Exodus 33:12-23; 34:5-9; Psalm 103:1-14;
Luke 6: 32-36; Ephesians 4:17-24, 32; 5:1-2
Tonight, in keeping with the purpose of an Ash Wednesday theme, we come to repent of our sins and to get back on a path toward spiritual purity. This is consistent with God’s calling of us to become his representative people, showing forth his character in our daily lives and interactions.
Many people believe that the purpose of salvation is to give us a way to escape hell so that we can go to heaven, and that all we have to do to receive this salvation is to say the sinner’s prayer and profess our faith in the fact that Jesus is our only Savior, with some churches adding baptism at this point, and when we have done those things, we will be set for eternity. This cannot be true because it does not fit with God’s purpose for offering us salvation.
God’s purpose in offering salvation is that we might be restored as his royal children and obedient servants, able and willing to represent his holy character in our daily lives. It is true that, as a by-product of this restoring work of God in our lives, we will when we die enter eternal blessedness, but, let me re-emphasize, that is a by-product not the goal of God’s salvation. The goal of God’s salvation is to restore us to being able to live for the praise of the glory of God by demonstrating God’s character to people around us.
People who try to slide by with claiming salvation without surrendering control of their lives to God would not even like the new heaven and new earth where God reigns totally and eternally; they would hate it and want to escape. They might even prefer to be in the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth, but where they are free to rage against a Sovereign God who requires their submission.
Far better it is to get to know God in this life and to be pre-shaped by God’s character, to be in the process of being made fit to reign with him in eternity. It is not so bad as the slackards imagine. Indeed, the greatest secret in this world is that highest pleasure to be found is being restored, degree by degree, as children of God in God’s likeness.
All the hymns we have sung in this service are about the joy of submitting ourselves for being transformed in Christ, “changed from glory into glory,” “Take your truth, plant it deep in us; shape and fashion us in your likeness, that the light of faith may be seen today in our acts of love and our deeds of faith.” “Purify my heart, cleanse me from within and make me holy.” “Change my heart, O God, may I be like you.” “All to Jesus I surrender, Lord, I give myself to Thee; fill me with thy love and power, let thy blessing fall on me.”
The scriptures we have read are also on this theme.
Our Old Testament text: While Moses was on Mount Sinai with the Lord God, the people of Israel had seriously broken their recently formed covenant by making and worshiping the golden calf. The Lord and Moses, both angry, had negotiated what to do with “Your people,” “No, your people.” Moses agreed to lead the people only if the Lord would accompany them. He argued that, if the Lord did not go with them, they would not have the distinctive character that they needed to fulfill their end of the covenant with the Lord, for the Lord had called them to be his representative nation among all nations. Moses finally asked that the Lord reveal his glory to him so that he would better know the Lord’s character. The Lord complied, revealing his glory as resting in his character as a God who is not only holy, righteous, and just, but also merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.
Our Psalm text: Our Exodus passage is reinforced in Psalm 103 where it says that the Lord made his ways known to Moses and then gives the description that he is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. Actually, the Exodus passage has echoes not just in Psalm 103, but also throughout the Old Testament.
If we may pick one of those characteristics as dominant, as involved in all the other characteristics, it would surely be steadfast love, the Hebrew word being hesed. This is the kind of love that does for the loved ones what they cannot do for themselves so that they can remain in the divine family covenant. This is the kind of love that, in human terms, is shown by a kinsman redeemer who takes risks and makes sacrifices to maintain weaker members of the family in the family fabric. The Lord God is the very model of a kinsman redeemer, and that is the character he wants his people to demonstrate in their relationships with one another and even with peoples of other nations. It takes a lot of transformation for the people of God to show kinsman redeemer type love for the lost, the last, the lagging, and the lawless.
Remember that Moses said that the reason he needed to know God’s character was that otherwise, the people of God could not be distinctive. If we do not know who God is, we cannot be shaped in God’s image.
Our Gospel Text: Luke reports that Jesus asks us to love our enemies and to do good without expecting anything in return. He sums this up as being merciful as our heavenly Father is merciful. In other words, we are to replicate God’s own qualities in our relationships with even the difficult people in our lives. Indeed, it becomes evident that Jesus is our model, our exceedingly high standard of how to do what he asks of us.
Our Epistle Text: Paul understands that our maturation in Christlikeness is gradual, step by step, degree by degree. We do not get there all at once. We invite Jesus to rule our lives, and then we grow in our ability to follow him. But Paul expects us to be clear about the direction we are moving, that we are putting off the old self, corrupt through deceitful desires, and we are putting on the new self in which our dominant desire is to be shaped by the character of God as we know him through Jesus Christ. Our new self is created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. The characteristics of this new self sound a lot like the character of God which God revealed to Moses: mercy, grace, patience, steadfast love, and faithfulness.
Of what do we most need to repent? Sin. Sin is anything that causes us to miss the mark, to become diverted from the goal of our calling to represent the character of God that has been revealed to us in Jesus Christ. What is it that makes us less merciful, gracious, patient, steadfastly loving, and faithful than God is? It is that of which we most need to repent and to be purified.
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