March 30, 2025 SERMON

Spiritual Journey of Lent                       
ISAIAH 59:12-20

We are four weeks into the church season of Lent which is the 40-day period leading up to Easter, (excluding Sundays) that starts on Ash Wednesday and ends the day before Easter.  

These 40 days of Lent involve fasting, prayer, and almsgiving as a way to connect deeper with God. Many use the 40 days of Lent as a time of personal reflection to prepare your heart and mind for Resurrection Sunday, Easter

The origin of the word Lent comes from the “Old English lencten springtime, spring” and “from Germanic langitinaz long-days or lengthening of the day.” 

Traditionally, it's a time for confession, repentance, and feasting.

Lent starts with Ash Wednesday, the day when you might see people with a cross of ashes on their foreheads. These ashes are a reminder of our need for repentance and the reality of our human frailty.

The ash marks symbolize sorrow and mourning over sin. The Biblical support for this observation comes from the following verses:

Then I turned my face to the Lord God, seeking him by prayer and pleas for mercy with fasting and sackcloth and ashes (Daniel 9:3).

There was great mourning among the Jews, with fasting and weeping and lamenting, and many of them lay in sackcloth and ashes (Esther 4:3).

What do you think of when I say the words Mardi Gras? The mere mention of these two words usually conveys thoughts of wild celebrations, beads flying through the air, ear-to-ear grins plastered on the faces of millions of revelers parading through places like Bourbon Street in New Orleans!

But that isn’t how it all started! It was started a long time ago to remind us to take time and celebrate the goodness of God. They celebrated “Fat Tuesday” by eating richer, fatty foods before beginning their time of fasting during Lent.

 Some would say that it was a time for good Christians to get all of their sinning out of the way before Lent, so you have something to feel really sorry about during Lent.

But the real theology behind it all is focused on remembering that there is a time to celebrate in the Lord… but there is also a time to reflect, to fast, to pray, to prepare. So, Lent begins with a celebration, and we end Lent with another celebration.

Originally, the idea was that a Christian, as a sign of repentance, would sprinkle ashes on his or her head.

In the Bible, ashes were always associated with humility and mortality, fasting and remorse. If you had sinned against God, and you felt remorse about that sin, and were repenting of that sin, then sometimes they would sprinkle ashes on their head as a sign of sorrow and repentance. 

Ashes were supposed to remind you that you were mortal, that you will eventually become ashes after you die. We’re only ashes, and we need to repent of our sins now while God gives us a time of grace.

During the 6th or 7th centuries, Christian churches thought about this idea. People would sprinkle ashes on themselves as a sign of repentance. Instead of sprinkling the ashes on your head, the ashes would be rubbed onto the forehead in the shape of a cross. 

It was a sign of repentance, and a reminder of their baptism, (when the sign of the cross was placed on you with water and the Word.) The ashes would actually be taken from the palm branches from Palm Sunday, the year before.

What’s really important, though, is not whether you have ashes on your forehead. What’s important is what’s going on in your heart, what’s going on in your soul.

For every Christian, Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of the somber season of Lent. During this time, we focus on Christ’s battle with sin and Satan that He waged in order to win for us our salvation. 

The 40 days of Lent do not include Sundays, because each Sunday is considered a “miniature Easter,” a time of joy and celebration of Christ’s resurrection. 

Why 40 days? Right after Jesus was baptized, the Bible tells us that Jesus went out into the desert to fast and to be tempted by the Devil for 40 days. 

For Jesus, those 40 days were a time of examination, a time when he battled the temptations of the Devil and emerged stronger than He had been before. 

For us, Lent is a time when we make that journey with Christ. We think about our temptations, our sins, and we repent. After these 40 days, we emerge stronger than we had been before.

Lent is a time to evaluate ourselves in light of God’s Word. It’s a time to abandon the sins we have grown accustomed to committing. 

It’s a time to receive God’s forgiveness and strength to lead a Christian life. It’s a time to renew our desire to serve God, and to be the Christians that God has made us to be.

This morning, let’s take a miniature Lenten journey as we look at Isaiah 59. Right away in verse 12, we read, “Our offenses are many in your sight, and our sins testify against us” –If we were to count all the sins we have committed in just one week – and remember, sins include not just our deeds, but our thoughts. Sins include not just the things we do,

but the things we don’t do but should. If we were to count all these sins, our offenses would be many. Thousands of sins, testifying against us in God’s court of law.

“Our offenses are ever with us. We acknowledge our iniquities” – there we see a key phrase as we think about Lent today. Lent is a time when we look at ourselves and acknowledge that there are some things that need to be fixed. 

There are some things about me that are not perfect, things that need to be changed, things that need to be adjusted. My attitudes. My lifestyle.

Listen to Isaiah describe some of those things he sees that are wrong: “Rebellion, and treachery against the Lord, turning our backs on God. Promoting oppression and revolt. Uttering lies our hearts have conceived.”

Take a close look at ourselves, and ask some hard questions – what are my sins? Where am I “not so Christian” in my life? What kind of person am I? Am I really loving others? Do I show that in my words and actions? 

Am I really patient? Do I really love God more than anything else in my life? Do I make sacrifices for Him? Am I peaceful? Or do I like to assert my will over other people? What are my weaknesses? What are my sins? Where do I need to get better in my life?

That is the first part of repentance, the first part of Lent. To look at ourselves and to recognize our sins. 

And then comes the second - to look away from ourselves, and to Christ. Isaiah does that… “The Lord looked and was displeased that there was no justice. He saw that there was no one, he was appalled that there was no one to intervene.” 

Before Jesus became a man, He looked out over the world and saw all our sin, and He was appalled at what He saw. And what appalled Jesus the most, was that there was no one to intervene, no one to rescue the human race from its sins.

So Christ did this Himself: “So his own arm worked salvation for him, and his own righteousness sustained him.” Listen to the battle gear that Christ wore for us: “He put on righteousness as His breastplate, and the helmet of salvation on His head; He put on the garments of vengeance and wrapped himself in zeal as in a cloak.” 

Everyone pictures Christ wearing a middle-eastern robe – and it’s true, that is what Jesus wore. But do you see what else He wore as He went into battle for us? He wore righteousness as His breastplate, and the helmet of salvation on His head. He was wrapped in a cloak of zeal, and He would take vengeance against Satan for all the evil He had done in our world. 

Judgment Day is talked about in these verses too:

“According to what they have done, so will He repay wrath to his enemies and retribution to his foes; he will repay the islands their due.” 

These are the people who refuse to repent of their sins and turn to Christ for forgiveness. On Judgment Day, Christ will speak to these people some very harsh words for their rejection of Him. 

On that day, everyone will see Christ’s glory: “From the west, men will fear the name of the Lord, and from the rising of the sun, they will revere His glory. For He will come like a pent-up flood that the breath of the Lord drives along.”

But what about those who do repent, who take a look at themselves, and acknowledge their sins, and turn to Christ for forgiveness and help to live a new life? What about you and me? 

Our final verse tells us: “The Redeemer will come to Zion, to those in Jacob who repent of their sins, declares the Lord.” Christ will come to us, our Redeemer, and He will grant to us salvation forever.

Lent is that time when we do some “spring cleaning” in our soul. We look deep within ourselves and acknowledge our sins. And then we look to Christ, who won the battle for us, and we receive His forgiveness. The forgiveness of sins, won for us on the cross. 

Lent is a time when we grow in our appreciation of all that Christ has done for us. Not only do we become more aware of our sins. We become more aware of just how much Jesus loves us, that He would do all these things for us. 

We talk about doing spiritual housecleaning beginning on Ash Wednesday, having genuine, from-the-heart, repentance. And God does something awesome when we come to Him on His terms. The Sinner Repents, and the Lord Relents. 

The judge says, “I find you innocent on all counts!” That sounds impossible! It sounds too good to be true! Because you know you’re a sinner. You can think of all the wrong things you have done throughout your life. 

But that’s exactly why we have come here today. Because our God is a God who relents. He’s the judge who doesn’t sentence us to our punishment.

As we take our steps toward the cross of Jesus this Lenten season, we learn how God can afford to declare us innocent. He let us off the hook by placing Jesus on the cross. During these next couple of weeks, we will see how God transferred our guilt to His innocent Son Jesus. Here we learn why we love Jesus so much: because He gave every bit of Himself to us.

The last part of Lent is leaving that sin behind.

Quitting the sin we have acknowledged in our life. 

A popular thing to do during Lent is to give up something that you enjoy. There are wrong ways to observe that custom: considering our self to be more spiritual than someone who isn’t giving up something for Lent. Supposing that the act of giving up something puts us in better standing with God. 

But there are proper ways of going about that custom: if it helps you to remember that Jesus gave up everything for you, so out of thanks you are going to give up something that you love for Him. In that sense it’s an offering of sorts. 

But avoiding chocolate or not watching your favorite TV show for a month and a half isn’t going to make you more spiritual…unless you fill that void with the Word of God and prayer. 

And there is the key: Jesus has given us everything. Our sins are all forgiven. We have a home waiting for us in heaven. There really isn’t anything more important and valuable than that.

God doesn’t command that we give up something for Lent, but if you choose to do that, here is a way that will be a spiritual benefit to you. Think of a thing or things that you really enjoy doing: maybe it’s eating a particular food or drinking a certain beverage. Maybe it’s an activity like shopping or exercising. Maybe it’s staring at the television or computer screen for hours on end. If you choose today to give something up for Jesus, then be sure to replace it with prayer, and Bible study. 

Maybe instead of spending two hours watching a basketball game, you read through some of the Gospel of John, slowly, digesting every word, considering how God is talking to you, praying that the Lord speaks to you and makes you a better Christian. We repent; God relents. 

And when we go into His Word, God opens His storehouse of spiritual treasures to us and gives us gift after gift. The Lord wants to replace the trivial things in our life with real gifts. Gifts like a peace in our heart that can deal with any problem. 

Like a greater willingness and ability to serve the Lord Jesus. And when we have these spiritual treasures, we aren’t going to miss the trinkets of the world so much, because God has a way of replacing them with something far more satisfying.

So, let’s get rid of the clutter. Our Christian life resembles a building that needs some upkeep, and Lent is the time to get to work. The Lord wants us to turn to Him. 

He will give us the power to do just that. He will point us to His Son Jesus and remind us that though this life is a struggle, Jesus won the ultimate struggle for us. He has made us that glistening, beautiful building in which He will dwell forever. 

Now with the Spirit’s help, strive to keep that building kept up! Don’t be satisfied with mere cosmetic improvements but beg the Lord to use the Word to change your heart to make you a more repentant, a more useful servant in God’s kingdom. Amen. 

Lets Pray

Dear Father, As we kneel in prayer help us to think deeply about our own mortality. I’m often so busy living that I forget that the day will eventually come when I will die and leave everything on this earth behind. All of the things I love so much and all of the things that worry me and cause me pain will vanish completely in the blink of an eye. 

As I heard the words spoken over me, “Repent and believe the gospel,” help me to use the weeks before Easter as a time to examine my thoughts and deeds, to see the ways my living and thinking are contrary to your will. Help me to apply the discipline needed to seek Your Truth and to move away from my sins and closer to Christ. 

Help me to strengthen my spiritual willpower during Lent by refraining from the following things in order that I might depend on your strength and be brought closer to You… (list those things in your mind)

Help me to establish or improve the following personal spiritual practice in my life… 

Help me to grow in my love for Christ and His Kingdom. Show me one specific way to do this… 

May this spiritual journey of Lent prepare my heart for Easter. I wait with eager longing for the victorious celebration of Christ’s resurrection power that triumphs over my sin and opens wide the gate of eternal life.

Amen.