While in Gettysburg, PA, years ago, I had a great time visiting with Paul and Marge Ferrin, a wonderful Christian couple. Paul led the music and I preached at a conference, and we met for dessert afterward. Paul, who passed away in 2018, knew Bill Gaither and just about everyone in southern gospel music. He told me about the time he made a hospital visit to one of their church members. He took the man by the hand and began to pray for him but could not remember the man's name. So, Paul turned the man's wrist so he could see his name on the hospital ID bracelet, and the man interrupted his prayer and gave him his name! I thought to myself, that is just like all of us sometimes; instead of coming clean and admitting our weaknesses, our faults, and our sins, we try to cover them up and make matters worse.
A biblical illustration of a broken, humble, poor in spirit mourner is the prodigal son in the parable Jesus told in
Luke 15. He left his father and family and wasted his inheritance in sinful living. But he came to his senses and headed home. The story has a great but also sad ending. The prodigal came home and was forgiven, but the older brother, representing the Pharisees, never left home, but was further away from the father than the son who had left! The older brother was not poor in spirit and refused to mourn over his own sin.
The Apostle Paul teaches us that genuine sorrow produces repentance (
2 Corinthians 7:10). There is an initial mourning over sin in salvation and a continual mourning over sin in sanctification. When we first come to Christ, we do so broken over our sin, and He saves us. But we must come to God each day in mourning over our sin and seek His forgiveness.
Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones describes this twofold dimension of mourning in the following way:
"Now this is not only true at conversion; it is something that continues to be true about the Christian. He finds himself guilty of sin, and at first it casts him down and makes him mourn. But that in turn drives him back to Christ; and the moment he goes back to Christ, his peace and happiness return and he is comforted." (Lloyd-Jones,
Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, p. 49)
There is forgiveness and healing for the poor in spirit who come to Jesus in mourning. Will you come to Him today? After Augustine gave his life to Christ at the age of 30, he felt compelled to serve the Lord in ministry. After his ordination he was very unprepared to serve, so he asked the bishop Valerius if he could have some time to study the Scriptures. He did, and after his study, the first book he wrote was about the Sermon on the Mount. He believed the Beatitudes, which we are studying in these devotions, were gifts of the Holy Spirit. He writes, "As the dry earth cannot bring forth fruit without moisture, so we, who were once a dry tree, cannot bring forth fruits in our lives unless we have been watered by the dew of the Holy Spirit, the gracious rain from above." (Greenman, Larsen, and Spencer, p. 45-46)
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