360: Will the Real You, Please Stand Up? | Brian Morgan | (Ash Wednesday)

Introduction

Let's pray. Father, thank you tonight. We ask that you would help us—help us to understand your scriptures tonight. Lord, we pray you would help us to enter into these forty days as we walk with you to the cross and resurrection. Holy Spirit, your job is to remind us and to teach us the teachings of Christ. So we welcome you here tonight. In Christ's name, amen.

So I was a freshman in college, and my youth group was going on a mission trip to Mexico. And I think we'll see a picture up there. If you got the picture, you can put it up there. And we were going on a mission trip to Mexico. We were gonna go across the border into Reynosa, and we were gonna help build a church, a Baptist church there. And one of the days on the mission trip, they wanted to take us out to see the shanty town outside of where we were. And on the way there, they said, one, they said, don't be knucklehead teenagers and make a lot of fuss. Just be quiet and just listen as we drive.

There were about 60 of us. We piled in these vans and we drove out there. I had never seen anything like that before. That's not an actual picture of where we were, but it's almost identical of where we were. I had never seen anything like that before. I had grown up in an upper middle class home, upper middle class school, church, all the above. And when we drove there, I was stricken to the heart. On the way back home, everybody in the van was totally silent. I had a lump in my throat I just could not get rid of.

We pulled up to the church in Reynosa, still in Mexico, that we were building, and they said, hey, we're gonna have a little bit of worship time. I was on the worship team. So, grab your guitars and we have a little bit of worship. We need dinner and we're gonna go to bed and anything and so we gathered and I can remember just like it was yesterday. We kinda gathered around the corner. We were getting our guitars out and my buddies were cutting up and inside of me, I was getting so mad, and I was so sad, and I was deeply stricken by what we had seen.

I thought, how in the world are we gonna sing these great Christian songs and sleep in our nice sleeping bags and sleep on these nice air mattresses when we just saw this? What are we supposed to do with images like that? How are we supposed to process things like that? I came home from that trip and I heard this whisper from God saying, Brian, are you gonna be the same person you were before you saw that? Brian, is your inner life gonna look different now because it is? And is your outer life gonna match what your inner life is now? Or are you gonna live with this chasm of what is going on in here and then how you live in upper class Raleigh, North Carolina.

The Purpose of Lent

How do we process it? Where do we go? What do we do with it? Well, for seventeen hundred years, the church has had a great location to do just that and it's called Lent. Lent is forty days to walk to the inner caverns of your life as you walk to the cross and resurrection of Jesus. For seventeen hundred years, the church has said, we wanna set forty days aside to take this journey into really what is going on inside of you. Alongside forty days in the community of God to walk to the cross, the bloody bloody cross of Jesus and the amazing resurrection of Jesus.

Alexander of Athanasius was the first one in March that said, hey, we need to set some time aside to really think about why Jesus died. So for seventeen hundred years, millions of people just like us have said, I wanna set aside forty days to walk to the cross. So that's what we do tonight.

Raise your hand if this is your first time coming to Ash Wednesday. It's okay. You can raise your hand. Alright. A few. Listen. We are so glad that you are here. Raise your hand if you are one to say, every year, I give up chocolate at Lent. Raise your hand. It's alright. There's some people in our church office that love chocolate. I'm one of those people. Forty days of walking to the caverns of what is going on here and forty days to the cross and resurrection.

When I got back from the trip, God was whispering, are you gonna be the same or are you gonna travel with me? What's interesting is for thousands of years, God's people have had this invitation to travel in here with God. We just finished the sermon series on Zechariah. The prophets over and over and over are saying to God's people, what is going on inside of here? And is it matching the way you're living your life? And so, it may be forty days for us. The New Testament church may have done it for seventeen hundred years, but for thousands of years, God has been calling his people to say, return to me.

So if you got a Bible, open it up. Isaiah chapter 58. There's a Bible right in front of you, it's page six seventeen. Isaiah chapter 58. And Isaiah is one of these prophets. There's so many things. There's 66 chapters in Isaiah. There's so much in there. But for sure, 58 is this calling. Is this calling of God back to his people to say, I want you to explore what's going on in here because the way you're living out there, they're not matching up.

In theory, their life looked one way, but what was going on here was radically different. And so, I think we've got a slide, a quick outline. So, the outline for verses one through 12 looks just like this. And we could spend weeks looking at chapter 58, but it goes like this. First, here's God's directions to Isaiah. Say these things. Do these things. Then there's God's correction to his people. God says these words of correction, similar to what we heard in Zechariah. Hey, people of God. Look over here. Turn over here. Then we have Israel commenting back to God.

I like that one. And then lastly, God's directions of what their blessing to the nations is to look like. Remember, God says, I'm gonna bless you and I want you to be a blessing to the nations, but the place you are in here has got you off course on your mission.

The Passage: Isaiah 58

So let's walk through the passage.

For God so loved the world... — John 3:16

God speaking to Isaiah, cry aloud, do not hold back, lift up your voice like a trumpet, declare to my people their transgression, to the house of Jacob their sins.

Then God says this about Israel. You can go to the next slide.

Yet, they will seek me daily and delight to know my ways as if they were a nation that did righteousness, did not forsake the judgment of their God. They asked me of righteous judgments. They're a delight to draw near to God.

What is God saying? He's saying they're acting all righteous on the outside, but inside is something very different.

And then verse three is their response back to God. This was God's question to me when I was coming back from that Mexico mission trip.

Brian, are your outside righteous religious things, are they gonna match up to what's going on in here?

Look at verse three. This is Israel saying to God, why have we fasted and have you not seen it? Why have we humbled ourselves and you take no knowledge of it? You hear their tone? Look at all the righteous things we've done for you, God. All the fasting and all the humbling of ourselves. Do you not see it, God?

And then God says, behold, in the day of your fast, you seek your own pleasure and oppress all your workers. He continues on in verse four.

Behold, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to hit with a wicked fist. Fasting like yours this day will not make your voice to be heard on high.

God is saying the fasting you're doing, the religious things you're doing, they're speaking of a really cheddar cheese in your soul. All over again in the Old Testament prophets, God is saying, return to me. I'm gonna give you a new heart, return to me. I wanna bless you and I want you to be a blessing for all the nations.

And they continue to fast for themselves. And then verse five, God lays out what is the fast to look like. He says, it's such the fast that I choose—a day for a person to humble himself? Is it to bow down his head like a reed and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? Is it to come back from the Mexico mission trip and say, I'm just gonna live differently this way and, you know, I'm gonna do nicer things around the house and be nice to my parents and maybe go to church a few more times.

God says, I show you because I wanna change you from the inside out. He's saying to Israel, is the fast that I choose for you, is it to spread sackcloth and ashes under you? Will you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord?

He's challenging them. He's saying, you're doing all these things outwardly and I have something more for you. Then you go into verses six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve. This is where it really changes in the passage. This is really the invitation for Lent. Our image is to give up chocolate somehow to make us holier or to give up a thing to make us draw near.

And God says, I want you to be changed in here. And when I change you in here, that will then flow out to those around you. I want you to not give up Netflix, because maybe you're watching too much. We just finished The Crown, anybody watch The Crown? The Crown's great, right? Watch The Crown. Don't give up watching The Crown as an outward action. Draw near to me, so I can change you in here, Israel, people of God, Brian Morgan coming back from Mexico. So I can change you in here that then flows out to the world and the nations around you.

So listen to the verbiage. Look at verse six.

Is not this the fast that I choose for you? He's saying to Israel. To lose the bonds of wickedness, that we would fast and draw near to God so he can loosen the bonds of wickedness. He can use us to loosen the bonds of wickedness. To undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke.

Is it not to share your bread with the hungry? To come back from a mission trip and say, mom and dad, I saw this and I am a different person. How am I supposed to live this way? Or is it to come back and just be more committed to youth group? He says, verse eight, then shall your light break forth like the dawn and your healing shall spring up speedily. Your righteousness shall go before you, the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard, then you shall call and the Lord will answer. You shall cry and he will say, here I am.

For seventeen hundred years, the church has said, what would it look like for you to set aside forty days to hear my call to come back to me? — (Paraphrased)

Tonight, we begin it with the ashes. So for those who haven't been to Ash Wednesday, we're gonna put some ashes on your forehead. It's a reminder that we are just dust. Without God, we are just dust. And one day our body will return to the ground just like dust. It's a symbol that without God, we are in deep trouble. It's an invitation to enter the next forty days as a reminder, we are desperate for you, God.

So when I got back from the mission trip, I didn't tell my parents. Obviously, I was deep in the mood. I didn't tell my parents. I didn't talk to anybody about it, but I knew there was something different in me that was gonna change the rest of my life. And so I stand here today. When I got back from that trip, I said, I cannot live my life the way I lived before. God, you have turned me upside down to want to be a blessing to the nations. You've turned me upside down as a freshman in college to say, how can I live now in a way that shares your blessing to the world out there?

And so tonight, the invitation for you and for me is the same thing, the same invitation tonight. The next forty days, God has something that he wants to stir in you, that he wants to change in you, that he is inviting you into—to change you to be more like Christ.

The Journey of Lent

So Lent is a journey. It's a journey inward to the caverns of our souls. It's a pretty scary journey sometimes, but it's also a journey upward. The graciousness and kindness of God. It's a journey of hypocrisy. God, this is really who I am if you really wanna know what's going on, and it's a journey of incredible honesty with God.

Oh, you're fine. Lord, may that phone be found. Oh, you're fine. Don't worry about it. It's a journey of disconnectedness. Are you feeling disconnected from what's going on in here? Lent is an opportunity to say, God, connect me with what is going on in here, with what you're doing in here.

Lent is a journey of giving up things. You may give some stuff up. Lent is an opportunity and an invitation to actually take things on. Have you ever read through the Bible? Why not start tonight? Have you ever sat down and, on a regular basis, prayed to God? Why not start tonight? That's what Lent is about. Stepping into the reality that God has something for you these next forty days as we journey inward and as we journey to the cross and the resurrection.

Let's pray. Lord, the proposition that there's something in us that you can make different. Sometimes we can't believe it. Sometimes we can't imagine that you can change what's in there, that we're just scared to even open up and acknowledge. And you say you want to give us a new heart.

Lord, we pray that tonight and the next forty days, as we travel with Jesus and the disciples to the cross, as we travel with Jesus and disciples to the empty tomb, we pray and we invite you. We ask you. We ask you humbly, journey with us to the depths of our inner life so you can change us. You can give us a heart that beats for you. A heart that reaches out to others. A heart that's a blessing to the nations, the way you bless us. Lord, if there's something we need to do different, something that we need to take on, something we need to give up, if there's a posture we need to take, we are open tonight, and we are open the days ahead to be and to be molded by you for that journey ahead. We pray it in Christ's name. Amen.