for Sunday 22nd February 2026
Today’s service is led by the Revd Dr Lance Stone
Introduction
Hello! My name is Lance Stone; I am a retired minister who has served both the United Reformed Church and the Church of Scotland. I am currently live in Glasgow. A very warm welcome to this service.
Call to Worship
Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Happy are those to whom the Lord imputes no iniquity and in whose spirit there is no deceit.
While I kept silent, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.
Then I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not hide my iniquity;
I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,” and you forgave the guilt of my sin.
Hymn Jesus Lover of My Soul
Charles Wesley (1707-1788) Public Domain BBC Songs of Praise
Jesus, lover of my soul,
let me to thy bosom fly,
while the nearer waters roll,
while the tempest still is high;
hide me, O my Saviour, hide,
till the storm of life is past;
safe into the haven guide,
O receive my soul at last!
2 Other refuge have I none,
hangs my helpless soul on thee;
leave, ah, leave me not alone,
still support and comfort me.
All my trust on thee is stayed,
all my help from thee I bring;
cover my defenceless head
with the shadow of thy wing.
3 Plenteous grace with thee is found, grace to cover all my sin;
let the healing streams abound, make and keep me pure within.
Thou of life the fountain art; freely let me take of thee;
spring thou up within my heart, rise to all eternity.
Opening Prayer of Approach, Confession and Pardon
O gracious and holy God, eternal Trinity of glory,
dwelling in love and joy and peace, before time and beyond time
and far above and beyond us;
in Jesus Christ you have laid aside that glory and come amongst us,
become vulnerable, living life in our shoes,
exposed to hunger and pain and to temptation,
feeling our joys and sorrows
and holding fast and faithful to the one who sent you.
We praise and worship you and rejoice in your solidarity with us.
For we live in this troubled world,
where we find it hard to distinguish what we can do
from what we should do;
and in seeking life we make foolish choices
and fall far short of who we truly are.
So we come seeking forgiveness and grace to emend our lives.
Assurance of Pardon
Lord Jesus Christ, second Adam come to undo sin’s curse,
assure us that we are beloved and forgiven
and give us grace to walk your way,
for we pray in your name and in your words,
saying together…Our Father…
Prayer for Illumination
Living God, open our ears and our hearts to your Word,
that we may not live by bread alone
but by every word that proceeds from your mouth. Amen.
Reading Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7
The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, ‘You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.’ Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, ‘Did God say, “You shall not eat from any tree in the garden”?’ The woman said to the serpent, ‘We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; but God said, “You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.”’ But the serpent said to the woman, ‘You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’ So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.
Reading Romans 5:12-19
Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned— sin was indeed in the world before the law, but sin is not reckoned when there is no law. Yet death exercised dominion from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sins were not like the transgression of Adam, who is a type of the one who was to come. But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died through the one man’s trespass, much more surely have the grace of God and the free gift in the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for the many. And the free gift is not like the effect of the one man’s sin. For the judgement following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brings justification. If, because of the one man’s trespass, death exercised dominion through that one, much more surely will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness exercise dominion in life through the one man, Jesus Christ. Therefore just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all. or just as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.
Hymn Seek Ye First
Karen Lafferty (born 1948) © 1972 CCCM Music OneLicence A-734713
Performed by Joy and Ruth Everingham and used with their kind permission.
Seek ye first the kingdom of God,
and His righteousness,
and all these things shall be added unto you.
Allelu, alleluia.
2 Ask and it shall be given unto you,
seek and ye shall find;
knock and the door shall be opened up to you.
Allelu, alleluia.
3 We shall not live by bread alone, but by every word
that proceeds from the mouth of God. Allelu, alleluia.
Reading St Matthew 4:1-11
Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. He fasted for forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. The tempter came and said to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.’ But he answered, ‘It is written, “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”’ Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written, “He will command his angels concerning you”, and “On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.”’ Jesus said to him, ‘Again it is written, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”’ Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendour; and he said to him, ‘All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Away with you, Satan! for it is written, “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.”’
Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.
Sermon
So it’s the first Sunday of Lent, that season of the Christian year leading up to Easter, when the church focuses on sin, the flesh and the devil. And so what’s different, some sceptics might ask – isn’t that what the church is always on about? Well, hopefully not, but this Lent season does give us a chance to ponder what the world often prefers to ignore: the dark side of human nature. And as is traditional on this first Sunday of Lent, we turn to the account of Jesus in the wilderness at the start of his ministry – when he was assaulted by this unholy trinity of sin, the flesh and the devil and where he had to hold firm and resist at all costs.
Jesus has just been baptised by John in the River Jordan, where a voice form heaven declares: this is my Son, my beloved…’ This is the great divine disclosure of Jesus’ identity, who Jesus is. But from there he is led into the wilderness and then comes the probing: ‘if you are the Son of God…’; ‘If you are…’; ‘If you are who the voice at your baptism has declared you to be then what? You are famished, the pangs of hunger are gripping you – see these stones? Well, if you are the Son of God, give in to the flesh and turn them into bread!’ And then, ‘You are vulnerable, at the mercy of a violent world. Well, if you are the Son of God, give into sin by putting God to the test and leaping from the parapet of the temple so that he must dispatch a squadron of God’s angels to catch you!’ And then, lastly, ‘if you are God’s Son, God’s rightful ruler, give into me, the devil, by bowing down and worshipping me and all the world will be yours.’ These are the temptations that come with the revelation of Jesus’ identity as God’s beloved Son.
And we could ponder at length these temptations, but I want to use this opportunity to explore a little bit what we mean by sin and what it is. I wonder how you would define sin. What do you think it is? One answer we might give from the Bible would be breaking God’s Law. Is sin primarily disobedience? The writer Francis Spufford in a book defending Christianity defines sin as the human propensity to mess things up, only that’s a rather sanitised version of what he actually says. So what is sin? Well, there is a verse to be found in the New Testament which tells us that ‘all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God’ and it is that idea of sin as falling short that I would like to consider today. Think for a moment of today’s Old Testament reading from the Book of Genesis, the story of Adam and Eve’s disobedience to God. They, like Jesus, are tempted – tempted by the serpent to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and so become like God. And there are many ways of interpreting this story but traditionally what happens here has been described as ‘the Fall’, and this an appropriate enough description. If we had read on in the story after they have eaten the forbidden fruit we would have found God walking in the garden in the evening, and Adam and Eve hiding from God. They are naked and ashamed and there follows recrimination and blame and estrangement and curses and surely they have indeed fallen here, fallen far short of what they were created to be, fallen far short of the glory of friendship and peace with God and with one another and with their world. Yes, Adam disobeyed God – disobeyed a direct command, as Paul puts it in our Romans reading – but in so doing he is diminished, short-changing himself and God.
If today’s reading from Romans invites us to turn back to Adam in order to interpret this story of Jesus’ temptations, there is however another more important Old Testament reference. Think again of Jesus. He has just come through the waters of baptism and now he finds himself in the wilderness, tempted. And what does that remind us of? Why, the people of Israel of course, in their journey out of Egypt! They too passed through the waters and they too were led into the wilderness and there they too were tested and tempted, only they moaned and complained and longed for food, crying out for the flesh-pots of Egypt: they yearned for the security of captivity. And there too we see sin as falling short. To return to Egypt is to fall far short of God’s purposes for this beloved people, and indeed a whole generation of Israelites never did make it to the Promised Land but perished in the wilderness. They fell short! And now in this chapter Jesus is in a sense Israel once again, coming through the water to be tested and tempted in the desert. Only where his ancestors disobeyed and fell short, he is obedient and goes the distance.
And how very subtle the devil is. Jesus’ temptations could be said to be all about means and ends – seeking the right ends but by the wrong means. Think of it: feeding famished bodies with bread; demonstrating God’s protective care of his beloved by entrusting himself to |God’s angels; being declared ruler of the nations: all of these are worthy ends but when sought by the wrong means they fall woefully short of God’s glorious plan for Jesus’ ministry. Giving in to these temptations would have yielded a lesser salvation because it would have by-passed the cross.
The fact is, Jesus’ sights are on something bigger, something higher, something wider. His salvation is so much more than what the devil was offering him. I love the language of that passage we read from Romans this morning contrasting Adam and Christ. It is language that is bursting at the seams in trying to describe what Christ has achieved. Adam represents us as sinners, people who fall far short of God’s purposes for us, people who make foolish, destructive choices which diminish life and bring death to the world. And Jesus comes to do so much more than just undo Adam’s sin. Paul writes, ‘But God’s act of grace is out of all proportion to Adam’s wrongdoing. For if the wrongdoing of that one man brought death upon so many, its effect is vastly exceeded by the grace of God and the gift that came to so many by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ.’ Jesus came to expand the horizons of Adam’s shrunken world. Jesus came to open up glorious new vistas and possibilities, where the devil would seek to narrow them and to limit life. To be God’s beloved, God’s delight, is to have his eyes on a bigger prize, a bigger salvation than the devil’s cut-price offering.
I wonder how you react to sin as falling short. What I think is interesting is that the whole notion of falling short lies at the very heart of our culture today – people are constantly being made to feel they are falling short. If you do not have the perfect body – especially if you are a woman – you are falling short. If you are not having great and very frequent sex, you are falling short. If you are ageing and showing it you are falling short and you must resist it at all costs. And capitalism of course feeds on creating a sense of falling short, creating felt needs that can only be met by buying more, consuming more, possessing more for otherwise you are missing out.
Nowadays there is a whole industry of self-help books which suggest that in some way you are under-achieving, falling short, that you could do better. I decided to check them out on Amazon and there are stacks of them – titles like ‘Self Help: this is your chance to change your life’; or ‘Love Better, Feel Better, Live Better’, or ‘Think Faster, Talk Smarter’. And who knows? Maybe a bit of self-help can improve the quality of people’s lives and who would begrudge that? But the trouble is that having diagnosed our sense of falling short, these remedies too often fall short! What the self-improvement industry offers is salvation for a secular age, and what that often amounts to is more productive lives, more efficient lives, more successful lives – the very terms the devil offered Jesus in the desert. Here is instant, cut-price salvation but not the life in all its fulness of the Gospel.
That brings us back to Jesus and back to sin. If I’m honest, I find it hard to imagine what sinlessness would look like. But when I look at Jesus what I do see is a life that did not fall short. Here was a man who loved God and loved people all the way to the edge and beyond. Here was a man who in his ministry revealed the full dimensions of what it means to be human, the true Adam. Here was a man who realised that life bought on the cheap soon wears thin and that eternal life comes with a price-tag.
This season of Lent that we have begun this week is a season of self-examination. We are invited to take time to take a long, hard look at ourselves. Before we do that let’s take a long, hard look at Jesus and a life that did not fall short. He knew himself to be God’s beloved and he lived as God’s beloved. So examine yourselves and ask where you are you falling short, where the world is short-changing you, and pray for grace to learn from him. Amen.
Hymn Before The Throne of God Above
Charitie L De Chenez (1841–1923) Tune: © 1997 Sovereign Grace Praise (BMI) (adm at IntegratedRights.com). Text: © 1997 Sovereign Grace Praise (BMI) (adm at IntegratedRights.com). OneLicence A-734713
Sung by Michael Lining and used with his kind permission.
Before the throne of God above
I have a strong, a perfect plea:
a great High Priest,
whose name is Love,
who ever lives and
pleads for me.
My name is graven
on His hands,
my name is written
on His heart;
I know that while in
heaven He stands
no tongue can bid me
thence depart.
2 When Satan tempts me
to despair,
and tells me of the guilt within,
upward I look,
and see Him there
who made an end of all my sin.
Because the sinless
Saviour died,
my sinful soul is counted free;
for God, the Just,
is satisfied
to look on Him
and pardon me.
3 Behold Him there! the risen Lamb!
My perfect, spotless Righteousness,
the great unchangeable I AM, the King of glory and of grace!
One with Himself, I cannot die; my soul is purchased by His blood;
My life is hid with Christ on high, with Christ, my Saviour and my God.
Prayers of Intercession
Living God, your love for us, your children, is far beyond our understanding. You have created and fashioned us in love, and set your holy image upon us, and exalted us to be your Beloved in whom you delight. And yet we have fallen, and continue to fall so far short of what you have made us to be.
We think today of all that diminishes and demeans human life: the curse of war that shatters people’s lives; the horror of poverty that leaves people struggling to live; the outrage of injustice that allows the powerful to prey on the powerless; the relentless greed whereby some hoard while others are left to fight for the crumbs from under their tables.
O God we pray today for those in positions of power and authority: for rulers and governments, that they might strive for the common good and to create a society where all may flourish.
We pray for those who are held back by their upbringing, or constrained by their circumstances and by forces over which they have no control. We pray for those whose lives are blighted by addiction, who have lost the strength to resist things that destroy them.
We pray for your Church throughout the world and especially in our own country, asking you to bring renewal. May your church be a place where people hungry for the bread of life are fed; where people whose lives are diminished find their worth; where those who have fallen short are raised up and find strength to live well.
Hear us as in a moment of silence we name before you nay who are on our hearts today…
We pray all these things in the name of the One who came that we might have life, and have it abundantly – Jesus Christ or Lord. Amen.
Offertory Prayer
For all that blesses and enriches our lives,
we give you thanks.
May our gratitude be expressed
in lives of trust and obedience:
Take us and all that you have given us
and use us in the service of your Kingdom. Amen
Hymn Guide me, O thou great Redeemer
Arglwydd arwain drwy’r anialwch William Williams (1717-1791), tr Peter Williams (1727-1796) and William Williams (1717-1791) or John Williams (1754-1828) Public Domain BBC Songs of Praise
Guide me, O thou great Redeemer,
pilgrim through this barren land;
I am weak, but thou art mighty,
hold me with thy powerful hand:
bread of heaven,
feed me now and evermore.
2 Open now the crystal fountain
whence the healing stream doth flow;
let the fire and cloudy pillar
lead me all my journey through:
strong deliverer,
be thou still my strength and shield.
3 When I tread the verge of Jordan bid my anxious fears subside;
death of death, and hell’s destruction, land me safe on Canaan’s side:
songs of praises I will ever give to thee.
Blessing
May God be above you,
and God beside you,
and heaven all around you
as you journey on;
and may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,
and the love of God,
and the fellowship of the Holy spirit,
be with you all, today and always. Amen