These sermons from Immanuel Church are as preached, recorded and transcribed. They are purposely left in the original form which was spoken.

Just a few brief words on Lent. There was a time when whole communities gathered around the church, held a common calendar and kind of stayed on the same page as a community because of the church calendar. This was also a way for people to move together spiritually through the life and ministry of Christ as we know the seasons. We have seasons today that kind of govern us as a community and things we rally round and sort of keep on the same page. We have those like turkey season about to start and deer season which is just finished. We have baseball season about to begin. Unfortunately we don’t pay too much attention, at least collectively, to the church season but we are in the season of Lent.

Lent, coming from the Anglo-Saxon word which means that period of time when the days become longer; they lengthen. This is a spiritual season marked by penitence. We wear purple as our penitential color. We don’t say Hallelujah in the service. It is a penitential season because way back when, in the early church, they used this season of Lent to prepare the catechumen to be baptized. So, it is appropriate that it be a period of self-denial; that it be a time when we sacrifice part of ourselves and when we do that something has to die. As we sacrifice part of ourselves preparing for this new birth so we die that we might be raised into new life. We will end our season of Lent, these 40 days which do not include Sundays which are like little Easters (we don’t count them), with the season of Easter. And the last act, if you will, that ushers in this new season of Easter with the glorious resurrection is that we gather at night and have the Easter vigil when there will be lots of baptisms and which is probably the most appropriate day to have these baptisms. After a season of Lent ushering in the season of Easter. So, that’s my two cents worth on Lent; the season that we are now in.

As Mike mentioned, we have prepared a sermon series, which we don’t often do but it sure was fun. Mike comes back; he’s just on fire with the Holy Spirit and the stuff they had been doing in Africa and he said, "You know, we need to do a Holy Spirit series this Lent." I said, "I’m right there with you. I think that would be great." So, we sat down and we looked through the Propers and we prayed and this is what came to us. I am going to all but ignore the Propers this Sunday but that is O.K. The first Sunday in Lent, which is today, we will be looking at the Holy Spirit moving us to convict us. Next Sunday we will be looking at the Holy Spirit moving us to equip us. We will look at the Holy Spirit in the third week moving to purify us. Then, to nourish us. Then the Holy Spirit moving us into deeper intimacy and it will culminated with the Holy Spirit moving us to the Cross.

All the great church historians and all the great theologians talk about Lent as being a journey and it is. We are moving with Christ in His Passion so it’s just meet and right that we should end up at the Cross. That’s what we have to look forward to and if you want to be reading ahead that would be good, too.

When I think about conviction, which is what we are going to be talking about this morning, I really think about being in touch with my own sinfulness. Some of us are and some of us aren’t and that’s O.K., but the season of Lent is a time to take a real look at yourself; especially those things that we keep in the darkness; those things that are recessed; those things that we don’t even want to think about. Patterns, habits, old things forgotten, that we have not confessed and repented of, these are the things that we need to bring out of the closet during this season and be real with it.

So, there really is a movement from darkness to light and I like to think of the overhead projector, like we use here in the Sanctuary, casting this burning, focused light on these. And I want you to just take it one step further. I want you to consider your yesterday being projected up here on these screens for all of us to see. Your thoughts, good and bad. Your actions, good and bad; your motivations. I don’t know about you, but just with my yesterday and it was a pretty good day, I would be too embarrassed to stay in front of you. I would be driven away in shame. This is the kind of work that the Holy Spirit wants to do in us this Lent. Let’s pray.

Holy God, we offer you ourselves. We say, "Have at us". We ask that you would bring your fire; that you would bring your light; that you would pierce us; that you would allow us to be real with you; and that we would allow your Holy Spirit to do His convicting work in our lives. We thank you for this convicting work. We thank you for loving us enough to reprove us. We pray all this in Christ’s Name. Amen.

We could be looking in our Bibles to the Gospel of John, the third chapter. Many of you know this part of John deals with Nicodemus and his questions for Christ about what it means to follow Him; what it means to be a disciple. Jesus works it around to talking about something kind of peculiar. He says in verse 6, "That which is born of the flesh is flesh and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born anew.’" This is where it all begins, isn’t it? This is the first work of the Holy Spirit in our lives; even before we knew Him; even before our knowledge of Him became personal. It moved from just the knowledge that we have about God to the knowledge that we have of God. This is the same kind of knowledge that allows us to know that "I’m me and not you." How do I know it? I just know it.

This is the work of the Holy Spirit, convicting us of our sin, showing us that we need a Savior; that we don’t have all the answers; that we can’t do it on our own, moving us to that point where we confess and repent and we start cutting away the deadwood. Something has got to die if we are going to sacrifice anything. Something’s got to die if we are going to move ahead in our baptismal ministry in an alive and real way.

Oswald Chambers writes about this. He says, "The entrance into the Kingdom of God is through the sharp sudden pains of repentance colliding with man’s respectable goodness. Then the Holy Spirit who produces these struggles begins the formation of the Son of God in the person’s life. He brings us to that point of understanding who we are--worthless, broken--and then He moves us to be able to die to that flesh in us so that we can be born anew This new life will reveal itself in conscious repentance followed by unconscious holiness." It’s never the other way around. It’s the conscious repentance and from flowing out of that just the natural being made over in Christ’s image and the fruit of that.

We read in verse 19, "And this is the judgment (there is our light imagery again) that the light has come into the world and men loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil." We know that Jesus died for the sins of the world. John just finished writing that in Chapter 3, verse 16. We understand the whole idea of the Cross. We touched on it in our Epistle this morning: that Christ died for our sins. But some of us have run away from the light. Again in verse 20, "For everyone who does evil hates the light and does not come to the light lest his deeds be exposed. But he who does what is true comes to the light that it may be clearly seen that his deeds have been wrought in God." This is our Lenten journey, bringing it into the light, refusing to keep it in darkness and allowing God to run it through His projector. We have all "sinned and fallen short of the glory of God". We say it, but do we really believe it?. Do you know who you are as a sinner? It’s important.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle of Sherlock Holmes fame sent a letter to ten or twelve of his closest friends, respectable people, in London with no return address. The note simply said, "Flee at once. All is known." They were all gone in the night. That hits kind of close to home. There are things that we keep hidden--the best of us, the most righteous of us. There are things that we keep hidden that we don’t want to come into the light. The Bible has two words for this. We are going to be looking at these words in detail.

Before I go on, is there anybody here who has ever heard of a "metanoia" sermon?. You know what a metanoia sermon is? It’s when the preacher goes off using the only two or three Greek words he knows, which typically is metanoia, and tries to impress the congregation and show how much he knows in the Greek. In fact, recently I had a guy in my office and we were talking about metanoia sermons and here I am about to preach a metanoia sermon. Metanoia, of course, is the Greek word for repentance. The first Greek word is elengkhos. We are going to be looking at some Biblical words for rebuke and reprove. Words that can be translated conviction or correction. The first, elengkhos, which does in fact mean conviction. It does mean reproof and it stems from the Greek work elengkho, which I love, and this fits into our tidy little Lenten theme thing. It’s to expose; to bring into the light.

Our second Greek word is atimia, which very closely means to rebuke. It’s to rebuke without leading someone to repentance and confession. It’s merely rebuke. So, you can see how the difference is already forming. Now, etimia can be used in two different ways. We have rebuking of the innocent and rebuking of the guilty. Just to show you where these pop up, we have Peter rebuking Jesus in Matthew 16:23. We have the disciples rebuking the children as they gather around Jesus in Matthew 19:13. We have the crowd rebuking the blind man for calling out to Jesus in Luke 18:39. Not leading to any kind of change; not leading to any kind of repentance, just knowledge that you have done wrong, for these all were innocent people. We also have the rebuking of the guilty. We have the repentant criminal, remember on the cross, rebuking the other criminal. We have Jesus rebuking the demon in Mark 9:25. Now these are examples of rebuking (etimia) without any change. There is no knowledge; there is no repentance. It’s just left there as rebuke.

The second important word, elengkhos, shows up several times in Scripture. Here are two examples. Job 5:17, "Behold, happy is the man who God reproves." You can read that "convicts of his sin" or "corrects". "Therefore, despise not the chastening of the Almighty," elengkhos. John 16:7-8, "Nevertheless, I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Counselor will not come to you. But, if I go, I will send Him to you and when He comes, He will convince the world concerning sin and righteousness in judgment." It’s the promise; we have talked about it a lot. When the Holy Spirit comes; when this paraclete, this comforter, this encourager, comes he will complete my work; he will empower you to be who I have called you to be and he will convince you of your own sinfulness. Elengkhos, remember, it leads to repentance. It leads to a change in life. It leads to new life. It’s a gift from God.

Now, "metanoia". It’s a simple word that we translate to repentance but the meaning is important here. It means to change; it means to turn around, and it’s important to note that confession is important. Confess your sins to God; confess it to your neighbor but don’t stop there because the enemy would have us stop there, wouldn’t he? We would stop there with, "having carried this burden, I have now confessed it and so I am right with God ." Wrong. See, the enemy has us when we stop there. We need to repent (metanoia), turn, change. Maybe it’s changing your direction. Maybe it’s changing a way of thinking; maybe it’s a pattern that just consistently pops up in your life. When we are convicted we are led to repent, to start afresh, to sacrifice something, let something die that something new can be born. The Holy Spirit is the chief agent here. He is the convictor. He’s the one that moves in our hearts; that moves in those dark places. He’s the one that allows us to live out our baptismal ministry.

Charlemagne, the great conqueror and emperor, would force people whom he had conquered, the heathens and the pagans, to be baptized at the point of a sword. He would march them through waters. There is this one story of him marching them through a river. The heathens are going through and they have had it explained to them as to what is going on and what they have to do here. In this particular story, they understood the concept of gods, and they understood the concept of the power of this God. So they took it all very seriously and as they went through the water, to a man they held their swords up over their heads. When asked about it, they replied, "We will give ourselves to this god but we are not going to give our swords. We are not going to give our warfare, our means of being who we are. We have to be able to fight." So, the question is what do you keep in darkness? What do you hold up over your head? What’s getting in the way of your baptismal ministry?

After He was baptized, the Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness, not convicting Him of his sins--He was sinless; he remained sinless. But He allowed himself to be obedient, driven at the Spirit’s will that He might encounter temptation; that His baptismal ministry would be tempered, would be hardened, would be all that richer and stronger. We need to be so willing to be driven by the Spirit. The Spirit is moving. "Nevertheless, I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away for if I do not go away, the Counselor will not come to you. But if I go, I will send Him to you and when He comes He will convince the world (He will convict the world) of sin and righteousness and judgment."

When I was in high school, and I think it might have even continued on into college (this is something I am not particularly proud of; in fact, I am kind of ashamed of it but in the spirit of this metanoia sermon, I am going to go ahead and share it), I used to be hard on my friends and acquaintances and would put myself in a position to shame them sometimes. This is how that goes: You are talking about something or a reference is made to something and you take a righteous stand in the flesh and your friend says to you, "Grafe, that really makes me feel guilty when you do that. I just wish you wouldn’t do that." That’s when you respond, and this is what I really used to say, "I can’t make you feel guilty. I can only make you aware of the things that you are guilty about." Isn’t that horrible? That’s the work of Satan. At its best, that is etimia; that’s rebuking and just leaving it out there. The Holy Spirit doesn’t do that, folks. When the Holy Spirit convicts you, yes, it will lead to guilt; yes, it will lead to shame but it will also lead to that opportunity to repent, to confess, to change--not in your power but to change in the power of the Spirit as He leads you and guides you. Habits are broken, new healthy patterns are born out of deathly patterns; new relationships are made possible.

When the Holy Spirit convicts, it is never leading us to hopelessness or emptiness, or the feeling that, "I just can’t do it. I am just not good enough." That’s the work of Satan and we need to call it what it is and recognize it for what it is.

Many of us are being convicted right now; I believe that. I think there are things that the Holy Spirit has brought to our mind. So, I am going to ask us to bow our heads and I am going to lead you in prayer. Please bow your heads. If the Holy Spirit is convicting you of something, maybe for the first time or maybe it’s something that He has convicted you of before and you were just not willing to move, I want you to stand up. This season of Lent is a time when we can be real with the Lord, when we can be bold. We want to use this season for what it is. So, if the Holy Spirit is convicting you of something, calling on you to repent and confess it, I want you to stand up. Thank you. As people stand up and our heads remain bowed, let’s pray for ourselves and for them.

Holy God, we love you and we praise you. We do praise you for chastening us, for convicting us, for loving us enough to call us to the level worthy of your son or your daughter. Lord, thank you for that. And there are things that we are struggling with, old patterns, old habits and, Lord, we give them to you right now. We lay them at the Cross. We cut this dead wood off and we give it to you, Lord. Burn it and cast it away in the Name of Jesus. Now, we just offer ourselves up to you as living sacrifices. We offer ourselves up to you and we ask you to birth something new in us that is of you; new fruit, new relationships, new opportunities to serve you, Lord. Thank you and we pray all this in Christ’s Name.

Please be seated. We close with this from Paul in II Corinthians 7:10, "For Godly grief produces repentance. Repentance that leads to salvation and brings no regret. But worldly grief (that’s the stuff I was telling you about, the stuff that the tempter would tell us that leaves us feeling helpless and hopeless, and empty and dead) produces death." Amen.