Ash Wednesday Acts of Repentance Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! In tonight’s Gospel, Jesus tells us to do things secretly. “And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” The Father will repay you (NASB). The Father will give you a return on your investment. Dear Christian friends, Jesus makes Christians and Jesus keeps Christians purely by the power of His Word. The Words of Jesus are so powerful within you that they do more than wipe away the record of your sins and instill eternal life within you. The Words of Jesus are so powerful that they make you able to do powerful things—holy things, God-pleasing things. We call these things good works. • Every Christian should think of himself or herself as an empty bucket. The Words of Jesus are water that pours into the bucket, “welling up to eternal life” (John 4:14). In the same way that ordinary water fills to the top edge of an ordinary bucket and then spills out, Jesus’ Words have likewise so totally filled you with forgiveness and life that the “water” of His Word spills out of you and onto others. This overflowing “water” from “Bucket You” and “Bucket Me” is what we call good works. • Are you NOT a deliberate doer of good works? Then perhaps you have not been listening to what your God has been saying to you all the days of your faith! Lent is a good time for you to change your mind and turn your head and give God your ear. God’s Scriptures allow us to think that there may be several different types—perhaps many different types—of good works (e.g., Matthew 25:37-40, Luke 19:8). Only two types of good works are needed for tonight: First, Jesus sometimes speaks about a type of good work that you know very well you are doing, and so also does everyone else around you. We might call this open and public good work “an act of confessing the faith.” Public worship is an example. As Jesus said in His Sermon on the Mount: “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5:16). Second, Jesus speaks about a totally different type of good work in tonight’s Gospel. Here Jesus is speaking about good works done in secret, and He gives some examples: “Do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing,” says the Lord. “Do not allow your fasting to be seen by others,” says the Lord. “Go in your room and shut the door and pray,” says the Lord. In keeping with the season of Lent—and for lack of a better name—perhaps these good works done in secret can be called “acts of repentance.” That is to say, these good-works-done-in-secret are the sorts of things you might do because your sorrow for your sin is far greater than anyone could ever know (contrition) and because words simply cannot express how deeply thankful you feel that Jesus loves and forgives you (faith). After all: • What are your offerings to the needy, other than the realization of your own neediness and thanks to God for all He has given to you? Giving is an act of repentance. My gift to the poor is not about me. My gift to the poor simply illustrates how much I need Jesus to give to me, because of my poverty of spirit (Matthew 5:3). • What is your prayer, other than begging that God would overlook your sins for the sake of Christ and deliver you from all the evil consequences you being a guilty person living in a guilty world? Prayer is an act of repentance. Prayer is not my performance. I would never even know how to pray, unless Jesus had said, “Pray like this…” (Matthew 6:9). • Fasting? Fasting is an act of repentance. Fasting is not about what I might accomplish. An empty belly merely helps me to remember that Jesus alone “fills the hungry with good things and the rich He has sent empty away” (Luke 1:53). This season of Lent will focus upon acts of repentance, that is, that particular type of good work Jesus teaches us to do in secret. We will hear the book of James during our midweek worship. (James is especially good at making people feel repentant.) Over the five weeks of Lent, the five chapters of James will point out to us five acts of repentance—that is, five good works of faith that produce wonderful fruit when they flourish in secret. James will tell us that our: • Silence is an act of repentance (Chapter 1, Lent 1); • Impartiality is an act of repentance (Chapter 2, Lent 2); • Generosity is an act of repentance (Chapter 3, Lent 3); • Trust is an act of repentance (Chapter 4, Lent 4); and • Prayer is an act of repentance (Chapter, Lent 5). During these five weeks of Lent we should also consider the possibilities of Jesus’ repeated Words in tonight’s Gospel, when He speak here about our good deeds done in secret. Three times Jesus says, “And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” Your heavenly Father will repay you (NASB). He will give you a return on your investment. What do these Words mean? • We already know what they do NOT mean. We know that our heavenly Father does not use forgiveness of sins and eternal life as a reward for our good works. Forgiveness and life are already yours on account of Jesus’ goodness and Jesus’ work, with no effort or desire on your part. • We can also be sure that our good works done in secret are not meant to make us feel all warm and tingly inside. When you do something for the sake of making yourself feel good, you commit an act of idolatry, not an act of repentance. • Nevertheless, Jesus has spoken clearly about your deeds done in secret and we ought NOT to ignore His Words. “And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” Perhaps the reward will have something to do with that precious gift of faith that Jesus has given to you. We will just have to wait and see...
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