Sermon Tone Analysis

Opening Prayer

Please pray with me.

O Lord, The house of my soul is narrow; enlarge it that you may enter in.

It is ruinous, O repair it!

It displeases Your sight.

I confess it, I know.

But who shall cleanse it, to whom shall I cry but to you? Cleanse me from my secret faults, O Lord, and spare Your servant from strange sins.

Amen.

St. Augustine of Hippo (AD 354-430)

Introduction

I am sure you have heard this before, but ...

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Welcome to Fish Fry Season … the one time of the year you can actually gain weight by not eating meat.

My wife and I constantly comment on the amazing Fish Fries in the area: “How can something so tasty actually be considered a sacrifice?”

Where I’m from, this yearly fascination with Fish Fries is not really a thing.

Most everyone in the Bible Belt is Baptist or non-denominational, so this tradition was rather foreign to me when I moved up here 10 years ago.

Even growing up in an Anglican church, my experience of Lent was going to church on Ash Wednesday and then finding something really simple to give up: like chocolate or coffee or trying to eat better.

Sometimes I was able to do it, most of the time I wasn’t.

But I didn’t really understand why we did it.

Our readings this evening make me think that, perhaps, I was going about it all wrong.

Tonight, I hope to strip away the blinders of an often misunderstood tradition and examine the heart of Pastor Elaine’s call to “self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and alms-giving; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy word.”

Lent is not about Fasting

If we were to ask ourselves, “what is Lent?” many of us would focus upon the fasting part: either giving up meat on Fridays, giving up sweets, eating healthier, or whatever you may come up with.

It’s the most clearly visible - it has the most rules - and, frankly, gets the most press.

But, the season of Lent is not about fasting.

Popular Christian culture has a fairly low view of fasting.

Yet, looking historically, fasting has never been an end unto itself, but rather a means to a completely different end.

Calvin says it like this:

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Fasting is not approved by God, except for its end; it must be connected with something else, otherwise it is a vain thing.

John Calvin

The season of Lent is a period when we use the tool of fasting towards another goal: “self-examination and repentance.”

Going back to Elaine’s encouragement there are four such tools: prayer, fasting, alms-giving; and reading and meditating on God’s holy word.

Focusing on just one

If we focus on just one of these, we miss the purpose of this season.

If we simply pray, we miss out on the help that fasting brings to our prayer, the joy of alms-giving, and the work of the Holy Spirit through the reading of the Scriptures.

If we only give alms (providing help to the needy), we do not engage with our loving Father in heaven, who wants to bring us into alignment with his will through prayer, fasting, and reading the Scriptures.

We won’t find joy in giving without being directed and enabled by God.

If we only read the Scriptures, we miss out on the opportunity to commune with God in prayer, re-aligning our lives, in deed and action, to God’s purposes.

Finally, if we only fast, we suffer for no purpose.

We cannot earn God’s favor.

Donald S. Whitney calls this a “miserable, self-cent[e]red experience.”

All four are required

If our goal is to seek “self-examination and repentance,” all four tools (prayer, fasting, alms-giving, and reading of Scripture) must be involved.

In so doing:

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We fast to prepare ourselves for prayer

We pray to submit ourselves to God’s will and to restore our relationship to Him

We read the Scriptures to discover God’s purposes and heart for humanity and His creation

We give alms as an expression of love to God, in the certain knowledge that we are being his hands and feet in a world that needs His love

Self-Examination and Repentance

Self-Examination

As we engage with these four tools, we should find something remarkable happening.

Through fasting, we begin to remember that God alone is the source of all good things.

“Give us this day our daily bread” takes on a whole new meaning when you are desperately wanting that very thing.

Through prayer, we humbly come to the almighty God, creator and provider of all good gifts, and see how inadequate we are to fulfill His will without His grace.

Through reading the Scriptures, we can re-enter into the story of Salvation.

We see how God has carefully crafted history towards His ends, raising a people to be His representatives, who birthed the savior, our Lord Jesus Christ, to ultimately conquer sin and death, and bring forth a people equipped by the Holy Spirit (that’s us!) to face evil, destruction, and injustice head-on.

Through alms-giving, we realize our part in that great story, learning to see and participate tangibly in God’s redeeming work in the world.

Repentance

And yet, as we look into the heart of God, we will no doubt sense the things in our own lives that fall short of God’s plans for us.

Most of the time we don’t ponder our own sin, either because it simply doesn’t come to mind or, more likely, because we don’t want to think about it.

For some, thinking about their sin is simply too painful, having come from shame-based cultures which said, “if you sin, then you must be less of a person” or “that God doesn’t love you any more if you sin.”

And yet, these are all lies of the Devil.

God, through Christ, tells us something very different:

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Sin is a misalignment between our wills and God’s will.

Before you think I am oversimplifying sin, let us see how insidious it actual is.

Charles Spurgeon said

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Sin is a thief.

It will rob your soul of its life.

It will rob God of his glory.

Sin is a murderer.

It stabbed our father Adam.

It slew our purity.

Sin is a traitor.

It rebels against the king of heaven and earth.

Charles Spurgeon

It is a barrier that seeks to separate a Holy God from humanity.

Sin enslaves us; it is a bondage from which we cannot escape on our own.

We try to free ourselves and fail, try and fail, try and fail.

This would repeat forever had it not been for God’s intervention.

And, yet, through Christ’s death and resurrection, sin has been defeated.

We have been adopted as sons and daughters ... into a new life.

Through union with Christ, we have been given the means to face our sins and repent of them.

St. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians:

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1 Corinthians 15:56–57 (ESV)

The sting of death is sin ....

But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

By belief in Christ and adoption through the Holy Spirit, we are guaranteed forgiveness of those sins.

Not because we deserve it - only because of God’s love for us.

St. John writes in his Gospel:

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To accept this gift we accept a new form of “enslavement.”

As Σπύρος Ζωδιάτης notes,

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Our real freedom from sin and the bondage to sin is found in our enslavement, both body and soul, to Christ, the Lord of all.

Spiros Zodhiates (Σπύρος Ζωδιάτης)