This series explores the season of Lent, beginning with Ash Wednesday and continuing through six Sundays. Through analyzing the biblical practices of lament, repentance, and anticipation, we can experience sorrow for sin and receive God’s sanctifying grace, both personally and corporately.
- Text: Psalm 139:1–24
- Topic: Lent, Lament, Personal Sin
- Big Idea of the Message: Lent is a season in which we lament our personal sin and brokenness.
- Application Point: We will not fight the feelings of guilt because of sin.
Sermon Ideas and Talking Points:
- What is Lent? Lent is a season of forty days before Easter when Christians fast, pray, and refocus their lives on God. Lent is a season that involves lament, repentance, and anticipation. Sarah Phillips writes, “Keep in mind the idea here is not to be overly scrupulous or to deceive yourself into thinking you can earn heaven through your own goodness. The goal is to honestly examine your life in light of God’s Word and to make a commitment to change in any areas you have not submitted to the Lord” (Sarah Phillips, “What Is Lent: Honoring the Sacrifice of Jesus,” Crosswalk, January 20, 2021,
https://www.crosswalk.com/faith/spiritual-life/lent-101-honoring-the-sacrifice-of- jesus-1382259.html). - What does it mean to lament? We get the idea of lament from the Hebrew word qina, which means a dirge or a song of mourning. It emphasizes feeling sorrow and wailing, many times in the form of a chant or song (Edward W. Goodrick and John R. Kohlenberger III, The Strongest NIV Exhaustive Concordance [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1999], 1483).
- Johnny Cash wrote the song “Man in Black” to describe wearing black for all the brokenness in the world. Cash describes the poverty, war, and sin that plagues every city. He ends the song by saying, “Till things are brighter, I’m the man in black.” You can see Cash perform the song here: https://youtu.be/Mw2izwNvTQE?t=317.
- “We step into this world with a cry. Although none of us remembers the moment, the first sound we uttered after leaving the warm and protected confines of our mother’s womb was a loud protest. We enter, wailing. To cry is human” (Mark Vroegop, “Dare to Hope in God: How to Lament Well,” Desiring God, April 6, 2019, https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/dare-to-hope-in-god). We lament at our own struggles and sin. We lament at the brokenness in our lives. Whether it’s our sin or personal loss, lamenting reminds us of the broken, sinful world we live in. We need to feel that grief; that is lament.
- We should lament over our sin. The idea of sin can become confusing in today’s culture. Even in the church we sometimes label certain behaviors as sinful (murder, adultery), and other things as merely flaws or personal struggles (pride, envy). However, one way to describe sin is “missing the mark” (Reinhold Niebuhr, “Sin,” in The Handbook of Christian Theology, ed. Marvin Halverson [New York: Meridian Books, 1958], 348). Think of a bullseye on a target. Your goal is to hit the bullseye when you shoot at the target. It doesn’t matter if you miss the bullseye by a yard or a millimeter; you still missed the mark. It doesn’t matter if your sin is a yard off (murder) or a millimeter (pride); you have still missed God’s bullseye of holiness.
- We want to open our lives to God’s work, just like the psalm says: “Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!” (Psalm 139:23–24). The psalmist reflects the desire for relationship and for God to know him. “Specifically, he asks God to search or scrutinize him to ascertain what is in his heart (cf. Ps 7:9[10]; Jer 11:20; 17:10), and to refine him from all impurity that his penetrating gaze discerns. The psalmist is aware of his anxious concerns (cf. Ps 94:19), his fears of crumbling under the pressure of his wicked enemies (cf. v. 19b). He does not deny or hide from the Lord his propensity to evil, realizing that he is always just one step away from falling into what is offensive … to the Lord. Therefore, he opens himself up to divine investigation of his heart and thoughts” (Daniel J. Estes, Psalms 73–150, The New American Commentary 13 [Nashville: B&H Publishing, 2019], Psalm 139, Logos). We are to invite the Holy Spirt to search us and prod us, to expose areas we must change in our lives.
- This lamenting can cause thoughts and feelings of failure. The Greek word enochos emphasizes guilt, “denoting the connection of a person either with his crime, or with the penalty or trial, or with that against whom or which he has offended” (Joseph H. Thayer, Thayer’s Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, 9th ed. [Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publisher, 2009], 217). Enochos is used in the Greek translation of the Old Testament, called the Septuagint, in Leviticus 20:9–16. The Greek word lypeō means “to affect with sadness, cause grief, or throw into sorrow” (Thayer, 383). Lypeō is used in texts like Matthew 14:9 and 2 Corinthians 2:4 for “was sorry” and “to cause you pain.”
- We want to avoid things that reveal our weakness and make us uncomfortable. When confronted with our sin, we want to say, “That isn’t the person I am,” but often it’s exactly the person we are! Being confronted with our sin is a mercy, not a cause for defensiveness. It’s God setting us free from what binds us. Sometimes he even uses unbelievers to make us aware of our sin. That isn’t persecution for our faith—it’s God calling attention to areas that need his purifying. We must allow our hearts to remain soft toward the conviction of sin, and then grieve that sin and cry out with our desperate need for God. Repentance is the beginning of change in our lives.
- Text: Habakkuk 1:1–4
- Topic: Lent, Lament, Church, Corporate Sins
- Big Idea of the Message: Lent is a season in which we lament a fallen world and the church’s own sin.
- Application Point: We will grieve together over the sin in our church and world.
Sermon Ideas and Talking Points:
- What’s wrong with the world? Poverty, war, abortion, racism, human trafficking, opioid addiction—this list can become long. We can think of countless ways that this world is fallen, broken and in need of Christ. Lent is not just about personal lament over sin and brokenness, but we also lament the sin and brokenness in the world and even in the church itself.
- The 1998 song “The Kids Aren’t Alright,” by The Offspring, describes the brokenness of one community. The lyrics describe friends who grew up to find that their naive dreams of youth were shattered by the reality of the world. Drug addiction, overdose, suicide, and the tragedy of life befell the friends, showing the struggle of living in a dark world. The songwriter describes, “Fragile lives, shattered dreams” (Dexter Holland, 1998).
- The Bible knows there is something wrong with the world. Sin has brought famine, injustice, sickness, war, evil, and all the tragedies of life. The prophet Habakkuk laments the injustice and violence he sees as the nations judge God’s people: “O LORD, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not hear? Or cry to you ‘Violence!’ and you will not save? Why do you make me see iniquity, and why do you idly look at wrong? Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise. So the law is paralyzed, and justice never goes forth. For the wicked surround the righteous; so justice goes forth perverted” (Habakkuk 1:1–4). We can relate to Habakkuk’s lament. We see the evil of the world and we cry out to God.
- Richard Patterson describes the background and lament form of Habakkuk’s complaint: “The nature of Habakkuk’s complaint can be appreciated by the four words he used to describe Judah’s social situation: violence, sin, misery, and destruction. All are strong words that contain moral and spiritual overtones. … In Habakkuk’s eyes, then, Judahite society was spiritually bankrupt and morally corrupt. Because sin abounded, injustice was the norm. … Habakkuk’s plea emphasizes his frustration and exasperation with the state of affairs at the time. The prophet’s concern was a long-standing one, so that his doubts and questioning were not those of a fault-finding, negative critic or a skeptic but rather the honest searchings of a holy prophet” (Richard D. Patterson, “Habakkuk,” in Minor Prophets: Hosea–Malachi, Cornerstone Biblical Commentary 10, ed. E. Philip W. Comfort [Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishing, 2008], Logos).
- Habakkuk was lamenting the evils found within the community of faith. What if it isn’t just the brokenness of a sinful world that we are supposed to lament over, but also the wrongs that the church itself has participated in. It is easy for
Christians to view ourselves as being in a glass house looking at an evil world, but the church has been part of tragedy in the world. Some extreme examples can be seen in Christianity’s role in genocides. Ethicists Glen Stassen and Dave Gushee describe the Bosnian conflict of the early 1900s: “This distortion of Christian faith was repeated by the Serbs at the close of the twentieth century as they rode their tanks into Kosovo, smilingly holding up three fingers as a symbol of the Trinity, on their mission to kill Muslims” (Glen H. Stassen and David P. Gushee, Kingdom Ethics: Following Jesus in Contemporary Context [Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003], 166). We can see dehumanizing language in the church still today. We demean the humanity of others, calling them names, failing to care for the common good of all in society, putting ourselves before others. Beyond the extremes of genocide and war, the church has been guilty of other sins: silence toward the poor and downtrodden, racism, failing to deal with sexual abuse in our midst, church scandals involving leadership, engaging in culture wars at the expense of our witness. All these things should cause Christians to grieve, to lament.
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Have you ever grieved over a bad situation that you created or were a part of? In his many series, like Kitchen Nightmares (developed by Daniel Kay [2007– 2014]), chef Gordon Ramsay confronts business owners who are struggling. Most of the time, Ramsay must reveal that they are the problem and need to change. For many people, such a confrontation is difficult to come to grips with. But they need to grieve over how bad their situation is. It is only from confronting this truth that something positive can take place.
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We as the church must confront sin and brokenness, in the world but first in our churches. “Corporate confession is what happens when a specific community comes together to confess before God a collective sin. … In corporate confession, an individual leads the community in publicly confessing sins common to that community. Corporate confession is not commanded in the Bible, but it is modeled as an appropriate means of communal repentance and humility before God” (“Is Corporate Confession of Sin Biblical?,” Got Questions, https://www.gotquestions.org/corporate-confession-of-sin.html). Personal lament can be difficult for us to face, and corporate lament and confession can be just as hard. But when we face sin together, we can repent together.
- Text: Psalm 32:1–5
- Topic: Lent, Repentance, Personal Sin
- Big Idea of the Message: Lamenting personal sin brings about repentance, a turning from the path we were on and turning toward God.
- Application Point: We will repent of personal sins and follow a different path.
Sermon Ideas and Talking Points:
- Have you ever found yourself going the wrong direction on a one-way street? You start looking for an exit or side road so you can turn around. People honk their horns at you, and you begin to get flustered. Once you are safely on the right path again you are relieved. When God shows us our sin, it can be disconcerting in a similar way. But if we ignore the “Wrong Way” signs and keep going the same way, we put ourselves and those around us in ever-increasing danger. Being shown our sin is a mercy, and repentance is an opportunity to turn around and go the right way again.
- What does it mean to repent? When I have guilt, I feel bad about a wrong that I am a part of. There must be more to repentance than just the “bad feeling.” Keri Kent writes about “the word metanoeo, which means literally to perceive afterwards. Meta means after, but implies in that meaning to change; noeo means to perceive. So metanoeo is to change our perception. It happens when we are perhaps confronted—by a person or our conscience or the Holy Spirit— and think again about what we have done. We feel regret, but we don’t stop there. We seek forgiveness, but also, we change our actions. We decide to go a new way. We make it right. To repent is not just to feel guilty over our mistakes, but to choose a new path. It is to make a 180-degree turn, to turn around and walk in a new direction” (Keri Wyatt Kent, Deeper into the Word: New Testament [Minneapolis: Bethany House, 2011], 165).
- Personal repentance is painful. One example can be found in Psalm 51, written by David after his sexual abuse of Bathsheba and murder of her husband. In another of his psalms, he writes of lament and repentance: “I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the LORD,’ and you forgave the iniquity of my sin” (Psalm 32:5). Verses 3–5 describe the painful process that it took for David, the author of this psalm, to finally come to a place of repentance. He ignored his sin until God’s “hand was heavy” on him, increasing his discomfort until finally he acknowledged his sin and repented (vv. 4–5). As soon as David confessed, God forgave (v. 5). Sometimes the pain of God’s silence is a direct result of our stubborn unwillingness to repent. But we can find comfort in knowing that as soon as we humble ourselves and confess, God is faithful to forgive us.
- The discomfort of David’s sin wasn’t an abstract spiritual experience, but something that manifested itself emotionally and physically, Mark Futato writes that David “tried to deal with his sin by denying its presence in his life. While this may have seemed to be the easy way, it turned out to be the hard way. The results of denial were disastrous. David became ill: His bones were in agony, he groaned all day long, and his vitality was reduced to nothing” (Mark D. Futato, “Psalms,” in The Book of Psalms & The Book of Proverbs, Cornerstone Biblical Commentary 7, ed. Philip W. Comfort [Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishing, 2009], Logos). This psychosomatic and spiritual struggle was an example of God allowing the consequences of sin to manifest themselves. Derek Kidner writes, “The book of Job is a strong reminder that not all suffering is the result of sin, nor does sin necessarily lead immediately to suffering. However, that does not mean that sin never leads to suffering, and in the case of the psalmist it apparently did. He is aware that his suffering had a divine origin” (Derek Kidner, Psalms 1–72: An Introduction and Commentary, Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries 15 [Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2008], Logos). David’s repentance brought not only spiritual healing but also relief for his whole being.
- “Wait, listen! I know you’ll never forgive me. And I don’t blame you. I wouldn’t forgive me either,” said the emotional and apologetic character Judy Hopps after she let down and betrayed her friend Nick in the 2016 animated film Zootopia (directed by Byron Howard and Rich Moore [Walt Disney Pictures, 2016]). She realized she was wrong and needed Nick’s help to solve a murder mystery. Judy didn’t know if she was too far gone, she didn’t know if Nick would forgive her, and she didn’t think she could even forgive herself. But Nick forgives her, and they solve the mystery. Our sorrow can make us feel as if we are too far gone, and it’s too late to apologize. However, with God it is never too late to confess and turn in a new direction.
- When we sin, that guilty feeling is from our conscience, and the work of the Holy Spirit takes that “feeling” and brings conviction. One of the jobs of the Holy Spirit is to bring conviction of sin. Jesus said, “And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment” (John 16:8). That feeling of guilt, the conviction when we have done wrong, is an invitation to repentance.
- Text: Revelation 2:1–17
- Topic: Lent, Repentance, Church, Corporate Sin
- Big Idea of the Message: The church must lament its sins and ask for forgiveness from God and the world around us.
- Application Point: We will apologize for the church’s sins to a world that looks to us.
- Sermon Ideas and Talking Points
- Sometimes we start out on the right path but lose our way. For instance, business or a church grows from its humble beginnings but loses the heart and passion it originally had. In the movie Kicking and Screaming (directed by Jesse Dylan [Universal Pictures, 2005]), Phil loses himself in becoming a kids’ soccer coach, and his behavior hurts the team and his son. Instead of being a coach who can have fun, winning becomes everything, and he changes for the worse. He eventually realizes the error of his ways and apologizes to his son and the team. He follows this with concrete change.
- The book of Revelation describes letters that Christ gives to seven churches (Revelation 2:1–3:22). In almost every case, the churches themselves are called to repentance. The church in Ephesus was hardworking, morally pure, and doctrinally sound (vv. 2–3). But Jesus called them to repent because they’d lost their way. Jesus tells the Ephesian church, “You have abandoned the love you had at first” (v. 4). Alan Johnson notes that some commentators think this love refers to the love of believers for one another, and some believe it refers to the church’s love for Jesus. Johnson says, “Neither view necessarily eliminates the other. Loving devotion to Christ can be lost in the midst of active service, and certainly no amount of orthodoxy can be a substitute for a failure to love one another. ‘First’ … love suggests that they still loved, but with a quality and intensity unlike that of their initial love” (Alan F. Johnson, “Revelation,” in Expositor’s Bible Commentary, vol. 2, New Testament, abridged ed. [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994], 1141).
- Does the church need to repent today? Jesus’s call to the church at Ephesus shows us that just as individuals can go in the wrong direction, churches can do the same. To the church at Ephesus, Jesus says, “Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first” (Revelation 2:5). To the church at Pergamum he says, “Therefore repent. If not, I will come to you soon and war against them with the sword of my mouth. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches” (vv. 16–17). In the letters to the churches, Christ called his church to repent of pride, sexual immorality, lust for power, and a dead orthodoxy.
- Jim Wallis describes the importance of repentance during Lent: “The ‘R’ word that is most characteristic of Lent is ‘repentance.’” But, he continues, reflecting on the modern American context, “I am reminded of how difficult confession, humility, and repentance are in our culture. Humility is something Americans are not particularly good at. Neither are we strong in the areas of self-examination, deep reflection, and repenting for things we have done wrong and then no longer
doing them. We tend to believe if people are poor, there really must be something more wrong with them than with those of us who are not. Many white people suspect that if black young men are having trouble with police, it must be because of the things that they are doing more than any problems with the systems we perpetuate” (Jim Wallis, “Taking Lent to Repent,” Huffpost, February 20, 2015, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/taking-lent-to-repent_b_6720982?).
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As a church, we are given the choice to repent. In darkness we have choices and responsibilities. In J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, Gandalf reminds Frodo that in dark times everyone has a choice. When Frodo says, “I wish it need not have happened in my time,” Gandalf replies, “So do I … and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us” (J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings [New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004], 51).When we see a dark and broken world, it should drive us to figure out what we can do to help.
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When a church repents, what does that look like? Perhaps seeing the needs in our community that we have been blinded to. Or acknowledging ways that we have contributed to sin and injustice in our world. Maybe the church can be less concerned with being popular or successful and instead open her doors to the least of these. Or the church can apologize to the world when she has committed atrocities—like when the Pope apologized for the church’s role in the Rwandan genocide. As Pope Francis stated, “This humble recognition of the failings of that period, which, unfortunately, disfigured the face of the church, may contribute to a ‘purification of memory’ and promote ‘renewed trust’” (“Pope Apologises for Church’s Role in Rwandan Genocide,” Al Jazeera, March 20, 2017, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/3/20/pope-apologises-for-churchs-role-in- rwanda-genocide). There is power in joining together and humbly admitting our sin.
- Text: Philippians 1:3–7
- Topic: Lent, Sanctification, Anticipate God
- Big Idea of the Message: Lament and repentance bring an anticipation for God’s work of grace and holiness to begin in our lives.
- Application Point: We will anticipate and experience God’s sanctifying work during Lent.
Sermon Ideas and Talking Points:
- Lent is a time to reflect on our brokenness and sin. We lament and repent of both personal and corporate sins. We can anticipate not only the sorrow but the experience of forgiveness and our dependence on God. We can anticipate Christ’s saving work and new life in him. Sarah Phillips writes, “Lent is a time to open the doors of our hearts a little wider and understand our Lord a little deeper, so that when Good Friday and eventually Easter comes, it is not just another day at church but an opportunity to receive the overflowing of graces God has to offer” (Sarah Phillips, “What Is Lent: Honoring the Sacrifice of Jesus,” Crosswalk, January 20, 2021, https://www.crosswalk.com/faith/spiritual-life/lent-101- honoring-the-sacrifice-of-jesus-1382259.html).
- Gender reveals can be tremendous times of anticipation. Is it a girl or a boy? But what if there is a mess-up, and the parents are left waiting? That happened to this family, when instead of pink or blue balloons, their reveal box had a bouquet of rainbow balloons: https://www.insideedition.com/headlines/19766-gender- reveal-party-goes-hilariously-wrong-as-box-contains-medley-of-rainbow-balloons.
- Unlike flubbed gender-reveal parties (and the many other disappointments of our lives), we can anticipate actually experiencing God this season of Lent. From our lament and repentance, we can experience God’s grace, mercy, power, love, and forgiveness. What is the forgiveness that we can experience this Lenten season? Is it just God saying, “No big deal”? Forgiveness “is the act by which God brings sinful man into right relationship to Himself. It is an act of grace, that is, of underserved favor, on the basis of the work of God in Jesus Christ, and is offered to the repentant sinner who trusts God’s word of promise” (Warren A. Quanbeck, “Forgiveness,” in The Handbook of Christian Theology, ed. Marvin Halverson [New York: Meridian Books, 1958], 137).
- Lent is a time of sanctification. As we fast and pray, we open our lives to the Holy Spirit to do a work of holy change in our lives. As we grow in our life in Christ, we will see the qualities that represent a godly life—qualities like virtue, self-control, knowledge, kindness, and love (2 Peter 1:5–8). “If you sense these qualities lacking, do not simply try to replicate them in your life to bolster your assurance, but instead repent of their lack in your life and ask the Lord to give you growth in these areas” (Wayne Grudem and Elliot Grudem, Christian Beliefs: Twenty Basics Every Christian Should Know [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005], 106).
- God is doing a work in our lives. Paul begins his letter to the Philippian church by saying, “I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy, because of your partnership in the
gospel from the first day until now. And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:3–6). The Philippians had been partners with Paul and his ministry for a significant period of time. Here Paul is remembering their help and giving thanks to God for them. They had shared with Paul to meet physical needs he had when he was imprisoned (4:15–16). Even while being persecuted, they boldly proclaimed the gospel and contended for the faith (Philippians 1:27–30). Paul’s encouragement of God finishing a good work revealed the larger work of grace that God was doing in the lives of his people, “This expression— completing what one has begun—is a major theme in this epistle. On the one hand, God is responsible for completing in the believers what he began, for it is his goal to conform every believer to the image of his Son, Jesus Christ. On the other hand, it is the believer’s responsibility to cooperate with God so that this work can be made complete” (Philip W. Comfort, “Philippians,” in Ephesians– Philemon, Cornerstone Biblical Commentary 16, ed. Philip W. Comfort [Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishing, 2008], Logos).
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You can have chocolate in milk and yet not have a glass of chocolate milk. Let’s compare a glass of milk to a person and the chocolate to the Spirit given to that person when they receive Christ as their Savior. If you pour the chocolate in the milk and let it set, the chocolate stays on the bottom. A person is given the indwelling of the Spirit when they put their faith in Christ, and they are justified before God. Now take that same milk with the chocolate at the bottom and stir it. The milk and chocolate blend together and you have chocolate milk that tastes delicious. The stirring is the believer allowing the Holy Spirit to change and transform the soul. These forty days can become the stirring of our lives for the holy work of God.
- Text: Matthew 6:9–13
- Topic: Lent, Church, Anticipate God, Kingdom of God
- Big Idea of the Message: The church can be a community of people where the kingdom of God is reflected in the world.
- Application Point: We will experience and live out God’s sanctifying work as a corporate church body.
Sermon Ideas and Talking Points:
- One of the struggles in anticipation is that it involves waiting, and waiting can make us impatient. Especially in our spiritual walk, we can be impatient when we aren’t seeing the results in our growth in sanctification that we’d like, or when we are waiting on God to answer a prayer. Corporately, we can struggle to be a holy church that reflects God’s kingdom while awaiting our coming King. But when we wait and anticipate what God is going to do, we don’t need to be impatient. In the movie, Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium, the characters Molly Mahoney and Mr. Magorium are in a clock store. They have wound all the clocks to strike at the same time and need to wait thirty-seven seconds before the store is filled with the sounds of chiming. Molly says, “Now we wait.” But Mr. Magorium corrects her: “No! We breathe, we pulse, we regenerate. Our hearts beat, our minds create, our souls ingest. Thirty-seven seconds well used is a lifetime” (directed by Zach Helm [Twentieth Century Fox, 2007]).
- It’s easy to talk about experiencing God individually, but what about corporately? Experiencing God corporately is very important. We can experience new vision for the church. God can show us how we can bring the kingdom of God to our community. We can be a place that cultivates the fruit of the Spirit, where we don’t just preach about love, joy, peace, patience, and kindness, but where people experience these virtues in real relationships. The church can be a community of people where the kingdom of God is reflected in the world.
- Just as believers know that they are not saved by doing works on their own, nor sanctified by trying to make themselves holy, they must also realize that bringing God’s kingdom and reflecting their King comes only by the power of God and the transformation of the Holy Spirit. Our prayer is to say, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). This prayer is sandwiched in among the ethical teachings of Jesus. We reflect the kingdom of God through living the teachings of Jesus. We as a church will pray and anticipate God giving us vision and showing us how to be kingdom-bearers in our community.
- The Lord’s Prayer is included in the teaching of Jesus at the Sermon on the Mount. In this sermon Jesus teaches on forgiveness, money, peacemaking, and how to live as his disciples. According to Craig Keener, the Lord’s Prayer is an adaptation of a synagogue prayer called the Kaddish: “Although Jesus’ ministry sets the elements of the prayer in a new context—the future kingdom is present in a hidden way in the future King, Jesus of Nazareth.” While we might see God’s kingdom expressed only briefly in the prayer, the concept of the kingdom of God and living as a kingdom citizen is found throughout the Sermon on the Mount. Keener continues, “The hallowing of God’s name, the consummation of his reign and the doing of his will are all versions of the same end-time promise: everything will be set right someday. No more crime, no more discrimination and hatred, no more sickness or grief. Of course that day will bring an end to those not doing God’s will, so his mercy has delayed it for their sake (2 Pet 3:9, 15).
But we who long for God’s will on earth in the future ought to live consistently with our longing in the present, working for God’s righteousness and seeking his will here” (Craig S. Keener, Matthew, IVP New Testament Commentary Series [Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 1997], Logos).
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Close your eyes. What does the ideal church look like? How does it reflect the church we see in the New Testament? The church can sometimes seem like a cloudy mirror that doesn’t reflect the true image that Christ intended. But perhaps like a mirror, the church can be cleaned in order to better reflect God’s community to the world.
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We are people of the kingdom of God, and that has given us some responsibilities toward God’s mission in the world. N. T. Wright proclaims that “God builds God’s kingdom. But God ordered his world in such a way that his own work within that world takes place not least through one of his creatures in particular, namely, the human being made in God’s image. God intends his wise, creative, loving presence and power to be reflected—imaged, if you like—into his world through his human creatures” (N. T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church [New York: Harper Collins, 2008], 207).
- The church can anticipate experiencing growth and change through the power of God’s Spirit. Through the power of God, we can become the people of God that a fallen and broken world desperately needs.