Pastor Albert N. Martin expounds the second Beatitude, "Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted" (Matthew 5:4), contrasting biblical mourning with worldly sorrow. He distinguishes between natural and sinful mourning, arguing that true blessed mourning is a gracious work of God, stemming from a self-awareness of spiritual poverty before a holy God. This mourning manifests in two ways: initially at conversion, leading to the comfort of forgiveness, and continuously throughout the Christian life, as believers grieve over indwelling sin, the state of the church, and the lostness of the world. Martin calls all to examine their hearts for this genuine, God-wrought sorrow.
Primary Texts
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Matthew 5:4This is the central text of the sermon, with Martin providing a detailed exposition of its meaning and implications.
Introduction to the Second Beatitude: The Kingdom's Description0:03
The World's Contrast: Laughter vs. Mourning2:56
What Jesus is NOT Saying: Natural and Sinful Mourning7:04
The Connection Between Poverty of Spirit and Gracious Mourning11:45
The Comfort of Forgiveness at Conversion16:20
The Continuous Principle of Mourning in the Christian Life23:36
Mourning Over the Abominations of the Church and World34:26
Call to Self-Examination and Comfort43:03
The Inseparability of Mourning and the Holy Spirit's Work46:15
Key Quotes
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. And we try to focus this whole matter of poverty of spirit upon this simple little phrase, it is the realization that in the presence of God, I am nothing, I have nothing, and I can do nothing, and I can do nothing.”
“Just as there are none in the Kingdom of Heaven but those who are poor in spirit, so there are none who will know the comfort of God but those who mourn.”
“All he had was sins that bothered him. It wasn't Godly sorrow that worked repentance. Not to be repented of. But as Paul says it was the repentance of the world that works death.”
“Christ never speaks the word of forgiveness to an unbroken heart. The grace is never in but to a wounded mourning broken heart.”
“And when Jesus said, blessed are the new birth, it's such that when God saves us by his grace, he implants within us a disposition that doesn't feel at home in the realm of sin.”
“Dear ones, Jesus pronounces blessedness upon those who mourn. One of the most touching instances of a Christian mourning over his sin as a Christian that I think I've ever read is found in the diary of David Brainerd.”
“For the Bible says, they that sow in tears shall what? Shall reap in joy. He that goeth forth and weepeth will come again with rejoicing.”
“If you don't want the path of the comfort of God. Mark it down. For blessed are they that shall be comforted. But thank God.”
Applications
All listeners
Examine if the church of our day would write 'Blessed are they who mourn,' contrasting it with the modern church's pursuit of making people 'feel good.'
Consider if you have genuinely mourned over your sin, recognizing your spiritual poverty before God, to know the comfort of forgiveness.
Take to heart the words of Christ about mourning as a prerequisite for blessedness.
As children of God, know what it is daily to mourn over sin and failure, conscious of weakness and rebellion.
Reflect on whether your 'acceptance of Jesus' was accompanied by genuine mourning before God for your sins, even in daily life.
Ask a simple question: Can Jesus mention some of us as those who mourn over the abominations in the church and the world?
Mourn over the mission of the lost, recognizing the judgment awaiting those without Christ.
Honestly ask yourself: Have you mourned over your rebellion against God?
Make your conscience do its work in examining your heart for genuine mourning.
For the child of God, do you know the blessedness of daily mourning your sin and failure?
Mourn for the church, not just a building, but the fellowship of believers.
For those who have never mourned their sin, speak to them today about God's comfort.
A full transcript is available on the
tab. 107 paragraphs, roughly 53 minutes.
Machine transcription
Introduction to the Second Beatitude: The Kingdom's Description
resume our studies this morning in the Sermon on the Mount, and particularly the Beatitudes, these eight blessings uttered by our Lord Jesus Christ. Matthew chapter 5, and particularly this morning we will be studying the second Beatitude, found in verse 4 of the fifth chapter of Matthew, Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted. I would remind you as we study the Beatitudes, we are reading a description of those men and women and fellas and girls who are members of the Kingdom of Heaven. We are not reading a description of natural characteristics. We are not reading a description of that which man himself can create, or attitudes which he cannot himself pursue. We are reading a description of what God, by His grace, works in man. Through the power and operation of the Holy Spirit. The first Beatitude we have studied,
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. And we try to focus this whole matter of poverty of spirit upon this simple little phrase, it is the realization that in the presence of God, I am nothing, I have nothing, and I can do nothing, and I can do nothing. I stand in need of all things. The only men and women who are members of the Kingdom of Heaven are those who are poor in spirit. For it is interesting, in the giving of these Beatitudes, the Lord Jesus spoke in such a way that emphasis was given in a way the English language can't give. What He really said was, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs, yes, theirs, is the Kingdom of Heaven. And then when we move on to the second Beatitude, we find the same thing. Blessed are they that mourn, for they, yes, they and only they shall be comforted. Just as there are none in the Kingdom of Heaven but those who are poor in
spirit, so there are none who will know the comfort of God but those who mourn. Blessed are those who mourn for they, and only they, shall be comforted just as surely as blessed Those who are poor in spirit, for they and only they are members of the kingdom of heaven. Now immediately we're confronted with the tremendous contrast between true biblical Christianity and the world. The world would never write anything like this.
The World's Contrast: Laughter vs. Mourning
Blessed, happy are they who mourn. This is what the world would write. If the world would, this is what the world would write. Perfectly happy or blessed are they who, he said, blessed are they who mourn.
So that the world would write this kind of a beatitude from its very actions. All the world loves a clown. This is a phrase you heard growing up and I heard growing up. And if the Lord cares, our children will hear and grandchildren.
All the world's center of attraction when there's some free time is the one who can make us laugh the hardest. And the world through this pursuit of giggling. And so the world looks at a standard like this and shakes its head and says, How can it be, people, the happy thing like this? A tremendous contrast.
A tremendous contrast between true Christianity and the world.
Today it's a sobering and a searching thing that the church of our day would not write at the end. Blessed are they who mourn. As absorbed is the one who mourns. The church process is the one that makes you feel good.
Jesus stated it even more emphatically in a parallel passage in Luke chapter 6. We'll be making reference to this several times throughout the message this morning. Listen as I read Luke chapter 6 verses 21 and 25. Now for ye should be filled.
Now.
Verses 25. Purpose of God. Jesus says, Woe to those that laugh. People of this world need some judgment.
A few weeks ago, people were a lot.
What Jesus is NOT Saying: Natural and Sinful Mourning
First of all, we want to discover what he's not saying. That's the pattern we follow. Always helpful in my own study and I trust it will be to you. There are three, basically.
Neither sinful nor virtuous. It's just common to us as human beings.
Which is the result of sin and rebellion against God.
Which is mourning.
Two types of mourning. A natural mourning.
To the love of God.
In sinner. It's the natural.
Offspring and brings no blessedness. Natural mourning that disappointed hopes. Frustrated ambitions. It's the mourning that will go on probably somewhere in a locker room this afternoon.
By some big 270 pound lineman on a professional football team. Whose team may lose a close game. And he'll sit down in the locker room and bury his big burly. His head in his big burly.
Like a little baby.
Singing that. I've seen this. That big. They weren't that big in my high school.
But good size fellas. Natural mourning. Disappointed hope. Against to take some of its natural penalty upon us.
It's involved in it. The Lord Jesus is not referring to this kind of mourning. Then there's a sinful mourning. A mourning in the fact.
Like the lock that God has placed upon us. It's the mourning. The presence of Eden and says you're going to be a bag upon the earth. He says oh.
And it's sinful mourning that leads a Judas to go out. And himself. For it says that Judas was sorrowful and repented of his deeds. But it was a sin.
All he had was sins that bothered him. It wasn't Godly sorrow that worked repentance. Not to be repented of. But as Paul says it was the repentance of the world that works death.
This is a sinful mourning. Now ingestedness upon mourners. Reason why I didn't want to preach on this. The Sunday after the death of our president.
Because our mind is filled with this natural mourning which was perfectly legitimate. And there was nothing wrong with the natural ...
You saw them with the v-sets. With tears in...
The Connection Between Poverty of Spirit and Gracious Mourning
He's speaking of this gracious morning. This morning that is the resolvation of the grace of God. And the best way I know the second beatitude with the first. There's a progression in these beatitudes.
Now do you see the connection? Notice.
It's the racket before God to be true of me. Let me illustrate
this. He has great wealth. Patterns of thought, his standard of living and all the rest is geared to the fact that he's a wealthy man. Someone comes to him and says the stock market has crashed.
Some of you perhaps back, what, 35 years ago. He's been invested in that which is just worth nothing.
What's going to happen? Sorrow's going to begin to grip his heart.
So perception of his true condition will produce response in his will.
He won't go around flipping out dimes like that to bring the pen on his standard of living, on the way he acts, the way he spends, the clothes he wears, the cars he drives.
He conducts himself as a man who has nothing. Now this is precisely the connection between poverty of spirit and holy moralism. Think that we're rich and with good spiritually and have need of nothing. When the Holy Spirit breaks in upon our hearts and reveals to us our spiritual poverty, this is our distilled derogs before a holy God. In his holy law,
the presence of holy God will press after him for truth, press after him for the truth that we might be found acceptable before God. And so when the Lord Jesus said, blessed are they who mourn, believe as we view it in connection with blessed are the poor, blessed are the rich, we can at least begin to understand that the Lord Jesus is talking about a self-awareness.
The Comfort of Forgiveness at Conversion
This will be true in two. I want to break it down in those two areas this morning. It will be true at two-fold light. First of all, the kingdom of God.
Ephesians 5.22. The fruit of the Spirit centers in the
Lord Jesus, new as Messiah. Will you listen as I read from Isaiah 61, verses 1 and 3. The Spirit of the Lord is God-hearted to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the
sin in his ashes of the Lord. What he's going to do, he's going to comfort those that mourn. The face of mourning, the garment of sin, and when he's done, he shall be called the planting that glorifies.
The place where I've discovered this is where Jesus said, blessed are those who are comforted with the wonderful grace of God's forgiveness.
To the smitten sinner who comes in repentance, son, thy sins be forgiven thee. Christ never speaks the word of forgiveness to an unbroken heart. The grace is never in but to a wounded mourning broken heart.
They shall know the comfort of forgiveness. They shall know the comfort of the Father's presence.
He came back with the wonderful comfort of the Father's open heart. As you sit here this morning, because of your sin, self as a pauper before God, recognizing your spiritual poverty, had some genuine mourning in
forgiveness. That's why Jesus said, blessed are they who mourn. No man has known the forgiveness of God. The man who doesn't know the forgiveness of God, it were better that he were never born.
You take to heart the words of Christ.
The Continuous Principle of Mourning in the Christian Life
People are those who mourn,
but notice now, Jesus said, blessed are those who have mourned, but there is a continuous principle of mourning in my heart.
It is given upon our end to the kingdom is developed and increased members of that kingdom. But you say, pastor, you've been teaching us in Sunday school that our sin, our blood, is not allowed to be remembered against no more. And if we've come in repentance, then we've been justified for the true child who's mourned from the entrance into the kingdom of God that he didn't know the one hundred part in his eyes of him to perceive who God is, a mourning life that perhaps he never even experienced when he entered the kingdom. And when Jesus said, blessed are the new birth, it's such that when God saves us by his grace, he implants within us a disposition that doesn't feel at home in the realm of sin.
And when we sing, there's there's conviction and disturbance between the pig and the disposition made. The little girl is there in the bonnet, slips on the way out of the front porch and she falls in the mud. But there's a tremendous difference between her and the pig. It's against her dainty little woman's disposition to be in that mud.
And she's uncomfortable until she gets out of that mud and the mud gets all turned. The difference between you and me. Oh, you say, that's right, it falls. No, it's huge. For God says it is back and under him according to the I didn't say God does. He gives us this position. It's like a dainty little girl in her pink frills. If we get stained with the mud, we're uncomfortable. And as the children of God,
we know what it is daily to mourn God that though he saved us by his grace and though he's cleansed us, we're conscious of sin and failure. We say with the psalmist, let not any deliquity have dominion over me. Yet though that's the prayer of our weakness of the flesh and sin and times even outright rebellion to God, that if we're here, his children, dear ones, will mourn. Presence of a holy God. Inaccurate dates that are put in most of our Bibles used to go down by the river bank every Saturday afternoon before you preached on Sunday and used to bemoan sinfulness before God. This sounds extreme to us in our giddy, slipshod, shallow. Dear ones, Jesus pronounces blessedness upon those who mourn. One of the most touching
instances of a Christian mourning over his sin as a Christian that I think I've ever read is found in the diary of David Brainerd. Amongst the American Indians, God so wonderfully used him, and he tells this instance that I thought you might appreciate hearing this morning. Those of the Indians who've obtained relief and comfort spiritually and have given solid evidences of having passed into true life in Christ, appeared humble and devout and behaved in an agreeable Christ-like manner. I was refreshed to see the tenderness of conscience among them.
One instance of which I can't even imagine. I'm trying to help but notice. Proceeding one of them very sorrowful in the morning, I required into the cause of her sorrow. I found the difficulty was that she had been angry with her child the evening before and was now exercised with fears lest her anger had been inordinate and sinful. This so grieved her that she waked and began to sob before daylight and continued weeping for several hours together.
This is an Indian story. I'm not going to go into the details. I'm just going to say that the Indian women, these Indians who prided themselves that when they went to their initiatory rites and were painfully scarred and marked with never shed a tear, this dear soul just born again, weeping in the morning hours because she lost her temper with her child. May God have mercy on us that we know so little of this.
The real mourning of the child of God. You know the Bible stories. You said, I accepted Jesus to mourn before God and I'm sorry. Back to mom and dad. When you fought with brother and sister.
How about those of you living.
I don't care how many buckets of tears.
Isn't produced.
And how there's eternity whose name is holy.
When Jesus said bless. He was pronouncing a blessedness.
And there's no greater smile than God can make it.
Mourning Over the Abominations of the Church and World
Not only a morning here with Ezekiel.
Listen what God said in Ezekiel chapter 9. And then especially read carefully verse. It's going to go through.
Find every man. And he said those are the people I'm going to find.
It's my privilege to sit. If young people were in a place of Christ. Ask a simple question. Can Jesus mention some of us.
I should not be of members of this place.
I'm in gentleman.
Gentleness in Christ is not true. Before you lock one's in there.
You have to believe us. Come to that.
Then we're blessed.
And then last of all. Mission of the lost.
If you are not found in a volcano. It was a bad hillside.
We did not mourn.
This is exactly what's happened. He opened our ears to heed his call. He left behind us. Men and women by the countless thousand.
Upon whom the red-hot log of the judgment of God is about to pour. And yet how little we pour. The psalmist said rivers of water run down mine eyes because they keep not thy law. The Lord Jesus instead of him beheld the city of Jerusalem.
The log of the judgment of God about to pour down. And he said, oh, can there be in that kind of morning. Oh, there's wonderful blessing. For the Bible says, they that sow in tears shall what?
Shall reap in joy. He that goeth forth and weepeth will come again with rejoicing. At every level as an individual of Christians. I'm blessed.
Call to Self-Examination and Comfort
As I mourn. Men of the church.
Shall be comforted.
Have you mourned?
Rebellion against God.
Be honest this morning. Make conscience do his work. I cannot enter into your mind. For blessed are they that mourn.
For they and they will be comforted. But thou be comforted.
Sense of sin. Need. But can come. To sin.
One who said, come to me, O ye that labor and are heavy laden. I will give you rest. Child of God. Do you know the blessedness of daily mourning?
Mourning your sin. Failure. Home since your morning. What is sin?
The concern.
I'm not speaking of a church building. This one fellowship. But for the church.
You get this. Comes the same way it came to Isaiah. When did Isaiah cry? He cried that.
As he went down and broke in this. He could have God. Say, if I lift thine iniquity. His prayer.
Goes up in joy.
The Inseparability of Mourning and the Holy Spirit's Work
But if I close this morning. He said, the reason we have to pray. I am so little.
I'm convinced of that.
Two things that mark.
The Holy Ghost. Are inseparable.
You read the accounts of the Bible. In the Bible.
If you don't want the path of the comfort of God. Mark it down. For blessed are they that shall be comforted. But thank God.
Meet us in our need.
Who've never mourned their sin.
Speak to them as well today. For thy name's sake we pray. My God. Heath of sinners.
Spirit. Him number 100. Your answer to that.
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Passages Expounded
Matthew 5:4
This is the central text of the sermon, with Martin providing a detailed exposition of its meaning and implications.
Texts Expounded
auto_stories
This is the primary text of the sermon, the second Beatitude, which Martin unpacks in detail.