This morning we are looking at the beatitude that says, blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Our Gospel reading is from John Chapter 16, verses 19 through 24. This is God's word. Jesus saw that they wanted to ask him about this, so he said to them, are you asking one another what I meant when I said, in a little while you will see me no more, and then after a little while you will see me? I tell you the truth, you will weep and mourn while the world rejoices. You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy. A woman giving birth to a child has pain because of her time has come. When her baby is born, she forgets to anguish because of her joy. The child is born into the world. So with you now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice and no one will take away your joy. Father in heaven, as we come to your word, open our hearts and minds, make us more like you. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Jesus is preparing his disciples for his arrest and crucifixion. He's telling them that soon they will experience grief and sorrow. Then he says something very interesting that when the world rejoices, you will weep and mourn. There probably has never been a time when a culture that avoided sorrow more than ours does. We don't like it, we don't want it, and if for some reason we have to go through it, we're going to blame somebody else for it. That is why the words of Matthew seem so counterintuitive to us. Blessed are those who mourn. The last few years I've had reasons to mourn. From the time that we got here, our best friend, my best friend was Michael Ramsey. When I had bypass surgery, he showed up, after I got home, he showed up almost every day because I was supposed to go for a walk. He would come and he would walk with me. We got back to my house, he would talk for a little while, and then he would realize that I was tired and he would leave, but the next day he would be there again. I mourned when we lost him. Then we lost my father in 2022. I realized this week, as the red wings were going through a slump, I felt like calling him and commiserating with him and then realized I couldn't. Of course we lost our son, Joe, which is the greatest cause of grief and mourning. If you take it at face value, the beatitude that says blessed are those who mourn almost seems absurd. Happy are the sad. What kind of sense does that make? Happy are the sad. The two words seem like opposites. If you looked up anethosaurus, synonyms for happy, sad wouldn't be on the list. Anonyms would be, sad would be there. It's like saying dark is the light or up is down. Doesn't make sense. The normal world of human thinking, especially 21st century Canadian culture, is bent toward avoiding sadness and mourning and seeking pleasure, especially frivolous pleasure. Now I enjoy TV sports as much, okay, even more than the average guy. And the NHL playoffs are almost here and I will watch to see who wins, but in the end, it really doesn't matter. It's frivolity as are most sports, as are most entertainment, most television. So when the Bible says happy are the sad, it is absurd to the natural human being. Yet we have to believe that God makes sense, at least to himself, and we must believe that if we are Christians, that God has given us the Holy Spirit, that He has made us people who are able to understand, at least in part, His word. And then we should attempt what it understand, I'm sorry, we should attempt to understand what it means when He says, blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Jesus uses childbirth as an example. I remember the childbirth that was most difficult for Tracy was our first son, John, 10 hours of labor. Now I realize for some women, 10 hours seems like a picnic, but it was 10 hours. And then finally the baby came and we cried with joy, but it didn't stop there. There's heartaches and joys and pain and sorrows and happiness. But unless we, and especially Tracy, are willing to mourn and go through that, there is no great joy. It's not just childbirth that teaches us these things. In so much of life, we eliminate the possibilities of great joy because we're unwilling to mourn. C.S. Lewis says it like this. C.S. Lewis says it like this. For our from finding our desires too strong, God finds them too weak. We are fooling around with things like sex and drink, when what is being offered is infinite joy. We are like children in a slum playing in a mud puddle. We don't understand what it means by an offer of a holiday at sea. We are far too easily pleased. Some of you are stuck in the mud puddle and seeking your comfort there. Some of you it's a mud puddle of a job that you're too afraid to change. For some of you it's a mud puddle of a relationship that you don't have the courage to change because you don't want to be lonely. So you'll never know what you could have had. For some of you it's the mud puddle of not having a relationship because you don't want to risk being hurt again. For some of you it's a mud puddle of some habit that you're seeking your comfort in. Jeremiah two says my people have committed two great evils. They have forsaken me the fountain of living waters and dug for themselves, cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water. And that's what we do. We comfort ourselves, our souls with something or someone other than Christ. We are children in the mud puddle drinking dirty water. The problem of course is we often cannot see that we are in the mud. Someone else has to point it out. Someone else has to tell you that the water is dirty. I remember being at a football game when my kids were in high school and there was a group of girls sitting just a couple of rows in front of me and they were being vulgar and taunting different people. So I pointed it out to them and I asked them to stop. When I told them they saw it. Now I'm not sure if they were more upset because they were drinking dirty water or because I told them and they would rather not have known. And that's how some people are. That's how people are with Jesus. You're going to be sad and mourn but there will be great joy. And some people say I'd just rather skip the mourning part. Thank you. Here's the problem. You cannot have the comfort without the mourning first. In the book Shadowlands or the movie, it says the joy now is part of the pain then. That's the deal. And child the pain now is part of the joy then. Still if ever there was a verse that seemed like foolishness to the natural man, this is it. Blessed are those who mourn, happy are the sad. Now unless you think Matthew is the only one that says this and somehow he's lost his way, Luke states it in even stronger terms. He says woe to you who laugh now for you shall mourn and weep. James in his letter in verse nine, chapter four, be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Solomon in Ecclesiastes, the mind of the wise is in the house of mourning but the heart of the fools is in the house of mirth. So the idea is an original with Matthew. It's a biblical truth. It's God's truth. Blessed are those who mourn. Happy are the sad for they will be comforted. Before this verse there's the verse that blessed are the poor in spirit for there's the kingdom of heaven. The poor in spirit are happy because of something in the present. Those who mourn are happy because of a future promise. They will be comforted. They shall be comforted. So can we conclude that if we mourn in this life we'll be comforted or are there different kinds of mourning? The scripture tells us there are. Second Corinthians seven, verses nine through 11. Paul wrote on now I rejoice 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 so that you might not suffer loss in anything through us. For the sorrow that is according to the will of God produces repentance without regret leading to salvation. But the sorrow of the world produces death. For behold what earnestness this very thing this godly sorrow has produced in you. There are many illegitimate sorrows in the world. Any sorrow which results from unfulfilled evil plans or lust or misguided loyalties are not godly sorrow. And if you mourn in this way you won't be comforted. And even what begins as understandable sorrows can become less than godly sorrows. John MacArthur in his book on Matthew explains that David mourned inconsolably over the death of his son Absalom. Now this was in part in order to atone for his own sin and guilt related to his son. Remember David had taken Uriah's wife, Beth Sheba, and had Uriah killed. And as a result Absalom caused a rebellion. And then Absalom was killed. And the king covered his face and cried out with a loud voice, oh my son Absalom, oh Absalom my son, my son. But then Joab came to his house and said, today you've covered with shame the faces of all your servants who today have saved your life and the lives of your sons and daughters, the lives of your wives, the lives of your concubines, by loving those who hate you and by hating those who love you. For you have shown today that princes and servants are nothing to you. For I know this day that if Absalom were alive and all the rest of us were dead, you would be pleased. If there is improper mourning, which will not comfort you, we know there is mourning which is godly and will be comforted. So what can be considered godly mourning? One commentator said there are three kinds of mourning and I wanna mention them to you. First there's mourning for the state of God's people in the church and how she is treated by the unrighteousness, unrighteous, I'm sorry. Daniel mourned for Israel when they were taken captive by the Babylonians. Nehemiah mourned for the state of Israel before it was rebuilt. Listen to what he says in the first four verses of the book of Nehemiah. While I was in the capital, Hananiah, one of my brothers, and some of the men from Judah came and I asked them concerning the Jews who had escaped and survived the captivity and about Jerusalem and they said to me, the remnant there in the province who survived the captivity are in great distress and reproach. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down and the gates are burned with fire. When I heard these words, I sat down and wept and mourned for days and I was fasting and praying before the God of heaven. This is certainly godly and legitimate mourning. Concern for God's people and God's reputation and grief when they suffer at the hands of the ungodly is expected of any Christian. Nehemiah exemplifies that kind of mourning. Another type of mourning is grieving for the sin, specifically the sins of the nation, the sins of the body. Nehemiah later in that same chapter demonstrated this as well. He says, I beseech you, God of heaven, the great and awesome God who preserves the covenant and loving kindness for those who love him and keep his commandments. Let your ear now be attentive and your eyes open to hear the prayer of your servant, which I am praying. You now, day and night, on behalf of the sons of Israel, your servants, confessing the sins of the sons of Israel, which we have sinned against you, I and my father's house have sinned. We have acted corruptly against you and have not kept the commandments nor the statutes, nor the ordinances which you commanded, your servant Moses. Isaiah put it more succinctly when he was confronted with the holiness of the living God, he said, woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips. You see, these men, Nehemiah and Isaiah, felt the weight of their own sin, but they also grieved for the sin of God's people. They fell on their knees before God in repentance, asking for forgiveness and healing. And God has instructed us to do the very same thing. If my people who are called by my name humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land, 2 Chronicles 7. I don't think there's any sin which blights our nation more than abortion. There's no reasonable person that says they're not human, they're not people. For example, in utero, surgery is performed in three and four month old fetuses. And when they're written about in that context, the unborn are always referred to as babies. When a mother is glad to be pregnant, even a pro-choice mother, she talks about her baby as though she is already a person, which he or she is. When someone doesn't want their baby, they become a non-person. This is a horrible, horrible sin. What we've tried to do is assert ourselves in the place of God and decide who is a person and who isn't, who lives or who dies. We have as a nation become purveyors of child sacrifice. Mothers with the help of the abortion industry sacrificing their children on the altar of convenience. If you are Christian, it is a sin not to mourn over the tens and thousands of babies, unborn children who've lost their lives every year. Do you know how many Canadians died in World War II? 45,000, that's a lot. And as horrible as that is, it's one half of the number of babies killed by abortion in Canada in 2021, the last year for which we have statistics. Do you mourn over this? See, to mourn, you'll have to care. And honestly, most of us don't care. Now we support a ministry called Open Door. And every year, beginning on Mother's Day, we have boxes and bottles and you can pick one up and fill them with change. Now I realize most people don't have change anymore, but you can fill them with dollars, you can fill them with checks, and I think you could even do a electronic transfer. We had a very paltry showing last year. Now I'm choosing to believe that we just didn't talk about it enough. I don't wanna believe it's that we don't care. I remember, I think I've told you this story before, so I'll briefly recount it. When Tracy and I were with Campus Crusade, she had befriended a woman named Fei Gao. And one day at a Bible study, Fei told her she couldn't come next week because she was having an abortion. She said it matter of factly, she was from China, and that was the way it was in China, it was very matter of fact. Well, Tracy and her friend Dana went and talked to her and her husband Joe. It was on a Thursday night and they talked for hours. And at the end of it, Fei said she was gonna go ahead the next morning. But what happened is that Tracy and Dana kept Fei up so late on Thursday night that she overslept and missed her appointment. And then she never made another one. See, she had taken an x-ray from a car accident when she didn't know she was pregnant and she was told by the doctor the baby would probably be handicapped. But Andrea was born and she was perfect. Later we learned that Fei gave her life to Christ. But you see, if we didn't mourn over the possibility of that baby being killed, Tracy and Dana would have never done anything about it. But because they did and because Fei kept her baby, there was great rejoicing. Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted. Last kind of mourning I'll mention is the mourning of godly sorrow brought about through grieving over our own sin. In verse three we saw the necessity of being poor in spirit. This inability, this poverty, this spiritual bankruptcy is necessary condition for the possessing of the kingdom of God and only Christians have it because it's been given to them by grace as a gift from a sovereign God. The result of poverty of spirit is the realization of one's own sin. And if anyone sees their own sin and how they insulted God through their arrogance and rebelliousness, they mourn. They cannot help it. That sin includes things I mentioned earlier, the sin of being satisfied in the mud puddles, of digging your own well. But how does grief and sadness over our own sin make us happy? How will we be comforted? I want you to imagine there are two people and they both have cancer. One person is diagnosed early. The other person never goes to the doctor. The first person hears the news and is of course devastated. The other person hears no news and continues on his or her jovial way. The first man is in mourning over his condition. Knowing the pain he'll have to endure in order to save his life. The second man goes about his business without any idea of the pain he will endure when he discovers his condition too late. The first man mourns, the second man laughs. Who is blessed? Who is happy? There's another possibility and that is that you won't believe the diagnosis. The doctor's wrong. He or she doesn't really know I'm fine. You think the man who never knew will be sad in the end. Think how bitterly regretful a person would be to recall that they were told and did not listen. We have a disease. It's called sin. It's deadly. It will kill us. It's not to be taken lightly. But because we've been diagnosed in time we can be comforted. But unlike the illustration with the cancer patients where the mourning is in part because of the pain they will endure to save his life, all the pain which can save our life has fallen on Jesus Christ at the cross. It's the pain we deserved. It's the pain we've caused to fall on the Lord Jesus. The second man finds out when it's too late and there's nothing to be done. No help coming. No comfort possible. If we think it's horrible to find out too late that we have cancer, it is infinitely more horrible to discover too late the result of our sin. Happy are those who are sad. Sad over their sin. Greed because of their sinfulness. Because they will be comforted. Comforted by forgiveness. Comforted by the gift of righteousness. He made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf. That we might become the righteousness of God in him. Comforted because the angels rejoice over the repentance of one sinner. Let's pray. Father, thank you for the gift of mourning that leads us to be comforted. In Jesus name, amen.