Pastor Jim’s sermon on Ash Wednesday challenged us to pay special attention to our relationship with God during this season of Lent. What do we need to walk away from in order to walk closer to God?
The passage was from Joel 2. Click the below “Play” button and follow along…
Joel 2:1-18
2 A day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness, like the morning clouds spread over the mountains. A people come, great and strong, the like of whom has never been; Nor will there ever be any such after them, even for many successive generations.
3 A fire devours before them, and behind them a flame burns; The land is like the Garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness; surely nothing shall escape them.
4 Their appearance is like the appearance of horses; And like swift steeds, so they run.
5 With a noise like chariots Over mountaintops they leap,Like the noise of a flaming fire that devours the stubble, Like a strong people set in battle array.
6 Before them the people writhe in pain;All faces are drained of color.
7 They run like mighty men, they climb the wall like men of war; every one marches in formation, And they do not break ranks.
8 They do not push one another; every one marches in his own column. Though they lunge between the weapons, they are not cut down.
9 They run to and fro in the city, they run on the wall; they climb into the houses, they enter at the windows like a thief.
10 The earth quakes before them, the heavens tremble; the sun and moon grow dark, and the stars diminish their brightness.
11 The Lord gives voice before His army, For His camp is very great; For strong is the One who executes His word. For the day of the Lord is great and very terrible; Who can endure it?
12 “Now, therefore,” says the Lord, “Turn to Me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning.”
13 So rend your heart, and not your garments; return to the Lord your God, for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness; and He relents from doing harm.
14 Who knows if He will turn and relent, and leave a blessing behind Him — A grain offering and a drink offering for the Lord your God?
15 Blow the trumpet in Zion, consecrate a fast, call a sacred assembly;
16 Gather the people, sanctify the congregation, assemble the elders, gather the children and nursing babes; let the bridegroom go out from his chamber, and the bride from her dressing room.
17 Let the priests, who minister to the Lord, weep between the porch and the altar; let them say, “Spare Your people, O Lord, and do not give Your heritage to reproach, that the nations should rule over them. Why should they say among the peoples,’Where is their God?'”
18 Then the Lord will be zealous for His land, and pity His people. NKJV
What’s all that Trumpet Noise All About???
- Morning: What good SHALL I do today?
- Evening: What good HAVE I done today?
Blow the trumpet. Examine your life. Joel tells us to “Blow the Trumpet.” Many times in the Bible, the use of a trumpet signaled an event of some religious purpose. Much like the ringing of church bells, it was used to call the congregation together for meetings, to usher the beginning of the month, and to note solemn days and festive occasions.
But in this passage, Joel is using the trumpet to sound an alarm and alert all the people to the seriousness of the crises. Crisis? What crisis??? The crisis was that (much like today!), people are not remaining in covenant with God. We’ve gone our own way, taken on our own sense of right and wrong. God calls that sin. Judgement is coming and hope is gone. The trumpet represents utter desperation. Joel is calling us to repent. Examine our lives and move closer to God. Renew the covenant with Him. Just like this season of Lent, Joel’s trumpet was a call to make some changes. A call to repent.
Repentance. What’s that mean???
Repentance Means Renewal
It’s possible for people to repent and yet try to recycle or maintain some sinful habit in their lives. Repentance is about confession our sins to God and then seek to live a life that is in keeping with that repentance.
Matt 3:8…..
Produce fruit in keeping with repentance.
Fruit. Fruit is fresh. Fruit is good. Fruit is something on the vine that wasn’t there before. Fruit is growth. Repentance is an about face; getting rid of the old and dead and replacing it with something new and life giving.
In Matthew 9:17, Jesus indicates that radical change is needed; the old ways won’t work:
Neither do men pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst, the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved.”
Paul follows the same theme in 2 Corinthians 5:17:
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation;
the old has gone, the new has come!
How well do we discard things that are a source of grief in our spiritual lives? Do we find ourselves trying to rebuild certain parts of our lives with unfruitful things of the past? To repent, we must be certain we do not repent in part, but that we repent completely. We can’t hang on to some part of our sin and pretend that it doesn’t make any difference.
Repentance Means a Change in Heart
To both the Hebrews and Greeks, the heart was the seat of one’s emotions. Joel tells us to “Rend your hearts and not your garments.” When you “repent”… honestly… do you really make a deep down change of heart, or do you go through the motions. Do you “tear your garments” by saying the right “churchy” things without having a true heart felt sense of remorse?
Joel’s trumpet calls us to have a total whole hearted change… not a half hearted kind of “pious fraud.”
There are several instances in the Bible where God showed mercy where He could have unleashed His wrath for those who refused to repent. Consider the following examples that show how merciful God was… and is:
The grace that God offers to us is a gift of mercy. When God shows mercy and forgives our sins, He literally erases our mistakes:
- Psalm 103:12 “As far as the east is from the west, so far has [God] removed our transgressions from us.
- Isaiah 38:17 God puts our confessed sins “behind His back.”
God cancels our mistakes. Our debts are erased.
So What’s Lent Then???
Lent serves a dual call for people to face our sins, and to fall in love with God through Jesus Christ. lent serves as a reminder that the day will come when the clock will stop and the trumpet will blow signaling that there is no more time. It will be like the sound of a horn signaling the end of a football game. God wants us to repent and be reconciled to Him before time runs out.
The trumpet is blowing! Life is fragile. Are you a true disciple of Christ? Come boldly, confident of God’s grace, God’s mercy,and God’s gentle restoration.
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