Preparing for Lent 2020

Based on the message I presented to a group of 55+ men and women on February 23, 2020.

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This Wednesday is Ash Wednesday – the beginning of Lent. I hadn’t planned the last of my series of messages in Psalm 19 to dovetail with Lent, but as I prepared to present it to the 55+ community, I realized it weaves together with the season quite well. 

Lent is the season in the Christian calendar during which many followers of Christ focus their attention on how they might grow in their relationship with God. And so, we come to the last part of our series in Psalm 19, verses 12-14: 

"Who can discern his errors? Acquit me of hidden faults. Also keep back Your servant from presumptuous sins; Let them not rule over me; Then I will be blameless, and I shall be acquitted of great transgression. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, my rock and my Redeemer.” 

Hidden sins. 

My wife, Nancy, recently told me someone on one of her online accounts asked advice regarding confession of sins. He complained of his difficulty thinking of anything he needs to confess. He wanted to know how others recognize what their sins are.

His request stunned me. How does anyone have difficulty knowing their sins? But the more I thought about his question, the more I realized his question is not all that strange. I’d guess half of those we might talk to don’t think much at all about their sins; and if pressed about them, they’d shrug their shoulders and deny having more than a few things they do wrong – and that, only on occasion. 

Of course, most who dilute the seriousness of their sins have good reason to do so. If they admit they’re sinners, then it must follow that God will judge them for their sins. That realization leads down a road many are unwilling to travel.

Scripture tells us from one end of the Book to the other, no one is without sin. Solomon wrote, Who can say, “I have cleansed my heart, I am pure from my sin”? (Proverbs 20:9). Several centuries later, Jeremiah penned: “The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; Who can understand it? “I, the Lord, search the heart, I test the mind . . . (Jeremiah 17:9-10). And centuries later, still, the apostle John added: “If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us . . . “If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us.”.” (1 John 1:8, 10).

Did you ever bite into a perfectly good looking apple and discover a worm wiggling around inside? I never knew, until a few days ago, how that worm got in there. Long before the apple got into my hands, an insect laid its egg in the apple tree’s blossom. The egg hatched inside the fruit as the fruit developed and begins to bore its way out of the apple.

That’s a perfect illustration of how sin – even secret sins of which we are unaware – worms its way in the human life. It’s birthed in our hearts as life begins, and slowly works its way out as we grow older. And no wonder

David asked in this nineteenth psalm, “Who can discern his errors? Oh, Lord, acquit me (cleanse me, purge me) of hidden faults.”

The only way I know to root out my sins is to routinely ask the Lord, “What have I done or said – or what have I NOT done or NOT said today that offended you?” And Lent is a great time to start anew the HABIT of seeking the Lord, asking Him to reveal to us each day the sins we need to bring to the Cross for forgiveness.

That brings us to the next part of this psalm, beginning with verse 13: “Also keep back Your servant from presumptuous sins; Let them not rule over me; Then I will be blameless, And I shall be acquitted of great transgression. 

Here is a dictionary definition of presumption: “To believe something without clear justification; to suppose something to be true without proof; to take something or someone for granted.

A couple of years ago my wife and I attended church out of town. The Gospel reading was the story where Jesus fed the 5000. I’ve heard expositions of this passage by many pastors over the years. This time, I heard something new.

When the preacher said the apostles “stole the bread and fish from the little boy and gave them to Jesus,” I believe he was simply trying to be ‘cutesy’ to add some humor to his sermon. I thought his comment was an engaging – albeit, novel – way to introduce that story. The priest then went on to make the larger point about giving what we have to Jesus that He may multiply it. 

But my comments now are not about the priest. They’re about me. 

It was not until later did I realize what I’d done wrong as I listened to his sermon. My relationship with the absolutely holy God had unconsciously slipped into a casual relationship, one of PRESUMPTION, that took His utter and impeccable Holiness for granted.

How it could be that I did not take offense at the flippant remark about the apostles stealing the loaves and the fish. Why did my spirit not immediately take umbrage with the implicit idea that the holy apostles would steal, and that the Lord Jesus Himself would be party to it? 

Presumption. I’m reminded of Nadab and Abihu, the two sons of Aaron the High Priest. A short while after they’d had a sit-down-at-the-table meal with God on the mountain, they offered “strange fire” during their ritualistic sacrifices. And God immediately killed them. 

I believe what happened to the two young men after their sit-down-meal with God is they’d become presumptuous about their relationship with the Holy One. Their presumption led to a loss of a reverential awe of God’s holiness. (You can find their story in Exodus 24:9-10 and Leviticus 10). 

Something similar may have also happened centuries later to another the priest, whose name was Uzzah. The Holy Ark of the Covenant had been in his home for 20 years (1 Samuel 7:1-2 and 1 Chronicles 13:1-5). And because ‘familiarity’ often leads to presumption, perhaps Uzzah no longer took the holiness of God seriously – and he died as a result. You can read that story in 1 Chronicles 13:9-10 and 1 Chronicles 15:12-15.

Maybe like Nadab, Abihu, and Uzzah, I unconsciously lost my sense of God’s absolute, utter, and ineffable holiness. 

Presumption is a danger we all face because we are all human and can too easily forget whose we are, to whom we belong – and the price God paid to bring us into His family. Hear these words of Jesus in context of eating and drinking with Him during Holy Communion: 

Luke 13:24-27 “Strive to enter through the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able. Once the head of the house gets up and shuts the door, and you begin to stand outside and knock on the door, saying, ‘Lord, open up to us!’ then He will answer and say to you, ‘I do not know where you are from.’ Then you will begin to say, ‘We ate and drank in Your presence, and You taught in our streets’;  and He will say, ‘I tell you, I do not know where you are from; Depart from me, all you evildoers.”’ 

Many religious leaders and laity of Jesus’ day presumed they were children of Abraham because of their heritage, their circumcision, and adherence to the Law of Moses and their traditions. But when they came to John the Baptizer as he stood thigh-deep in the Jordan River, John told them: “You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Therefore bear fruits in keeping with repentance, and do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham for our father,’ for I say to you that from these stones God is able to raise up children to Abraham.” (Luke 3:7-9) 

Pedigree, church attendance, and even meticulous adherence to the rules of your church are simply insufficient for salvation without true faith in the Savior. That’s why presumption can so easily lead to transgression and offending our Lord. 

Yes, God is our loving Father; But He is not our ‘Buddy.’ God embraces every sinner and saint in His affectionate and powerful arms, but do not ever dare to think of Him as ‘the Man upstairs.” It is only when we put off our dangerous presumptions about our Impeccably Holy God that we will be innocent of great transgression. 

The season of Lent is a good time to refocus attention on our very human tendency toward taking our relationship with God for granted. God help us to never do so again.

Finally, let’s move to the last verse of this nineteenth psalm: “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, my rock and my Redeemer. 

Our words are important. That’s why the Lord warns us in Matthew 12: “But I tell you that every careless word that people speak, they shall give an accounting for it in the day of judgment. For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.” (Matthew 12:36-37) 

God has spoken many times in the past. But as the writer of Hebrews tells us: God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world.” (1:1-2) 

The apostle John tells us in the first verse of his gospel: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” 

In speaking of this Word, the 19th century Scottish preacher, Robert Murray McCheyne said this: “I do not stop to inquire why He is called ‘the Word.’  I would just remark that as the word of a man expresses the mind of a man, so Christ was revealed that He might express the mind of God.’ 

Our words give voice to our thoughts. Our words make audible what is in our hearts. They reveal to others who we are. As the Lord Jesus remarked: “Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.” (Matthew 12:34) 

Jesus is God’s word made flesh. He is the full and final expression of God’s thoughts. He makes audible God’s heart. He shows us everything of who God is. “He who has seen Me,” Jesus said, “has seen the Father.” (John 14:9)

So, my point: What do MY words express about my heart? What do they tell others – and God – who I am?  

And what do YOUR words express about your heart? What do they tell others – and God – about you? 

It is those questions that bring us to this last verse in psalm 19 – and what can be a good prayer for this season of Lent: “May the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, [always] be pleasing in Your sight, Oh Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.” (Psalm 19:14)

Oh, Lord, change our hearts. Please, continue, Lord, to change our hearts so that we think and speak words only that please you. That Jesus alone be glorified. Amen.