As we continue in the season of Lent, this week and next week, we’re exploring the distinction between Law and Gospel, two ways God speaks to us in the Scriptures. Today, we hear the 10 Commandments, a clear example of law. What happens when we fall short of the law? We trust in God’s grace and forgiveness, revealed in Jesus Christ.
Today’s sermon Scripture reading is Exodus 20:1-17. Some of the direction for this sermon came from Amy Butler’s A Preacher’s Guide to Lectionary Sermon Series – Volume 1: Thematic Plans for Years A, B, and C.
Here’s the sermon podcast and the worship livestream from Christ the King.
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I have good news and I have bad news. Which one do you want first?
Let’s start with the bad news, then it’s uphill from there. Here’s the bad news: God tells us how to live—God gives us the 10 commandments we just heard, and lots more instructions throughout the Bible—and we break them. We fail to follow the instructions we’re given, and messing up—breaking the commandments—has consequences. That’s the bad news.
Ready for the good news? God forgives us. Jesus loves you. There is grace for all those times when we mess up and break the commandments.
The Bible is full of both good news and bad news.
In the Lutheran tradition, we call this law and gospel, and it shapes how we approach all of Scripture. In fact, it’s right in the first page of our church’s constitution: “The proclamation of God’s message to us as both Law and Gospel is the Word of God.”
I want to talk today about Law and Gospel because between this week and next week, we get some of the purest examples in the entire Bible of law and Gospel. This week with the 10 commandments, we mostly get the law part, so I really hope you’ll all be here next week for the gospel part!
Law means basically what it sounds like. It’s the part of the Bible that tells us how to live in this world. Don’t kill each other. Don’t steal other people’s stuff. Worship only God. Do this. Don’t do that. The law is God’s command to us.
That in itself is not bad news. One use of the law is to show us the right thing to do. The 10 commandments are a gift from God to help order society and restrain evil. We can’t thrive in this world if people are constantly murdering and stealing and not honoring their parents and coveting other people’s stuff and all that.
But when we don’t live up to the demands of the law, when we make mistakes, the law is what lets us know we are sinful. The law points out all the ways we sin, all the things we do wrong. The law becomes bad news in that it holds up a mirror to us, revealing our sinful nature, our rebellion against who God created us to be. The other use of the law is to show us how far we are from God.
So as we look at those 10 commandments—and by the way, the Bible has a lot more than 10 commandments. The Jewish rabbi’s traditionally taught that there are 613 commandments in Scripture that God’s people ought to follow—as we look at those commandments, have you ever broken any of them?
How much of God’s law have you broken just today? I’m pretty good at some of them, at least on a surface level. I haven’t killed anyone, or stolen anything recently that I know of. I live in a neighborhood where most of my neighbors homes are the same model as mine, so coveting them isn’t much of a problem.
But that’s only if we stop at a surface level understanding of the commandments. In his Small Catechism, Martin Luther gives explanations for each of the commandments, and they get a lot more involved. He takes a command like “Do not kill” and explains that not killing your neighbor doesn’t just mean not stabbing them with a sword; it includes looking out for them and protecting them. Not bearing false witness not only means not spreading false rumors about your neighbors, but also standing up for them and interpreting whatever they do in the best possible light, giving them the benefit of the doubt. I’ve definitely fallen short there.
Jesus does the same thing in Matthew 5, talking about how you’ve heard it said, “You shall not commit adultery” but really, looking at someone with lust is already committing adultery in your heart. You’ve heard it said, “You shall not murder” but Jesus says if you are angry with someone, you’re just as liable to judgment.
It’s more than any of us can live up to, and that’s the point. The law reveals our sin. That’s the bad news. It doesn’t matter which one you’ve broken; if you’ve broken any of them, you’re a sinner. The law reveals our need for a savior.
The good news is that we have a savior. The good news is that God forgives. That’s the gospel message.
Law, and gospel. In a sermon in 1525, Martin Luther said, “God speaks through the law, saying, ‘Do this, avoid that, this is what I expect of you.’ The gospel, however, does not preach what we are to do or avoid. It sets up no requirements but reverses the approach of the law, does the very opposite, and says, ‘This is what God has done for you; he has let his Son be made flesh for you, has let him be put to death for your sake.’”
In another sermon seven years later in 1532, Luther says:
“So this now is the difference between the Law and the Gospel. The Law presses us to do what we are supposed to do; it demands that we do our duty towards God and our neighbor. In the Gospel, on the other hand, we are summoned to a gift of alms, to a rich distribution of charity, where we are to receive and accept God’s favor and eternal salvation.
If the Law then accuses me of failing to do this or that, of being a law-breaker and a sinner in God’s record book of guilt, I have to confess that it is all true. But what it says after that, ‘Therefore you are condemned’—that I must not concede, but resist it with firm faith and say: ‘According to the Law, which reckons up my guilt, I am indeed a poor, condemned sinner.
But I appeal from the Law to the Gospel; because God has given another word that is higher than the Law.’”
As I’ve said, one of the themes running through our readings this year in Lent is the idea of covenant. We started with God making a covenant with the whole creation, promising Noah that a giant flood would never again destroy the earth.
Last week, we heard about Abraham and Sarah and the covenant that Abraham would be the father of many nations. We heard how God kept that covenant, even though it seemed impossible, and we talked about how faith is believing God’s going to keep God’s promises.
Both those covenants were primarily about what God committed to do. God committed to not flood the earth. God committed to give children to Abraham.
The faith God gives us sets us free to believe God’s promises, and when we’re set free and we trust God, it makes a difference in the way we live.
The 10 Commandments are another covenant, but we only heard part of it today. The covenant actually starts in Exodus chapter 19, right after God has rescued the Israelites from their slavery in Egypt. God tells the people, “You have seen what I did to the Egyptians and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now, therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples.”
Again, the covenant starts with God’s action, God’s grace. It’s gospel, good news! And then from there, God gives the people the law to show them how to live, and we get the 10 commandments in chapter 20. The commandments are a gift!
“God first establishes the relationship with us. Only then does God make a claim on our behavior. There are two crucial points here — two things about the law that are good to know.
The first is that God does not give the law as a means to salvation. To use the law to earn salvation, to win your soul’s way into heaven, is like trying to build a faster-than-the-speed-of-light spaceship or a time-travel machine out of plywood. It’s not possible.
And neither is it possible to earn salvation through the law. God does not give the law as a way to establish relationship with the people. God establishes the relationship and then gives the law.
That leads to the second point about the law. It isn’t about ‘us,’ per se. God does not give you and me the law in order to perfect us or even to make us a better ‘you’ or a better ‘me.’ The law is not about us — it is about our neighbors. God gives you the law, not so that you can get more spiritual or have your best life now, but so that your neighbor can have her best life now.”
Every week, we begin worship by confessing that we fail to live up to the covenant God makes with us. We don’t hold up our part of the bargain. We never can. That’s law. If it was a contract between us and God, all of us would be in violation.
And then, each week, we hear the promise of God’s forgiveness. We hear the good news that Jesus has done what we could never do. Jesus has taken the punishment for our sins, died on our behalf, so that we can live.
It’s not a human contract; it’s a covenant, and as Amy Butler writes, “Contracts are governed by the rules of bargaining. Covenants are governed by the irrational but eternal rules of love.” (A Preacher’s Guide to Lectionary Sermon Series, Volume 1. Pg. 106)
The covenant depends on God, not on us. Hear the good news of the Gospel: God’s grace is big enough, wide enough, generous enough to cover all of your sins. Jesus gave his life so you could be forgiven.
We’ll hear more about that good news next week. For now, we join in singing hymn number 606, Our Father We Have Wandered, and as we sing, listen for the dialogue of law and gospel, the bad news of our situation, what we have done, how we’ve wandered, and the good news of God’s forgiveness and grace, how God continues to call us, how our Heavenly Father still rejoices to bring us home. Let’s sing.