Do You Mourn Over Sin?

Church Family:
Do you hate your sin? Do you justify sin? Do you excuse your sin? Do you see other’s sin before your own? Do you psychologize your sin to the point of your sin losing its sinfulness? Do you feel the sting of your sin? Do you feel the weight of your sin? Do you weep before God over your sin?

Ezra gives us a perfect understanding of how we are to look at our sinfulness as he responds to God’s people, once again, marrying into neighboring tribes and falling into pagan worship in Ezra 9:3-6, “As soon as I heard this, I tore my garment and my cloak and pulled hair from my head and beard and sat appalled. 4 Then all who trembled at the words of the God of Israel, because of the faithlessness of the returned exiles, gathered around me while I sat appalled until the evening sacrifice. 5 And at the evening sacrifice I rose from my fasting, with my garment and my cloak torn, and fell upon my knees and spread out my hands to the Lord my God, 6 saying: “O my God, I am ashamed and blush to lift my face to you, my God, for our iniquities have risen higher than our heads, and our guilt has mounted up to the heavens.”.

Ezra is confessing the sins of his brothers and sisters in the faith with great devastation. This is not even about his own sin. Ezra did not disobey God’s commands to not marry into neighboring tribes and fall into pagan worship, yet he is the one who is on his knees before God with ripped clothing and missing pulled-out beard hair shattered before God that the sins of the people were going to once again separate them from God. Ezra felt the corporate weight of what they had done. He was mourning over sin. He did not try to justify sin. He did not try to psychologize sin. He did not try to hide the sin. He let the weight of offending a holy God fall upon him and bring him to confession and repentance. There is an appropriate time to mourn over sin and our offense against God. In fact, without mourning over how we have offended God, there is generally no real repentance.

Church, are we like the returned exiles in Ezra 9? Do we corporately enjoy worship together on Sunday mornings and then throughout the week live lives intermingling and enjoying the gods of this world? Have we failed to mourn over our sins against our holy God? Where have we slowly embraced things that are disgraceful to God that need to be confessed, mourned and hated so that we are restored once again? God's people saw Ezra’s mourning and it moved them to see their sin and take responsibility for it convicting them to turn from their sin and return to God.

Let us develop a habit of mourning over our wicked sin by seeing it as our holy God sees it. True grief over sin does not come from comparing our character to those around us but from meditating on Jesus Christ and His atonement for our sin (1 John 4:10). Godly grief and mourning then produces repentance, which glorifies God, the giver of grace, as we live under the gospel of salvation (2 Cor. 7:10).

See you Sunday, celebrating Jesus' atonement for sin: Steve