Weeping For Joy 2/18l/2018
Unhindered • Sermon • Submitted
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We have been spending our Sunday Mornings looking at the theme of “Unhindered”
What the church of Christ looks like when it becomes unhindered
From the things of this world
And how the church (spiritual body) of Christ can continue to live unhindered.
Our scripture for the year is found in
And he who had died came out bound hand and foot with graveclothes, and his face was wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Loose him, and let him go.”
What God is calling his people to do is get free from their own stuff so that they can see other people released into what God is calling them to do.
Derruck - speaking in youth and doing a great job
We said that Jesus wants to use the church to be Him in us so that he can touch people through us
He is whatever people need at the time they need it.
Our examples - - The resurrection and the life
- The Way, the truth and the life.
And we spent a few weeks looking at God’s word to see what that means to us today.
Then we looked at how Jesus calls us the salt of the earth.
And how we are called to effect life around us
But how satan has a two fold plan to hinder that in our lives and make the salt uneffective.
The constant changing of our society that threatens to swallow us up and just make us disappear
the world that we live in that seems to be having more of an effect on us than we are on them.
And then last week, we started to look at how we get ourselves free from the hindrances of this spiritual life and how to stay that way.
Jesus taught the people certain spiritual attitudes that they could have that would keep them free from the snares of this world and of the flesh.
I like to call them the BE ATTITUDES - because if we will be this way, we will be a people and a church that is unhindered.
Our first one is found in - Be Poor in Spirit
bankrupt without Jesus
living in a spirit of surrender to God
Not fighting for ourselves and our rights, but pleading for the mercy of the Creator of the universe.
We said that if we are to be unhindered, then we must die to ourselves
We must know where we stand in Christ or actually that we cannot stand without him
We must give it all up to accept the riches that Heaven has for us.
Which leads us to our next Be Attitude
Blessed are those who mourn,
For they shall be comforted.
Happy are Those Who Weep
Happy are Those Who Weep
That’s what Jesus is saying here. But how does that work.
Think about who you like to hang around with in life.
Isn’t it those who are joyful
Isn’t it those who are cheerful
In fact, we try to stay away from those who are whiners, don’t we?
But again we miss what Jesus is saying. This is spiritual.
He is not talking about those who mourn for the physical, we all have those times.
He is talking about those who mourn in a spiritual sense.
Just like last week, the poor in spirit become the mourners in the spirit.
We said that the poor are those who are spiritually bankrupt. And yet we saw through three examples how each one became spiritually wealthy - the kingdom of heaven was theirs.
Here in this verse, it is a spiritual sorrowing over our sin and brokenness that brings the reward - they will receive comfort. We love to be comforted don’t we?
Last week, we saw that our poverty leads us to say that outside of God we have nothing.
Today our mourning says that outside of God we can be nothing.
And Jesus says that it’s through these two spiritual attitudes that blessings and comfort flow. - so yes, Happy are those who weep.
Parenting - our children are fearful - our children are picked on - our children experience the negativity of this world
What do we do? Comfort them
We hold them
We speak over them
We embrace them
We love them.
This is what God does for those who mourn spiritually over their lives.
Why Mourn?
Why Mourn?
We mourn because we are sinful beings.
That sin separates us from God
That separation from God separates us from LIFE
and we become dead.
Also He spoke this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other men—extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I possess.’ And the tax collector, standing afar off, would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”
The Pharisee never recognized a need for God in his life.
If we don’t mourn, we don’t need to be comforted.
The tax collector, realized that without God, he could never receive what he needed to feel any good about himself.
Look what he does:
He looks down
He beats his chest
He asks for mercy
I want to tell you today that in this story we see the hindered church and the unhindered church.
We have people who sit in church pews every week.
They pray beautiful prayers
they are ministry leaders - some are pastors and teachers
BUT - they’ve never come to a place where they mourn their sinful state.
They’ve never really sought real forgiveness, because they do not even recognize that they need it.
and so they’ve never really entered into the kingdom of God.
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit,
A broken and a contrite heart—
These, O God, You will not despise.
These are the unhindered Church - the ones who cry out to God - I am a sinner.
Mourning is Continual
Mourning is Continual
It never stops.
It applies to so much more than just the conviction of sin that we felt that day that we gave our lives to Christ.
That’s part of it, but we cannot like most Christians do, stop there.
It’s continuous - none of us ever arrive in this flesh.
O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?
Here we have the plague of man’s heart. - we are wretched, we are dying, we are marked by sin and rebelliousness
And there isn’t anyone in this place this morning that can say any different.
We may not like to admit it, but as a human being, there is nothing we can do about it - BUT GOD!
Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,
Here we have the struggles of every man’s heart - the crisis’ of faith that arise from situations that we face
The sins that we continue to be ensnared by
The spiritual endurance that we all face. - But God
And we could go on, but I think you get the picture.
Now let me say this here. This is not a mourning of defeat.
This is a mourning of the struggle that we all face. The age old struggle between the spirit and the flesh.
These are tears and weeping brought on by the thought of the promise of heaven.
That to be present in the body is very much being absent from the Lord.
We all struggle to walk in the way of Jesus Christ
We all struggle to follow his Word
We all struggle with the things that come our way
But Praise be to God
Our Mourning is Comforted
Our Mourning is Comforted
This happens with the removal of our guilt through the blood of Jesus Christ.
He forgives us which leads to a great freedom
We have a peace that passes all understanding
WE have the assurance that we are sons and daughter of the living God
We have been accepted
We have been adopted
God’s mercy and grace has been applied to our lives
We are no longer prisoners of pride.
Think about it - in the prison of pride
The addict doesn’t have a problem
people have no reason to talk about thier fears because they have none
WE can’t admit our failures
And this is the hindered church - WE are okay
Our mantra - I’m just as good as the next guy.
But here we see that blessed or happy are those who mourn
Notice it doesn’t say here who justify, who rationalize or who compare
These are the people who are unhindered
These are the people who are set free
This is where the blessing flows - like that parent that seeks to comfort thier child
Peter in the storm
The Applause of Heaven Chapter 5: The Prison of Pride
As long as Jesus is one of many options, he is no option. As long as you can carry your burdens alone, you don’t need a burden bearer. As long as your situation brings you no grief, you will receive no comfort. And as long as you can take him or leave him, you might as well leave him, because he won’t be taken half-heartedly.
But when you mourn, when you get to the point of sorrow for your sins, when you admit that you have no other option but to cast all your cares on him, and when there is truly no other name that you can call, then cast all your cares on him, for he is waiting in the midst of the storm.
Let’s PRAY