Video Editing

💭 Consider this:

RefQuests

Thumbnail

YT Description/Post

📣 🤔

📄 Follow along with this sermon's transcript:

📍 Sermon Outline 00:00 Trailer 01:

Highlights

Our second point is: grieving is the work of the Holy Spirit. Perhaps you may say, "I've already confessed my sins and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. My sins are forgiven. I have been comforted. That is something that happened in the past. So how does this verse apply to me now?" Today when you ask someone who professes to be a believer, "Are you a Christian?" he or she may say yes. "How do you know you are a Christian?" Most of the time they will say, "I remember the day when I professed my faith" or "the day I said the sinner's prayer" or "the day I was baptised" or "the day I spoke to the preacher who explained to me about sin and salvation." Notice they are always talking about the past. Can you imagine the whole basis of their assurance of being a Christian is based on something in the past?

When it comes to the assurance of our salvation, the Bible always talks about the present—the evidence of the present. The Bible says, if you have salvation, Romans 8:9, then you have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in you. It is the evidence of what you have at this moment. If you have salvation, 1 John 4:20 says you will love your brother. Anyone who says he loves God but does not love his brother is a liar. Again, it is the evidence of what you have at this moment. It is not something in the past, something that is happening now.

Likewise, "Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted." The words "mourn" and "comforted" are both in the present tense. In other words, blessed are they that are continuously grieving for their sins and they shall continuously be comforted. The believer will grieve for his sin because he knows and understands what it means to lose the joy of his salvation. As mentioned a while ago, the true believer will never lose his salvation. No man can snatch the believer out of God's hand. Once saved, always saved. But what he will lose is the joy of his salvation. So he knows and understands what is missing in his life because of sin: the joy of worshipping God, the joy of serving God, the joy of Christian fellowship, the joy of prayers, the joy of studying God's Word, etc. Therefore, he will grieve for his sins. He will be sorrowful. He will be repentant. And he will be restored the joy of his salvation. Isn't that a blessed thing?

Most certainly the believer will grieve for his sins because he knows and understands the spiritual struggle in his heart. On one hand, he wants to glorify and honour God, but on the other hand, he fails to do it. As the Apostle Paul said in Romans chapter 7, there is always this spiritual struggle within his heart: the things I should do I do not do, and the things I should not do that I do. The believer will grieve for his sins because he not only knows what sin is—sin is a transgression of God's law—but he also knows that it was because of sin that Jesus Christ was crucified on the cross of Calvary and shed His precious blood. And only His blood can wash away all our sins. Therefore, he is sensitive to sin. And whenever he sins, he will be grieved in his heart. He will confess. For he knows, "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9).

Dear friend, pause for the moment and consider this. Why do we miss the joy of our salvation? Why is there this spiritual struggle in our hearts whenever we sin? Why are we so sensitive to sin? There are sins we have committed that no one in this world would ever know. There are sins we have committed and have gotten away, so to speak, or at least we think we have gotten away. Why do we still grieve in our hearts over those sins that no one in this world would ever know and we have so-called gotten away? It is because to grieve is a conviction of the Holy Spirit. So whenever we sin there is grief. We know that this is the working of the Holy Spirit and we know that we are God's children.