The Joy of Lament: The Soul’s Quest for Comfort
Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted –
Matthew 5:4
As we continue our walk through the first blessings and promises of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount,
We started this by defining
blessing as being happy, content, satisfied and prosperous; with that in mind
how is it that those who mourn are counted as blessed? Loving The Lord our God
with all our heart, mind, soul and strength (Deuteronomy 6:4-9) goes beyond
mere behavioral modification; it’s a transformation of life that stems from the
heart, the innermost being of who we are. This means that our inconsistencies
and sin break our heart from the inside. We see the holiness of God and what He
demands and try as we might, we cannot measure up. We continue to fall short of
His Glory (Romans 3:23). And we mourn and lament over our broken relationship.
The whole point of the Law was to
show us that we could not keep it (Deuteronomy 5). The point of the Ceremonial
Laws (Leviticus) was to show us that we’re never going to be clean enough from
our sin to enter into the presence of a Just and Holy God. Yet, God wants to be
near to us, so laws, ceremonies and procedures were put in place, and even with
these wonderful graces in place we continually fail, and sin and we mourn. We
cry out with the Apostle Paul, “O wretched man that I am who, will deliver me
from this body of death?” (Romans 7:24)
Here The Lord promises comfort.
The old system of sacrifices and ceremonial cleansings could never offer
comfort because they had to be offered repeatedly, year by year, month by
month. There was no true rest because there was never an end to the work. Jesus
is announcing the end of the sacrificial works and ceremonial cleansings. In
Matthew 11:25-30 Jesus beckons for everyone who is weary and burdened to come
to Him for rest. As one Pastor so beautifully put it, “Lay your deadly doing
down. The good, the bad and the indifferent. Lay it all at the foot of the
cross and flee from it.” Jesus promises comfort because He is the end of our
labors. He will be made sin, though He has no sin to die for, so that we can be
made righteous before God, because we have no righteousness in us. All our
righteousness is filthy rags before God (2nd Corinthians 5:21;
Isaiah 64:6). He is the one who is going to be set forth as a propitiation for
us (Romans 3:25; Hebrews 2:17; 1st John 2:2; 4:10). He is our great
High Priest and perfect sacrifice and He died once for all (Hebrews 7-8) and in
Him we are blessed with comfort because by Him we are free from the lordship of
sin and death. We can rest. God is satisfied. We don’t have to wonder if our
good works outweigh our bad works. We don’t have to live in the uncertainty of
our eternal destination, because ours is the kingdom of heaven. We are blessed
and we are comforted as we trust in Christ for our salvation and reconciliation
to God. Jesus is the way. He is the truth. He is life. No one comes to the
Father except through Him (John 14:6).
Our mourning over sin doesn’t
stop with our personal relationship with it, by default we mourn over sin in general.
There is a place for corporate and national repentance as outlined in Scripture.
It’s Jeremiah weeping and calling the people of Israel to repent. It’s the king
of Nineveh ordering a decree of national prayer and fasting to stay the hand of
God. It’s Ezra and Nehemiah weeping over the sin of the people who were just
returning from exile in Babylon, and it’s Jesus weeping over Jerusalem for
rejecting salvation and not recognizing their day of visitation. As we realize
our sin against a Just and Holy God, we see the dangers and ugliness of sin. We
must hold that view of sin in every sphere of life and determine to stamp it
out wherever we find it. I pray that God
would break us over sin, personal and public, so that we might experience His
comfort.
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