Welcome to the preaching ministry of Tri-City Baptist Church in Chandler, Arizona. Our desire is that God would be magnified through the preaching of His Word, and that Christians would be challenged, strengthened, and edified in their personal walk with Christ. Matthew 5, verse 4, I'll read it for you while you're turning there. Blessed or fortunate, or can we even say, one who is to be envied are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted. For a couple of years when I was in late elementary school, our family moved to Prescott, Arizona from South Carolina, and my dad started a church. This was in the early 1980s. Because of the economy of the time during the early Reagan years, all of the promised support that he was given, this is my father, never materialized. We didn't receive one penny from any of the churches who said, we'll send you money, pastor, you get out there and preach God's word. And so our family really struggled. I didn't realize that until one evening we were at the library checking out books and my mother burst into tears, which was a little strange. And I said to her, mom, why are you upset? And she said, we don't have anything to eat at home. And I was thinking, you know, we don't have anything that we like to eat at home. She actually meant we don't have anything to eat at home. And so I went, okay, you know, I'm trying to comfort her. And in the back of my mind, I'm thinking, so what am I going to eat then? But when we got home, some people in the church had bought us groceries and put it on our front step. And I will tell you, God provided for us. But during that time here in Arizona, in Prescott, where it's a little cooler climate than down here in Phoenix, My dad's cousin, my dad's from California. My dad's cousin came to visit, and he had a Cadillac, and behind it he was pulling his three-wheeler. And I'm in sixth grade, and I really wanted to ride his three-wheeler, which my parents thought was a really bad idea. But I thought it was a really good idea. I mean, I'm sixth grade, that's pretty responsible, right? And I want to ride the three-wheeler. And my dad's cousin was saying, come on, let him ride the three-wheeler. I mean, after all, he's in sixth grade, and all sixth graders are responsible. So I got up on the three-wheeler, and he's giving me direction. Like, when you want to turn right, you have to lean left, and you want to turn left, you have to lean right. So I promptly didn't listen to any of that and drove his three-wheeler into the side of his Cadillac. All the way down the side of his Cadillac. I have no idea how expensive it is to repair and repaint a Cadillac. I have to believe it's a lot of money. I know I didn't ride the three-wheeler the rest of the weekend. And when he left, he didn't speak with me. I've never spoken with this man. Again, I don't think it's personal, but I will tell you that Some things in life just aren't very counterintuitive. And actually, there are a lot of things about the Christian life that are counterintuitive. They're not intuitive. You would think it's gotta be one way, but it actually isn't that way. It's the opposite way. And when you get to the Sermon on the Mount, particularly the introduction, these verses in the Beatitudes, that's how we'd commonly call them, there's a lot of things here that are counterintuitive. They go against the way you think. And let me give you some of these things. The first will be last, and the last will be first. That's counterintuitive. Or lose your life to find it. Gain the world and lose your soul. The richest man is the poorest man, and chief among you is your servant. All of that seems counterintuitive. I mean, we know the team that comes in last isn't number one, even though that's what they all raise their finger when they score a touchdown or run around the bases or whatever sport they're doing. We're number one. No, you're number 31. Okay, you're the worst team in the league. The last team isn't first. Losing something doesn't mean you find it. If you lose it, you've lost it. You don't lose something and say, look what I found, nothing because I lost it, I didn't find it. Rich isn't poor, chief isn't servant. The way we look at life and the way scripture explains life often go cross-grain. So when you get to a verse like this, when Jesus says to the crowd, the fortunate man, is the one who mourns over his sin. He receives God's inexplicable joy. And that seems counterintuitive to me. But there you have it. That's what God says. It's like riding in that three-wheeler. You have to lean left to turn right. You have to lean right to turn left. And in this case, Jesus says it plainly, grief over sin brings joy. So can I encourage you, number one, you must grieve over your sin. This is true regardless of your spiritual condition. Do you realize unsaved people must become broken over their sin? Salvation is not based on a particular prayer, an understanding of a particular set of doctrinal facts. It's not based on a Christian lifestyle, church attendance or membership. It's not based on even living up to the standards that Jesus said we should strive to achieve. None of that is salvation. There is no sense of a formula here. You're either a follower of Jesus or you're not. And if you're not a follower of Jesus, then I'm just gonna tell you, you're not a believer, you're not saved, you're not a Christian. And I was standing in Vermont speaking to a gentleman with a pastor on a missions trip with our church, and the pastor of the church we were helping, we were talking to the gentleman, he said, I'm a Christian. And I said, that's great, we're on the man's porch, that's wonderful, tell me, how are you actively following Jesus today? That wasn't the approach he was ready for. He was prepared to tell me about the prayer that he had prayed as a child and that he had grown up in a particular church. He was all prepared to tell me the very thing that many people tell me when they tell me that they're saved. But I think it's because we don't understand the nature of salvation. that really salvation is, and it is an act, I'm saved, it's a progressive act, I'm being saved, and it will be a final act when we see Christ, I will be saved. There is a position sense of salvation, there is a progressive sense of salvation, as we work out our own salvation in fear and trembling, and there's a final salvation when we are totally saved in Christ. But because we've been taught to think of it as a formula, God loves you and has a purpose for your life. We think of it formulaically, I don't know if that's a word, but I'm going to use it anyway. We think of it that way, we neglect one of the most important aspects of salvation, which is repentance of sin. Salvation is the outworking of a heart that's grieved by sin, which is why it's so critical for salvation. And you have, at the beginning of Jesus' ministry and throughout His ministry, and mirroring what John was doing, people coming to Jesus, repenting of their sins, and being baptized. And that's kind of what it meant to be saved back then. But I was sitting in the office of a man who taught at a university, a Christian university. He taught counseling, and we were talking about how we came to Christ, and this was a number of years ago, and this is what he said to me. Now, I knew this guy really well. I believed him to be a Christian man. He's written hymns that are in your hymnal, okay? And here's what he said to me. in the privacy of his office at the Christian College. He said, Matt, when I got saved, I remember I was a young man, I went forward in church, I knelt down at the altar, and this is what I prayed. Lord, I wanna go to heaven. God, I wanna go to heaven, but I am not repenting of my sins. Now, I'm not the judge of that man's salvation, but I'm gonna tell you that's not salvation. Unbelievers have to be broken over sin. Because salvation is the result of genuine repentance as one recognizes the weight of his sin and he takes ownership of that sin. He says, I am a sinner. I've done wrong. I have violated the commands of God. I've offended a holy God. And the one who recognizes the gravity of his sins against God is the one who's ready to be saved. So he grieves over his sin like one grieves over the death of a close friend. It's personal, it's real, and sometimes it's even very emotional. Those whose sins are forgiven must also grieve over their sin. We can all say, okay, unbelievers, they ought to repent of sin, but do you know that's true for believers as well? We all should be grieving over our sin. Paul chastises the Corinthian church for this failure. You read chapter 5 and you read that horrible story. I don't know about you, I almost can't preach through 1 Corinthians in mixed company. There's some pretty difficult passages there. And you get to chapter 5 and it's pretty difficult because the story is so gross. It's pornographic really. of what this man and how he's living his life. And of course, you read the story and you go, okay, that's a bad guy. But that's really not where all of the emphasis of the teaching is going in Paul's writing to the Corinthians. He's actually writing to the church and saying, the problem is you haven't mourned. You haven't grieved. This man is still in your presence. And I'm going to tell you, even in church constitutions, maybe here, I don't know your constitution, so this isn't a thing at you at all. Believe me, I'm not trying to offend you, but I read church constitutions sometimes, and what I find is the blending of Matthew 18 and 1 Corinthians 5, and they do not belong together. Because 1 Corinthians 5, there's no Matthew 18 process. The Matthew 18 process of going and getting two people and going and all of that, You don't find that in 1 Corinthians 5. Paul says, I've already cut this man off. I've already done it. You have to do it. And you have to mourn. And as believers, we have to actually say, we sin. It's defiling. It's gross. And we have to recognize the presence of genuine, defiling sin in our life and repent of that sin. And yet the church in Corinth was so blind to the sin in their church that they ignore, which is painfully obvious to the rest of us. And I'm just going to go on to say that all of life should include this attitude, right? I mean, this is how we should be all the time. We should always be repenting of our sin. We're forgiven people. I'm not gaining new forgiveness from God. He's forgiven me. What I'm gaining from God is the blessing of repenting over sin, of turning from it, of saying, God, I don't want this in my life. I'm sorry I did that. I wish I'd never done that. I don't ever want to do it again. Help me never to do this again. Help me never to say that again. I have been in situations that even as the words are coming out of my mouth in the social situations, I'm sitting there saying, oh God, please help me never to say this ever again. It's part of repentance. Our simpleness harms us, it harms ourselves, it harms our families, it harms our church, it harms our communities. It's like ripples in a pond. Our simpleness is inherent. Paul says, when I would do good, evil is present with me so that even the good I want to do, I don't do. The things I don't want to do, those are the things I do. Can we all recognize that's common to man? Isn't that your experience too? I know it's my experience. I walk away from a conversation, I walk away from a situation, and I say, I wish I hadn't done that. I confess to my church family last Sunday night, I was driving home about, oh, this was probably about five days ago. No, it was a week. So it has to be a week. So it was about nine days ago. I'm driving home. My wife was out of town and I was tired. That's my excuse. Isn't that good? I'm mitigating my And I got into an argument with a policeman while we were driving down the road. His window's down, my window's down because he was on his phone and not paying attention and he almost hit me. So I rolled down my window to chastise him. He was wrong. But you know, you just don't do that. And I was thinking about a verse that comes a little later about showing mercy to people, just being gracious to people, and I wasn't being gracious. The truth is, if it hadn't been a policeman and if I had done that, that wouldn't have been gracious either. The things I want to do, I don't do. The things I don't want to do, those are the things I do. So what's Paul's conclusion in Romans 7? I'm a wretched man. Who will deliver me from the body of this death? There are some things that are not redeemable. Flesh and blood will not inherit the kingdom of God. And this is what Jesus is actually doing in me. He rescues me, Galatians 1, from this present evil world. And though my sin abounds, grace super abounds. And thanks be to God, Paul concludes, so that with my mind I serve the law of God even though my flesh wants to sin. So as a believer, I should be broken over my sin. And this grief, ladies and gentlemen, is an extension of one's impoverished condition before God. Blessed are they that mourn. Those who are poor in spirit, that is, they are completely dependent on God. They're like someone who's impoverished, they're poor, but it's poor in spirit. So it's not material possessions that are missing here, it's impoverished spirits. And so we have that same context here. The one who's utterly dependent on God, he's poor in spirit and he says, God, I need you to help me. Now we have someone who's mourning, he's sorrowing, he's grieving over his sin. He recognizes his need of Christ to actually come and intervene so that he will not be as he was. So even as poor in spirit is a sense of dependence, this sense of mourning is a submission to God. It's a surrendering before God and saying, I am not who I should be, and I never will be who I should be, and unless you intervene in my life, unless you come and take over my life, I will sin in ways that will embarrass me, will embarrass my church, destroy my testimony, and ruin my family. And so I have to mourn over my sin. I think there's a connection here between our individual condition and the Jewish exile, by the way. If you know anything about the Jewish exile, God sent the Jews into exile in 720 BC. The Assyrians came and destroyed the northern kingdom, the 10 tribes of the north that had split off under Rehoboam's failed leadership. And then the southern kingdom, of Benjamin and Judah, the remaining Levites, and then any of the other tribes who were still faithful to God, who kind of came over and lived in the southern kingdom, they were all taken into exile by the Babylonians. There were three specific raids that the Babylonians made on the southern kingdom, finally culminating in the burning of the temple. You remember this story from the Old Testament. And there seems like there's kind of a picture that's here. Because the Jews in exile, the ones who were godly, were able to fully see the extent of Israel's turning from God and were able to personalize that in prayer of repentance to God. That's why you have Daniel praying and saying, we have sinned, we have broken the covenant. You get the same kind of prayer in Nehemiah. These almost ecstatic prayers, he's like a teapot, all bottled up, and he finally just, the prayers just erupt out of him. We've sinned against you. And our grief over that sin, like the Jewish exiles in prayer, admits the consequences we face Well, they're all our own doing. We put ourselves into this position. There's no blame shifting in mourning over sin. There's no mitigation. There's no excuse. There's no defense. You know, Lord, I'd been a much better husband if you'd give me a different wife. If I had a different husband, Lord, you know I'd be so much godlier woman. Or, oh God, my parents, what were you thinking when you gave me my parents? Or my children, Lord, I did the best I could. We give excuses to God instead of owning up and saying, nope, it was me, I did it, I was wrong. I don't want to be too humorous. So forgive me if this is a little bit humorous, but I met your pastor when I was a high school student, and he was working in the discipline department of the school. We became on speaking terms. And I was standing one day in the discipline committee as a high school student, and there was a girl in front of me. Her name was Lynn, and Lynn was a little airheaded. And bless her heart, right? That's what we say in the South. Bless her heart. And your pastor said to Lynn, Lynn, I have here an offense that you did. I don't remember what it was because what came next was so astounding. And she said to him, well, if I tell you some things I did that you don't know about, will you let me out of the things that you have in front of you? And he said to her, no. But what don't I know?" And then she told him. And then he gave her demerits for the things he had written down. And I'm just shaking my head behind her, poor Lynn, poor Lynn. And then he gave her demerits for the things that she told him about. But you know, that's not how we go to God, is it? We come to the Lord and say, Lord, you know it all. You know everything. I've sinned in front of you. I've disgraced myself. It's an admission of guilt before God. Do you grieve over your sin? Men and women, how do you think about gossip? Do you grieve over gossip? Do you grieve over lying or laziness or worry or lust or envy? Do you see the sins of others first? Do you explain away your own sinfulness? Do you tolerate reasonable sins? And give me a practical example of that grief. Do you feel sorry for disobeying God? Do you regret offending Him? Are you afraid His name will come into disrepute or that you'll be embarrassed when you're found out? Are you earnest, never to sin that way again, eager to clear yourself from that sin, indignant that you would have even done it in the first place, alarmed by your words or actions or attitudes, and longing for God's justice to be done, even when that justice is against yourself? That's grief over sin. Do you grieve over your sin? Because if you do, you experience the incredible, overwhelming comfort of God. Biblical grief for sin results in authentic joy. There's something about this immediate relief in God's comfort. They shall be comforted. In the now, repentance means encouragement from God. His spirit responds to our spirit, pulling us away from self towards our Savior. It's a response to the gospel message. My grief over sin is the result of my seeing myself as God does. My sins put Jesus on the cross. Substitutionary atonement means it was because of me He died, it was because of me that he was nailed to that cross. And how can you have any other kind of response? How can you think of it any other way? But when we do that, oh, the joy that comes, that God gives you. He floods your spirit and soul with joy. Grievers receive comfort from God. God comes alongside you. The Holy Spirit alongside to say the right thing at the right time. His words are comforting. They don't add to our pain. They take away the pain. When he says, you know what? You did sin. It's true. And here are all the consequences for your sin that you should have to face. But you don't have to face those consequences because I died on the cross for you. And so we recognize in our grief the joy of being forgiven, that Jesus has died, that when the darkness fell and he was on the cross, when the darkness fell, that was the time of judgment. In those hours when the whole earth stood quiet and God was pouring out the sins of mankind onto the Savior, my sins were being judged that day. I sometimes get a little bothered when I hear preachers talk about the physical sufferings of Christ. You know, the Bible doesn't emphasize it. It makes mention of it. It talks about how Pilate had Jesus flogged But then I've heard preachers talk about the different nerves in the body and the type of whips, and I'm hearing all of this. And do you know, one night I was listening to a guy preach, and he was preaching this way, and it occurred to me why it bothers me so much, and here's why. Because when Jesus was coming to the place of the cross and was sweating out drops as great as blood drops out of his pores, when the stress of his knowledge of being the sin bearer was so great, and he was looking into the proverbial cup and saying to his father, if it's possible, let this cup pass from me, but your will be done. When that was going on, do you realize Jesus would have gladly taken the physical suffering for crucifixion? and not be the sin bearer? But which would you rather do tomorrow? One little white lie, crucifixion. Which would you rather have? Jesus would rather have not experienced the sins of mankind being poured out upon him He would have gone to the cross every day. In fact, I think in Hebrews, when it says he was despising the shame, I think the translation there is weak. I think he's embracing. He's not embarrassed at all. The cross was horrible. Crucifixion is a terrible way to die. But it wasn't the physical sufferings of Jesus that bothered him. It was the sin, my sin. your sin. And so in the now, we can come to the Lord and realize that because of his blood, that he went into the holiest place with his own blood, the mirror of which, the shadow of which was on earth in the temple and tabernacle, that holy place, and he took his own blood into the temple of heaven, and he poured his own blood out on the mercy seat, and the blood is there, and it covers, and so when God sees me, he no longer sees Matt the sinner, he sees Matt the saved one, the one whose sins are covered by the blood. And so I can, as one grieving over my sin, come back and rejoice and say, isn't God great? Because look what He's done for me. And even more than that, that's in the now. Do you know, this verse has a little bit of a hint that He's talking about the end. They shall be comforted. That's not just the English doing that. It's pointing towards something. And those who are fortunate because they mourn over their sin, they find that in the afterlife, in the next life, we will be freed from the presence of sin. Won't that be wonderful? When we've already been set free from two aspects of sin right now, its power has been broken, its penalty is no more, but it's still present with us, so that even when I would do good, when I would think right thoughts, when I would say the right thing, when I would feel the right emotions, or respond the right way, or have the right motives, or serve God in action, or give up myself in sacrifice, I still have evil. It's still around. It's in me. It's all in my flesh and I cannot get rid of it in this life, but it will be gone one day. I will come to a place where with my eyes, as Job says, I will see God and I will have no more sin. Never again. The wrong word, never again. The wrong thought, never again. The wrong action, never again. And so I say, envy me. Blessed, envy me, I'm fortunate because it will be no more. One day, no more stupid words. One day, no more selfish actions. One day, no more lusty thoughts. No more foolish decisions. No more carelessness. And for the grieving saint, that is a true blessing. This is liberation. This is the grounds of rejoicing. This is the hope of heaven. When we see Jesus, we will be like Him. Our sin nature will be eradicated. The strength of sin will be overthrown. The consequences of sin already gone, and all will be righteousness. All will be light. All will be life. There will be no more of this life that's so awful, truly, that's so bad. All of that gone, and only thing we have left is Jesus. And the world thinks of grief as something to be avoided. You deal with grief. You cope with grief. It's something that requires you to take deliberate steps to manage it. You need support groups and seminars. There are AA-like organizations to help you get through grief. That's all worldly grief. And I'm not saying it's not important to go through those steps. What I am saying, though, is Jesus says, almost counterintuitively, that you should embrace the grief that sin brings actively grieve over that sin because you will be comforted. Let's pray together.