What is the season of Lent all about, anyway? And what is repentance? Join host Pastor Matt Popovits as he interviews Chad Bird, author of "Unveiling Mercy", as they dig into the significance of this pre-Easter season.

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Hey friends, welcome to the program with me today is author and speaker Chad bird. And on the program, we're gonna be talking about lent repentance, Chad, welcome to the program. Thanks

Matt. It's great to join you looking forward to the conversation. Yeah,

Me too. So, uh, let's pretend that those who are listening in have, have very little familiarity with all things, Christianity, and, and yet they hear this word being thrown out, uh, around this time of year. We get close to Easter, this word, uh that's it's not a common one, this word lent, uh, and they're wondering what it is. And you've got just a, a minute or two to try and explain it to 'em how in the world are you gonna explain the concept of lent to someone who has no idea? Um, no frame of reference for it? Yeah.

Let me, let me give it a shot so you can think of it in terms of a season. Okay. So we're all from a, you with our four seasons and in the church's life, it's set up to where the year it's divided into different seasons, not, you know, winter, spring, fall, but seasons called advent and Christmas and epiphany. And one of 'em is called LT. So it falls always in the spring of the year. It's leading up to Easter to the celebration of our Lord's reserv direction. And it's a time of preparation. It's traditionally a time that focuses upon the topic we're gonna talk about today, repentance, but also it's, it's associated with this idea oftentimes of kind of the, uh, what you might call the kind of the athletic side, spiritual, athletic side of the Christian faith. That is it's it's, it's about strong.

It's about, um, fighting temptation. It's about the, the, the, the battles that we all face in this life as Christians. So it's a season it traditionally associated with kind of 40 days, just like Jesus fasted, 40 days in the wilderness. So this, these 40 days of preparation leading up to leading up to Easter, it's a, it's, it's a good contrast. Easter's all about joy and rejoicing in our Lord's resurrection. And then lent always has a, a little bit more of a, of a subdued and somber tone to it. Uh, so it's a good contrast. And, you know, if you think about it kind of reflects a lot of the seasons in our own life, you know, we go through maybe periods of struggle. We also go through periods of joy. So this alter alternation between L and Easter, between struggle and victory between sorrow over sin and rejoicing over life. That's kind of reflected in seasons like lent and Easter. And some of the other ones.

Now, your, your specialty, your area of focus is in, uh, Hebrew and the old Testament. Is there, is there any parallel in the old Testament to this season that, that Christians now observe, uh, called lent?

Yeah, somewhat. Uh, so in, in the life of Israel and the life of God's old Testament people, they also had, they didn't necessarily have seasons, but they didn't have holy days. And many of these were associated with a feast, a festival. So of course, anytime you have a feast at the time of being happy and rejoicing over God's gifts, but there were also what you might called a, a fast. So they kind of the opposite of a feast. Uh, and one of the, one of the big days for this was, was called the day of atonement and Hebrew. It was yo Kippur, and that was a day actually of fasting. And that is somewhat parallel to, to the idea of lint. It was a it, and, and it still is among, uh, among Jews today. It's, it's a time of, of repentance. In fact, the day is leading up to yo Kippur for, for Jews are, are days of repentance and reflection and fasting.

And so in that way, the old Testament, yo Kippur was kind of like a, an abbreviated LT, if you will, wasn't a entire 40 days, but it wasn't a day for thinking about your sin for confession, for reflection. Uh, it was the only day, in fact, in the life of Israel, where there was a mandated fast. So everyone was to fast during this particular day. So in that way out, it did kind of have this, uh, this parallel in the old Testament. And we see maybe not every year, but we see these periods in Israel's life, where there was fasting and mourning and, and grieving. It might be over a NA national disaster, or it might be over just to kind of a, a period in Israel's life when there was a need for this kind of national public repentance. But we do see this, this theme of feasting and fasting of repenting and rejoicing reflected in Israel's life. And so that then continues in the life of the church today.

So if the, if the season of lent is about, um, recognizing your, your sin, recognizing your, your struggles as a human being, uh, perhaps, you know, recognizing your mortality, how, how does that help one's spirituality? How is that an, an asset to their, their faith experience? How is that a, how is that a good thing?

Right? Because on the surface, you're like, how, how could that be good?

Right? That does not sound like fun.

No, it doesn't, it doesn't. And, and I, and I do think that that kind of assumption that we have reflects, uh, an attitude that's, you know, very common in our culture that it's, it's the good times. It's the happy times when we tend to think that we are kind of making progress in life and that life is as it should be. And we tend to view the opposite times is not good for us, right. Times a struggle. Those, those can't be good for us. So that's, I think that's kind of our initial reaction, but when you, even, when you pause to think about your own life, you realize that isn't true, because I mean, completely apart from Christianity completely, apart from religion, we've every person has been through a trying time in their life, and maybe it was brief, maybe it was a long period.

And then as time goes on, most people are able to look back and say, you know what? That was hard. That was really difficult. But through it, I learned more about myself. Maybe I developed a little bit more patience and love with and toward other people. In other words, I, I grew as a person in the midst of that struggle, that loss that I experienced. Okay, well, you take that and you, you plug that same understanding into the Christian life, and you'll see that it's, it's the same, same with us. I mean, the reason that we're thinking about our mortality, the reason we're thinking about struggle and our, our need for, for confession is because, well, let me put it really, basically it brings us face to face with the truth that we are not God that we are we're, we're humans and we're frail, we're fragile.

We mess up all the time. And in, in and of ourselves, we're inadequate. We need, we need God. We need him to carry us through these times of struggle. We need him to give us his strength and our times of weakness and more than anything else, because we are mortal because, you know, every day we're like it or not we're are inching our way toward the grave. We need his life. And so these bring us face to face with the truth that we're not God, but at the same time, we have a God who loves us in Jesus Christ, who gives us life in Jesus Christ and who promises to bear us through times of struggle. So in an ironic sort of way in these times of weakness is when we realize our greatest strength and that greatest strength is outside of us in God, in Christ. And that's a, that that's a fantastic realization because then we, we tend to take our focus off ourselves and more focus more upon God and his gracious actions in our lives.

There, there are two seasons like this on the Christian calendar there's lent. And then there's, there's advent. And, and, and they're both what we'd call these, these penit potential seasons or these seasons as you put it earlier, uh, I like the analogy of going to the gym where you purpose. We do the hard stuff that, that, that can result in growth, right? Yeah. Um, looking inward at our, at our need for, uh, forgiveness and our mortality and our weakness. A and you said, I like what you said, I wrote it down. It brings us faith face to face with the truth that we are not God. Now I'm assuming then it's on purpose that these seasons, where we confront the truth, that we are not God, they serve as a runway to these other seasons that give us the reality of God. So the, the advent is a runway to the season of Christmas where God arrives for us. Um, and then lent is the runway to Easter where God, uh, dies and rises for us. Um, am I, am I correct in that connection of, of these, these seasons serve as a runway to prepare us for the reality of who God is after we've reflected on, on how we are not him.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, you put those two together, you put Christmas in here and then you put, uh, Easter here and you're really looking at you're the beginning and end of Christ. Work of saving us. Right? So at Christmas, he comes to become one of us so that he, who is the son of God comes down and he becomes the son of Mary. So that he's not, not only fully God, but he's fully human. So now he's one of us mm-hmm . And then you look at Easter and this is when he rises from the tomb having been crucified. So this is these, these are kinda the, the, the twin polls of his ministry. And then we have these seasons leading up to them. We have advent leading up to his birth. We Havelin leading up to his resurrection. Yeah. These are these seasons, as you say, are pen potential seasons.

They they're, they, they point out our need for forgiveness. They point out our sin and, but they're leading us really away from ourselves and into Jesus and who he is and what he's, what he's done for us. I love, I, I love your language of runway too. It's it's the, it's the path, the road, the runway that takes us from where we are to where God wants us to be. And, and, and, and fascinatingly where God wants us to be is always, always in Christ. That's, that's where he continually leads us. We, we tend to be, you know, very focused on ourselves. We, on that way, everybody's that way we, we kinda get wrapped up at our own little, uh, little bubble, our own little world and God's activity within us is always to kind of lift our heads from Naval gazing, lift our heads from looking at ourselves and being so focused on Mimi, me, and point us a away from ourselves and to the face of Christ, where we see a savior who loves us a savior, who wants us to be with him, a savior who forgives us and gives us life and salvation.

So by pulling us away from ourselves in these seasons of advent and lent God is leading us really not just to where he wants us to be, but the place that's actually best for us. Now, we were created to be in this union with God, and that's what we have in Christ. So it's, it's not as if we're sort of leaving our, our humanness leaving, leaving that behind. We're actually coming to the, to the point where God who has created us as humans wants us to be. So I, I would put it this way. True human flourishing, true human flourishing is found in Jesus Christ because here is where God finally puts us to where exactly he wants us to be in union with himself in the person of his son.

So in that process, in that, in that journey of being led away from ourselves and, and, and toward Christ, um, being led away from our, our, our, our name will gazing and obsession with ourself to being found in Christ. Um, uh, there's this, this practice, uh, this call to something that we, we know as repentance, um, again, pretending the people listening have no familiarity with, with any of the stuff we're talking about. How would you describe what repentance is and role does that play? Not just in journeys, like the journey of lent or advent, but in the Christian life in general.

Yeah. Um, you mentioned earlier that, uh, that I, uh, learn and study and talk about Hebrew. So, uh, me give you a Hebrew, good Hebrew word, that, and it's a very concrete word that's connected to repentance. So that, that I return to over and over, because I think it just kind of sums up very well, what repentance means. So in Hebrew, there's a word called shoe, and it, its basic meaning is to turn or to return. In other words, you're, you're going one direction and now you're gonna be going another direction or you've been moving away from some and now you're gonna return. So you're going turn from the direction you had been going. And you're going to come back to where you were Sohu is to turn or to return. It just so happens that that is the Hebrew word for repentance. So in Hebrew to repent is to stop going the direction you're going and to be brought back to the place that God wants you to be.

So of course, throughout our lives, we're, we're moving, we're going here. We're going there, we're doing this, we're doing that. And we're all familiar with getting lost. We're all familiar with going the wrong direction, even just on a, you know, we're, we're supposed to be meeting someone somewhere. We get lost, we turn down the wrong street or maybe we're going the complete opposite direction. So we're all familiar with that. All familiar with getting lost and sin is kind of like that. We, we lose our way. We get lost from where God wants us to be. You know, we, we have all sorts of metaphors for that, for this, right. You know, we, we go, we're going down the wrong path. We often say, so we need to get off of that. Get back to where we need to be. So that's kind of sums up our lives.

We're always getting lost. We're going the wrong way. And so what God is doing, and when he calls us to repentance is he's getting us away from this wrong direction. And he's turning us. He's returning us to come back and we always come back to him that that's key. You know, our sin is always moving away from God in when one direction or another moving away from him. And so when God calls us to repentance, he's calling us home, come back to me, stop going that way, because that way's gonna gonna lean only in death or in, in, in all sorts of problems for you. So come back to me because I am where you, you want to be. That's basically what repentance is now. A cool, really cool thing here about, about the Hebrew is that in the vast majority of occasions, when Hebrew word shoe, which means to turn to return or repent when it's used God, this is the interesting part.

God is usually the subject. So here's what's going on when God will say repent, but what God does is he repents us. He turns us, he returns us. So just like one of terribles that Jesus told was about a law sheep. And what happened? Did the sheep find its way home? No, no. What, what happened? Well, the shepherd went out and he found the sheep and he brought the sheep home and he would say that he shoved the sheep. That is to say he repented the sheep. He, he brought this law sheep home. So that's the really amazing and grace of what repentance is, is that God calls us to repentance. And then God affects. He makes happen. Our repentance by bringing us back by turning us by returning us to, to himself. So we get lost and God finds us. We go the wrong way. God brings us home. And that just shows is how much he cares for us that he's not gonna say, well, you know, too bad for you. Hope you find your way home. No, he's gonna search us out. He's gonna find us. He's gonna bring us back to where he wants us to be.

So, so would, would it be safe to say, then repentance is kind of giving up on this road. You're you're, you're walking down and of, of, of sin and kind of giving in or letting go and, and, or falling into what, where God is turning you, which is, which is toward him, right? Like it's, it's because he's, he's doing the work he's calling you, he's leading you to him and he's pulling you away from your sin. And the act of repentance is like, I'm, uh, I'm, I'm gonna I'm I'm gonna let go here and, and give into what God is doing. God's doing this and I'm, I'm gonna let him turn me around toward Jesus. Is that yes. Yeah. Logically,

Appropriately. I don't know. Yeah. I think that's, that's a great way to think about it. I mean, it's, it's, it's a gift for seed from God. Yeah. But it's also something we're doing. So it's also going on at this same time. I mean, I guess you could compare it and maybe it's not the perfect analogy, but okay. If, if I fall in love with someone I'm doing that falling in love, right? I mean, it's not somebody else falling in love, so I'm the one falling in love. But at the same time, just listen to the words we use. Right. I fall into, I don't jump into it. I don't climb into it. I fall into it. So I'm doing it. But at the same time, I'm sort of also passively receiving this. It just, it happens to me. And it's, it's hard to explain and understand, but I know it's real. It's kind of like that we, we sort of fall all into repentance. You might say, mm God makes it happen. We're doing it. But at the same time, he's the one who is achieving this for us.

Yeah. There's very, there's very clearly this, this, this force greater than myself acting upon me from the outside. Right. Like calling me, like drawing me towards, towards something different. Um, you, you know, you, you mentioned, um, the story that Jesus tells about the law sheep and, and the, uh, the, the, the man goes and finds the sheep. But in, in that same section of scripture, there's the story of the prodigal son. And as you were talking about the story about going down one road and then turning around and going turn going a different road, the, the image that came to mind for me is that prodigal son who's off following his own, his own road, his own path. But then he comes home to his father. Now in, in that story that the dad doesn't go and get him. But, but would you say that in that story, it's, it's the, it's the knowledge that the son had of the character and the heart and who his father was that helped to call him back home to this place of being received back. I mean, where's the agency of the father. Who's, who's God in this story. Where's the, and, and his involvement in turning the son around. Is there, is there any connection there?

Sure. That's a fascinating story. I think that, well, there's so much going on there. I'll, I'll try and summarize what I think is happening. So, uh, for those who do don't know the story, there's a son who basically gets his inheritance from his father before his father dies. He goes into far away country and he just basically squanders everything and he's painless. And so he, he hires himself out to work feeding pigs, which in that society would've been considered basically, you know, the lowest of the low kind of occupations. And then he kind of comes to his self and he is like, you know what, my father servants back home, they have, they have plenty to eat. And here I am feeding pigs and hungry. So he decides to go home, but here's key. Here's what's key. He says to himself, he kinda has this inner monologue.

He says, you know what, I'll do. I'll go back. And I'll tell my dad that I'm no longer to be called his son, but he can make me a servant and kind of implied in that is if I'm a servant, I can kind of begin to maybe impress him and work my way back, maybe to be accepted into the family. So he goes home. And so he's, he's going home because he knows his dad is not gonna slam the door in his face mm-hmm , but he's also kind of working the angles of, if you will, , I'm gonna, I'm gonna make myself a servant and maybe I can, you know, earn his favor again. And then his dad, when he sees him coming, he runs, which never would've happened to that culture. You know, a growning wheat, I'm a runner, many, many people listening to this probably runners.

But in that culture, you would not see, you would not see a, a father, a Jewish father running in his robes, down the road, especially to meet his son. But that's what he does. And when he gets to his son, the son kind of begins this confession and the father just cuts him off. He doesn't even let him get to the point of saying, you know what, make me your servant. He throws his arms around him. He he's weeping. He's rejoicing because his son is back. And he says, let's throw a feast because my son was dead in his lie. He was lost in his found. It was the love of the father that drew him back. And yet he was kind of still in that in phase. And his father's expression of full acceptance and full love for him is what finally, I think finally brought him to that true repentance. It was in that moment in which they embraced and he realized he didn't have to be a servant. His, his dad embrace him as if he had never been gone. His dad embraced him as one who was forgiven and loved. And that realization of this, this love of the father is finally what brought home to this prodigal. I think what, what really love, what real love is, what, what forgiveness really is. It's God embracing us and not happy that we're back, but so happy. He wants to throw a party to celebrate our, our return.

And, and in some sense, you know, I, I guess you could say that that's, that's the journey that Christians are embarking on in some sense during the season of, of lent. Uh, and we're kind of, we're making that, right?

Yeah. We're, that's kinda what Lynn is. It's the journey home. And when we get there, what do we encounter? We don't encounter a God. Who's wagging his finger at us or a God who says, well, if you do these five or 10 things, then I'll take you back. We find a God who runs to us, embraces us and says, you're my child. I of you, nothing will ever change that. You are your mind. That's, that's the embrace of God is embrace of us on Easter. Hmm.

For people who wanna learn more about the stuff that you write and the things that you put out, where can I go?

Yeah. I think the best place to go is that 15, 17 org. I work for 15, 17, and I have a, a part of their website. That's, that's all my articles. You can check those out. You can also look me up on Facebook. And I had posted daily on Facebook. And, uh, you can find my material there as well.

And you recently released a daily devotional filled with insights from the old Testament. He tell us a little bit about that.

Yeah. Yeah. The devotion is called unveiling mercy and it's 365 daily devotion. So every day of the year, I'll take a different Hebrew word or phrase and I'll have the Hebrew characters there, but of course, everything else is in English. You don't need to know anything about Hebrew to, uh, to profit from this. And then each of ocean will, will explain the Hebrew word. And more importantly, it will connect it. Every single one of 'em will connect it to the, to the new Testament and the work of Christ. So it bridges that, that, uh, that bridges from the old Testament to the new Testament to show how the old Testa is leading us to, to Christ. Yeah. That's unveiling mercy, and

People can grab that@amazon.com and hold bunch

Other places com sure. Yep, yep. Wherever you get your Christian books, it, uh, it should be there. Awesome.

Hey Chad, it's always great to talk to you always great to see you. Thanks so much for spending a little bit of time today, talking length and repentance and some

Other things. Yeah. Thanks having on Matt. Appreciate it.

Absolutely. And uh, thank you to our listeners for tuning in and being a part of this conversation. We hope that you will join us next time.

Thanks guys. Thank you for listening to this broadcast of engaging truth. Be sure to join us each week at this time, to help support our ministry, contact evangelical life ministries, post office spots, spot Cypress, Texas 77 4, or visit our elm.org or find us on Facebook evangelical ministries. You.