Lenten Video Series

During the season of Lent, church workers encourage their community to bring penitent hearts to the Lord. We plan Wednesday night services, rehearse special music, offer resources that families can take home, coordinate youth group Lenten meals, and prepare Sunday school lessons that help children understand the significance of the season. Amidst all these acts of service it is easy to lose touch with our own meditations on repentance and redemption.

To support personal time of reflection, we’ve produced the “Honest Repentance” video series. The free series consists of six sermons written and preached by Dr. David Maxwell, Professor of Systematic Theology at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis. Each of the 10-minute messages is theologically rich and personally applicable. We encourage you to use them in your time of meditation as you focus on the cross this Lenten season.

“Repentance starts with being honest before God and ourselves about who we are. When it comes to sin, everyone has a natural impulse to hide, but repentance means finding the courage to be honest. It also means having faith in the promise of forgiveness.

“But being honest about faith means recognizing that faith is contested on many sides not only by society, but by our own experiences, and sometimes even by the actions of God himself.

“Finally, repentance means becoming more human, not less. Because our thoughts, desires,
and actions are so linked with sin, it is easy to view repentance as fighting against our humanity as if holiness meant trying to stifle as many of our natural human impulses as possible. But honest repentance recognizes that sin is the thing that stifles our humanity, while repentance results in our natural impulses functioning more as God designed them.”
—Dr. David Maxwell

David’s imaginative interweaving of the Old Testament foundations of our faith with the challenges we encounter in daily life helped me probe deeper into what living the whole life as a life of repentance actually means in taking the Word of the Lord into my own life. Brutally honest with and about himself, David opened up the hearers’ ability to face the wrinkles and crevices of our own lives with the freeing message of forgiveness and acceptance that Christ gives us through his death and resurrection.
—Dr. Robert Kolb, Professor Emeritus of Systematic Theology, Concordia Seminary, St. Louis

Dr. Maxwell preached the “Honest Repentance” sermon series at my church during Wednesday evening Lenten services. The images he described stuck with me; I found myself thinking about their theological significance all week. I felt both convicted and encouraged.
—Jessica Bordeleau, member of Timothy Lutheran Church, Saint Louis

I listened to Dave’s sermons during our church’s Wednesday Lenten services. Every sermon took me on an intellectual and spiritual journey through the Scriptures. And, for reasons that are still somewhat of a mystery to me, each one of them engaged my heart in ways that surprised me. They changed me. They just might change you too.
—Dr. Tim Saleska, Professor of Exegetical Theology, Concordia Seminary, St. Louis