Luke
23: 26-31
6th
Midweek Lenten service
April 1,
2009
Luke 23:26-31 (New International Version)
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FATHER,
FORGIVE US FOR MISPLACED SORROW!
Finally! After all the false accusations, the mock
trials, the spitting, and hitting, beating, and flogging, and mockery...finally
we hear about some people who showed Jesus a little compassion. As Jesus was struggling to carry the cross to
the place of execution, a group of women stood along the way and were crying
out in anguish about the suffering Jesus had endured. Their sorrow for him was sweet and admirable.
The angels themselves may well have been weeping on that day. Yet it was this
very man for whom they were lamenting with such heartrending sobs who told them
that they were crying for the wrong reasons. Their sympathy for Jesus was
heartfelt and genuine, to be sure. But there were other tears to be shed, tears
that these good women had no idea they should have been shedding. And it can
happen that we too sometimes might cry the wrong tears. It is then that we must
take to heart what our Savior said to the women of Jerusalem. It is then that
we must pray: Forgive Our Misplaced Sorrow!
The women truly felt sorry for Jesus as
he struggled under the weight of the cross. And this wasn't just a sudden jolt
of pity as you might feel as you pass the scene of an accident. Our text tells us that they mourned and
cried, making those gestures of woe with which the people of the East display
their sorrow: beating their breasts and throwing their hands up in
despair. Yet Jesus told them that the
sorrow God truly looked for was something different. “Do not weep for me; weep
for yourselves,”
Why
would Jesus tell them that? He was making it plain that he didn’t want their
tears of sympathy, but their tears of repentance. Why? Jesus foresaw the
destruction to come upon the city that rejected its God. “The time will come
when you will say, ‘Blessed are the barren women, the wombs that never bore and
the breasts that never nursed!’ Then they will say to the mountains, 'Fall on
us!' and to the hills, 'Cover us!'” For if men do these things when the tree is
green, what will happen when it is dry?”
What
did Jesus mean by that? Jesus himself was the green tree, the very picture of
spiritual health and vigor, the one man in whom the Lord God was well pleased.
And Israel was the dry tree, lifeless now in her spirit. If Christ, the perfect
one, had to suffer as he suffered in this dark world, what might the sinful
people of Jerusalem expect? The sin of rejecting their Messiah would have
horrible earthly consequences. On a day not 40 years in the future, the legions
of the great general Titus would sack the city and burn the temple to the
ground. An eyewitness account of that siege and its ending reads like a horror
story. During the siege mothers who were starving, ate their own children. How much happier the people of Jerusalem
would have been to be swallowed up by the hills!
Yet
even worse would be the eternal consequences to be suffered by the nation that
had rejected their Messiah. They had had every opportunity to repent and
believe in Christ who had walked among them for three years, preaching and
teaching and performing signs and wonders. Yet they had refused to do so and in
the end had screamed for his blood. On the Day of Judgment, when, as Scripture
says, “they must look upon him whom they pierced as he comes in the clouds of
heaven,” what excuse can they offer? How can they escape the eternal flames and
torments and regrets of hell? The only
way to escape was through Godly repentance!
Those are the kinds of tears Jesus wants!
That’s why it’s important to make sure that
our sorrow is not misplaced. What I mean
by that is this, last week when I talked about the mockery and beating Jesus suffered
at the hands of the Roman soldiers, I got emotionally choked up. Maybe you did too! How can we not be moved to
sympathy when we hear about what Jesus went through? But if that’s all the tears we cry, tears of
sympathy, then we are in danger. Then our sorrow is misplaced. Then we need to
hear the words of Jesus, “Don’t cry for me, cry for yourself.” In other words, what Jesus wants from us too
are tears of Godly repentance.
What
is Godly repentance and how does one get it?
Recall that Godly repentance involves three things: 1) Godly sorrow over
our sin; 2) Godly trust in the Father’s promise to forgive our sin through what
Jesus suffered; and 3) Godly desire to put away sin.
Now
when we talk about repentance, we need to know that that is something we can’t
do, in and of our selves. It’s called
“Godly” repentance for a reason. Only God can work true repentance in our
hearts and lives. How does God do
that? He does it through the power of
his Word. Take for example Godly sorrow over sin. How does God work that in our hearts? When we look at what God recorded in the
Bible about Jesus’ suffering and death he wants us to know that Jesus didn’t
just suffer at the hands of those evil men who tortured him, he suffered those
things because by nature we are evil and have done evil things too. As we look at our Savior’s death, God wants
us to know that Jesus wasn’t falsely condemned and cruelly crucified just by those
sinful men who tried him and nailed him to the tree. He died because of our sinful hands
too! When we hear Jesus cried out on the
cross, “My God, my God why have you forsaken me,” God wants us to know that Jesus
tasted hell itself because we have forsaken the ways of our heavenly Father.
Only when we come to the realization that we are guilty of what Jesus suffered,
will we then know the sorrow God wants.
Only then, can we beat our breast with the tax collector in the temple
and plead, “God be merciful to me a sinner.”
Godly sorrow is being sorry that we get caught doing something wrong,
but sorry that Jesus was willing to be caught for us and to suffer what we
deserved!
But
as we look at what Jesus suffered God doesn’t want us just to have sorrow, but
also to have hope and comfort. God wants us to know that he loved us so much
that he made Jesus suffer what we should have, and on the basis of what Jesus
did God has promised that our sins are completely gone from God’s record
book. In Christ God remembers them no
more. Do you believe that? If you do, then know that God has worked in
your heart the kind of faith that saves and is part of Godly repentance too.
That good news has the power to work tears too, not of sorrow but of joy.
That
good news also has the power to produce the final part of God’s
repentance--good works. You see, saving
faith, after all, is not just some lump inside our hearts but a living and
active power in our lives. It will shine in our lives as surely as the sun must
shine in the clear blue sky. In the words of Scripture, through faith in Jesus
we have become new creatures, created by God to do good works in accordance
with his law. These good works are the evidence that our sorrow has indeed been
a Godly and God-pleasing repentance, a confession of sins coupled with faith in
the forgiveness purchased by Christ.
“Do
not weep for me,” Christ told the women of Jerusalem, “Weep for yourselves.”
Let’s conclude this sermon and our midweek Lenten services for this year with
this question: “Why did we have these services?” Did we have them simply to hear what Jesus
suffered, feel badly again until Lent comes next year, and then just go home
and go on with life as though nothing has changed? Is that what Lent is all about, just to have
an emotional catharsis so that we can feel good about ourselves? God forgive us if that has been the reason
and purpose of our tears this Lenten season!
Our purpose for these Lenten services is God’s purpose--through the Law
to convict us of our sin and through the gospel, comfort us with forgiveness
and to change our sinful ways. Let this
be our prayer then as we conclude another year of Lenten services: “Lord, let this holy season of Lent bring the
right kind of tears to our eyes, the tears that lead to eternal life in your
Son. Amen.”