I'd invite you to open the Word of God with me to Matthew, the Gospel of Matthew chapter 5. We're just getting into this series, this new series on the Sermon on the Mount. It's the most, surely the most remarkable sermon ever preached. It was preached by the Lord Jesus as sort of an inaugural message to his disciples to show them what it means to be a true follower of Christ. To become a citizen of heaven, you must repent of sin and believe on Jesus. But to live as a citizen of heaven, you must incorporate these attitudes. You must exemplify these attitudes that Jesus is here giving us in the sermon. Last week, we saw where Jesus declared a happy existence, a blessed state of being, true flourishing for those who are poor in spirit. And what Jesus is saying here couldn't be more practical. He's telling us how to live the happy life, how to live life to its fullest, the way God intended. And what a blessing it is that the first and most fundamental attitude of Christianity is poverty of spirit. C.H. Spurgeon, the great preacher, once remarked, a ladder, if it is to be of any use, must have its first step near the ground, or feeble climbers will never be able to mount. And he was saying so because he saw this first attitude, poverty of spirit, as the first rung of the ladder. Brothers and sisters, that's exciting. My friend, that's exciting because anyone here can declare spiritual bankruptcy before God. That's a wonderful thing, a wonderful truth in this message here that Christ begins with blessed are the poor in spirit, the spiritually bankrupt. But today we're going to consider a second attitude that is fundamental to Christianity. It is no less essential, no less necessary. Let me read our text, it's very brief. Matthew chapter five and verse four. Jesus says, blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted. That's the word of our Lord. And let's just begin with prayer. Father, we once again want to acknowledge you and ask your blessing upon the reading and the preaching of your word. We thank you for your Holy Spirit that you have sent to convict of sin, righteousness and judgment. And we pray that even in our midst, your Holy Spirit would be at work. Lord, would you be making Your will known to each and every heart here, Father. We pray that You would break the hardened hearts, Father. We pray that You would deal with Your people. There be somebody who's holding out on You. There's some sin in their life that they've not repented of. Maybe they've not told anyone about. Father, we pray that You would deal with them and not let them go. And we pray if there be anybody in this room who's never come to truly mourn over their sins and be repentant, would today be a day of salvation. And this we ask in Jesus' name, amen. Crying is good for you. According to an article by Medical News Today, crying has many benefits for us. First, researchers have found that crying has a self-soothing effect. A 2014 study explained how crying activates the parasympathetic nervous system, which helps people relax. And as well as helping people self-soothe, crying can help people get support from others around them. Now that's natural enough, but studies have actually been shown that demonstrate crying rallies support from people around us. Moreover, research has found that in addition to being self-soothing, crying helps to actually relieve pain. And there's these chemicals in us, when we cry, this oxytocin and endorphins that are released and these chemicals make us feel good and they ease both physical and emotional pain so that crying can actually reduce pain and promote a sense of well-being. The article goes on to explain how that crying enhances mood, releases toxins, relieves stress, enhances sleep. It fights bacteria that is in the eyes and even improves vision. So yes, crying is good for you. And of course, as infants, we cry anytime and everywhere, and they tell us crying is a good sign. It's a sign of life. It's really the first sign of life, or first thing we hear from one who has entered this world of sorrow, is it not? But the ironic thing is that the older we get, the more private we tend to get about our tears. This is all interesting because today Jesus is going to give us what is another and most essential benefit to crying. Jesus is going to talk about tears. He's going to tell us something about mourning, this extended period of crying. And however old you are and however non-emotional sort of person you may be, You can't afford to go without this sort of crying. So I just read our text. Jesus said, blessed are those who mourn. That is those who cry. They're in deepest sorrow and grievance. He says, for they shall be comforted. The commentator John Stott remarked of this, that we might translate this as happy are the unhappy, happy are the unhappy so as to get the idea of how paradoxical this is. As G.K. Chesterton put it, a paradox is truth standing on its head and calling for attention. That's what Jesus is doing. He is speaking with shock effect. He wants your attention this morning in the countercultural thing he's saying. And this beatitude, blessed are those who mourn, is sister to the first we saw. Blessed are the poor in spirit. The first beatitude indicated to us that we studied last week that we are blessed of God. Those are blessed of God who understand their true spiritual bankruptcy. Have you recognized that? Have you recognized you have no merit of your own? You have nothing in your own life, no righteousness that commends you to God and his holiness. Well, that's the first. beatitude we saw. We are spiritually bankrupt, but now this second beatitude indicates that those blessed of God will also feel their own unworthiness, will feel their own wretched condition before God in a profound way. We must understand we are impoverished in spirit, but we must also feel that in some way. Last week we were focusing on the fact that we must be cognizant of our unworthiness before God, but this week we're dealing with the fact that we must be emotionally conscious of our sinfulness before the Lord. And ultimately, we must repent then of our sin. So there's a progression here where genuine poverty of spirit results in what we call contrition of heart. Contrition. The church has long used this term to talk about brokenness, sorrow of heart as it relates to sin. Poverty of spirit yields contrition of heart. And this is the second mark of a true Christian. The second mark of a true Christian is contrition over sin. Contrition over sin. And we'll be answering just two basic questions of our text that will help us appreciate this most fundamental attitude of the Christian life. First, what did Jesus mean by those who mourn? Is Jesus saying, blessed are any who mourn for any reason? Certainly not. There are many kinds of tears. Even the Bible itself indicates there are many different kinds of tears. There are many different reasons people cry. And I want us to see three kinds of mourning from the Word of God this morning. First of all, there's mourning that is sinful. There are tears which are displeasing to God. These are tears which come from out of a state of rebellion and selfishness. So let's talk about them. Let me give you some examples from the Bible. First of all, some mourn because they simply want to manipulate others. And you've heard the term crocodile tears. Crocodile tears are, it's an expression for tears or any really expression of sorrow that is insincere. It's manipulative. It's not genuine. We see these tears in Delilah's attempt to seduce the strong man, Samson, to get what she wanted. And sometimes, brothers and sisters, people will use tears. They will go through great lengths to shed tears and show great sorrow and emotion to manipulate you, to get something they want. So beware. All tears are not innocent. Beware of deceitful, manipulative, disingenuine tears. More generally, the Bible indicates that some mourn because of some unfulfilled desire for sin. Some unfulfilled sinful lust. For instance, when David's wayward son Amnon mourned, he mourned when he couldn't have this illicit relationship he desired with his own sister, Tamar. That's sinful. Or there's King Ahab in the Bible who mourned because he coveted a plot of land that the peasant Naboth would not sell to him. And so he's weeping there like a baby on his bed and his wife Jezebel comes and says, put yourself together. And she says, I'll get you that vineyard. And she does so at the price of Naboth's blood. Yes, many mourn when their lust goes unfulfilled. And these tears are not blessed of God. This is the mourning of the wicked. This is no proof of virtue. Many mourn only the consequences of their sin. And this can be more subtle. Because none of us like sin's consequences. I think of Cain in the Bible, who had no remorse over murdering his own brother. But the moment God issued a judgment upon him, he lamented and said, oh, this judgment is more than I can bear. Cain was not repentant. Cain was not sorry in a blessed state. He was only sorry over the consequences of his sin. Just read the Bible and you'll see there are many other sorts of crying that is displeasing to God. In Ezekiel 8 we read about these Israelite women who were weeping over the god Tammuz. This was a pagan fertility ritual. God hated this, and you can read about it in Malachi chapter 2 verse 16. God's people were shedding tears upon his altar. But God said he wasn't pleased because they were tears of hypocrisy. And he says, spare the tears, mend your ways. Joel 2.13, rend your hearts, not your garments. Not all mourning is blessed of God, because some mourning is purely selfish, even sinful. Of course, there's also mourning that is plain natural. And this accounts for a great deal of the tears we see. It's part of our humanity. It's part of living in a sin-cursed world that is full of pain, full of sorrow, full of suffering. Everywhere we look, our world is filled and overflows with suffering. So Ecclesiastes 3.4 says, there is a time to weep. There is a time to mourn. This past week, I was just at a funeral. And these are times when it is good and even necessary to mourn. Mourning is the expression of sorrow. It's the release of inner grief. And in this way, tears are actually a gift of God because tears become that mechanism by which we can release our grief instead of just penting it up inside. The poet John Donne rightly observed, he who has no time to mourn has no time to mend. And it's true that when dealing with grief it helps to mourn. But of course many of us have been led to believe that real men don't cry. We aren't supposed to show tears. We aren't supposed to show mourning to others. Jesus though didn't hold back. In the scriptures we read of Christ that at the grave of Lazarus Jesus released his grief. He mourned for any and all to see. Jesus wept. Never once does the scripture record that Jesus laughed. We can certainly imagine that he did. And what a beautiful thing that must have been to see. But Jesus wept. Jesus wept and The scriptures tell us in Romans 12, 15, weep with those that weep. That's what Jesus did. That's what we should do. We should mourn over the loss of loved ones. We should mourn over the intense pain and suffering that others are bearing because this is a powerful way of both mending our own hearts and also showing others that we genuinely care. But there's nothing in suffering itself and or weeping over suffering that is inherently virtuous. Jesus said blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted but he's not promising a special blessing to those who merely weep over suffering. Do you know that in the time of Christ there were actually professional mourners? There were people that you could pay and you certainly would be expected to pay in the Jewish culture at least to mourn over your loved one. And Jesus is not talking about this kind of mourning. That is mourning over grief. That is the sort of natural bereavement process we go through. That's not what Jesus is dealing with in the sermon. Not just any mourning renders us blessed of God. So there is a third kind of mourning that renders us blessed of God. When Jesus said, blessed are those who mourn, he's talking about a spiritual mourning. He's talking about mourning over sin. mourning over sin. It's true Jesus doesn't mention sin in this verse here in Matthew 5.4, but he's picking up on a very familiar theme in the Bible. If you read through the Psalms you will see, and I just began by quoting from one of them at the outset of our service here, Many of the Psalms contain a lament over sin. Psalms like Psalm 32 or Psalm 38 or 51, 102, 130, 143. These Psalms are where the psalmist laments his own sinfulness and cries out to God for mercy. Mourning sin was also a common theme found in God's prophets. If you read the Old Testament, all these books in your Bible before the Gospels here, you will find that the prophets are continually calling people, God's people, to stop laughing and to start mourning. God had given them his laws. Israel knew what God wanted them to do and they did not care. And that is what God is after so many times in the prophets. Stop laughing. Stop making merry. Put your life on hold. Start weeping. It's time to change your ways. It's time to mourn over sin. So likewise when Jesus begins preaching, blessed are those who mourn, he's talking about those who mourn this most tragic loss. He's talking about mourning the loss of something even more tragic than the loss of life. It is mourning the loss of your innocence. It is mourning the loss of your fellowship with God. This is the greatest tragedy. A man once dreamed that he saw Jesus bearing an enormous crushing burden upon his back. And he recognized this to be a burden representing sin. So he approached Jesus and asked, Lord, whose sins are these upon your back? Are these not the sins of the whole world? To which Jesus replied, not the sins of the world. But the sins that belong to you. These are the sins I carry upon my back. And the man then awoke and he wept and he wept and he wept because to this point he had not realized the enormity of his sin before God. Has that ever been your experience? Have you ever wept over your own sinfulness? Not the things just other people are doing, but your own sin before God. Have you ever realized how hideous your rebellion to God is? I thank God for every time he has brought myself or any one of his people to this place where we mourn our sin. We should mourn the sin in our own lives. How do we get there? How do we do that? Are we talking about simply being very introspective? Well, this is not simply being introspective. We could all search our hearts this morning, but the Bible doesn't just say, search your heart. The Psalm says in Psalm 139, search me, oh God. Psalm 139.23, search me, oh God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts and see if there be any grievous way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. We are to allow God to search our heart, to x-ray our heart and show to us the things we would not otherwise care to see. How can you do this? How can you allow God to search your heart and reveal your sin to you? Well, if you will hold your life up to the full length mirror of God's word, like James 1 describes. God will show you yourself. If you will look intently into the mirror of God's word, you will see yourself. And I can promise you this much. You won't like what you see. If you look honestly and intently and long enough into the undiluted word of God, you won't like what you see. Because God is holy and we are not. The Bible shows us ourselves the way God sees us and it shows us the holiness of God. It shows us the standard against which we are to be measured. Hey, it's easy to just look at my sins and then judge myself according to my next door neighbor or somebody else at work that I don't like. But when the only standard by which you are judged is the holy God, that is very different. And if we allow God to search us through his word, and so that we see ourselves in light of his holiness, we will cry with Isaiah in Isaiah 6, 5, Woe is me, Isaiah said. Woe is me, when he saw the holiness of God. For I am ruined, because I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, because mine eyes have seen the Lord, the King of hosts. Now naturally, if we mourn over our own sin, we will also mourn over the sin of others. And we will realize that we are not just unjust before God and unworthy before God, but we will mourn that we live in the midst of a people of unclean lips as Isaiah did. We will mourn the sin of others. This is biblical. David wept for the sin of the world. He said in Psalm 119, 126, my eyes shed streams of tears because they do not keep your law. The prophet Jeremiah often mourned over the sin of his people so that he is called the weeping prophet. And when Jesus showed up on earth, he also wept. He wept and groaned over the devastating effects of sin's curse on the world. He wept over the sins of Jerusalem, the scriptures teach us. In fact, so remarkable was Jesus' pathos that Matthew 16, 14 says, many of the Jews said, Jesus, is Jeremiah come back from the grave? Jesus was grieved over sin. He had no sin of his own. He was grieved over the sin of the world. So what about us? Are we moved about the sin of our culture? Did you know the latest global estimates of modern slavery indicate there are more people enslaved today than ever in the history of the world? And slavery, the slave industry is incredibly fast growing. We hear about children being trafficked for money and pleasure. I'm not talking about so-called microaggressions. I'm talking about real slavery, real oppression, full exploitation of every kind. There are children being trafficked. We hear about babies in the millions being aborted and their abortions celebrated. And these evils are so horrid that most Americans, they don't even want to hear the truth about it. They feel so uncomfortable. They don't want to know the details. And it's not politically correct to even mention it, not even in church. But for the love of God, we, the people of God, must mourn these sins and we must do what we can to stop them. The British evangelist George Whitfield used to say as he preached to impenitent crowds that would mock him and were calloused toward the sins of their society. He said, if you yourself will not weep for your sins, George Whitfield will weep for you. And that man would throw his head back and sob like a baby for the sins of his people. We should mourn our sins and the sins of our world. And this is not about being more or less an emotional sort of person. It's not about simply emotions. This is about what the church has long recognized as contrition. Contrition. Contrition is the breaking of a hardened heart, a heart that is calloused to sin. It's often accompanied by mourning, but it is most evident, it is always evident, we could say, by a changed life. It's repentance that Christ is after. Jesus isn't after simply an emotional response. Jesus' call to mourn isn't a call to be more emotional. And there are some people here that just, you aren't emotional. You aren't an emotional sort of person. But that's not what Jesus is after. He's not after emotions. He wants you to be truly repentant over your sin. To have a contrite heart is to have a heart that aches and breaks over sin. that is moved to think upon the gravity, the weight of our sinfulness. Tears are a good sign, but the best sign is a 180 degree turning from sin, repentance that results in a changed life. To be clear, the word that Jesus uses here for mourn, blessed are those who mourn, this word mourn does not simply describe a sad feeling. There are actually nine different words used for sorrow in the Greek, and this word that Jesus uses for mourn is the deepest, it is the darkest, it is the heaviest sorrow of them all. It typically describes the drawn-out process of mourning, accompanying death, where we mourn the loss of someone we love. So this word expresses something far deeper than a moment of tears. This communicates a drawn out process of grief, lamenting, a lingering state of sorrow. This is the kind of sorrow that defies comfort. And that is why Jesus' next statement is so amazing. He says, blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted. We've explored what Jesus meant by those who mourn. And we saw that he's talking about contrition over sin. He's dealing with the heart, our attitude towards sin, what we might call contrition, this contrite heart. We are to be poor in spirit, that is, recognize our spiritual bankruptcy before God. But what then? So I'm unworthy before God. So I'm spiritually bankrupt. Jesus says the right response to that is we ought to mourn. We ought to be broken. We ought to have a contrite heart because of our impoverishment before the Lord. But the second question we must ask of our text is, what did Jesus mean by they will be comforted? Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted. What did Jesus mean by this comfort? Well, with regards to the sorrow we've discussed, we're talking about sorrow over sin, mourning sin. And the Bible shows us there are only two sources of comfort for someone mourning sin. It's a true comfort and a false comfort. False comfort makes sinners comfortable in their sin. Like a painkiller. It just numbs your sorrow over sin. The world offers a variety of false comforts. The first and probably most basic would be hollow laughter. This is where we play down or make light of our sin. We laugh it off. After someone threatened to blow the whistle on him, a very famous talk show host was pressured to publicly confess having adultery with multiple women on his staff. And so he did. He flat-out told his late-night audience, this is what I did. The response? Unsuppressed, immediate laughter. Laughter and applause. And the show went right on without a hitch. But for every laugh we hear in the late night show, where someone's laughing off sin, often sin of some sort of sexual nature, for every laugh we hear of sin, someone else is crying. Someone else is mourning. That is, adultery and immorality really can seem like a harmless joke, right? when it's just on the screen, until you see a woman weeping because her heart's broken, or a child crying himself to sleep because daddy's not coming home. Sin is disgusting. It brings death and destruction. It ruins lives and ultimately ends in eternal death. It's not a laughing matter. And beyond all this devastation that sin has wreaked upon our world, if you want to see the true ugliness of sin, then just look at the cross. Just look at the cross and see what sin did to the Holy Son of God. God takes sin seriously. The Bible teaches Christ died for our sin. 1 Peter 2.24 says that Christ bore our sins in His body on the cross. Your sins put Jesus there. As we sing, it was my sin that nailed Him there until it was accomplished. Do you realize your sin put Jesus on the cross? Don't laugh at sin. That's a false comfort. Now, sadly, this false comfort of laughing at sin has actually made its way into much of the church. A while back, John Piper was invited to speak on grace and truth at a national gathering of the American Association of Certified Counselors. It has been called the most bizarre moment in Piper's entire preaching career. He began his sermon by giving this crowd of Christian counselors nine sins that are true in his own life. The bizarre thing was that the crowd erupted in laughter several times throughout Piper's litany of sins. And if you know Piper, you'll know he's no comedian. He wasn't trying to be. And he was perplexed, he was trying to be transparent with these counselors about his own sin, his own failings in life, and so to relate to them and He was perplexed when met with laughter. Now, Piper didn't condemn the crowd, but he later admitted he was totally caught off guard by this, and he explained how that this reflects the expectations many Christians have for preaching in our culture. How that many Christians are expecting from preaching a silly, slapstick, jokey, jesting, clever, trifling, young teen, summer camp, rah-rah atmosphere. And Piper observes That this is the way the entertainment saturated culture of America is. If you haven't noticed, preaching on sin isn't exactly popular today. Many churches don't want to talk about sin, let alone mourn over it, shed great tears over it, talk about true repentance from it. This is offensive. Most people find this offensive. They want their ears to be tickled with some kind of good, humored, uplifting, upbeat, very positive kind of a talk. Maybe somebody here is very uncomfortable. But this was something going on also in the first century. This isn't just a new phenomenon. In the first century, in the Church of Corinth, we read that the Christians there were unwilling to confront this gross immorality in their own assembly. And so Paul writes to them. He says in 1 Corinthians 5, 2, you are arrogant. Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this, that has done this sin, this immorality, be removed from among you. You see, we're going to see in this sermon, Jesus is very gracious and we are to deal very graciously with sinners. But when it comes to the church of the living God, we don't tolerate that. We can't put up with sin. Why, Paul? Why do you say these people are arrogant? Why do you say they must mourn? Why do you say they must remove this sinful behavior, this one who is in unrepentant sin from the assembly? Because sin is a cancer. You can't tolerate it in the body. Paul will go on to say it spreads. And it is the height of arrogance to suppose that we in the 21st century can somehow be more tolerant than the church of the first century. Even so, it is the height of arrogance to assume that we can be more tolerant of sin than Jesus Christ himself, of a truth we can't. Instead of making light of sin, the Bible says in James 4.8, cleanse your hands, you sinners. Purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be miserable. and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy into gloom. That is to say, we must take our sin seriously. Another false comfort takes the form of escapism. That is diverting attention from our sorrow to virtually anything else. Anything that will hold your attention. For some, this takes the more obvious forms of drugs and sex and alcohol. Many in our culture have a habit of escaping to the bar that Friday night. That's exactly what they're going to do to find their comfort. But I must warn you that this can be far more subtle. Honestly, when God is convicting you about sin, anything you seek other than repentance from God, other than forgiveness from God, that is a false escape. That's a false comfort. This is because when you offend God, the only way forward is to go back to God. It's to make things right with the Lord you've offended. Maybe God's dealing with you this morning about some sin in your life, some particular sin. The worst thing you could do... is anything other than repent of that sin. For instance, when God's bringing to your mind, this is what the Holy Spirit does by the way, it's His ministry to us to convict us of sin. And when God the Spirit is bringing to your mind some particular sin that you have not repented of, If instead of sincerely forsaking that sin, you decide to escape your guilt by running to friends and family, immersing yourself in the social life, turning on a sporting event, watching Netflix, whatever. I don't care what it is. God doesn't care what it is. That is resisting the Holy Spirit. The Bible says in Numbers 32, 23, and God wants you to know, be sure your sin will find you out. Be sure your sin will find you out. Whatever escape you find for the moment, you won't escape from God. Closing your eyes or looking the other way doesn't change anything. So some play down sin. Some pretend like it never happened. They want to run from it. Others, as strange as it may sound, try to seek comfort. in despair, some sort of self-deprecating behavior. But it may even come to the point of absolute, total despair. I think of Judas Iscariot, who after considering what he had done and how he had betrayed innocent blood, the Bible tells us this was a broken man. He went out weeping. He cast down the money. He didn't even want the money for which he had sold Christ. And he went out and hung himself. Despair. Here was a man seeking comfort, the only place he thought he could find it. And there's no end of stories that tell about people that in coming to face-to-face and coming to encounter the gravity of their sin and seeing no way out, they seek comfort in the leap of despair. Death itself, a tragedy. And all self-deprecating behavior, likewise, trying to punish yourself for your guilt, that's a false comfort. Of course, we could say the same for any false religion where people are trying to add to their life good works. They're trying to bury their sin with good things. But it's the same deal. It's a false comfort. Why? Because there is only one true atonement for sin. There is only one covering for sin that truly covers it. There's only one sin-bearer who truly carries sin away, never to be seen again, and that is the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ. He alone is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. He was slain for sin, and He said on the cross, it is finished. No more debt, then, do we owe. Beware of these false comforts. The problem with all of these comforts I've just mentioned is that they are false because they still leave us in our sin regardless of how much they inoculate you regardless of how much they numb your pain. They inoculate you to guilt. They do not change the fact you are guilty before God. They do nothing to remedy your actual condition which is your sin before God. So false comfort makes sinners comfortable in their sin. True comfort True comfort comes to sinners who forsake their sin. And that's what Jesus is talking about here. Jesus said, Blessed are those who mourn, that is mourn over their sinfulness, for they shall be comforted. In other words, only those who are contrite of heart, broken over sin, mourning their sin, only they will receive this comfort that comes from God. And that little word, for, that conjunction there, blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. That little word is Jesus giving you the reason that the unhappy are happy. This is Jesus giving you the reason, like Paul, that the Christian can be sorrowful yet always rejoicing. 2 Corinthians 6.10. The true Christian, that is one who is truly repentant over his sin, mourning his sin, will receive true comfort. And let me give you three assurances of true comfort for the true Christian. First, all believers who mourn their sin will be eternally comforted at life's end. All true believers who mourn their sin will be eternally comforted at life's end. This is probably the most obvious thing that comes to our mind because notice Jesus uses the future tense. He says, blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted. And if you just read Revelation 21 for at the end of the story, we read that when God comes to forever dwell with his people, he will wipe away all tears from their eyes. There will be no longer any death, no longer any mourning, or crying, or pain. And this is why we as a church could say, we don't sorrow as those who have no hope, 1 Thessalonians 4.13. We have hope of eternal life. That's comforting, despite the fact we presently loathe our sin. But a second reassurance of true comfort is that all believers who mourn their sin presently receive forgiveness of God. All believers who mourn their sin presently receive forgiveness of their sin from God. A moment ago I mentioned how Judas Iscariot, he had sinned against the Lord and in realizing the gravity of sin, this brought him to despair. And the only comfort that he could resort to was to go out and hang himself, take his own life. But that night there was another man who betrayed Jesus. And the Bible tells us that he went out and also wept bitterly. That is, he mourned his sin. But the rest of the story in the Bible is that this traitor had another encounter with Jesus. And he found Jesus forgave his sin. Jesus lifted him up. Jesus gave him another chance. And this made all the difference in the world for the man we know as the Apostle Peter. Just as God will not leave sinners poor in spirit, He won't leave us in our poverty when we declare to Him our spiritual bankruptcy. We come to Him saying, I need the riches of your grace. I have nothing in my hand to offer you, God. And God will not leave us impoverished spiritually in the same way. God will not let sinners go on mourning sin indefinitely. He comforts the afflicted. He wipes away the tears of those He mourns because He's a God who forgives. And as we fall down before Christ, we hear Him call our name and we see Him take our hand. He lifts us up and He says, go and sin no more. That's our Jesus. That is the merciful God of second chances. That's comforting. That's true comfort that comes from God to His people. A third assurance of true comfort is that the true Christian receives the comforting presence of the Holy Spirit. A true Christian receives the comforting presence of the Holy Spirit. In the Upper Room Discourse, the night before his death, Jesus promised to send the Holy Spirit to dwell with his disciples forever. And Jesus refers to the Spirit using the Greek term paraclete, which means helper, or one who comes alongside to help, or comforter, one who comforts his people. So it turns out the same Spirit of God who convicts us of sin is the same Spirit of God who comforts us. Comforts us with His blessed presence. Maybe the Spirit of God is working on you right now. He's convicting you. That is only because He wants to comfort you with the comfort that comes from being closer to His presence. Being in a closer relationship with God. This is the ultimate reassurance. God will not leave us alone. He will not leave us comfortless. He is always with us. So yes, we are comforted. Do you feel the real paradox here? God does not delight in death and suffering. He's not just wanting everybody all around the world just to be miserable. God is not a sadist. God is not a cosmic killjoy. But like any good doctor, he knows that in order to save the patient, he must kill the infection. and he must kill all of it. And so this painful process of mourning, which feels like death, actually results in life that is sweeter than ever before. That's why the psalmist said in Psalm 34, 18, the Lord is near. The Lord is near to the broken hearted. Those broken hearted over their sin. And he saves those who are of a crushed spirit. Those who are contrite of heart. Brothers and sisters, whenever you see a sinner weeping over their sin, just know that God is near. God is very near. A second mark of the true Christian is contrition over sin. We saw last week, a true Christian is poor in spirit, but Jesus is here saying that they are also those who mourn over their condition. They are contrite of heart. And this again is very counter-cultural of Jesus. The world says blessed are those who have much fun. The world says blessed are those who are able to escape their guilt through whatever means and laugh it off. Our world cannot seem to understand this kind of sorrow. Christians experience over sin. They don't get it. And if you mourn over your sin and someone who's not a Christian comes to know about that, they might think to you or say to you, you're psychotic. What's wrong with you? Just like they said of Martin Luther. Many have studied his life and said the guy was psychotic because he was so obsessed over this thing called sin. And in the minds of the world, there is no God. There is no such God who gives us such a holy law. But to be a Christian, To follow Christ is to mourn your sin. So how can you be brought to mourn over sin? Well, briefly, mourning requires some time and attention. So to put this into practice, it's going to take some time to do the following. Put your life on hold. Silence your phone. Shut yourself in your closet and get alone with God. And then give careful attention to what he says in scripture. Open the word of God. Pour over it. I would suggest you, you can even start here right in Matthew chapter 5 with a sermon on the mouth. Let the spirit of God speak to you his words and give him time to hit you with the full gravity of your sin. And then as he does, agree with him. Agree with God against yourself. Be brutally honest as God shows you how you've fallen short of His glory. And let Him pour out to you the contents of your life. No, don't make excuses. Stop thinking about other people. Stop talking about other people's sins or why you did what you did. Be brutally honest with God and let the Spirit of God empty out to you the contents of your life. And make sure that you also confess the sin behind your sin. That is, follow those sins down to the very root. Get to the bottom of it. Ask the Lord to show you the very motives of your heart, why you did what you did. And after having confessed your sin to God, consider any steps that you need to take to make things right with others. You may need to talk to somebody. You may need to go make a visit. You may need to do something. because this is what true repentance is. It's a change of life. And consider what you must do in order to prevent yourself from returning to the same sin in the future. Finally, rest in Christ. Bring your burden to the Lord and leave it there. Cast your burden on the Lord and trust him to sustain you. Trust him to bear it away as far as the east is from the west, as he has promised to do. Now, if you're here and you believe you're guilty before God, and you've never come to the assurance that God has forgiven your sins because of the work of Jesus Christ, my friend, if there's any doubt, if there's any lack of assurance, please see me before you leave today. I'd love to take a Bible and open it and show you the true comfort that is alone found in Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Father, thank you for this word, even though it is a heavy word. These are, we know, not the popular sayings in the Bible, but yet we thank you for them because we need them. And even in an age like ours where there's so much frivolity and laughter and distraction and so little time to even think about sin and far much more time making light of it, we thank you for your holy word that still comes to us and calls us to be serious about every single time we break your law. Father, please make us a people that is sensitive about our sin. Give us that. That sort of a heart, that sort of a response that Isaiah had when he saw your holiness, that we would loathe that sin, that we would self-accuse instead of just blaming others. Father, please change our hearts, God, that your glory might be seen in our lives, that you might be pleased with the fact that we are forsaking sin and becoming more like your Holy Son, Jesus Christ.