Transcript

Shelby Abbott [00:00:00]: Welcome to The Connecting Podcast with Paul Tripp. My name is Shelby Abbott and our podcast exists to connect the transforming power of Jesus Christ to everyday life right here, right now. We've been going through the first part of The Sermon on the Mount, called The Beatitudes.

Paul Tripp [00:00:18]: Well, I want to say a couple things first. I'm pumped at this new format.

SA [00:00:23]: Yes, me too. I like the quick-hitting 20 minutes, looking at one thing, pulling apart one thing. I think it's helpful.

SA [00:00:30]: Really accessible.

PT [00:00:30]: And I love the topic we're working on. I know that sometimes, just life in this messed-up world is so discouraging. I was at Reading Terminal Market the other day and one of my most important jobs in life is to get my dear wife, Luella's afternoon coffee. I have never ever had one cup of coffee in my life, but I'm a master at ordering coffee because I've learned.

SA [00:01:09]: And I've seen you do it.

PT [00:01:10]: So I walk up to the coffee place and it's in a place where people have to get by, so the line actually starts across that walkway. And so, I just walked up to the counter and the only guy waiting in line that I didn't see screamed at me and said something nasty; and I'm just thinking, "I can't even go to the market without being yelled at by somebody don't even know." And he says something like, "If you want to go in front of me, just go in front of me then, huh?"

SA [00:01:48]: Like you did it on purpose, yes.

PT [00:01:49]: Yes, and so, we're all facing that. We're all facing huge, life-altering things and little nasty inconveniences because we live in this world that's messed up. It's insane. It's gone bad. It's broken. It's groaning and I love that we're going somewhere in scripture that gives us some guidance.

[00:02:17] And the thing that we will focus on for... well, it's the first eleven or twelve of these episodes, is if you're going to live well with hope and with commitment and with faithfulness and with joy and with courage, you have to start with character because the real you, you carry into any situation you're in.

[00:02:43] Your response to what's outside of you is always shaped by what's inside of you, so it's a blessing that Jesus is essentially coming and saying to His disciples, "This is the character that counts and oh, by the way, disciples look at it, it's impossible. So it's only going to come by means of you crying out to Me and Me blessing you with My empowering, transforming grace."

[00:03:23] Man, we have got to get away from thinking of grace is a ticket in and a ticket out; and in between, we just gut it out. Grace is vibrantly operating right now. We need grace right now and you're confronted with these beatitudes.

[00:03:45] Well, we looked at the fact that it's sweet to be poor, poor in spirit and how important it is to come to life saying, "I am nothing. I deserve nothing," because that drives you into the hands of God to find your hope and confidence in Him. The entitled demanding life is a life of hardship and difficulty. It just is.

SA [00:04:12]: It just is miserable, yes.

PT [00:04:13]: It's miserable. Well, if I could title this episode we're in right now, it would be "It's Good to Be Sad". Now, nobody believes that. No, nobody believes that. I mean, we'd do anything to try to avoid sadness.

[00:04:39] You know, I've spent twenty years of my ministry in a counseling office and I've thought of this many times. The amount of married couples who came for counseling, often the wife wanted it. She drug her recalcitrant husband into the room. You know, his heels dragging as he came in.

SA [00:05:09]: "I don't want to be here."

PT [00:05:12]: And looking at me like, "I did not want to be here." And they would say, "We don't know what to do. We just don't love one another anymore." Now, come on, what is actually going on there? It's that the romantic happiness that fueled our liking of one another didn't last and now when love is necessary, we don't like the work of that.

[00:05:51] I mean, look. You are in this romance with this person that you think has the ability to make you happy and your cell phone beeps, and they're FaceTiming. You'd love to see their face and you love the sound of their voice, and it's just so sweet and wonderful.

SA [00:06:18]: Excitement, yes.

PT [00:06:19]: Well, you know, a month into marriage, you roll over, this person has zoo breath and robin's nest hair, and they're asking you to take out the trash and it's hard. I mean, marriage is difficult and if you have hooked yourself to happy, happy, happy, happy everything, you will hate marriage. You'll hate parenting.

SA [00:07:01]: You'll hate your job.

PT [00:07:01]: You'll hate your job.

SA [00:07:02]: Yes, your kids.

PT [00:07:04]: You'll throw your remote control. It just doesn't work. So Jesus says this remarkable, again, counterintuitive thing. 4Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Seriously?

SA [00:07:26]: Yes, that's a little bit...

PT [00:07:29]: The happy life is the sad life? That just doesn't sound right. Why am I supposed to mourn and what am I supposed to mourn? Well, if you ask those two questions, you're going in the right direction.

SA [00:07:51]: Yes, yes, you're starting on a good path.

PT [00:07:52]: What is this path? What is this mourning that Jesus says is the good life? Well, again, it's not looking for reasons to be sad. It's not a religious sour face because you think that's what religious people are supposed to do.

[00:08:23] It is a drop dead, no-holds-barred, realistic view of yourself and the world around you. Let me start outside and then, go inside. If you look at the condition of the world that God created in its present condition, you should weep. The world is not what it's supposed to be. Think of disease. Think of ecological crisis, the way we've damaged the environment.

SA [00:09:05]: Abuse.

PT [00:09:06]: Think of the sorry state of human government. Think of war. Think of little children have to hide from their father or mother because of physical and sexual abuse. Think of the fact of every big city in the world is inflicted with homeless people, poor people living on the street. Think of corrupted food sources and polluted waters. We should weep.

[00:09:55] This is the world that my Lord created and when He was done, He looked and said, "It's very good." My problem is that my heart's not broken enough. I walk through Philadelphia. I'm so used to seeing homeless people, it doesn't bother me anymore. It's just wrong. I shouldn't be there.

[00:10:21] I should be sad. It's good to be sad. Something bad has happened inside of me if I grow steely and cold to the conditions that are all around us, that we see and experience everyday. It's not good. It's not good to be hard-hearted, but there's a hard-heartedness that develops in us where things that should break our hearts don't break our hearts.

[00:10:52] I was, again, having a conversation with somebody how across the world, even the United States, there are billions of poor people who can't get healthcare. Just the just the normal kinds of help that would keep you in even the lowest level of healthiness are beyond their reach. It's not right. It's not good and whatever your political persuasion is, you got to look at this world and say something's wrong here that should break our hearts.

SA [00:11:33]: And sadness communicates that you care, like if you explain your story to someone and your story is a horrific one, and the person across the table from you doesn't seem affected by that, you can kind of be offended because you're like, "Aren't you sad for me? Why aren't you sad for me," because tears, sadness, weeping, that communicates care, empathy, a desire to connect and so, God wants us to feel those things because He cares about us.

PT [00:12:08]: Jesus looked at the multitude that in two or three weeks would cry, "Crucify Him, crucify Him," and He wept. He was moved with compassion because what He saw were people who were distressed and scattered like sheep without a shepherd. I want to be like Jesus and I would argue that the people who make a difference are people who were, first, sad.

SA [00:12:42]: Interesting.

PT [00:12:43]: Something broke their heart, so maybe that begins with starting a hospital or a walking place for homeless people or visiting elderly or whatever it is, or sharing the gospel with somebody who is horribly lost.

[00:13:09] It starts with your broken-heartedness. Jesus wept. Part of the deep divine sadness is what made Him willing to go to the cross because He got it. The state of the world, the state of the people He created was not okay with Him and it shouldn't be okay with us. True justice, true mercy, true gospel boldness starts with a broken heart.

SA [00:13:44]: Yes, you should often ask the question, "Is it good enough for Jesus, then it's good enough for me." And if Jesus was a Man of sorrows, acquainted with grief, what should that tell us about how we should view the world and see the condition of it? It's important that we reflect our Savior in areas that, you know... it shows that we care, shows that we want to comfort, shows that we want to reach out and be empathetic.

PT [00:14:11]: Yes, the problem with me — I'll make this confession — is not that I'm too often sad. That's not my problem. My problem is I'm not sad enough, that I do grow hard-hearted and don't care the way I should about the brokenness of my world, its fallenness and the myriad of kinds of suffering that come out of this.

SA [00:14:50]: Yes, the opposite of love is not necessarily anger. The opposite of love is indifference. It's not really caring at all. So when someone doesn't care, they just kind of are unaffected by things emotionally. They don't get sad.

PT [00:15:03]: There's an old joke where they're doing a survey of people door to door because the last turnout election was very low and the surveyor says, "Do you think it was ignorance or apathy," and the responder says, "I don't know and I don't care." It's funny, because it hits home.

SA [00:15:28]: Yes, yes, it's true.

PT [00:15:29]: So I should mourn what's outside of me, but more deeply and more importantly, I should mourn what's inside of me. And of all the beatitudes, this is a recognition of the tragedy of sin, that not only sin-past, but the fact that this still lives inside of me, I'm still not free. I'm still — my Tripp-ish way of saying — that I'm still not a grace graduate and I'm sad that that rears its ugly head every day of my life.

[00:16:35] I wish I could stop asking Luella's forgiveness. It is truly heartbreaking. She is one of the most lovely people I have ever been blessed to know. I pray everyday that God would blind her eyes to what a bad deal she got.

SA [00:17:04]: So far, so good.

PT [00:17:05]: And yet I will get irritated or I'll get mad at her. I will say something that shouldn't be said. I'll argue with her as if she's stupid and she's not; and that better break my heart. If you can live with that and it doesn't bother you, you're not in the happy life. You're in a miserable condition.

SA [00:17:49]: Yes, you're very self-focused in that and it's good to know, too, that the second part of this beatitude is they shall be comforted. Jesus will meet you. It's the sad who see the ending of their sadness in Jesus and that contrast should actually help us to understand that the process of going through being sad is something that for the believer, arrives at the feet of Jesus and He's the one who comforts us.

PT [00:18:17]: And one of the things that I always think about when I think about this kind of sadness is that the resurrection, that empty tomb tells us it will be okay in the end. We won't always be here because Paul argues that that resurrection is the firstfruit of another resurrection and so, I become — and I think this is where we should live — I become a sad celebrant.

[00:19:00] I'm sad that I still am in the struggle, like Romans 7 in Paul's angst and sadness, but I'm not defeated and I'm not desperate and I'm not depressed because the march of grace has begun and nothing can stop the march of grace; and that grace will ultimately result in no more sin and no more suffering. I will not only be with my Lord forever, but I will be like Him forever and we will live together in peace and righteousness forever. I just want to say be a sad celebrant. That's the good life.

SA [00:19:47]: Yes.