Embracing Lent: Strength in Our Spiritual Narrative

"Hey, well, good morning, Elmbrook Brookfield Good to be with you here this morning They let me out of Lake Country Where I've been locked up for the last eight months No, it's been great being out there And I'm just grateful to be here with you this morning And so here we are in March And it's snowing outside I have a friend who is a farmer And she says that the farmers say that there has to be three snows on a robin's tail So we've got one taken care of I guess we only have two more to go But more important than the weather or the season Is the season of the church calendar that we're in right now For those of you who may not be aware we're in this season We call Lent Which is roughly leading up to the 40 days until Easter Sunday The Resurrection Sunday And for me, it's just a time that I love Because we as American Christians We get to exercise muscles That we don't typically exercise throughout the year Things like reflection And slowing And repentance And contemplation And we get to kind of take this season To kind of pause" [00:36:14]

"Father God, here we are, and we would humbly ask that over the next several weeks as we look at these accounts of Your Son Jesus in the Gospels, that You would take these true stories and that You would remind us of Your love, of Your care, of Your forgiveness, of Your compassion, and that we would be inspired to follow Jesus more closely, that we would seek to, by Your power, to resemble Him in our thoughts and our minds and our attitudes. And we pray that You would be pleased to do this in us, Lord, collectively as an expression of the body of Christ here in Brookfield, here in Waukesha County, so that our friends and our neighbors and the community around us would know that Jesus rose from the dead and that He lives forevermore at Your right hand, and His forgiveness is available for anyone who would seek to come to Him. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen." [00:39:46]

"Each one of us, whether we recognize it or not, needs a story that helps guide our lives. Some people refer to this as a worldview or it's part and parcel of a worldview. The story or the stories that we believe about the world influences our lives and how we live. They determine decisions we make. The narratives about reality that we believe in influence the outcome of even our own story." [00:44:23]

"The writers of the book, The Drama of Scripture, Craig Bartholomew and Michael Goheen, this is a book I cannot recommend to you enough, The Narrative of the Drama of Scripture. Say this, In order to make sense of our lives, we depend on some story. Some story provides the broader framework of meaning for every part of our lives. Again, McIntyre, the guy that they're quoting, says it well. I can only answer the question, what am I to do, if I can answer the prior question, of what story do I find myself a part?" [00:44:50]

"So what story am I believing? What story do you believe and are you living out in your life? God understood this and He gave the Israelites certain instructions as they were entering the land that He had promised to them. He gives them instructions that every year during the time of first fruits, they are to take some of their first fruits and they are to go before the priest and when they go before the priest, they are supposed to recite certain things. It says this in Deuteronomy chapter 26, the priest shall take the basket from your hands and set it down in front of the altar of the Lord your God. Then you shall declare before the Lord your God, my father was a wandering Aramean and he went down into Egypt with only a few people and lived there and became a great nation, powerful and numerous. But the Egyptians mistreated us and made us suffer, subjecting us to harsh labor. Then we cried out to the Lord, the God of our ancestors, and the Lord heard our voice and saw our misery." [00:45:34]

"Jesus is about to go out into the desert where he is going to be tested by Satan. So there are huge allusions and references to the story of the people of God in this scene. And so it shouldn't be surprising to us at all that Jesus immerses himself in the story of the people of God as they're now on the back end of their 40 years in the desert. And they're now on the precipice of finally entering the land that God had promised them. And Jesus identifies with that story and he situates himself squarely in the scene of Israel about to enter the land for this period of time. And what were the people of God to do when they entered the land? The people of God, as they were on the threshold of entering the land that was being held by the enemy, was this. Deuteronomy chapter 12, it says this, destroy completely all the places on the high mountains, on the hills, and under every spreading tree where the nations you are dispossessing worship their gods. Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones, and burn their Asherah poles in the fire. Cut down the idols of their gods and wipe out their names from those places in Deuteronomy chapter 12. And so God is essentially telling the people of Israel there, he says, hey listen, take no prisoners, destroy everything. I don't want anything left over of the worship, the idolatrous worship that the people before you were doing in the land. I want you to purge the evil from the land. Jesus is now on the threshold of rooting out evil and destroying the works of the devil. 1 John chapter 3 says this, that the reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil's work. The kingdom is now going to come and is slowly but surely going to permeate the entire world much like leaven permeates a loaf of bread. And just as the people of God had to do battle with the Canaanites for decades to clear land, we have now been commissioned to do battle with evil, to rescue people out of their bondage to sin. We are on a rescue mission. We're not called to go on and smash altars or Asherah poles or anything like that. We're to go out and proclaim and demonstrate the love and the goodness of God so that people can be reconciled to him. And Jesus is immersing himself in this story. And in Deuteronomy, when Moses is retelling the law to the Israelites, just as they are on the threshold of going into the land. That's what Deuteronomy means. It is the second." [00:53:08]

"telling of the law or the repeated law. Moses is repeating to them exactly what they are to do and how they are to behave as God's chosen and set -apart people on the eve of them stepping into their destiny and taking over the land that God has promised them. And Jesus is just soaking in this story. He is just drenched in it, and now He is living it out on a visceral, existential level, and He's saying, I will not give in for even a moment." [00:55:49]

"Deuteronomy chapter 11 verses 22 to 24 says this, if you carefully observe all these commands I'm giving you to follow, to love the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to Him, and to hold fast to Him. Then the Lord will drive out all these nations before you, and you will dispossess nations larger and stronger than you. Every place where you set your foot will be yours. Your territory will extend from the desert to Lebanon, from the Euphrates to the river, to the Mediterranean Sea. And Jesus, you can just hear, He's taking all that in. And He's saying, if I can be faithful, if I can be true, if I can hold fast to love the Lord to my God and to choose Him and serve Him only, I will have the same result. The kingdom will come, and God's will will be done on planet earth. And Jesus is taking all these commands personally. He's internalizing them. It's not an overstatement to say that everything depends upon how He does in these 40 days in the desert. If He does not hold fast to love the Lord and obey Him, if He gives even an inch to the enemy, then you and I don't have a future." [00:57:20]

"Or do you understand that you have been rescued out of the dominion of darkness? Colossians 1 .13 says, you have been rescued out of the dominion of darkness, brought into the kingdom of the Son that He loves. You have been adopted into God's family. You're His beloved daughter. You're His beloved Son. And now He has empowered you by His Holy Spirit who lives inside of you. And He says, hey, listen, I have work for you to do. I have profound, cosmic, and eternal work for you to do to tell others about me. And one day I am going to come back and I'm going to set up a new heaven and new earth. And guess what? You're going to be a part of that. Do you know that that is your story? Because that story and knowing that you are a part of that story and that you fit into that story will change your life. It's so much more powerful than just a list of do's and don'ts." [00:58:50]

"God has adopted me to be his very own son, his people, Exodus chapter 19, and you're my people. And now he's given us his law to live by. He's given me his word. He's filled me with his spirit. And he has asked me to represent him, to be his priest. We're a nation of priests to display him and declare him to the nations around us. That is the story that I find myself in. And I just going to recite it to myself to remind who I am and where I am in the story. Do you know the story that you're a part of? Because the story that you're believing about yourself influences the decisions that you make in life. Not only does he understand the story that he's a part of, but he internalized the dialogue of that story. Let's just read again what Jesus says to the enemy here. It says, verse 3, the devil said to him, if you are the son of God, tell the stone to become bread, doubting God's provision. And Jesus answered him, it is written, man shall not live on bread alone. Now, we read that and we think Jesus is saying, no, I don't really need food. All I need is the Bible and I'll be fine. Okay? That's not exactly what Jesus is saying here. If you look at the context of what he's quoting from Deuteronomy chapter 8, it says this, be careful to follow every command I'm giving you today so you may live and increase and may enter and possess the land the Lord your God has promised on oath to your ancestors. Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness for those 40 years to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. He humbled you, causing you to hunger, and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God." [01:00:19]

"Jesus is reminding himself that it was God who provided the manna every day in the desert. It was God who did not allow their clothes to wear out or their feet to swell the entire time they were in the desert. God is my sustainer. God is the one who ultimately provides for me. And to circumvent that and to doubt that, the goodness and the graciousness and the power of God would be a betrayal of who he is." [01:02:20]

"And he says, not going to do it, Satan. Wouldn't be prudent. I'm not going to do it at all. And so he internalizes the dialogue of the story. Then the devil led him to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And he said to him, I will give you all their authority and splendor. It has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. If you worship me, it will all be yours. And Jesus answered, it is written, worship the Lord your God and serve Him only." [01:03:50]