Part 2 of BLESSEDR: A Study in the Beatitudes
September 27, 2026
Glynwood Baptist Church, Prattville, AL
James Jackson, Pastor
[Title Slide]
Good morning. Please open your Bibles to Matthew 5. That’s going to be our “home base” passage—the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes—but we are going to be looking at several passages this morning that circle around the ideas of mourning, grieving, and comfort. So just keep your Bible open!
We are in the second week of our study of Jesus’ Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount. These are the eight statements Jesus began with “Blessed are…” And as we talked about last week, the state of being blessed is not a feeling. Someone who is poor in spirit, or mourning, or persecuted may not “feel” blessed. Instead, it is a pronouncement. You can BE blessed whether or not you FEEL blessed.
And there’s probably no other Beatitude that captures that tension more than the one we are going to talk about this morning:
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”
Earlier this week, a young member of our church named Sam came to my office to talk to me. Sam is twelve years old. And a couple of years ago, Sam’s grandfather died.
Sam’s questions are the questions we all ask when we are grieving: Is my sadness normal? Should I still be feeling this bad? And what do I do with these feelings?
Now, if I had looked at Sam and said, “Sam! How fortunate you are! Why, this very Sunday, I’m preaching on the Beatitudes, and Jesus said those who mourn are blessed! So how happy you should be right now that you are missing your grandfather!”
Now, Sam is one of the most polite and respectful young men you would ever want to meet. But if I had said that to him, I think he might have lost it.
I know I would.
Because right now, Sam just misses his grandfather.
And simply telling him that Jesus says those who mourn are blessed doesn’t resolve the tension Sam is feeling.
And really, the only thing that makes Sam different from anyone else in this room who is dealing with grief and loss is that Sam was honest enough to recognize the disconnect.
Jesus says, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”
But Sam is asking the question a lot of us have asked:
“If Jesus promises comfort, why does it still hurt?”
We are going to read this Scripture passage together. By the way, the stickers came in. So if you are ready for the Beatitude challenge, all you have to do is come up to me or any of the other ministers, quote the Beatitudes (in order), and you will get one of these BLESSEDR stickers.
Let’s read together. And when we get to the Beatitudes, let’s read aloud.
[READ MATTHEW 5:1-12. Each of the beatitudes is on a separate slide]
Let’s pray together
Now, before we try to answer Sam’s question, there’s another question we need to ask.
When Jesus says, “Blessed are those who mourn,” what kind of mourning is He talking about?
Because there are all kinds of reasons people are sad.
We’re sad when someone we love dies. We’re sad when a relationship ends. We’re sad when we get redeployment orders and have to say goodbye to friends.
We’re sad when the doctor gives us news we didn’t want to hear.
We’re sad about things we’ve done. Things that have been done to us. Things we’ve lost. Things we never had.
Sometimes we’re sad because we didn’t get something we wanted.
So Jesus isn’t saying that sorrow itself makes you blessed.
In fact, the Bible distinguishes between different kinds of sorrow. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 7:10:
“For godly sorrow produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly sorrow produces death.”
There is godly sorrow (or grief), and there is worldly grief.
And certainly one of the things Christians ought to grieve is our own sin.
When I see myself honestly before God—when I stop making excuses, stop comparing myself to somebody else, stop calling my sin a “mistake” or a “bad choice” and start calling it what God calls it—that ought to produce grief.
Godly grief produces repentance..
But our own sin isn’t the only thing Christians mourn.
Because sin didn’t stay contained inside the human heart.
Sin broke the world.
And we live in that broken world every day.
Which brings us back to the question Sam was asking.
Is my sadness normal?
Should I still hurt this much?
What am I supposed to do with these feelings?
Hundreds of years before Jesus said, “Blessed are those who mourn,” Solomon wrote something that sounds almost as upside-down.
Listen to Ecclesiastes 7:
“It is better to go to the house of mourning; than to go to the house of feasting; for this is the end of all mankind; and the living will lay it to heart.”
And then:
“Sorrow is better than laughter; for by sadness of face the heart is made glad. The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning,
 but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.”
Sorrow is better than laughter?
Really? How can that possibly be true? Is it because God wants us to be miserable? Is sadness is somehow more spiritual than happiness?
Solomon tells us why:
“The living will lay it to heart.”
There are some things we learn in the house of mourning that we will never learn in the house of feasting.
Parties distract us. Funerals make us pay attention.
Food helps us forget. Funerals force us to remember.
The house of mourning makes us confront things a house of feasting helps us avoid.
The house of mourning tells us the truth.
And I think that helps us understand why there can be such a thing as good grief.
1. Grief tells us the truth about how things are.
The first truth us that there are sinful actions we commit. Romans 3:23 says:
“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
This is what we usually think about when we think about sin. When I ask kids in our baptism conversation to tell me what sin is, that’s their answer:
Things I’ve done. Words I’ve said. Thoughts I’ve entertained. People I’ve hurt.
Things I should have done and didn’t.
Nothing wrong with that. In fact, sometimes I wish grown-ups would hold on to that childlike definition of sin a little longer. Because as we get older, we stop calling those things sin. We call them mistakes. We call them bad choices. We make excuses for them because “we both did things we wish we hadn’t.”
Godly grief means I stop making excuses for those things. I call them what God calls them.
Sin.
But the problem goes deeper than sinful actions.
The second truth is that there is a sinful nature we inherit.
In Romans 5, Paul teaches that we all have a sin nature that we inherited from Adam. He says,
“Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned…”
The Bible’s diagnosis of the human condition isn’t simply that basically good people occasionally make bad choices.
Something is wrong inside us. We don’t just commit sins. We are sinners.
There is something broken in the human heart that bends us away from God.
And notice something else in Romans 5:12:
“Sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin.”
Sin didn’t stay contained inside the human heart.
It broke the world.
So the third truth is that there is a broken creation we inhabit.
Listen to Romans 8:20
“For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope… For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.”
Paul says creation groans.
That’s a very human word. When your body hurts, you groan.
Paul looks at the world around him and says it’s as though creation itself is groaning:
Something isn’t right.
People aren’t supposed to get sick. But they do.
Creation isn’t supposed to decay. But it does.
Bodies aren’t supposed to wear out. But they do.
This is not how it was supposed to be.
Every death tells us the truth about the world we live in.
We weren’t created for funeral homes. We weren’t created for cemeteries. We weren’t created for nursing homes and rehab. We weren’t created to stand beside hospital beds and say goodbye.
The Bible calls death an enemy (1 Cor. 15:26)
So grief– Sam’s grief, your grief, all grief—tells us something true:
Something is broken. Things are not how they should be.
And this brings us to the second thing that makes grief good. Grief tells us the truth about how things are, but grief also creates a longing inside us for what will be.
Grief makes us ask the question,
Will it always be this way? Will there always be sickness? Will there always be hospital rooms? Will there always be cemeteries? Will there always be goodbyes?
Or is a day coming when God is finally going to put everything right?
Please turn to John 11.
You probably know the story. Lazarus is sick. His sisters, Mary and Martha, send word to Jesus: “Lord, he whom you love is ill” (John 11:3).
Now, there’s no question about whether this family believes in Jesus. They do. There’s no question about whether Jesus loves this family. He does.
In fact, verse 5 goes out of its way to tell us that:
“Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus” (John 11:5).
And then comes the strangest part of the story:
“So, when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was” (John 11:6).
That’s not the “so” we expect.
Jesus loved them, so He waited.
Put a pin in that.
By the time Jesus arrives in Bethany, Lazarus has been in the tomb four days
Martha hears that Jesus is coming and goes out to meet Him. And the first thing she says is:
“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died” (John 11:21).
Don’t hear unbelief in that sentence.
Martha has faith that Jesus could have made a difference. What she doesn’t understand is why He didn’t.
Some of you have prayed that prayer.
Lord, I know You could have stopped this.
I know You could have healed.
I know You could have changed the circumstances.
So why didn’t You?
But listen to what Martha says next:
“But even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you” (John 11:22).
That’s faith. Martha doesn’t understand what Jesus is doing, but she trusts him.
And Jesus tells her: “Your brother will rise again” (John 11:23).
And Martha answers: “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day” (John 11:24).
Do you hear it? Martha’s grief has her longing for what will be. She believes what the Scriptures have taught her: there is a resurrection coming on the last day. She has grown up trusting that day would someday come.
She just doesn’t realize that day was today!
And Jesus says:
“I am the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25).
Not just, “One day, the dead will rise.”
I AM the resurrection and the life.
He goes on to say,
Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, 26 and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.
Then Jesus asks the question:
Do you believe this?” 27 She said to him, “Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world.”
And you know the rest of the story. Jesus goes to the tomb, calls forth Lazarus from the grave, and Lazarus walks out of that tomb.
But there’s a detail I don’t want you to miss before we get to that point.
Mary, Martha’s sister, also comes to Jesus.
And interestingly, she says exactly what Martha said:
“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died” (John 11:32).
Now, notice:
33 When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled. 34 And he said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” 35 Jesus wept.
Why did Jesus weep? Jesus knows what He is about to do. He knows Lazarus is coming out of that tomb. He knows that within minutes these tears are going to turn into astonishment and joy.
And Jesus still weeps.
I think that tells us something enormously important about grief:
Knowing resurrection is coming doesn’t mean the grave doesn’t hurt. Faith doesn’t mean you don’t cry. Hope doesn’t mean you don’t hurt. Believing in resurrection doesn’t mean you stop missing the person who died.
Jesus wept too.
But before we move on from this passage, I want you to notice something else. Grief wasn’t the only emotion Jesus displayed at Lazarus’ tomb. Verse 33 says he was “deeply moved and greatly troubled.”
Your grief doesn’t mean you don’t have enough faith.
The Greek word translated “deeply moved” is embrimiomai. And it’s a strong, forceful word. The word picture is of somebody snorting with anger.
Of all the English translations that I looked at, the New Living Translation is the only one that captures this. It says that when Jesus saw Mary’s weeping, ‘a deep anger welled up within him.’ The text uses the same word in verse 38. Embrimiomai. Hot indignation. Deep anger.
Jesus isn’t standing at Lazarus’s tomb saying, “Well, death is just part of life.”
No.
Jesus sees what death has done. He sees two sisters devastated. He sees a community grieving. He sees His friend lying in a tomb.
And he knows this is not how it is supposed to be. He knows how sin and death have distorted God’s good creation.
Jesus knew resurrection was minutes away.
And still, He was angry at the disruption of death. He grieved at the pain of loss. And he longed for the day when death would be no more. When that last enemy would be destroyed. He longed for that day John writes about in Revelation 21, when
4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”
Lazarus walking out of that tomb was a glimpse of it.
But only a glimpse. Because Lazarus would die again. Lazarus was a temporary resuscitation, pointing toward the promise of ultimate resurrection, when death itself will die.
And good grief makes us long for that day.
Grief tells the truth about the way things are.
Grief makes us long for the way things will be.
And third, grief is the gateway to God’s comfort.
3. Grief is the gateway to God’s comfort.
Let’s go back to our Beatitude:
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”
Remember what we said last week: the blessing isn’t describing how you feel.
Mourning doesn’t feel blessed.
Standing beside a grave doesn’t feel blessed.
Missing someone you love doesn’t feel blessed.
So where is the blessing?
The blessing isn’t in the mourning. The blessing is in God’s response to the mourner.
“They shall be comforted.”
In John MacArthur’s book on the Beatitudes, The Only Way to Happiness, he points out something interesting about the grammar of these promises.
The Greek verb translated “they shall be comforted” already tells you who will be comforted. The pronoun they—autoi—isn’t necessary to make the sentence work. Jesus includes it for emphasis.
MacArthur takes the force of it this way:
They—and they alone—shall be comforted.
In other words, you can’t experience the comfort of God for grief you refuse to acknowledge.
You can’t be comforted over a loss you won’t allow yourself to grieve.
You can’t experience the comfort of forgiveness while you’re still making excuses for your sin.
You can’t bring God the broken pieces while you’re still pretending nothing is broken.
Mourning is the gateway to comfort.
And that’s why Paul gives God a remarkable name in 2 Corinthians 1.
Listen to this:
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort” (2 Corinthians 1:3).
The God of all comfort.
Verse 4 says God “comforts us in all our affliction” (2 Corinthians 1:4).
Notice what Paul doesn’t say.
He doesn’t say God explains all our affliction.
He doesn’t say God immediately removes all our affliction.
He doesn’t say God prevents all our affliction.
He says:
God comforts us in our affliction.
Sometimes that’s what we want least when we’re hurting. We want answers.
Why did this happen?
Why didn’t You stop it?
Why did You wait?
Mary and Martha asked essentially the same question.
“Lord, if you had been here…”
And Jesus never really gives them an explanation.
He gives them Himself.
“I am the resurrection and the life.”
Maybe that’s part of what Christian comfort means.
God doesn’t always answer the question why.
But He does promise that we will never have to grieve without Him.
And then Paul says something else about comfort that I don’t want us to miss:
God “comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction” (2 Corinthians 1:4).
God’s comfort doesn’t terminate on us.
Comforted people become comforting people.
One of my all time favorite TV shows is The West Wing. One of the characters, Leo, is a recovering alcoholic. And when another character is facing a post-traumatic breakdown, Leo tells him this story:
A man is walking down the street when he falls into a hole. The walls are so steep he can’t get out.
A doctor walks by, and the man calls up, “Hey, Doc, can you help me?” The doctor writes a prescription, throws it down into the hole, and keeps walking.
Then a priest comes by. The man calls out, “Father, I’m stuck down here. Can you help me?” The priest writes out a prayer, throws it down into the hole, and keeps walking.
Then a friend walks by.
The man shouts, “Hey! I’m stuck down here! Can you help me?”
And the friend jumps down into the hole with him.
The first guy looks at him and says, “Are you crazy? Now we’re both stuck down here!”
And his friend says, “Yeah. But I’ve been down here before, and I know the way out.”
That’s 2 Corinthians 1.
God comforts us in our affliction so that we can comfort others in theirs.
Sometimes the person God uses to comfort you is somebody who is willing to climb down into the hole with you and say:
“I’ve been here before. I know how dark it gets. And I know the way out.”
Not because they have all the answers.
Not because their grief looked exactly like yours.
But because God met them in that hole.
And now they can sit beside you in yours.
Maybe that’s why the church is supposed to be such a powerful place of comfort.
Look around this room. There are people here who have buried parents. People who have buried spouses. People who have buried children. People who have heard the word cancer. People whose marriages ended.
People who have watched someone they love slowly disappear into dementia.
People who have lost jobs, dreams, friendships, health.
And God has not comforted all of us in exactly the same way.
But He has comforted us so that we can comfort one another.
That’s part of what it means to be the body of Christ.
When you don’t have enough strength to carry your grief by yourself, somebody else jumps into the hole with you.
And ultimately, every bit of comfort we experience now is a foretaste.
Because Jesus doesn’t say:
“Blessed are those who mourn, because eventually they’ll get over it.”
He says:
“They shall be comforted.”
There is a promise in that future tense.
We experience God’s comfort now.
We comfort one another now.
But there is a comfort still coming that none of us has fully experienced yet.
The same Jesus who stood outside Lazarus’s tomb and wept is the One who promises that one day He will wipe away every tear.
So Christian comfort isn’t pretending the loss wasn’t real.
It isn’t forgetting.
It isn’t “moving on.”
It is knowing that grief does not get the last word.
“Blessed are those who mourn—
for they shall be comforted.”
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