Midweek Lenten Service 2026

March 18 (Wednesday after the Fourth Sunday in Lent)

Service “Theme”: Realization of our rest

Theme Verse: “Therefore, while the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it” (Heb. 4:1). 

Psalm: Psalm 105:23–36 (OR 105:37–45); Psalm 106:21–33; Psalm 95; Psalm 90

Reading: Hebrews 3:12–4:1; Deuteronomy 34:1–9

Realization of our rest

Paul says that Moses’ ministry was a ministry of stone and a ministry of death. It was indeed glorious, but its glory was passing away (2 Cor. 3:7). 

            The present participle καταργουμενην depicts this “abolition” of Moses’ ministry as already in the process of happening. From its start it was provisional, and his very life and death among God’s people bears this out. Moses’ death in the wilderness is a result of his own sin at Meribah (Deut. 32:51), but it also represents the provisional character of his ministry; the Law of Moses was good, but it was never intended to be final. (See also Rom. 4 and Gal. 3.) 

            Moses is faithful, glorious and sainted (Heb. 3:2–3), but in his fall at Meribah he is also an icon of those whose “bodies fell in the wilderness” through unbelief, who did not enter their rest. This futility is taken up in Psalm 90. Moses, likely reflecting on this very reality, complains that “our days pass away under your wrath” and that “the years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty” (Psalm 90:9, 10). Sin has eternal consequence, but it is also seen vividly in our worldly lives. Quite simply, they pass away. 

            Moses is hemmed in by death, and out of the futility of it all he cries out, “Return, O Lord! How long? ... Satisfy us in the morning with thy mercy,” and also, “Let your work be shown to your servants, and your glorious power to their children. ... establish the work of our hands upon us” (90:13–17). Moses must die as sinners must, so he cries for the merciful work of the Lord to appear. Also, the work of mortal hands is always left provisional, thus Moses commends his work unto the Lord — that is, to Him whose very name isיהושע, salvation.

            Solomon expresses the futility, and humiliation, of death in Ecclesiastes 1. The sun rises and falls again; the wind whirls around and around; rivers fail to fill the sea. One generation hands down its unfinished (or worse, finished!) labors into the unsure hands of the next. Moses and Solomon teach us to number our days and to entrust all things to God even as we entrust them also unto the next generation. Joshua and not Moses is called to give rest to God’s people. 

            Moses falls but Joshua rises; Israel dies in the wilderness but a new generation comes up. There are two censuses in Numbers, at the beginning and end of the 40 years, and they nearly match. There is a savor of resurrection even in our earthly fruitfulness; the glories of the Second Article are not entirely foreign to the blessings of the First Article. But Hebrews 4:8–9 points out the obvious: The rest that Joshua gives does not last, otherwise David would not have used his example to admonish Israel hundreds of years later. 

            Jesus, who shares a name with Joshua, son of Nun, as well as with Joshua, the high priest purified in Zechariah 3, is unlike him in this: He succeeds Himself in office. In His death He is both sacrifice and priest; in His resurrection and ascension He is made High Priest forever (Heb. 6:20). His eternal office brings an eternal rest. His atonement is administered forever since He Himself lives forever to administer it. “The peace of the Lord be with you always.”

            The endless successions of this world may be a token of resurrection, as one generation commends God’s works to another, but they reek of the futility of Moses. Jesus is the Last Joshua needing no successor, the Last Aaron needing no other sacrifice, the Moses who leads His people into His perpetual promise. 

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March 11 (Wednesday after the Third Sunday in Lent)

Service “Theme”: Redemption of our witness

Theme Verse: “‘And the patriarchs, jealous of Joseph, sold him into Egypt; but God was with him and rescued him out of all his afflictions and gave him favor and wisdom before Pharaoh, king of Egypt, who made him ruler over Egypt and over all his household’” (Acts 7:9–10). 

Psalm: Psalm 81 (antiphon vv.5–6); Psalm 105:15–24

Reading: Acts 7:9–17; Genesis 6:1–8; 39:1–2, 7–21

Redemption of our witness

Adam has fallen and so too has Cain, away from God’s Word and away from His presence, but we have farther to fall. Genesis 6 records what happens to the “sons of God.”

            First, we must settle the identity of these “sons of God.” Sometimes they are identified as fallen angels, based on the use of that phrase in Job 1 and 2 and perhaps in Psalms 29 and 89. Briefly, that identification clashes with the purpose of the text and the book of Genesis as a whole.[1] Certainly the devil (presumably, though not explicitly, with his minions) lurks in Genesis, tempting Adam to fall, just as he temps Cain, waiting at the door. But the fall is the fall of Adam, and Eve’s blaming of the serpent does not remove her and Adam’s responsibility. 

            Claiming the sons of God are demons makes the flood a non sequitur, since it is the proximate reason for the world being completely empty of the righteousness of faith (Gen. 6:1–5). It is a human sin that causes the flood, a human sin from which God must redeem His people. Those people specifically, the sons of God, are simply the sons of righteous Seth, the very people who “began to call upon the name of the Lord” in Genesis 4:26. They are set against the “daughters of men” who are of the worldly line of Cain (Gen. 4:16–24). 

            The sin, then, of these sons of God is giving up their faith in intermarrying with the worldly. They spy the cute pagan girls and are lustfully willing to give up their faith for their hands. This ruins their witness and brings about the sorry state of the world that deserves the flood. The falls of man, away from God, against his brother and before the world have conspired to ruin what God made good. 

            But His original purpose in creation will not be frustrated. Genesis teaches us not only about the nature of creation, but also about the nature of God Himself: patient, merciful, redeeming. “And he will redeem Israel from all his iniquities” (Psalm 130:8). On the far side of floodwaters, there will arise one who hears God and obeys (Abraham) and one who wrestles with his brother and overcomes and reconciles (Jacob). But what about the world? How will God redeem our witness?

            God has blessed His people with the blessing of Abraham and He has multiplied them under Jacob  into a nation of 12 tribes, but as yet they have not subdued the earth — these blessings have not been shared with the nations. (See several false starts in this regard in Genesis 34 and 38.) 

            Here arises Joseph. Joseph is faithful and thus favorite in his father’s house and his dreams of preeminence over his brothers (and parents) prove divine. When his brothers sell him into Egypt he rises quickly to prominence and a place of trust in the house of Potiphar, and there he is offered the same temptation the sons of God were in Genesis 6: a pleasing marriage with the worldly. 

            Joseph remains faithful instead and it costs him all that he had accrued thus far. He is cast down again, only to rise again (in a patient and glorious process we will pass over here) to the very right hand of pharaoh. Poignantly, Joseph does at last marry an Egyptian, daughter of Potipherah, priest of On (Gen. 41:45). Faithfulness, then, does not demand isolation. It is not that the church oughtn’t wed the world; we must do so on faithful terms. We mustn’t do so to save ourselves, much less satisfy our lusts (whatever they may be), but in order to save the world by our uncompromising witness. 

            This Joseph does. He saves the world materially by his preparations for famine, and he also converts pharaoh and his servants. Notice the faithful words of Joseph’s steward in Genesis 43:19–23, as well as pharaoh’s reception of Jacob and Jacob’s blessing in Genesis 47:5–10.[2] Also recall the words of Exodus 1:8; the rising of a pharaoh who knew not Joseph presupposes a line of pharaohs who did know Joseph and Joseph’s God. 

            God’s blessing and command in the beginning is to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it, and through fall and flood He has brought it to pass. Genesis begins with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden at peace with God; it ends with God’s people faithfully dwelling in the best part of the best nation in the world, with brothers reconciled and the world (in principle) evangelized. 

            So the epithet of Joseph is inscribed over the whole of Genesis: “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today” (Gen. 50:20). 

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March 4 (Wednesday after the Second Sunday in Lent)

Service “Theme”: Redemption of our brotherhood

Theme Verse: “But you have come ... to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel” (Heb. 12:22a, 24). 

Psalm: Psalm 78:1–8; Psalm 133; Psalm 105:8–15; Psalm 60

Readings: Hebrews 12:22–24; Genesis 27:41–44; 28:10–15; Genesis 4:1–8 (OR 4:1–15)

Redemption of our brotherhood

Already obvious from Adam’s fall away from God is the way it also causes a fall away from Eve. They may have seemed to be united against God in taking His fruit, but that unity is a sham and gives way to blame, self-justification and an antagonism that is handed down.

            Cain kills his brother Abel, and the murder flows from their parents’ fall in two ways: They inherit their sinful nature and it is their worship that sources their discord. Cain’s unworthy worship, faithless and thankless, is why he goes unaccepted by God and why he resents the faith of his brother. Abel dies for his faith, expressed in his offering of the firstlings of his flock and the fat thereof. 

            God must redeem brotherhood, and He does so in Genesis’ other pair of brothers: Esau and Jacob. This He does first of all before they were born (neither having done any good or evil) by declaring that the older shall serve the younger (Gen. 25:23). This suspension of primogeniture is the abnormal norm in Genesis (Cain is driven away, Ishmael is blessed but sent away, Esau despises his birthright, Reuben falls from grace along with Simeon and Levi), teaching us that the last shall be first. God’s grace exalts, fraternal strivings do not. 

            Esau is the new Cain and Jacob the new Abel. This may require some argumentation, since Jacob’s reputation has been sullied in modern times.[1] He is remembered mostly as a cheater and deceiver, but it is Esau whom Hebrews calls profane and adulterous, and it blames him for selling his birthright for a trifle (Heb. 12:16; see also Rom. 9:8, 10–13). He is the father of Edom, perennial enemy of Israel and even an enemy of Christ (Herod was an Edomite — cf. Josephus’ Antiquities).

            Jacob, by contrast, is called “sound” or “wholesome” in Genesis 25:27, though translators usually beg to differ.[2] The word תמ is translated favorably in its other occurrences (Prov. 29:10; Job 1:1; 2:3; 8:20; 9:20–22; Psalm 37:37; and Gen. 6:9 describes Noah with the same root), but not in Genesis 25. However, it is intended to portray Jacob as a mature and faithful steward of his father’s tents and flocks, while Esau galivants about the woods hunting game.

         Jacob does usurp his unfaithful brother, despite the risk of curse and fratricide (cf. Gen. 27:6–14, in which Rebecca plans the deception of Isaac, willing even to bear curses to accomplish the blessing of Jacob). In fact, taking this blessing does not make Jacob’s life easier, and arguably, he never thought it would. It is a burden he seeks and bears, as Esau drives him from home and he is led to labor many years under his deceptive Uncle Laban. 

         God is working to redeem brotherhood, not only by giving “Abel” supremacy, but by exalting the lowly and by reconciling estranged brothers. 

The last shall be first, proclaims Jesus, and it is a token of His gracious way. Matthew 18 gives over the kingdom of heaven to children, the youngest of disciples. 

Jesus redeems brotherhood by being unashamed to be called our brother, who takes the lowest place as the Last Adam but is risen as firstborn from the grave and the firstborn among many resurrected brothers.

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February 25 (Wednesday after the First Sunday in Lent)

Service “Theme”: Redemption of our worship

Theme Verse: “By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac. ... He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back” (Heb. 11:17a, 19). 

Psalm: Psalm 105:5–15, 42–45 (OR 105:5–10); Psalm 50:1–15 (OR 105:7–15)

Readings: Hebrews 11:8–19; Genesis 12:1–8

Redemption of our worship

Both tabernacle and temple are built to be gardens (e.g., Ex. 25:31–35; 26:31–34; 39:24–26; 1 Kings 6:29–35), complete with blossoms, fruits and tracery adorning their vestments and furnishings and stylized cherubim guarding their doors (Ex. 26:31; 1 Kings 6:32). The meaning is simple: The priests are entering a new Garden of Eden, where man again (very carefully and provisionally) may walk with God (Gen. 3:8). By analogy, then, the fall of Adam that we mourn particularly at this time of year (First Week in Lent in the One-Year Series and Three-Year Series A) occurred in a sanctuary, where God Himself was to be found and followed. Man’s first fall, then, is a sin of worship — a failure to fear, love and trust in God.

            As we will see, this fall only breeds others. How we worship will bleed over into all other things, and when we ignore God’s fatherly commands and promises we will also fall away from our brothers (see below) and before our world (see further below). 

            It is this marred worship that the Lord must redeem. To heal a fallen creation, He must apply His knife to the source of the infection, to the particular wickedness beneath all others: our refusal to receive His holy words and to trust them. This He accomplishes in the calling of Abram. 

            Abram is in many ways Adam’s opposite:

• Called to find the Promised Land while Adam is put there to begin with;
• Faced from the start with privation and not the fruit of the garden;
• Patient to await his inheritance and not anxious to seize it himself; and
• Giving to God his most precious “fruit” instead of taking God’s.

And we see much of his work in Genesis is “liturgical.” He builds altars wherever he goes in Canaan (Gen. 12:7, 8; 13:18; 22:9), worshiping the God who promised he would have the land — but not until he was himself planted in its still foreign soil. The climax of this career falls on Mount Moriah, where he who received the promises (and only the promises) offered up his only son. 

            The path from his call (Gen. 12:1) to his sacrifice (Gen. 22:1) is not sinlessly smooth, but it is (all the more!) clear that God is making Abram into a “new Adam,” by faith able not only to keep his hands off God’s fruit, but also to lay down his own. 

            This sacrifice on Mount Moriah, carried out by our father Abraham, is carried out only in faith of the resurrection. He is the model for our own worship, our own faithful offerings. He who could stare death in the face — and not even his own, but the death of his son and his legacy and all that he had risked so completely by answering God’s call — he shares your faith. 

            Only, you have heard word of its fulfillment — Christ the firstfruits from the grave, God’s own sacrifice and thus His pledge of faithfulness. Let us lead Abrahamic lives, our lives flowing from our Sundays, banking on God’s promises without reservation. Let us live not by all that we see arrayed against us, but instead by what we have heard in the garden sanctuary of God.