We begin with godly sorrow. 2 Corinthians 7:8-13

The season of Lent is not exactly a happy season.  In the season of Lent, we are not celebrating the birth the baby Jesus.  There is no decking the halls with bough of holly or fal-la-la-la-las being sung in the season of Lent.  In the season of Lent, we are not celebrating Jesus’ miraculous resurrection from the dead.  Nobody is hiding chocolates for children or getting away with wearing pastels in the season of Lent.  The season of Lent is a somber season.  In the season of Lent the preacher invites you to look into the mirror of God’s holy Law and confess what you see.  And, without fail, what every single one of us sees is someone who has failed to love the Lord their God with all their heart and failed to love their neighbor as themselves; what every single one of us sees is a sinner.  Looking into the mirror of God’s Holy Law is not a pleasant experience for any of us, not a single one of us… enjoys it.  So why do we do it?  Why not just look away, try to forget what we saw in that mirror, and pretend that everything is, O.K.?

After all, you don’t have to subject yourself to the unpleasantness that is so prevalent in the season of Lent. There are plenty of preachers who will help you avoid the unpleasantness of this season.  A few years ago, a popular prosperity preacher who presides over the largest congregation in the United States was interviewed by a CBS reporter.  The reporter said, "You've been criticized for 'Church lite,' for 'a cotton candy message,'" then the reporter asked. "Do you feel like you're cheating people by not telling them about the Hell part? Or repentance part?"[1] "No, I really don't, because it's a different approach," the prosperity preacher replied. "You know, it's not hellfire and brimstone. But I say most people are beaten down enough by life. They already feel guilty enough.”1

The prosperity preacher knows his bible well, at least he knows what saint Paul wrote in 2 Timothy 4:3, “For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.”  The prosperity preacher knows people don’t want to be corrected and rebuked, they want to be celebrated and praised.  The prosperity preacher knows what their itching ears want to hear and on any given Sunday that particular prosperity preacher scratches on average 40,000 ears.

To an extent, saint Paul would agree with the prosperity preacher.  God’s Holy Law is not something people enjoy hearing the preacher preach.  In his second letter to the Corinthians Paul admits God’s Holy Law causes “sorrow” and it “hurts” people.  Paul, from firsthand experience, knows this to be true.  The congregation in Corinth was a bit of a hot mess. They were engaged in a variety of sinful activity, including a rather scandalous case of incest.  Paul holds up the mirror of God’s Holy Law an instructs the members of the congregation to take a look.  And, as you well known, when they did, they did not like what they saw.  They saw how they had sinned against God and how they had sinned against each other and it caused them sorrow to see it.  It hurt them to see it.

When Paul saw his people in sorrow and hurting, he admitted that part of him “did regret it”; he regretted causing them sorrow, he regretted hurting them.  He regrated it because Paul wasn’t a sadist.  He didn’t hold up the mirror of God’s Holy Law and instruct the sinners to confess what they saw because he liked causing people pain.  Paul was not a jerk.  But unlike a prosperity preacher, Paul knew the sorrow and hurt were necessary.  So instead of shielding them from it, he preached it; he happily preached it.  Paul writes, “8… I see that my letter hurt you, but only for a little while— 9 yet now I am happy, not because you were made sorry, but because your sorrow led you to repentance. For you became sorrowful as God intended and so were not harmed in any way by us.”  Paul was happy to hold up the mirror of God’s Holy Law, not because he liked causing sorrow and hurting people, rather Paul held up the mirror of God’s Holy Law because it created what Paul called, “Godly sorrow”.

Paul, like any good preacher, was happy for his people to be full of Godly sorrow because Godly sorrow “brings repentance”.  Godly sorrow causes the sinner to see that their sins are not just boo-boos, accidents, or mistakes.  Godly sorrow causes us to see our sins as flagrant acts of disobedience against God’s Holy Law and as such deserve to be punished not with a slap on the wrist or by spending some time standing with our nose in the corner of a wall, but punished by an eternity of separation from our God and suffering with the damned.  Godly sorrow causes us to and confess that we have sinned “by our own fault, by our own grievous fault” and cry out, “Have mercy on us, Lord”, “forgive us, Lord”.  Godly sorrow causes us to turn away from our sin and pray for the strength to stop doing the sin.  Paul, like any good preacehr, was happy for his people to be full of Godly sorrow because Godly sorrow brought his people to repentance.   

Paul, like any good preacher, was happy for his people to be full of Godly sorrow because Godly sorrow “leads to salvation”.   There is a difference between Godly sorrow and worldly sorrow.  Worldly sorrow might very well recognize the seriousness of sin and admit that sin deserves to be punished.  Worldly sorrow may even want to turn away from that sin, but worldly sorrow has nowhere to turn.  Worldly sorrow is full of remorse and regret but offers no resolution.  Therefore worldly sorrow fills people with despair and ultimately leads to death, eternal death.  Godly sorrow, on the other hand, not only turns away from sin but it also turns to Jesus.  Godly sorrow looks upon the one who has been tempted in every way just as we are, yet was without sin.  Godly sorrow looks upon the one who was pierced for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities.  Godly sorrow believes in the one who proclaimed “it is finished” and promised “whoever believes and is baptized will be saved”.  Godly sorrow not only turns away from sin it turns to Jesus.  Therefore, Paul, like any good preacher, was happy for his people to be full of Godly sorrow because Godly sorrow led his people to salvation.

Finally, Paul, like any good preacher, was happy for his people to be full of Godly sorrow because Godly sorrow “produces” fruits of faith.  Paul lists some of the things that Godly sorrow was producing among the Corinthians congregation.  Paul writes, “11 See what this godly sorrow has produced in you: what earnestness, what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what alarm, what longing, what concern, what readiness to see justice done.”  Godly sorrow created in them an earnestness and eagerness to live in obedience to God’s Holy Law.  Yet, because they were sinners, the good they wanted to do they did not always do, and the evil they did not want to do, this they sometimes did.  But Godly sorrow caused them to be indignant about their sin and take it seriously.  Godly sorrow created in them a longing a concern a readiness to glorify their God with their thoughts, words, and actions.  Paul, like any good preacher, was happy for his people to be full of Godly sorrow because Godly sorrow was producing in his people fruits of faith. 

In the season of Lent, we spend a great deal of time looking into the mirror of God’s Holy Law.  Looking into the mirror of God’s Holy Law is not a pleasant experience for any of us, not a single one of us… enjoys it.  So why do we do it?  Why not just look away, try to forget what we saw in that mirror, and pretend that everything is, O.K.?  Because looking in the mirror of God’s Holy Law fills us with Godly sorrow that brings us to repentance, leads us to salvation, and produces inside of us fruits of faith.

You don’t have to observe the unpleasant season of Lent.  There are plenty of prosperity preachers who are willing to scratch an itch.   However, I encourage you to embrace the season of Lent by attending the midweek Lenten services that vicar has prepared.  Vicar has created a Lenten series for us that will walk us through the places of the Passion; that is the places Jesus visited on His way to the cross to suffer and die for your sins.  This is not like visiting the manger or empty tomb.  These are not considered by most to be happy places.  The places of the passion will likely cause you sorrow and hurt you to hear what happened at each one of them, but I assure you, the men who will be leading you to these places are not taking you there because they like seeing people suffer.  Rather, the men who will lead you through the places of the passion, like any good preacher, like Paul, are hoping to fill you with Godly sorrow.  Amen

[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-positivity-of-joel-osteen/