Ash Wednesday:
“Return to the LORD: A Call to Return”[1]
February 17, 2021
Text: Joel 2:12-19
It
wouldn’t be a bad idea to read through the Book of the Prophet Joel this
week. It is only three chapters. Not only does our reading from the second chapter
of Joel serve as our text for this evening, it sets the theme for our whole
Lenten midweek series, and really for the whole concept of Lent in general. And the message is timeless: “Return to
the LORD your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and
abounding in steadfast love” (Joel 2:13; ESV). Return.
That is, repent. For disaster is
coming, and it is but a prelude to the coming Day of our Lord’s Judgment. But in returning to Him there is safety and
shelter from the coming wrath over sin.
For He has pity on His people in their distress, and grants forgiveness
and salvation to all who trust in Him.
Joel
opens his book with a vision of invading locusts, devouring everything in their
path (Joel 1). This calls to mind, of
course, the eighth plague in Egypt that led to Israel’s exodus from slavery
(Ex. 10). But it is not an otherwise
unheard-of occurrence. For example, for
the past year, places in Africa and the Middle East have been dealing with
devastating locust swarms. Asia and
Australia have likewise suffered. We
haven’t had swarms of biblical proportions for some time, now, here in North
America, but it wasn’t that long ago, in the 1930s, during the Dust Bowl, that
the high planes locust swept through large swaths of the country in great,
glinting clouds, up to 200 million locusts per square mile, that blocked out
the sun and would the clothes off a man’s body, along with every speck of
vegetation. 2020 was a difficult year,
but there were other very difficult times in history when a lot of bad things
happened all at once (dust bowl, depression, devouring locusts, war, just to
name a few).
Joel
announces the coming of such a bad time to Judah and Israel. It is impossible to say for certain whether
the prophet is speaking of a literal plague of locusts that will eat all the
vegetation, or whether the locusts symbolize invading armies of Assyrians or
Babylonians coming in to devastate the nation and drag it off to exile. Maybe both.
In any case, you know who else are described in the Bible as
locusts? The swarms of demons. St. John writes in Revelation of the devil
opening the shaft of the bottomless pit, from which come smoke and locusts on
the earth with power like scorpions, who were given to torment people. John described them like horses prepared for
battle, with human faces and women’s hair, but fangs like lions, breastplates
of iron, and tails that sting (Rev. 9:1-11).
Now that is scary, and it is meant to be. Though the comfort is that the locusts are
not allowed to actually harm those who have the seal of God on their foreheads
(v. 4). That is, the baptized believers
in Christ. And that is the point that
the Prophet Joel is making. There is
only one safe place to be when the locusts come. With the Lord. In the tender mercies of the Lord. Return to the LORD your God, to His grace and
mercy, to His patience, and to His steadfast love.
Beloved,
the locusts are swarming all around us.
We see it in this pandemic. We
see it in politics and civil unrest. And
we see it in our own lives, in our besetting sins that devour us, in our
brokenness and weakness, in our faithlessness and weariness. It is demonic chaos, and it is but a prelude
to the Day of our Lord’s Judgment, when Jesus comes again with the holy angels
to judge the nations and put an end to the chaos once and for all. You are dust, and to dust you shall return. We must know that. And there is only one place of safety in the
midst of all that now troubles us, and on the Day of wrath to come in the
end. The Lord. Return to the Lord. Turn from your sins. Repent.
Cling to our Lord’s faithfulness and mercy. Return to the LORD your God.
But
how? The Lord Himself tells us in our
text. Rend your hearts and not your
garments. This is to be a repentance
from the very core of you. Contrition,
that is, sorrow over sin. Return with
fasting and weeping and mourning. That
is, come face to face with your sin. Be
honest, and no longer live by lies.
Confess your sin. Name it before
God. Yes, even those sins, the ones you
that really trouble you, the ones you try to put out of your mind and pretend
never happened. Especially those sins. Confess them before God, and perhaps even
before your pastor in the context of private Confession. Lent is not a time for superficial
acknowledgement that you are a sinner in general, and you have your faults and
weaknesses. Repentance gets to the heart
of the matter. Apart from the Lord, you
are dead in your trespasses and sins (Eph. 2:1). The wages of sin is death (Rom. 6:23). You are really guilty. There are real sins that afflict you, and
they are killing you. And the only
answer is the grace and mercy, the patience and the steadfast love the
LORD. The only answer is Jesus.
And
that is who you receive in the Holy Absolution.
Jesus and all His gifts of forgiveness, life, and salvation. The LORD, who is gracious and merciful, slow
to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.
He shelters you from the locusts and defends you against their deadly
tails. He binds up your brokenness and
forgives you all your sins. He takes all
the sins you confess to Him away from you and covers them in His precious and
cleansing blood. He gives you His
righteousness and His resurrection life, so that on the Day of Judgment, you
will stand. You will stand before Him,
clothed in His righteousness and perfection, declared not guilty, justified. And you will live. You will live forever with Him in His
Kingdom, and reign with Him for all eternity.
There the locusts will never touch you.
Now,
repentance is not a one-time event, but it is the whole life of the Christian
this side of glory. We sin daily, and so
we return to the LORD daily and live by faith in His mercy. It is really just a daily return to Baptism,
and living daily in that new reality.
Every day, Old Adam must be drowned along with all sins and evil desires. And every day, the New Creation in us emerges
and arises to live before God in righteousness and purity. Lent helps us with that because it gathers us
as a people for that very purpose, and it focuses our mind… on our deadly
sinful condition, and on the sacrifice of Christ that is the cure for that
deadly sinful condition. With Lent, and
particularly with Ash Wednesday, we are doing as the Lord bids us through the
Prophet Joel. We are consecrating a fast
and calling a solemn assembly. Elders
and children, bridegrooms and brides, which is to say, people of all ages and
in every stage of life, gather together here in the Christian congregation, to
lament our sins and turn to Him in faith. This is the place of returning to the
Lord. Because this is where the Lord is
for us in His Means of Grace, to forgive us and enliven us. This is where the Lord sends us His promised
grain, wine, and oil: The Bread that is His Body, the Wine that is His Blood,
and the Oil of gladness, which is His Holy Spirit. The Church returns to the LORD in repentance,
and in faith, as she gathers around these things in which the LORD grants
salvation and deliverance. For here He
bestows the fruits of the sin-atoning death of our Lord Jesus Christ. God’s wrath over our sins has been poured out
on Christ. And now He shelters us under
the outstretched arms of His cross from the locusts, from the Law’s righteous
condemnation, from death itself, and from all harm and danger.
The
Prophet Joel announced the impending disaster to God’s Old Testament people,
bidding them, “Return to the LORD your God.” And so he does for us this evening. It is true, the locusts are swarming and the
chaos is all around us. But there is a
place of safety and deliverance. It is
the embrace of the LORD’s grace and mercy, His longsuffering patience and
steadfast love. And the Promise is
absolute. Even on that dreadful Day when
the sun turns to darkness and the moon to blood, the great and awesome Day of
the LORD, nevertheless, it shall come to pass, that everyone who calls on the
Name of the LORD, everyone who returns to Him and trusts in His redemption,
which is to say, Christ crucified and risen… shall be saved (Joel 2:31-32). And so you are marked this evening with the
ashes of repentance, but in the sign of the cross, the sign of your redemption,
and the seal of faith. Grant us, O Lord,
true repentance, that returning to You, we may have life and eternal
peace. In the Name of the Father, and of
the Son X, and of the Holy
Spirit. Amen.
[1] The theme and many of the ideas for
this sermon are from Eric Longman, Return to the Lord: Resources for
Lent-Easter Preaching and Worship (St. Louis: Concordia, 2020).
No comments:
Post a Comment