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Some of you here likely have not been to West Virginia, and if you're like my wife, when we've got called out to West Virginia, you're saying to yourself, Can anything good come out of West Virginia? Well, I hope to answer that tonight for you. I am Sean Wegener.

You're welcome to call me Dr. Wegener if you like. You can call me Sean if you're a Christian. You can call me Brother Sean. Whatever you call me, make sure you call me to dinner, okay? All right. I'm glad to be back with you. As Tom had said, we've been here before.

I've preached with you, but this was quite a few years ago, and most of our time spent with you was at the other campus down in downtown Bryan. He and I have been able to keep a relationship going. In fact, it was wonderful to hear you talk about the vows this morning because they were, for us, our premarital counselors.

And all the vows that we said were the ones that he covered. Love me. That was the whole point. But of course, it was wonderful to have their counsel. We got to meet up in San Antonio this year. We were both at the Evangelical Theological Society. And we talked there, and he had said, Well, if you ever are back here visiting your family, give me a call and let me know.

So when I found out I was coming, I was going to text him, and then I thought, well, that's not going to work. So I emailed him. And then I asked my wife to text Nancy because that's The best way to get things done. And so that's something that we learned in our relationship over time together.

Tonight, tonight, I'm actually going to be reading to you from a manuscript that I wrote because the emotions of what we're talking about are far too dear to my heart. In fact, when I teach students and those who are interested in preaching at my church how to preach, I tell them never to do what I'm doing today.

That is to read from a manuscript. But I hope that you'll forgive me on that because there are things that we are covering tonight that I want to share with you, but oftentimes it gets me emotional to a point where I need an anchor, something to look at and to hold to.

So let's open God's word together. I want to read Matthew chapter 5, verse 4, and then we will flip immediately over to Matthew chapter 7, verse 24 through 27. Tonight's message is entitled, The House Still Stands. Just Matthew 5, verse 4. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

Matthew chapter 7, verse 24 through 27. Everyone who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain Fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock.

And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like the foolish man who built his house on the sand, and the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and they beat against that house, and it fell. And great was the fall of it.

Let us pray together. Holy Spirit, we ask tonight your blessing on the word of God, that you would bring to my mind all things that are relevant to this task, but that you would open the hearts of those who are hearing your word, that they would come to listen and obey, and that they would better understand what it means when you said to us, Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

Help us, Spirit, in this matter to glorify the Son, in whose name we pray. Amen. On the 29th of July in 1943, my father died. On that same day, a few hours later, his last child was born. Over a month before this, while all our energies were concentrated in waiting for these events, there had been in Detroit one of the bloodiest race riots of the century.

A few hours after my father's funeral, while he lay in a state of men, In the Undertaker's Chapel, a race riot broke out in Harlem. On the morning of the 3rd of August, we drove my father to the graveyard through a wilderness of smashed plate glass. The day of my father's funeral had also been my 19th birthday.

As we drove him to the graveyard, the spoils of injustice, anarchy, discontent, and hatred were all around us. It seemed to me that God Himself had devised to mark my father's end the most sustained and brutally dissonant of codas. And it seemed to me, too, that the violence which rose all about us as my father left the world had been devised as a corrective for the pride of his eldest son.

I had inclined to be contemptuous of my father for the conditions of his life, for the conditions of our lives. When his life had ended, I began to wonder about that life and also in a new way to be apprehensive of my own. These are the words of James Baldwin that he wrote in an essay titled Notes of a Native Son.

The funeral of his father, who was a pastor, brought to his mind a flood of issues. Baldwin juxtaposes the potentiality of the Christian faith, its forgiveness, the hope of the resurrection, with the reality of sin and racism and death. tenuously floats between mourning with hope and hatred for reality.

But Baldwin is not alone tonight in calling us to look at the strong currents ahead. Jesus himself will not let us escape the white water rapids of mourning, for we cannot avoid it any more than a tour of Niagara Falls can avoid the mist. And in our tour of life, we must sail over the edge and into the abyss of sorrows, only to see that the captain in our ship assures us we need not be smashed on the rock bed below.

Standing at the helm of human life, God incarnate speaks to us, Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. How do you react to that apparently absurd statement? And it feels absurd, doesn't it? The atheist isn't shy in pointing out how absolutely absurd that is. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

If God is all-powerful, if God is all-good, the atheist argues, why is there any suffering, any sorrow, and death? In fact, recently on YouTube, you can pull up an atheist who is arguing that this is one of Jesus' most absurd. Statements. Wouldn't it have been more good for God to obliterate mourning than to bless us through it?

What a difficult question. In fact, that's one that we ought to ask. What happened? Either he isn't all good or he isn't all-present, or perhaps he is all good and all-present, but he's so aloof that he doesn't understand human suffering. Why not eliminate it? Oh, but the atheist is really asking what happened to the world if there is a good God.

The Christian knows what happened to the world. We don't ask what happened, but instead we are taught to cry in the book of Revelation, How long, O Lord? It was sin that entered into the world that brought death as a penalty. It is sin that is always spoken of as a penal discipline for the rebellion of man.

We have rebelled against the God of life and thereby sorrow entered into the world. And so we ask, How long, O Lord, until you make it right? How long before the comfort shall come? How long before you actually wash away all that's broken? You know, the Sermon on the Mount doesn't sail you away from hard questions.

Did you hear the words of Christ? Blessed are those who mourn. The mourning is present and it's active. It's a participle. It's more literally translated, the mourning ones. Those who are mourning. The mourning ones shall be comforted. But the comfort isn't at present, even as it is guaranteed.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. This means that you're not going to experience a life which is calm and peaceful. In fact, amidst the sunshine of your life and my life, everyone who is here, we are just one cloud away from annihilation, aren't we?

The older I get, the more I realize each time the phone rings, every tidbit of news and every moment that I live my life, I seem to be just one second away from life-altering loss. You get a text message from your younger sister. It says, dad's in the hospital.

And your heart stops. But that's reality, isn't it? That is the reality of a fallen and broken world in which we live. It is the true heart-wrenching loss, and God has said that he is not going to stop it until the return of Christ. So, if we want to understand what Jesus is saying, we need to understand what he means by the mourning ones.

What does mourning mean? We need to properly address it. What is mourning? There are, of course, all kinds of mourning. You can experience mourning when you move from one place to another. My children did that when we moved from Georgia to West Virginia. They mourn the loss of their friends.

We mourn the loss of our local churches. We go to follow God and do a new experience. In fact, you can experience mourning just from changing your job. And many of us experience mourning when we look at a family photo of Christmas past. Mourning is the feeling of loss, the loss of something close to us and dear to us.

And the greater the bond, the greater the mourning. And grief is the inward expression of that mourning. So grief takes all sorts of different forms. Tonight, I want to limit our discussion on mourning to the greatest form of it. What does it mean to mourn the loss of a loved one?

For those of you who are experiencing other forms of mourning in your life, whether it's the loss of a pet or a job or just the feeling of loss in general, I want you to know that your loss is worth discussing. The book of Isaiah says that a bruised reed he will not break, so your abrasion.

Is something God cares for tenderly. But I want to limit our discussion. And I pray in the Holy Spirit that He would apply the Word of God to you as we speak directly of what it means to lose the beloved one. Biblical mourning. That's what we're talking about.

Not the world's way of mourning, but what Christ is referring to in Matthew 5, verse 4. Biblical mourning is a solemn and appointed time to express the dearness of the departed soul. The Bible does not avoid it the way American culture does. The Bible prescribes to you a month of mourning, which you can see reflected in Deuteronomy 34, verse 8.

During a month, you are to lament loudly, weep bitterly, forego work, wear clothes appropriate to a loss. But it seems like our own society no longer recognizes mourning as appropriate. And you can see it in policy manuals with work, can you not? All people always say to you, even at work, take as much time as you need.

But what do they mean? They mean, I hope you get back to work with the same work ethic and the same chipper smile that we're paying you for. Well, is that biblical mourning? There are two forms, I think, of unbiblical mourning. Mourning which is not which Christ Speaking about that is worth bringing up and discussing tonight.

And that's when we define mourning as amputation or as gangrene. Amputation is quick. When we define mourning as amputate, what we mean is that when we've lost a loved one, we want to make swift decisions. We want to cut out all reminders that a life was lived. We change the room, we donate the clothes, we take down the pictures.

The problem with mourning as amputation is that you might sever the limb before the proper time. Amputation is meant to be done on unhealthy and dead limbs. But Christ is not speaking of mourning as unhealthy, as something you need to get over quickly, as a dead practice. Instead, he is speaking of blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

To disconnect yourself from the reality that you lost someone close to you is harmful. We mourn because the truth tells us this: that all men and women are created in the image of God and thereby endowed by their Creator with worth. Death is meant to be an invader.

We mourn every loss of human life from embryo to hospice because death cannot change the fact that we are created in the image of God. Death is a curse. Death is a penal discipline. But death cannot change the value of humankind because we were created in the image of God and God does not change.

Therefore, we mourn, but we don't amputate. Another form of unbiblical mourning is mourning as if it were gangrene. You know, the danger of gangrene is that it's a poison which seeps into our blood and pumps through our entire system. Slowly and almost imperceptibly, we allow our mourning to poison us.

We turn our living into dying. The once hollowed anniversaries of our life now feel like pestilence to our heart. It numbs our limbs. It makes us feel catatonic and we're trapped by the unforgiving march of time. That's gangrenous mourning. Gangrenous mourning makes empty rooms into altars of idolatry, trinkets and mementos into sacred relics, and it turns homes into museums and we into the curators.

Of past joy. That is not the abundant life Christ is talking about when he tells us to come to him. Likewise, there's a form of poisonous mourning which clings to substances in order to cope with loss. There's many a Christian who's picked up the bottle only to compound the woe.

While there isn't one way to grieve, alcohol, drugs, work, anything which you will prescribe to yourself to distract you from loss is poisonous mourning. Mourning is active, it is the mourning ones. When you deny the activity of mourning by distractions, mourning becomes poisonous. It cannot be blessed because ultimately it declares that substances are a good substitute for the Savior.

But biblical mourning is what we've come to discuss. Not what it isn't, what it is. Biblical mourning doesn't mean to amputate or to fester. Rather, the Christian takes a different route, the path of the resurrection. The resurrection, the comfort that shall come is God's plan for restoration. Taking comfort in the resurrection allows our mourning.

To be purposeful, it leads us back to where comfort belongs. Belief in the resurrection means you don't have to amputate, you don't have to just move on. And I've heard this poor advice from Christians, have you not? That when someone has experienced loss, even loss of a young child, they say, don't weep, don't cry, don't mourn.

Your loved one is with Jesus. Unfortunately, that is poor advice because we're supposed to mourn, even if our loved one is with Christ. We are told, Blessed are the mourning ones. Our hope does not include putting the fun back in funeral. Our hope doesn't have to make light of the enemy of God.

And death is an enemy of God. You see, God the Father didn't just get over the death of the Son. The Father didn't amputate the Son when he died on the cross. You will not read a single psalm of lamentation that gives you the advice, just get over it.

And you won't hear that from Christ either. Instead, you will read, God is near to the broken-hearted, Psalm 34:18. A psalm which we apply, yes, to sin, but also to just having a broken heart by the sin which is in. The world. You know, we're not told that Jesus went up to Mary and Martha when he saw them weeping and said, Quit your belly waking, woman.

I am the resurrection and the life. Get over it. Instead, we read actually much more simply, don't we? Jesus wept. And when you read that passage, you realize he's not weeping over the fact that his friend died, but that he saw the brokenness on those who knew the passing of Lazarus.

Jesus wept. There is a world of difference between telling someone to move on and sharing Christ. In fact, it's the book of Revelation where Jesus comforts us by saying, I am coming soon. There is a large difference, loved ones, between telling someone to move on and Christ telling them to hold on.

I am coming soon. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. The comfort is in the future, isn't it? And the resurrection does not mean that you have to call death good. We don't need to do that. In fact, the pronoun they refers to. People who are actively mourning.

The resurrection does not mean you have to continue to say death was a good thing. You may, in fact, say, well, they're resting in peace, but even that phrase, resting in peace, refers to the resurrection that is to come. It is comforting, it isn't sentimental, it's literal. They are resting in peace if they knew Christ as their Savior and Lord.

But we mourn the fact that we have lost them. In fact, last time Danielle and I were attending Emmanuel Baptist Church, Pastor Tom was in a series which he called the theology of death. I don't know how many of you who are here who remember that series, but I took notes on it and wrote down.

In fact, Pastor Tom was right because he opened us up to Corinthians and reassured us that death is the enemy of God. It is the last enemy to be put under his feet. You see, Jesus removed the sting of death. He didn't turn a hornet into a butterfly.

We mourn, and the resurrection doesn't change that. So what difference does it make in our lives? I think the Apostle Paul answers that question. Do not mourn as the world mourns, as those without hope. The resurrection. gives us hope in the assurance of the comfort which is to come.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. We treat death not as a friend, but we consider it almost like winter. We look out at a world crystallized by the chill of death, and we begin to realize that there is life which the winter cannot freeze.

Deep roots are not reached by the frost. For when the sun shines upon a dormant life, we call that spring. And new life comes from what seems to be dead. And what appears to us all over the world is that we've laid our loved ones to rest, but the ultimate truth is this, that Jesus Christ has risen from the dead, and he is the first fruits of the resurrection.

And that's an agricultural term like the spring, isn't it? The first fruits. In other words, it's the first taste of what is to come and you are to hold on to it. Do you remember what it's like to taste a first fruit? I think in our modern time, I'm starting to forget what it was like to live without a harvest.

You can go at any point in time to a store and get blueberries whenever you want. But I remember, and perhaps there are those here who remember going to pick the first Texas blueberries of June. When you haven't had that fruit and you taste the first fruit. Harvest, it is sweet.

Jesus's resurrection is the comfort that shall come, but it holds hope to us in that we now know that God is true, even as death is a liar. And how then, how can we continue to mourn and hold on to the truth? We've heard it from Christ. We understand now that mourning can be blessed because we get to bring to him the same cares that he has for us.

He, in fact, wraps all this up in the Sermon on the Mount in His final illustration. And it is the final illustration of the Sermon on the Mount that gives us the key to understanding the blessing of the Beatitudes. Listen closely as we read these words again. Listen very closely because they're intentional and they were given to you by God that you might be comforted.

Listen, everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock and the rain fell and the floods came and the winds blew and they beat on the house, but it did not fall because it had been founded on the rock.

And everyone who hears these words of mine and does them and does not do them will be like the foolish man who built them. His house on the sand, the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and they beat against the house, and it fell, and the falling of it was great.

Did you listen closely? Who's the rock? Immediately, we want to say, Jesus, Jesus is the rock, but he actually told you a different explanation of what the foundation is. He said, Not, I am the rock in this passage, but it says, Those who hear my words and do them are standing on a rock.

Now, let me be clear to you: you cannot hear the word of God and obey it apart from the work of the Holy Spirit bringing you back to life, in which then you put faith in Christ, and now you are able to walk in new life. But there are Christians who are going through a time of mourning who are saying, I do not feel comforted, and they need to go back to what Jesus said and say, What does it mean to look intently into the Word of God and to do it?

That's what we are called to do in this sermon. That is what he's asking. Those who hear my words and do them are on a sure foundation. It's the same warning from James chapter 1, is it not? He who looks into the word of God and forgets what he does is like a man who looks at his.

Face in the mirror and immediately goes away and forgets what he looks like. But the man who looks intently into the Word of God, not forgetting what it says, but doing it, he will be blessed in all that he does. It is the man who looks intently into the word, not forgetting what it says, but doing it.

Do not be like the man who looks at his face in a mirror and forgets. You who know Christ need to go back to the word in every high and stormy gale because your anchor will hold within the veil. On Christ, the solid rock I stand. Listen to him.

It's not just I came to faith in Jesus and now I can go through life. Listen to him. Obey him. Go back to the word. It is obedience to the word of God. Now, obedience to the word of God, according to Christ, did not stop the storm. Listen, it changed the result of the flood.

The hope of our restoration, being reunited with our loved ones in Christ, is assured to us. The resurrection promises this. However, grief in this life requires that we go back to the word and do what it says, going back to the word. And you'll say to me, Pastor, I always seem to be going to.

Broken. I always seem to be going back hurt. I'm always going back sobbing. So be it. Go back to the word because that is the sure foundation. Everyone has a storm coming, but not everyone falls. Every storm of life requires you to go back and requires its own obedience.

There are psalms, treasures in the Bible that will not unlock unless you have obtained the key of sorrow. There are lamentations in the Bible you will not understand until you have seen your fellow man broken and you weep with Jeremiah on the shores for a city that is destroyed by its sin.

You will have to go back. There is a new treasure open when you go back to the Word. There is comfort to be found that you've never found before. Applying the Word and doing it. Now, the exact same storm falls on both the houses, does it not? The word of Christ that Christ uses for rain falling is not a very typical word in the New Testament.

And the rain fell. That word is a flavorful word in Greek. It's used by the ancient Greeks primarily to discuss what it means to have a powerful rushing river, like the Euphrates or the Nile or the Mississippi. We translate it fall, but it really means the rush of a great water on something.

We might say, well, it's raining cats and dogs, and mean what Jesus meant, but even that's playful, isn't it? We might sing, hallelujah, it's raining men. That would not be what Jesus meant. What did he mean? The falling of this rain is like a monsoon. It is a torrent.

It is a flood. It is the flash-flooded rivers whose broken banks now crash upon the houses and sweeping away lives. And this fall happens whether or not you go back to the word. That fall happens to everyone. As the Rio Grande forms the southern borders of Texas, so sorrow rings the gates of heaven.

It is appointed to man once to die. Everyone and all time, it is appointed that your family will go through sorrow. But that's not how the verse finishes. This fall is upon both houses, and the falling is the same. It has the potential to wipe out both houses.

But there is a second falling in this illustration. It's not the same falling because it happens differently on both houses. Indeed, concerning the falling of the second house, Jesus uses a similar but a very different word from his first word. In fact, English does a poor job of showing us that these are two different words.

The first word related to water rushing upon someone, but the second is related to labor. In fact, we still use the second word today when women go into labor. Ladies, have you ever heard of Pitocin? Pitocin is the synthetic hormone which causes women to go into labor. That word is related to what Jesus said happens to this house.

The second house is under the same falling as the first, a great water falling upon it, but the second house contracts and it implodes, and the falling of it is great. It falls into a great labor and gives birth to annihilation. Whether or not you are a Christian, the storm of grief is coming.

But mourning always carries with it a possibility of annihilation. Have you gone back to Christ to listen to him and to obey him? Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be. Shall be comforted is said to those who listen to the last words. Everyone who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house upon the rock.

You don't go back to substances, you don't go back to escapism, and you don't go back to bitter hatred for the way things are. You go back to Christ. This is why Jesus can say, Blessed are those who mourn, for he is near the brokenhearted. And the Father sent the Son to die for the sins of the world, so that his very own enemies would hear, I have sent my only begotten Son.

He provides the hope. Now, I don't want you to confuse obedience with performance. We talked about that today. It's important that you keep Galatians in mind. Performance is a theatrical term. It means that while you were on public display, you did the absolute best you could. It implies that you could have grieved or mourned better.

Performance receives grades. This is obedience. It's not performance. Obedience is honesty. I hear your word. I trust your word. I may not be able to do it, you are Christ and my Lord, and I follow you. Christ says, Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

Do you believe it? And you say, I just stumbled to him. Well, I'm thankful then that he didn't say, Come to me, you who are capable of running. He said, Weary, heavy-laden. It brings to our mind a marathon runner who perhaps is bruised and battered and limping, but so be it, he came back to Christ.

You shall be comforted if your mourning comes to him. And in him and through him, there is a blessing to our morning, a blessing known only to those who come. And while our house is under the same flood warning as all the other houses, the house still stands.

Danielle, the boys and I, we experienced grief some months ago. We have gone through a miscarriage this past year, just prior to the most recent pregnancy. We are honest when we say it was a dry time, but not a drought. We were in grief. But not despair. We were unable to sleep, but still at rest.

We murmured, we wailed, we wept, and we fought, but we were not lacking in charity. It was honest then when a Christian can say to someone who says, How are you doing? You can be honest and say, I am not okay, but I am blessed. It is honest then when you say, I am in great lamentation, and that's my only song of worship.

For me, the form of mourning took on the form of naming our unknown child. We didn't know whether it would be a boy or a girl, so we decided to pick a biblical name that in English could be both. We named the child Jesse Hill, taking from Isaiah 11:1 there shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.

That was how this father mourned. And I went to the piano, and I took my emotions and how I was feeling to God and penned out a hymn, the words of which are: There are sorrows of this world which make heaven all the sweeter. A morning which shall be blessed.

For this we did not ask, we did not want, but still received. And in God's unchanging trust, we believe He still redeems. Morning, taken to Him, shall find comfort. The waves came up. The house was shaken, but the foundation did not move. I am still rearranging my home from the destruction left by the storm, and it's taking us time, but the house still stands.

The house still stands. Yes, sometimes that's all you can say. And in fact, there's times when you can't even say it because the morning has choked the words from your mouth. But Christian grief never can suffocate the comfort that comes from the resurrection. The house still stands. Broken dreams as broken glass litter the hallways.

The house still stands. Water stains from red eyes spot the ceiling and the walls and the floor, but the house still stands. I'm still surprised when I find hidden rocks, those beasts. In my house, which once held such strength, but now cannot uphold it. Those times when I, as a father, lash out at my children or am angry irrationally because I am still in mourning, but the house still stands.

Can you say the same? Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Anyone who hears his words and does them is like a man who stands upon the rock. Go back to Christ. And don't alienate yourself from the congregation. It's such a temptation to do so.

But the fellowship of your church was given to you for moments like this. We are to embrace one another. We are to be brothers and sisters in Christ. We can walk through this life together. The storm is coming for every house, so you need fellowship. Let your church make dinners.

Let them sweep up the glass that you are feeling and allow you a time to process. But beyond all that, beyond the church, beyond fellowship, there is an everlasting word of Christ. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Go back to him, and you'll discover a new meaning to his name, Man of Sorrows.

That's the name of our captain. That's the name that is given to him in the Bible. It is a title for him, Man of Sorrows. Bearing shame and scoffing rude, in my place, condemned, he stood. Did you sing it? Ah, but did you believe it? It's one thing to sing, Hallelujah, what a Savior.

It's another to go back to Him and say, I believe I shall be comforted. Will you? Will your house still stand? Let us pray together. Most High and Heavenly Father, we come before you and we ask for your help because we are not performing well. But we never have.

We came by grace through faith alone, and our sanctification will take place by grace through faith alone. Help us to come back to your Son. Help us to hear him and to obey his word. And in our time of mourning, which is not a matter of time, Appointed to all.

May we be comforted by the first fruits of the resurrection in that blessed name of Jesus Christ, in whom we pray. Amen. Let me give you the benediction from my church as we come to a close. We close every service with this benediction. We have gathered in the name of the Father.

Now let us grow into the image of the Son as we go in the power of the Holy Spirit. Thank you.