WEEPING BECAUSE OF SIN

When have you wept over your sin? Have you ever? Those questions are not questions that determine your relationship with the Lord, but they do create an examination of our relationship with sin. By weeping I think the Bible means many things, two of which are - shedding literal tears and or the deep grief and weeping of the soul such that it cannot find peace because of the evident and ongoing action of sin.

Again, have you ever wept over sin?

Ezra was a godly man. We are told this throughout the letter but in a stated way in 7:10: "... Ezra had set his heart to study the Law of the Lord, and to do it and to teach his statutes and rules in Israel." Ezra was a man after God and a man whose heart was sensitive to the glory of God. This sensitivity to the Lord created a sensitivity to sin such that the action of sin caused him to weep (Ezra 10:1).

To weep is to feel. Weeping is the outflow of the soul that is being affected by something that grieves it. What is astonishing with Ezra is that he wept, not over his own sin, but because of the sin of the people! Where most of us would cast judgment, blame and, sadly, even feel some level of self righteousness over the sinful ways of people, Ezra wept (See Luke 18:9-14)! Ezra felt, in that moment, something of what the Lord feels by the blatant rebellion of humanity, especially His redeemed people (See Ephesians 4:25-30). This grief affected Ezra not only visibly but fully. We are told that this grief led Ezra

• to tear his garments and pull out hair from his head and beard (9:13);

• to be appalled, which is to feel disgusted, or deep sorrow of the soul, by the sin (9:3,4);

• to be ashamed - guilt and embarrassment - as a leader of this people who sinned (9:6);

• to spend a whole entire night in mourning and fasting (10:6).

All of this, not because of his own sin, but the sins of others! We need not imagine what he would feel by his own rebellion because his response to their sin is a picture into his soul. What I found in this weeping of Ezra is this truth:

I do not and will not truly kill that which does not truly disturb my soul

Weeping over sin is the real heart of killing sin. Weeping over sin is the fruit of a constant seeing and loving the glory and kingdom of God. This was Ezra's heart.

When I fight against my sin that fight, an an act, is not killing it. Killing it is when I am so in love with Christ and the glory of God that I cannot and will not tolerate actions within myself or in others that oppose Him. So I eliminate them from my life, without the possibility of parole! If I am not disturbed by sin I will never really destroy it because I will not wrestle against sin that my soul does not weep over.

Jesus wept over the tomb of Lazarus. Yes, He loved Lazarus and, perhaps, that was an aspect of His tears. Yet, contextually, we know that He is about to declare Himself to be the Resurrection and the Life and this reality gives us a redemptive glimpse into His soul (John 11:25). Jesus wept because a result of the sin of Adam, physical death, was winning. Jesus, in His tears, was weeping over the sin of Lazarus and, by grace, over our sin as well. Because He truly and completely wept and grieved, He alone would and could truly, completely and willingly kill our sin by His death on the cross.

When our minds become engrossed with the sheer magnitude of what sin did to our blessed Savior, we will be nurtured by the Spirit of God to learn, by grace, to weep over sin. Our own and others.