Blessed are they that mourn!

Matthew 5:4 “Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.”

When I look at the Beatitudes I see them as being written to the saved and not the lost; just as when I see the entire word of God, I also see it being written to the saved and not the lost. However there are others who see both as being written to the lost and saved, however the issue I have with their theory is; God has one message to the lost and that is to repent and believe on Jesus Christ or else go the eternal hell. Here God has no message to the lost; it is a message to the first church and only to her membership and future Christians. This is what makes the Beatitudes so special to every Christian that reads them. Here the Lord says “Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.” The word mourned means - The feeling or the act of grieving – therefore it requires us to believe it is speaking about an act; with that act of grieving being over sin. This is the way I see it; if a person has been saved then sin is the last thing they want to do; however it is something we all do. With this thought in mind we must gather from this verse that the Christian, while grieving over the sin in their life must understand that comfort will come and that comfort is that the blood of Jesus Christ will forgive all our sins and not just the past or present. And beloved this delivers to us all a great comfort. However our greatest mourning of all is living a life from a daily presence of being with our Saviour Jesus Christ. Mourning for the Christian could come in many areas, it could come in death, it could come falling away from the church, or falling into apostasy, but this is the very bottom-line fact; there is comfort in our time of mourning and that comfort is only found in Jesus Christ. Isaiah 30:18 - 19 "And therefore will the LORD wait, that he may be gracious unto you, and therefore will he be exalted, that he may have mercy upon you: for the LORD is a God of judgment: blessed are all they that wait for him. (19.) For the people shall dwell in Zion at Jerusalem: thou shalt weep no more: he will be very gracious unto thee at the voice of thy cry; when he shall hear it, he will answer thee." Indeed those who trust in Jesus Christ there should be no mourning; but in this flesh dwelleth no good thing Romans 7:18 Therefore we do mourn just as we worry, and as we do so many things in life that shows the weakness of our flesh; however we also know even if we do, comfort is right here with us in Jesus Christ. We learn in Job 14:22 "But his flesh upon him shall have pain, and his soul within him shall mourn." As long as we are in these bodies pain and misery is assured however on day when we shall shed these bodies sin will no longer mourn us. Job knew a thing or two about pain and mourning in this flesh but he also knew about the comfort of the Lord and beloved we too should have that same comfort. We truly see a great example of this in Micah chapter 7 where the prophet speaks about the great effect of sin "The good man is perished out of the earth: and there is none upright among men: they all lie in wait for blood; they hunt every man his brother with a net." Micah 7:2 and then the comforting of the Lord “He will turn again, he will have compassion upon us; he will subdue our iniquities; and thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea.” Micah 7:19. Beloved our comfort will be the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, when we shall sin no more, when no more tears will dim the eyes, yes beloved there is comfort in our time of mourning but we must look in the right place and He resides in your heart if you are saved.

Blessed are the poor.

Matthew 5:3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

My apologies to all because I promised a couple of weeks back to write about the Beatitudes but I had gotten sidetracked on couple of other issues. The Beatitudes was the first sermon preached in a church after Jesus Christ had called her out and assembled her together for the first church meeting. Here He begins to preach a sermon that is universally accepted as “The Beatitudes”. The first one is “Blessed are the poor in spirit…” not blessed are the poor but rather poor in spirit which is everyone who has just been saved; since their recent conversion they have not learned much and that makes them poor in spirit or weak in spirit. Some folks want to believe that being monetarily poor that God has a special blessing for them and they will live eternally wealthy because they suffered enough on this earth, but that could not be farther from the truth. God hath concluded that He has no respect of persons Romans 2:11 which means; God does not love you nor hate you because you are a particular race, creed, nationality, or group of people. In John 3:16 we see that “God so loved the world” not that God loves everyone in the world but that He loves people from all different nationalities of the world. God is never going to bless people here on this earth just because that are poor; if God wanted you to be rich, He would have made you rich! Paul said “I am what I am by the grace of God” 1st Corinthians 15:10. Those that are “poor in spirit” are those who have believe that Jesus Christ is their Saviour; those whom are weak in faith. We must understand that the lost are not weak in spirit they are spiritually dead, therefore it is simple to understand that the Lord is speaking to those Christians who had just been “called out” and saved. However weak in faith they may be they are certainly blessed of all other people on this earth because God has saved their souls from eternal hell fire. Luke mentions these poor in spirit in Luke 4:18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised,” This is actually a quote from Isaiah 61:1 where the word “poor” is rendered “meek” or the poor in spirit. Now looking at the scripture in Luke we see that God had sent him to preach the gospel to the poor in spirit, God had also “anointed” him or elected him to preach the gospel to the meek or poor in spirit, God had also “sent” him, and God had also given him the message to be delivered, and now beloved we understand why we are blessed. This is no “Mickey Mouse” preaching you hear in your average churches pulpit today; this is truly a man who knows our Sovereign God and how He works. If you are saved today it is because God has in totality saved your soul; from the particular soul, to the sermon to be preached, to the one who was to preach it, to the working of your faith in Christ, nothing left for you to do or anything to doubt; this is why the poor in spirit are indeed blessed beyond our imagination. This is why Paul wrote; "And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God. (20.) Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, (21.) Unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen." Ephesians 3:19 - 21

God has made no such promises to America!

Jeremiah 29:11 “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.”

We as Gentile Christians are certainly blessed beyond our imagination of God. However blessed we are we need never forget Gods first love is Israel. God made many promises to His first love and He will certainly deliver on every single promise. We Gentiles are blessed because of Israel’s downfall and for a time God has elected to set His first love aside and use the Gentiles. While we do find many promises in the scriptures to the Gentiles we find nothing like God made to Israel. It is my belief that God created and blessed the United States of America as a blessing to Israel. But America will not be allowed the same downfalls that Israel was; the Lord will simply allow us to fall. Let us never forget whom we are dealing with; He is the most judgmental being in all of creation. He will not sit by while America continues to act as a nation of heathen for much longer; we have made our bed and now we must answer to God for our sins. I am not claiming to have some great revelation from God; but am warning God will not continue to bless our sinful ways. “For the nation and kingdom that will not serve thee shall perish; yea, those nations shall be utterly wasted.” Isaiah 60:12 I must ask have we not seen America made into a waste land in the last 20 or so years? If I remember right the greatest down fall began in the sixties and have continued thru today and has only gotten worse and worse. The dope smoking hippies of that era are now running our nation and have turned it into a waste land. Abortion is still murder to God; He has not changed! Homosexuality is still an abomination to God; He has not changed! It is still wrong not to pray in the name of Jesus Christ; it is wrong to have worship services in the fashion that most are conducted and call it a worship of God! It is still wrong to be ashamed of God or Jesus Christ in public. And it is wrong to forget the One who blessed you from the start; and to say He had nothing to do with it. Yes; yes indeed it is all still wrong! God has not changed and He never will and this is why America is in her final years. God has made promises to His beloved Israel; not because she is any better but because this is the way He has elected it to be. God made Israel many promises that we Gentiles often use as our own but they do not belong to us; therefore we will not see them extended to us. We will fall more and more until one day we are a nothing. We just saw our nations credit rating fall to AA+ and our government and nation treat it as though it was a political move; but not everything is political something’s are punishment from God. I see no mention of America in the scriptures and no promises from God that even though we turn into a - greedy, selfish, God hating, and allowing anything nation - that He will continue to bless us. For more than 200 years we have been blessed as the greatest nation on earth out side of Israel; and we have ignorantly lost that status. Israel has not wakened from their blinded state but they will because God has promised to redeem them and use them once again, but not America. Greed has taken our hearts from God; we no longer need God today because we are smart and strong; but in reality we are ignorant and weak. People vote for politicians out of ignorance and those politicians to keep their jobs have voted to allow the mess we have today. America has been destroyed by greedy and selfish people and she will not return. People today do not care about the good of America they only care about what government can do for them. When a nation is in 14 trillion dollars in debt and on her way to 16 trillion and even beyond; but no one cares as long as the government doesn’t remove their government handout; then we are without a doubt a doomed nation. 1 Timothy 6:10 “For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.” - Proverbs 1:19 “So are the ways of every one that is greedy of gain; which taketh away the life of the owners thereof.”

What Wonderful Words To Hear!

“And he said to the woman, Thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace.” Luke 7:50

The most wonderful words a lost soul can hear are “Thy faith hath saved thee”. Most wonderful because it cancels any thoughts of works for salvation. Now please understand I am not against works; I am against works for salvation! Now one may ask “why are you against works for salvation?” Well I am glad you asked that question; we cannot live good enough or have sufficient works to enter the kingdom of God. If we fell short before salvation then we will most certainly fall short after salvation. If the blood of Jesus only cleanses our sins before faith has come then what about after faith has come. If one single sin will condemn us to eternal hell before faith then won’t one single sin condemn us to eternal hell after salvation? God said through James; “For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all.” James 2:10 It is not just big sins that condemns us but any single sin; just the smallest of though can condemn us because our thought are also sin. “But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.” Matthew 5:28. So if sin includes the thoughts of our hearts then sin is inescapable. To believe that works is a part of salvation means we will all surly go to eternal hell. Salvation that includes works also means we cannot live a life of peace after faith has come; Jesus told this woman of many sins “…go in peace.” How could she go in peace if she had to live a sinless life? Having to examine every thought before she even thought it; or is that even possible? I could find no peace in that!

The Lord Jesus Christ; the Saviour of mankind told this woman that her faith had saved her even though she had many sins. “Wherefore I say unto thee, Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much: but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little.” Luke 7:47 and she had many sins after faith had come. I have had many sins after faith came to me. But she and I were both glad to hear that the blood of Jesus was sufficient to cleanse all our sins and not just our past sins. “In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace;” Ephesians 1:7. Now I can live in peace on this earth knowing that even though I may sin many times over, my sins have all been forgiven by the blood of Jesus Christ.

The Lord Jesus also told this very sinful woman “And he said unto her, Thy sins are forgiven.” Luke 7:48 He did not specify her past sins He said “Thy sins are forgiven.” As in all her sins; then she was told to live in peace because knowing that all her sins were forgiven she could, what a wonderful, blessed way to live in a sinful world. If you want your sins forgiven come to Jesus; bathe in His blood and you too can live sin free the rest of your days. You can live a life of peace in this evil world. “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ:” Romans 5:1

We will continue the Beatitudes next week. This passage truly made a great impression on my heart this week.