Now is the Day of Salvation

“Receive not the grace of God in vain; (for he saith, I have heard thee in a time accepted, and in the day of salvation have I succoured thee: behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation;) giving no offence in any thing… but in all things approving ourselves as the ministers of God. ”

The season of Lent is certainly an anomaly. While many Catholics and almost all other people think of it as a time of deprivation and bondage to idiotic rules and restrictions , I find it liberating . Lent is like Christian silent retreats where you can't speak for a couple of days, except in chapel where you say the responses and sing the hymns. At all other times your mouth is sealed. There is no TV, no secular reading, no business carried on. You have to slow down, stop talking and just be. Nobody can bother you and you may just find a big chair by the fireplace and read a book. When the weekend is over, you find yourself reluctant to re-enter the chattering, busy world again.

Lent is like that. A few restrictions on your diet perhaps. You needed to cut down anyway. Keeping a discipline and making it a sacrifice to God can surprise us, just how good it makes us feel. It's like a little military training. Tighten the belt a little, trim the fat, get in spiritual fighting shape and be ready for anything. (Coffee hour today will be just like this: nobody signed up for it! Very Lenten!)

When God led the children of Israel away from the fleshpots of Egypt and out onto the Sinai desert, it was to test them and reform them. They were used to being slaves, but slaves that were fed. Now they had to trust an invisible God who, every morning, gave them just enough manna to gather and eat. But they came out on the desert as hardly a people who could be called a nation , let alone the Chosen Race. Their bad habits and pagan notions of God became evident immediately . Even when God gave them command to take the Promised Land, they didn't trust Him enough to cross the river. God left it to the next generation to conquer Canaan and he left the Jews in the wilderness 40 years.

Our 40 days of Lent echo Jesus' forty days of fasting in the wilderness. He went out by the Holy Spirit to strengthen His spiritual man and subdue His natural man to the will of the Father. I don't know how hard it may have been for the Son of God to subdue His flesh. He wasn't sinful like we are. But He was just as human in other ways. He got hungry. He grew easily tired. He may have been cold . It was a test of His resolve to go through the next three years faithfully in order to bring about our salvation. He was up against incredible odds. Satan would oppose His every move . He had to get that devil's ears pinned back right away or be dogged by him constantly.

We have great reason to get the devil knocked down a few pegs in our lives. He has gained too much territory and made himself at home in many ways. It's hard to identify where the devil is lurking when we allow ourselves every pleasure, watch every movie, spend all the time we want in idle pursuits, and don't devote much time to prayer or Bible study. Satan makes great inroads with Christians when they hardly act the Christ-like role.

But when we cut back on the extras, enter a time of sparseness, say “No” a few times to our flesh, and pray: the complaining starts . T he excuses begin. The rationalizing mechanisms get going . And we hear quite clearly, if we are listening, the voice of the enemy. “Did God really say that you couldn't eat ice cream? Isn't just one bowl sort of a reward for all you've been giving up? Why can't you just have a taste? What's that going to hurt?”

When we don't fast, don't pray, don't cut our intake of sweets or alcohol or the latest movies we don't confront the enemy on any front and we don't really know our peril or what state our life is in. The world, the flesh and the devil all have their inroads into our thinking, our values, our appetites, and our perceived needs. The Israelites on the desert only remembered the fleshpots and how they had bread and meat enough in Egypt. They really didn't realize that now they were no longer slaves.

We are slaves to sin so long as we let sin rule our lives. Wherever sin is the master, we are its slaves. Simple enough. How do we get freedom from sin? How am I to be saved from my former thinking, my twisted values, my appetites for sinful things, and my craving things I thought I needed but which displease God? Now is the day of salvation. Today is the accepted time. St. Paul quotes Isaiah in making his point not to receive God's grace in vain. His is an urgent message. Don't slack off! Don't lose this chance! God has spoken into your life, now take His grace and make it the center of your being. This is what Isaiah was speaking of when God spoke through him saying:

“I will … give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the earth. …The Redeemer of Israel, and his Holy One, to him whom man despiseth, to him whom the nation abhorreth, to a servant of rulers, Kings shall see and arise, princes also shall worship, because of the Lord that is faithful, and the Holy One of Israel, and he shall choose thee. …In an acceptable time have I heard thee, and in a day of salvation have I helped thee: and I will preserve thee, and give thee for a covenant of the people, to establish the earth, to cause to inherit the desolate heritages; That thou mayest say to the prisoners, Go forth; to them that are in darkness, Show yourselves. They shall feed in the ways, and their pastures shall be in all high places. They shall not hunger nor thirst; neither shall the heat nor sun smite them: for he that hath mercy on them shall lead them, even by the springs of water shall he guide them.” Isaiah 49:6-10

This is a covenantal promise that God made to His Son. Although many will despise you, Kings will choose you and worship you. You will set the prisoners free and give amply to those who come to you. This picture of salvation depicts a life of protection under God's righteous Servant.

Salvation is such a common Christian word, but we argue all the time about what it means. Salvation means being saved and healed . Like a man that is mauled by a lion, we groan in the torment of being devoured by sin, eaten by the world or enslaved to Satan. But before we expire, the Savior comes and saves us out of that gaping steaming mouth, from between those cruel crushing teeth, and begins to bind up our torn skin, bones and muscle. In time we are able to sit up and eat, walk with stumbling steps, and eventually recover. Salvation is every bit as dramatic as that, although no one else may see the miracle.

Our trouble is often that we don't realize we're being eaten. We enjoy our sins. We don't want to be saved from everything that is wrong in our lives. We don't even want to know what's wrong. The children of Israel couldn't last the 40 days Moses was upon the mountain, but they reverted to an Egyptian idolatry and made themselves a golden calf. What's wrong with a little paganism? Why not watch Jerry Springer? We don't want to think about it, but Socrates truly said: “An unexamined life is not worth living.”

So Lent brings us into a little battle with ourselves, when we seek to adopt a discipline, make a deal with God about what to attempt to reform ourselves. The battle begins when we consider any restrictions on our diet, television or movie viewing, or favorite pastimes. Then we bravely sacrifice dessert or coffee. The battle continues almost immediately the next time we reach for the cookie jar. That's good . We need to know just how strong the bondage in our lives had become. We pray a little prayer for strength. We ask that He remind us before the cookie is in our mouth.

Now is the day of Salvation. Lent is the opportunity to find out how much of you is still in Egypt, still a slave, still the possession of your flesh, our wicked world, or the devil himself. Christ is always able to save you from the lion's jaws, and we can plead with Him to save us . He may not rescue us immediately , as we need to use our own spiritual muscles, or be better convinced on how bad our situation is. But He always saves us, if we ask Him and we let Him.

When He was tempted in the wilderness, Jesus faced three main issues: his own physical needs as well as those of every human being; pride along with presumption; and power. He could feed Himself, He could feed every man and be crowned king of the world. He could be declared Messiah by a miraculous grandstanding deed jumping down in the Temple courtyard; or He could just claim the right of rulership over the world. But all these would have been mere counterfeits of His true mission. They would have been easier, perhaps, but they wouldn't be the real thing.

We can settle for a nice, tame, self-serving religion. There will never be a lack of well-furnished and opulent churches for the self-deceived. Or we can stay on the desert, seeking for God where He may be found: at the place of sacrifice and love. Then, when you have made your sacrifice, may angels come and minister to you.

O LORD, who for our sake didst fast forty days and forty nights; Give us grace to use such abstinence, that, our flesh being subdued to the Spirit we may ever obey thy godly motions in righteousness, and true holiness, to thy honour and glory, who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.

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