I've been doing the single dad life for the majority of this
week. My wife is with some friends
from the church and they're floating down some river in
Oregon, totally out of cell coverage.
So I'm on my own. No, no even phone a friend.
I'm just on my own. And you know, I mentioned that
because this is only the second time that she's ever had any
kind of time away from the kids. I think it's good to get
refreshed, come back excited. The first time she ever left,
she was gone for about 45 minutes.
And one of my daughter's broke her arm didn't take long.
I did not take long. I was literally picking up my
kids from school and she's running out on the patio over
here. And I mean, it's we're literally
in the first hour of the tour of duty and I got a broken arm.
And it it, I have to admit, it took me about 3 hours to really
understand that it was broken. And I think that's the benefit
of moms is they haven't, they have an instinct for these
things. And dads were like, yeah, you're
probably fine. And it took me a while.
And the reason that I finally understood what was happening is
appropriate for what we're talking about today.
It was about 2 1/2 hours of just constant tears.
You know, you think as again, the dad reflexes like, oh, I'm
sure, I'm sure those tears will go away.
You know, maybe she's over exaggerating.
But because it lasted so long, those tears actually had a
message that there was some real deep pain happening in her life.
And so because she kept crying and looked in the arm was bent.
It was just bent. And I was like, I, I'm so sorry.
We took her in and and every and she she's fully healed, full
recovery. In fact, I looked at it again
today. I'm like, yeah, straight as an
arrow and as as as mom was leaving on this trip, the kids
were like, remember last time when Rosie broke her arm and I
was like, don't even don't even go there.
We're not going there. We're going to be fine.
I mentioned all of that because God has given us this amazing
gift in our tears to help us understand what's really
happening in life and help others understand what's
happening in your life. And as we've been doing in this
time that we're, we'll be looking at the Sermon on the
Mount in the Gospel of Luke. All summer long we've been
finding these surprising blessings.
Last week it was like you're blessed when you're hungry.
Two weeks ago, blessed when you're poor.
Now we find the surprising blessing of tears that God
actually uses tears in our life to do some deep and meaningful
work that turn into a blessing. And we're going to look at that.
The simple title of the message, it's going to come right out of
one verse of the Bible is blessed tears.
And this is the kind of message that some of you are going to
need to hear right now because you might be, you know, on your
second Kleenex box of the day just wiping tears.
All of you will need this message at some point in the
future because it is an inevitability of life that you
will go through seasons where something happens that moves you
to the point of tears. And so we find our verse where
where we left off just the second-half of the one verse we
looked at last week. I'll read it to you now.
It's in Luke chapter 6. In verse 21, it says, blessed
are you who hunger now for you shall be filled and blessed are
you who weep now, for you shall laugh.
One of the the first things we can look at in the surprising
blessing of all of this is that we need a reminder sometimes.
Sometimes we need the lesson for the first time that we believe
in a God who has given us the gift of the the full survey of
emotions. That if you are going through a
season of sadness or tears, it does not mean that you are
outside of God's will for your life.
And for those of you who need that reminder or just you're in
that season and you just need to take refuge in His Word, I can
confidently say that we believe in a God that comforts those who
are in a season of tears because we have an entire book of the
Bible that will give you a song to sing in a prayer to pray, no
matter what emotion you're experiencing.
That book, of course, is the book of Psalms and it's full of
worship songs and prayers that God moved through the Holy
Spirit to have put into the Bible that that will meet you
wherever you're at. And for the purpose of today,
I'll just share some of you that will meet you in your tears.
In Psalm chapter 6, it says I am weary with my groaning all
night. I make a bed to swimming.
I drench my couch with my tears. My eyes waste away because of
grief. Psalm 42 says my, my tears have
become my food day and night. And you're so moved with this
emotion that it's, you can't even think about eating.
Psalm 56 says, you have collected my tears in your
bottle, This beautiful picture of, of God seeing this moment
of, of your, of your weeping and, and making a memorial with
you. He remembers that he sees it and
it's special to him. And then Psalm chapter 126 says
those who sow in tears will reap in joy.
The the Bible in its worship and prayer book is full of the
emotion that moves people to tears.
And so today we're going to look at some of those moments in life
that you will be blessed when you are moved to tears or, or
moved to that heart condition that would be considered
weeping. And, and very simply to start
this out, I'll meet some of you where you're at right now.
And that is the blessed tears of sorrow that that's sadness and
sorrow and heaviness of heart is something that you do not have
to feel is outside of God's plan for your life.
It is something that God can actually bless, which gives us
our first gospel good news of the morning.
The God of the Bible, the the the Lord revealed in Christ does
not require his people to grit their teeth through every up and
down of life and pretend to be happy or joyful no matter what.
And that is good news. It's good news to know that you
have the gift of sorrow. And it does not mean that that
God is not with you. We, we do not have to pretend to
always be excited and joyful and happy no matter what.
There are times when you will be moved to tears and that is OK.
In fact, when we get this similar passage in Matthew
chapter 5, it says blessed are those not who weep, but who
mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Mourning means a deep expression of sadness, sorrow, and grief.
And it's most often tied, of course, with the sadness and
grief caused by the loss of a loved one.
And it's a pain that is real and it's not to be denied.
And God says when you go through that pain, you're actually going
to experience that through that you will be comforted.
And I can say as someone who probably attends more funerals
than the average person just by by way of my role in our church,
there is a special kind of Holy Spirit movement in the sanctuary
when people who know God, who trust in God, give him the
sadness of that moment. And I'm always surprised and
always moved with how so many people can turn that sadness
into a moment of worship and trust in God.
And so like I said, this is maybe a message for some of you.
Now, all of you will someday sit on this side of a funeral and
you'll be moved with a, a, a moment that will challenge your
theology. Is God good even when you're
sad? And again, I'll just say that
you are not out of place if you come to church with a heavy
heart. We are not a a group of people
who have to wear our best clothes and wear our best smile
and always answer, how are you with I'm always fine.
This is a time where you can come into the sanctuary to
worship and to sit under the word of God.
And some of you just need to be comforted by the power of the
Holy Spirit that God is near those who are broken hearted.
Psalm chapter 5 verse 2 says, hearken unto the voice of my
cry, my king, and my God, for unto thee I will pray.
There are so many of the Psalm prayers that compare praying to
crying to crying out. I love this specific verse
because Charles Spurgeon has a great way to compare the cry of
a prayer to God to the cry of a child to a parent.
He says, my brothers and sisters, sometimes we can't put
our prayers into words. They're nothing but a cry, but
the Lord can comprehend the meaning for he hears a voice in
our cry to a loving father. His children's cry is music and
they have magic influence with his heart which he cannot
resist. Parents, you know that one of
the most special moments. Now this isn't always true and
we can get worn out by by the redundancy of tears and just the
exhaustion of parenting. But when you have one of those
real moments when your child is going through sadness or hurt
and pain, to bring them close and to wipe away their tear is
one of the beautiful moments of being a parent, to hold them in
your arms. And all of those moments, this
one especially, is designed to point you to what God wants to
do in your life when you are going through sadness.
And we've called this series officially the way of Jesus, the
way of the world. Sometimes to deny your emotion,
to pretend everything's fine, to run from the the sad moments of
life. But the way of Jesus is not to
deny suffering. He gives us a philosophy with
how to offer it to God in worship so that we can be
blessed. And we see this in the life of
Jesus himself. Jesus did not come to show us a
life well lived, that was always happy, joyful no matter what,
smiling at every circumstance. In fact, you come to church and
you want to go home with one Bible memory verse.
Today you'll give you the shortest verse in the Bible, and
maybe it's the easiest to remember because it's the one we
need to be reminded of the most. John Chapter 11, verse 35.
Jesus wept, and the context of that is very interesting for our
study. Jesus wept as he joined in the
morning of two friends who were mourning the loss of their
brother. Mary and Martha lost their
brother Lazarus. And they were so sad that Jesus,
even knowing that he was going to use that moment, the death of
his friend Lazarus, as a way to preview the power of God to
bring life from the dead, He still joins them in their
morning. In their sadness.
He weeps with them before he encourages them that God has the
power of resurrection. So there is a blessed moment in
your life when you are going through heaviness of heart, when
you are going through those seasons of loss or grief or life
didn't work out how you thought it would, or there's a major
transition or some news that's just really heavy to handle.
And I know I'm speaking to some of you right now.
There is a special moment of worship set aside for you that
is blessed because of what you go through.
And I think as I, as I went ahead of you and thought through
some of those blessings, I'll share with you a couple.
One of them is that our God acknowledges your pain.
You are not called to bury your pain and pretend you believe in
a God that only gives you awesome things all day long when
we come today. And some of us need to express
our worship by giving God the honest pain and sadness of your
heart that you believe in a God who wants you to express your
pain so that he can comfort you. The other encouraging the
blessing in this is that when you express your pain, when you
go through seasons of sadness with a full view of who God is
in your life, the encouragement I have for you if you're in that
season is that you are weeping for now, that the full view is
that there will be something God does to bring healing to your
sadness. There's another side of the
funeral that those who mourn at night find joy in the morning.
And there is a comfort to know that God can work out the
sadness of your life so that someday you can look back and
see the healing and the provision of your life.
And the third blessing, if you're in this season right now,
is you're being invited to let God comfort you in your sadness,
is that these are the moments where you really get to
experience the value of being part, not just of Christian
theology, where you understand your beliefs of heaven and all
your doctrinal positions. And you can go out into the
woods and enjoy creation on your own.
But you're here Sunday morning as part of a community, and you
listen to announcements with ways to go deeper in the
community. And every week you should be
invited to. If you're not part of a smaller
community where you can know, know people and be known by
people and eat together and pray together and talk about the Word
together. This is the time of life where
those moments are so important. One of the great blessings of
going through seasons of sadness is that you get to see the
community of God's people come around you.
The funeral setting is the joy of theology on display, but also
the joy of tears shared. The Bible calls us to rejoice
with those who rejoice, but to weep with those who weep.
And if you're not part of some sort of Christian community that
goes deeper than just Sunday morning high and by, you should
probably join one before you need one.
Many of you are already part of 1, and you've experienced the
times where you've had to comfort, you've had to bring the
meal, you've had to help people move.
And of course, your time will come.
None of us are going to get out of this thing alive.
We're all going to need seasons in our life where people need to
come around us for our hurt and pain.
So as way of just wisdom, join the community before you need
the community. Psalm chapter 34 says the Lord
is near to those who have a broken heart.
He's near with the power of His spirit and he's near with the
collection of his people. It goes on to say he saves such
as have a contrite spirit. So the Lord is near to those who
have a broken heart and he saves those with the contrite spirit.
And that Psalm gives us kind of a picture of the the blessed
tears of sorrow, but also the next category which the blessed
tears of repentance. That's what contrite spirit is
getting after this brokenness to someone's life that allows God
to come near. There's tears of sorrow and
there are tears of repentance. We'll look at psalms for each
one of these because again, the psalms are full of moments where
God's people cry out. Psalm chapter 51 says the
sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite
heart. A broken heart, the psalmist
says, is the sacrifice of God. And he says, Oh God, you will
not despise my broken heart, that one of the ways that we
come to God to make an offering of our life is coming and
saying, my heart is broken to the great Savior and Healer of
hearts. Some of you, when you heard that
Psalm reference, you knew exactly where the story came
from. Psalm chapter 51 is a Psalm
written by David in response to his sin with Bathsheba.
And one of the ways that tears are going to be blessed is when
they become so real in the act of repentance that your life is
now given to God once again. And this is the Psalm of
repentance. This is when David became so
aware that his sin was more than just a fleeting moment of
pleasure or one lie. This is when David was
confronted that the consequences of his sin was the life of
someone. It it, it robs someone of a life
and of a family. It robbed David of his actual
worship of God. And when you actually realize
the consequence of sin, not just from some preacher on a Sunday
morning, not just from the Bible telling you the do's and don'ts,
but when you see your life apart from God and you say apart from
God, I was on a path of destruction for my life and
everyone else, you will mourn. Psalm 38 says, for I am ready to
fall and my sorrow is continually before me.
I will declare my iniquity. I will be in anguish over my
sin. I want all of you who came as
people who wanted not just to listen to the Bible and, and,
and think about whether or not you wanted to agree with it or,
or, or you're investigating Jesus, but most of you came to
worship. Most of you came today and said,
you know, above all else, we praise you above everything.
If you are part of the family of God, you have gone through the
act of repenting from a life outside of God to submitting to
the will of God in your life. And for many of you, that
included a serious mirror to the life that you were living.
And, and I know some of you can relate to real tears that were
shed when you had to confess to the person you hurt, when you
had to ask for forgiveness from people and before God, Not all
of you and certainly tears can be manipulated, but a, a really
strong sign that someone is really desiring to give their
life to God and follow him in a real way is that repentance is
full of sorrow. And, and the opposite is true.
The, the when, when someone says sorry and they just, you can
sense they're, they don't, they don't actually have any kind of
weight to what they're going through.
It's pretty clear that they're not actually aware of what
they're saying sorry about. Again, I can, I can use
parenting for this example. We've all seen false repentance,
have we not? You know, I, I'm going through
the transition. They say when your, your kids
are young, it's mostly a physical battle and then a
transition to be a mental battle.
So I'm in that transition now. Like when they're young, you're
just carrying car seats and, you know, carrying them and you
know, everything's physical. And then, and then it turns into
a mind game and you're like, Oh my God, this is, this is harder.
And I think of that in the act of repentance when, when my kids
were young, I say, don't do that.
They look at me like, wow, I'm so sorry and I'm ashamed.
I'm crying because I'm so sad and this hurts and then get
older and I'm like, did you lie? And they're like, maybe I'm
like, Oh my goodness, this is now like now we have to do like
actual investigation on whether or not they even believe that
this is wrong. And I'm like, I don't think
you're a psychopath, but I'm going to watch you.
You know, we've got to have a motion to the sorrow of
repentance. And this is what this blessings
getting at, because there's, there's a great blessing in your
life when you actually go from living apart from God to living
for God. That's repentance.
And the Bible's full of what that should look like.
It is not just, well, it was a 5050 split.
I was thinking about doing things my way.
Now I'm going to do things God's way.
And you know, I'll, I'll report back the results.
It, it, it's full of the Bible saying you were dead in sin.
You are. You were destroying your life
and others. And now you're going to be
greeted with the love and the kindness of God and you're going
to see those two paths. One was full of life, one was
full of death. And real repentance sees the
sorrow of the life lived apart from God.
James puts it this way, James chapter 4 verse 8, Draw near to
God and he will draw near to you.
Repentance is a blessing. It's the gospel good news.
That way your sin abounds, grace abounds more.
He says, cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts.
You double minded and here's what that cleansing looks like.
Lament and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to
mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves in the sight
of the Lord and he will lift you up.
The, the, the, the song of salvation is that you can weep
for sin and you can be ecstatic for salvation all in one moment.
And that is the gospel. So genuine tears of repentance.
Here's a couple of things again in our musing.
How is this blessed? You are blessed when you
generally when you genuinely start living for God.
And here's a couple of signs of that.
There's no more excuses. You know that when the tears are
actually flowing and you want to, you wonder, are these real
tears or these just tears? You think you need to cry to
get, you know, my forgiveness. Tears that are genuine are free
from excuse. It's not if it wasn't for this
person and if you hadn't done this and it's man, I see it.
I am so sorry. Free of excuses, genuine tears
rely on God's grace and not your goodness.
Because when there's no more excuses, there's no more pride.
And now you can go from saying, well, I am sorry, but I'm also
pretty good and I didn't do that bad.
Now you can say in this genuine act of repenting and coming to
God, you can say I'm nothing but the grace of God.
I just come for nothing but grace.
And the final genuine sign, real tears, is that you're actually
wanting to change that. Your tears are weeping a life
once lived and now you're excited for the will of God in
your life. So there are blessed tears of
sorrow, blessed tears of repentance, and they should lead
to, as you grow in the Lord and follow him, tears of compassion.
Psalm chapter 119 says rivers of water run down from my eyes
because men do not keep your law.
When we're outside of the will of God, most of everything we
think about has to do with us. And there's something very
powerful that will happen to the life of someone who's born again
in Jesus. They begin to get the heart of
Jesus and they now have the ability to feel not just for
their own life, but for the life of others.
They can actually look out and see a life that is not going
well, that needs help, that is walking towards a path of
destruction. And they can start to be moved
to the point of compassion, even tears for someone who needs the
power of God in their life. We see this in the example of
one of the prophets of the Old Testament, Jeremiah.
He's actually called the weeping prophet.
He cried for the people of Israel.
And his, his whole movement of compassion was because God gave
him a message to give to the people of Israel to say, if you
don't turn from these idols and, and from your hardness of heart
to God and pretending everything's fine when you're
actually not living for God, then you're going to be
destroyed. And he wept not because he was
worried that they didn't like the sermon.
He was weeping because they weren't listening and they were
walking towards destruction, captivity, a life apart from
God. It says in Jeremiah 90 that my
head were waters and my eyes fountain of tears, that I might
weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people.
They're going to die apart from God.
His weeping was compassion for others.
And of course, as we consider the way of Jesus all summer
long, this is the way of Jesus. We see Jesus weep in mourning
for the mourning of others. And we see Jesus as he
approaches the cross to lay down his life for the salvation of
others. He approaches with tears.
Luke chapter 19. Now as he drew near, this is the
final week of his life. The mission, the hour is at
hand. He saw a city and he wept over
it, saying, if you had known even you, especially in this
day, the things that make for your peace, but now they are
hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you
when your enemies will build up embankment around you, surround
you and close you in on every side, and level you and your
children within you to the ground.
And they will not leave in you one stone upon another because
you did not know the time of your visitation.
Jesus has come to be Messiah, Savior from their sin.
They reject him. And it's only a matter of time
before the Roman forces are going to ransack Jerusalem and
he weeps for them. And I have to say this is this
is what genuine and true outreach must look like.
What you call it evangelism or apologetics or or or soul
winning or missions, it has to be moved with compassion.
If you don't look out and see a lost and dying generation
walking towards the destruction of their life and are moved with
compassion, then then you're really not going to be blessed
in seeing the revival that all of us wait for.
And I, and I just think of this in my own life, I'm like, as a
preacher and pastor, I can, I can harden my heart.
I mean, it's not unclear that our country and culture and city
are all in need of a radical revival for a heart after God.
We live in a country that's hardened its heart that is
calling evil good and good evil. And the the temptation and the
folly is to look at them and say, what a bunch of fools.
What a bunch of stupid idiots that are shaking their fist at
God, denying his existence and sinning like this.
And in our hardness of heart, the temptation is to say, let it
not be for us. Let us, you know, guard the
walls of our church and make sure that none of their sin
creeps into our theology. And we just need to look at them
and, and just get our kids out of there.
And and I'm and there's wisdom in in all of that.
But what we can't do is look at sinners that are so in need of a
savior and judge them with a hard heart.
What we actually have to do is say this city, this country,
this world is broken. It's lost.
Lord, help our heart to break for what breaks yours.
Every lost Sinner stuck in their pride and stuck in their
political divides and stuck in their cultural sin soaked
addiction is an image bearer that God wants to redeem and He
wants His church to not sit back in judgment, but be moved with
compassion. Could you imagine if the church
wept for the culture, the church wept for the city?
I tend to think that we would probably have a brighter light
to shine in the darkness than if we just told everyone how
horrible and evil their sin is. So we speak the truth and love.
But once again, I just appeal to the the appearance among us, not
it's it's easy for me to to say this, that not all of our
children are radical followers of Jesus.
Some of them might be lost in the very culture that I just
gave a picture of. And and what parent among us
right now with a child that is wayward and prodigal and lost in
their sin and and shaking their fists at God and denying
existence? What what parent would sit back
and just judge them as idiots and fools?
Not a good one. The good parents weep.
The good parents cry. The good parents are, are, are
their heart is broken because their heart is in tune with God
for that one person. And again, that just gives us a
picture because we're not just called to be good parents.
We're called to be lights in the world.
We're we're actually called to weep for enemies.
We're called to have compassion for people that we don't even
know, but we see them and we say, Lord, break our heart for
what breaks yours. And if you have tears of
compassion, I assure you, you will be blessed.
The promise is that you are in tune and in line with the very
heart of God. He desires that none would
perish, not one, but that all would come to know the saving
grace of God in their lives. So here are your blessed tears
that you go forth and cry. Blessed tears, tears of sorrow,
you're here. Express your sorrow to God.
May you be comforted by His Holy Spirit and His people.
Tears of repentance. You come and you think I'm just
going to hold this and I don't know if I could go through the
pain of actually mourning my sin.
You will be blessed as you truly repent and weep over your sin
and present them to God that he can lift you up and tears of
compassion that your heart would break for what breaks God, what
break what what breaks God's heart.
Those categories you find yourself moved in your heart in
that way and you will live a blessed life.
That is the decision of faith that you have to make today is
Jesus telling you a way that will actually work.
Blessed are those who cry or weep now, for you will be
blessed. And those are the three
categories for the here and now. But of course, we'll end with
the 4th category of tears. It is uniquely human that we
even get to preach this because there is this strange thing that
happens in real time where God can take a tear that is for for
most part all associated with the heaviness of life, with the
sorrow and the repentance and the movement of compassion for
the brokenness of the world. And most of all, the tears you
will cry will be for these heavy moments.
But there is this preview of the miracle.
Some of you, I hope all of you have experienced that there is a
category called tears of joy. And it is the great preview that
God gives us this reversal of the salty discharge as it comes
out of our face. And we think normally this is
for heaviness, but I'm holding this child in my arm.
And now the joy is causing the tears.
And that is the promise of this blessing.
Blessed are those of you who weep now and see the heaviness
is temporary, he says, because there's coming a day where you
will laugh. You will experience the joy of
eternity. We're about to take communion
in. This actually gives us a great
reason to think about the tears of joy and where Jesus is taking
all of his blessings. All of the temporary now is
getting turned into the eternal promises.
And it is pointing us to a reminder that we see every time
we consider the cross. As Jesus is giving his disciples
a preview of the cross, he says most assuredly, no doubt it's
going to happen. John 16 And most assuredly I say
to you that you will weep and lament.
You're going to experience great sorrow, great sadness, but your
sorrow will be turned into joy. That is the way of Jesus.
When you look at the cross, the disciples see that and they
think what just happened? The Savior, the Messiah, he's
been put to death, and there's much weeping and lamenting and
sorrow for the death of the Lord.
Is there any greater injustice then the Son of God who lived a
perfect life, dying on the cross on behalf of sinners?
May we weep and lament at the thought of the Savior of the
world paying the price for our sin.
And yet three days later there was joy inexpressible when the
story that we celebrate every year and we actually consider
every time we gather, where sin and sadness and sorrow and
lament were left in the grave and conquered by the power of
the resurrection. And that is your Christian
story. Your repentance, your sorrowful
tears will turn into the joy of salvation.
Your your sadness and sorrow and the heaviness of your life will
turn into the joy of God's good plans to work all things
together for good. The the movement of compassion.
Someday you will hear well done, good and faithful servant, you
cared for the lost and now enter into my joy.
Everything will get turned upside down and every time we
talk about sadness now, we have to remember the end of the
story. And I probably don't preach it
enough, but may we all be reminded that no matter what
causes your tears today, tomorrow, or for the rest of
your days, this is how it all ends.
Revelation chapter 21. And God will wipe away every
tear from their eyes. There shall be no more death,
nor sorrow, nor crying. Like a good father to a child.
Once and for all it will be finished, and you will live in
eternal joy. So in the meantime, blessed are
you who weep just for now, because there's coming a day
when you will laugh for eternity.
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