SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 4/2/2020
9:55 AM
My Worship Time Focus: Happy are
the Sad
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
Matthew 5:4
Message of the
verse: “Blessed are those who mourn,
for they shall be comforted.”
As we begun the section on the Beatitudes we stated that
they are all paradoxical, and the reason is because what they promise for what
they demand seems incongruous and upside down in the eyes of the natural
man. Now we will see that the paradox of
this second beatitude is obvious. What
could be more self-contradictory than the idea that the sad are happy, that the
path to happiness is sadness, that the way to rejoicing is in mourning.
Let
us look at Psalm 55:6-8 where David is crying out “6 I said, "Oh, that I had wings like a
dove! I would fly away and be at rest. 7 “Behold, I would wander far away, I
would lodge in the wilderness. Selah. 8 “I would hasten to my place of refuge
From the stormy wind and tempest.’”
I can’t help but think that everyone who is reading this SD has had
moments like this when they just wanted to fly away from all of their troubles,
they wanted a cry of release of what they were going through, and the deeper
the problem the more they wanted to get away from it. However it is not like being outside in the
rain and you run into the house for shelter from the rain, as burdens are not
like rainstorms where we can flee from them.
“The deeper the sorrow, the harder the pressure, the worse the despair,
the more elusive comfort seems to be” writes John MacArthur.
He
goes on to write “In the routine of ordinary, day-by-day living, the idea seems
absurd. The whole structure of most
human living—whether by the primitive or sophisticated, the wealthy or the
poor, the educated or the uneducated—is based on the seemingly incontrovertible
principle that the way to happiness is having things go your own way. Pleasure brings happiness, money brings
happiness, entertainment brings happiness, fame and praise brings happiness,
self-expression brings happiness. On the
negative side, avoiding pain, trouble, disappointment, frustration, hardships,
and other problems brings happiness.
Sidestepping those things is necessary before the other things can bring
full happiness. Throughout history a
basic axiom of the world has been that favorable things bring happiness,
whereas unfavorable things bring unhappiness.
The principle seems so self-evident that most people would not bother to
debate it.”
As
we look at that Jesus states in this second Beatitude He is saying “Happy are
the Sad,” and then we see in Luke 6:25 that He states “Woe to you who laugh
now, for you shall mourn and weep.” This
verse is the converse beatitude of Matthew 5:4.
So what we see here is that Jesus turned the world’s principles exactly
upside down as He reversed the path to happiness.
MacArthur
concludes his introduction to Matthew 5:4 by saying “To discover what Jesus
meant, and did not mean, in this beatitude we will look at the meaning of
mourning as it is used here, the result of mourning, the way to mourn as Jesus
teaches, and the way to know if we are truly mourning.”
Spiritual meaning for my life today: I remember one of our Pastors at the church
that I attended after I became a believer preaching on what a paradox is and he
described it by talking about the fans that we had in our worship center. There were 6 or 8 fans blowing in the worship
center that in the summer they were blowing in reverse taking the heat from the
lower part of the worship center and raising it to the top so that we were
cooler. That is not really what you
think a fan would do to keep people cooler and this being “poor in spirit” and
then being happy to mourn does not seem like the right thing to do either. It is a matter of faith and trust in the Lord
to work it out.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Continue to be teachable as the Lord teaches
me contentment, humility and gives me joy in studying and reading God’s Word.
4/2/2020 10:29 AM
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