Exodus 20:1-17
And God spoke all these words, saying,
“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
“You shall have no other gods before me.
“You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.
“You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.
“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
“Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.
“You shall not murder.
“You shall not commit adultery.
“You shall not steal.
“You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
“You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor's.”
Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. Today we're taking a look at the 10 commandments. And you gotta wonder sometimes, when you're a pastor, what do you say? When you get to something like this? The 10 commandments? were reading the whole thing all 10 of them. Do you choose one? Or do you talk about them all, to talk about Israel and the ancient people and what God was doing here? mean, in our Small Catechism, Martin Luther spends a whole lot of time talking about the 10 commandments. And in the Large Catechism, it's page after page after page after page of explanation for each individual one. Good thing I have all day, right? Well, the 10 commandments actually give us a chance to ask a fundamental question. A fundamental question about Moses, his writing in the Old Testament, and what it has to do with us Christians, because we take a look at this, this whole set of the 10 commandments, and if you've memorized them from the Small Catechism, like many of us had to do when we were young, you'll notice there's a lot more text in there than what you memorized, right? So there's a lot going on. There stuff like carved images. And there's stuff about male servants and female servants not working on the Sabbath. You go, what are these doing here? I didn't have to memorize that. Why not? This gives us a chance to ask a fundamental question about the 10 commandments. What do they have to do with us, us Christians? What do the 10 commandments actually have to do with people on the other side of the cross? Instead of people who are there at the base of Mount Sinai? I have an answer for you. It's very simple. The 10 commandments do not apply to Christians. Now you're gonna say, wait a second pastor? Did you just join the ELCA? are you preaching against God's word? No. And I want you to hold on with me and see where I'm going with this. Before you walk out. Let me explain. The original context of the 10 commandments is a covenant between a nation brought out of Egypt, in slavery, freed and to go into the wilderness and God says to them, you follow my covenant, and you will live long in the land that I give you. Your nation and borders will do well, you will be defended from enemies, and you will be prosperous in this land. That's not the promise that God gives Christians isn't. That's not what we receive through Jesus Christ. The promise of these 10 commandments in its original context, was just for the Jews and their descendants. As long as the covenant the Old Covenant was active. And we know this on a fundamental level, because there is one commandment that we totally ignore, actively and willingly and you accept it without without knowing it. It's a very simple commandment. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy? Now you might think to yourself, Pastor, we're here on Sunday morning, we're in worship, we're keeping the Sabbath. Nope. Let's listen to what God says. Six days shall you labor and do all your work but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God on it, you shall not do any work. You or your son or your daughter, your male servant or your female servant, or your livestock or the sojourner who is within your gates. What that means is that God commanded his people from sundown on Friday night to sundown on Saturday night. Not to do any work. Zero. No yard work. No driving the kids to sports games. No volunteering for anything else. Friday to Saturday 24 hours, you could do no work. And when was the last time you tried that. Or you heard a sermon from your pastor saying you must rest on Friday nights. No starting fires, no driving your car, no taking walks, no going for a run. None of it. You have to read. We don't do that do we do. That's because deep down inside, we know the 10 commandments are not for us. They are for Israel, a covenant between God and a singular nation of people. That was fulfilled when Jesus Christ King. I'm not the only one who says this. Martin Luther himself said it. He writes, quote, the law of Moses, which henceforth is not binding on us, concerns the Jews, for the law is given only to the people of Israel. And Israel has accepted it for itself. And its descendants. We will not any longer have Moses for a rule and law giver. God Himself will not have it. Moses was a mediator and a law giver of the Jewish people only. To them he gave the Law. If I accept Moses, in one commandment, I must accept the entire Moses. From this would follow. If I were to accept Moses as a master and law giver, I would have to be circumcised to wash clothes, according to the Jewish custom to eat, drink and dress like them, and to observe all those customs which the law commanded them to observe. So if the 10 commandments in their original context are for us, then you got to do it all, every single one of the 613 commandments of the Old Testament, including the bacon you may have eaten this morning. Right. But Jesus Christ has fulfilled the Old Covenant. He obeyed it all perfectly. He did every ritual and every law and everything that God commanded, including loving God with his whole heart and loving his neighbor as himself and went to the cross, to take our sin and fulfill the covenant Israel could not sacrificed himself there to end the law. And its weight on our shoulders, to end the rule of Moses, and the guilt it assigns to us so that we could be free in Christ. Now, you may have heard it explained this way. But Pastor in the Old Testament laws, they're divided into three parts, right? There's the the Civil Code, the ceremonial code, and the moral code. Have you heard that before? Go through the Old Testament and point out which one is which? Moses doesn't mark civil, moral and religious. which pieces are which? And how do you know? There's no underlining or highlighting. We all come up with our own list and know the whole thing has been fulfilled. The whole thing has been taken care of. Jesus has done it all. Which means we are free from the law.
Just as St. Paul tells us, throughout the book of Romans and throughout the book of Galatians. And this is a joyous freedom that Christians have that we don't have to go and find every single commandment written in Have Old Testament law and check off the box when we walk out every morning. We don't have to be terrified that God might look down on us and say, Do you remember on page 372? I wrote this rule, and we are free in Christ. Okay, now you're gonna say But wait a second pastor Martin Luther wrote the 10 commandments for us to memorize. You spend weeks with our confirmation students telling them what every single commandment means, how it applies to your life? Why are you teaching a thing that doesn't apply? I'm so glad you asked What a great question. It's very simple. We use the 10 commandments as reinterpreted by Martin Luther King, because they reflect God's moral law. In the world. We call it natural law. You actually don't need a 10 commandments to say, don't kill, right? Or don't steal. These things are clear. Honor your father and mother is something we get from nature, as much as from Holy Scripture. And so since the early days, the Christian church has used these 10 commandments, because they reflect the natural law of the world, God's moral law, founded in creation. And they're a good guide for us. As Christians. They reflect the teachings of Jesus Christ in places like the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew, where he took these laws and expanded them into full love. loving your neighbor as yourself. And these 10 commandments then have two important functions in the life of Christians. First, we use them to cut the old sinful flesh in us. Because no matter how many times we come and gather and hear Christ's word and receive forgiveness, there's still that little sinner inside you that tries to act up and take over. And he wants to tell you that you're just fine all on your own and that God loves you just the way you are. And isn't it great that you get to do the things that you love. And then we look at the 10 commandments, as explained by Luther and we realize this little center is wrong. That little voice in my heart, and in my head, is trying to lead me away from God, and it slices that guy up to our enemy inside us. And when we realize that we're still a sinner, the 10 commandments point us to Christ and His sacrifice again. Where we can cry out to Him, I have nothing good in me, only you are good savior, Jesus Christ. Forgive me, give me life. Because without you, I am nothing. And Luthers commandments, as he explains them, they point out that none of us can keep a single one of these commandments for a moment of our day. All we can do is look for forgiveness. The other thing they do is they help to guide us because salvation is not just being forgiven, but it's also being given new hearts. When we're baptized into Christ, we are made one with him. We're a new creation. And every single one of you I know you, do, you want to do what is right, and follow God's will. And the question is always, well, then what do I do? And the 10 Commandments can help us there. Help us to see what it means to love your neighbor as yourself and to put them first in your life to serve the people around you. So when Christ gives us this new heart that He has given you by the power of the Holy Spirit, these give us practical methods to say, what can I do to serve my neighbor and through my neighbor, serve God? Because we still need to be told the Holy Spirit does wasn't beamed into our hearts all of God's will. We still need to look at it and say, What should I do? And the 10 commandments are there to be handy dandy easily memorizable guide to go out and serve the people around you. So they're not there to be a list of rules that we have to follow and be burdened by. They're not there as a as a way to make God happy or a covenant that we must cling to. And they're there to drive us to the forgiveness of Jesus Christ and guide us as we serve Him. In Jesus name, Amen.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai