Ash Wednesday
Commemoration of Silas,
Fellow Worker of Peter and Paul
February 10, 2016
During Lent we will contemplate the Gospel. The
Gospel is simple. What could be more simple? God loves us and He saves us.
There is no need to make the Gospel difficult. No need to add to it or
complicate it. It is simple. It is exactly what it appears. It is the love of
God in His Son for sinners. The Gospel is simple.
And yet, the Gospel is profound. Something doesn’t
need to be complicated to be profound. It is doesn’t need to be difficult to
understand to be profound. It is simple, it is what it appears to be. And yet,
there is more to it than meets the eye. It is deep and rich and profound. The
love of God is vast. The love of God is profound.
The Gospel is the answer to what plagues us. Guilt
is the order of the day. The apostle Paul almost despaired of this fact, “Oh,
wretched man that I am.” If there’s any day that has a pulse on the guilt we
own it is Ash Wednesday. Ash Wednesday is a fitting beginning to the season of
Lent. Lent is a time of repentance, of contemplation of our sin and our guilt. Of
our inability, and even resistance, to love the will of God rather than the
desires of our own sinful flesh.
Yes, Ash Wednesday goes right to the heart of
things, and it does so by going for the jugular. If you saw the Super Bowl
commercial with Helen Mirren lambasting those who drink and drive you got a
sense of the direct rebuke of the Law upon someone who is guilty. I was joking
after Bible Class yesterday that preachers can learn from Helen Mirren on how
to preach the Law. But I was only half joking. If you haven’t seen the
commercial, go online and watch it and see if you can do so without squirming a
little, whether you’re guilty of that crime or not. I once witnessed in a
courtroom a judge who blasted out the defendent on what kind of behavior he
expected of her and I was convicted, even though I hadn’t done anything wrong!
This is the way the Law of God works. The Law is
simple. It tells you exactly what God’s will is. It shows you that you shall
have no other gods because there is nothing good in anyone or anything else for
eternal life with Him. The Law of God is His perfect, holy will. When presented
to us, though, we are shown our guilt. The Law is as simple as that, it shows
us our sin and our guilt. Hopefully at least one person who drinks and drives
was convicted by that tirade from Helen Mirren. Hopefully at least one person
repented of that sin and will no longer do it. The Law is not meant to ream you
out just to make you feel bad. It is meant to expose your guilt and drive you
to repentance. It is that simple.
And yet, it is profound. Think about it, how much
love are you showing someone to leave them in a sin that is harmful to them and
to others? When you bring the Law to bear on someone you are loving them. You
are helping them. You are taking a step to bring them to the point where they
no longer continue in that behavior and then they are not only blessed themselves
but are also loving others by not carrying out that sin. God’s will is good and
gracious, and that’s why He brings the Law to bear on us.
It is a profound thing that the very thing that
cuts us to the heart is the very thing that is a gracious act of God to make us
aware that we are guilty and dead in our sin and guilt. He loves us so much that He will not leave us
drowning in our condemnation. He cannot bear to see us die in our sin and be
lost forever.
This is one of the marks of the Christian Church,
the preaching of the Law. Any church that is not condemning sinners of the
their sin is dangerously close to not being Christian. If what is heard from
the pulpits of Christian churches leaves people satisfied in their own efforts rather
than coming to the awareness that they are wretched and so soiled in their
heart with sin, then those people are hearing a false Gospel.
There is one who has kept the Law of God perfectly
and it is our Lord Jesus Christ. He aligned His will with His Heavenly Father.
He did not entertain temptation but clung to the Word of God. He did not desire
His own will but His Father’s will. He rejoiced in loving people even to the
point of dying for them. No one ought to be made to feel or think that they are
fine the way they are. That is pure modern-day humanism. We are not fine the
way we are! We are wretched and live in a body of death. We are dust and ashes.
We are utterly caught up in sin and stand guilty before God. Not just
partially. Not just not as much as others. Fully guilty, fully condemned, and
fully without power to remove ourselves from this wretched state.
Jesus quotes the Old Testament, “You shall love the
Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your
mind,” and says of that, “This is the great and first commandment. And a
second is like it”: (and then quotes the Old Testament again) “You shall love
your neighbor as yourself.” His interpretation of these two commandments is
this: “On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
So here is the question for you this evening as you
begin this season of Lent. As you prepare to celebrate the great victory of
Easter. As you ponder the Passion of your Lord Jesus Christ, His suffering and
death. As you take extra time out of your week each week for six weeks in
meditating on the Word of God.
How do you see the Law and the Prophets, that is,
the entire Old Testament, as depending on these two commandments?
It is the crucial question. Because here you see
how utterly simple the Law is and how amazingly profound it is. Here you see
which way you are going to go with the Law. Whether you will go the way of the
world and the way that is so natural to your own sinful nature or the way of
your Lord Jesus Christ. Whether you will see in Jesus’ statement a call to look
within yourself and do what God requires of you or a call to repentance and a
complete despairing of your own ability and will to live as God calls you to
live. Whether you will see yourself as good enough for God to love you or
seeing that He condemns you by His holy Law except for the gift He has given
you in His Son who fulfilled the Law you could not and suffered the punishment
you deserve.
The sad state of affairs in the world and too often
in the Church is that we do not want to hear the condemning judgment of the Law
but rather want to see ourselves not in wretchedness but as doing pretty well,
considering all. Sadly, so often we look inward to strive to obey God’s will.
To often we do not see that there is nothing but sin and guilt. It is an
illusion that we can obey God’s will of our own power!
The Ten Commandments, all simply and directly
stated, leave no room for this. You have other gods, you do not love your
neighbor as yourself. Everything the Word of God depends on—you have fallen
short, you are found wanting. Who will rescue you from this body of death?
It may seem there’s no good news here. But the words
of Christ are profound. The very thing God demands of us in His Law, the Ten Commandments,
our Lord Himself fulfilled. He did what you could not and have not. He did this
for you. And because you are still found in your guilt, He suffered the
punishment for your guilt in your place. It is simple even as it is profound.
Your Lord does not direct you to the Ten Commandments to whip you into shape
but to drive you to despairing of your own works and to repenting of them and
of your sin and guilt. In this repentance is found an astonishing thing. Hope!
Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus
Christ! Thanks be to God that in repentance we see not ourselves but our Lord
in all His glory and grace and love for us in suffering, dying, and rising for
us. Amen.
SDG
No comments:
Post a Comment