Ash Wednesday - Repentance

17th Feb, 2010

Written By Rev Law Hui Seng

Posted By Teresa Han

2Samuel 12:1-23
Main Idea: To cause people to repent.
Objective: To result in the congregation realizing that they will suffer the consequence of sin like King David and need to repent.

A. Introduction
- Today, on 17th February, is Ash Wednesday for churches throughout the world. Most Methodist Churches do not conduct the service but this year we do it in order to uncover its meaning. By doing so, we will not lose our rich christian heritage on Ash Wednesday.
- What is it? The first day of Lent, the Wednesday of the seventh week before Easter. The day gets its name from the ceremonial imposition of ashes on the foreheads of worshippers in the liturgy of the day. This is a rite that goes back to the 10th century. The main idea behind it is to do with repentance in view of Christ has done on the Cross.
- In the Roman rite, and in the 1985 service produced by the Liturgical Commission of the Church of England, the imposition of ashes takes place in the Holy Communion after the reading of the gospel and preaching of sermon, although the Holy Communion may not be necessary.
- The ceremony consists of a blessing or prayer over the ashes, traditionally made by burning the palms from the previous year’s Palm Sunday, followed by imposition of ashes on the forehead accompanied by a verbal formula. The formula is either a reminder of human mortality or an exhortation to be committed to the gospel or both.
- This combination of word and the symbol of the ash is a powerful spiritual reminder to get us to begin the season of Lent. What is Lent? It is for christian practice. It is an annual season of fasting and penitence in preparation for Easter, beginning with Ash Wednesday and lasting 40 weekdays to Easter. Roman Catholic Churches and Anglican Churches have been doing it all the time. For Methodist Churches, we are not consistent with it. For our GMC, in view of the Chinese New Year, we start our 40 days of fast and prayer on 22nd February until 2nd April, that includes Saturdays and Sundays.
- For us, the important thing is we catch the idea of repentance, and through fasting and praying for 40days, we focus on the need for repentance.
- To help us to reflect on the subject of repentance, I preach to you the repentance of King David.

B. The Repentance of King David.
- Here is a famous real life biblical story of a king committing the sin of adultery, breaking one of the ten commandments: Thou shall not commit adultery. I do not want to go into the details of how he did it. It was all written in Chapter 11. I just want to highlight a few points of on repentance. Notice the proses of King David’s repentance.
- Take note that he thought nobody knew his sin of adultery; he thought he could pretend to be righteous and escape from prophet Nathan’s eyes, the servant of God. Eventually, the prophet confronted him with the story of the rich man, the poor man and his ewe lamb and took him to task by proclaiming straight at his nose, “You are the man.”
- Then, prophet Nathan proclaim a series of judgement of God on him. The idea of suffering from the consequence of sin is very strong here. It is very true in the New Testament, where the Holy Spirit strike dead Ananias and Saphira for lying the Holy Spirit. Prophet Nathan now said David’s house would have to suffer from killings for he killed Uriah using the sword of Hitittes, in order to rob Uriah’s wife. There will be calamity on his family. His wives would be given to those who were close to him; God strike dead the child whom Uriah’s wife had borne to David.
- Will all these consequences as a result of the sin of adultery that King David suffered, God is still very gracious to him. In verse 13, prophet Nathan assured King David that God had forgiven his sin and he was not going to die. But take note, this is only after King David confessed and repent. He confessed in the beginning of verse 13, “I have sinned against the Lord.” He showed repentance through his fasting and prayer to God that God would spare his child.

C. Applications.
- With this, learnt drill our mind into a few ideas about repentance in this Ash Wednesday and this season of Lent.
- Firstly, notice that for repentance of a person to take place, he or she must realize that he has sin against God by breaking one of God’s law. So, you need to confess your sins.
- Secondly, there is no way you can hide from God’s wrath or punishment. No matter what you do to replace the damage, God will not buy it. His punishment will take its course naturally. God is our creator and He is all knowing, he knows when we sin against Him.
- Thirdly, we must realize that the serious consequences of sin, in the case of King David, his whole family was affected. Think of the sins of hatred, anger, bitterness, revenge, greed, pride, lust, self-centredness, drunkenness, etc that can affect your family if you commit those sins.
- Fourthly, repentance takes feelings of sorrow, remorseful (regret) and realizing you are wrong, you have broken God’s law, you have sinned against God. King David showed his sorrow through his fast and prayer.
- Fifthly, repentance requires action of reconciliation, compensation, etc. In repentance, you let go of your pride and everything, you just want to get right with God and people.

D. Conclusion
- Have we any sin to repent from in this season of Lent? May we take this year’s lent more seriously and allow God to show our unrepentant hearts in terms of wrong attitudes, thinkings, actions, beliefs etc, so that we can repent from them.