Can you tell Lent is just around the corner? The lessons from Isaiah are telling us a
central truth, “your iniquities have made a separation between you and your
God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not
hear.” The Good News is that the problem
is fixable. It is also an important
thing that the Lord doesn’t just leave it at the nebulous idea of sin, He tells
exactly what sins they are committing.
Verses 9-11 graphically depict the situation of God’s people, beginning
with “we hope for light, and behold, darkness, and for brightness, but we walk
in gloom.” Today it might be preached
that if you just speak against the darkness you will find it dissipates but the
right prescription is to find the light, to leave the darkness of unrighteousness
and walk in light of the Word of God.
According to Jesus sin is a serious issue. Serious enough that the cause of sin should
be cut off. He clearly doesn’t mean this
literally but what He does mean is that we should be ruthless about sin. As Christians we know that the problem of sin
is deep down in our nature and that nature can only be dealt with by the Holy
Spirit and thereafter we have an opportunity to deal with it by disciplining
our hearts, heads and hands to the work of righteousness, cooperating with Him
as CS Lewis wrote, “Christians have often disputed as to whether what leads the
Christian home is good actions, or Faith in Christ. I have no right really to
speak on such a difficult question, but it does seem to me like asking which blade
in a pair of scissors is most necessary. A serious moral effort is the only
thing that will bring you to the point where you throw up the sponge. Faith in
Christ is the only thing to save you from despair at that point: and out of
that Faith in Him good actions must inevitably come…”
Paul reminds Timothy of a great truth, “God gave us a spirit
not of fear but of power and love and self-control.” When we are led by the Spirit and live by the
Spirit these are true. When we seek
things of the flesh we lose these things.
That the spirit is a spirit of self-control is an interesting paradox
isn’t it? We think of self-control as
something we have to exercise but Paul says it is a spiritual gift. Maybe then, we can ask Him to give us more,
make it operative in us, but we have to want it to possess it. Praying is an
active thing in this regard. Paul
commands Timothy to guard the good deposit that has been entrusted to him but
he is to do so by the power of the Holy Spirit.
If you haven’t read them, I commend both the Celebration of Discipline
by Richard Foster and the Spirit of the Disciplines by Dallas Willard. Both are excellent resources for not only
Lent but for all of life.
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