S2 EP 3: Blessed And Mourning

Welcome to the Thirst with Hunger podcast with Pastor Sandy Edwards, where we destroy every obstacle that hinders people from knowing God. Here you'll be challenged, encouraged, and equipped to pursue his presence, walk in truth, and live with bold faith. Let's dive in.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Welcome to another episode of the Thirst with Hunger podcast. For the past 2 weeks, we've been talking about the Sermon on the Mount, and we dug into the foundation of things and just how the first beatitude has to do with us recognizing our need for God. Meaning we arrive at the conclusion of realizing That we will always have a need for God, whether things are going well, whether we are having to endure through a storm, whatever the case may be. All of us have a need for God, and we need to keep that in the forefront of our mind every single day, every single waking, breathing moment of our life. We need God. We cannot do this life without God. And if we do not really understand that the first beatitude is the foundation, we will not be able to experience or engage in the rest of them. And so we spent a lot of time establishing that blessed does not mean happy. It means that you have a posture before the Lord that recognizes that you cannot live this life without him in your mind, in your will, And in your emotions. So before we go any further, I want to just share with you an image that I saw in my head as I was studying for this episode, and I saw a vision of a tree. And it's not strange that God often uses nature to describe our relationship with him or the internal things that we experience throughout scripture. Psalm 1 says the blessed person is like a tree planted by rivers of water. Jesus said, you will know a tree by its fruit. Paul in Romans used the imagery of branches and roots to describe what it means to be grafted into Christ. And so these Beatitudes are the roots of that tree. And Jesus is not giving us, as I've said in the first and second episode, that these Beatitudes are not behaviors that we perform in order to receive Blessings and rewards from God. He is giving us a root system of a soul that is surrendered before God. And so each beatitude is a root, and Jesus tells us what fruit each of these roots will produce. So the root that comes from being poor in spirit produces the fruit of inheriting the kingdom of heaven. And today in episode 3, we're going to talk about blessed are those who mourn, and the root of mourning in the context in which Jesus was speaking of produces the fruit of comfort. So just like blessed and poor seem odd in the same sentence, so does blessed and mourning. And that's not by accident, as I said in episode 2. The enemy himself has spent a lot of time working through television, through education systems, through music, through culture to completely disconnect us from the way God sees words like whore and mourning and meekness, which we'll talk about in the next episode. And one of the enemy's most effective weapons against the church is Redefinition. If he can convince you that what God says in his word does not mean what it means in God's word, he can overthrow the kingdom of God in your life, which is what he's really after— to steal, kill, and destroy. Because your life is supposed to ride on the word of God, who is Jesus, right? Who is the way, the truth, And the life. Jesus is not a substitute. He's not an alternative. He is the life. So I want us to pay attention to how Jesus is speaking here. He's not listing these unrelated, disassociated ideas. The Beatitudes are meant to be digested as a whole, not independently or separately. And just like last week, those 2 words sitting next to each other, Are going to seem strange in the context in which Jesus was speaking about it. Because again, how we have been conditioned to look at these words like poor, we think it always means someone who doesn't have money. But Jesus is not talking about money here. He's talking about our character, our soul, what it means to be Christlike. Okay, so blessed in mourning. Matthew 5:4 says, God blesses those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Comforted. They will be comforted. So the question we need to be asking when we read Matthew 5:4, what exactly does mourning mean in this context, and we need to find out what this word means. So when I looked it up in the Strong's Concordance, this word means to grieve, to lament. Specifically, when Jesus was speaking, it was talking about grieving over sin and to mourn with those who mourn. So it carries a duality. It means to grieve over sin and to mourn with those Who mourn. And this mourning is not just like general sadness. This is not mourning that comes when life is hard and things are not going your way. Jesus is talking about a specific kind of mourning, the grief that comes when a soul looks honestly at its own sin and feels the weight of it before God. Now, this is not talking about What happens when we feel or recognize that we have committed sin and we feel so much sorrow where we start living in shame and guilt. Jesus is talking about godly sorrow. And I need to stay here for a moment to kind of work through and unpack this because a lot of us have been taught this version of Christianity where we rush right past this. We want the comfort, right? We want to be comforted. We want other people to comfort us. But we do not want the mourning that produces it. We want the Matthew 5:4, for they will be comforted, without sitting in the first part, which says that they mourn. And you cannot skip the mourning and get to the comfort. They are not separate. They are one sentence. One sentence. Not independent or separate from one another. So we know that it means to mourn with those who mourn and to grieve over sin. To grieve over sin. To mourn with those who mourn. A perfect example of what that looks like, to grieve over sin, is in Psalm 32, verse 3 through 7. And so David, in his life— and I know we love to quote scriptures from the book of Psalms because we just want to have the right thing to say, but it's not about having the right thing to say, it's about applying it to Our life. So David understood what it looks like to grieve over sin. In Psalm 32:3-7, he says, when I refused to confess my sin, my body wasted away and I groaned all day long. Day and night your hand of discipline was heavy on me. My strength evaporated like water in the summer heat. Finally, I confessed all my sins to you and stopped trying to hide my guilt. I said to myself, I will confess my rebellion to the Lord, and you forgave me. All my guilt is gone. Therefore, let all the godly pray to you while there is still time That they may not drown in the floodwaters of judgment. For you are my hiding place. You protect me from trouble. You surround me with songs of victory. Now, most of us quote the latter half of that verse, which is Psalm 32, verse 7, you are my hiding place, and we never really stop to actually read the verses that come before that. To teach us how David even arrived at the conclusion of verse 7. The reason he was able to come to the conclusion that the Lord is his hiding place and that God protects him from trouble and that God surrounds him with songs of victory is because he went through the process of verses 3 Leading up to seven, he refused to confess his sin. And what was the fruit? His body wasted away. He groaned all day long. He was in physical deterioration. His strength evaporated, not because of an enemy attack, because this is what we often do: we blame the enemy. We rush to say it's the enemy. It's the enemy. It's the enemy. It's the enemy. But perhaps it's God allowing things to play out so that you arrive to the conclusion that you, one, need to confess your sins to him, that you, one, need to confess your sins to him, that you need to grieve over the fact that you have sinned. So that the fruit that follows is you come back into alignment with God. So the reason David was experiencing a lack of strength, the reason why he felt the physical manifestation of a lack of confession to God, the reason why this was happening was not because of the enemy. It was because he did not grieve over his sin. He would not confess. So this tells us, right, if we're breaking Matthew 5:4, God blesses those who mourn, for they will be comforted down. This tells us that when we do not confess, when we do not mourn over sin the way Jesus is describing it here, the body starts to register what the soul is refusing to deal with. That means that your body is keeping record. Your soul, your mind, will, and emotions are all keeping record of the fact that you are not confessing your sin, that you are not grieving over your sin, that you refuse to admit that you have been rebellious towards the Lord. And notice what David said. He said, I said to myself, Nobody else said it. He says, I said to myself, I will confess my rebellion to the Lord. And then he says that God forgave him and that all his guilt was gone, and that as a result, he was comforted. He came to the conclusion, and the fruit of comfort began to manifest in his life because he says that to himself. He came to that conclusion, and he says, For you are my hiding place. You protect me from trouble. You surround me with songs of victory. This is all the comfort of God. This is all the comfort of God. So the hiding place he found in verse 7 was on the other side of the grief that he chose not to avoid anymore. In verse 3. So this tells us that just like being poor in spirit, realizing your own need for God, if you add in the way that you will realize your own need for God is by grieving over your sin, then we know that this is an opportunity. To experience a deeper relationship and to grow in intimacy with God. So there's 3 different things that Jesus is addressing all within these first Beatitudes. He's saying, first, you need to recognize that you have a need for God. The second thing is you need to grieve over your sin and confess your sin to the Lord. And as a result, you will not only receive the kingdom of heaven, but you will also be comforted. And comfort doesn't mean what we think it means, because we've been taught that comforted means I feel better. This is not what Jesus is addressing. It's not about you feeling better. It's about you being made whole. How do we know this? Because again, David is going through the process and the motions, and he's confessing about how his physical body began to feel the effects of not confessing this sin. That is why I consistently spend a lot of my time helping God's people understand that your soul and the spirit work together. To make one whole person in Christ. It's not independent of one another. God's Spirit works together with your soul to make you as that new creation and whole in Christ. So whenever we try to be made whole apart from God, it falls apart. It doesn't work because God did not create your mind, will, and emotions to be under the authority of anything else but him. Of anything else or anyone else but him. Paul in 2 Corinthians chapter 7, verses 9 and 10, and he says, now I am glad I sent it. Not because it hurt you, but because the pain caused you to repent and change your ways. It was the kind of sorrow God wants his people to have. So you were not harmed by us in any way, for the kind of sorrow God wants us to experience leads us away from sin and results in salvation. There's no regret for that kind of sorrow. But worldly sorrow, which lacks repentance, results in spiritual death. So this tells us that there's 2 kinds of sorrow, not one, right? Godly sorrow, which is mourning the way Jesus describes in the Beatitudes, and that leads us away from sin. So, God blesses those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. That kind of sorrow, which is godly sorrow, leads us away from sin. It produces repentance. It produces change. And this kind of sorrow, there's no regret on the other side of it because it moves you towards Christ, not away from him. Now worldly sorrow is you just feeling bad, feeling guilty, feeling sad about all the consequences of sin without the grief that produces a turning away from it. And Paul is explaining in 2 Corinthians 7:9-10 that that kind of sorrow, worldly sorrow, is the kind of mourning that does not result in repentance but results in spiritual death. And this is why the enemy works Overtime. He knows that if you just go to the altar and you're just crying without mourning over the sin that led to whatever situation that you are in before God, you'll go right back to the thing that you cried about. He'll keep you in that cycle without the mourning that produces repentance that actually changes your heart. He'll keep you in that cycle. And he'll use situations that you refuse to confess to God. He will use people in those situations that you refuse to confess to God about to strengthen this torment, to strengthen this cycle, to strengthen the emotional torment, to strengthen you not being made whole, to strengthen everything that keeps you and hinders you from knowing God. So blessed are those who mourn. Jesus did not say blessed are those who feel bad, who cry until they feel better. Those who grieve over their own sin, who confess their own sin to God, before God in a way that produces the fruit of comfort. And with comfort comes You being made whole. With comfort comes deliverance. Comfort can look like inner healing. Comfort can look like confession, which brings the healing. The whole Bible connects. In Isaiah chapter 38, the Bible says that in those days Hezekiah became sick and was at the point of death. And Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz, Came to him and said to him, thus saith the Lord, set your house in order, for you shall die, you shall not recover. And then the Bible says, then Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the Lord and said, please, O Lord, remember how I have walked before you in faithfulness and with a whole heart and have done what is good in your sight. And Hezekiah wept bitterly. Later on in that chapter, if you go back and read it, in verse 9, it says, a writing of Hezekiah, king of Judah, after he had been sick and had recovered from his sickness. In Isaiah 38, verse 14 through 19, it says, delirious, I chattered like a swallow or a crane, and then I moaned like a mourning dove. My eyes grew tired of looking to heaven for help. I am in trouble, Lord, help me! But what could I say? For He Himself sent this sickness. Now I will walk humbly throughout my years because of this anguish I have felt. Lord, Your discipline is good, for it leads to life and health. You restore my health and allow me to live. Yes, this anguish was good for me, for You have rescued me from death and forgiven all my sins. For the dead cannot praise You; they cannot raise their voices in praise. Those who go down to the grave can no longer hope in Your faithfulness. Only the living can praise You as I do today. Each generation tells of Your faithfulness to the next. In verse 17 of this same verse, he didn't say the anguish felt good. He said it was good for him, and there is a difference. The anguish led him to repentance. It stripped him away of his pride. It produced humility that just feeling better could have never produced. And he said, I will walk humbly, humbly through my years because of this anguish I have felt. Not in spite of it, but because of the anguish that I felt, I will walk humbly. 2 Corinthians 7, verse 9 through 10. Paul literally is saying, for the kind of sorrow God wants us to experience leads us away from sin and results in salvation. Some of you listening to this podcast episode, you've been in church a long time, and you have heard people tell you that when you're grieving, that you just need to pray and praise your way through it, to not speak out loud or say out loud the grief. That you are feeling in your heart to just get over it. Just get over it. When you gonna get over it? To stop dwelling on it. To move forward. And all in the name of faith, all in the name of trying to appear spiritual, all in the name of trying not to be a burden to anybody, all in the name of trying to appear like you are more saved than you are. All in the name of that, you've buried grief that God actually wants to use. And there's a grief your soul has been carrying that it was never given permission to have before God. It's the kind that Jesus is describing in Matthew 5:4, the honest, specific, holy grief that God's— that says, God, I have sinned. I have hidden this away from you. And did you know that hiding things away from God, or trying to hide things— because you can't hide anything from God, but you can surely try— is you concealing sin? Some of us have sinned against ourselves and need to ask God for forgiveness. Where you hide your emotions, you betray your own selves. It's not all the time that we betraying other people. Some of us have betrayed our own self where we won't be honest with ourself about what we're really feeling. So we betray ourselves and we conceal our sin and we hide things in our heart. We hide everything in our heart but the word of God. And we don't allow ourselves to feel the weight of our choices. We don't allow ourselves to feel the weight of things that are happening around us, and therefore we can't even grieve or mourn with other people who are mourning because we don't mourn. Mourning with those who mourn— the reason why we can't is because we don't mourn ourselves with God. So it makes it difficult for you to reconcile with other people who are mourning, and you tell them things and you say things to them like, when you gonna get over that? I thought you would have been over that by now. These are the horrible things that we say to people when they are suffering because we also ourselves don't receive God as the loving Father that he is when we're in private and we're going through. And so therefore, when the Bible says that you will be judged to the degree in which you judge other people, this is exactly what that means. You're looking around when you're going through situations and things hit your house and you're going through hard stuff. Wondering why no one is present to mourn with you, and it's because you don't mourn with others. You don't even mourn with God. So all in the name of faith, you buried your grief, and God wants to use that grief to comfort you. Grief has a way of exposing the parts of us that have been hidden for years. And sometimes God allows that grief to happen so that we will grow in intimacy with God. Some of us, if we're honest, had we never experienced grief, had we never experienced brokenness of any kind, had we never experienced the trials that we had to endure, some of us wouldn't know God the way that we do. So mourning, grieving over sin, mourning with those who mourn— those are not signs of weaknesses. That is the second root that Jesus said we are to have and live in, trying to take hold in your life. Jesus said that this soul, the one that mourns, that grieves over sin and mourns with those who mourn, will be comforted. Not might be. Will be, and we have to understand that mourning is not the end. Jesus said in John chapter ten verse nine, "I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved." And will go in and out and find pasture. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. We, we say all these things. But mourning is not the end. Jesus said in John 10, verse 9, I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. And a door is not a destination in God. It is an entrance. Mourning— blessed are those who mourn. It's not where you stay. It's how you get in. David understood that if I confess and I grieve, he said it to himself, if I confess this sin and grieve before God, I'm gonna be comforted. He lived it out in real time. And then Paul later comes and confirms what David said, and Jesus comes and confirms David's experience, all of it. We've been taught that mourning is the place you get stuck. That if you are a person of faith, you should be past it by now. And so when godly grief, you know, godly sorrow rises up in you, when the Holy Spirit begins to touch and place his finger on places in your soul that you still need to bring before God, you shut it down and you praise over it. You declare your way through it. You do everything except walk through it. Which is what this life in Christ on this fallen world is supposed to be—a walk, a journey—not a I need to hurry up and get through it. I just need to hurry up. I just need to hurry up. No, you don't need to hurry. God is not in a hurry. And perhaps today, you who are listening to this episode, even those who will listen. Years down the road to this episode, you are in that place of mourning. Maybe you're grieving over sin, or you're mourning over the death of a loved one, or you're mourning over all these things. God is not standing outside of that waiting for you to get over it. He wants to walk with you through it, in it, in the middle of it. And think about what a door actually does. It separates what is outside from what's inside. Right. The door to your house, you cannot access what's on the inside without putting a key in there, turning the knob, and going inside and locking the door behind you. You can't skip the door and end up in the house, right? So you don't get to the green pastures that Jesus is describing in John 10 and that David described In our most favorite quoted verse, he maketh me to lie down in green pastures. You can't get to the pasture in John 10 without entering through the door, which is Jesus. David went through the door in Psalm 32. He stopped refusing to confess and entered through the grief he had been avoiding. And on the other side, he found out for himself, not something, not a story of salvation or testimony, secondhand, hand-me-down, message that, that someone else told him. He found out for himself that God was his hiding place. He found out for himself that God protects him from trouble. He found out for himself that the Lord surrounds him with songs of victory. The tax collector in Luke 18 went through the door. He beat his hands on his chest. He couldn't even look up. And where did Jesus say he went? Home justified. Every single one of these people mourned first. Every single one of them went through the door, and every single one of them found out that what Jesus said was on the other side of it. That's the promise, the covenant promise of Matthew 5:4. Not that mourning is where you live, but it's how you get in and how you stay in. It's how you get in the kingdom, and it's how you stay in the kingdom. By one, realizing your need for God, and two, Grieving, mourning over sin, and mourning with those who mourn. Mourning over your own sin causes you to mourn with those who mourn. Blessed are those who mourn, who are willing to stand at the door, feel The weight of their own sin and what it cost, and walk through with God hand in hand, foot in foot, staying in step with the Spirit. Because the truth is, you're not alone when you invite Jesus into the morning. How do we know that? Because he said, I will send the Holy Spirit who will be your Comforter. The Holy Spirit will be your comforter. That's one of the characteristics in the nature that Jesus said, when I send him, he's gonna comfort you. You're not alone in the morning. The Holy Spirit is the comforter. So the question is not when you gonna get over it, when you gonna be honest. The question is When you gonna walk through the door? When you gonna invite Jesus into the door? When you gonna say to yourself— when you gonna arrive at the conclusion and grieve and confess your own sin to the Lord every day, day in and day out, and allow the Holy Spirit to comfort you and walk through the valley of the shadow of death? It's just a shadow. When are you going to get in that valley of the shadow of death? You walk through it. When you gonna get in there and allow Jesus to walk with you in the valley? When you gonna mourn in the valley? You keep trying to praise in the valley when, when the valley is not meant to be praised through. It's meant to be walked through. And in that walk, you may praise God, but you supposed to be experiencing all the things you're supposed to experience in the valley, not just praise. But worship in spirit and in truth. And meaning to worship in spirit and in truth means that you tell the truth about what's happening in that valley. It means that you tell the truth about what's happening in that valley. That's the promise of Matthew 5:4. Blessed are those who mourn. God blesses those who mourn. For they shall be comforted. The comfort is on the other side of the door, not around it, through it. Thank you for listening. God bless you.

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