11/02/2024 – Jody Destry
Everyone knows what it feels like to have a guilty conscience. To have done something we know we shouldn’t have done.
And as we get older, we become more sophisticated at justifying our questionable behavior to ourselves.
If we’re honest, we all still do things from time to time that we know we probably shouldn’t do, but we’re much better at convincing ourselves why it’s really not that bad.
We ourselves say things like…
i am a good person
I try to do the right things
I am kind, be kind to others
I pay my taxes.
I don’t steal
I try not to lie
didn’t kill anyone…
I try to be a decent contributing member of society….
So this little sin here…. or this little white lie there…..this little secret here… it doesn’t really hurt anyone…so it’s not that bad, right?!
Church & Culture:
In church we tend to capitalize the message of grace and capitalize the message of sin because it is more comfortable. It is more pleasant and acceptable to talk about the positive things than about the difficult things. When we talk about grace, we assume the reality of sin, but we don’t like to talk about it very much.
In 2024 we live in a very individualistic culture in which it is more about ‘your’ truth than ‘The’ truth. Where “you do you” is widely accepted, often in addition to the way of life Jesus calls us to when we choose to follow Him and be His disciples.
The point, though, is that the Bible doesn’t shy away from talking about the hard stuff – we just often have selective listening and selective reading.
Today’s text: Matt 5:4
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted” (NIV)
Jesus makes a radical statement here: we would never say that to someone who is grieving, right? Oh, you grieve, look how blessed you are!
And if someone said that to us in the middle of a difficult time in our lives, we probably wouldn’t receive it well at all.
It asks us some big questions:
What does Jesus actually say?
What grief is he talking about?
What kind of comfort does he promise?
How can experiencing sadness be the good life?
To whom did Jesus speak?
– Jewish villagers under Roman occupation
– Ordinary people – farmers, fishermen, women, children, tax collectors, sex workers.
- Living under the oppression of Roman rule, they have all but lost hope of any form of liberation and believe that their current circumstance is a direct result of their sinful ways: they had turned away from God and had not remained faithful to Him .
They mourned a future that felt hopeless
They mourned their own sin and brokenness
They mourned the state of their city
What kind of mourning was Jesus talking about?
Mourning – Greek verb = Pentheo – to mourn one’s sin and brokenness (spiritual mourning over the state of one’s soul and circumstance)
We have a hard time identifying with this kind of grief – it’s countercultural to us and often we honestly don’t see ourselves as people in need of a savior.
“The present time is certainly not a time of mourning. Instead, people purposefully turn away from anything unpleasant, determined to fill their lives with things that will take their minds off something serious. In their preoccupation with temporary pleasures and distractions, people settle for superficial and empty substitutes for reality. Millions think more about what shows they will watch on TNT tonight, or what video tape they will rent this weekend, than about the things of eternity.” – Billy Graham –
Jesus says this kind of mourning is necessary. Not only necessary – but also good for us – ‘the good life’.
In other words, “You are blessed if you can humbly acknowledge and mourn your sin and brokenness, for then you will receive the comfort of forgiveness and healing.”
But there is also a school of thought that would say that Jesus was not just talking about personal sin and brokenness, but about the grief and sadness that comes from living in a world ruled by death – in this earthly world where death has the final say – but in the Kingdom that Jesus is talking about, death is swallowed up in victory and the promise is eternal comfort and eternal life.
The invitation in this passage is to be present with our grief – to be honest with God about it – and not to ignore our need for comfort.
What kind of comfort is Jesus talking about?
Greek //
Comforted
please / parakaleó (verb)
Question: comforted by who or what?
Comforter
parakletos (noun)
PARACLETE – One called alongside to stay on standby.
Amazingly, this is the same word we see in John 14 and 16 that Jesus uses to describe the Holy Spirit who was to come.
If we ignore our need for comfort, we cannot invite the Comforter into those places of pain to bring us the help and relief we so desperately need.
The promise:
Help is on the way!
You don’t have to be alone in your grief.
The Paraclete has been called to stand next to you
He will plead for you
He will comfort you
The promise is not that our grief would be immediately removed—but that in the midst of our grief and pain we would experience the deep comfort of the Paraclete—our advocate, our counselor, and our standby.
“You are blessed when you feel like you have lost what you hold most dear. Only then can you be embraced by the one you love most. (MSG)
