You are on a long journey through unfamiliar, risky territory. It is a very

Transcription

1 Lent Immanuel Lutheran Church, Hamilton, Ohio Pastor Kevin Jud March 11, 2012 Exodus 20:1-17, 1 Corinthians 1:18-31, John 2:13-22 You are on a long journey through unfamiliar, risky territory. It is a very dangerous region, but thankfully you have been given permission by the king to journey on a special trail that will get you safely through. You journey on this safe, narrow trail but sometimes it gets confusing and the way to go is hard to see. It is very difficult to follow the path on your own, so the king has given you a guide to lead the way and keep you safe. As long as you follow the guide you stay on the path and the walking is pretty smooth. But you get easily distracted. You see interesting things off the path and you can find yourself wandering off seeking something different; something more. Sometimes you just want to go your own way. When you wander off the path the guide will come over and kick you on the backside and tell you to get back on the path. It is dangerous off the path. There are sinkholes and quicksand and cliffs and wild animals; you could easily get hurt or lost. The only safe place is on the trail. That is where you belong. Now the guide is just a guide; he is not the king; the guide doesn t decide who belongs on the trail. It is easy to get confused because the guide is always right there. However, if you start to believe that the guide is the one in charge and he decides who gets to stay on the path you can start to think you need to please the guide. But that gives

2 2 the guide illegitimate power and the guide will take that power and he will become a bully to you. He will knock you down, sit on you and crush you under his weight while he torments you for not following him perfectly. As a guide he is great, but he can become a tyrant if you set him up as the one in charge. In your baptism you were set apart by God for a holy life both now, in this world, and for eternity in the heavenly city after the judgment. In baptism, God claimed you as His own and gave to you forgiveness of sins, life and salvation. You died to your old self and were given new birth in Jesus Christ. You were rescued from slavery to sin; freed from captivity to death; released from bondage to the devil. You have been set free and set on the narrow way which leads to eternal life. As a redeemed child of God, He gives you His law as the guide. The law tells you what to do so that life goes well. The law is God s design for life. He says, I am the creator, you are My creation, this is how you shall live. As we look at the Ten Commandments which is our Old Testament reading today, notice how God introduces them to the children of Israel: Exodus 20:1-3 (ESV) 1 And God spoke all these words, saying, 2 I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. 3 You shall have no other gods before me. 1 God gives the commandments to the children of Israel because he rescued them from slavery, not as a precondition for release. To us He says, I am the Lord, your God, who has made you my own in the waters of Holy Baptism, I have forgiven you all your sins through the blood of my Son 1 The Holy Bible : English Standard Version. Wheaton : Standard Bible Society, 2001

3 3 Jesus. I have rescued you from sin, death and the devil. You shall have no other gods before me. The commandments come after being rescued. And for the Christian they function as God s owner s manual for your life because you have been set apart by God. The law of God is your guide in this dangerous world. It leads you on the narrow path. The law is a gift from God; it is God s design for life. The creator says, this is how you shall live as a child of God. This is what you shall do and this is what you shall not do. Of course when you are told to do something a certain way you have a natural urge to rebel; that is part of your sinful nature and it causes all sorts of trouble. Robert Kolb, a professor at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis writes about our rebellion this way, (we) Creatures only create frustration and fear with our futile, fatal efforts to redesign our humanity according to our own foolish plans. It only makes sense to enjoy God s gift of the true design for human living. What we all know, but don t like to admit, is that the God s law is good. The Ten Commandments are good. Love God; love your neighbor. If we all lived according to God s law, life would be so much better for everyone. There would still be disease, there would still be death, but so many of life s problems would go away. If you doubt this, just turn on the television during the day and watch a little Jerry Springer or Maury Povitch or Steve Wilkos or Dr. Phil or any of the real life courtroom shows and ask yourself how many of the problems discussed are caused by folks breaking the Ten Commandments.

4 4 The law is a good guide to keep you on the right path; the smooth path. When you start to wander, the law is there to kick you on the backside to get you back on the path. It keeps you safe from the sinkholes, the quicksand, the cliffs of life and the wild animals roaming around. It keeps you from getting hurt or lost. The law of God is good. The law of God is a good guide. But the law of God is never, never, never the source of salvation. If you look to the law for salvation it will grow into an enormous bully and will knock you down, sit on you and crush you. You can never find peace with God through the law. You can tell when you are being crushed by the law because you will say things like, I feel like God is just out to get me. It s like God has a gun to my head waiting for me to make a mistake. You feel like the law is crushing because no matter how hard you try you cannot obey it perfectly. But the law is not the way to salvation. The law is not the key to the kingdom. You cannot fulfill the law perfectly. You cannot fulfill the law on your own and so the law shows the need for a savior. The impossibility of you fulfilling the law shows you need the one who did fulfill the law for you. The law points to the need for Jesus to go to the cross as the sacrificial offering for your sins because that is where forgiveness is found. Jesus pours out that forgiveness in baptism, in His word, in Holy Communion. Jesus makes you His own and then gives you the law as a guide because you are a redeemed child of God. And so we continue to strive, through the power of the Holy Spirit, to delight in God s will and walk in God s way to the glory of His holy name.

5 5 The law of God is a good guide, but it is not a key to the kingdom. Learn to love the law as God s good design for His creation given to you because He loves you. Love the law because you are already a child of God. Amen.