The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost                                                         Rev. Walter R Steele

15 June 2008                                                                                    Exodus 19 & Romans 5

The Law and the Gospel

Oh what a difference there is between Moses and Jesus! How differently does the message of the Law treat us than does the Gospel. In the Law, God thunders at us. He demands that we obey. He says, “If you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession.” But if you ignore me, if you disobey me, if you fail to keep up your end of the covenant, than I will punish you, I will strike you down; you shall surely die!

That’s the word of the Law. The Law demands that you keep the covenant. The Gospel says something entirely different.

How foolish is the reply of Israel to God’s demands. “All that the Lord has spoken we will do.” Such certainty, such dedication, such piety! Such foolish bravado! Oh for a faith that will not shrink though pressed by many a foe! It won’t take “many a foe” to trip up Israel. They won’t even make it off this spot before they turn back from the Lord and worship idols. They will complain and murmur and ask to go back to Egypt.

What does God say of all the commandments?

He says, “I the Lord you God am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the father to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations to those who love me and keep my commandments.”

What does this mean?

God threatens to punish all who break these commandments. Therefore we should fear his wrath and not do anything against them. But he promises grace and every blessing to all who keep these commandments. Therefore, we should also love and trust in him and gladly do what he commands.

We should, but we don’t. We don’t because we can’t. We can’t because we are sinful to the core. The commands of God, his holy, divine Law, written on our hearts are hateful and loathsome to us. We don’t like the idea of not being autonomous. At the heart of human sin is covetousness. Certainly we covet one another’s stuff. But more than that, we covet God’s divinity. Man wants to be god. Each of us wants to be the measure of all things. To submit to God’s Law would to tantamount to acknowledging our dependence upon him for all things. To fear love and trust in him above all things belittles us. That’s what our sinful self thinks, deep in the recesses of its depravity. And from that well, or rather, from that cesspool, come forth the sins that hurt and harm our neighbors.

So why, if we cannot keep the Law did God give it in the first place. Isn’t it cruel to put an impossible task in front of someone? Some think so. Some theologies teach that God never asks anything that we aren’t capable of doing. That’s a bucket of hogwash! God does command in his Law precisely what we are incapable of doing. So why? Why the Law?

First, the Law was given to Israel. In actuality, the Law of Moses does not apply to us. He gave the Mosaic Law through his prophet to a people that he had led out of slavery in Egypt. He gave it to a specific people, in a specific time, to be the law of a specific society. He structured their entire society. He gave them the required sacrifices, the holidays they were to observe, and the social norms and mores they were to practice. The men were not to trim the corners of their beards; they were to circumcise their boys on the eighth day, etc. Moses was for ancient Israel, not for you and me.

But that does not let us off the hook. God’s Law, and by that I mean his Word about what is morally right and wrong, was written large on the hearts of all. Paul writes that the Gentiles, not having the Law, nonetheless have the law written in their hearts, impressed upon their consciences. We all know that honor and obedience is due to parents and other authorities. We also know that murder and theft and adultery are wrong. Forty or more decades of decadence has not erased from our society the fact that fornication is sin. Sexual relations are to be reserved for marriage—and marriage is the union of a man and a woman. (Sorry, Californicatia!) No one can escape natural law. Even biology teaches it! Furthermore, all people know deep down that there is one God; that fact is written into creation itself.

But God’s Law written on our hearts has not stopped human sin, has it? So Christians make good use of the Ten Commandments, in so far as they agree with Natural Law, to clear up our befuddled minds. As the Baptized, as those born again of water and the Spirit, you are a new creation in Christ. In the inner man you delight in the ways of the Lord. Faith, alive and well in you, is living and active and ready to do the will of your Father in heaven. Still, and what a pain in the neck he is, the Old Adam, your sinful nature, pops up regularly, screws up your thinking, points you away from Jesus and makes a mess of it all. That is why you, yes you the Christian, still need the instruction that the Law can give. Not only in the commands themselves, as helpful as they are, but in the great Bible stories. In them you hear of the men and women of faith, and how they lived out the faith in this world. You read of Abel, and of Enoch, and of Noah, and Abraham—especially of Abraham, and Sarah. You hear how they trusted God, even while bearing life’s troubles and crosses.

Furthermore, you read and hear of the failures. You are warned and admonished by them. Yes even by the story of Adam and Eve, of Noah and his drunkenness, of Abraham and Sarah and their attempt to accomplish God’s promise by fleshly means, of David and Bathsheba, and so on. You learn how they fell, and how God picked them back up again and fulfilled his Word in spite of them.

I mentioned Abraham. He is the father of us all. In him the promise of the Gospel was given to the whole world, for he received that promise before he was circumcised. Man, did he fail! He and his wife decided to accomplish in the flesh what God had promised to do for them. But he and she were restored. In his story, as in so many of them, we come to understand another reason why we need to hear the Law of God. We do get befuddled. We, along with the entire human race, get confused and led astray by sin. And we even, at times, call sin “good” and what is good we call “bad.” So the Law must come in and do something we really don’t like. It must come in and point out our failure, accuse us of our transgressions and condemn us by calling us what we are. That may not seem too nice sometimes, but the stakes are too high. This is life and death we are talking about. Whether we like it or not, we must hear the diagnosis! And it is this: All have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God. You shall surely die.

That is where the Law, as Law, leaves you. But Moses has one trick up his sleeve. Moses is a man of faith, as is Abraham, his father and ours. God promised Moses that he would raise up a Prophet great than Moses, one who would save people from sin. All those Israelite sacrifices, all that so-called ceremonial law, actually points forward to one who would do for real what those things only symbolized. And so Moses is retained by us, chiefly, because he preaches Christ! But Moses could not preach Christ as clearly as did Paul. For Moses had do deal with shadows of things to come. Paul could speak clearly of the One who had come, who had died, who had been buried, who had been raised and who had appeared to many witnesses—including to the apostle himself.

Oh what a difference there is between Moses and Jesus! How differently does the message of the Law treat us than does the Gospel! The Law demands that you keep the covenant. The Gospel says something entirely different. The Gospel says that the New Covenant—which is really a Testament—is in the shed blood of Jesus. Jesus, God the Son in human flesh, while we were still sinners, still enemies of God, died for us, unrighteous, un-good, sinners. By his blood he has atoned for our sins, and bought pardon for all—for the sins of the whole world. His righteousness is now ours, since he has reconciled us to the Father.

The Law demands that you DO, but you cannot. The Gospel demands—nothing! It demands nothing! It is all free gift. It is the gift of God’s grace. It is his sure and certain promise that, although you are a sinner, rightly condemned by the Law, it is precisely for people such as you, such as all of us, that Christ died and has brought forgiveness of sins and a new standing before God as his well-beloved children. The Law has a big IF in front of it. There is no IF in the Gospel. The Law says DO! The Gospel says DONE!

It is finished!

Thanks be to God!

SDG