Those Who Mourn
1Seeing the multitudes, he went up onto the mountain. When he had sat down, his disciples came to him. 2He opened his mouth and taught them, saying, 3“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. 4Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. 5Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth. 6Blessed are those who 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 children of God. 10Blessed are those who have been persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. 11“Blessed are you when people reproach you, persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely, for my sake. 12Rejoice, and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven. For that is how they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
Listening to the Sermon on the Mount, which Jesus speaks to his disciples, I find myself wondering whether a person could really lay everything down in the heart for the sake of an honest faith that hopes for a heaven no one can see. When Jesus commanded a rich man to give away everything he had, the man could not live by that word, and so he left Jesus. Peter, afraid to die with Jesus, who carried the cross for the work of redemption, denied Jesus at the last moment. This is what human beings are like when they want the world. No one can ever live by the will of God through human willpower, so we must have the help of the Holy Spirit.
Isaiah 32:15
15Until the Spirit is poured on us from on high, and the wilderness becomes a fruitful field, and the fruitful field is considered a forest.
For our hearts, as barren as the wilderness, to become a fruitful field and a dense forest, we must receive the grace of the Holy Spirit that God pours out. When the Holy Spirit comes on our hardened spirits, a beautiful watercourse of life will flow, and life will sprout as in a watered garden. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God. When the Holy Spirit comes, we come to know the holiness of the truth and realize how ugly sin is, and we gain the wisdom to throw away our own righteousness and live for the righteousness of God. The Holy Spirit does not speak on his own authority but speaks only the will of God, so if believers rely on the Holy Spirit, they can have a faith that obeys with humble trust.
Jesus said that those who mourn are blessed, for they shall be comforted. To mourn means to grieve, to be hurt in the heart. People are in agony when they lose those they cherished and loved most. The grief we receive in the world can be healed by the things of the world. Pain caused by people can be healed through people, and pain caused by money can be escaped once the money is made up. But the mourning spoken of in the Sermon on the Mount is not pain caused by the world’s problems; it is a spiritual pain for souls that have not been saved. The mourning believers carry comes from a good heart, so they receive God’s comfort, and unlike the world’s comfort, this comfort is grace that fills the soul.
God gives spiritual grace to believers who grieve over people who refuse the gospel of Christ, and who pray with tears and devote themselves. Believers can feel that grace clearly in the spirit. When they mourn before some huge problem, saying they can only do their best and there is nothing more they can do, it is as though a great hand, like a great fortress, strokes them, and a warm voice wraps around them, telling them not to worry and not to hurt. Believers who have been comforted are not afraid of death at the hands of persecutors, and they are filled with joy in the hope of the kingdom of God. There was a prophet who received this comfort from God, who preached the word with all his life, and who prayed with tears and mourned as he watched a people who would not listen at all.
Lamentations 2:10-11
10The elders of the daughter of Zion sit on the ground. They keep silence. They have cast up dust on their heads. They have clothed themselves with sackcloth. The virgins of Jerusalem hang down their heads to the ground. 11My eyes fail with tears. My heart is troubled. My liver is poured on the earth, because of the destruction of the daughter of my people, because the young children and the infants swoon in the streets of the city.
The prophet Jeremiah served for about forty years, from King Josiah to Zedekiah, the last king of Judah. In those days the power of Assyria, the great empire around Israel, was gradually weakening, and Babylon was slowly gaining strength. Jeremiah told the people that it was God’s will for them to give up on Egypt and surrender to Babylon, but they would not listen. When King Josiah, who served God, died, his son Jehoahaz came to the throne, abandoned his father’s good policies, and did evil. As a result, three months after taking the throne, King Jehoahaz was carried off captive by Pharaoh Neco of Egypt and put to death. The kings who came after him, Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin and Zedekiah, were also taken captive to Babylon, and in the eleventh year of Zedekiah, Judah and Jerusalem suffered the agony of being destroyed by Babylon. Sadly, everything Jeremiah had prophesied came true. Jeremiah proclaimed to the people that idol worship, false prophecy, relying on the nations and abandoning justice were sins against the fear of God and would be punished, but the people were deceived by false prophets and would not listen at all.
Jeremiah wrote down the message of Yahweh and urged the nation of Judah to repent, but King Jehoiakim burned the scroll on which the prophecy was written. As a result, he was removed from the throne in Babylon’s first invasion. Jeremiah told King Zedekiah that God had warned in advance that he could live only by surrendering to Babylon, so he must obey that word, but Zedekiah resisted Babylon to the end, had both his eyes put out, and was executed. When the kings of Judah were all dead and even Governor Gedaliah had been murdered, Johanan became the leader of Judah, and he too ignored the word of God. He led the people left in Judah, and Jeremiah with them, down to Egypt. Jeremiah preached the word with a mourning heart to save the people, but he was harshly persecuted, and it is thought that in the end he was martyred in Egypt.
By the world’s standards Jeremiah seems to have lived an unhappy life, but to God he was more precious than anyone.
The people knew that God was the Almighty, who had brought their ancestors out of Egypt, so it is hard to understand why they would not obey his word. The nation called Israel had been formed through Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who obeyed the word of God, and yet they relied on the nations more than on God and in the end were destroyed by Babylon. How frustrated Jeremiah, who knew the will of God, must have been! God is the owner of this world and rules every human life, and even the life to come, yet people do not believe in him as the King of kings, so they have no interest in the word Jeremiah preached. God said that if they would not listen to the word of judgment, he would bring Nebuchadnezzar from Babylon to strike Judah.
We must not forget the almighty power of God, who uses nations, people and the powers of the world both when he helps believers and when he judges. God said he would cut off all of their everyday life, like the voice of the bridegroom and the bride and the sound of the millstones, but they thought it could never happen and did not listen to Jeremiah. The record says that until the day Noah entered the ark, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, and did not turn back until the very moment the flood destroyed them all. Reading that, it seems people really do care more about life in the world than about God’s providence. If they defied the word of God they would have to be carried off to Babylon and serve as slaves for seventy years, as Jeremiah 25:11 says, yet because they thought it could never happen and it was not happening right away, they did not grasp how serious it was. The visible world and their own lives mattered more to them, so they ignored the warning of the prophet Jeremiah. Jeremiah preached the word with a mourning heart, feeling a pain as though his insides were torn apart and his liver poured out on the ground, but the people rejected that word, and so they were trampled underfoot by cruel Babylon.
You too have probably felt frustrated at least once, watching a child who will not listen, or people who hear the word and still do not live wisely. When you walk with the Holy Spirit, the world and people’s hearts become plain to see, and it is heartbreaking to watch people make foolish choices because they cannot let go of their own foolish greed, stubbornness and pride. They block both eyes and both ears and listen only to the voice of their own hearts; you know how terrible the judgment they will meet at the end is, and you try to stop them, but they will never listen. Human beings are foolish: only after they have suffered do they finally regret. Jeremiah knew the enormous suffering the people of Judah were about to face, so he told them to submit to Babylon, but they closed their eyes and ears and persecuted Jeremiah instead. Even so, Jeremiah had to save them as they ran toward judgment, so he had no choice but to preach the word with a mourning heart.
We must listen when Jeremiah preaches the word with a mourning heart. Jeremiah said that if they obeyed the word of God, then however cruel and beastly the Babylonians who invaded, God would not let them harm the people; that promise had to be believed, and only those who listened to Jeremiah could live. Even now God is speaking to us too, through the Holy Spirit. He is saying that your life in the world may matter to you, but you must know that if he does not protect you, the life you prize so highly will not exist either. We must listen to the words of the Holy Spirit, who sighs as he watches believers leave God’s embrace and says that the world is a dangerous place ruled by Satan. Jesus Christ surely promised that he will come again, and he commanded that until then you must fulfill your role as light and salt. If you value your own life more than this command, you will not meet Christ when he comes again, and you may even face a terrible judgment.
John 11:33-35
33When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews weeping who came with her, he groaned in the spirit, and was troubled, 34and said, “Where have you laid him?” They told him, “Lord, come and see.” 35Jesus wept.
There are several scenes in the New Testament where Jesus wept. In this scene Jesus sees Mary and Martha and the Jews weeping because Lazarus has died, and asks where Lazarus is. When Jesus heard the news that Lazarus was close to death, he deliberately stayed two more days, and went to Judea after Lazarus had died. Martha, who had been waiting for Jesus, reproached him: if he had been there, her brother would not have died. Jesus told Martha that Lazarus would soon live again, but Martha’s faith did not trust Jesus completely. Martha had a head-knowledge faith, so she answered that she believed people of faith would rise again on the last day. Many believers make the same confession as Martha, but they do not know how vague that faith is, how far removed from fact and from real life. Jesus asked the weeping Martha whether she believed that he was the resurrection and the life, that whoever believes in him will live even if he dies, and whoever lives and believes in him will never die. What he meant was, Do you believe that I can raise Lazarus now? He was asking her: I am the Creator and the owner of life, so I can raise Lazarus again; do you really believe it will happen in real life?
Jesus is talking about a faith that is real, where anything at all can happen now, not a faith that stays an idea. It is not something vague, like saying he will answer someday, but a faith that needs to experience miracles happening in real life. Martha then answered, in John 11:27, that she believed he was the Christ, the Son of God, who comes into the world. Yet right after that she told someone nearby to go and call Mary, which shows that although she said with her mouth that she believed, nothing had changed in how she acted. Listening to Martha’s answer, it is clear that she had no idea what Christ means, or what it means that the Son of God has come into the world. If she had believed that Jesus is the all-knowing, almighty King of kings, who rose again and sat down on the throne, she could never have behaved like this. If she really believed that Jesus was the Christ, she should have pleaded with him earnestly. She should have pleaded: I believe you are the Christ and the owner of life, and I believe in the resurrection on the last day, but now, please, raise my brother Lazarus. Jesus had come there to teach, by raising Lazarus, that he is the owner of life, so if Martha had only confessed her faith well, she could easily have received the answer. But Martha made a confession of faith she knew only in her head, like a parrot. A prayer that is not sincere cannot bring a miracle and cannot be answered, and a faith known only in the head has no power.
Mary, who came running when Martha called her, had also heard and learned much of Jesus’ teaching and had seen miracles with her own eyes, yet when she met a problem beyond the limits of her own reason, she could not trust Jesus. Martha and Mary had loved Jesus until then, so they had served him meals and listened closely so as not to miss a single word he said. When they saw him turn water into wine, heal the blind, raise up the lame and work the miracle of the five loaves and two fish, they were proud to be with Jesus. Back then they would probably have rebuked people who refused the gospel: God is alive and at work like this, so why can you not decide? But when all of it became their own problem, they doubted whether a miracle would really happen to them, and they could not make the decision of faith. When it was someone else’s problem they could preach the gospel with confidence, but when it became their own they could not show a faith that rose above the world. Now all they had was the complaint: if you had come a little sooner we would not have had to suffer like this, so why have you come only now? All they could think was that they were suffering now because Jesus had not helped them when it happened. If they thought Lazarus had died because Jesus did not work a miracle, then a healthy faith would not complain but cling to Jesus to the end, because the very resentment is evidence that Jesus has the power to raise Lazarus.
Could it be that you too have a self-centered faith like this? When you saw others waver, did you rebuke them, asking why they showed such unbelief when God answers those who pray? Or do you know that he is the Christ and the owner of life, yet think that is needed only for going to heaven? Do you lose heart, thinking that since you cannot solve the problem in front of you right now, Jesus cannot solve it either? Or are you resentful, asking why, if he really is the Son of God, he did not help you in advance so that this would never happen? If you are resentful, asking why this had to happen to you of all people, why your body had to be the one to fall ill, why it had to be your family, I hope you will repent now. You must know how to mourn when you see your own spiritual state like this. Only when you have a faith that mourns over your own sin of not trusting him to the end can you mourn in grief over the unbelief of others.
Jesus would weep over Martha and Mary, and over us, and ask: do you still not trust me, so that you have made yourself the master and put me in second place? When Jesus saw their unbelief, he worked an astonishing miracle, as though he had resolved to show them plainly who he was, the one they knew only in their heads. He commanded the dead Lazarus, “Lazarus, come out!” and Lazarus came out, as if he had been waiting, bound hand and foot with linen, and Jesus told them to free him and let him go. Jesus had resolved from the beginning to raise Lazarus, so if Martha and Mary had shown him a sincere faith, then through the miracle of Lazarus raised from the dead, the two women would have taken on more work for the kingdom of God.
We believers are people who have already received the answer by faith. The Holy Spirit, who is with us and knows even the deep things of God, will give great comfort to a believer who mourns and pleads for the salvation of souls. Do you have the faith that you are a child who has received grace and comfort? Are you mourning and praying with a faith that longs for your nation and people, and the church, to stand on the rock of faith? The good works of those who are poor in spirit like this are what it means to store up treasure in heaven.
The word comfort means coming alongside and calling. When our hearts are weary and hurting as we watch the world decay, he will come close, hold us, and comfort us, saying that he knows it all and we need not worry. Simeon, who walked with the Holy Spirit, called Jesus righteous and devout, the consolation of Israel. Jesus, who comes to our side and becomes our comforter, calls by name the believers who devote themselves even to death. Jesus said that after he ascended he would send the Counselor. The Counselor is the Holy Spirit, whose name means the one who comforts, and the Holy Spirit walks with believers and helps them repent of their sins. On a spirit that prays with a mourning heart for souls, Jesus and the Holy Spirit, who are its comforters, will pour out great power and grace.
When we pray for the salvation of souls, we receive great comfort as we see brothers and sisters and neighbors healed by the grace of God. I believe that you who have received that grace know well how warm God’s comfort is and what great strength it gives. The comfort we receive in this world now can only be partial, but the complete comfort we will receive in heaven on the last day, whether that is the end of our life or the end of the world, will last forever. On the last day it will be made perfectly clear whether we lived as those who mourn for the salvation of souls and the will of God, or lived hurting other souls and getting in the way of God’s work.
The peace in which you now live is probably the answer to the prayers of brothers and sisters in faith beside you, who mourn and pray for you. If you think that you are living by grace now because someone is praying for you, you must live humbly before God. A believer who knows how to be thankful for small things knows the will of God, and so truly has a heart that mourns for the salvation of souls. When God sees a believer who mourns, he knows that believer’s devotion, which shows a good faith, so he will comfort them. You know how good God is, so I earnestly hope that you will devote yourselves with all your heart, mind and soul and become believers who receive the comfort of God.