Scripture reading: Joel 2:15-17
15Blow the trumpet in Zion;
sanctify a fast;
call a solemn assembly;
16 gather the people.
Sanctify the congregation;
assemble the aged;
gather the children,
even infants at the breast.
Let the bridegroom leave his room,
and the bride her canopy.
17Between the vestibule and the altar
let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep.
Let them say, ‘Spare your people, O Lord,
and do not make your heritage a mockery,
a byword among the nations.
Why should it be said among the peoples,
“Where is their God?” ’
Sermon Title: "THE SOLEMN ASSEMBLY" Sunday, April 20, 2008
PASTOR HUDSON: Today we're in the Old Testament. Our
passage images a very Hebrew event know as the solemn
assembly. I want us to look at those solemn-assembly
moments and how the components of it have a place in
our own life today.
The ancient Hebrews, enjoined by God,
sanctified a fasting day, a solemn assembly, a holy
window of time set apart for the purpose of connecting
with God. It was about a renewal of faith and a
repentance of sin within one's own life over against their
connection with God.
The Hebrews understood that the quality of their
response to their covenant with God and their life of
repentance directly impacted the way in which God's
blessings flowed into their lives. They understood on
occasion there needed to be some very significant
times where they reconnected with the commitment they
had made to live with God. They knew that because they were human,
they had a predisposition to neglect that dimension of
their life.
Today, as Wesleyan Christians, we prize highly our status of
justification by faith, the idea that by believing in
Jesus Christ, a full and complete redemptive work has already
been done on our behalf. Because we esteem that so
highly, it may be easy for us not to reckon as
seriously as we should with the negative life
consequences of our sinful predispositions.
I shared with you in the last few months about a
friend of mine years ago who was very excited by his
new-found faith and relationship with Christ. On one
particular Monday morning he was not at work. He
showed up a day or two later. I came to find out that over
the past weekend my Christian brother crawled over the
fence of a salvage yard and swiped some parts to work
on his car. He was arrested and spent his weekend in
the city jail.
When he came back to work, on the one hand he
felt a little sheepish. On the other hand, he was
struggling with how all this fit together with his faith. He made
the statement to me, "Maybe God let that happen to me
so I'd have a witness." What I wanted to say was
maybe God let that happen to you because what you were
doing wasn't very smart.
Sometimes we don't wrestle honestly with the
negative consequences of our sin because we're so
invested in justification by faith that we tend to
gloss over that. The truth is even for justified,
sanctified believers in Christ, there are consequences
for sin.
My new next door neighbor had a consequence that
drives home the point there are things you cannot
neglect in life. In our particular community, we do
not have city sewer systems. We have our own septic
systems.
They didn't know to turn on their system. After
living there three or four months, I noticed a repair
truck in front of their house. I visited with them a
little bit. They discovered there are consequences
when you don't turn the breaker on the system.
They learned the hard way that there are some things
that you have to do and you can't neglect.
So is with the solemn assembly. The solemn
assembly has to do with the people of God recognizing
that even where there is grace, there is still a place
for us to pause and say, God, we need our heart
cleansed. We need our life renewed. We need to
re-evaluate our covenant.
If we were to take an inventory, which is what
solemn assembly is, how worthy would our walk be as we
evaluate our lives in terms of the gift that
we are responding to? Do you feel like God would look
on us with favor because we've had reactions and
responses to God that are worthy of the gift of his
son?
Solemn assembly is about repentance for all
the ways in which we have failed to do that, perhaps
through withholding good deeds or occasionally even
acting out of malice, or bitterness, maybe it was more
convenient to do what was more desirable for
ourselves.
There are those things that God may ask us to do
that simply cannot be done any other way than to set
our desires on the back burner. A solemn assembly is
a time in which we weigh those kinds of issues, and we
repent for the times in which we let our own
motivations get the upper hand over what should have
been a God response.
Scripture tells of a day that will come when God
says, What does the Lord require of you? Does he
require vast, elaborate expressions of your worship in
the temple? No, God doesn't require that at all.
What the Lord requires is to simply love God and walk
humbly with him. Seek out justice and respond in ways
that say I am simply going to be Christ in my
generation.
Sometimes what we need to do is have a solemn
assembly within our heart where we simply bring
ourselves back to a place where we say, Lord, show us
the ways in which we can live in a manner that is
worthy of the wonderful gift of justification that you
have shed over us.
When we have set those things in order, the
result is God's spirit. It's like a channel opens up,
and God's spirit begins to flow. Marvelous things
begin to happen, not only in our lives, but in our
church, in our congregation. Things begin to move and
happen that we never thought would happen before.
Sometimes for that to begin, we've got to get the
impediments out of the way, that's what solemn
assembly is about. It is to simply take an inventory
of where am I in my covenant with God, where am I in
my response to the Lord.
I hope you'll join me today in a time of prayer
that simply says, Lord, we want to know where we are
and how it is with our soul so that nothing might
stand between us and you.
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
amen.