How to Mourn (Matt. 5:4)

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 4/12/2020 8:54 AM

My Worship Time                                                                                         Focus: How to Mourn

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                             Reference:  Matt. 5:4

            Message of the verse:  “4 “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”

            The focus “How to Mourn” is actually a main section which we will very briefly look at and then move on to the sub-section “Eliminate Hindrances” for the main part of this SD.

            “What does true mourn over sin involve?  How can we become godly mourners?”  This is the question that John MacArthur asks and then goes on with three sub-sections to answer this question of which the first is the one we will look at this Easter morning.

            What are some of the hindrances that keep us as believers from the way that we should mourn over sin; the things which make us content with ourselves which make us resist God’s spirit and question His Word, and the things that harden our hearts.  The Bible talks about a stony heart in different ways, and a stony heart does not mourn.  A stony heart is insensitive to God, and God’s plow of grace cannot break it up as it only stores up wrath until the day of wrath. 

            MacArthur writes “Love of sin is the primary hindrance to mourning.  Holding on to sin will freeze and petrify a heart.  Despair hinders mourning because despair is giving up on God, refusing to believe that He can save and help.  Despair is putting ourselves outside God’s grace.  Of such people Jeremiah writes, “They will say, ‘It’s hopeless!  For we are going to follow our own plans, and each of us will act according to the stubbornness of his evil heart’’ (Jer. 18:12).  The one who despairs believes he is destined to sin.  Because he believes God has given up on him, he gives up on God.  Despair excuses sin by choosing to believe that there is no choice.  Despair hides God’s mercy behind a self-made cloud of doubt.”

            Now there is another hindrance to being able to mourn and that is conceit and this tires to hide the sin itself, choosing to believe that there is nothing over which to mourn.  It is the spiritual counterpart to when a doctor who is treating a cancer as if it were a cold.  If it was very necessary for Jesus Christ to shed His blood on the cross to save us from our sin, our sin must be great indeed.

            Next “Presumption” hinders mourning because presumption is a form of pride.  It recognizes the need for grace, but not a whole lot of grace.  The person who presumes is satisfied with what could be called cheap grace, as they expect God to forgive little because it sees little to be forgiven.  God declares through Isaiah “Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return to the Lord, and He will have compassion on him; and our God, for He will abundantly pardon” (Isa. 55:7).  There is no pardon offered to the unrepentant, presumptuous person who refuses to forsake his sin. There is a gospel, a false one, that teaches otherwise and this has always been popular, as it dearly is in our own day; but it is as I said a false gospel, as Galatians says in 1:6 it is a “different gospel,” a distortion and contradiction of the gospel found in Scripture, which is the true gospel.

            We will look at one more hindrance, “procrastination” and then will quote a paragraph and a poem that is found in MacArthur’s commentary.  Procrastination is a hindrance because a person who knows that he needs to confess his sin to the Lord will say that he will put it off for another day in order to ask God’s forgiveness and cleansing.  This is very foolish and also very dangerous and the reason is because we “do not know what [our] life will be like tomorrow, [We] are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes” is how James write in James 4:14.  The sooner that the disease of sin is dealt with the sooner comfort will come.  If it is not dealt with then we have no assurance that comfort will ever come, because we have no assurance we will have time to confess is sometime later on.  It is best to keep a short list with the Lord and to ask the Lord to do what is written in Psalm 139:23-24 each day:  “23  Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me and know my anxious thoughts; 24 And see if there be any hurtful way in me, And lead me in the everlasting way.”

            “The most important step we can take in getting rid of hindrances to mourning, what ever they are, is to look at the holiness of God and the great sacrifice of sin-bearing at the cross. If seeing Christ die for our sins does not thaw a cold heart or break up a hardened heart, it is beyond melting or breaking.  In her poem ‘Good Friday,’ Christina Rossetti gives these moving lines: 

Am I a stone and not a sheep,

That I can stand, Or Christ, beneath Thy cross,

To number drop by drop Thy Blood’s slow loss

And yet not weep?

Not so those women loved

Who with exceeding grief lamented Thee;

Not so fallen Peter weeping bitterly;

Not so the thief was moved;

Not so the Sun and Moon

Which hid their faces in a starless sky.

A horror of grace darkness at broad noon—I,

Only I.

Yet give not oe’r

But seek thy sheep, true Shepherd of the flock;

Greater than Moses, turn and look once more

And smite a rock.

Have a Happy and Blessed Easter.

4/12/2020 9:48 AM