Evangelical Presbyterian Church of Milford

Introduction

During last October’s Congregational Meeting Ron Syme suggested that we spend a day together fasting as a congregation. The Elders considered the idea at our October meeting and believed the Lord was indeed calling us to a congregational fast, but not for 2014. So at our recent January Meeting we considered the idea of fasting again, and we agreed that the Lord is calling our entire church to seven Wednesdays of prayer and fasting across the upcoming weeks of Lent.

For those of us not familiar with the season of Lent: Lent is the forty days (not including Sundays) leading up to Easter. It has its origins in the ideas of spring and the lengthening of daylight hours. (Which is where Lent gets the name “Lent” from, lengthening.) And its forty day period is linked to an ancient church practice of Christians fasting across the forty hours leading up to Easter sunrise, celebrated as the hours the Lord Jesus spent in the land of the dead: From His death on the cross Friday afternoon through to His resurrection appearance Easter Sunday morning.

This year Lent begins Wednesday, February 18^th – with what’s come to be called “Ash Wednesday”. So, we’ll begin our days of fasting that Wednesday, February 18^th, with a soup supper here at the church beginning at 6:30pm. We’ll enjoy some soup together, and enjoy each other for a bit before going upstairs to the Sanctuary for a short Service of ashes and prayer, and then our fast will begin – just water – from after that simple soup-meal throughout the rest of Wednesday night, Thursday morning and afternoon, and we’ll all break the fast with our own dinners in our own homes Thursday evening. We’ll continue to have soup meals and prayer times at 6:30pm on the Wednesdays that follow: February 25^th, March 4^th, March 11^th, March 18^th, March 24^th, and April 1^st, breaking our last Wednesday, April 1^st fast with our Maundy Thursday Church-Family Seder/Supper.

I’m going to preach and teach more about the actual practice of fasting next Sunday as some of us may be quite familiar with fasting and others of us might not be. So, I’ll take us step-by-step through the Scriptures about fasting and the practice of fasting next week. But this week I believe the Lord wants us to look at the whole upcoming season of Lent that’s now just a couple of weeks away, and how the Holy Spirit might be calling us to use the opportunity of this special church-season to develop more Christ-like qualities and character in us…

Isaiah 58:1-14 [NLTse]

58 “Shout with the voice of a trumpet blast. Shout aloud! Don’t be timid. Tell My people Israel of their sins! ² Yet they act so pious! They come to the Temple every day and seem delighted to learn all about Me. They act like a righteous nation that would never abandon the laws of its God. They ask Me to take action on their behalf, pretending they want to be near Me. ³ We have fasted before You!’ they say. ‘Why aren’t You impressed? We have been very hard on ourselves, and You don’t even notice it!’

“I will tell you why!” I respond. “It’s because you are fasting to please yourselves. Even while you fast, you keep oppressing your workers. ⁴ What good is fasting when you keep on fighting and quarreling? This kind of fasting will never get you anywhere with Me. ⁵ You humble yourselves by going through the motions of penance, bowing your heads like reeds bending in the wind. You dress in burlap and cover yourselves with ashes. Is this what you call fasting? Do you really think this will please the Lord?

⁶ “No, this is the kind of fasting I want: Free those who are wrongly imprisoned; lighten the burden of those who work for you. Let the oppressed go free, and remove the chains that bind people. ⁷ Share your food with the hungry, and give shelter to the homeless. Give clothes to those who need them, and do not hide from relatives who need your help.

⁸ “Then your salvation will come like the dawn, and your wounds will quickly heal. Your godliness will lead you forward, and the glory of the Lord will protect you from behind. ⁹ Then when you call, the Lord will answer. ‘Yes, I am here,’ He will quickly reply.

“Remove the heavy yoke of oppression. Stop pointing your finger and spreading vicious rumors! ¹⁰ Feed the hungry, and help those in trouble. Then your light will shine out from the darkness, and the darkness around you will be as bright as noon. ¹¹ The Lord will guide you continually, giving you water when you are dry and restoring your strength. You will be like a well-watered garden, like an ever-flowing spring. ¹² Some of you will rebuild the deserted ruins of your cities. Then you will be known as a rebuilder of walls and a restorer of homes.

¹³ “Keep the Sabbath day holy. Don’t pursue your own interests on that day, but enjoy the Sabbath and speak of it with delight as the Lord’s holy day. Honor the Sabbath in everything you do on that day, and don’t follow your own desires or talk idly. ¹⁴ Then the Lord will be your delight. I will give you great honor and satisfy you with the inheritance I promised to your ancestor Jacob. I, the Lord, have spoken!”

Sermon

The forty days of Lent have traditionally been a season of spiritual renewal among Christians. I don’t know what it is about us human beings, but it seems that we oftentimes need a little “extra help” to get focused and motivated to draw nearer to Christ. That “extra help” sometimes takes the form of a Christian retreat or conference, and we come back home so fired up we’re ready to start making some changes! God’s “extra help” is sometimes a moving Bible study or sermon or Worship service, or even reading a book or watching a show or movie that inspires us to begin putting into practice what the Lord wants to see going on in our lives.

Too often “extra help” comes in the form of hardship or disappointment or tragedy: When fear or discomfort or heartache “wakes us up” out of our hard hearts and old ways to consider the claims of Christianity, or to commit ourselves to deeper and greater surrender and service and praise. Of course, “extra help” can simply be a special day of the year – like New Year’s and its resolutions – or a special season in our lives – like when we’ve committed to accomplish a certain goal by this age or that birthday.

Lent’s been like that for many Christians over the years: A forty-day season of “extra help”, providing Jesus’ people with a focused time frame in which to begin growing more and more like Him in different areas of their lives.

I love this passage from the prophet Isaiah because our Father makes absolutely clear that it is when we serve others for Him that He then serves us. I know that many Christians have been tempted to “coast” in our faith because Jesus has promised to “be with us always”, so we can just enjoy that, right? And because the Holy Spirit continues to show us all the different ways that God’s with us, so we don’t have to do anything, right? And yet it was to believers, to those who trusted and followed Him that Jesus said, “Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and He will give you everything you need.” (Matthew 6:33) It was to God’s people that Jeremiah said, “If you look for me wholeheartedly, you will find me.” (Jeremiah 29:13) And it was to those early Christians that the author of Hebrews wrote: “It is impossible to please God without faith. Anyone who wants to come to Him must believe that God exists and that He rewards those who sincerely seek Him.” (11:6)

The Christian life is always “onward and upward”, as C.S. Lewis described it in The Last Battle. The Christian life is always about engaging the Lord in refreshed and deeper ways. (And when I say “deeper” I’m not talking about magical or mystical ways, I’m talking about us giving Him more and more of ourselves, surrendering more and more of ourselves, taking more and more thoughts captive for Him until every thought is captive to His glory! The Christian life is about always pursuing Christ, and keeping our first love for Him supple and new and vital! At the very same time, since the Scriptures have taught us, “If someone says, ‘I love God,’ but hates a fellow believer, that person is a liar; for if we don’t love people we can see, how can we love God, Whom we cannot see?” (1 John 4:20)

Which brings us back to our morning’s reading, because the prophet asks us, “Do you want to experience and enjoy God’s blessings in your life? Do you want to be someone who’s known for bearing Christ’s light and His healing and His righteousness? Do you want to know His protection, and be certain our Father will always answer your prayers? Then you must have nothing to do with crushing or ruining others; you must have nothing to do with accusing or slandering others. You must use your money to feed the hungry and to satisfy the needs of those who are weak in the world. Only then will His light shine from you in the darkness. Only then will those dark, confusing, and crushing times in your life become as bright as though it were ‘high noon’, having clear direction and a light and joyful heart. Then the Lord will always guide you, will always satisfy your needs, and will always give you whatever strength your circumstances demand. Then your life will be abundant, lush, and productive for the Lord, and your life will be a blessing and a refreshing to others. That which has been torn down in your life will be rebuilt (even from generations ago!). If you keep the Sabbath, doing only what God wants done, delighting in it, honoring it and having others honor it, then you will find your joy in the Lord, and then you will live above the troubles going on around you, and you’ll receive the fullness of all that God has promised. The yokes, the chains, the brokenness that has enslaved you and bound you and kept you down will then be untied and broken, and on account of God’s power at work in your life, that which is enslaving and binding and keeping others down around you will then be untied and broken, as well!

…

So this Lent, put into practice in your life at least one new way of loving God more. That might include reading the Bible daily, if you are not doing so now. Begin tithing, if you’re not doing so. Strengthen your daily prayer life, or begin praying with your roommate or spouse or family. Commit to never miss Worship, if you’re not as regular as you could be. Join a Bible study or Sunday School class, if you’re not already a part of such things.

But don’t just add these things to your already busy schedule. Put God first! If you simply add Him, likely it will only be a matter of time before He just doesn’t fit anymore. No, put Him and His things first, and look at what else in your life may need to go to make room for your Maker, your Savior, the One Who is life and has life for you still that you have not yet even tasted.

“How is God calling you to love Him more?” Whatever the answer, make plans for living into that as Lent draws near. Make a list. Make a plan for “seeking the Kingdom of God and living righteously above all else.” Be ready, come Ash Wednesday. If you don’t have any ideas, ask Him in prayer. And when some random idea pops into your head, bounce it off me, one of the elders, or a trusted Christian friend, and if it’s of the Lord, trust that the Holy Spirit has answered your prayer and then live into it!

Likewise this Lent, put into practice in your life at least one new way of loving those around you more. How is God calling you to love your friends, your family members, your co-workers, your neighbors more? Is He leading you to find a prayer-partner and establishing a regular, weekly prayer time together? Is He stirring you to start inviting different friends and neighbors to Worship? You’ve got a couple weeks to be asking our Father and to better understand, that is, if you don’t already know how He’s wanting you to be about this. Then commit to begin living these ways during Lent.

One of the great things about Lent is that because it begins on a Wednesday night, you start off with three days – Thursday, Friday, Saturday – to begin your new practices, and then you get a break, since Sundays are not a part of Lent. It’s a great time to begin new things and to let go of old things! Then, after those first three days and then the Sunday break, you then have six days with the new practice or habit or commitment, and then another Sunday break. Then six more days, and then another Sunday break. And on and on across Lent. By our Father’s grace, when Lent is over and Easter Sunday arrives, we’re all ready to continue the new practices He’s begun in us all the rest of our days!

Of course, our congregational fast will be a part of what we’ll all be doing across Lent. But it is your elders hope that this fast will work together with however else the Lord is calling us to “seek Him wholeheartedly”, and that the result will be loving God more and more, with Lent’s help, and loving our neighbor’s more and more, with Lent’s help.

(And let us know if you can provide a big pot of soup for our different dinners across the Wednesday night’s of Lent. When enough people help it gets to be a lot of delicious fun!)

Over the next couple of weeks I hope different ones of you will share your lenten plans for drawing nearer to Jesus and for showing those around us Jesus’ love…