THE PURPOSE OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS

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1 Sermon #1,038: 1 Kings 21: (15 th Sunday After Trinity), Bethany-Princeton MN THE PURPOSE OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS Prayer: Heavenly Father, illumine me with Your Holy Spirit for Christ s sake, that in the bright mirror of the Law I may rightly see my manifold, great and grievous sins and truly realize how terrible is Your wrath because of my sin, and how awfully You will punish all the impenitent for their transgressions. From the Gospel, however, let me learn to know Your kind fatherly heart, which through Christ is opened to me, so that with a broken spirit and a contrite heart, but nevertheless not despairing, on the contrary, firmly trusting in Your grace, I may come to confession, where You will surely deal with me according to Your fatherly goodness, and will forgive me all my sins. Amen. (Prayer by C. M. Zorn in The Lord Will Answer: A Daily Prayer Catechism, p. 168) Dear fellow redeemed in Christ, especially you children who are back in Sunday School again: This morning we said the Ten Commandments. Not the what does this mean s. Just the commandments. All the you shall s and you shall not s. We say them to start Sunday School every week. Even the littlest children who can t read can say them perfectly by the end of the school year. We took our usual summer break, but now it starts up again. You children again will be learning to say these words by heart. You might struggle over what order they go in. It s kill, commit adultery, steal, in that order, not You shall not kill. You shall not steal, and then face a frowning Mr. Minzlaff or a frowning Pastor Gernander. You might get a little nervous about it, not wanting to make a mistake. The king and queen in this Bible story did not have that problem. They could have stood to be a little more nervous about making a mistake. Making a mere mistake, however, was not what they did. Getting the commandments in the right order was not their problem. Even knowing a commandment was their problem. Caring what the commandments even said was their problem. It seems as if telling Ahab and Jezebel the Ten Commandments would be wasted breath. 1

2 It began with King Ahab breaking the Ninth Commandment, You shall not covet your neighbor s house, coveting the property of his actual neighbor, poor Naboth who lived in the shadow of the palace. Ahab had a sinful desire to possess the vineyard which God had given to Naboth by inheritance from his father. When he couldn t have it, Naboth acted like a pouty child. We learn in catechism instruction that there are two commandments about coveting because it is such a serious sin by leading to more sins. That s what happened here. Queen Jezebel saw her pouting husband, who at this point grudgingly submitted to and accepted the answer no. In no way did she think he should do this. You exercise authority over Israel! she said in other words, You re the one in charge! But we know God is the real King. Jezebel s words indicate that they were going to set out to not fear and love God in their actions. They were breaking the First Commandment, You shall have no other gods, setting up Ahab in the place of God. The next commandment to be disobeyed was the Seventh: You shall not steal. Jezebel said, Let your heart be cheerful; I will give you the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite. In other words, she would take it by a show of right. She would steal it for him. The next commandment to be disobeyed was the Eighth: You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. Jezebel hired two men to publicly lie about Naboth so he could be condemned. Then they broke the Second Commandment, You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, as those who did sinful swearing, and lied in court, declared that innocent Naboth has blasphemed God! Finally, the Fifth Commandment fell: You shall not kill, for they took Naboth outside the city and stoned him with stones, so that he died. Then they rejoiced over his officially sanctioned murder. This shows how low Israel had sunk, to disregard God s Law so callously, and it stirs up righteous anger to see poor Naboth viciously mistreated. 2

3 But it isn t only a history lesson. And if all you do is shake your head at Ahab and Jezebel, and call the most immoral or wicked women Jezebels, as our society does, then you miss the point. It is about the purpose of the Ten Commandments, not only in the history of Israel at its low point, but in your life. The Ten Commandments stand alone among the laws in the Old Testament. By now we are used to hearing the Old Testament law ridiculed, especially when it comes to the issue of homosexual behavior. When you quote what the Old Testament says prohibiting it, a person defending homosexuality will mention the dietary laws that we no longer follow. That shows ignorance of the Old Testament s teaching. There were other kinds of Law the civil law which concerned Israel s laws as a nation, similar to misdemeanors in our system; and ceremonial laws that governed their worship: the religious ceremonies, sacrifices of animals, worship festivals, and laws about being ritually clean or unclean, which included dietary restrictions. These laws were only in effect until Christ came. But the Ten Commandments which include one about marriage between a man and a woman stood alone among the Law. It is the moral law. It is binding for all times and all places, among all people. It is still in effect. The moral law is the one that is written on the heart and in your conscience. So even among people who are not Christians, their knowledge of right and wrong is the moral law at work. It functions as a curb, to maintain outward decency and order in the world. At the very least, even if Ahab and Jezebel had rejected Israel s faith, this could have kept them from doing what they did. But they didn t listen to the voice of their conscience. That is not the main purpose of the Law, however. That s sort of a bare-minimum goal. The real purpose of the Law is what you children learn in Sunday School every Sunday: The Ten Commandments show us our sin, and how much we need a Savior. 3

4 This is the real usefulness of the story of Ahab, Jezebel, and Naboth. You certainly see sins in this story! You see evil and wickedness unleashed. But not so that you can think: At least I m not that bad. No, the real point here is that you actually are that bad: the same evil that was in Ahab and Jezebel is embedded within you. The same not-caring-what-the-commandments-say dwells within you. It is your sinful nature, your old Adam. For you too are tempted to disregard what the commandments say, just to get what you want. When you want to be popular, when you want to experiment or try out what everyone else is doing, when you want to do the fun thing instead of being responsible and doing your duty, your inner Ahab pouts and your inner Jezebel says, Don t you exercise authority here, nobody s the boss of you. You commit sins because you too set out to not fear or love God in your actions. The Ten Commandments show you your sins, how like Jezebel and Ahab you are. They show you how low you sink when you trample on the Naboths in your life. But why? So that you see how much you need a Savior. That is the point of the Ten Commandments. To lead you to your Savior. For as terrible as Ahab and Jezebel look, there was a time when humanity looked worse. The only one in whom God was well pleased with on His own merits stood covered with blood, full of tears, mocked by men, spit upon and scourged, wearing the crown of thorns, many hands were raised to wound Him, none would interpose to save. He became Sin, and so was forsaken by God. All the wretchedness of sin defaced His beauty in God s sight. He was punished for all the sins of every sinner. In this respect, girls and women, Jezebel s guilt was the same as yours, and, boys and men, you are no less guilty than Ahab. Your sins did as much to put Christ on the cross as their sins in 1 Kings 21 did. So when the Ten Commandments show you your sins, in Jesus you see the end result. 4

5 But He did not have to do this. He could have left you in your sins to pay for them yourself, to die in your own blood as Jezebel later did. But He didn t. This is where you see God s love for you. You see no anger from God at all because of your sins. In fact you see no sins. When you see what sin did to Jesus, you are seeing your sin, your punishment, your death, taken off of you. You see your Savior! Your sins show you that you need a Savior. You have one! And in return you have no sins! The Law cannot accuse you or condemn you. You see no sins with you, and all your sins are over there, with Jesus on the cross and then, because He is risen, all your sins are buried in His tomb. They are no more! You are forgiven! This is the Gospel. The Gospel is as far from the Law as can be. The Ten Commandments serve a purpose but they do not save you. Only the Gospel saves you. Your obeying of the Ten Commandments does not do anything for you before God, because you can never keep the commandments as God requires. Only Jesus obeying of the Ten Commandments for you does anything. By faith in Him you have Jesus obedience and the forgiveness of all your sins. The burden of the Law is not carried by you. It was carried by Jesus for you. You are set free. What are you going to do with your freedom? Not care what the Law says, like Ahab and Jezebel? No, but on the contrary a child of God can live without fear of the Law and what it can do, instead the Gospel gives you the strength to live in the Law, knowing Jesus is the one who has done it for you. You are a child of God, not because you do the commandments so well but by faith in Christ Jesus, who baptized you into the life of the Triune God, into His own life, to walk with Him in newness of life. Amen! 5