. That that thought should be in the front of our minds and not...

in the back or suppressed, pushed away, off to the side. Grief and sorrow are some of God's most basic tools that he uses to draw us to him. Okay? There's a song we sing here on occasion, More Love to Thee, O Lord. A song I happen to really like this song. And there's this verse in the middle of it that's always struck me as wondering why in the world any of us sing it. Do you know, who thinks they know the verse I'm talking about? You probably know it, John, Abram, the musicians are like, yeah, I know it. I'm going to read you the words, okay? This is verse three or four, okay? It's in the middle of it. And we're singing this to the Lord, and this is what we say. We say, let sorrow do its work. Send, send grief and pain. Sweet are thy, your messengers, sweet their refrain. When they can sing to me.

more love to the Lord to thee, more love to thee, more love to thee. And it's always struck me as one of the strangest verses in all the music we sing, and therefore probably one of the most helpful ones and the most instructive, because we say and we cry out to God, let sorrow do its work with me. Send grief and pain. And what are we asking for when we say that? Well, it's kind of obvious. It's something that we say by faith. When we recognize that it is better to be in the house of mourning and that there's good work that goes on in us when we're sorrowing, when we're sad, when there's intense loss and grief. That God is at work in those times. And yet to our natural senses or to those who don't believe in Jesus Christ and don't submit to his word, nothing could be farther from the truth or what they would desire. Send grief and pain. Let sorrow do its work.

What do you do with sorrow in your life? What do you do when even if you're sorrowing over sin and you realize that you've done something you shouldn't have done? Maybe it's big. Maybe it's small. What do you do? Deny it. Hide it. Distract yourself. Try to make up for it. Defend it. Say it wasn't wrong. It's all kinds of things we do. Do any of us cultivate sorrow over it? Do any of us say, whoa, look what I did. I think I need to sit in this a minute and think about what just happened. I think most of us are as quick as we can to send in the cleanup crew and get it tidied up and put away. Because we wouldn't have sorrow do its work. And you see it in our confessions of sin. You see it in our knowledge of our own sins. When we acknowledge our sins, when we say to our spouse, Honey, I sinned against you. Or we say to our children, I lost my temper with you.

Or when we say to our brothers, I shouldn't have hit you or broken your toy or whatever. Are our hearts in these words? To what extent are our hearts more engaged with sports or with politics or with theology or with making money? More so than an acknowledgement and a sorrowing over and a dealing with our sins? I think for many of us, our hearts are least involved. At the point of dealing with our sins. We will acknowledge that we have sinned. I did this thing. But with no sorrow. No brokenness. No mourning. And so while we may sing from time to time, let sorrow do its work. Send grief and pain by our actions. We say, no, no. Put sorrow away from me. Keep grief far away. Let distraction and entertainment.

and money or food or sleep or whatever it is. Let it do its work. And so you start to realize that inside of each of our chests is a very strong desire to avoid the blessing that Jesus speaks of here and pronounces. Blessed are those who mourn. And we say, no, no, that can't be. That will be a blessing that I will have to go without because I can't endure it and won't have it. Now you remember last week, if you were here, what I said to you is that this is not a list that we can cherry pick from and say, well, this one is, I could do this one. I will have the odd ones. I'll have numbers one, three, five, and seven. But you can keep the evens because those are offensive to me. Those are costly to me. No, the Beatitudes are not something that we pick and choose from and say, this is one I'll have and this is one I'll leave. These are statements.

Given to us by Jesus Christ of what a Christian is. A Christian is to mourn. Now, I realize saying that to you that I'm crazy. That you all look at me and you're like, really? I thought we were supposed to not mourn. I thought we were supposed to do anything but mourn. Have happy, have joy, have peace and laugh. And isn't this all wonderful? But I'll ask you, what is the testimony of Scripture regarding the life of godly men? Were they light and happy and smiling all the time? Or were they sober-minded? And were they quick to mourn and aware of their sins? Did they feel the weight of their behavior and their actions? The testimony of the men that we would look up to in Scripture and in history are not men whose lives were filled with laughter and joviality and lightness.

But those who mourned and who grieved, when Jesus came into Jerusalem and he looked down on the city, what did he do? He wept. He wept over the city. These weren't even his sins. It was their sins. And he wept over them because he knew the consequences of their sins. Oh, how I've longed to you like a hen gathers her chicks underneath her with her wings. I've longed to gather you to myself, but you wouldn't have it. and now the day of repentance is gone, and there's nothing for them but to destruction. Now, I'm paraphrasing. It's not exactly how, word for word, how he says it, but this is his grief. This is his lament over the city. Nowhere in Scripture do we have a record of Jesus laughing. I don't know that I'd realize that or really thought much about it until this week, but there's lots of teaching. There's lots of healing. There's lots of mercy. There's lots of rebuking.

There's lots of tension. But nowhere in his life do we ever see him laugh. He weeps over the city, Jerusalem. He weeps over Lazarus. And you think that, I've never heard anyone say that that's how we should be as Christians. What I've been told is that we should be the happiest people around. And I'll come to what comfort looks like in our lives. You might be thinking, well, the Old Testament, the Psalms are filled with rejoicing. That we should rejoice, that we should exalt in hope. There's these things, you're like, it seems like you're trying to pour water on Christian joy. And I'm saying, our conception of Christian joy is not biblical. It's not what the Bible says we should rejoice in. Our joy, in large part, comes from this world and not from God. And what we've given up in the process is mourning and grieving over our sins. We laugh at sin now, don't we?

You and me, when we see sin, we laugh. Sometimes an outright laugh and sometimes a nervous laugh. But we laugh at it. We think it's funny. How many of you have children and you've had to teach them not to laugh when someone sins in the house? That it's not funny when someone else does something inappropriate. That they shouldn't encourage disobedience. And that they should be ashamed of their laughter. You might think, Dave, if we do that, No one's ever going to come to church, and no one's ever going to think that Christianity has anything to offer them. And I say, until you do that, they will never think that Christianity has anything to offer them. The problem with us is that we don't mourn. It's not that we don't try to have the joy of the world. It's that we don't mourn over sin. We don't know what sin is. And if we do know what sin is, it's the sin of our leaders, and it's the sin of other Christians, and it's the sins of our parents, and it's the sins of others.

But our sins are not that bad. And so the world looks at us and says, you're just like us. You want the same things, you do the same things, you say the same things, but you've veneered over it with Jesus. And that's to our shame. Have you mourned for sin at some point in your life? Have you wept over your sin? At some point, have you been overcome by the grief of what you've done? I have, not as often as I should. But I have had occasion in God's kindness to weep over my sins. Have you? Would you? Or does your understanding of what it means to be a Christian leave that aside? I think part of the reason we're opposed to this is because we don't know what to do with grief. We're not well-versed and experienced in what the scriptures say about sorrow and where to find comfort.

And so which one of us wants to go into a situation where we don't know what the resolution will be or how to fix the problem? How many of us organize our lives around just keeping it together? Because if it starts to fall, if the house of cards starts to fall, it's all going to fall. We're going to lose our control, our ability to moderate ourselves. And so our whole goal in life is to keep numb to it all, to not feel this ought not to be true of us. When the Israelites were carried away into Babylon, one of the things that they were asked, told to do was to sing songs of Zion. Sing us songs of Zion, the Babylonians say. And this is one of the most intense psalms, Psalm 137, that you'll ever read. And it's divided in two distinct halves. The first half is a lament. And I'm going to read it to you in a second. It's the psalmist saying, how can we sing the songs of our God when here we sit?

away from our city. And the second half of it is the psalmist calling out to God to absolutely and utterly destroy the Babylonians, their oppressors. This is what Psalm 137, the first half, verses 1 to 6 says. It says, By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion. Upon the willows, in the midst of it, we hung our harps. For there our captors demanded of us songs, and our tormentors mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How can we sing the Lord's songs in a foreign land? How can we? Are they light, simple things? Do these songs have no meaning? They said, We can't sing these songs. If I forget you, O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget her skill. May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you. If I do not exalt Jerusalem, Jerusalem, above my chief joy. The Israelites, the psalmist says, we've come into captivity. Why? Why were they in Babylon? It's because of their sins, because of their rejection of the Lord. And so they were carried off into captivity and then they were told, sing us songs of joy. And they said, how can we do it? How can we do it? We're here because of our sins and you want us to be happy? You want us to sing praises to our God whom we've rejected?

This is a time of lament and sorrow, of weeping, not a time of rejoicing. And Lord, help me not to forget. The psalmist here sets us an example of what it means to mourn. Any one of us could weep and mourn over a tragedy, over death, but that is a natural sorrow. You don't have to be a Christian to weep over the death of a loved one. The world does that. This is a spiritual mourning, a mourning and a weeping over our sins. Paul gives us an example of this in 2 Corinthians 7. I've only got one verse on here, but I want to read to you the very beginning. He's talking about a letter that he's written to them. And the context is they have an incestuous man who's having relations with his mother, his mother-in-law, or his stepmother. And the Corinthians are celebrating it. And he's told them, you're boasting, it's not good.

And in this first letter to them, he says, you should put the man out. I've judged him already. Get him out of there. You're doing things that even unbelievers don't do, and you're boasting about it. And so it's quite a disciplinary note. So then they do what he says. And then he says this in 2 Corinthians, in his second letter, he says, for though I caused you sorrow by my letter, I do not regret it. And there's a world of help in that sentence alone, that we would cause sorrow for the sake of godliness in one another. For though I caused you sorrow by my letter, I do not regret it. Though I did regret it, for I see that that letter caused you sorrow, though only for a while. And so what he's saying to them is, I love them, and it wasn't my delight or my desire to cause you pain, but someone had to say something. You were out of line. But now I rejoice. Not that you were made sorrowful, but that you were made sorrowful to the point of repentance. For you were made sorrowful according to the will of God.

Did you hear it? You were made sorrowful according to the will of God. It's God's will that his people would sorrow over their sins and that's what would lead them to repentance. You were made sorrowful according to the will of God so that you might not suffer loss in anything through us. And then he describes the natural sorrow of the world and its result with godly sorrow. For the sorrow that is according to the will of God. produces a repentance without regret leading to salvation. And then simply, but the sorrow of the world produces death. I want you to believe that it's God's will for you to get upset about your sins. That's what I want you to believe. That that sorrow is a kindness from him and that that is the lever that he'll use to bring you to repentance.

A lot of talk of grace and of mercy and of the kindness of Jesus is of no benefit if you don't see your need of him first. When Peter preached at Pentecost, when he was done, what it says of his sermon is that he preached and it cut them to the quick. Okay? Have you ever been cut to the quick in real life? You ever cut? Yeah, you have. I remember. You ever been cut down to the bone? You ever cut into the bone? Cut to the quick. It doesn't happen without you knowing it and feeling it for weeks to follow. It says that they were cut to the quick and they cried out, brethren, what must we do to be saved? There is no way to become a Christian or to live as a Christian without sorrowing over sin. And so if you avoid mourning and feeling your sins, you avoid Jesus Christ.

By your actions, what you say is, I can handle my sins on my own. I don't need to sorrow over them. I don't need to be grieved over them. I don't need to weep over them. I need to do them a little less. I need to try a little harder. I need to make up for them some other way. But you reject Jesus Christ. Simply, you're just rejecting him. Is there any other place other than the Bible where you've been taught to cultivate sorrow and mourning? Is there anywhere else someone has said, you know what you should do? You should cultivate, pursue, seek out mourning over your sins. Now maybe you say, well, my parents told me that. And I'd say, yes, but they told you that because the Bible says it. Is there anywhere else in your life where people say, you should feel an incredible weight for the sins that you commit? They should weigh heavily on you. And you say, no, no, there's really not. I've not seen it.

I've never had anyone, but any place, anywhere, but the Bible and other Christians expect or desire or want me to feel the weight of my sins. And I know I'm on thin ice with some of you because I'm pushing so hard. You're like, that's not the gospel. We're not supposed, we're free from all of that. And I say, you will not be free from it until you feel it. And if you refuse to feel it, you will lie to yourself and say you're free when in fact you're still in bondage. Do you not think that Satan would trick you into believing that you've become a Christian when in fact you've not? And so I'm asking you, and you should be wondering yourself, have I mourned over my sins? Do I mourn over my sins? It is true that we're not to bear the weight of our sins alone. Mostly because we can't. And it's because God's not made us to bear our own sins. If he did, he would have kept his son.

But it is appropriate that we would feel the weight of our sins. Not just once at the beginning of our lives, but that Christians would live in a continual state of knowing their sins. Knowing them. And you think, well, that sounds awful to me. And I ask, are you happy denying them? How many people are depressed on drugs because of it? Whether they're self-medicating or they're medicated by a doctor. We are a depressed people suppressing our sense of guilt. And to think that the church is somehow free of all of that is very, very wrong. So you and I, we have to fight hard to feel our sins. Not so that we'll despair, but so that we'll actually come to Jesus. Listen to David's description.

of the weight of his sin. In Psalm 32, he starts off and says, How blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. How blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit. And so he starts with this exclamation of it's a good thing. It's a good thing, a blessing, just like the blessing Jesus speaks of, to have your sins forgiven. And then he describes what he did. When I kept silent about my sin, My body wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night, your hand was heavy upon me. Your hand was heavy upon me, Lord. When I kept silent about my sins, your hand was heavy on me. How many of us think that the Lord's hand should be heavy on us when we are in sin? For day and night, your hand was heavy upon me. My vitality was drained away as with the fever heat of summer. I acknowledged my sin to you.

And my iniquity I did not hide. You realize that what drove him to acknowledgement and to confession was the weight he felt. Now you and I might wish that there's some other way to do it. That we would confess our sins by some other way other than being pressed to it. But the reality is we have to be pressed to it. We have to be pressed to it or we will never do it. Sure I would. If the list of things God owes me, if he did all those things, then I would confess my sins. No, you wouldn't. And the list is sinful itself. I'm talking about myself as much as I'm talking about you. We're that sinful. Then unless we feel the fire of hell burning underneath us, we won't repent. And I'm not trying to denigrate the work of the Holy Spirit. I'm just simply saying that the Holy Spirit's the one who makes you feel the fire of hell burning.

I know of a couple of situations in my life where it became clear to me that there was a decision to be made, and if I did it, I was going to go to hell. That my conscience and my life would be corrupted in such a way that if I did that thing, there was no hope for me. And I understand many of you want to come in and say, no, no, no, that's not what the gospel says. You can go do anything. Like, there's no sins that can't be forgiven. And I say, yeah, I know that there's no sin. I understand that, but I'm telling you for me, I understood what doing it meant for me.

it meant that I was going to make a break with this and I was going to stop fighting and I wasn't going to come back. Because I knew enough about myself to know if I go there, I have rejected. And who, after tasting of the firstfruits and rejecting it, can be restored. I knew that's what was true about me. And it scared the crap out of me. And it kept me from doing it. That's the work of the Holy Spirit. That's the work of the Holy Spirit. You ever almost died? That's the work of spiritually. When you feel that way about sin, that's the work of the Holy Spirit. I almost died. And so David said, I acknowledge my sin to you, my iniquity I did not hide. I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord. And he forgave the guilt of my sin. You wonder how long it took David to do it. How long? We know at least days and nights. It was at least a few days. How long did it take?

How much fight did he put up? How long did he resist weeping and mourning? How long do you do it? How blessed is the man whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Mourning is the first part of this work. And if you will not mourn over your sins, you will never have the comfort of God. It's shut up away from you. No matter how much you cry for it, how much you demand it, and how much you think you're owed it, those who mourn shall be comforted. How will we be comforted? How does the comfort of God come to those who mourn? First, it comes through you knowing who you are and just exactly what you are. In Mark 2, Jesus said to them, It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick. I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.

Now you realize he's not talking about in his mind there's righteous ones and there's sinful ones. He's talking about in their minds. Do you believe yourself to be a righteous man or a sinful man? I came for the sinful men, not the righteous men, says the Lord. You know, it's a funny thing. When someone dies, there's really not much you can say to somebody to comfort them. It's just a sorrow that has to be borne. And many of the things we say to people to try to comfort them don't help. Some of us have had those things said to us with good intentions, and they didn't help. And so on some level it makes sense that we would avoid mourning because we say there's no help for those who mourn. The comfort to those who are mourning death is the mercy of God in the resurrection and him coming back and reuniting those people with their bodies, their souls with their bodies, to dwell with him. There is a comfort. I suppose we could say that.

but it doesn't dry up our tears in the moment. Is there anything to be said to someone who's mourning over sin? Do we just say to them, good, I'm glad you feel miserable about yourself now. I'm glad that you're weeping and crying. That's where God wants you and there's nothing more to be said to you. No. There's comfort to those who mourn over sin. That's exclusive to them. Only they can have it. Only they will be comforted by it. In Romans 5, Paul says, While we were still helpless at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. For one will hardly die for a righteous man, though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. But God demonstrates his own love toward us, and that while we were yet sinners, mourning and grieving and feeling just the way that Jesus says we should, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more than having now been justified by his blood, we shall be saved.

from the wrath of God. And that's really what you're mourning. If we're honest, when you think about your sins, the thing that you're mourning and the thing that you're dreading and the thing that's making you weep is the consequence of your sins. Having now been justified by his blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through him. For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. This is the Christian comfort. That their sins can be forgiven. Their sins can be forgiven. Whatever their sins are, that their sins can be forgiven. If I forgive you, if your spouse forgives you, if your boss says, yeah, it's okay, don't worry about it, it's of little consequence. Whether they forgive you or not. What really matters is whether the judge of heaven and earth is going to forgive your sins. And Jesus promises to those who mourn, they will be forgiven. And that will be their comfort.

The Bible is full of promises like this from the beginning to the end. And those promises are for those who are overcome with grief and sorrow and the weight of their sins. Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and you will find rest. Now, it's possible for us to take these promises and to twist them into some sort of a justification for sin. Paul addresses that in Romans, where people say, well, shall we sin that grace may abound? And he says, may it never be. May it never be that we would use the grace of God as an excuse for sins.

What I want to say is that those who make a habit of twisting these promises into a justification for sin have never felt the weight of their sins. Those who mourn over their sins and look to Christ will be comforted. They will be comforted. You will be comforted. You know, in our lives, when we interact with people, we have conversations or we can, you know, in business, we might have contracts. You know, whether that's... with your employer or with your supplier or with your realtor or with your bank or whoever. We have all these contracts and user agreements and all this stuff. Well, all of that stuff is meant to do is to get right at the point of whether or not somebody's going to do what they say they're going to do. And the reason contracts are so extensive is because people are not generally good at doing what they say they're going to do. And so you have really long contracts that say, this is what you said you're going to do. That's the short section.

I'm going to sell you this thing, and it's going to cost this much, and you're going to pay me in this way at this date. Done. The whole rest of the contract is what happens when one or both of the parties doesn't do what they're supposed to do. It all gets down to what does it take for us to believe? How many assurances do we need that the other party will fulfill what they said they will fulfill? And so really what it comes down to is whether or not we keep our word. All of our contracts are simply a way of ensuring and protecting, ensuring that you'll keep your word, and if you don't, I'm protected from your failure. But really, the question that we're driving at that's underneath all of it is, will they do what they said they would do in the way that they said they would do it? And so my question to you is, do you believe that God will do what he said he would do? Do you believe that if you confess your sins, he will comfort you?

Or are you demanding some other assurances? Because you don't believe that God will do what he says he'll do. When it comes to contracts, I often feel like I live in two worlds. Some of you guys know Mike Bowles and some of you don't. Mike's like my dad. And I often tell him he's a dinosaur. And it's not because he's that old, but it's because the way he thinks and the way he does things is not how things are done. And if you go and talk with him, the stories he'll tell you, I remember him telling me he built a multi-million square foot refrigerated warehouse in Miami, in Dade County. They never pulled permits. The guy paid him and says, here's the money, just build it. Go design it and just build it. There was no contract. They built the whole thing. They hadn't even gone to the city yet. Here's the money, go build it. If you need more, just let me know. Sounds like South America or what causes a bunch of crime, you know.

But my point in bringing that up to you is to say, what I've learned from Mike is the value of your word and taking people at their word and that contracts are only as valuable as the people who make them. They can say, I'll do this and I'll do that and I'll listen. Do you believe that that man or that woman is going to come through or not? That's the whole question. Do you believe it? They can say this and promise that and all this other stuff. And in the end, you go, I don't want all that stuff. I'm trying to make a judgment of whether I trust that you will do what you say you're going to do. And if you won't, I'm not going to do business with you. That's what I've learned from Mike. If he didn't trust people to do business, there was no hope for him. But if he trusted them, they didn't need contracts.

They sat down and they talked about it and they looked each other in the eye and shook hands and now we can do a multi-million dollar deal. Because you said you were going to do it. God says that he will comfort those who mourn. He says that he'll comfort them. That when you weep and mourn over your sins that you will be comforted. Do you believe it? Or do you demand a sign? Prove it. Prove it. You remember what Jesus said about those who demanded a sign. It's a wicked and perverse generation that seeks after a sign, and no sign will be given to you except the sign of Jonah, which was his way of speaking of his death and resurrection. If you want confirmation that God will do what he said he would do, then you find in the pages of Scripture that the tomb was empty and that that was his guarantee that he would comfort those who mourn. And if you demand more than that, you will never be comforted. God is no man's debtor.

And I don't stand here because of my experience of it and say that he will comfort you. I stand here and tell you that because his word is full of his promises to comfort those who mourn and that he will not cast out those who come to him. And so the question is not a question of whether he will do what he says he will do. The question is whether we will do what we ought to do, which is mourn over our sins. Ask God to make us feel them such that we might repent of them more thoroughly. and more frequently, and more quickly than we have in the past. That's the only question in this verse. Will we mourn or not? If you want to be comforted by God, then ask him not to comfort you. He promises to do that. Ask him to make you feel your sins, that you would become aware of his hand on you, that he'd afflict your conscience and upset your life until such time as you

are willing to repent of your sins. Those are the kind of prayers that those who want to mourn, those are the kind of prayers they pray. All right, let's pray.