40 Days of Lent

40 Days of Lent

Now, 40 in the Bible is a number that represents trial, represents testing, and also represents a long time.

Right? So we have 40 days of the reign.

We have the 40 years in walking the wilderness. We have Jesus' 40 days in the wilderness as well.

And I think it's really interesting because there's this connection between the 40 days of Jesus in the wilderness,

aka the 40 days of Lent, and the 40 years of the people of Israel in the wilderness, like before they got to the promised land.

And here's something I've been reflecting on a lot because I've been reflecting on the Book of Exodus a lot.

In the Book of Exodus, you have the people of Israel who are set free from slavery in Egypt, and God wanted to lead them to do these two places.

One is to a place of the covenant where they worship him and receive the law. They have a new relationship with him, and they get the law and they get worship.

But then also he was going to lead them to the promised land. And you know the story, right?

He was going to take them right from Mount Sinai, basically to Mount Zion. They were going to go from the wilderness, from slavery, through the Red Sea, to a place of worship, and a place of covenant, over to the promised land.

That was God's plan, that was plan A, right? But what happens?

They got to the promised land, sent some scouts in, they're like, we can't do it, we can't do that, we can't defeat these people who are living there right now because they're big and we're small.

Now here's something interesting, interesting thing. God had just set them free from slavery in the largest kingdom, nation, whatever country, in the world at the time.

They were slaves in Egypt and God set them free. He had them walk through a, the Red Sea, right? With the water, it was like a wall, till they're right until they're left.

And he's bringing it to the promised land, but they get there and they're like, oh, we couldn't possibly do that. The God who set them free from slavery was going to lead them into victory.

But they didn't have the heart to fight, and they didn't have the trust in their father, that he would fight for them.

And so what happened? They had to wander the wilderness for 40 years, and in the wilderness, what did they learn? They learned how to trust, and then learned how to grow strong.

Learned how to trust, and learned how to be free people who belong to the one holy God. But that was plan B. I think about this a lot.

The Lord who set you free, right, from your sins, but through your baptism, leading you through the waters of baptism, just like God led the people of Israel through the waters of the Red Sea into freedom, wanting to lead you to a place even greater freedom.

And what happens? We come up against the battle, we come up against the enemy, we come up against some kind of challenge, and maybe it's some interior sinner, an interior battle, or an interior kind of weakness that we experience, and recognizing that God actually wants us to face that thing, because he, with his power, the same one who set us free from slavery, and set us free from death, is wants to set us free in this area.

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