02-21-21 Kevin Goins - Lent: Naming our Enemies, The Enemy of Loneliness

“Lent:  Naming Our Enemies” 
Psalm 25:1-10
Lent is a season of preparation for Holy Week and Resurrection Sunday, but Lent is also the time when the believer is led to confront the enemies of the Christian life.  One of the worst of these enemies is loneliness.  In our text today we see four of the sources of loneliness.  Fortunately for us, however, we do not need to be satisfied with only naming the causes of loneliness.  The message of Lent is that Jesus has defeated all four of these loneliness-producing enemies.                          

I Lent is more than a time of preparation.  Lent recalls how Jesus faced many e_______________ on his way to the cross to win our salvation.

A. Loneliness can so distort our view of life that we begin to see life as meaningless and without any ____________.

B. “The first Sunday of Lent is the time to look the enemies of the Christian life in the face and n____________ them before God.” 

II What is the source of spiritual loneliness?

 A. First, s________________ God for who he truly is makes us lonely (25:1-2).

  1. How can someone who is not at all ___________ us take away our loneliness? 

2. Some try to claim that they are good friends with God, but they do it by bringing God __________ to their level, so that he is ________ them.

3. If you want to get a glimpse of how different God is, consider his ___________________________.

B. Second, the fear of s___________________ makes us lonely (25:3).

1. The Hebrew word translated “shame” in this verse does not refer to an i_______________ feeling but to an o_______________ experience of public embarrassment.

2. Old Testament scholars tell us that verse 3 is a _________________.  David prays that ___________ of God’s people will be shamed, but that __________ who hate God will be shamed.

3. Shame makes us lonely.  It makes us feel that we do not deserve to be part of the _______________ family or the family of ______________.

C. Third, the r______________________ of past sins makes us lonely (25:4-7).

 1. The past cannot always be k____________ in the past.

 2. Whatever we ____________ will one day be harvested.

D. Finally, our failure to k__________ the covenant God made with us makes us lonely (25:8-10).

III The Gospel says that Jesus came to call out these four enemies and to engage them in face to face c_________________.

 A. What did Jesus do to end the loneliness that comes from seeing how different God is?

-He ___________; in the incarnation, in the physical body of Jesus, God became what we are.  He became ______________ to show us who he really is.

B. What did Jesus do to end the loneliness that comes from our fear of shame?

 -He experienced the shame of being n____________ to a c____________.

C. What did Jesus do to end the loneliness that comes from remembering our past sins?

 -He took our sins on h____________________.

D. What did Jesus do to end the loneliness that comes from our failure to keep the covenant?

 -By his death, he created a __________ covenant between us and God.