Ash Wednesday
Dear friends in Christ. Today we begin the holy penitential season of Lent. In this holy season, Christians meditate on the great price Jesus, our Savior, paid to save us from our sin; we meditate on the great love and mercy of our God and Savior that He would do this; and we hold up our lives to the light and mirror of God’s holy Law that we may all the more recognize our sins for which Jesus suffered and died, sorrow over them, and in so doing, by the power of the Holy Spirit, fight against sin to root it out of our hearts and lives.
As our Lord’s dear Christians, we are called to fight against everything leading us away from love for God and love for our neighbor. Repentance, fasting, prayer and works of love—disciplines of Lent—have helped Christians through the ages in this “spiritual warfare” against sin, temptation and our old sinful nature. In the early church these disciplines of Lent helped prepare the catechumens for their baptism on Easter and they prepare us today for a celebration in all its fullness of Jesus’ resurrection.
Today is called Ash Wednesday. The Bible has a number of references to ashes and dust. They serve as a sign of human mortality—that we will all die—in fact the words used when the ash crosses are applied on the forehead are an echo of the Lord’s curse on Adam after the fall into sin [Gn. 3.19]: dust you are, and to dust you shall return; and they serve as a sign of public repentance.
By the 10th century ashes were imposed on penitent sinners in preparation to their full communion with the Church. Since the 11th Century ashes have been imposed on all the faithful who desire them as a reminder that [Rm. 6.23] the wages of sin is death. By the 12th century ashes became specifically associated with the beginning of Lent. By the time of the Reformation the imposition of ashes was a regular mainstay of Lenten piety and practice.
To get our bearings on this Ash Wednesday for the 40 day season of Lent before us, let us first remember that we are dust; and then we will do well to ponder what David writes in the Psalm: [The Lord] remembers that we are dust.
1. When the OT Patriarch Abraham once spoke to the Lord, he said [Gn. 18.27]: I who am but dust and ashes have taken it upon myself to speak to the Lord. Dust and ashes! Hardly what many would consider a flattering portrayal but it captures the reality: Abraham spoke the truth—the full realization of his sinfulness; his origin was dust—as Moses records the creation account [Gn. 2.7]: And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground; and his destination was ashes—the ashes of decay.
So also us today, on this Ash Wednesday: we remember that we are dust; that is, we are sinners and that the wages of sin is death. In fact, in the few verses of this psalm that serve as our text, David uses 3 different words for sin: sins, guilt, and transgressions. He writes: [The Lord] has not dealt with us according to our sins. Here he uses the most “general” word for sin—one that means “missing the mark”, falling short of the standard of perfection that God requires, a lack of completeness.
Then David writes: Nor has [the Lord] punished us according to our guilt. Here the word guilt means not just the deed that is wrong, but the consequence of it—by our sin we are declared “guilty”; the result of our sin/ iniquity is that like a judge does in a court of law—we are declared guilty. And then David writes: [the Lord has] removed our transgressions from us. “Transgression” means rebelling, revolting against the standard of God’s holy Law, His just and holy will. That’s what all of our sins are—our revolt/ rebellion against God. This Lent let us remember we are dust.
This Lenten season, especially, as we remember that we are dust, that is, that we are sinners, how it drives home to us the fact that there is nothing meritorious in us! There’s nothing that we can boast of before God and by it claim that we earn/ deserve His love or heaven or eternal life. That’s the point of not only the season of Lent but also our daily examining our hearts and lives in the mirror of God’s holy Law—we are dust; we are frail sinful human beings who by our sins earn and deserve nothing but God’s wrath and who by our sins merit nothing but damnation. That’s what we confess in the confession: all my sins and iniquities…have ever offended [God] and justly deserved His temporal and eternal punishment. Notice, in our text, David praises the Lord precisely because He doesn’t give us what we earn and deserve. One result of remembering we are dust—honestly examining our lives and recognizing our sin—is that we cannot think God owes us anything; we cannot be self-righteous but that we, instead must thank and praise Him for not giving us what we deserve!
As we remember that we are dust—and what is dust?—it is nothing; and spiritually, before God, we are nothing/ have nothing to hold before Him and boast—we cannot put our trust/ confidence in our good works. Lent gives us the true picture of ourselves—that we are lost and condemned sinners; that there is nothing we can bring to the Lord except our sin and guilt—and so Lent drives us to seek the grace of God; it leads us to that muted but repentant Lenten joy: praise be the Lord! He does not deal with me as I deserve but in grace! He has not dealt with us according to our sins, nor punished us according to our iniquities…As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.
But even here, dear Christian, we must be on guard! We still have within us our old sinful corrupt nature that wants us to run away from the Lord; it wants us to minimize, explain away/ rationalize away our sins; it wants us to judge the sins of others harshly, but our own lightly so that we think we better than they are and so more worthy/ deserving of heaven. That’s why Lent, that’s why the daily examining our hearts and lives, that’s why remembering that we are dust are such vital matters. Only when we truly recognize our sin, our lost and damnable state; only when we accept the pronouncement of God’s holy law upon ourselves; only when we do not dispute with God but confess our infirmity is there any hope and help for us. Because only when we despair of ourselves and run to the Lord and His grace, run to Christ and His cross seeking and imploring His forgiveness is there help and hope.
Lent and the daily examining our hearts and lives, the hearing of God’s judgment on our sin prepares the way for God’s mercy. We recognize that God’s judgment on our sin is just and right. We recognize that our sin earns us God’s wrath and condemnation. We feel the weight and burden of the Law accusing us of sin and dragging us to hell. We recognize that we are dust and cannot help ourselves before God. Dust you are, and to dust you shall return. Precisely then, now, are we prepared for God’s mercy! God tears us down so that we can receive His grace.
2. When we remember—and remember rightly—that we are dust—Lent—we can only despair of our sin and lament our wretched condition that we can do nothing about. But it’s different when God remembers that we are dust.
Our text: As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord had compassion on those who fear Him. For He knows our frame; He remembers that we are dust. What a glorious thing for us when God remembers that we are dust! God remembering that we are dust moves Him to action—into action for us! Since God has compassion on us, He does not deal with us as we deserve.
Again, our text: He has not dealt with us according to our sins, nor punished us according to our iniquities. For as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is His mercy toward those who fear Him. As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us. Although God has more than enough cause to damn us forever casting us away from His presence, although that would be the penalty we really deserve, God, instead does not give us what we deserve—that’s mercy. And this mercy of God that we enjoy is not a small limited supply that once it’s used up is gone forever. Instead, it’s new every day as if we hadn’t used any of it before, like the prophet Jeremiah writes [Lm 3.22]: Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness. The Lord’s mercy is too vast to measure—as David writes in our text: For as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is His mercy toward those who fear Him. God knows no limits on mercy; there’s no limit to His forgiving our sins. Our sins can never catch us, heap guilt on us or damn us because God’s mercy is always there and always giving us the forgiveness of sins.
Because God remembers that we are dust, that is, because God knows the weakness and frailty of our moral nature, because God knows that we are sinners already conceived and born in sin, does that mean that He takes it easy on us? That He doesn’t expect/ demand that we keep His holy Law perfectly? That He’ll “let us slide” and give us all eternal life and a glorious eternity in heaven if we try our best? Hardly! He still expects His just and holy Law to be obeyed. But since we are too weak and frail to do it, because God knows the limitations our present physical and spiritual weakness imposes on us, that’s why He sent Jesus: what we can’t do Jesus has done for us! And because Jesus has come and done for us what we can’t do, God can be and is merciful toward us.
The whole foundation of our forgiveness, the whole reason why God can show us mercy and not deal with us as we deserve is because of Jesus! Here we come to the heart and core of Lent—pondering Jesus’ holy suffering and death.
Because God remembers that we are dust unable to keep His holy Law and can only earn damnation for ourselves, He has compassion on us. That’s why He sent His Son, Jesus, to be our Savior. Jesus took on our human nature, became a true man so that in our place, He could obey all of God’s just and holy laws—that very law that we can’t but that the holy and righteous God demands of us if we are to gain heaven. Yes, Jesus came and for us/ in our place obeyed God’s holy Law. What we lack, Christ has made complete.
But what about our sin that we commit day in and day out that God says He, in His holiness and righteousness must punish? Again, Christ! He took our sins upon Himself; He became the world’s sinner loaded down with your sin, my sin, the sin of all people ever to live. And there on the cross, He paid the penalty for those sins. There on the cross all of God’s wrath over our sin was poured out on Him, the holy, sinless God-man who was loaded down with the sins of all. God’s wrath was absorbed in the cross. This eternal, once for all sacrifice is always before God and that’s why He can and does show us mercy and not deal with us as we deserve for our sins; that’s why He can remove our guilt from us—all our sin has been dealt with by Jesus; God sees us in Christ. That’s why when we remember our sin and that Dust you are, and to dust you shall return we then in faith run to Christ and receive His holiness and forgiveness.
When we remember that we are dust, the situation for us is hopeless; but when God remembers we are dust it is a glorious thing for us: He is moved to compassion and precisely here is our firm and certain hope: His mercy. INJ Amen