Ash Wednesday 2026

Amen. You can be seated. And please take your Bible and turn to Psalm chapter 119. Right there in the middle of your Bible, Psalm 119. That's the longest chapter. There in the Psalter. And this morning, we're going to look at one verse. Last year in our inaugural Ash Wednesday service together as a church, Pastor Andrew did such a good job, preaching the word to us, bringing us a homily, and he did it succinctly. in a good amount of time explaining and encouraging us with the word, I'm going to try to do the same thing. And so in an effort to do that, we're gonna look at one verse this morning. for Ash Wednesday. Psalm 119, verse 25. The Holy Spirit says, my soul clings to the dust. Give me life. according to your word. This is the word of the Lord. Let's pray. Holy Father, we ask now that, in your word, you would show us your son Jesus. that you would sanctify us in the truth, because your word is the truth. We pray in the name of Jesus and by the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Well, here we are, sweet family. Ash Wednesday, 2026. Our Christian calendar, the liturgical calendar that we follow as a church, and as we do many of us in our homes and in our lives, really is such a blessing, because it structures our year around God, who God is, the Holy Trinity. You know, in an advent, in Christmas, uh, and an epiphany, we celebrate the Father sending the sun, and then through Lent and Easter, we celebrate the coming of the sun, to save us from our sins, and then, beginning with Pentecost, in ordinary time, we live, uh, in this time between the times, waiting for Jesus to return as the word and the sacraments sustain us, his church, his bride. And so there's a lot of, there's a lot of joy. There's a lot of intentionality, right? The church calendar helps us, people like us, who are forgetful, you know, people who can be selfish or structure our calendars or our days around us. What the church calendar does. is it, it shifts our focus away from us and toward the God who made us, and the God who sustains us. And we are enabled through that. Hopefully we pray, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to to think, and speak, and act, um, in response to God and who he is, in ways that maybe we wouldn't naturally be inclined to do. And Lent is a time that we're entering now where, um, there's, there's maybe more sorrow than there is joy. in our practice. But that's not a bad thing. Because the gospel is good news, and the good news can only be good if we're in a bad situation. And we need good news. Which we know to be true. And so on Ash Wednesday and then through the season of Lent, like Pastor Andrew said, we are identifying with the fasting of Jesus and his temptation in the wilderness. And what we're doing is we're preparing for Easter. We're preparing for the resurrection of the Son of God that we'll celebrate together here in about six weeks. Right? The word lent comes from the old English word lank 10, which means spring. So let means spring, and it's this season in preparing for Easter, where the days start getting a little longer. And we're ready for that, aren't we? We're ready for some sun, we're ready for this snow to be gone. We're ready for some warm weather. And we're preparing for, uh, the, the rising of the sun. You know, the S O N, is what we're doing. in Lent. And, but we begin Lent, of course, with Ash Wednesday, and with this, with this confession of who we are, as fallen sinners, Pastor Mike just let us well in confessing our sins. And so this morning, we look to Psalm chapter 119. Psalm 119 is such a great chapter in the Bible, isn't it? And it's all about the Bible. It's about the word of God, about God's law, and how it's so good for us. I had a professor, Dr. TJ Betts, who taught at Boyce and at Southern Seminary, and he said, you know, we sing the song Amazing Grace. Um, Amazing Grace, you know, how sweet the sound. And he said, Psalm 119 is like the song, Amazing Law. You know, how amazing is your law, O Lord? And Psalm 119 is really cool, the way that the Psalmist put it together. You'll notice, if you have an ESV, and I don't know if other translations do this, I can't remember off the top of my head, but each section of someone 19 starts with this heading. Our heading this morning is Dalet. Daleth. Um, before verse 25. And that's the fourth letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Psalm 119 is structured based on the Hebrew alphabet. So basically, what it's telling us is, these are the ABCs of the Bible. Um, And every section begins, every line of that section begins with the letter that the heading is indicating. So in verses 25 through 32, each verse, the first letter, in that verse in Hebrew, is dalet. It's the same all the way through. It's meticulous. It's beautiful. And what it's showing us is that the Word of God really is everything for us. It's the A, B, Cs of our life, is the Bible. is God's word. And in verse 25, the psalmist says, my soul clings to the dust. That's why we're here today, really, isn't it? Because our souls are clinging to the dust. in life. Again, pastor Mike just encouraged us, we're all going to die. Why are we going to die? Because we're sinners. But ultimately, that's the reason that everyone dies regardless of whether it's from cancer or a car accident, or good old age, or whatever it is. Everyone dies because everyone is a sinner. My soul clings to the dust. That word clings in Hebrew is the same word from Genesis 2:24, A man shall leave his father and mother and cling to his wife, or cleave to his wife. The psalmist here hearkens back to that, saying, there's a sense in which, because of our sin, we are married to death. From the time we're conceived, we are married to death, we cling to death. what dust represents. That the Hebrew word dust here is the same exact word from Genesis 3. You are, you know, from the dust you came into the dust, you shall return. We are married. We are clinging to death in our natural state. because of our sin. This is the aforementioned bad news. Right? This is the bad news that every human in the history of the world has had to wrestle with. And everyone's tried to answer it through different philosophies, different worldviews, different systems. I'm reading a great book right now by Tim Keller on Suffering. called Walking with God, through pain and suffering, and he goes through all these different worldviews throughout history, and how they've tried to answer the problem of suffering. And the answer that God gives us, from his word, is that the reason the world is broken, the reason that we sin, and the reason that we die is because of sin. Because Adam sinned, And Adam's sin has been passed to us, and we sin, in thought, word, indeed. We do not love God with our whole heart. We do not love our neighbor as ourselves. This is why we can feel it. We can feel it. Whether this morning, whether you're feeling it physically, you know, not just because you're tired. Though, maybe that's part of it too. But those pains that we feel, emotionally, relationally, whatever it is, the brokenness of the world. is because of our sin. We need life. That's ultimately what we need. Isn't that what everybody wants? Isn't that what Indiana Jones was looking for on that last crusade? It didn't end up being the last crusade. There were two more that we know of. What did they want? They were looking for eternal life. How do we live forever? How do we stay young? How do we feel good? What does every human being ultimately want? We want to feel like we're okay. We want to feel like our sins are forgiven, like we're in the right, and we want to live. We need life. So the psalmist, inspired by the Holy Spirit, says that our soul, it clings to the dust, and then he gives this imperative, it's a request. It's a request of the Lord. It's a pleading with the Lord. Give me life. According to your word. Notice in verse 31, he uses this language over again. He recapitulates it. He says, I cling to your testimonies. Verse 25, my soul clings to the dust. Verse 31, I cling to your testimonies. O Yahweh. Let me not be put to shame. We need life. And so the Psalms here are revealing to us, first and foremost, that life comes through God's Word. Right? It is through the preaching of Christ, through the scriptures, that God gives new spiritual life, because the problem isn't just that we're physically gonna die. That is the result of God's curse on Adam, in his sin, that we're all going to physically die. But the bigger problem is that we're spiritually dead. Because of sin, because Adam's sin is imputed to us, and then we practice sin, we are spiritually dead. That's how we're born. That's our natural state. And if we die in that spiritual death, then St. John tells us in the book of Revelation that there is what's called the second death. God's judgment for our sin. Eternal conscience punishment, that's just, because God is holy, holy, holy. And we are sinners, sinners, sinners. So we need life, we need spiritual life. And the psalm here is telling us, as God's word tells us all the way through, that God gives spiritual life, we can be born again, as Jesus tells us in John chapter 3, through the good news of the gospel, that is brought to us, that is preached to us through the word. The Holy Spirit, through the preaching of the word, gives the gift of faith. so that we understand who Jesus is and what Jesus did, that God is holy, and that we are sinners, and that the Lord Jesus came and he got down into the dust. With us, for us. that he lived without sin, that he was tempted by the devil for 40 days as he fasted in the wilderness, and that Jesus did not sin in his temptation. and that Jesus went to the cross, as we look forward to Good Friday. Why is Good Friday good? Because Jesus, the perfect one, died for our sins. so that we can receive the forgiveness of our sins and the hope of eternal life. so that we can live first spiritually, and then on the last day when Jesus returns, we can live in the resurrection. and live forever in the new world. where King Jesus is administering justice where there are no wrongs, and there are no sin, and there are no death, there is no death, and there are no tears. That's the good news. We look to Jesus in his resurrection, and God gives us the gift of faith. We know this good news, and we assent to it. We believe it's actually true, and we trust Jesus. I pray this morning, for everyone here with us. that you are trusting in Jesus, that God, if he has not given you that gift of faith, yet if he hasn't opened your eyes yet, that he would even now. As the word is preached, that you would see Jesus and that you would trust Jesus. That you would repent of your sin, that you would humble yourself and confess your sin and turn from your sin. Because that is the hope of Ash Wednesday. Is that we're clinging to the dust, but there is one who came down into the dust to pull us out of it. To redeem us, to save us. Give me life according to your word. And that word is not just the scripture. But it's the person for whom the scripture testifies. You read this verse, Psalm 119, 25 in the, in the Septuagint, which is the Greek version of the Old Testament, and it's actually Psalm 118 in the Septuagint, fun fact, for you at 706 this morning. But in the Greek version, it says, give me life according to your logos. According to your word. And St. John, of course, would tell us in John chapter 1 that that word, that logos, he became flesh. And he dwelt among us. And that dwelling among us was coming down into this dusty world, coming down into this dust bowl of a world. And not getting any dirt on his hands. He never sinned. He lived for us. He died for us. He rose again for us. He's going to come again to save us. As we walk around today with those ashes on our head, as a witness, both to our mortality, and our sin, and also a witness to the hope of the gospel. When Dr. Brett puts those ashes on us this morning, he's gonna say that we are from dust and that we're going to dust, and we need to repent and believe the gospel. That's the message that we're preaching to ourselves, and to the world this morning, because that's the only message, that's the only hope. We need life according to God's Word. Because we're clinging to the dust. We are, as humans, in our sin, married to the dust. married to death. But Jesus came. to redeem his bride. We have a better husband. And there is a better wedding that's coming. When Jesus returns the marriage supper of the lamb, when his people are as a bride adorned for her husband, when we will cling to him, when we will cleave to him, forever and ever, and everything sad will be untrue. And our hope this morning, as we, as we worship here together, and as we go out into our lives, with the mark of Christ and our mortality on our head, is that we are hoping. We are confidently expecting. that that wedding day is coming. And we pray this morning, through the power of the Holy Spirit, that in your soul, in your inner man, in your heart, that that's already happened. That you are made alive. Give me life. Listen, if we're gonna close here, but one more encouragement. If you're, if you're not a Christian, and, you know, we all know each other, but we also have children here, too. If you're not a Christian, if you're not trusting in Jesus, Simply, what we need to do, we need to pray these words genuinely to God. Give me life. According to your word. If you are a Christian, We need to pray the same thing every day. Father, give us life. according to your word. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the good news of Jesus. We thank you that though we are dead in our trespasses and sins, that your son came and he lived, and he died, and he rose again so that we can be saved so that we can have life. According to your word. We pray that you would bless us now as Dr. Brett, leads us in the imposition of the ashes, and that all throughout the day and all throughout this Lent season, that we would consider, that we would remember, that we would hope in, the fact that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. We pray in the name of Jesus, and we pray by the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen.