Lent - Week 1

"Lent 1 - The Manifestation of Christ's Desire II"

Matthew 28:16-20

Lent is a time of confession and repentance. But Protestants don't always pick that up. The Church calendar was said to have been forced out because it caused a lack of focus on the Lord's Day. There was a whole argument against the Church calendar. First they would say that the Bible never spoke about holidays like Ash Wednesday so it had to go. Second, they would say it also set up competition with the Lord's Day. If every day became the Lord's Day, then no day would be holy of special. And thirdly it would violate the consciousness of Christians to have to attend church when it wasn't even necessary. Our focus must remain on the real Lord's Day and not just any random holiday on the Hallmark calendar. Lent was originally and sometimes even now a way to communicate penance and our contribution to our salvation through that. And as Christians it should not be about our work for salvation, but rather His work for us. The CRC Church has given it up for this reason, it has nothing to do with us. Yes, we are to repent and confess, but it is not those works that are what actually saves us. It is not to be focused on us. 

This time of penance and withdrawal it is to carry a weighty-ness and transcendence. It can be a connection from our past. We are to have a true view of worship. We are to have a holy view of God and His holy day. There is nothing wrong with singing psalms or hymns with any number of voices or instruments. There is nothing wrong with banners or decorations or a symbol of the cross in the church. All of these have been discouraged by some before. 

Lent is characterized by prayer and fasting, which eventually led to giving up something. The problem is not with the idea of it, but rather your purpose behind it. It cannot be a tool with which we use to climb up into the lap of God. Lent means spring and Lenten means springtime. However we can still rescue the true Lent and there are a few ways we could do that. 

We must change the focus from our work in Lent time to Christ's past work for us. *I* am giving up and *I* am repenting and on it goes. 

We can keep penance as a theme in Lent while knowing it does not earn us God's favor just by us repenting. We must be mindful that we already have His favor. Even our best repentance needs repenting over.

Another theme of Lent has been baptism. We can focus and preach on humility and the importance of Christ's baptism and how it works out within our baptism as well. 

We need to steer away from anything that would distract from our regular Lord's Day...Lent is good, but it cannot be greater than our regular Holy Day of God. 

We would take out any habit of Lent that would take away the importance of the cross and the work on the cross. We must use this time to be an emphasis on His work. No matter what, salvation must be focused on Him. 

Conclusion of last week's passage: we must disciple the structures of a people. We don't have the capacity to disciple whole nations, we usually go for an individual. God is a nationalist, He speaks about His nations of people throughout His whole Scripture. Another thing is that we shy away from dominion. Christ is the second Adam where the first Adam failed when he did not take dominion over the serpent and his wife. God made man to have dominion over His earth and man failed with that. Adam was to have dominion over the earth and animals and instead, an image of animals had dominion over him. When Christ left, He commanded us to have dominion to carry on His true dominion. As Christians, we have a fear that dominion means tyrannical and overpowering authority. When Christ came, He had dominion and He passed it off to us. We are to take it and dominate the world for Christ. 

"When error is admitted into the church, it will be found that the stages of its progress are always three. It begins by asking toleration. Its friends say to the majority: 'You need not be afraid of us, we are few and weak. Just let us alone, we shall not disturb the faith of the others. The church has her standards of doctrine, and of course we shall never interfere with them. We only ask for ourselves that we be spared from interference with our private opinions.'

Indulged in this for a time, error goes on to assert equal rights. Truth and error become two balancing forces. The church is permitted to do nothing which looks like deciding between them; that would be partiality. It is considered bigotry to assert any superior right for the truth. We are to agree to differ, and any favoring of the truth - because it is truth - is partisanship. Any points of doctrine that the friends of truth and error hold in common are considered to be "fundamental doctrines," and any points of doctrine on which they differ are effectively set aside by being labeled "non-essential doctrines." If anybody objects to such a watering-down of the truth, he is labeled a disturber of the peace of the church. At this point, truth and error have become two coordinate powers, and the goal of church officers is to be skillful in diplomatically preserving the balance between them. 

From this point, error soon goes on to its natural end, which is to assert supremacy. The adherents of truth began by tolerating errorists, and then they themselves come to be merely tolerates, but only for a time. Error henceforth claims a preference for its judgements on all disputed points. Men are placed into positions of authority, not - as at first - in spite of their departure from biblical truth, but because of it. They are rewarded for repudiating the doctrines of the faith, and are given positions from which they can teach others to repudiate them, and help make them skillful in combating them."

- Charles P. Krauth

Lutheran Minister -- 1823-1883