Lent - Hope, Peace, Joy, Love

 

285 Days until Christmas! As slow as 2020r was, you’d think it was already here. We’ve had at least 3 seasons in the last month – Winter, Spring, and Monsoon. CS Lewis said “because man enjoys a change out of the routine, god created seasons, and because man liked consistency, He put them in the same order every year.” I don’t thing Middle Tennessee got that memo.

So, what season is it now? We’ve gone thru that fat baby with the arrows season. Pollen season is up us. St. Patrick’s day is almost here. Baseball, Basketball, Hockey, even FOOTBALL Season! Already had Fat Tuesday, although every day is Fat Tuesday for me. Ah yes, it’s the season of LENT! (no not lint, like your belly button, LENT.)

So, what is Lent? Lent, compared to Advent, is often treated like the ugly, drunk step-cousin at a family reunion. You know, the type you have to invite, but you sit him way back in the corner, and far away from the bourbon balls. Advent is joyful anticipation, Lent like fearful suspense. Advent like “God’s gift to us”, Lent like “You gonna get it!”. Advent is all neat and organized with candles and trees and greenery, and lent is messy, bloody. And we don’t like to think about that.

But Advent and Lent are not step-cousins, they’re more like identical twins. Advent prepares us for the revelation of God’s Gift to Mankind by Jesus birth, and Lent prepares us for it’s true realization by His suffering, death and glorious resurrection!

So how do we prepare in Lent? Tradition says to deny yourself during that 40 days, so we tend to look at lent more like a punishment. But that sacrifice is only good if it leads you to contemplate His coming glory of Easter. So, I’d like to suggest a slightly different way to look at Lent.

Advent is all neat and divided up into separate weeks, each contemplating a different aspect of Jesus birth – Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love. Let’s look at Lent with each of these not through a manger, but through a cross.

Hope: 2 Corinthians 1: 9-10 – “Indeed, we felt we had received this sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and He will deliver us. On Him we have set up our hope, that He will deliver us again.”

We tend to look at the cross as a sad event in the Easter story, and truthfully, it should tear your heart in two the suffering that Jesus went through. But that cross is not a symbol of despair, but HOPE. It is a symbol of death, but that death was for the death of our sins, so that we might LIVE in Jesus Christ. Our hope, our only hope, is through that cross. To take it up not as a punishment, but as His Salvation.

Peace: Philippians 4:6-7 “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”

So what’s so peaceful about a cross? Granted nothing from outward appearance. But that’s the point. This peace doesn’t come because of the circumstances around you, it comes in spite of the circumstances around you. The first part of these two verses says that peace comes by prayer and supplication, but the cross is HOW we are allowed to pray at all. The cross is our doorway into the Throne Room of God. The cross allows us to petition Him face to face. The cross was instrumental in the peace of our Salvation. Jesus.

Joy: Psalm 30:5 “Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning.”

Joy. Wow. That’s a hard concept when thinking about a cross. In the Garden of Gethsemane, when praying to the Father, Jesus stress was so great the He even sweat drops of blood. Some would even bring up that from the cross, Jesus cried “My God, my God, why have you forgotten me?” He was in terrible anguish and pain. But was this a cry of abandonment? Follow me down this rabbit hole for a moment. If I sing “Amazing Grace”, then stop, what’s the next thing you think? “How sweet the sound”, right? Songs have a way of doing that, especially very familiar songs. You hear one line, and the rest comes to mind. Now we go a little further, and we also know that the book of Psalms is a collection of songs and poetry often used in the synagogue for worship. In those Psalms, I’d like to bring up Psalm 22. The first verse of Psalm 22 is “My God, my God, why have you forgotten me?” Naturally, that song would come to the hearer’s mind. What are some of the other verses?

Verse 8 – “He trust in the Lord, let Him Deliver Him.”

Luke 23: 38 “He saved others: let him save himself.”

Verse 14 – “I am poured out like water, all my bones are out of joint.”

John 19: 34 “But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear and at once there came out blood and water.”

Verse 18: “They divide my garments amongst them. For my clothing they cast lots.”

Luke 23: 34 “And they cast lots to divide his garments”

And later in verses 27 & 28? “All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the LORD and all the families of the nations shall worship before you, for kingship belongs to the LORD and He rules over the nations.”

This Psalm is and was then considered a prophecy of the coming Messiah. It was written around 1000 BC, well before crucifixion was a thing, yet it described it accurately. This psalm was well known to the crowd around Jesus cross. So when Jesus shouted “My God, my God, why have you forgotten me”, what do you think was the first thing to come to the crowd’s mind? This wasn’t a cry of agony, but a song of VICTORY! This was a laugh in the face of Satan. This was Jesus saying, you thought you had me, but this cross is how I win! This was JOY! Joy because of a cross! “Weeping may tarry through the night, but Joy comes in the morning.” Or like the old saying goes, “It’s Friday night, but Sunday’s coming!”

Love – John 3:16 “For God so loved the world, that He gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.”

God so loved the world. In spite of all mankind had done, in spite of man willfully turning from Him and taking on sin, God willfully took on the sacrifice of blood to bring us back. The cross was the only option. Adam knew the effect of sin was death, and only a perfect sacrifice, His perfect sacrifice, could remove that sin. God so loved the world. So perfectly, so deeply, so desperately loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son. From the Christmas miracle of God becoming flesh, fully human and fully God, to the Easter miracle of death, burial, and resurrection victory, God so loved the world.

Now that may cause some to see the cross as an endpoint. A line in the sand, an ultimatum even. “Ok, I’ve done my part. I’m not doing any more. You’re either with me or against me.” Look at the attitude of a lot of Christians, and you know what I’m talking about. But that’s not what the cross represents. Look at the very next verse in John, verse 17:

“For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him.”

The cross is not a line in the sand, not an ultimatum, it’s an open door. It’s God saying, I’ve removed all the barriers, come home. Some people will misuse this verse to say there is no Hell. A loving God wouldn’t send someone to Hell after all that. Hear me out, that is not what this verse is saying. Now I’m gonna give you the other side of the coin. Make no mistake, there is a Hell. But it’s not God’s will to send you there. God’s gift was for all sin, everyone’s sin. Cause guess what? Everyone has, and everyone will sin. In the book of Romans, Paul says “All have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God.” And there’s no sliding scale on sin, either. A Man who beats his wife and kids and me flipping off somebody in traffic are equally sinners in the eyes of God. And God equally loves us and equally gave Himself for us.

So why is there a Hell? Because the love of the cross is an open gift, to either take or refuse. God loves His creation of mankind so much, that He wants all to accept Him, that not one would be lost. He loves His creation so much, that He allows us the choice to say yes or no to Him, and respects the decision we make. Even though His heart breaks when we do not accept His offer. God so loves the world, that He doesn’t control us, He doesn’t force us, He opens the door with the cross and asks us to come in, return to Him. “Amazing Love, how can it be, that Thou my God should die for me?”

Hope, Peace, Joy, Love. These are the things that I would ask you to consider for Lent.

Hope, Peace, Joy, Love. These are given to us by His glorious cross.

 Hope, Pease, Joy, Love. Choice.

Have you chosen? What will you choose? Eternal life or Eternal Death? Heaven or Hell? It is your free will to choose. The cross has opened the door. Will you go in?