Return to the LORD

Ash Wednesday

Joel 2:12-13

Dearly beloved, no matter how careful your pastor was, or how still you stood, the ashes on your forehead are smudged, smeared, filthy. Some of it usually ends up in your bangs or on your nose. And it feels uncomfortable. Good! For smudged crosses, untidy ashes, and discomfort remind you that sin is a messy business.

Remember that “you are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Genesis 3:19).

Those words were originally spoken by God Himself on the very same day our first parents fell into sin. Sin has consequences. Sin means death. But even in the midst of sin and death, God did not leave our first parents without hope, but gave them a promise: The woman’s Offspring would someday crush the serpent’s head.

While ashes are an outward reminder of your sinfulness, ultimately this Lenten season is not about ashes, but about an inward change of the heart, and the Savior who works that change in you. Listen again to the prophet Joel:

“Yet even now,” declares the LORD, “return to Me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; and rend your hearts and not your garments.” Return to the LORD, your God, for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and He relents over disaster.

When the LORD calls you to return to Him, it means that you have first left Him. The sin that separates you from God is part and parcel of your fallen nature and manifests itself in your thoughts, words, and deeds:

• the idols to which you cling;
• the foul language and gossip that come forth from your mouth;
• your failure to hold God’s Word sacred and gladly hear and learn it;
• the grudges you hold;
• the lies you tell;
• the greed and pride that fill your heart; and
• the lust and covetousness in which you delight.

Do your sins disgust you? Or do you simply shake them off, ignore them, or downplay them? Do you sweep them under the rug and reason: “Well, my sins are not as bad as so-and-so’s sins”? Know this: “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). Your sins are so serious that God sent His only-begotten Son to suffer and die for them. No wonder our gracious Lord says to you: “Return to Me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning.”

Wrapped up in those three words “return to Me” is God’s call to repentance. At its root, to “repent” means to be of a different mindset, to turn around, to have a new orientation in life.

Once you thought this way, now repent and think the opposite way.

Once you were going this way, now repent and go the opposite way.

Once you were turned inward, self-oriented, self-centered, now repent and be oriented toward Christ and your neighbor.

That’s why God calls out to you: “Return to Me.” He is calling you to turn away from yourself. To turn toward Him in faith and toward your neighbor in love.

And how is it that you turn toward God? “With all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning.” True repentance always stems from the heart, for it is “with the heart one believes and is justified” (Romans 10:10).

God wants you to return to Him “with all your heart” because, by nature, your heart is turned inward. By nature, your heart produces “evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander” (Matthew 15:19). By nature, your heart lays up for itself treasures on earth. Because such things are not compatible with faith in Christ, He calls you to deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Him (Matthew 16:24).

Use this Lenten season to examine yourself in light of the Ten Commandments, and then “rend your heart.” Come clean. Confess what is true of you. That you are a sinner. That you have not kept God’s Law. That you deserve nothing but God’s wrath and punishment.

But then, in the same breath, confess what is true of the LORD your God. That “He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and He relents over disaster.” That is what this Lenten season is all about. That “in Christ God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them” (2 Corinthians 5:19).

The beauty of the Gospel is this: God does not turn away from you, but comes to you, even in your weakness, in your sin, in your guilt and shame. He comes to you not with the pointy finger of “I told you so,” but with the precious blood of the Lamb without spot or blemish, with the baptismal flood of forgiveness that washes you clean and pure, with the true righteousness of Christ that covers up the filthy rags of your own self-righteousness.

Friends, God’s forgiveness is greater than your sin. His love is superior to your disobedience. His faithfulness is bigger and better than your unfaithfulness. Jesus Christ is proof of that. “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him” (John 3:16-17).

As is evident, your Lenten journey to the cross is not ultimately about ashes. Nor is it ultimately about charitable deeds, prayer, or fasting, as worthwhile as those practices can be. This Lenten season is about Jesus Christ—“the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). Even your sin. The ashes on your forehead in the shape of a cross point you to Christ. He alone is your salvation. He alone gives you the power to deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Him. He alone turns your heart away from yourself to Himself. And He alone lays up for you treasures in heaven as you hear and believe His precious Gospel and faithfully eat and drink His life-giving Body and Blood.

From dust you came and to dust you shall return.

That is the curse you bear because of sin. But remember, Jesus Christ is stronger than your sin. And His Easter victory is a mere 46 days away. First the cross, then the glory. First confession, then absolution. First death, then life. All so that you can faithfully exclaim: “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me” (Galatians 2:20).

God grant you a blessed Lent!

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.