Our Father, Sermon for February 14th, 2024 Ash Wednesday

Our Father
Pastor James Huenink

Joel 2:12-19

“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.
Who knows whether he will not turn and relent,
    and leave a blessing behind him,
a grain offering and a drink offering
    for the Lord your God?

Blow the trumpet in Zion;
    consecrate a fast;
call a solemn assembly;
    gather the people.
Consecrate the congregation;
    assemble the elders;
gather the children,
    even nursing infants.
Let the bridegroom leave his room,
    and the bride her chamber.

Between the vestibule and the altar
    let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep
and say, “Spare your people, O Lord,
    and make not your heritage a reproach,
    a byword among the nations.
Why should they say among the peoples,
    ‘Where is their God?’”

Then the Lord became jealous for his land
    and had pity on his people.
The Lord answered and said to his people,
“Behold, I am sending to you
    grain, wine, and oil,
    and you will be satisfied;
and I will no more make you
    a reproach among the nations.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. Tonight, we're beginning our Lenten journey. Every Wednesday night, we'll have a worship service all the way up through holy week, when we'll have a whole bunch of extra services, in remembrance of the story of Jesus Christ and His death on the cross. And each one of those nights, we are going to explore a different piece of the Lord's Prayer called a petition. And it just so happens to work out wonderfully that if we start on Ash Wednesday with our Father, who art in heaven, well, you get all the way to men at the Easter Vigil, which works out pretty well, right? That means I get all of my sermons planned out for me in one fell swoop. But it also means that we get to explore deeply the prayer Our Lord taught us to pray and say why this prayer is? What makes this special for the life of a Christian? And why these things? And what do they mean for us. And so we'll take a look at each piece. US Luthor to guide us in our exploration, and begin to understand it. And so tonight, we are looking at the very simple phrase, Our Father, who art in heaven. Now you might think about this and say, Well, isn't this just how you start a prayer? Right? You got to say who you're praying to our father, right? Sometimes we pray or pray to Our Lord Jesus Christ. On certain days, we pray to the Holy Spirit and ask Him to come into our hearts and guide us. What's so special about our Father, who art in heaven? Luther says this. With these words, God tenderly invites us to believe that he is our True Father, and that we are His true children. So that with all boldness and competence, we may ask him as dear children ask their dear father, I think the question behind that explanation is simple. How do we know that God is our Father? How do we know that He is father and not judge? condemn her cruel tyrant, indifferent God is somebody who just doesn't care. How do we know? He is our Father? Well, the easy way is to say Jesus says so right. Because He tells us to pray this way, our father. But I think Joel helps us understand it a little bit too. Our Father points us to a God who loves his children. Even when we sin, and we go astray. We are all today wearing marks on our foreheads that remind us of the curse of sin that we we all face. The curse of sin passed down from Adam and Eve. The curse that God proclaimed when he said, from dust, you have come to dust you shall return. And Joel says, Yeah Even now declares the Lord, returned to me with all your heart with fasting with weeping with mourning, and render your hearts and not your garments, returned to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. And he relents over disaster where he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and he relents from disaster. This was a message to an Israel that was turning away from God. Basically, that's the reason God called the prophets in all of those little prophetic books. Turn Back to Me. He said, I am your father. I want to love you. I want to save you. Return to the Lord your God. He is gracious and merciful. Same message for us. When we see our own sin, because we know we do it, we see our errors or mistakes, we feel our guilt. And we know that we have a father who is merciful, that when we face our sin, we don't tear our clothes like they did in ancient Israel. Not even put ashen crosses on our foreheads. We rent our hearts, not our garments, and we turn to God and ask for mercy. And he is a father, who is gracious and merciful and slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. And he sent his son Jesus Christ to enter into death, the death, we remind ourselves with these ashen crosses, enter into death on the cross to take away your sin, so that he can be your father. He is gracious and merciful. It's the same. When we think that our Christianity becomes something that we can brag about. I think that's a thing that all of us fall into, especially when we gave up Valentine's Day dinner to come to church, right? Everybody else is at a restaurant, and here we are with ash on our foreheads. God must love us, right, we're cool. And that's sort of what Israel would think about. They're fast, and they're feast. And if they just did the right sacrifices, it didn't matter what else they did. God would think they're amazing. Jesus warns against that too, when he says to beware of practicing your righteousness in others, in order to impress them. It's always, it's always a thing that rears up in us. If we're faithful, and come to church, and volunteer. We might think, Wow, that's pretty lucky to have me, led, you know, at least deep in our hearts. And now's the time to repent of that. Return to the Lord our God, because He is gracious, and merciful. We are all sinners, all the same. Whether you're here every Sunday, or you just walked in the door. And we need a Savior, who is a father, who sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to give you grace and mercy and tell you, he is your father. He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. And he relents over disaster. We need to remind ourselves that God is our father too, when he sends disaster into our lives, as he often does been reflecting lately on what what it's like to be someone who is in their later years. We just had a funeral for Ellie day. She was 93 when she went by that time, all your friends are already gone. Right? If you've been to funeral after funeral, you've seen people around you pass away. And none of your generation are left to come when you finally can imagine how hard that is. How tough that must be. Or even when they end up seeing the next generation go before that. It's hard to think about a father who is loving when you face that, right. It's hard to think that there is a God who is gracious and merciful. But we know that he is there. And we know that he is there for us because he sent his own son Jesus, to go through it the same himself. Not to see all his friends go before him but to go first, through death into the grave and then rise from the dead. And so those people can be called behind him to rise into new life on the last day That's the kind of God our Father is

not one who will bat away every minor disaster, but takes care of the worst one. Death itself for you, and for me is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. And he even relents over the curse of death itself. Because he will raise you from the dead and give you new life. And that kind of God is the kind of God who will listen, when you pray, who commands you to turn to him and say, Father, I need because he wants to love you. He wants to give you His mercy. He wants to give you his peace. And it's always there for you to return to the Lord your God. He is gracious and merciful and slow to anger and abounding in steadfast law. In Jesus name, Amen.

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