THE REFORMED WITNESS
HOUR
"With Jesus in His Glory"
Rev. Carl Haak
(e-mail: Rev. Carl Haak) |
Dear radio friends,
Today we are going to consider the greatest blessing that belongs to the child of God, the exclusive blessing that belongs to everyone who is united by faith to the only Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. It is the blessing of eternal life, of glory, of being with Jesus forever in His glory.
We base our message today on the word that we find in John 17:24. It is part of what is referred to as Jesus’ high priestly prayer, a prayer that He made on Thursday evening of Passion Week, the last week of His earthly life. In the presence of His disciples, the Lord Himself prayed a beautiful prayer for His disciples and for us. He concluded that prayer in these words: “Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world.”
Think about the fact, first of all, that Jesus prays for us. Over all of our life, every minute, hour, and day, this is the prayer that is continually placed by the Savior Himself before the very throne of God: “Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory.”
That is a remarkable thing. It ought to impress itself upon our daily lives. Here is our Savior. As I mentioned, Jesus at that point was under the shadow of the cross. He was about to enter into the agonies of the garden of Gethsemane, where He would fall upon His face and pray three times in sweat and blood. He was about to be bound and crucified and abandoned upon the cross. He was about to be made the sin-bearer for us.
Yet, His concern is for us! He brings our needs to the Father. Our tendency so often, as children of God, is to feel that we are quite alone and that no one really understands. We see ourselves as those who are besieged and attacked and left alone. This must correct us. We must realize that our Savior prays for us, perfectly, powerfully. “Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am.” We must not reduce the Lord’s prayer for us to: “I desire.” He did not say, “I desire.” He said, “I will.” He prays, as the Bible teaches us, as One who is equal to the Father, the One who is the victorious Lord and Savior. He prays for us when our hearts are plunged in sorrow and our way is dark and lonely and when the bands of temptation are strong.
If you were to read the entire prayer in John 17, you would see that in His prayer that we be with Him in glory, Jesus has reached the crowning point. He had prayed, in that prayer, various wonderful things. He prayed that we might be kept from the evil of the world and from the devil, who was behind that evil. He had prayed that we might be made holy and have fellowship with Him in the truth. He had prayed that, as a church, we might be unified, and that we would be established in the unity of His truth. He had prayed that His church and His people would be active in missions and the spread of the truth — especially that this would go forth as we live our life together in the unity of the church in the bonds of the truth. If you read the passage, you will find that Jesus’ prayer has reached some very beautiful and high themes.
But now His prayer has come to the crescendo, to the highest point. In His prayer that we are considering at this point (I will, Father, that they be with me where I am), He plants His foot in glory. As the Son of God, as the mighty Savior, He prays in a kingly manner. He brings the petition that we might be brought to the completion, to the apex of our salvation, in Him. “I will, that they also whom thou hast given me be with me where I am.” Note those words: where I am. He did not pray, “Where I soon shall be.” He was, of course, at that moment in the upper room with His disciples. It was Thursday evening of the Passion Week. But He prays as if He were in heaven: “I will, Father, that they be with Me where I am, that they might behold My glory.”
How do you understand that? The Savior is praying in the certainty of God’s counsel, of God’s eternal plan. He had mentioned that already in verse 4 when He said, “I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.” Jesus knows the Father. The Father is almighty. For the Father to plan and to purpose is for it to be accomplished. Therefore, praying in the certainty of the power and the love of God that God will accomplish His heart’s desire and that through His cross God is going to attain salvation for all of His children — in that absolute certainty He prays, “I will, Father, that they whom Thou hast given to Me be with Me where I am.”
Now, note also that He describes those for whom He prays as “those whom Thou hast given Me.” I do not know of anything more comforting than that. That is a reference to the biblical truth of election, a word that is used in the Bible. It refers to the truth that God chose, purely out of grace, from the fallen world, those who of themselves were undeserving, and of themselves were as worthy of eternal punishment in hell as any other. God chose them, from eternity, to save them.
Jesus believed that. Jesus believed and taught what is called sovereign predestination. That is, God, as God alone, the sovereign ruler, predetermined, chose merely out of grace, those who would be saved. Jesus had prayed about this in verse 6 of the prayer in John 17. He says, “I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world.” Again, in verse 9, He says, “I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me; for they are thine.” There is, of course, nothing more humbling and more comforting than those words: “Those whom Thou hast given me.”
As I said, that means that of themselves, the people of God are undeserving. To be saved does not mean that you distinguished yourself above another; that you did something that another person failed to do. Oh, no. You, of yourself, cannot lift yourself up one inch, one iota, from another. To be saved means that the source of salvation is to be found in the eternal, gracious will of God; that God, out of mere grace has chosen from before the foundation of the world (as we read in Ephesians 1) those whom He will give to Christ.
Jesus prays, “Father, those whom thou hast given Me.” That, too, is very important: “given Me”— that is, entrusted to Me. You see, we cannot enter into heaven of our own. We have a terrible debt of sin. We have an awful hatred in our hearts against the living God. But to be given to Jesus means that God has given these elect to His Son to redeem them. God has sent His Son on the great mission, the great task of time, to make the way straight, to open the prison, to bring out those who are bound in sin, to save them. Jesus says, “I pray for these. Father, I pray for those whom Thou hast entrusted to Me, those whom Thou hast given to Me, that I might save them. And I pray, not only that I might now save them and make them holy people on earth but, Father, I pray that they may be with Me, that they may be brought to the apex, to the completion, to the culmination of salvation; that they might be brought to that eternal purpose and that eternal goal that Thou hast in Thy heart; that they might be brought home to be with us.” You see how glorious a prayer it is?
That prayer answers our questions about sudden death, a sudden death of a loved one who has been snatched away from us. We ask, Why? Why does God take them? Why does God take a prospective husband from me, killed suddenly in the war in Iraq? Why does God take from me a son? Why does God take from me a beloved wife? Here is the answer: “Father,” prays Jesus, “I will that they be with Me where I am.” You see, the believer belongs to Jesus Christ. Salvation means that the union of our life is with Christ and His Father. We live now in this present world. But we live as those who belong to the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ is within us and He has loved us from all eternity. He has done everything for us and He desires that, when the will of God for our life is accomplished, we be brought to Him.
You see, so often, our will is diametrically opposed and runs contrary to the Lord’s will. So often we are praying, “Father, I will that those who belong to Jesus, and I love them, that they be with me on earth where I am”; while Jesus prays: “Father, I will that those whom Thou hast given Me and for whom I have laid down My life, that they be with Me where I am.”
Do you know the love of God in Christ? Do you know how deep and how powerful and how compassionate is that love? As a mother, you love your son. As a prospective bride, you love that young man. As a husband, you love your wife. But our love, as children of God, is that which is given us of Him. It is a reflection of His love for us. He loves perfectly. And He wills that, when the will of God is accomplished for His own, they be brought to Him in glory. You see, death, for a believer, is not caused by heart stopping, by car crash, by cancer, by aneurysm, by bomb or explosion. It is caused by an answer to the prayer of Jesus: “Father, I will that they whom Thou hast given Me be with Me where I am. And when Thy will, O Lord, is accomplished in their life and they are as that jewel fitted and polished according to Thy purpose and are now ready for glory, I will that they come to be with Me.” That is the cause of the death of every child of God.
But we ask another question. We can understand now what happens at death. We can understand that the child of God is purchased in that wonderful blood of Jesus and, therefore, must go to be with Him in glory. We rejoice in that. But we ask another question: Why is it so important that the child of God be taken to be with Jesus? That is, how is it so important that it outweighs the pain, the sorrow, and the crushing grief that we experience in death?
Here is the answer again. First of all, if Jesus had only said that “they also be with Me where I am,” and He had left it at that, that would have been enough. To be with Jesus, children, is that not reason enough? To be brought into the immediate presence of the King of kings and Lord of lords; into the presence of Him who is our elder Brother, the great Shepherd, the Bishop of our souls, who is the Living water, the Everlasting bread, whose love none can measure; and then to be not only with Jesus but with all of His saints, ten thousand times ten thousand, all together with Him? Oh, that is reason enough.
But Jesus goes beyond. He says more. He gives an even greater reason. He says, “Father, I will that they be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory, which Thou hast given Me.” Jesus yearns for all those given Him to be with Him, that they might see His glory! That is the thing that makes heaven so bright and so wonderful and so worth it.
The Bible says that when we see that glory of Christ, in an instant we will understand the reason for all of the sufferings of this present time and we will be ready in an instant to dismiss them as a light thing. Those things today that are so crushing, that are smashing our souls, what we believe now comes to us without any rhyme or reason and is just too much and we say, “There is no answer,” and we cry out, “Why, O Lord, look at the mess of my life. My daughter, my wayward son. My path is impossible, O Lord.” God says (I don’t say) to you, “When you see Jesus in glory, you will say, ‘It was all worth it. I’d undergo more to see such glory!’ ” Jesus wants us to behold His glory!
Now hear the prayer: “Father, bring them whom Thou hast given Me, for whom I have died, bring them all to be with Me where I am in glory, that they might behold My glory which Thou hast given Me.” To behold that glory is much more than just to see. It is to gaze in wonder and in awe, to be shaken to the very core of your being. It is to see into the heart of God. It is to see grace in God’s eyes.
When you go to heaven it will be something like hiking in the Cascade Mountains of Washington or some other very beautiful place and you come around a corner and out of the woods and you get above the treeline and suddenly you see it: a vast view all out in front of you of mountains covered with snow and you gasp in wonder. Now multiply that by infinity. We shall see Him as He is. Job, in the Old Testament, said, “I shall see Him with my own eyes.” Paul said, “I will see Him face to face. I will see His glory.”
What is glory? Glory is the outshining of God. Glory is the radiant and the shimmering and the outshining of all that God is, of His love and grace, holiness, righteousness, and truth. Jesus is referring to the glory that the Father hath given to Him, that is, not only the glory that belongs to Him as the eternal Son of God. For, as God, He is glorious! But He is referring to that glory that was crowned upon Him — the glory which Thou hast given Me — the glory the Father gave to Him as the Son of God in our flesh, the One who has taken our body upon Himself and humbled Himself and rose and ascended and God has highly exalted Him (Phil. 2:9). Jesus did not leave that human body behind, but when He ascended as Lord and Savior, all the glory of God is now revealed in Jesus Christ. It is all to be seen right in His face. The glory of God, who forgives sins; the glory of God, who in compassion draws us sinners to Himself — we will see it. We will behold it. We will keep on beholding it.
Listen to Him pray: “Father, My people have seen Me in the flesh. They have seen Me a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. They have seen Me in the words of the psalm: a worm and no man. They have seen a crown of thorns. They have seen Me crucified upon a cross with blood and water oozing from My side. Now, Father, My people throughout the ages have journeyed in faith across the valley of the shadow of death, through the roads of trial to purge them. They have endured grief. Father, I will that they be with Me where I am, that they might behold My glory, that they may gaze and gaze on Me.”
Children, and I trust children are listening, I do not know very much about what it is like to enter into heaven and what it is like to be there. I cannot comprehend that. But, you know what, when we die, we will see Jesus. And our hearts will be at peace and it will feel just right. Then, do you know the next thing that is going to happen? You will see that you are changed. His glory will be shining out of you. Now Jesus prays, “Father, bring them, direct their steps. Rule over their hours and over their minutes, over their smiles and over their tears, and bring them to see My glory.” Then we shall be satisfied.
Brothers and sisters in the Lord Jesus Christ, it shall happen. We shall see Him and we shall be satisfied. This is no “hope so.” This is certain. This glory is ours. It belongs to everyone, by grace in Jesus Christ, brought to faith and repentance in Him today, being united to Him through faith. This is ours. This glory belongs to us. The prayer is going to be answered. Jesus says, “For thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world.” Jesus was confident. He was certain that everyone that belonged to Him will be brought to be with Him to behold His glory, because He was confident of the love of God. “Thou lovedst Me before the foundation of the world.” Can anything break the eternal love of God for His Son? Can any hand reach up to heaven and break the bond that is between the Father and His Son? No! Well, so sure it is that we shall be with Him in His glory.
How are you living? For what are you living? What is important to you? What are you pursuing? Where are you going? Are you concerned about the world and its pleasures, its parties, its drinking? What is your weekend all about? Do you apologize to others for your attachment to Jesus Christ? Let this word, let His prayer, enter into your hearts today with all of its power — power for a holy life and all of its beauty to comfort your souls. Do not let one day pass without thinking that Jesus has prayed. He has prayed that you might go home soon to be with Him and see His glory. Pitch your tent a day’s journey closer home tonight and be ready when He summons. Be ready for His call, for He will call to the earth, and we shall be with Him, and we shall see His glory!
Father, thanks for Thy word. Now write it on our hearts and give us to live in hope, the hope that will never make us ashamed. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
THE REFORMED WITNESS HOUR
February 6, 2005 Blessed Are the Poor in Spirit
No. 3240 Rev Carl Haak
Dear Radio Friends,
Today we begin a series of messages on the description of the true Christian and the blessedness that belongs to them. The series of messages is going to be taken from Matthew 5:1-9. These verses are commonly referred to as the Beatitudes. They form part of the Lord’s most beautiful sermon, recorded in Matthew 5-7, a sermon on the kingdom of heaven. They are referred to as the Beatitudes, for they were the Lord’s words by which He pronounced a blessing upon the children of His kingdom. He said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit … those that mourn … the meek … etc.” He began His sermon on the kingdom by describing those who were the members of His kingdom and the blessedness that belonged to them — a blessedness that was exclusive, a blessedness that was resting upon them alone as the citizens of His kingdom.
The Beatitudes.
These Beatitudes were given while our Lord was in Galilee during the first year and a half of His ministry. He was experiencing at that time a great popularity. The people have flocked to hear Him and He sees, according to the first verse in chapter 5, that the multitudes are all around Him. So He resorts to a very unconventional manner of teaching. He ascends part way up a mountain slope. He sits down on this hill, and He opens His mouth and begins to teach them. The Son of God, of whom the psalmist says in Psalm 45 that grace is poured into His lips — the Son of God will now teach the multitudes about the kingdom of His Father, the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven. And, as I said, He will begin His sermon with these Beatitudes, with these descriptions of who are the members of His kingdom and the blessing that comes to them.
Let us remember (or store away in our minds) a few things about the Beatitudes as a whole. They are, first of all, a description of every Christian. The Lord is not referring just to the “elite,” to some notable saints, but to every child of God, to the work that He will perform in each one of them. Every child of God, you and I, are to show forth these characteristics. It is not that some Christians possess them and others do not, but everyone in His kingdom possesses these gifts. They are made poor in spirit; they mourn; they are meek; they are hungry and thirsty; they are merciful, pure in heart, etc.
Let us also remember concerning these Beatitudes that they are all gifts of grace. The Lord is not speaking of natural tendencies, personalities, or qualities. He is speaking of a spiritual blessing. He is speaking of the work of the Holy Spirit, of dethroning sin, and making us after His own image.
We consider, first of all today, the first Beatitude: “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” said Jesus, “for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
The first question is this: What does it mean to be poor in spirit? Our Lord, there, is talking about how every true child of God is given, by God’s grace, to view himself as he stands in the presence of God. He is referring to an inward knowledge of oneself before God. As I stand before God, as a child of God, I am given to know that I am nothing; I have nothing; I can do nothing; I deserve no good. He is referring, then, to that which is the very opposite of what we are by nature. We are, by nature, according to the Bible, proud. In pride we are filled with self-glory. That self-glory rules in every son of Adam. It expresses itself in a proud and haughty spirit, self-assertiveness, self-sufficiency, the desire to be admired and praised by the world. The whole principle out of which we live according to our sinful flesh is that we must express ourselves; we must be self-reliant; we must be self-confident. And at bottom, it is pride, a refusal to acknowledge and to bow before God.
To be poor in spirit is to be brought to the dust before God. It is to know our own utter helplessness before God. It is the first work of grace in our souls. Until one is made to know that he is nothing, God will make nothing out of him. We are poor, bankrupt, nothing to give, no resources, poor before the living God. We deserve nothing. We have nothing.
Let us understand. Poor in spirit is something God makes you to be, not something you make yourself to be. Our flesh tries to mimic this grace of being of poor spirit, to make ourselves out to be of poor spirit. I can remember in my ministry being picked up once at an airport by a man from the church who, after a brief introduction, wanted me to know that he was just a nobody in the church. He was not one of the big-wigs. He had only been sent to carry the minister’s bags. He was just a humble, poor soul. He seemed to be very anxious for me to believe how humble he was. He, in every instance, tried to prove that he was humble. In fact, I believe that he would have been angry at me if I did not think that he was humble. But it was false modesty. It was a defense of himself. The Lord is not referring to things like that. Poor in spirit is not to be identified as self-mutilating. Poor in spirit is not to be identified with that voice that says to us, “I’m no good.” Making ourselves out to be humble, or even hating ourselves, is also in reality our pride — pride against God. It is rooted in self.
Poor in spirit is not that. It is something that God makes you to be, not that you make yourself to be. It is God’s grace introducing us to ourselves. It is giving us to see that we are vile and full of sin and devoid of any currency in good. It is when God makes us know that we are sinners. In one word: it is the grace of humility. It is a right understanding of myself before the living God.
Listen as it is described for us in Isaiah 57:15: “For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy; I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones.” Of course. Can God dwell with pride? Only those who are made humble can know Him — no one else.
The poor in spirit is one who has been shown his pride — a pride that reveals itself in self-assurance, self-promotion, self-congratulation, self-approval, gloating, glee over the fall of others, conceit, arrogancy. To be made poor in spirit is to see that within yourself.
And now, standing before God, it is the knowledge that I am nothing, I have done nothing, I can do nothing. It is to be emptied of self-justification.
Do you know that? Do you know that about yourself experientially? How do you really feel about yourself in terms of God and the presence of God? What are the things that you think of with regard to yourself as you stand before God? Do you boast? Do you take credit? Do you think that God must also see that somehow you are different, you are distinguished from others, you are a bit better?
We must see that in this first Beatitude the Lord is putting His finger upon the very first work of the grace of God and the citizens of the kingdom. They are given to see themselves as wretched sinners, humbled before God. He has to say that first. It has to be the very first Beatitude because if we do not know that, we will not go on to mourn, the second Beatitude. We will not be meek — that is the third Beatitude. And, most importantly, we will not hunger and thirst after righteousness — that is the fourth Beatitude. We will not hunger and thirst after a righteousness that God alone can give to us unless we first know ourselves as empty and bankrupt — as poor in spirit.
Jesus pronounces, “Blessed are they who are poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Jesus says that they are blessed, they are happy. Now that is the very opposite of the world, is it not? The world would say, “That’s the trouble with Christianity. It gives you a bad self-image. We need to assert,” says the world, “the fundamental goodness of man, the value of the human being. Blessed are the poor in spirit? Happy are the poor in spirit? How can you say that? That’s absurd!” says the world.
But God says, “Blessed.” And blessed not because being poor in spirit earns God’s favor. That is pride again. But blessed because when God shows our emptiness, when God cuts down, when God humbles to the dust, it is in order that He might lift up and fill us with Himself. Blessed are you, because for you Christ has been given; for you who have nothing, Christ has been given to be everything.
For theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Once again, the idea is not that we become poor in spirit and now we have earned the right to the kingdom, that humility pays our entrance-fee and secures a place for us in the kingdom of heaven. No. But it means this: that in the way of being aware of our own nothingness, being made poor in spirit, we are given to rejoice in the wonders of God’s grace, such a grace that we are made citizens of the kingdom of heaven.
You say to me, “What is the kingdom of heaven?” The kingdom of heaven, according to the Bible, is the reign or the rule of God’s grace in the hearts of His children. It is not an earthly kingdom, but it is a kingdom that, as Jesus says in John 17, is within you. It is a kingdom of His grace. The kingdom of heaven is the exercise of the mighty authority of God’s grace over the hearts of His children. It is, therefore, a spiritual kingdom. It is not a material kingdom. It is not of this earth, but it is spiritual, it is heavenly, it is glorious. It consists of the fellowship of the living God.
The poor in spirit are blessed because they are the ones who are now made subject to the Lord and granted entrance into the glories of the kingdom of God. They are the ones who have come under the rule of grace. Of course. No one is going to renounce his pride or own up to his pride or say “I’m nothing,” unless the scepter of the King, the King of kings, has so now ruled in his heart that he recognizes his own poverty and sees the riches of God’s kingdom.
The poor in spirit possess the kingdom in a perfect sense. They possess it now by promise. But they possess it also perfectly at the return of Jesus Christ, the day when the kingdom will have come in all of its power and glory, when everything else has passed away. Then we shall enter perfectly into that kingdom and we shall be rich, eternally blessed, full, and satisfied. Blessed are ye poor of spirit, ye who have been made to know your own bankruptcy spiritually before God, ye who know yourself to be empty and void of the currency of good, for you shall be filled with the splendor of My Father’s kingdom.
Is that true of you? Do you desire to be ruled only by Christ? Do you confess Him that He is your Lord and King? Then that means that the mighty grace of God has dethroned in your heart that awful, stinking pride. And now Christ, Christ alone, fills you. He is your peace, your fullness. Now I am given the knowledge that I am a child of the King — His child and forever I am! I am a citizen of the kingdom of God through Christ.
This is what it means to be poor in spirit. It is to know that we are nothing. And this is what is promised to us: the kingdom of heaven.
But we might ask, “Is this true of me? Do I know that I am nothing in the presence of God? Is all of my boast in His grace and in His kingdom?” Do you know your sin? Do you know this, as you stand before God, that you are a guilty sinner and, should God eternally condemn you, He would be doing no injustice to you? Do you know that? Then, beloved in Christ, hear the word of Jesus: “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of God.” They are the ones emptied of themselves, filled with the perfect and enduring grace of God.
Then it is also true that in our lives we will not rely on anything — not on anything in ourselves. We will not boast of our natural birth. We will not pride ourselves in our temperaments, in our looks. We will not boast in our achievements, our knowledge, our deeds, or our powers. We will not rely upon money that we have, the school that we attended. We will not bring before God the life that we believe is better than others and makes us worthy of Him. But we will look to God in utter dependence. And we will come before Him as a pauper, as a beggar. We will approach Him in the knowledge of our sinfulness and vileness and say to Him, “Nothing in my hands I bring; simply to Thy cross I cling. Foul I to the fountain fly. Cleanse me, Jesus, or I die.”
But more. If you are poor in spirit, you will look away from yourself to God. You will look away from yourself to God in Christ. And you will see that, by grace alone, you have been made rich in Christ. By grace alone your sins are forgiven. By grace alone you are accounted righteous in the work of Jesus. By grace alone you are given to be an adopted son or daughter of God. By grace alone you belong to the King and He will rule over you in His kingdom and bring you to perfection. Keep looking at Him! Have nothing to do with any trust or any boast in yourself or in man. But before Him, standing empty and naked with nothing, see Him as all-sufficient and behold the wonder of wonders.
Blessed — for yours is the kingdom of heaven!
Hear Him say to you, as the Savior speaks, as the multitudes come to Him and He speaks faithfully from God: “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of God.”
May God bless this word to our hearts today.
Let us pray.
Father in heaven, we thank Thee for Thy word. We do confess that of ourselves we are proud. Of ourselves, as we stand before God, before Thy very face, we would rise up and we would shake our fist in Thy presence if Thou would say to us that we are nothing. This is our pride. Forgive us of our sins. Humble us low. Give us to know the depth of our sin and our poverty. And give us to know the riches of Thy grace. Lift us up in Christ. Continue to bless us as we hear more messages in the coming weeks on the Beatitudes. Watch over our souls. Hear us now, Father of all mercies, through Jesus Christ Thy Son, in whose name we pray, Amen.
THE REFORMED WITNESS HOUR
February 13, 2005 Blessed Are They That Mourn
No. 3241 Rev. Carl Haak
Dear radio friends,
Listen to the words of Jesus Christ (Matt. 5:4): “Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.”
This is the second Beatitude or blessing that our Lord Jesus Christ pronounces in His Sermon on the Mount recorded in Matthew 5-7. Do you mourn over your sin? The Lord says to you, “Blessed [happy] are you.” And He promises you a heavenly and a perfect comfort that flows from His cross today.
The Beatitudes of our Lord Jesus Christ, which we began to study last week, are not to be viewed merely as wishes that Jesus is making for His children. The Beatitudes are not to be compared to greeting cards that Jesus sends in which He would say, “I wish you a happy birthday; I wish you a joyful anniversary.” The Beatitudes are not wishes but they are pronouncements, declarations of the King of the church. In the words of Scripture, they are part of the Word that proceeds from His mouth, the mouth of the Son of God. They are blessings that He pronounces upon His people, blessings that are rooted and earned for them in what He did on the cross. And when the Lord speaks, He proclaims them as the King and Lord of salvation. He says that all those who have the burden of sin in their heart, made by the Holy Spirit in them, they shall be comforted. Listen to Him speak. “Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.”
I remind you again that the Beatitudes are blessings that the King, Jesus Christ, is pronouncing upon the citizens of His kingdom. The Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7 to which I refer is really the sermon on the kingdom of heaven that Jesus Christ came to establish in His Father’s name. Jesus begins this sermon on the kingdom of heaven by describing the citizens of this kingdom, those who are made to belong to this kingdom. He describes them from a spiritual point of view, not from an outward, physical point of view, but from an inward, spiritual point of view — from the point of view of the heart that they are given. And then He goes on to say that these have great blessings.
So Jesus is describing in the Beatitudes everyone whom He has taken by grace into His kingdom. And He is going to tell us the characteristics of such.
The very first and the fundamental, the dominant characteristic of every citizen who has been brought into the kingdom of heaven is that he is poor in spirit. That is the first Beatitude that we considered a week ago (Matt. 5:3), “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” These were the first words that Jesus spoke in His sermon. The citizens of His kingdom are predominantly poor in spirit. That is, the first realization that Christ works in the heart of a believer is to give that believer to know and to say “I am nothing; I can do nothing; I deserve nothing; I am a bankrupt sinner before God. God, have mercy upon me.”
Jesus is teaching that the very first work of saving grace is to produce within us a deep and personal understanding that I stand with nothing to recommend me to God. And I possess everything that deserves the eternal darkness of His displeasure. But although, says Jesus, grace makes you poor in spirit, to know your undone state before God, I promise you everything. “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” His promise is not a blessing in the kingdom of heaven but His promise is the whole kingdom of heaven.
But the poor in spirit, citizens of His kingdom, are not yet in that final perfect kingdom. They are now on the earth. Jesus is speaking to us as we are on this earth and as we struggle now with sin and sorrow. We, therefore, mourn. That would obviously be the next thing that you would expect of these citizens. They are poor in spirit and, therefore, they mourn. They mourn because Christ has worked in them a deep and present burden of sin and sorrow. That burden is so necessary, for it causes them to lay hold of the comfort, the exclusive comfort that belongs to them; the comfort of belonging to a faithful Savior, Jesus Christ, who has fully paid for all that makes them mourn, for all their sins. Blessed, then, said Jesus, are they that mourn.
And yet, how strange. How paradoxical. How contradictory His words at first sound. Blessed, which means happy, happy are they that mourn? Happy are they that weep? Immediately we see that Jesus Christ is speaking here of something spiritual, something that He must work in us. He is pointing out the difference between the citizen of the kingdom of heaven and the person who belongs only to this fallen world. Only a child of God can understand this.
Weeping and mourning is so hateful and so irksome to our human nature. We see that in the world around us. The philosophy of the world is: Forget your troubles. Don’t face them. Drown them in a bottle, medicate them with drugs or with lust, escape them on a cruise ship in the Caribbean, run from them into the arms of pleasure, don’t dwell on your problems. We live in the age called “pleasure-mania.” All the energy, all the money, is spent to entertain. The world says, “We must laugh now. We must refuse to consider sin within the breast of the human.” Jesus says in Luke 6, “Woe unto you that laugh now, for ye shall weep.” The laughter of the world, apart from faith in Jesus Christ, is the laughter of a cover-up. It is fake. It is hollow. It is the folly of attempting to escape where there is no escape. Jesus means a spiritual weeping, which is, at bottom, over personal sin.
There are, of course, many reasons for tears. There are many things that would cause a person to cry. For you, too. Sickness and pain, pain so intense that we cry. Cancer. Mental depression and breakdown. Death. Bereavement. There are sinful reasons as well for tears. There can be the reason of a wounded pride. We say, “I’m hurt. I take offense.” Or we cry because we do not get our way. You see that in a little child. And we really are never any different from that little child. When we do not get our way, we mourn. It may be over financial loss. It may be over a multitude of things. But our Lord is not referring to a mere earthly reason for tears or a mere sinful reason. He has a different mourning in view. I do not need to prove that right now. As a child of God, you know that. Yes, our Lord is our light and our comfort, our salvation and our joy, in the midst of every trial of death and sickness and knowledge of sin. But, at the same time, the Lord is referring to a weeping here that everyone who is poor in spirit knows about, recognizes. It is the mourning that is the consequence of the knowledge of sin. You say, the knowledge of the consequences of my sins? Those consequences I find to be very severe. They ruin my life. I sometimes say, “How can I go on?” You mean those kinds of tears? Yes. But deeper. It is a mourning over sin itself, over the fact that I have sinned. No, even more. Over the fact that I am a sinner.
Listen to one of the weepers, one of the mourners that Jesus is referring to. His name is Paul (yes, the apostle). He weeps. In Romans 7 is the lament, the weeping of the apostle Paul, a child of God. He cries out at last, “Oh, wretched man that I am.” It was a deep, personal realization of who he was in himself — a wretched sinner. The agonizing realization of my own sin. Then besides, there is for the child of God the agonizing realization that it was for my sins that Christ was nailed to the cross of Calvary. The mourners that Jesus is describing are those who have been brought to see their sins in the light of the cross. Is that you? Do you know this type of weeping?
Notice, Jesus said, “Blessed are they that mourn.” Not, “blessed are they who once mourned,” in the past. But the Lord is referring to this as a present and, indeed, a continual thing. We have much to mourn over — not in false piety, not in a pious, outward display, not something that we are acting out, but something that is from within. Sin, after all, is not first of all, an act. It is an attitude. It is the disposition of the heart. It is, according to Scripture, the sinful nature. Solomon prayed his prayer at the dedication of the temple in this way, asking that the Lord bless all those who knew the plague of their own heart. We are confronted, then, by the grace of God, by His holiness. And we begin to contemplate the life that we were created to live in the light of God and we see the misery of our own sins. I discover that within me there is that which causes me to grieve and to mourn. I am a sinner.
Do you pause at the end of the day and reflect on that day and ask yourself the question: “What have I done? What have I said? What have I believed about others? What have I done toward others?” You find, do you not, if Jesus Christ is testifying within you, that you must confess that you have done, that you have said, that you have thought things unworthy, evil, sinful. Why? What makes you like that? What makes you behave like that? Why are you irritable, resentful, revengeful, spiteful? Why do you harbor jealousy and envious thoughts? Your sin. The Lord is showing you your sin.
Yes, I know, sin is all around us in the world, and all around us in other people, too. But we had better be careful of pride. You see, we are to mourn. To mourn means that one knows his own sin and knows what that sin means to God and how it has dishonored God. Oh the pain of heart that that will bring.
There are many results, as I said before, of our sins in marriage, in the family, and in the church, and even upon our children. We mourn over those results and cry out, “Oh, Lord, how long?” But, once again, the child of God has been led to see the fountain, the cause, the deep-down recesses of the heart, the ugliness of sin within.
Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted. No, we do not stop with mourning over sin. The Lord says that there is found in this mourning a blessedness, a happiness. There is the paradox. Christ says that the mourners are happy and will be comforted in their weeping. Not an artificial happiness. Not one that is glamorized in the church world, one that is a superficial “Hallelujah! We got the victory.” Not when, in an emotional frenzy, we put our hand in a fist and pump it over our head. No! A deep, deep joy in the midst of sorrow; a happiness in the midst of mourning; a blessedness tasted only in the way of tears.
Maybe you felt this joy, this blessedness, this comfort especially as you stood before the grave. Tears run down our face. We feel the loss, the grief, the mourning. Yet, we also feel the hope, the power, and the victory of the risen Lord Jesus Christ. We taste and see the word that He said when He said, “I will give you a joy that no man can take from you.” So here there is a great grief. There is a reckoning with my sin. No soft-peddling of my sin. No glossing over my sin. But at the same time, as that grief is felt, there is also a profound, there is a glorious, peace. My sin — not the part but the whole — is forgiven in His cross. Oh, the blessedness.
That blessing is, first of all, because it is the sure evidence of the work of the Holy Spirit within us. He is the only one who can show us our utter hopelessness and wretchedness. We do not mourn over our sin and pride of ourselves. Of ourselves we would defend that sin and ignore our pride. But it is God who convicts. It is God who sends the sword, the sword of His Word and the light of His truth to convict us. If you have the grief of sin it is because the Holy Spirit has worked it.
And, secondly, we are blessed not only because it is the evidence of the work of the Holy Spirit but because the Holy Spirit does not just stop with the knowledge of sin. He goes on to lead us in the gospel to the truth of the perfect satisfaction of Jesus Christ. What a glorious thought, so glorious that it will fill our thinking to all eternity. Christ has died in my place, for my sin. Great sorrow, great joy. The Christian life is one of great sorrow and great joy; of mourning and of blessedness.
Christ promises not only the happiness of the satisfaction of Jesus Christ, but He says “they shall be comforted.” Comfort in the Bible is the possession of a great good in the midst of sorrow. It is a good that outweighs the sorrow. And it is more. It is a good that tells me that even the sorrow and the evil that I experience are serving my good. And what is that comfort, that great good that we have that is greater than all of our sin and that tells us that everything that we experience in this life is working for our eternal good through the hands of our wise and loving Father? What is that great good? It is belonging to Jesus Christ. We confess that this is our comfort. One of the church’s great creeds, the Heidelberg Catechism, begins with the question: “What is your only comfort?” Very personal. What is your comfort? And we respond from the Scriptures: “That I am not my own, but I belong to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ.” That is my comfort: to belong to Jesus. That is what we read in Isaiah 40:1, 2: “Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned!” That is comfort.
We look at ourselves and see nothing but sin. It is in everything I do. And it is not pretty. But I see the Lord. I see that the God of grace gave Christ to take my sin upon Him, to die the accursed death, to wash me clean within, and that now I belong to Him in life and in death. I belong to Him by the power of the faithful hand of God so that I cannot be taken from Him. That is my comfort. Why? Why would God give me to belong to Jesus? Was it something that I did? Was it something that I earned? Was it that I was a bit better than someone else? No! The Bible says that it is all of God because God sovereignly, graciously loved me eternally. We read in the Scriptures (Jer. 31:3), “I have loved thee with an everlasting love; and in lovingkindness I have drawn thee.” They shall be comforted.
This comfort is something that we experience over and over. As we experience the knowledge of our sin over and over, so also we experience the comfort that is in Jesus Christ over and over. Still more, our Lord means to say to us that this comfort and happiness are not yet perfected until glory. They shall be comforted. Now? Yes, in the knowledge of belonging to Jesus Christ. But the Lord has in mind here the perfect state of that comfort. The burden of sin is with us now in this world, and it remains there. We are forgiven, but we sin and we need comfort. The consequences and the pains of our sins remain with us so long as we walk on this earth. Perhaps today you are a child of God who is very weary. Perhaps you are despairing whether it is even worth it to go on because of the consequences of your sin. You say, “My whole life is ruined.” Jesus says, “I will comfort you. You have sinned greatly, but I have not let go of you. I have brought you to repentance. And, further, I comfort you in this knowledge, that there comes a day when all the scars and all the effects of your sins, too, shall be removed, and there shall be only glory, only praise for God, with your sins perfectly washed away.”
There is a perfect comfort that awaits the children of God. The world says, concerning our sorrows and over our sins, “Get over it. Put your trust in education. Bank on the United Nations to solve these economic and world problems. Bank on psychology to give us an understanding of what makes us tick. Or bank on the evolutionary development — we’re on the ladder and going up the ladder.” All of these will fail you. There is no hope apart from Jesus Christ.
For the child of God, there is comfort now, but there is comfort that shall be perfected. Right now the comfort that we have in Jesus Christ, as I said, at times burns very low and we spend days asking, “Has the Lord forgotten to be gracious? In His anger has He hopelessly removed His love and grace from me?” Jesus says, “They shall be comforted.” There is a glorious hope, a hope that shall never put them to shame. We shall see it for ourselves. I tell you about it today. But you shall see it yourself. There shall be a glory that shall be revealed in us, says the Bible. Sin will be no more. Sorrow and sighing will flee away and we shall be comforted in the eternal arms of God. He shall wipe away all tears from our eyes. In glory we shall be perfect in Christ, we shall be happy. And there shall be nothing of sin to destroy it, to spoil it, to mar it. But we shall rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory. And the burden of sin shall be perfectly lifted.
Do you hear the pronouncement of the King? “Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.”
What kind of a person are you? There is sin in your life, that is for sure. Not because I know you. You know not me and I know not you. But God knows us and His Word tells me everything about you and about me. You are a sinner. Do you know that? Are you morose, sullen, resentful, cold towards others, hopeless, angry, fearful? Or, by the grace of God, having been brought to see yourself as a sinner, do you mourn? And in that mourning do you experience the comfort of Jesus Christ? And are you, therefore, sober and warm of heart and serious and possessing heavenly joy? Are you fundamentally happy? Do you have a happiness in Christ arising out of the knowledge that the burden of your sin has been forgiven? Do you have a deep knowledge of sin within you and an abiding confidence that Jesus Christ has been nailed to the cross to take away your sin. And then a peace, a peace of belonging to Jesus Christ, and a joy in the prospect that soon we shall be with Him in glory and our souls shall rest forever in Him.
Hear His word: “Blessed are you that mourn. Your joy shall have no end. You shall be comforted.” Believe that! He swears, He makes the pronouncement as the King. Those of His citizens who mourn shall be comforted.
Father in heaven, we do thank Thee for Thy holy word. Now we ask the Holy Spirit to seal it to our hearts. In Jesus’ name, Amen.