Sermon - Advent Midweek 1 - 2018

The church sings: “The Law of God is good and wise and sets His will before our eyes, shows us the way of righteousness, and dooms to death when we transgress.” “These are the holy Ten Commands God gave to us by Moses’ hands when high on Sinai’s mount he stood, receiving them for our good. Have mercy Lord.” 

God’s law is indeed very good. And according to 78% of Americans, the ten commandments should be displayed publicly for all to see. Yet, only 14% percent of Americans can name all ten commandments. How sad. It’s not really sad that they’re not displayed in schools or government buildings, frankly that’s not surprising and it doesn’t matter. What’s sad is that the ten commandments are no longer in the minds, hearts, and lives of many Americans.  

The reason this is so sad is as we heard in Deuteronomy, we fear the Lord our God “by keeping all his statutes and his commandments.” We fear the Lord by keeping His Law, and because of our many trespasses against His Law, Christ fulfilled the law in our stead. Without the Law we do not know God’s will for our lives, we do not know of our need for Jesus, and Jesus needn’t have died for us. That’s why it’s sad that we don’t know the Law.

Instead God’s Law is to be ever before us. As Moses declared, “These words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” Therefore, let us place God’s holy commandments before us this evening by reciting them. But because statistics dictate that many of us don’t know them by heart, let us all open our hymnals to page 264 so that we may read them together as one body.

The Law of God is important, it’s not something that’s outdated or outmoded by Christ, but in fact because Christ has come the law is just as important as ever. The Law gives our faith a mode of expression. Christ has come to make us alive, as such our faith is alive and active as well. Your faith is going to make you do things. “Faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead,” James writes. “For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.” God has given us the Law in order to make our faith alive and active! 

What’s more, it’s actually to our benefit to keep the Law. God gave the Law “for our good, that He might preserve us alive, as we are this day.” God’s Law is a great thing! Too often we think in the binary sense of Gospel good and Law bad. But that’s not the case at all! God didn’t give the Law as some arbitrary rules you gotta follow if you want to be in the club. All of God’s Law is for our good so that this world may be preserved. 

Rather than bellyaching to have the Ten Commandments posted in school, or in other government places, first post them in your homes. Teach them to your children and grandchildren, discuss them around the dinner table, think about them as you go about your day. Let them first be in your heart, mind, and lips and from there they will spread to those around you and maybe even back into our schools. 

But because of our failure to keep the Law, because of our ignorance of them and apathy towards them, because of our many trespasses against them, we have not been faithful and we’ve not feared the Lord. Therefore, “sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.” This one man is Adam. He failed to keep the Law of God and fear Him alone, therefore we’ve all inherited his sin and have become heirs of unrighteousness and death. Not only his sin, but the sins of all mankind have multiplied and increased the transgression of sin. We “go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.” 

The Law through it all reveals our unrighteous and unholy living. God’s perfect and holy Law shines like a bright lamp into our deathly dark hearts full of sin. With each commandment you’re repeatedly reminded of the depths of your depravity. Like a hammerfall, each time we hear the law it’s another nail in our coffin. Our sin brings about our sad demise. 

But realizing our sinful hearts, the law shows us our great need for Christ. “The free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man's trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many… For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification… Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men.”

Jesus did not come to abolish the Law. He didn’t come to rid us of its significance and our need to keep it. In fact the Law is still here, “until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.” Instead, what Jesus came to do is fulfill the Law. Jesus came just like us and was born of a woman, but unlike us He was conceived sinless by the Holy Ghost. Jesus experienced the full gamut of human emotion, yet unlike us He never succumbed to sin’s temptation. He experienced agony and suffering and bitter death, and in the end He declared that “it is finished.” From Jesus’ birth to His death He fulfilled the Law on our behalf; He remained faithful and immovable to replace our faithless wavering.

The Law of God is good and perfect and holy and Jesus fulfilled the whole Law on our behalf so that our righteousness might exceed even that of the scribes and pharisees and we would be welcomed into heaven. God’s Law is very good. It shows you how you ought to live this life in a way which is most healthy. It shows you your faithless sinning and condemns you. It shows you how greatly you need Jesus Christ and how greatly He loved you by fulfilling the Law. It shows you now how we should give thanks to God for His love for us in Christ Jesus. 

“Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”