I hope that you all know that today marks the first Sunday of Lent, which is the season of preparation for our greatest Christian celebration, that of the Resurrection of Jesus. I won’t be at all surprised if that comes as news to many of you, especially as the official beginning of Lent this past Wednesday – known as Ash Wednesday – was likely overshadowed in your activities this past week by that other cultural holiday – Valentine’s day – which was the next day. And given the choice between sackcloth and ashes and reflecting on sin, and heart-shaped chocolates and flowers and reflecting on love and romance, I know which way a lot of us will lean…
It feels early to be preparing for Easter, and in fact it is early, since Easter Sunday this year is March 31, and so I’m going to ease us into the journey this morning and set up the steps ahead of us as we journey towards the empty tomb.
What is Lent?
The Lenten season is the 40 day period (not including Sundays) which leads to Resurrection Sunday. In some ways it parallels the purpose of the Advent season which leads to Christmas, in that it is a time of preparing and waiting, but in other ways it is the opposite. Advent is about the themes of hope and joy and love and peace, and it is a time of feasting and celebrating that leads to the big celebration – while Lent is about the themes of confession and repentance and sin, and it is a time of restraint and sacrifice and simplicity. Lent is most familiar as a season where people “give something up”; usually something that is a pleasure or indulgence, such as chocolate (and that makes me wonder how many people that normally give up chocolate for lent chose to wait until after Valentines day to start!). Some Evangelicals who observe Lent chose not to give something up, but to take on some spiritual practice that they may not normally do, such as reading through the entire New Testament. Either way, the result is the same – it is a deliberate, specific time of readying ourselves to remember and celebrate both the death of Christ, and more importantly the resurrection of Christ.
Which begs the question, what about you and me? What are we going to do or not do for Lent, as a personal decision that will aid us in arriving at the Good Friday and Easter Sunday celebrations with ready hearts? You might not have thought of that yet, but I think it is pretty important. In light of what Jesus has done for us, I think it is pretty important that we spend some time, that we exercise some discipline, and arrive ready to worship our Resurrected Lord Jesus in the way that He deserves. I’ll leave that question with you for today, with the strong encouragement to make a decision about this before you go to bed tonight. Decide today, and start tomorrow.
Ok, that’s a general introduction/background, let’s pray and then I’ll get a little more specific.
Why Does God Hate Sin?
Here’s a question I’d like you to think about for a moment, since Lent is a season of confession and repentance from sin: why does God hate sin? I think we’d all agree that God does hate sin, but I’m not sure we really and deeply understand why God hates sin. And I think that is pretty critical to how we then see our sin and respond to it. So let me invite some responses from you – what do you think – why does God hate sin?
God’s hatred of sin is a direct manifestation of His love for us. God hates sin because He loves us. We tend, in our minds and more likely in our emotions, to go the opposite way: when we think of God hating sin, we then think of ourselves as sinners, and think/feel that God’s hatred of sin somehow translates to God angry at us or rejecting of us or condemning of us. God hates sin, there is sin in me, therefore we think God’s hatred is directed at us. So then we imagine ourselves as needing to do something to appease God and remove that hatred from us, so we confess and hope/trust God will forgive (though sometimes we still aren’t really sure, because maybe we didn’t “get it all” or “do it quite right” and are still not really sure it will be very long before we sin again and be right back where we started). Does that sound familiar? IT IS REALLY WRONG!! IT IS REALLY BACKWARDS!!
We have to begin at a different starting point – that God’s hatred of sin is a direct manifestation of His love for us. God hates sin because of what it does to us – how it robs us of life and joy, how it promises something that will feel good but that ends us harming us, how it dulls our ability to actually enjoy all that God has created us to enjoy, how it takes something good that God created for our pleasure and twists it into something that enslaves us. God hates sin because He loves us and wants something so much better for us.
Perhaps a few examples. God created us to be in relationships with others, where we could love freely and be loved freely in return. But then we sin by being selfish, putting our own needs (more likely “wants”) ahead of others and that sin of selfishness breaks/harms our relationships and creates misery where God created a beautiful interdependence. So God hates the sin of selfishness because it creates misery, and He loves us so much that He does not want us to be miserable. Here is another: God created a wonderful world full of things for us to enjoy. But then we sin by being greedy, and that sin of greedily wanting “more” destroys our ability to enjoy what we have, it destroys our ability to accept what God gives us because we just want more, and God hates that sin of greed because of how it wrecks our ability to enjoy the things God created for us to enjoy and He loves us so much that He wants us to be able to enjoy those good things He created for us to enjoy.
Do you see? We could keep going with example after example, and the point each time would be the same. God hates sin because of how much He loves us.
Ultimately, of course, the most significant truth is that sin separates us from God, and God loves us so much that He does not want us to be separate from Him, again because He knows that being fully with Him is what is absolutely the best for us.
Dealing with Sin:
So, then, how do we deal with this problem of sin in our lives. We know; it is through confession and repentance.
I don’t think, by and large, we do those well. It is like the Ash Wednesday/Valentines Day comparison – we don’t want to think about sin and confession and repentance, we’d rather think about nice and pleasant things instead. We’d rather hear a sermon about the gentle love and care of God than about how and why God hates sin. But this is the season for concentrating on sin and confession and repentance – because of God’s love for us – so that is what I’m planning to do, using Psalm 51 as our roadmap. But first:
I’m honestly tired and frustrated with surface confession, and an almost complete lack of repentance. And I speak those words to myself first, and then to you. Of all the things that are wrong with the church of Jesus today, I think this is one of the root causes. Our confession is surface level, and our repentance – genuine change – is almost non-existent. That sounds harsh, perhaps it is, but I think it is true. I think we are quick to say, “yah, sorry God, I know I’m a sinner, would you mind doing that forgiveness thing for me…” (mostly because we don’t want to be “in trouble” and we don’t want God “mad” at us and we certainly don’t want to get punished). I attended an Ash Wednesday service and I prayed the prayers along with everyone else, “We have not loved you with our whole heart, and mind, and strength. We have not loved our neighbours as ourselves. We have not forgiven others, as we have been forgiven. We have been deaf to your call to serve, as Christ served us. We have not been true to the mind of Christ. We have grieved your Holy Spirit. We confess to you, Lord all our past unfaithfulness: the pride, hypocrisy and impatience of our lives. Our self-indulgent appetites and ways, and our exploitation of other people….” I prayed those, I even agreed with them as I prayed them, “yes, I have done all those things”, but it was a surface agreement. It didn’t sink in. It certainly was not accompanied by any grief for those sins. And it certainly never led anywhere close to repentance, where I hated the sin and grieved the way those actions cut me off from the love of God and so perverted the good things God wants for me that I desperately wanted to go and live differently. And this is no condemnation of the Ash Wednesday service – it was good – it just scratches the surface, that is my point.
And scratching the surface of confession and ignoring repentance almost completely is a dangerous way to live as a child of God.
Because it keeps us enslaved to sin. It keeps us stumbling along life, half-blind and half-asleep, continuing to make choices that lead us away from God and life and fullness and joy and power; and that is what God hates. That is what makes God angry. That is what makes God weep. That our lives would continue to be lived under the slavery of sin when Jesus died to set us free from sin.
So here is the journey I’m going to lead us on through this Lenten season: a Journey of Confession and Repentance, Through Death to Life. I’m not going to just scratch the surface and move on. I’m not just going to spend one week on Psalm 51 and then move on. We are going to go slowly through it. We are going to repeat it. I’m going to give you questions and reflections for the week in between Sunday mornings. It is not a journey of condemnation or of self-loathing or of focusing on “how bad we are”; but it will be challenging. It will be uncomfortable. It will require change. It will require the honesty to actually look at our sin, the courage to face it and the roots of it, the openness to actually grieve our sin, and then the willingness and conviction to choose to live differently as we are empowered by the Holy Spirit of God (who, by the way, delights in nothing more than in empowering us to live lives of holy power instead of lives enslaved to sin!).
The Journey Ahead
Here is where our journey is going to go:
Feb 17 Step 1: Planning and Packing; Intro to Lent and Ps 51
Feb 24 Step 2: I Cannot Climb This Mountain Myself (A Plea From the Pit of
Death): Ps 51:1-2
Mar 3 Step 3: Looking Deeply, Letting Go Completely (Holding Death and
Admitting Guilt): Ps 51:3-5
Mar 10 Step 4: The Cleansing Shower (Stepping Out of Death): Ps 51:6-12
Mar 17 Step 5: The New Life (The Journey Continues): Ps 51:13-19
Ps 51 (NLT)
Psalm 51
For the choir director: A psalm of David, regarding the time Nathan the prophet came to him after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba.
1 Have mercy on me, O God,
because of your unfailing love.
Because of your great compassion,
blot out the stain of my sins.
2 Wash me clean from my guilt.
Purify me from my sin.
3 For I recognize my rebellion;
it haunts me day and night.
4 Against you, and you alone, have I sinned;
I have done what is evil in your sight.
You will be proved right in what you say,
and your judgment against me is just.[a]
5 For I was born a sinner—
yes, from the moment my mother conceived me.
6 But you desire honesty from the womb,[b]
teaching me wisdom even there.
7 Purify me from my sins,[c] and I will be clean;
wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.
8 Oh, give me back my joy again;
you have broken me—
now let me rejoice.
9 Don’t keep looking at my sins.
Remove the stain of my guilt.
10 Create in me a clean heart, O God.
Renew a loyal spirit within me.
11 Do not banish me from your presence,
and don’t take your Holy Spirit[d] from me.
12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation,
and make me willing to obey you.
13 Then I will teach your ways to rebels,
and they will return to you.
14 Forgive me for shedding blood, O God who saves;
then I will joyfully sing of your forgiveness.
15 Unseal my lips, O Lord,
that my mouth may praise you.
16 You do not desire a sacrifice, or I would offer one.
You do not want a burnt offering.
17 The sacrifice you desire is a broken spirit.
You will not reject a broken and repentant heart, O God.
18 Look with favor on Zion and help her;
rebuild the walls of Jerusalem.
19 Then you will be pleased with sacrifices offered in the right spirit—
with burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings.
Then bulls will again be sacrificed on your altar.
Here is your second assignment for the coming week: memorize this Psalm. Write it out by hand, look at it and try and outline it, read it every day, and commit it to memory. This will be a good starting place for us, we can work on it over the next several weeks, but this is one of those passages of Scripture that, if truly “written on our hearts”, will bear fruit in your life until the day you die.
Introducing Psalm 51
I’m not going to dive right in to the Psalm today, there isn’t enough time for that, but I do want to lay the foundation for next week by introducing the background. It comes to us in the header of the Psalm, which says: “For the choir director: A psalm of David, regarding the time Nathan the prophet came to him after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba.” Now the academics like to argue and debate about whether it was actually written by David following that sin, but that is not particularly relevant to us and the role of the Psalm in our journey towards Christlikeness so I’m going to ignore that debate and begin with the assumption that it is “regarding the time Nathan the prophet came to David after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba”.
You remember the story. I wish I had time to read all of 2 Sam 11 and 12, but it would take about 12 minutes or so and I’m already on page 5. So I’ll leave that as your third assignment from this morning (remember #1, choose a way to observe the season of Lent; #2, memorize Ps. 51; #3 read 2 Sam 11 and 12). So I’ll summarize:
It is spring, King David’s army is off at war, David gets up from his afternoon nap and sees a beautiful woman (Bathsheba) taking a bath, desires her, takes her, gets her pregnant, tries twice to trick her husband Uriah (who had been off fighting in the war) to go home and sleep with her so it will look like the child is Uriah’s and David will get away with his adultery, but is unsuccessful. So David murders Uriah by having him placed where the fighting is worst and having the other soldiers suddenly retreat. Then David marries the widow, the son is born, and David figures it will all blow over. But sin doesn’t blow over…
Nathan the prophet arrives and tells David a little story about a rich man with many sheep and cattle who steals the only lamb a poor man has and serves it to his guests. David is rightly enraged that such a thing would happen, and then Nathan lowers the boom: “You are that man!”. David is deeply convicted, confesses “I have sinned against the Lord”, the Lord sends a deadly illness on the child and for seven days David fasts and weeps and prays, but at the end of a week the child dies. David comes out of mourning, to the surprise of his advisors, goes and worships the Lord, comforts his wife, and later on David and Bathsheba have another son, Solomon, who eventually secedes David as king of Israel.
There is easily a month of sermons in that passage, but as background to Ps 51 I only want to make one simple point. We are exactly the same as David. Oh, it may not be adultery and murder (until we remember Jesus’ words about lust and anger), but the process is exactly the same. We are tempted. We choose to sin. We try to get away with it. We don’t (even if we think we do, even if we don’t see any consequences for a long time!). God convicts us (because of how much He loves us). We must grieve and mourn our sin. Then God forgives and restores.
We need that background because the Psalm begins with the conviction part – David has recognized his sin and is convicted, and the Psalm puts words to the deep emotions of grief over sin and the desperation with which David asks for forgiveness. And they are amazingly powerful words for us – once we have actually recognized, admitted, felt deeply the reality of our sin, and gotten to the deep place of true confession (rather than the surface level of just the words). As we study the Psalm, and allow it to lead us to the cross and empty tomb, my goal and my prayer is that it would take us deep below the surface. That God would truly convict us of sin because of His love for us, that we would repent, and then as we arrive at the celebration of the victory of hope over despair, mercy over judgment, love over apathy, life over death, of Jesus over sin, we would step into the power of the freedom from sin and lives lived in free abandon to the love of God.
Will you come on the journey?
