“¹And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto him: ²And he opened his mouth, and taught them, saying, ³Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.  ⁴Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.  ⁵Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. ⁶Blessed are they that do hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be filled.  ⁷Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.  ⁸Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.  ⁹Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.  ¹⁰Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.  ¹¹Blessed are you, when men shall revile and persecute you and say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake.  ¹²Rejoice, and be exceeding glad; for great is your reward in heaven; for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.”  Matthew 5:1-12

What a powerful list of characteristics which describe the Christian.  As we look at the beatitudes, we find that they are in a divine arrangement.  Nothing is accidental when it comes to the Word of God.  Here is the list:

The first four are more passive and have to do with our attitude toward God.  The second four are more active and have to do with our attitude toward Man.  Regarding God, the blessed man is concerned with his own “nothingness”.  Blessed are the poor in spirit.  He is concerned about his own heart condition being that of brokenness and emptiness; one of spiritual bankruptcy.  He or she is aware of the truth that we cannot save ourselves and we need a Savior.  This first beatitude is the key to all the rest.  It is what we call FUNDAMENTAL.  Necessary.  Vital.  Poor in spirit carries the idea of brokenness.  One must be empty before he/she can be filled.  With the gospel there are always two sides. 

1. A breaking up (an emptying; a pulling down) 

2. A building up (a raising or constructing)

For the most part, people do not like this process nor the order of it.  Many want only the love of Jesus emphasized.  Many ministries and messages and are only fixed upon that one theme.  It is a great theme, is it not?  Of course, it is.  Listen to it:

However, it is vital that we consider the whole counsel of God, correct?  I have found, even in my own experience, that sometimes I was so in need of encouragement or help that I went to the Bible like I would a promise box or a fortune cookie.  I would pick up the Bible and randomly open it and see what it said.  If it were not to my liking or if it did not speak to my desire, I would say, “Ok, let’s try that again.”  I would keep this up until I landed on a verse that gave me the “desire of my heart”, so to speak.  Does that make sense to you?  Have you ever tried that?  I wanted the Bible to give me an answer that would promise the quickest remedy or tell me I was the “Apple of His eye!”  -- LOL.  I completely forgot about the fact that maybe the Lord was wanting to show me my sin, or my failure.  I was to learn that before He could “bless” me I needed to come clean.  Did you hear that?  Come clean.  Repentance.  I began to realize that before I could be truly blessed and experience the riches of His grace, I must first be emptied of passion, self, sin, and pride.  To acknowledge that I was nothing without Him.  Listen to this verse in Luke 2:34, speaking of Jesus:

Wow!  Did you see that?  Look at the order there.  The FALL and RISING again of many.  So, there needs to be a breaking, a falling, before there can be a rising, or a building.  Before I can go up, I must first come down.  Before I can climb this mountain, I must first be brought to the great reality and admission that I cannot climb this mountain!  Poor in spirit is a helplessness that drives me to the Savior.  “It is a dependence upon another to whom one is answerable.  They are so dependent that they are vulnerable to exploitation by the one who holds the power.”  We are so proud of our independence and self-reliance, are we not?  Yet, a beggar says, I can do nothing of or by myself.  I am dependent on someone else.  In Acts 3:4,5, it says these words about the beggar at the gate:

his man at the gate was dependent upon, and at the mercy of others to throw into his cup a mere coin to enable him to see another day or eat one more meal.  He did not realize that this day would be his last day at the gate and his first day on his feet!  Hallelujah!  Today can be YOUR last day at the gate, and your first day on YOUR feet!  I say to you today, Look up!  Expect to receive something!  Open your ears and listen to His voice as Jesus wants to lift you out of that miry clay of sin and slavery and set your feet on the solid Rock!  To give you the power to live an overcoming life for Him and be His vessel of honor right where you are.  Yes, right where you are!  But it takes a coming down before a rising up.  This is not a bad thing; this is a good thing!  Broken and contrite.  Pulverized.  Broken of pride; broken of passion and self; broken of my independent spirit; broken of self-reliance.  Poor in spirit is not an outward show.  It is an inward condition.  Someone right now is feeling this.  You are saying “this is where I am right now.”  Yes, it is.  There could be nothing so great as to come and fall at His feet and say, Jesus, I have tried to do this on my own and it’s not working!  I am like that beggar in Acts chapter 3.  I have gone to church expecting and received only a voucher for a meal.  I have been sitting at the gate of religion and it has left me with nothing but dead ceremony and empty liturgy, but I am coming to you expecting to receive something!  Say it!  It’s good to do!  Yes, friend, the answer to our lameness and paralysis is not silver and gold, but the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth! 

Review these powerful scriptures:

“The righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it to heart: and merciful men are taken away, none considering that the righteous is taken away from the evil to come."
Isaiah 57:1

“Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.”
Isaiah 6:5

“⁵I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee.  ⁶Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes."
Job 42:5,6

“⁷And I Daniel alone saw the vision: for the men that were with me saw not the vision; but a great quaking fell upon them, so that they fled to hide themselves.  ⁸Therefore I was left alone, and saw this great vision, and there remained no strength in me: for my comeliness was turned in me into corruption, and I retained no strength.  ⁹Yet heard I the voice of his words: and when I heard the voice of his words, then was I in a deep sleep on my face, and my face toward the ground."
Daniel 10:7-9

Being poor in spirit is not a onetime thing.  It continues as long as we live this Christian life.  What a powerful truth we have launched into today.  Well, we are just getting started.  It gets better!  The next beatitude is this:

This naturally follows the first beatitude in the divine order of things.  To be poor in spirit is to see ourselves as we really are.  Sinful.  Sinners.  Like Isaiah saw himself.  How was that?  In Isaiah 6:5 Isaiah says that when he saw God, he then saw himself.  He saw what he was really like.

“Woe is me, for I am undone(cut off); I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.”  Isaiah 6:5

Unclean.  There it is.  Well, at the same time he sees this uncleanness, he says something else. 

“Woe is me.”

There it is!  This is a mourning over what he has just seen, is it not?  Yes!  We too must mourn over the same sinfulness in our own hearts.  Blessed, (happy) are those who mourn.  Look, let’s face it, the world sees this statement as pure nonsense.  Mourning is the one thing the world does not want to do.  But the Bible says, Blessed are those who do!  In fact, they are the only ones who ARE HAPPY!  Listen to what the writer says in Luke. 

“Blessed are ye that weep now: for ye shall laugh…Woe unto you who laugh now! for you shall mourn and weep.”  Luke 6:21,25

How unlike the world are those who mourn over their sins!   Mourning shows that we are different from the world.  The world is not interested in this mourning for sin.  They stay away from it like the plague.  Proof of this is seen in the effort made to avoid it.  So much time and money is spent on activities or entertainment to run from this very thing.  Pleasure, movies, travel, sports, gambling, and other avenues of escape.  I remember television commercials that advocated grabbing for all the gusto you can because you only go around once in life.  (a famous beer commercial) Or, perhaps you remember this old saying:  Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die.  How sad!  How empty.  But notice, we as Christians believe the exact opposite.  Do not avoid it!  Embrace it!  Blessed are they that mourn.  BLESSED!  I beg us to hear these words of Jesus.  The Christian lives a different life!  Actually, an opposite life to the world.  For example: the Christian loses to win.  Jesus said,

"He who seeks to save his life will lose it, but he who seeks to lose his life for my sake, the same shall find it.”  Matthew 16:25

“For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”  Mark 8:36

Let us read one more time this verse in Luke 6:25:

“Woe unto you that laugh now!  For ye shall mourn and weep.”  Luke 6:25

“Blessed are ye that weep now: for ye shall laugh.”  Luke 6:21

Did you know that our Lord himself mourned?  Not over His own sin, for He had none.  He wept over Jerusalem as it rejected Him as Savior and brought upon themselves eternal ruin.  He also mourned and wept at the grave of Lazarus in John chapter 11.  Why?  Because of what sin has done to the human race!  And every believer must mourn over it.  Why?  Because we have some semblance of understanding as to what sin has done to a Holy God.  So, what sort of man is he who mourns?  Let us take a look at this.

It comes voluntarily right out of the heart that knows and sees its true condition. Listen to it.

“And, behold, a woman in the city, which was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster box of ointment, and stood at his feet behind him weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment.”  Luke 7:37,38

This is something that was totally out of the blue.  No one saw this coming.  She began to weep.  She was a sinner.  She was spontaneous to break the box and pour its contents over his feet.  What love, what prodigal love!

It is mourning for sin, not for suffering. Listen to it.

“For I know in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not…but I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.”  Romans 7:18,23

In the book of Exodus, Pharaoh wanted the plague of locusts to go away.  He did not want the plague of sin in his own heart to go away.  He did not mourn THAT!

Mourning is Spiritual, like that of David in Psalm 51:3:

“For I acknowledge my transgressions and my sin is ever before me.”  Psalm 51:3.

Like the Prodigal son in Luke 15:18, 21:

“I will arise and go back to my Father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee…And the son said to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight and am no more worthy to be called thy son.”  Luke 15:18,21

True mourning is specific. It is specific sin. Peter wept over the fact that he denied the Lord. Three times he said he never knew Jesus. Then the rooster crowed! I can imagine that Peter never again heard another rooster crow without being affected and reminded of his specific sin. But he was also reminded of Christ’s specific forgiveness!

Don’t wait!  As soon as you see yourself and see your sin, WEEP NOW!  Blessed are you who weep now!  Don’t put it off!  Today is the day!

True mourning is a sustaining characteristic.  It seems like it is always happening.  Think about a foot pedal on a keyboard.  There is what is called a sustain pedal.  When a note is played and the pedal held down, the note is sustained as long as you keep the pedal to the floor.  In other words, for a Christian, mourning is something that continues on for our entire trek through this world.  We are continuously seeing our sin as we grow and develop in Christ and the Holy Spirit keeps His hand upon us pressing and speaking and leading and convicting the heart and soul.  But the music that comes as a result of that is quite amazing.  There will be times when it lets up.  But that is because there needs to be room for other notes to be sustained by pressing so as to make themselves heard and blended with others for a glorious sound.  It may go on and on, but eventually the piece will be finished, and we will see that it was a stroke of genius on the part of the Holy Spirit to have his hand heavy upon us.  For then we will experience the greatest comfort that comes from knowing that my mourning has been turned into laughing.  In the Greek text, the word MOURNING is successive, meaning this, Blessed are the ones who are mourning, for they shall be comforted.

A hard heart is like stone. It cannot feel much if anything at all.  Someone said, “A person can feel a stone in the kidney, but not a stone in the heart.”  One who is mourning in a true fashion is sensitive to the Spirit’s prompting. Why? Because they are already poor in spirit! He or she knows when they have stepped outside the boundary of God’s will and committed sin. I feel that many in the church today have lost a sensitivity to sin. Is it possible we have lost our sense of what it means to be poor in spirit?

True mourning is just that.  Submissive.  It bends.  It’s flexible. A hard heart will not bend.  It has a most difficult time complying with the Word of God.  Many are like the anvil.  An anvil is the heavy block of steel on which metals, usually heated until soft, are hammered into shapes.  When the hammer hits the anvil, the hammer bounces back from it.  The anvil repels the hammer.  But one who mourns over his sin has been heated up.  A mourning heart is a bendable heart!  This is why it is comforted.  It is blessed and happy because it bends to the will of the black smith.  Look at it.

“And his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law does he meditate day and night.”
Psalm 1:2

Pastor Jerry, where is the bending?  It is in the word delight.  Delight means soft, pliable, bendable.  Bend toward His Word and you will see your desires change!  They would be in line with His desires and that will cause joy unspeakable in your life.  You are perhaps not bending to His will and His Word.  This is why we seem to be always in need of outside stimulants and/or calming agents.  We need to be comforted.  But the best comfort will come when we see ourselves for who we really are and mourn over what we have seen.  We confess that to the Lord, bend to His convicting power and He will shape us into a vessel of honor for Him.

“Blessed is the man who delights greatly in His commandments.”  Psalm 112:1

Ah, there it is!  Blessed is the man who BENDS to His commandments.  This word DELIGHT has the meaning of “to bend towards, and applied to the will, it implies entire, and full inclination towards an object, or person.  To will anything is to purpose that in the doing of it you find pleasure.  We are always the happiest, and delighted when we bend toward His will, His Word, His law, His ways!  Hallelujah!  I feel that!  Maybe we are not as delighted to be serving Him as we used to be because we have been a little obstinate, unbending.  We have not been mourning enough over our sin that the Lord has been putting His finger on.  

“Make me walk in thy commandments, for in them I delight.” Psalm 119:35

Woo!  This is getting good!  So, bending creates comfort!  To the ones mourning, true delight is theirs because they are submissive, bendable, and pliable.

They mourn over the sins of others.  Listen to Isaiah, and Daniel, and Nehemiah.

“Woe is me…I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips.”  Isaiah 6

“We have sinned, and have committed iniquity, and have done wickedly, and have rebelled, even by departing from thy precepts and from thy judgments; neither have we hearkened unto thy servants the prophets…neither have we obeyed the voice of the Lord our God, to walk in his laws…”  Daniel 9:5, 6, 10

“And it came to pass, when I heard these words, that I sat down and wept, and mourned certain days, and fasted and prayed before the God of heaven…I confess the sins of the children of Israel, which we have sinned against thee; both I and my father’s house have sinned…”  Nehemiah 1:4, 6

These men were moved over the sins of their fathers and their people.  Isaiah said, “Woe is me.”  It is important to note that they also included themselves in this.  Daniel expressed it as “WE have sinned, and rebelled.”  Nehemiah mourned and wept over what his nation had done but said, “both I and my father’s house.”  We; I and my fathers.  Could it be that if we don’t mourn over the sins of others it may be a sign that we are not mourning over our own?  But if we do enter into a mourning over the sins of others, we shall also be comforted.  The Lord will come along side us and help us.  Nehemiah wept.  This is also significant.  There will be times when tears will flow over our own sins and the sins of others.  Jesus experienced this.  “Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how I would have gathered you as a hen gathers her chicks, but you would not.”  Listen, never underestimate your tears.

“Put thou my tears into thy bottle: are they not in your book?”  Psalm 56:8

The scriptures tell us in the book of Revelation that there are “vials full of odors, which are the prayers of the saints”. Yes!  Isaiah 38:5 says that God has seen Hezekiah’s tears!  The Lord continued by saying that He would add to Hezekiah’s days fifteen years.   Apparently, the Lord heard his tears.  Saw his tears.  His tears were his prayer.  Sometimes there are no words.  Do you agree?  John Bunyan said that “it is better to have heart without words, than to have words without heart.”   Tears are music to God’s ears.  He does actually hear them!  Listen to it.

“…for the Lord has heard the voice of my weeping.”  Psalm 6:8

I don’t know who you are, but you have been weeping day after day.  Your heart is crying, and you are without words.  Take courage!  HE HEARS THE VOICE OF YOUR WEEPING.

Mourning leads to comfort.  Really?  Yes.

“Weeping may endure for the night, but joy comes in the morning.”  Psalm 30:5

“They that sow in tears, shall reap in joy.”  Psalm 126:5

So, let us not avoid the mourning over our sins.  Let’s not be quick to pass off that prompting of the Holy Spirit to mourn over the wretchedness and sinfulness of our hearts.  Why?  Well, because if we do not mourn over what we have seen about ourselves today, we will mourn over them on another day.  Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.  Comforted?  Yes, in fact, they are the only ones who are.     Just ask Peter.

Pastor Jerry