Written In Stone
On Wednesday Lent began and we have embarked on a journey that will take us to Holy Week, to Good Friday and the Cross, and then on to Easter Sunday and the empty grave. Our series for this Lent is Journey to the Cross, a Journey of Stones. We will look at passages that talk about stones and stones will be our visual reminder and application of the messages as we journey to the cross. Today we focus on why Lent is so important in our Christian calendar and life.
Have you made a promise, and then gone back on your word? How do you think that person felt when you broke that promise? Has someone made a promise to you and then broke that promise? How did you feel?
A promise is an agreement, a covenant between two parties. I am not talking about minor agreements like “I promise to wash the dishes,” or “I promise to take out the garbage,” although even such minor promises hurt when they are broken. I am talking about the agreements that have significant and far-reaching consequences for our lives. Promises that, if we break them, turn our world upside down. It brings about hurt, pain, anger, suffering, disappointment. The marriage covenant between a couple is an example of such an agreement where life-changing promises are made. We all know what happens when that covenant is broken. When a promise is made, it is like a beautiful statue carved in stone. But when the promise is broken, the statue is thrown to the ground, and the pieces lie shattered on the floor.
1. God’s Covenant Written in Stone
God made a covenant with His people, with you and me, and His covenant is written in stone. The story of God’s covenant with us goes back a long, long time. God established His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. When Israel ended up in slavery in Egypt, it seemed as if God has forgotten his promises. But He is faithful. He freed them from slavery and brought them out of Egypt. They were on their journey to the promised land. God brought them to Mount Sinai and there established his covenant with them. He offered to be in a special relationship with them. They will be His chosen people. He said, “You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Ex 19:4-6).
When Moses presented God’s offer to the people of Israel, they responded with one voice, “Everything the Lord has said we will do” (Ex 24:3). They were excited and immediately agreed to obey God’s commands. They shouted, “We will do it.”
Then the Lord said to Moses, “Come up to me on the mountain and stay here, and I will give you the tablets of stone with the law and commandments I have written for their instruction” (Ex 24:12). So Moses went back up the mountain, and he stayed there for forty days and forty nights (Ex 24:18). It was contract time, time to seal the deal. God’s expectations would be written in stone — “When the Lord finished speaking to Moses on Mount Sinai, he gave him the two tablets of the covenant law, the tablets of stone inscribed by the finger of God” (Ex 31:18). God’s covenant is written in stone. God intended His Ten Commandments to be permanent — a covenant that would last forever. With His own hands, God cut the tablets. With His own fingers, He engraved the words. God’s love for his people, for us, was written in stone.
But it took forty days. Israel grew impatient and became restless. When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, “Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.” Oh, how quickly and easily do we become impatient and restless with God, and then take things into our own hands?
Aaron answered them, “Take off the gold earrings that your wives, your sons and your daughters are wearing, and bring them to me.” So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron. He took what they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool. Then they said, “These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.” When Aaron saw this, he built an altar in front of the calf and announced, “Tomorrow there will be a festival to the Lord.” So the next day the people rose early and sacrificed burnt offerings and presented fellowship offerings. Afterward they sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry.
Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go down, because your people, whom you brought up out of Egypt, have become corrupt. They have been quick to turn away from what I commanded them and have made themselves an idol cast in the shape of a calf. They have bowed down to it and sacrificed to it and have said, ‘These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.’ “I have seen these people,” the Lord said to Moses, “and they are a stiff-necked people. Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation.”
Moses interceded for the people with God asking Him to turn his anger away and to remember his promises. The Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster He had threatened. And so Moses “went down the mountain with the two tablets of the covenant law in his hands. They were inscribed on both sides, front and back. The tablets were the work of God; the writing was the writing of God, engraved on the tablets” (Ex 32:11-16).
Down in the camp the party was in full swing. The people were singing, dancing, and drinking around the golden calf. Moses saw this and was furious. In anger, he threw down the tablets of God and they shattered into a thousand pieces. The promise was broken. The covenant was broken. It was not Moses who shattered the covenant. The people did it. It was their own sinful, selfish lives and the breaking of the promise which they had made to God that shattered the stones. Now, it is easy for us today, to judge Israel and point fingers at them. How could they be so foolish? What were they thinking? How could they so blatantly and so intentionally break God’s laws?
2. We Shatter the Stones
But when we are honest with ourselves, we realize that we break God’s laws all the time. Every day we shatter the stones just like Israel. The Ten Commandments were not only for Israel. They were written in stone. God’s laws are timeless. They do not change. They are God’s expectations for how his people should live — holy, as He is holy. Jesus said that He did not come to abolish the Law but to fulfill it. On the cross, through his suffering and with his broken body and spilled blood, He established the new covenant. The new covenant fulfills the old covenant. On the cross, Jesus made the ultimate, final sacrifice to make us righteous and holy. And now He calls us to live as God’s people — “… whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. … Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven” (Mt 5:19; 7:21).
But, sadly and so often we choose to disobey, to violate, to ignore, or to rewrite God’s laws to fit our own circumstances. God tells us that He alone is and wants to be our God. But who or what is really at the center of our lives, controlling our lives? When something else than God is at the center of our lives, then we have broken what was written in stone.
God tells us to honor our father and mother, and many times we do. But there are times we fail. “If my old man knows what I am doing now.” “My mom thinks I’m at the library studying. Well, what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.” And again, we have broken what was written in stone.
God tells us that we should not lie. But then we do lie at times and we have all kinds of excuses to justify our lies. Whenever we lie, whenever we fail to tell the truth or fail to uphold the truth, we have broken that which was written in stone. We are told by God that we should not steal but then even Christians fudge their income taxes, conclude shady, dishonest business deals, and think nothing of it. “No blood, no foul,” they say. And again we have broken what was written in stone.
God tells us that we should not commit adultery, but these days many Christian couples are sexually active before their wedding day. Internet pornography has become an addiction and epidemic among Christians. Jesus said, “Anyone who looks at a person with lust in his heart has already committed adultery.” It is written in stone but apparently it just doesn’t matter.
God tells us that we should not kill, but then we take life away when we are angry with someone, when we call someone a fool or an idiot. Jesus said that when we do these we will be subject to judgment and in danger of the fire of hell. It is written in stone but apparently it just doesn’t matter.
Our Lord Jesus tells us that the greatest commandment of all is to love God and our fellow human beings. But then we love only those who love us, who are like us and think like us. We condemn and judge our enemies, forgetting that our Lord told us to love even our enemies. It is written in stone but apparently the great commandment of love just doesn’t matter.
We have broken and shattered the stones. We don’t have to look very far to see that we live and work in a world that has been twisted, bent, and broken by sin, so much so that it does not function at all in the way God intended it. The sin-scarred condition of the world, the brokenness caused by sin, is obvious in our own lives, in our homes, our communities, and our churches. We see it in government, politics, business, education, entertainment, and the Internet.
3. Blessed Are Those Who Mourn
Therefore, we should weep and mourn as we witness, experience, and sadly give way to the presence and power of evil. Jesus said, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”
Mourning means that we recognize the reality of sin in our lives. Mourning means we acknowledge the seriousness of sin and what it has done to us, to others, and the world. Mourning says that we know that this life right here, right now, is one big spiritual war. Mourning means that we realize that every morning as we get up, we will once again encounter a long list of temptations. Mourning means that we know that there really are spiritual enemies out there intending to do us harm, trying to turn us away from God. Mourning results when we confess that there are places where our hearts still wanders. Mourning results when we realize we have broken the stones of God’s covenant with us. Mourning then results in repentance and turning back to Him.
Thus, mourning is good for us. It brings us to the realization and confession that we need a Savior. Mourning causes us to cry out for the help, rescue, forgiveness, and deliverance of a Redeemer. Jesus says blessed are we when we mourn because we will be comforted. He is talking about the comfort of the presence and grace of the Redeemer, who meets us in our mourning. He hears our cries for help. He comes to us in saving mercy. He wraps his arms of eternal love around us. It is the comfort of knowing that we are forgiven; knowing that we are being restored. It’s the comfort of knowing that we have received a new life and a second chance and that we are now living in a reconciled relationship with God our Father. It’s the comfort of knowing where we are going and that our destiny is secure. What a blessing we have in Jesus.
So it is right and good that every year during Lent we take time to pause, to reevaluate, recalibrate, and clarify the values of our hearts once again. As we journey to the cross, where we remember the sacrifice, suffering, and resurrection of our Savior, it’s good to give ourselves to humble and thankful mourning. Lent is about taking time to reflect on why we all needed such a radical move of redemption. It is a time to confess the hold that sin still has on us, to confess our ongoing battle with sin. It is a time to focus on opening our hearts and hands, in confession and submission, and to let go of sin once again. Lent is about fasting but not just from food. We willingly and joyfully let go of the things in this world that have too much of a hold on us. Lent is about giving ourselves in a more focused way to prayer, crying out for the help that we desperately need from the only one who is able to help us, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
This morning, you hold in your hands stones. They represent the sins, the idols, the transgressions and iniquities, the addictions, the hurts, and hangups in our lives. This morning, and every Sunday during the season of Lent, we have a choice as to what to do with these stones. We can hang on to them as a painful reminder of our sin, and it will continue to make us bitter, broken, hurting people. Or we can let them go. We can mourn, confess, and repent the broken stones in our lives. We can lay them at the foot of the cross, and ask God to forgive us. I invite you to leave your stone with Jesus Christ this morning. As you come forward to fetch the bread and cup, leave your stone at his cross. Then take the bread and wine and be comforted by his sacrifice, his love, and grace.