The Beatitudes (Part 3): Blessed are they that Mourn
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Blessed are those who mourn
Natural Mourning
happy are the prosperous, the successful, those for whom the sky is always blue and who seem to know nothing of the problems and burdens, pressures, heartaches and tears with which those less fortunate are sadly familiar
Entertainment is king and the amount of time, energy, money and enthusiasm spent on it is testimony to the fact
Don Carson comments: ‘The world does not like mourners; mourners are wet blankets.’
Sinful Mourning
J C Ryle underlines the warning it contains: ‘It is possible for a man to feel his sins, and be sorry for them, to be under strong convictions of guilt, and express deep remorse, to be pricked in conscience, and exhibit much distress of mind, and yet, for all this, not repent with his heart. Present danger, or the fear of death, may account for all his feelings, and the Holy Ghost may have done no work whatever in his soul.’
Spiritual Mourning
To be ‘poor in spirit’ is to be convicted of one’s sin, whereas to ‘mourn’ is to be contrite for it
Only those who have been humbled, wounded and broken under the crushing burden of their sin can ever know God’s saving grace
David Brainerd, a pioneer missionary to the North American Indians who died in 1747 at the age of 29. His journal, in which he wrote page after page of his terrible conviction of sin before he was converted, has become a missionary classic. One extract reads as follows: ‘One night I remember in particular, when I was walking solitarily abroad, I had opened to me such a view of my sin that I feared the ground would cleave asunder under my feet, and become my grave, and send my soul quick to hell before I could get home. Though I was forced to go to bed, lest my distress should be discovered by others, which I much feared, yet I scarcely dared sleep at all, for I thought it would be a great wonder if I should be out of hell in the morning.’
American preacher A W Tozer ring tragically true: ‘In the majority of our meetings there is scarcely a trace of reverent thought, no recognition of the unity of the body, little sense of the divine presence, no moment of stillness, no wonder, no holy fear … The whole Christian family stands desperately in need of a restoration of penitence, humility and tears.’
True conviction of sin leads to true repentance and faith, and the joy of release from the guilt and grip of sin
John Stott rightly observes, ‘Some Christians seem to imagine that, especially if they are filled with the Spirit, they must wear a perpetual grin on their face and be continually boisterous and bubbly. How unbiblical can one become?’
‘For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do … I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature … For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do … I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature … For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing … What a wretched man I am!’ (Romans 7:15,18,19,24)
Lord I am vile, conceived in sin;
And born unholy and unclean;
Sprung from the man whose guilty fall
Corrupts the race and taints us all
Sin is high treason against the majesty of our Maker, open rebellion against his rightful authority
the nineteenth-century American scholar W S Plummer wrote, ‘No man can prove that God is better pleased with innocence in an angel than he is with penitence in a sinner.’
one professor who told his students that the Bible ‘had no more authority than a daily newspaper …’ Mysticism is rampant; professing Christians are often more interested in angels and demons than in the person and work of Christ. Public worship is increasingly being geared to the worshippers rather than to the One being worshipped. Biblical ethics are compromised or abolished. In some charismatic circles epidemic hysteria is masquerading as a mighty work of the Holy Spirit. In others, miraculous healing is being promised on a ‘name it and claim it’ basis. Rodney Howard-Browne, prime mover in the so-called ‘Toronto Blessing’ movement which burst on the church scene in the nineteen-nineties, cheerfully announces himself as a bartender for the Holy Spirit. Pseudo-prophets dispense pseudo-prophecy with scant regard to biblical criteria. In some circles, entertainment evangelism has become the norm, and at times is carried to the point of absurdity; on one visit to the United States I was given a leaflet advertising the services of ‘Skipper, the Gospel Monkey’. Serious literature is being neglected; many Christian bookshops are almost a contradiction in terms, with a heavy emphasis on music, games, trinkets and ‘Jesus junk’. Moral standards are crumbling, while dishonesty, immorality, greed, pride, sharp practice and self-serving are often tolerated, even among local church leaders, without any semblance of biblical discipline.
Grief over a Sinful world
seventeenth-century Scottish preacher David Dickson wrote, ‘Two things in sin chiefly move the godly to mourn for it. One is the dishonour it brings on God. The other is the perdition it brings on the sinner.
For they shall be comforted
nineteenth-century American preacher C R Vaughan expresses something of what this means: ‘He is there to impart holiness, to give grace according to the day, to bestow wisdom, patience and courage, to sanctify and comfort in affliction, to erase the image of Satan, to impress the image of God, to conquer the unholy passions, and to fill the soul with all the fruits of the Spirit.’