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Mothers mourn over children falling away, over ones they’ve outlived, over the ache of children they never had. That grief feels heavy for Mother’s Day, yet Jesus declares in Matthew 5:4, “Blessed are those who mourn.” How is it blessed to mourn?
The following study questions are AI generated and may contain errors.
This transcript has been automatically generated and may contain errors.
Happy Mother’s Day, everybody. And what a joy it is to be able to take this time to take Tim Butler’s place here. Not place, but give me the opportunity to preach God’s word and be part of this ministry that he has here.
And I was just thinking, the verse that we got today, blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted, is like, it’s really kind of a sad thing to talk about on Mother’s Day. But then a friend of mine kind of mentioned some things. A lot of times mothers mourn over their own children that are falling away from God. Some mothers mourn over their children because they live past their children. Some mothers just mourn over their children because they’re struggling with their walk with Christ. Some ladies just mourn because they want to have children. But today, besides mourning, what we’re going to learn about is we’re going to learn how we can be comforted by all this.
And I find it amazing how a mother has this natural love for their children, and they’re always ready to comfort their child when they’re sick, when they’re not feeling well. There’s that natural bond, and there’s a natural bond when we become Christians that with our Savior that there’s a bond with that, that relationship that we have as our caregiver. And the desire with them to fellowship with them. Our Father in Heaven is basically the same. He loves you. And he paid the penalty for our sins on the cross, as we celebrated that not too long ago.
These Beatitudes are a small part of a larger section called the Sermon on the Mount, or like Luke would have said it, the Sermon on the Plain. It was amazing. My mother, I mentioned that, and she goes, I never heard that before. You know, and I was raised in church with my mother and all that, and one of her famous sayings was, Jim, watch your testimony. Remember the promises that you gave to God. And that was all through my teenage years, was the thing that always popped in my mind, that’s something I learned from my mother, is watch your testimony. And that has always been convicting to me.
So I got a little technology here. I’ve got to figure everything out. So that’s to click it to. All right, blessed are, the verse today is in Matthew 5. Matthew 5, verse 4 says, Blessed are those who mourn, for they should be comforted. So we’re going to take this first part and bless it.
As I mentioned, did I mention this already? Oh, no, I didn’t. So as I mentioned, I always got to, did I do it right, Tim? OK, there we go. I’m already ahead of myself in the slides. But anyways, the Beatitudes in Matthew can be divided into three sections. As you look in the section of the scriptures, verse 3 through 6 is our relationship with God. And this is our relationship that we have between us and our father in heaven. The 7 through 10 is a relationship that we have towards others. If you want to know how to have the attitude, the right attitude through Christ, it’s good to understand these Beatitudes. And as we go through the Bible, verse 10, Jesus addresses us as Christians what we should do. And through the week, we’re going to go through one of the other, Tim just took last week. And in the Bible, blessed usually means happy. And this is not a happy little person and all that. It’s happy because we are blessed because of what Christ did for us. We are blessed because of what when we have our sorrow, when we’re mourning and everything after that, that’s our blessing. So there we go. I don’t do acting much, but there we go.
Many Jewish people believe that the kingdom would be ushered in only by the great war of force of arms. Remember, we always heard that story. All right, here’s our king. We’re going to win. We’re going to conquer everybody. But no, Jesus promises to be poor in spirit, which was last week, the humble, the meek and be peacemakers. And these are really hard things to accomplish, because as I read that verse, blessed are those who mourn for they should be comforted.
Let’s just break this up. I have a little different style than Tim. It’s all that we’re all different style, but it’s still the same message of Christ here. And so I’m going to define mourning, not good morning or anything. Mourning. OK, it means to experience deep grief in keeping with his theme of spiritual blessedness. Jesus seems to indicate that this mourning is due to grief over sin is an expression of our hearts. When something we value has been taken away, it’s like a death of a loved one. We mourn in, you know, somebody that, you know, maybe we were mourning over the death of a son or, you know, maybe our parents. This is our first Mother’s Day that we ever spent without our mother. And we’re mourning over the stuff that we used to do. How about the loss of a job? We mourn over that, don’t we? How about a loss of our home or what are some of the things that we think we mourn? How about do we ever think about mourning over our sinfulness? I know when we mentioned sin, that that’s not a church growth thing. Oh, you could talk anything you want out of the Bible, but don’t talk about sin. Well, I’m sorry here you’re going to hear about sin, because that’s the only way that you could become a Christian, is recognizing your sin and needing a savior to forgive it. So I’m going to use that unpopular word a lot that doesn’t really do a lot for growing churches is our sin.
Jesus reminded his disciples not to seek happiness as the world does. And that happiness, a lot of times the world says, all right, you need this fancy house. You need this good car and it’ll be happy. How about fancy food or, you know, fancy clothes or this? This will be your happiness. Or how about people that, how about things that make you happy? The material things, you know, those all fade away. And me, I’m only in my mid-50s, but I know a lot of things that I thought my life that made me happy doesn’t make me happy anymore because I don’t have them no more. You know, I thought this cool looking bicycle. I remember the train set. Oh, everybody’s going to like me because I got this train set. And when cameras, the video cameras came out. Oh, everybody’s going to like me because of these fancy video cameras, because it was HD, not HDMI. I’m learning tech stuff, so I can’t remember exactly what that was. You know, when it came out, when you used to have the big tapes in there and then they came with the little tapes and that was woohoo. But I mean, that’s back in the 90s and what everything’s changed now. Now we do everything on these little bitty wires and all that stuff and through, you know, Bluetooth and anything. But anyways, where are we at? So I got to draw myself in. I don’t have my wife with me that goes like this or whatever to tell me or goes like this because I’ll get going off. But anyways, that’s another thing is I was going to mention. Blessed is the woman that even though she says take out, talking about taking out the trash while I was getting ready, the trash can was sitting there. So, yeah, yeah, yeah. I said, I can think of some other stuff. And she said, how about a man that takes out the trash for us for the mother? Oh, that’s a good one. I’ll mention that. Then all of a sudden I had to walk back in the house. Oh, she meant me to take out the trash. So there we go.
The people who agree with God about evil in their own hearts can attain an inevitable state of blessedness due to the comfort that they receive from the Holy Communion with the Holy Spirit. Jesus called the Holy Spirit, the comforter. And that’s what we’re going to learn at the end. You know, and we all pretty astute in the Bible that Jesus said, when I leave, I’m going to send you a comforter. And that’s the blessed part of the end of the thing. And we’re going to eventually get there. So there’s some verses in the Bible that I’m not going to have them, but you could probably remember. John 14, 16, 26, and John 15, 26 and 2 Corinthians one for all talks about the comforter of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus puts this high standard of living so high that we cannot really, you know, really accomplish it, because you really think all those things. How can I accomplish this? But if you were able to accomplish this, then it would be your works through salvation and not through faith. And that totally is not is we’re not a work salvation. We’re not a works by salvation. If I get this, I’m getting all this theology mess it up. And so I stumble over it. But anyways, it’s by works you’re saved through faith and that out of yourself is the gift of God. Listen, you mentioned both. So I can’t boast about saying I’ve done all the beatitudes and I’m 100 percent. No, no, that’s not very meek. Anyways, where we are. So I’m getting lost.
So the next verse is Isaiah six, 22, as all these things were my hands made. And so that these things can be declared by the Lord. But this is one of whom I would look. He who is humble and contributes to the spirits and trembles at my word. This is me. Do you really get convicted of your sin? So do you really I mean, do you really think or is it just is it just a big sin that you get convicted over?
Oh. So my mic died. So the button. Oh. Oh, boy. I got to be I’m not very I wasn’t blessed with coordination. That’s why I never played sports as a kid. And you can see now, you know, they always say, keep your eye on the ball. Well, look, there’s people out there. Look at that squirrel. Oh, the ball went past me. Oh, so. So where are we at? That’s confessing a sin. Some people have pride and they don’t want people to know that. But it was getting with. Do you really. Do you really get convicted of your sin in your life? And I don’t mean the big sins, the little sins like what you think of people, mental sin, I think is a lot of times we don’t hit in our lives. Do we have sin because we don’t like other people and all that? So. Does Bible verses pop up again when you’re walking along and also like you’re driving down the highway and, you know, there’s 55 and you’re doing 70. Do you get convicted because you’re disobeying the law? And I really do that a lot. And I have to be careful because my foot is like lead. I think it weighs more than my belly at times, but I’m just not sure.
So another verse we look at is 2nd Corinthians 710. It says, for godly grief produces repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death. Huh? That’s kind of interesting there. So with the regret of the willingness, we turn away from these sinful habits. Because Christ is there and then we put. But what does the world say when you’re like doing bad? They just want to really put you down, don’t they? Keep on going, keep on going, keep on going. So it’s the mourning process that should turn us back to Christ. Our mourning over the sin that we have in our life, our mourning over things that are happening in our life. And who do we mourn? Do we mourn to the world or we mourn to Christ? And the idea is, is we are blessed because we have a savior who gave us the Holy Spirit to help us through this.
Let’s look at Matthew five, twenty nine. I’m going to read James four, eight through nine. This is not drawn near to me, God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners and purify your hearts. You double minded be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy turned to gloom. Think about that for a minute.
Does this mean I should go around, I’m sinning, I’m going to put ashes on my head, I’m going to walk around in all this sinfulness and I’m going to put coats of sackcloth, oh me, I’ve sinned, I’m a bad person. I don’t think that’s really what God is talking about here. Or do we just, you know, that’s no big deal. I do that all the time. Yeah, I always make fun of people, but, you know, God forgives me. You know, there’s a grace thing and all that, you know, it’s just something about that just doesn’t seem correct. And I think if you dig in the scriptures, you’ll find that a lot of times we just pacify sin and just kind of laugh it off like, yeah, you know, that’s OK. But I mean, really grieving because I remember my mom always said his grief, the grieving of the Holy Spirit inside of you. When you do sin, you feel that grief like I really disappointed God. But I don’t think he wants us walking around like that all the time. And then let’s look at Matthew 5, 29. Maybe we can find something in it. Matthew 5, 20 signs, if your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out or throw it away. For it is better for you to lose one member, one member than to the whole body be thrown in the hell.
Well, that’s not very encouraging, is it? So I’m supposed to I’m not supposed to look at that plug out my eye, my hand. I did that, you know, chop it off with all that. Something’s not right there. You know, you’re thinking of all this. I’m so sad. I don’t want to be a Christian, but that’s all I got to do. But some of us sometimes we just put shades on or maybe we’ll just scratch the sin and say, you know what? Let’s say eating, eating is one of mine. I could see a billboard and I would just keep on seeing that billboard. And it would like to be like, you know, like a juicy hamburger that stacked up double beef, cheese, the juice. Oh, man, my mouth is watering now because I desire that. But if I’m supposed to be disciplined with my body and discipline and stuff, I need to do. But if I keep on seeing that sign, well, I’m just going to look at this bottle, turn the other way. Yeah, I’m turning the other way, you know, but you’re not. It’s the same thing with a lot of other sin we have in our lives. A lot of times we just put it away and we’ll make up some spiritual thing saying I’ll just deal with it. This will grow me stronger, but it’ll be right there. You know, maybe it’s, you know, drinking issues or maybe it’s like, well, I only say little words. So you just scratch. You’re not plucking it out. I think when Christ plug it out, just get rid of it like you don’t have it no more. I know friends that drive certain ways. I mean, there’s a faster way to go to work. They drive another way to avoid pornography or are bad signs. You know that that would draw their mind or are trigger things. A lot of times I had a friend that was alcoholic that a lot of times he knows where all the. And I don’t mean picking on signs and, you know, Bush signs or, you know, the alcohol signs. He has to because after a while, he’ll start getting that taste in his mouth or thinking about it. So he avoids it. That’s cutting it off. And so I’m sure this doesn’t mean we should go around, you know, being sad about it. But it’s cutting it out. So let’s look at my next points.
So here’s what I think. That we need to do what God is saying here first. Did it show up? OK, sorry. First, it says go to God and nothing else. So we’re going to it’s a lot of times we have these books help self-help books that makes us want to go to the book and then have a couple of scriptures with it. I believe the authority for anything comes out of the scriptures. A hundred percent. And we should be consoled. You should be consoled out of the scriptures, not from a book that uses the scriptures, because to me, in my mind, you’re putting that book in the Bible underneath it. And this should be the other way around. Another way is to clean up what is pulling you away. What is pulling you away? You know, is it your friends that you hang around with? Is it the people you hang around with? What is pulling you away? Change your heart. You don’t want to rip out your heart or anything like that, but change your heart. What you know, what’s making you think that way? What’s triggering you to think bad about people? What’s triggering you about making fun of people or are triggered worrying about how you look? You know, because we should only we should only worry about what we look towards Christ, not other people. And I know it’s difficult because I like looking nice. You know, I wish I was 40 pounds lighter, but it’s not happening at my age. The longer I go. And don’t lose your relationship with Christ when you’re walking through all this, try not to do the relationship that you have with Christ, like the other getting busy. I always it seems like through my life, busyness with everything kind of draws you away from Christ and we need to stay steadfast.
And so. Sorry about that, guys. So does a woman stay in labor pains forever? From my experience, my wife never did. It was labor pains for a long time and it’s over with. And now they’re happy with this bundle of joy. OK, so that’s the contrast. Do you stay in this mortal part of being sinful and in anguish? I’m not saying put sackcloth on you, but forever. No, there’s a rejoicing. And that’s what happens when a woman gives birth. There’s that labor pains, all that thing. And the next thing you know, they’re happy with this bundle of joy with this baby that they call beautiful. And so when we read Psalms 3011, it says, you have turned from my mourning and into dancing. You have loosened my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness. So that’s what that’s that that’s. Oh, and then the next one is out of you. Ecclesiastes three, four, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance. So through our walk with Christ. We have this time that we need to. There’s this time that we mourn, we mourn over a sin, but at the end we have discomfort, which is the Holy Spirit, which we ask the Holy Spirit to come in our lives. This is the time that we ask Jesus Christ to come in our lives at the same time. You know, there’s a lot of times I get unhappy. And, you know, even yesterday with Pastor Tim, I was having this stuff bothering me. It was bothering me a lot. And then, you know, you go to somebody like him or you go to somebody else that can comfort you in this time. That’s why your realm of influence is really important. And that’s why we got to John 14, 26. It says, oops, let’s go back. John 14, 26. But the helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the father was sent in my name, he will teach you all things and bring you remembrance. And all that I said to you, of course, you don’t see in that verse. He said there will be a bunch of self-help, self-help books, and these will all help you. It says just one thing. Where do you got to go? You go to the scriptures. And I will always believe in my heart. And you go to the scriptures.
So why is it important to walk this way? One, I think it’s important to memorize scriptures because the Holy Spirit will convict you with the scriptures that you memorize. You know, study the scriptures, understanding what they mean, just not like those last verses we went. If you just read that, OK, you start chopping off parts of your body. But that’s not exactly what it means. Totally. That’s why you got to study. Be part of a church that rightly divides the word of truth. That’s not afraid to say, hey, that’s the wrong. We need a council. You need to put you on the side, rightly dividing the word of truth. And that’s even a verse there, too. So. And have godly people in your realm to be that influence that keeps you on the narrow path. Who’s hanging around your kids? Are they, you know, who who’s influenced your kids? Who are your kids? Spiritual heroes. You know, who are you? Who are they looking at the same thing with us as adults? You know, I want to hang around people that are going to keep me focused on Christ. I don’t want to be around people that are going to drag me away, even though that lifestyle may look fun. But my love for Christ, I mean, we need help. And I believe the Holy Spirit is in all of us that helps us do that straight narrow path.
So great. So praise be to God. That we have. That we have who Jesus said he was going to. Praise be to God and the father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the father of compassion and the God of comfort and everything we do after that hard time. There’s that comforting part with the Holy Spirit where godly people get around you and comfort you through that, through the work of the Holy Spirit, not through the work of other books or other this, but then they walk you through that pathway. And what’s unique is that there’s a lot of people been through a bunch of different stuff in their lives that they can comfort and say, hey, like a mother that’s maybe gone 10, 12 years and realize I can never have children, can comfort that young mother that’s never have children. Same thing. You know, I don’t make my mother’s day or mothers that have children that have gone and walked away from the Lord. They can comfort other mothers. The same thing we do with men, us men that we have issues in our lives that we do with. You be around other men that men have been through and comforting through and all that.
So next, I’m going to read Second Corinthians one, three through five. It says. Blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the father of mercy and a God of all comfort, who comforts us in our affliction so that we may be able to comfort those who are in my affliction with that comfort. With which we ourselves are comforted by God. It’s a lot there. So we look back at that. Like I said, we are blessed because God is our comforter. We’re not blessed because of the things we have in the world. So that’s why we rejoice. That’s why we come to a time of worship, because Jesus is our comforter.
So. Anyways. So I know there’s some people probably out there and maybe later on that they’ll see this. But have you ever had a time where you like say, hey, I want that comforter. I realize I’m sinful before creator and I need Christ. You know, you know, Jesus. You know, died on the cross for our sins. A lot of times we realize that that he died on the cross and we know it’s a good thing. But do you really come to him because you say I sin before a holy God and I need you, I need you, Jesus. Not just for the insurance policy of going to heaven, because who wants hell? I don’t. But I love Christ and I want him to use me however he wants me through all my inefficiencies that I have through life. But the most important thing is, is to encourage other people to love Christ. And if and if you are never accepted, Jesus Christ is your savior. So time to ask one of us, Tim, Melanie or any one of us in our church here that say, hey, I want Jesus Christ as my savior. Can you tell me or show me how I can take Jesus Christ as my savior? And I’ll tell you, it’s easier. It’s by the mouth. You make confession of your sins. You know, now my verses just popped out of my head, but it’s by faith. You know that we walk. It’s not by worship. Nothing I can do. There’s no fancy prayer. It’s just realizing I need you, Jesus. And I want you to be in my heart. Lord, I’m sorry for my sins. I’m sorry for what I did. I’m sorry for being a sinner. Please save me. And there you are. You’re instantly a child of God. And then from there it goes on to baptism. And then from baptism, then you start. You have some other Christian brothers or sisters. They’ll come along and walk you down that pathway.
So I’m going to close in a word of prayer. And then it’d be your time for our communion. My father, I just want to thank you. That I am blessed that I can come to you in my sorrow, Lord, that I can come to you when things go bad, when things go wrong, Lord, that you have the Holy Spirit that could come and comfort me, Lord. Lord, in times when I feel like I’m not worthy enough, Lord, but you encourage me. Thank you, Lord, for your word. Thank you for what you’ve given to me. And all we do may we glorify not.
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