Category Archives: matthew 5:20-26

The Ten Commandments require further explanation

Posted on by
Sermon

Download Sermon
Service
Download Service Download Bulletin

Sermon for Trinity 6

Romans 6:3-11  +  Matthew 5:20-26

The Ten Commandments have been in the news again lately. We talked about it a little bit in Bible class. A lot of people seem to think it’s a great idea to post them in elementary school classrooms in the public schools of our country. The thing is, the Ten Commandments require further explanation. Even the Jews in Jesus’ day, who grew up learning the Ten Commandments, didn’t understand them rightly. That’s why Jesus stepped in in today’s Gospel from the Sermon on the Mount and explained the Law further. In order for the Ten Commandments to be used beneficially, they first have to be read correctly, and that requires knowing some other very important things—five things, actually, two of which Jesus addresses in today’s Gospel. The rest we glean from the Epistle and from the rest of the Scriptures.

To read the Ten Commandments beneficially, you have to know, first, the context in which they were originally given. The Ten Commandments were not just dropped down out of heaven. They weren’t delivered from on high to all men. They weren’t even given to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They were thundered down from Mt. Sinai by God Himself to the people of Israel who were gathered at the foot of the mountain. And how had they gotten there? 430 years earlier God had made a solemn vow to Abraham to rescue his descendants from slavery in a foreign land and to return them to the Promised Land of Canaan. That foreign land turned out to be Egypt. God revealed Himself to Moses and raised up Moses and Aaron to lead the people out of Egypt with great signs and wonders and ten plagues that forced the Egyptians to let the people of Israel go. The Lord God parted the waters of the Red Sea for His people to get to safety. He destroyed the Egyptian armies. He provided food and water for them in the desert on their way to Sinai. And now, 50 days or so after He rescued the Israelites from Egypt, God begins the Ten Commandments with these words: I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before Me. The First Commandment makes no sense at all apart from that context. The Second Commandment—You shall not misuse the name of the Lord—makes no sense unless you know His name, Yahweh, the LORD, He-who-is, the only true God, the God of steadfast love and faithfulness who deserves to be worshiped, not only for who He is, but for the steadfast love He had shown to Israel in bringing them out of the house of bondage.

Second, to read the Ten Commandments beneficially, you have to know which parts applied specifically to Israel under the Old Testament that God established with them there at Mt. Sinai, and which parts reflect the timeless will of God for us Christians and for all people. The Third Commandment, for example, Remember the Sabbath Day by keeping it holy, had very specific applications to Old Testament Israel. Under the New Testament, it’s no longer about resting for 24 hours, from Friday evening to Saturday evening. It’s about regularly setting aside time to hear God’s Word and to honor the preaching of it. The Fourth Commandment, Honor your father and mother, has the promise added to it, that your days may be long upon the land which the LORD your God is giving you, referring to the land of Canaan that God was giving to Israel, not to the United States of America.

Third, to read the Ten Commandments beneficially, you have to know what it actually means to keep the Ten Commandments. And this is one of the things Jesus spelled out so clearly in today’s Gospel. The Fifth Commandment simply reads, You shall not murder. Most people think that, as long as they don’t kill anyone, they’re keeping this commandment. But Jesus explains that it goes far beyond taking another person’s life. I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. So the Fifth Commandment commands not only the hands but also the heart. Hatred and anger toward your brother make you guilty of breaking the Fifth Commandment. And whoever says to his brother, ‘Raca!’ will be subject to the council; but whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be subject to hellfire. Saying “Raca” to someone was a slur that carried civil penalties. The Jewish council had apparently made a law against it. Even their manmade laws prohibited certain forms of speech. But Jesus reveals that just using the hurtful phrase, “You fool!”, made a person “subject to hellfire,” as far as God is concerned. In other words, to keep the Fifth Commandment, you have to avoid, not only killing a person, but also hating and becoming angry at a person, and speaking hurtful words to him.

Jesus does the same thing with the Sixth Commandment in the verses right after our Gospel. You shall not commit adultery. To understand what it is God actually commands, you have to know what it means to commit adultery. It includes all sex outside of marriage. It includes homosexuality. It includes divorce for unscriptural reasons. But Jesus goes even further: I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. “Lusting” is the same word as “coveting,” which means to set your desires on something you’re not supposed to have. Coveting another person’s body sexually is just as sinful as coveting a person’s house is just as sinful as coveting a person’s wealth, or even a person’s life. You have to understand that all God’s commandments command the hands, and the mouth, and the heart itself. No human law can regulate such things. But God’s law can and does.

Fourth, to read the Ten Commandments beneficially, you have to know, you have to understand that God’s commandments cannot save anyone. As Jesus said in our Gospel, I say to you that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. The scribes and Pharisees had about as much external righteousness, external obedience to the commandments as anyone in Israel, as anyone anywhere. But, Jesus says, it wasn’t enough. To keep the Commandments, you have to obey them also on the inside, with the mind, mouth, and heart, and you have to do it perfectly, without failing. Because, as James says, Whoever keeps the whole law but stumbles at one point is guilty of breaking all of it. But, as Scripture clearly reveals, man, since the fall of Adam, is turned away from God, unable to trust in Him and worship Him, unable to hear Him, unable to keep His commandments from the heart. The commandments command well enough, but the commandments cannot save. As Paul writes to the Romans, We know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin.

Well, if the commandments are there, primarily at least, to show us our sin, to show us how far short we fall of the true righteousness that God demands, then, finally, to read the Ten Commandments beneficially, you have to know the Gospel that can save, the power of salvation for everyone who believes. In the Gospel, Paul writes, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “The just shall live by faith,”… even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe. For there is no difference; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as the place of atonement, through faith, in His blood…to demonstrate His righteousness at the present time, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

That’s the Gospel, that God has given His Son Jesus Christ to shed His blood for our sins, so that we might be saved and made righteous before God through faith in Him, not through our attempts at obeying the Ten Commandments.

You see, then, how important it is to read the Commandments correctly. Teaching people the Ten Commandments would be worse than worthless if we don’t accompany that teaching with the further explanation that the Holy Scriptures provide in both the Old and the New Testaments. At best, we would turn people into little hypocrites, little Pharisees, who seek to please God by doing enough good things and avoiding enough bad things, by being obedient enough, by being upright and moral people. But you can’t be upright and moral people until you understand that you’re already not upright and moral people by nature, until you understand that you need a Savior, until you repent of your sins, until you believe in the Savior whom God has provided to be your righteousness before God. Then, through faith in Christ, the truly Righteous One, God forgives you your sins against all His commandments. And only then can you begin, as Christians, to truly obey them, from the heart, as those who have brought by the love of God to love God, to want no other God but Him, as those who have been born again of water and the Spirit, adopted as beloved children of the heavenly Father, as those who have been buried with Christ through Baptism, into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we, too, should walk in a new life. And the Ten Commandments serve as an indispensable guide for what that new life is supposed to look like.

Without that further explanation of the Ten Commandments, in the context of the whole Bible, they do more harm than good, because, by themselves, they allow people to fool themselves into thinking that they’re godly when they’re really not. But with the explanation provided by Scripture, a Christian can use the Ten Commandments beneficially. So learn them. Post them in your home, if you like, and recite them every day. But add an explanation of them, like Luther’s explanations in the Small Catechism, which are outstanding and Scriptural. And, even better, add the Apostles’ Creed and its explanations in the Small Catechism. Add the explanations for the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer, and for Holy Baptism, and for the Lord’s Supper as well. Fortified with those explanations, and spurred on by faith and the Holy Spirit, you will be well-prepared disciples of Christ Jesus, ready to live more righteously than the scribes and Pharisees, as the righteous people whom God has called you to be. To that end, let us pray with the Psalmist: Teach me, O LORD, the way of your statutes; and I will keep it to the end. Give me understanding, that I may keep your law and observe it with my whole heart. Lead me in the path of your commandments, for I delight in it. Amen.

Source: Sermons

Two kinds of righteousness are necessary

Posted on by


Right Click to Save

Sermon for the Sixth Sunday after Trinity

Romans 6:3-11  +  Matthew 5:20-26

In today’s gospel, Jesus teaches His disciples about righteousness. The Scriptures speak of three kinds of righteousness, actually, or even four. One is God’s own essential divine righteousness, His quality of being righteous, good, loving, and just. We won’t focus on that righteousness for the moment, because that’s who God is, with or without us, just as He is omnipotent and omniscient and omnipresent. It’s an attribute of God, and we’re concerned today with the attribute of righteousness that God demands of us human beings.

In that regard, there are two kinds of righteousness that are necessary, and a third that is theoretically necessary. The first is the righteousness by which we are justified and enter the kingdom of heaven. There is a second righteousness in which justified Christians begin to live within the kingdom of heaven. The third kind, if we want to speak of a third kind, is more theoretical in nature. It can’t actually be performed by any of us who are born from a man and woman. But it is, nonetheless, required of us, so we’d better understand it.

It’s actually this third “theoretical” kind of righteousness that Jesus speaks of in today’s Gospel. You have to be righteous in order to enter the kingdom of heaven. That’s what Jesus says. And not just a little bit righteous. Not just pretty righteous or very righteous or extremely righteous. The scribes and Pharisees had that going for them already, but Jesus informs His disciples: I say to you, that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.

Perfect righteousness. Utter sinlessness. Complete obedience to God’s Law, in thought, word, and deed. That’s the requirement for entering the kingdom of heaven. The Ten Commandments do not say, “Do your best! Try your hardest!”, or, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again!” No, they say, “You shall! You shall not!” And they go deeper than most people imagine, including the scribes and Pharisees in Jesus’ day. The commandment says, “You shall not murder!” They thought they were righteous because they had never actually murdered anyone. But Jesus reveals in the Gospel that angry words, hurtful words, make a person just as guilty of hell fire as murdering someone. The apostle John, in his epistle, applies the commandment also to the heart, “Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer.”

Likewise the scribes and Pharisees thought they were righteous because they didn’t sleep around with other men’s wives. But Jesus reveals in the words just after our Gospel that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

The righteousness that God’s Law requires is high and lofty. You have to be good and loving, just and upright all the time. Honoring God all the time, and not according to your version of who God is, but honoring Him according to His Word, recorded in the Bible. Loving your neighbor all the time, and again, not according to your version of what love looks like, but according to Holy Scripture. That’s what God demands of His creatures. That’s the righteousness that earns a place in the kingdom of heaven.

But it’s theoretical. It can only be performed by people who start off righteous. That’s not you or I, or anyone born of man and woman. We’re doomed from the start, not because God made us incapable of being righteousness, but because our parents did, and their parents before them, back to Adam and Eve. Original Sin has infected us all and turned us into people who don’t even want to be truly righteous, by nature, people who trust in ourselves first, who look out for our own interests first, people who easily find fault in others, or even in God, but who imagine ourselves to be, well, righteous—or at least, righteous enough, more righteous than a lot of other people.

Now, the Law’s penalty for unrighteousness— for every misstep, for every transgression, for every rebellion, for every “oops,” is the shedding of blood. Without shedding of blood there is no remission. And not just a little blood. All of it, till you die. And not just physical death, but eternal death and the suffering of hell fire. So the price for forgiveness and reconciliation with God is a price so high that to pay it is to perish.

In the Old Testament, God offered some temporary remedies for Israel’s unrighteousness, the death of animals, one after another after another, to atone for, to make up for the sins of the people, to earn reconciliation with God. But, as you know, those animal sacrifices were only temporary remedies until the true price could be paid, the sacrifice of God’s own Son, true God and true Man. His perfect obedience under the Law, His suffering and death for the sins of mankind—that’s the righteousness that counts before God.

And so the Gospel goes out into the world, calling all men to repentance, because all have sinned. All have transgressed the Law of God and all are under its condemnation, by nature, because no one can perform the righteousness that the Law requires. But see, in the Gospel, in Holy Baptism, God holds out to us poor sinners another righteousness, or better, the righteousness of Another, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. The righteousness that counts before God. He offers it to us a free gift, already purchased for us by the blood of Christ. This is the righteousness of faith.

Faith saves, faith justifies, not because it’s such a good and noble work, but because faith lays hold of Christ, who offers us His righteousness—His perfect obedience in doing and suffering, living and dying—to hold up before God as our own. God counts this faith to us for righteousness—again, not a righteousness that we had done, but a “foreign righteousness,” the righteousness of Christ, credited to our account through faith in Him.

By this faith, by this righteousness of faith, we are justified before God. This is the righteousness that is necessary for us to enter into the kingdom of heaven, to be reconciled to God, to be adopted as His children and made heirs of eternal life, and it’s entirely ours by faith in Christ.

That’s our great comfort, because, when we believe in Christ Jesus for righteousness, we know that it is certain, because His righteousness is certain. His perfect life was already lived for us. His death as the payment for sins has already been accomplished. And so eternal life depends on Him, not on you.

There is still that other righteousness that is necessary—not necessary in order to enter the kingdom of heaven, but necessary, nonetheless, for those who have been justified by faith, for those who have been made heirs of heaven by the righteousness of faith. This other righteousness is the new life of obedience to which God has called us. It is the ongoing renewal of the Holy Spirit as He sanctifies us and forms us Christians more and more into righteous people, who think what is right, who want what is right, who do what is right. This righteousness within us who believe is necessary, because it’s what a living faith always produces, and it’s God’s will that we live in it.

What did Paul write to the Romans in chapter 6? As many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? 4 Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. 5 For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection, 6 knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin… Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Reckon yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ. That’s what daily contrition and repentance looks like, saying no to sin, and living each day for God, which includes living each day to serve your neighbor, in love. That’s what the Ten Commandments teach us how to do, now that we’ve been justified by faith. They guide us in the new obedience of the children of God, in righteous attitudes toward God and our neighbor and in righteous behavior.

We recognize that this righteousness of new obedience is only begun in us in this life. We never reach the goal of perfection here on earth, because of the weakness of our sinful flesh. But we keep working together with the Holy Spirit. We keep striving to be righteous like God, and we keep watching out for sin and temptation, always taking it seriously, because God has warned us that, yes, we’re saved by faith, but faith can’t coexist with an evil intention or with impenitence. And if we allow ourselves to grow indifferent toward sin, indifferent toward righteousness, then we will make shipwreck of our faith, as the Scripture says, and drive out the Holy Spirit.

So let us pray that God would preserve us from that, through His Word and Sacrament. He has already promised to hear such a prayer and to work through His means of grace, to keep us steadfast in the faith by which we stand righteous before Him, and to strengthen us in the love and obedience in which God’s righteous children walk, being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Source: Sermons