Today we continue to expound in the teaching of our Lord Jesus in Matthew chapter 5 and verse 4. Matthew chapter 5 and verse 4. As we continue systematically to study the wonderful teaching of the Lord. And this is what we read in Matthew 5, verse 4: "Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted." The parallel passage to this is in Luke chapter 6 and verse 21, the second part of the verse, which I shall read to you: "Blessed are you that weep now, for you shall laugh." Those who weep now, God will fill their mouths with laughter on that day. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Again, this is exactly the reverse of the world's thinking. The world regards nothing blessed or joyful about mourning. The Lord Jesus came to bring comfort to those who mourn. And so we want to examine this question: what does this mean?
Now in expository preaching, the purpose is to expound what the word of God means. And this is our task here. Expository preaching answers only one question: what exactly do these words mean? We must get away from the kind of preaching that announces a text and then preaches all around it, or uses the text simply as an excuse for saying whatever the preacher wanted to say in the first place. We must be faithful in exposition. That is, understanding and explaining what the Lord Jesus wanted us to understand.
Now here then is the question. First we need to ask, what is this mourning that is being talked about? Does the Lord Jesus mean that anyone who mourns will be comforted, regardless of what kind of mourning and mourning for what? And what is this comforting that is being spoken of here? Well, let us come very quickly to the point. What does it mean that they shall be comforted? Does it mean that you are just going to have a nice feeling? That the Lord Jesus will make you feel good again because you had a bad time? Well, we must understand the spiritual depths of meaning of the Lord's teaching.
Putting it very quickly to the point, comfort in Scripture basically has to do with salvation. To be comforted in Scripture means not just having some kind of a good feeling or being patted on the back. It has to do with the comfort of salvation. Now this passage of the Lord's teaching finds its roots in the Old Testament as everywhere else in the Lord's teaching. And this is what Jeremiah 31, verse 13 says, the second part of the verse: "I will turn their mourning into joy. I will comfort them and give them gladness for sorrow." Well, when you look at the passage, it has to do with the salvation of the Jews, of Israel. I will turn their mourning into joy and their sorrow into gladness.
Psalm 30 says something quite similar to this. This is what the 30th Psalm says, Psalm 30, verses 11 and 12. It reads like this: "You have turned for me my mourning into dancing. You have loosed my sackcloth and girded me with gladness, that my soul may praise you and not be silent. O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you forever." Here is somebody testifying. The psalmist testifies that God has turned his mourning into dancing, into the gladness of joy.
Now when we look at all this, and we look also in the New Testament, we will see at once that this comforting has to do with salvation. Isaiah 40, verse 1, begins with the words, "Comfort, comfort my people, says the Lord." And this comfort, as we see from Isaiah 41 onwards, has to do with the coming of the Lord to save his people. In Luke chapter 2, verse 25, the consolation — Luke 2, verse 25 — the consolation or comfort of Israel is in fact the salvation of Israel. Or if you look at 2 Corinthians chapter 1, verse 6, comfort and salvation are mentioned together. Or again in 2 Thessalonians chapter 2, verse 16, salvation is described as eternal comfort. So as soon as you study Scripture — don't try to read our own meanings — that comfort means that God makes you feel good. That, of course, is included. But it is much deeper than that. The comfort of the Scriptures is the comfort of God's eternal salvation.
So once we are clear about this — and this section does not take at all long to expound — that those who mourn are the ones who will be saved. God will comfort them with his eternal comfort, with salvation. Now this then makes it very important for us to understand what this mourning means.
Now that we have seen what comfort means, what we need to bear in mind here is, first of all, to observe again that salvation is not based on a creed. We are not saved by a creed, not even the right creed as such. It is important to have the right creed, that is fine. But salvation, in the Lord's teaching and in the whole of the New Testament, is not a salvation by creed. Today we preach a salvation by creed: so long as you believe the right creed and you belong to the right church, you are going to be saved. The Lord's teaching is nothing as superficial as that. Let us deeply understand this point. We are today preaching, too often in the churches, as I say, a salvation by creed. And of course a creed is important. But the creed alone is not going to save us, even if we believe it most heartily.
Nor are we saved by works. It is not a salvation by doing good. Now doing good is very important in the New Testament. But we are not saved by good works or by doing good, even though good works are extremely important. So we are neither saved by creed, nor are we saved by works. So what then are we saved by? We are saved by God's power in transforming us and making us into new persons. I hope that this one point, at least, this church and all of you understand perfectly clearly. God's grace is manifested in his transforming power. We are saved — we are saved not only by his death, but by his life. His death secures the pardon of our past sins. His life, Paul tells us in Romans, is that by which we are transformed. We are reconciled through his life, because we are made into new beings, new persons.
The life that we now have — the life that I now live, Paul says — is Christ living in me through faith. Faith then is the channel by which this resurrection life of Christ comes into us and makes us to be new persons. So we must stress not only the death of Christ, but the life of Christ. Christ — not only that our past sins are forgiven, but that we, right now, are being made new persons through the resurrection life of Christ. This is full salvation. And too often in the churches, again, we stress only the death of Christ, as though the life of Christ really didn't matter for us. Paul says in Romans 5: "Much more, if we have been forgiven through his death, justified through his death, much more shall we be saved by his life." Now that is the scriptural teaching. Paul understood the Lord's teaching perfectly. I've often said Paul is all commentary. He's simply commenting on the Lord's teaching. This is not to say that the commentary is unimportant. It is most important for us correctly to understand the Lord's teaching. In other words, if we come to an understanding of the Lord's teaching that differs from Paul's exposition, then we know we are wrong. He is the one — Paul is the one who will guide us to the right understanding of the Lord's teaching. And Paul certainly says exactly the same thing. We are not saved by a creed. We are not saved by works. We are saved by being a new creature. And this point I have expounded already in full quite recently.
So what is this new person? The new person is one who mourns. Now what does that mean? Now here we need to look more deeply into it, because there is something important for us to understand. The word "mourning" here — mourning expresses, of course, sorrow. It finds its expression in tears. Mourning expresses the deepest emotions and feelings of the human heart. We have a Christianity today that is far too superficial. And the Lord Jesus, in this word, strikes at the depths of our being. Whether our Christianity is deep or superficial depends on whether we understand anything about mourning. And I suspect we don't understand much about mourning.
I was quite distressed by looking at the recent study by Professor Schweizer, Edward Schweizer of Zurich, a noted New Testament scholar. In his recent work on Matthew, it symbolizes so much the failure to understand the meaning of mourning. What does he say? He says, well, we don't mourn about sin. We simply hate it. And from this he concludes that because we don't mourn for sin, then what do we mourn for? We mourn because we are oppressed, we are persecuted. Now there is truth in that, but it is wide off the mark. The statement is neither relevant nor even reasonable. And one does expect better things of New Testament scholarship in these days than this kind of superficiality. And I say this not because I would like to make a punch or a point on someone, but because it is so reflective of the thinking of this age: the lack of understanding of mourning.
Why do I say it is irrelevant? I say it is irrelevant simply because the point is not whether or not we grieve over sin as such. The point is: we grieve because we have sinned. I am not grieving about this thing called sin. I am grieving that I am the one who got involved in sin. This is the point of the mourning. It is not whether or not we grieve over an abstract thing, or a concrete thing if you like, called sin. We may hate sin, but that does not stop me from grieving over it, that I got involved in this.
Let me give you an example of this. Those of you who have followed the news lately have heard of this sickening, this hateful act, where a laborer of 22 years of age dropped two children from the Jacques Cartier Bridge into the icy waters of the St. Lawrence below. One was a boy of six, one a girl of five. This act is hateful in the extreme. It is disgusting that this man — whatever his motives, and nobody knows what his motives are, because when the police questioned him, he declared that he had no particular motive, or at least didn't say that he had any particular motive — takes other people's children and drops them over the bridge into the freezing waters below the bridge. So of course they are frozen to death. Now the act is hateful. It is sickening that there should be such sin in the world. Certainly we hate sin. But that does not stop me from grieving, from mourning, mourning over these two innocent children who perished through this hateful act.
It does not stop me from mourning when I think of the suffering that is imposed needlessly upon these parents, whose beloved ones are lost, and lost in such a horrifying manner. As you know, that one mother waited for days and days in stress and anxiety to hear about her little daughter, in the hope that maybe her little daughter, her only daughter, would return. Only after so many days of anxiety and waiting, to hear that the baby, her beloved child, was thrown into the freezing waters of the St. Lawrence. Do we not grieve? Do we not weep with those who weep? To say that sin is a hateful thing and therefore we hate it, we don't grieve over it — is irrelevant. It is sheer nonsense. I do not grieve over sin as such. I grieve over the consequences of sin. I grieve that I have been involved in sin.
And so it is distressing to find a New Testament scholar speaking such irrelevant nonsense. And I fear, as I say — it is not to make an attack on the scholar — it is to say that it reflects the spirit of the age, that we do not understand what mourning is, and dismiss it with a statement to say, "Oh well, it has to do with — we don't mourn over sin, we hate sin." I can still mourn over that which is hateful. It has nothing to do with — it doesn't mean one or the other whatsoever. It is — one would think that at least the person knows sufficient of life and of logic not to make such mistakes in thinking.
What is more, the statement is not even true scripturally, as I shall demonstrate in a moment. And that is the most serious part of the error. I hope that you don't make this kind of mistake. We here are speaking about a mourning that is not sentimentality. It is a mourning which strikes to the depth of the soul, that is the expression of the essence of our being. And I suspect that, like these kind of — like our scholars today, and so many Christians today — we don't understand what mourning is, and we dismiss it as being only for those who are oppressed and persecuted. And since they are not oppressed and persecuted, there is nothing to mourn for. This is completely to have mistaken the point here.
What the Lord says — and he uses a present participle in the original — he who is constantly mourning. He who keeps on mourning. He is describing a constant attitude of heart. And this is what Luke understands so well: he who weeps now shall be able to laugh in the future. He who weeps now, in the present, this present age of darkness and of sin.
Now, what then does this mourning refer to? First, the Greek word "mourning." The word that is used here is described by Archbishop Trench, who was once professor of King's College London, where once I studied. Professor Trench, in his book called "Synonyms of the New Testament," says that this word "to mourn" is to grieve with a grief that takes possession of the whole being, so that it cannot be hid. It cannot be hidden. And that is why, he points out, this word in the Scriptures is often joined with the word "to weep," "to cry." And that is why you find that Luke has "weep" and Matthew has "mourn." "Weep" is the outward expression of that deep inner grief. And the Lord Jesus, I remind you again, does not say, "Those who have wept in the past will be comforted," but those who keep on weeping, as Luke puts it. Who weep now. Who mourn now. It is a constant attitude of heart, that we cannot allow this superficial and cavalier treatment of the text to dismiss in this fashion. We must understand the spirit of the New Testament.
Now, when I study the New Testament on this point, I am amazed at the depth and the wealth of teaching that the Lord Jesus sums up and crystallizes into this one sentence: "Blessed are those who mourn." Why blessed? Why is it so blessed to mourn? There are five stages when I study the New Testament teaching in this, and each stage takes us deeper and deeper into the essence of this spiritual mourning. Each stage takes us deeper, until at the final stage, we arrive very close to the point of Isaiah 53, verse 3, which reads like this, of the Savior, of Christ: "He was a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. A man of sorrows, acquainted with grief." That is why Jesus could become our Savior. We have this superficial Christianity that doesn't understand the depth of mourning, that doesn't understand the depth of pain. And so we have this floating Christianity, this superficiality. Would that God would teach us to weep. To teach us to weep.
What are these five steps then? The first is the mourning to do with repentance. The mourning of repentance. This we find everywhere in the New Testament as well as in the Old Testament. That's why I'm completely unable to comprehend what this professor is talking about. The mourning — doesn't he know what repentance is? I have seen a man weep an hour and a half. Weep over his sins, as he knelt there before the Lord and wept. He wept for his sins. You say that we don't weep over sin, we just hate it? What superficial nonsense. It's distressing. Clearly this man has never wept for sin. How can a person say this? Have you never wept for sin? For the sins that you have committed, or the way you have grieved somebody else? Or you never wept for sin? What kind of Christianity is this? What shallowness of Christianity is this?
Let me show you everywhere it is in the Scriptures. Wherever you turn, if we look in the Old Testament, we can see that everywhere. Psalm 39, verse 12, for example. The psalmist knew this well. Psalm 39, verse 12: "Hear my prayer, O Lord, and give ear to my cry. Hold not your peace at my tears, for I am your passing guest, a sojourner like all my fathers." Hear my prayer, O Lord. Please listen to my cry, the cry from the depths of my heart. Hold not your peace at my tears, O Lord. Now this is a man who understands repentance. Why do we say it's repentance? Because in verse 8 he says, "Deliver me from all my transgressions." Deliver me from all my transgressions. Hold not your peace at my tears. No wonder the psalmist was a man of God. He understood what it is to weep over sin, and not dismiss this with some theological statement about — that sin is simply to be hated. Of course we hate sin. We need also to grieve over it.
And so we can find this throughout the Old Testament. Let me read to you another passage in Isaiah 22, that our very calling is a call to repentance, to tears. Isaiah 22, verse 12. And what does the great prophet Isaiah say here? "In that day the Lord of hosts called to weeping and mourning, to baldness and girding with sackcloth." Baldness — in those days when people mourned, they often shaved their head, or even more violently, they pulled the hair out of their head. To baldness and girding with sackcloth. They put sackcloth on when they mourned, much as Chinese people put on white garments in mourning, or western people put on black armbands in mourning.
And then what does it go on to say? Much like this age today who understands nothing about mourning: God called to weeping and mourning. And behold, joy and gladness, slaying of oxen and killing sheep, eating flesh and drinking wine. "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die." God calls us to mourning, but we say we don't want to mourn over sin. Oh no. What we're going to do is we're going to have joy and gladness. We will slay the oxen and kill sheep, and eat flesh and drink wine. We'll eat and drink, for tomorrow we die. So we might as well enjoy it today. And notice verse 14: "The Lord of hosts has revealed himself in my ears," says Isaiah. "Surely this iniquity will not be forgiven you till you die," says the Lord God of hosts. A people who do not know what it means to mourn and to weep, but who say, "Well, we will enjoy it while it is still today." God says, "This iniquity, your incapacity to weep and to mourn over sin, will not be forgiven you until you die, even until you die." You see. You see, the Scripture has nothing of the superficiality. It has the depths. The call to repentance. The call to weep.
We find this in other places, such as Joel chapter 2, verse 12, where it is combined with fasting in verse 15. We find this so many places that I'm not going to look through all these references. Suffice it to look at one more place in Ecclesiastes. And this is what Ecclesiastes has to say. Ecclesiastes chapter 7, verses 3 and 4, reads like this: "Sorrow," the wise man of Ecclesiastes says, "sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of countenance the heart is made glad." And the fourth verse says, "The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth." Of enjoyment. The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning. The heart of fools is in the house of mirth.
I fear that we are today more in the house of the fools, the house of mirth. We have not yet understood what it is to weep. Therefore we do not understand what it is to have joy. Those who do not weep do not know gladness. That is what Ecclesiastes says here. "Sorrow is better than laughter, for by the sadness of countenance the heart is made glad." Nothing so cleansing as the tears of repentance. That after the rain, there comes forth the sunshine of gladness. After the showers, the warmth of God's joy in the sunshine. Those who do not know how to weep also do not know what joy is. They think that joy is in the house of mirth, in superficial fiddling, in superficial gladness. I fear this is so characteristic of the spirit of this age.
That is why in James chapter 4, verse 9, he says, "Weep." Weep. He calls again, much as Isaiah does, to weep, to mourn. For in repentance — in James, chapter 4, and verse 9, and this is what he says: "Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to dejection. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you." A calling to wretchedness, to mourn, to weep, because again it is a call to repentance, as we see in verse 8: "Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you men of double mind." Mourn, you men of double mind, you sinners. So we see that the weeping is nothing to do merely with oppression. It has to do with repentance, the deep repentance for sin.
The same thing we find in 2 Corinthians chapter 7, verse 10. And let me read this also to you. 2 Corinthians chapter 7, verse 10, is a very important passage of this. And this is what the apostle Paul says: "For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation and brings no regrets." Godly grief, he says, produces repentance and leads to salvation and brings no regret. But worldly grief — notice there are two kinds of grief. Not all grief, not all mourning will save. There is a godly grief and there is a worldly grief. A worldly grief that produces nothing but death, because it is based not on faith but on unbelief. In 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, verse 13, Paul says to the Thessalonians, 1 Thessalonians 4, verse 13: "Do not weep as those who have no hope." We may weep, but we must not weep as those who have no hope, who have no faith in God. We weep out of repentance for sin.
Now that is the first stage in the Christian life. We begin by weeping, and we don't stop weeping in the Christian life. In a world such as we live in today, in a world of sin, how can we stop weeping until the new age comes in, until God's kingdom is established, until God's will be done on earth as in heaven? So that we are like Lot, as it says in 2 Peter chapter 2, verses 7 and 8. 2 Peter 2, 7 and 8, where it says of Lot that he was grieved by the sins of his generation. He was vexed — the Greek is "tormented," bruised in his righteous soul — because of the sins of his generation. That is how the Christian will be in this generation. Grieved to the heart. God save us from this superficiality. Weeping is going to be our whole lot in this generation until God's kingdom is established on earth in fullness and in power.
So closely related. And we come now to the second stage. We do not always be mourning over our sins in terms of repentance in the past. That is the first step. When God forgives us our sins, we don't keep mourning over those past sins. Even though we remember them with grief, we do not keep asking for forgiveness. God forgives us our sins. So our sorrow is turned to joy over his forgiveness. But then comes the second stage. Closely associated with sin are the consequences of sin. What are the consequences? There is pain. There is death. And these consequences of sin are all around us. One of the consequences of sin in the world is this fellow throwing these children into the St. Lawrence. Heartless. Brutal. The consequences of sin that brings pain to others and death to others. And one of these days we might be the victims, because sin is all around us. And so we grieve. We weep over these things.
So in Revelation chapter 21, verse 4 — and I give you all these references so that you see that I am not giving you my opinions. I would like you to check the preaching everywhere to see that it is scriptural. You don't take my word for it. You take God's word for it. And if you find that what I say is not scriptural, you reject it. Revelation 21, verse 4, we find here that God will wipe away all tears on that day. Not now. On that day, he will wipe away all tears. Up to that time, we will still have tears to shed. But on that day, in the day of the new Jerusalem, of the new heaven and the new earth — 21, verse 4 — "He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more." But until then there is still death. And when our loved ones part from us, or we part from our loved ones, there will be a grief. For who likes to say goodbye to those whom we love? "Death on that day shall be no more." But until then death is with us. "Neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore." To see others suffer brings pain to our hearts. For us to suffer brings little sorrow to us. But to see those whom we love suffer brings a lot of pain to our hearts. Much rather would we suffer than to see those we love suffer. Brings pain to our hearts. We mourn over the consequences of sin. We grieve that there is still such sorrow.
In John 11, verse 35, we find that the Lord Jesus wept over the pitiful state of Lazarus and his family. It says, "Jesus wept." The shortest verse in the Bible. John 11, verse 35, consists of two words: "Jesus wept." Why did he weep? He saw the helpless estate of mankind. He saw the pitiful condition of mankind. Does the pitiful condition of mankind not touch your heart? Does the fact that mankind is enslaved in the power of sin — does it say nothing to you? Does it say nothing to me? I see many Christians. They don't worry too much. They are so busy trying to save their own skins. They couldn't worry about anyone else sinking in the quagmire of sin. That others should perish does not disturb them too much. After all, all they want is their own salvation. This kind of Christianity — superficial as it is. Do we not grieve?
The Lord Jesus looked at these weeping, mourning people, mourning over Lazarus' death, and he wept. How pitiful is mankind. How helpless in their hopeless estate. This is the second stage, when we don't just weep for our own sins, but now we learn to weep, to feel compassion, over the world, over the unbelievers, as people who are sheep without a shepherd, torn apart by wolves, who don't know who is speaking the truth, who is speaking falsely, confused, bewildered, looking one way, looking another, don't know where to turn. And some are caught in the thorn bushes, some have fallen into the ditches and cannot climb out, bleeding pitifully for help, but there is none to help. And too many Christians, like the Levites, just walk by when they see the wounded man by the road. "Not for me to care." They don't weep over those who are thus injured. Doesn't disturb them. Their compassion doesn't exist. But not so the Lord Jesus. Filled with compassion and pity.
And this takes us on to the third stage. In the third stage, we come to the point which Schweizer talks about. Of course, we also mourn over persecution, oppression, when the righteous are oppressed by the unrighteous. Now we are moving not just from compassion for sinners, but compassion for the righteous, for those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, just as we find in the Beatitudes: "Blessed are you when you are persecuted for righteousness' sake."
# The Beatitudes: Blessed Are Those Who Mourn (Part 2)
Brothers and sisters in China, it grieves me, it pains me that they must so suffer. As the Scripture says, weep with those that weep, as Paul exhorts the Christians in Romans 12:15. In Romans 12:15 it says, we weep with those who weep, we rejoice with those who rejoice. In other words, we learn not just to close ourselves off, but we learn to identify with other people in their need and in their joy. But if we cannot identify with them in their need, how will we identify with them in their joy?
So we must reach the third stage, in which we learn to have compassion upon the righteous and care for those who are persecuted. And sometimes, of course, we weep because we also are persecuted. And there is nothing shameful about that. For it indicates something wrong with those who persecute us. Now notice the scriptural teaching on this point is again very plain. Psalm chapter 6, verse 6. We will find the psalmist knows a great deal about weeping because of persecution. We suffer for his name's sake. Now, whereas we count it a privilege to suffer, it still grieves us that there are those who are thus heartless, thus insensitive to the truth. The psalmist says in chapter 6, verse 6: "I am weary with my moaning. Every night I flood my bed with tears. I drench my couch with my weeping. My eyes waste away," verse 7, "because of grief. It grows weak because of all my enemies." All my enemies. Who likes to be oppressed? Who enjoys it, unless we have a very strange makeup and mentality, some kind of persecution mentality that sort of glory is in being persecuted? We weep that others do not understand. That others not only don't understand, but go so far as to slander us, to oppress us, because we speak or stand for the truth.
The psalmist understood this so well, and he grieved over this. He says in verse 8: "Depart from me, all you workers of evil, for the Lord has heard the sound of my weeping. Leave me alone, you workers of evil. The Lord has heard my supplication, and the Lord accepts my prayer. All my enemies shall be ashamed and sorely troubled. They shall turn back and be put to shame in a moment." Now we do not understand these deep sentiments of the psalmist if we don't understand what it is to stand up for righteousness and for truth. If you have never made a stand, of course, nobody is going to oppose you. But when you are oppressed, when your parents turn against you, when your loved ones reject you, it cuts to the heart.
I know the taste of that. I know what it is. When I went out to serve the Lord, my parents didn't want to see me again. And that an only son, rejected by his parents. When I would go home and my parents would make it known that I was not welcome, by bluntly asking, "When are you going to leave? How long are you going to stay? How soon are you going?" Does it cut you to the heart? Even my parents don't want me anymore. As the psalmist did say, "A father may forsake his child, a mother might forget her child, but God will not forsake me." God will not forsake me. Have you known what it is to stand for the truth? You see, this third stage is not arrived at until you make some kind of stand for the truth. Up to that point nobody wants to oppress you. I mean, you don't do anything, you don't stand for anything. Who wants to oppress you? You don't stand, you don't take up a flag, you don't stand for any cause. Who is going to oppose you? But when you stand for the truth, when you finally arrive at the stage when you say with Luther, "Here I stand. I can do no other. So help me God." When he was asked to recant, he said, "Here I stand. I can't do anything else. My conscience won't allow me. So help me God." He was oppressed. His life was in constant danger. And Luther certainly knew what it was to weep.
The same thing in Psalm 42. Psalm 42 makes the same point again. Let me read this Psalm to you too, that you may understand how deeply the Lord Jesus crystallizes the whole teaching of Scripture on godliness in these marvelous words of his teaching. The Lord Jesus could do it as no one else could do it. No wonder they were amazed at his teaching. "No man ever spoke like this man." That he could concentrate so much truth into so few words, that just to bring it out we have to analyze it point by point, step by step, to bring out, to expound the riches of it. Psalm 42, verse 3: "My tears have been my food day and night, while men say to me continually, 'Where is your God?'" "Where is your God?" Now you are in trouble, you are suffering. So where is your God? Your God forgot you. They say to me, they mock me, they ridicule me. Our brothers and sisters in China knew a lot about this. "Where is your God? You are in hard labor now. You are in jail now. So isn't your God going to help you? Isn't he going to send some angels to get you out of jail? Where is your God?" My tears have been my food day and night.
Have you understood this kind of suffering as you stood for the truth? Verse 9 and 10 of the same psalm: "I say to my God, why have you forgotten me? Why go I mourning because of the oppression of the enemy? As with a deadly wound in my body, my adversaries taunt me, while they say to me continually, 'Where is your God?'" Has he gone to sleep? Look, you are in trouble now. Your God doesn't do anything, does he? And as the Lord Jesus was hanging on the cross, they said, "Well, where is your God? Maybe your God will bring you down from the cross." Isn't your Christianity the kind of Christianity which says that God always puts sweets in your mouth, and every time you are in trouble he bails you out, every time you are stuck he brings you through? Well, so now, now you are in trouble. We are giving you trouble. What is your God going to do about it? My tears are my food day and night. God has not promised sunshine without rain. He has not promised flowers to adorn pathways all our lives through. The Lord Jesus called us to take up our cross and follow him. And taking our cross means we are going to die on it. And when we are going to be crucified, our enemies will taunt us and say, "If God is true, come down from the cross." What they did not see was the resurrection to come. God has something much more wonderful than bringing him down from the cross. He would raise him from the dead. He would not just take him out from dying, but he would wait till he died, and raise him up. So he will do with us.
So we find this third point: weeping because of the oppression of the enemy. And we can go on through the Psalms — Psalm 56, verse 8, and so on and so forth through the Psalms — weeping through oppression. Let us move to the fourth stage. And this is the riches of the Lord's teaching, when we go on to the fourth stage. What is it? It is weeping for the sins of God's people. Weeping for the sins of God's people. Do you have any concern for what happens to the church? Oh, this is deep indeed. Indeed, at this stage we come to the place where we look at God's people with God's eyes. When we look at the sins of God's people, and it cuts us to the heart. We thank God for men in the Old Testament who wept over the sins of God's people: Ezra, Nehemiah, Jeremiah, Isaiah, as we shall see.
Look at Ezra, that great servant of God, through whom restoration was brought to Israel. Ezra says, in chapter 10, verse 6, we read this: "Then Ezra withdrew from the house of God, and went to the chamber of Jehohanan the son of Eliashib, where he spent the night, neither eating bread nor drinking water, for he was mourning over the faithlessness, the sins, of the exiles." Where are God's people today who weep over the faithlessness of God's exiles in this world? God's church — the exiles, of course, was the remnant that had been sent into slavery when Jerusalem was destroyed. And yet, in spite of that judgment that had come upon them, they had learned no spiritual lessons up to that point. They were still in their sins. They were still faithless. How hardened can God's people be? Insensitive to sin. They don't weep for sin. They profess that all that is necessary is that you hate it. What does that mean, you hate it, if you don't weep over it? Where do you find it so hateful? I would like to see hatred of sin. I don't see it around. Because those who cannot weep for sin, neither can they hate it. That is the truth of the matter. It is because we see the damage that it does, the grief that it brings, that we find it so hateful. If it doesn't hurt us, what do we find so hateful about it? Ezra wept over the sins. He went fasting. He ate neither bread nor water. And he mourned. And as a result of that, God brought revival to Israel. God cannot bring revival to the church except we learn to weep over the sins of the church.
We find this everywhere in the Old Testament. We find this weeping, this mourning for sin. Jeremiah is another example. Jeremiah chapter 9, verse 1. Let me read this to you as well. And I say I give you all these references because I want you to understand that what I say is simply God's word. I have nothing to say of my own. Jeremiah chapter 9, verse 1. One of the most profound, most powerful verses in the Bible that really speaks to my heart. Where do we find men of God like Jeremiah in this generation? What does Jeremiah say? "Oh that my head were waters, and my eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughters of my people." Why? Because Jeremiah foresees that Israel is going to be destroyed. He sees it already in prophetic vision, and he sees that Israel does not want to repent. And he said, "Oh that my head were waters, my eyes were fountains, that I could weep." He says, "I haven't got enough tears to weep for this people. I haven't got enough tears."
Verse 2: "Oh that I had in the desert a wayfarer's lodging place, that I might leave my people and go away from them. For they are all adulterers, a company of treacherous men." Treacherous men. Adulterers. Spiritual adulterers they are. "They bend their tongue like a bow, and falsehood, and not truth, has grown strong in the land. For they proceed from evil to evil, and they do not know me," says the Lord. A people — God's people, Israel, a chosen people — going, what? Jeremiah says, from evil to evil. So they are going to be slain. They are going to be destroyed. "Oh that my head were waters, my eyes fountains of tears, that I could weep for them." And he did. The whole book of Lamentation is weeping. Lamentation. We have a whole book of mourning in the Bible. To lament is to mourn, to weep. Weeping over the sins, and finally the destruction, of Israel. Do we care?
And so we find in the New Testament the Lord Jesus doing the same. In Luke chapter 19, verse 41, we find Jesus weeping over Jerusalem. Luke 19:41, where Jesus wept over Jerusalem. And he said, "Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, because you did not know the things which make for your peace, you will be destroyed. You will be wiped out. How often would I have gathered you, oh Jerusalem, and you would not." Disaster was waiting for them. And when they wept for him in Luke chapter 23, when he was carrying his cross, there were some women weeping for him. He said to those women, in Luke 23, in verse 28, he said, "Don't weep for me. Weep for yourselves, for the disaster that is coming upon you." Compassion for people. The people of God.
We find this weeping over the sins of the church. Oh, Paul knew this well. How well he knew this. And he exhorts the Christians to weep over the sins of the church. In 1 Corinthians chapter 5, he says to the Corinthians, he says, "You should not be happy and rejoicing. You should learn how to weep for the sins that are committed in your midst." This is what he says in 1 Corinthians 5:2: "And you are arrogant." You think you are so spiritual, you Corinthians, because you speak in some tongues, and you have some spiritual gifts in your church. You think you are really something. He said, "Ought you not rather to mourn?" Here we have this word again. "Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you." The man who committed this sin must be removed from the church. Weep for the sins of the church. There is nothing to be proud about, of the church in this age, in this generation. Let us learn to weep.
In 2 Corinthians chapter 12, verse 21, we find the same thing again. 2 Corinthians 12:21 reads like this: "I fear that when I come again, my God may humble me before you, and I may have to mourn over many of those who sinned before and have not repented of the impurity, immorality, and licentiousness which they have practiced." They have not repented of these sins. These Christians have not repented. And so I am going to mourn. I am afraid I will have to mourn when I discover they have not repented. But today the church says, "Well, well, I mean that doesn't matter. Holiness is not that essential." God forbid that it is not essential. We don't mourn over sin. You think that it doesn't matter so much? Would that we learn to mourn.
And Paul says in Philippians chapter 3, verse 18, this is what he says. Philippians 3:18: "For many of whom I have often told you, and now tell you even with tears, live as enemies of the cross of Christ." He doesn't just tell them. He tells them with tears. He warns them of the danger of sin in the church. They live as enemies of Christ, because their God is their belly. Verse 19: "Their end is destruction. Their glory, they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things." Oh, what to God we learn to weep for the church.
But Ezekiel says to the Israelites, you don't mourn, so you shall not mourn. And because you don't mourn, you shall pine away. You see, godly grief — that Paul has spoken about in 2 Corinthians 7, verse 10 — godly grief versus worldly grief. If you don't have godly grief, you are going to have worldly grief. Don't think that you can escape from grief. The time will come that you will weep, with weeping and gnashing of teeth. And that day, that weeping and that gnashing will be too late. Either you have godly grief, or you are going to have worldly grief. You are going to take your choice. But don't think because you don't want to mourn now, you won't mourn. In fact, as we read in Luke chapter 6, those who weep now, they shall rejoice later. And those who laugh now, they shall weep later. Everybody is going to mourn. Everybody is going to weep. The only question is whether it's now or later. Whether it's weeping godly tears now, or weeping and gnashing of teeth in hell. There is the choice. Sin is going to bring grief to everyone. It's only a question of sooner or later.
But let us come to our last point. From this we go on — weeping for the sins of the church — to the next stage, where we weep out of concern for the church. Not necessarily that the church or brothers and sisters have sinned, but out of our concern and love, in seeing that they grow spiritually. You see, at every stage of the Christian life, there is weeping. Whichever stage you have arrived at. There are some of us who weep in our concern, in our anxiety, in our love, to see those who are standing in Christ, that they continue to stand fast and they continue to grow. We water the seeds with our tears. The seeds are growing, but we — Paul understood this so well — we mourn out of love for Christ and for his people.
The Lord Jesus says in Matthew 9:15, that so long as the bridegroom is still here, the guests do not weep. But one day the bridegroom will be taken away, and then — then will the people weep. That was in Matthew 9:15. And in Mark 16:10, we read how the disciples wept when Jesus the bridegroom was taken away. Why do they weep? They weep not because of sin now. They weep because of their love for Jesus. They weep because he was taken away. But their sorrow was turned to gladness when he rose again. And the same way today, we weep — not because of the sins of the church, in this stage, the stage of the fifth stage we are talking about — but out of our love for the church as the body of Christ. Because we love Jesus, we love our Lord. We weep out of our concern for the church.
This point Paul understood so deeply, so profoundly. And this is what we see about Paul at this stage. We see in Acts chapter 20, in verse 19, the quality of this man. Would that God grant us in this generation some people like this. Acts chapter 20, in verse 19. And this is what Paul says as he said goodbye to the Ephesian church, to the Ephesian elders whom he had taught for three years. It was a very painful goodbye, because he loved them very much, they loved him very much. But the time had come to say goodbye. There comes a day in this world we must all say goodbye. Even though we may have fought the same battle together, we may have drawn swords together in the spiritual warfare, we advance together. But there comes the day when it must be — on this life, we have to say goodbye. And here was the time for Paul to say goodbye to the Ephesian church that he had loved, that he had served with, for three years, building them up.
And this is what he says in verse 19: "Serving the Lord with all humility and with tears and with trials which befell me through the plots of the Jews." Serving the Lord with tears. All the depth of this man. The depth and profoundness of this man. Such was his love for the church. He served the Lord with tears. He watered the seeds with his tears. Again, in the same chapter, in verse 31, in his final words to the Ephesian elders: "Therefore," he said, "be alert, remembering that for three years I did not cease night or day to admonish everyone with tears." The tears of love and concern for the church. Where in this generation do we have men like this? Men of this quality.
Now I don't know at what stage you stand at today. Whether it's stage one, if you are not yet a Christian, or stage two, or stage three, stage four, stage five. Would to God that you grow through all these stages and become the man of God like Paul, who weeps not only for the sins of the church, but weeps even for the growth of the church.
You know, in Ezekiel chapter 22, we find Ezekiel saying these words, God speaking through Ezekiel. And this is what we read. Ezekiel 22, verse 30, reads like this: "And I sought for a man," God says. "I looked for a man. I sought for a man among them," that is among Israel, "who should build up the wall and stand in the breach before me for the land, that I should not destroy it. But I found none." I sought for a man. Now let us read verse 29. It says: "The people of the land," God's people, the Israelites, "have practiced extortion" — extortion is, of course, in this sense, means to make profit from the poor — "and committed robbery. They have oppressed the poor and needy, and extorted from the sojourner without redress. And I sought for a man, but there was none to be found." Verse 31: "Therefore I have poured out my indignation upon them. I have consumed them with the fire of my wrath. Their way have I requited upon their head," says the Lord. What does this mean? God was looking for a man who would stand in the breach, who would build the wall. What breach? The breach between God's people and God himself. A breach has opened up today between the church and God. And God looks for men to stand in the breach, to reconcile the two parties. Will he find a man? Well, in the early church, he found Paul. Who will he find today? What kind of a man will he find today?
Let me close now as I read one more psalm. Psalm 126. And this is what we read in Psalm 126, these precious words of the psalmist. Psalm 126, the last two verses, verses 5 and 6: "May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy. He that goes forth weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing his sheaves with him." Isn't that beautiful? God looks for people today who will sow with tears, and they will come back with shouts of joy. So wonderful is the Lord's teaching. We can see that so much riches is crystallized into that few words: "Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted." How wonderful that is. Let us close as we sing the hymn number 200.