Should We Keep Lent?

This sermon sheds light on how the historical origins and formal customs of Lent lost their biblical basis and degenerated into superstitious, hypocritical religious rules. It points out that the forty days of fasting and rites of repentance that began in the Roman Catholic Church gradually became bound to form, and instead became an occasion for licentiousness and corruption, such as the carnival held just before Lent. The Reformers rejected this legalistic formalism, emphasised the truth of Scripture alone, and sought to convey the essential meaning of Christ's suffering and the cross.

Yet the church today is compromising, borrowing formal elements from Catholicism to relieve the tedium of the Word. Visual devices such as coloured ribbons and candles do not help believers grow in faith; they reduce worship to an entertaining event. Such outward piety keeps believers from truly restoring their relationship with God and causes them to cut themselves off from him. The sermon emphasises that true faith is not formal religious activity but a life that acknowledges Jesus Christ as King, repents daily and is transformed.

The sermon asks whether believers, rather than being bound to formal events, are living lives that remember the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ every day and talk honestly with God.