New Sermon Series! Lent with Jesus: Spiritual Disciplines in the Sermon on the Mount

Welcome into Lent, Redeemer! This week, starting on Ash Wednesday, we will embark on a new sermon series “Lent with Jesus: Spiritual Disciplines in the Sermon on the Mount.”  

We tend to make Lent about giving up stuff — chocolate, sugar, sweets, alcohol, social media, or streaming series. Those can be good choices that leave more room to contemplate our need for Jesus and his cross. This year, your pastors would like to make this a season about our putting on things, of planting seed in the ground and seeing what God might grow in and through us, as we take up spiritual disciplines that are informed and shaped by the cross.  

This series will be a Lenten journey with Jesus, finding spiritual disciplines in Matthew’s record of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7). As we examine this pivotal teaching of Jesus, we will see a way of life that points to the cross — a life of spiritual poverty, a life of prayer, a life of sacrificial giving, a life of true influence, and more.  

The word Lent comes from an old English word that means “lengthening.” Just like the sun stays out longer as spring begins, the 40-day season of Lent is a time for us to take longer looks at Christ crucified for us. I love this quote from Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter. 

"Lent … should never be morose — an annual ordeal during which we begrudgingly forgo a handful of pleasures. Instead, it ought to be approached as an opportunity. After all, it is meant to be the church's springtime, when out of the darkness of sin's winter, a repentant, empowered people emerges."

I am thankful for this imagery of a gospel springtime for us as Christ’s people during Lent, especially after this South Texas winter that had a bit of a kick to it! May Christ grant us a beautiful springtime! Join us as we begin our series.  

In Christ, 

Paul Hahn  

RPC Lead Pastor