Mourning is something we will all be familiar with if we live very long on this earth. When we think about mourning, we think of death. We think of how a person hurts in the deepest part of their soul when someone dies that is dear to them. This is a normal process of life, and many will experience it. However, there is mourning that is only experienced by a small percentage of people. It is the mourning that Jesus talks about in Matthew 5:4. This mourning is spiritual mourning, it is mourning over the sins we commit and can include mourning over the unrepentant souls of others. It is a mourning that gets God’s attention. It is a mourning that brings a promise from Jesus. A promise that says we will be comforted.
Matthew 5:4 “Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.”
We know this is not talking about the mourning of unrepentant people because Jesus promises them that they will are blessed, fully satisfied and that they will be comforted. Jesus never handed out positive promises to those who have not committed their lives to Him through repentance and obedience. So, what is this mourning Jesus is teaching about?
This is a mourning over the sins we have committed against a holy God. We find an example of this in the life of David. The Old Testament allows us to look deep into the life of David to see a man who God deemed in I Samuel 13:14 as “a man after His own heart.” David had a very sorted life. He would go full force for the Lord and then mess up, and when he messed up it was big! He committed adultery, lied, and ordered a just man to be murdered. Yet, God says he was one that was after His own heart. A man that found favor with God. How could God say that about such a person? Because David mourned over his sins. He repented with great sorrow. In Psalm 51, we find David praying a prayer of repentance. This prayer is 19 verses that show us the heart of David as he sorrows over his sin against God. He starts as we all should start when we feel the gravity of our sin. He asks for mercy. The first 4 verses give us an example of how we too should approach God in sorrow over our sins.
Psalm 51:1-4 “Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me. Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight: that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest.”
If we have accepted Jesus as our Savior and Lord, the Holy Spirit comes to live within us at the moment we are saved. Therefore, when we sin, we should feel conviction over our sins. The Holy Spirit allows us to know when we have sinned and gives us the opportunity to do something about it. We are to be sensitive to the Holy Spirit at all times. Many ignore the prompting of the Spirit and only make the consequences worse. Many will read the account of David’s repentance and feel it doesn’t apply to them. After all, they haven’t committed those grievous sins against God and man. May I remind you that every sin is a sin against a Holy God and all sin is serious to God. It is so serious that it required payment for it by the death of His Son Jesus. While it is true that the consequences on this earth are different for different sins, it is not true for eternity. The man who may seem good morally to us, a good neighbor, father, husband, co-worker, or boss, is still guilty before God and will spend eternity in Hell if he has not repented of his sins and yielded to the authority of God in his life.
We all must see our sins as David did. We must beg God to have mercy on us, to forgive us and blot out our sins, and to wash us and cleanse us from our sins. We must acknowledge our sins and own them as transgressions against God. This is evidence of mourning over our sins. Those of us who have been saved for any length of time and grown in our walk with the Lord should look back and loathe who we were before we were forgiven. It should make us so grateful for the shed blood of Jesus to cover our sins that we never want to yield to temptations again. When we sin, and we will, we should immediately feel the pain of sorrow. It should hurt our souls to realize how weak we are and cause us to cling to Christ even tighter. For those who feel and live this way Jesus promises they will be comforted. They will be fully satisfied in Him. He will forgive and draw them closer as they seek Him. When Peter denied Christ after the arrest of Christ he went out and wept bitterly. It had only been a few hours since Jesus had told him that he would deny him. Peter had proclaimed with immense pride that he would never deny Christ, and when it happened just as Jesus had said, it broke him. He was never the same. He understood his sin and his need to stay close to God for strength. Peter went on to do great things for God after he mourned over his sin.
When was the last time you mourned over your sins? What about the sins of others, does it grieve you to see others sinning against a Holy God? Have you become so accustomed to the sins around you that you are desensitized to them? Do you allow yourself to categorize sins as little or big, forgetting God hates all sins? Examine yourself today and reflect on all that God has forgiven you for, mourn over any unconfessed sin, and rejoice over his forgiveness.
