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In the name of Jesus, amen. Dear saints, tonight we enter into the holy season of fasting that we call Lent. And I want us to consider this tonight: what Lent is not.
Lent is not pretending like Jesus hasn’t yet died on the cross and risen from the dead. I think there’s a danger that sometimes we think of Lent in this way and even Holy Week, that Jesus is going to the cross and we try to forget all the things that He’s done for us so that they come to us somehow in a new way. Now, we pray that the Holy Spirit will bring these truths to us certainly in a new way every single day. But we are not here to pretend like Jesus has not yet died on the cross. And especially we’re not here to pretend like Jesus has not risen from the dead.
Every single Sunday, every single time the church gathers together, every single moment of the Christian life is a celebration of the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, His conquering our sin and our death, and the devil who’s after us so fiercely. He has the victory, and we are not here to pretend like we don’t know that he has the victory yet. We know it. We rejoice in it. We delight in it that Christ is our Savior who is crucified and risen from the dead and ascended into heaven and lives forever.
Nor are we here tonight to pretend like we are not yet Christian, like we need to repent for the first time of all of our sins. Now, there might be some people here who are not Christian. And I’d like to talk to you after the service or find one of the pastors. We got baptism and some other things to talk about. But I’m assuming to you tonight that you are Christian people, that you are repentant people, that the Holy Spirit has already worked in your own hearts to teach you that you’ve broken God’s law, that you deserve His wrath and punishment, but that all of that wrath was poured out on Christ to save you.
The law of God, says Jeremiah, is like a hammer that crushes the rock to pieces. And that hammer lands blow after blow on the hardened heart of sinners to convince them that their pride needs to be humbled. But that hammer, dear Christians, that is not for you, not tonight. That law has already done its work; it has already crushed your hearts, has already proven to you that you’re a sinner and a lawbreaker. So that when you come to repent, and this is very important, when you come to repent of your sins, you come to repent as a child of God. You come to repent as a baptized believer. You come to repent not as a person who is unsure of their salvation or unsure of the love of God or wondering if God is going to be happy with you or angry with you.
No, the Lord Jesus loves you to death and to resurrection. He loves you. His blood has already been spilled for you. Your death has already been covered with His mercy and His absolution. And so you come to repent with that confidence, with the confidence of faith, with the confidence of God’s love.
The devil would love to take away that confidence. I mean, you know what the devil wants us to do with our sins. There’s really two options. He wants us to either try to hide them, cover them up, and never let them see the light of day, or he wants us to boast in them, label ourselves as them, use them as our name tag, and flaunt it all over. But the Lord—no, this is not why we are here. It’s not how we, as Christians, deal with our sin.
We repent. Yes, because we are still in our sin, because we are still waiting for the Lord to deliver us from this body of death, because we are still in the flesh, we are still sinning. Oh, even against our own will, the good that we would, we don’t, and that which we don’t want to do, we do. What miserable people we are. But the Lord Jesus is with us, and He gives us tonight the grace and the kindness of showing us our sins. He lets us reflect on these things. He gives us the Ten Commandments, and in this marvelous list of commands, He gives us so many profound and wonderful gifts. He says, “I am your God. You shouldn’t have any others.” He says, “Here’s my name. Don’t misuse it.”
He says, “Here’s my name. Here’s my word and my house that shows you my great love and compassion, and you should be there often.” Here’s father and mother. Honor them. Here’s your life. Let’s protect it and the life of your neighbors. Here’s marriage: your parents’ marriage, your marriage, if the Lord has given it to you, your friends’ and families’ marriage. Rejoice in it. Here’s some stuff. Here’s a good name. Here’s a heart that’s content and joyful. The Lord Jesus gives all of these things to you in His commands.
Now we forget, and we make mistakes. Even knowingly we transgress these commandments. We’re still in the flesh. But listen to what the Lord says: “Rend your hearts and not your garments. Return to me, and the Lord will have mercy.” It’s who your God is—A God of mercy, the God of kindness, the God of death and resurrection for the forgiveness of all sins, the God who does not hold your sins against you, but holds them against His Son so that He can hold you to Himself in eternal life and the resurrection forever and ever and ever.
So your Lord Jesus says that when you fast, don’t make your face look all sour, as if you didn’t know the forgiveness of sins and the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. You’ll fast. You’ll repent. You’ll fight against your own sins and against your own flesh and against the world and the devil. And we’ll all be fighting until the Lord returns in glory to gather us to Himself.
But we fight with joy. We repent with confidence. We confess our sins with joy because we know and we can never forget that Christ is crucified and risen from the dead for us. So let us rejoice this Lententide. The Lord Jesus loves you. He sits at the right hand of the Father for you. And He, as He always has and always will, forgives you all your sins.
In the name of Jesus, amen. And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.