Flesh and Blood hinge: the 4th Commandment [Trinity 21]

LISTEN TO THE AUDIO HERE 

READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:

• Isaiah 25:6-9

• Ephesians 6:10-17

• St. John 4:46-54

May grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord

(2 Pet 1:2)

 

Who speaks to you today, only through His Gospel, saying,

“When this man heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went to him and asked him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death.”

 

In God’s first three commandments, we have been living on “easy mode”. That is, we have been told to only have one God, Him. To use the Name He gives us, and to keep His holy day. So easy to do with our lips and even more so, since God is spirit, we just honor His Name and Day in the spirit and we can live life to our pleasure.

 

Every once in a while we use His Name for a prayer. Every now and then, declare publicly how our God is the real God, and on the proper day, give the proper offering, with the proper words, at the proper time and place. 

 

We cruise through life like this, barely even perceiving God in all of it. Just in those places He said, because that is good enough. 

 

However, when we get to the 4th Commandment, God begins to interfere with said life. Often called the hinge of the Commandments, God introduces father and mother into the mix, instead of remaining in the spirit realm. He brings His commands out from our imagination, into the very lives we were trying to live without Him.

 

The Official in today’s Gospel teaches this. Let’s assume stereotypical royalty here. That his success is his own, his prosperity is his own, and yet he pays lip service to his God or gods and they appear to leave him alone. In this worst case scenario, they also leave him alone when he cries out in need.

 

The 4th Command goes: “Honor your father and mother”.

What does this mean? We should fear and love God so that we do not despise or anger our parents and other authorities, but honor them, serve and obey them, love and cherish them.

 

Our sinful nature causes us to hate God, now, because He ties up His honor with earthly honor and that is impossible to accomplish, for us. However, Pop Christianity is all too eager to teach us these things and it is always by works righteousness, without the need for Jesus.

 

To honor God, they’ll say, you need to place a higher value on Him than other things, you need to be generous, live a life devoted to Him, seek Him in everything YOU do, and make choices that reflect the place He has in your heart. You’ve got a long list, apparently…

 

They will also say that serving God means you loving others, you obeying His word, and using your unique skills in daily life. Many would say that obeying God means simply “giving Him what He wants”, reading His Bible to learn the rules and instructions. 

 

Loving God means choosing to obey His commands, spending time in prayer, and caring for other people. And cherishing Him is thinking about Him, telling Him I love Him, spend time in His presence, and choosing to do everything out of love for Him.

 

But, they are just going in circles here: to love God is to obey Him, to obey Him is to pray, to pray is to be devoted to Him, and to be devoted means to love Him and to love Him is to obey Him. Like a hamster wheel: around and around and around and around. We call this the fallacy of circular reasoning.

 

Here in Christ’s Church we call it God’s Law. Yes, it is circular because these things of God have no end. If you are in charge of honoring God, then you need to figure out how to do it for eternity, before the resurrection of all flesh. If God’s service, obedience, love, and cherishing are all dependent on how well you do, then you will quickly find yourself in the Official’s shoes.

 

What kind of shoes are those? The kind that stand before a silent god in the face of suffering. The kind that stand in the presence of all the praying, tithing, and fasting you did that now returns nothing. Turns out, all that effort, work, and lip service were not enough.

 

Because the 4th Commandment is the one that God appears in flesh and blood. He accepts worship from His first three commands, but then places His honor and His Name on earthly parents and other authorities. In other words, in order to get to God, you have to go through man.

 

This begins with Jesus being made man. Jesus Christ fulfills the 4th Commandment in two profound ways: His Active Obedience (perfectly keeping the law in our place) and His Passive Obedience (suffering the consequences of our failure to keep it).

 

It is divinely necessary for our Savior to be true man in order to act in our place under the Law and fulfill it for us. God keeping His own Law is redundant and doesn’t mean anything. But when a man does it, then it has fulfilled its purpose. Thus God is made man, in Jesus Christ.

 

As Galatians 4:4-5 says, “When the time had fully come, God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons.”

 

Two examples of this from Jesus’s life are from Sts. Luke and Matthew. First His submission to His parents, Joseph and Mary, from the age of 12 when He appeared in the Temple until He is baptized. And second, when He tells us to “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s”, that is when He honors father and mother and other authorities. (Lk 2:51; Mt 22:21)

 

That is His active obedience as a man. It is also divinely necessary that He passively obey, as a man. That is, to be able to suffer and die for our guilt because we failed to keep the Law. This is passive because His guilt and death are not self-imposed. Taking our sin and guilt, He deserves death for those transgressions. And as our substitute, also allows the ruling class and other authorities to condemn Him publicly and crucify Him.

 

Colossians states (1:22), “He has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death to present you holy in His sight, without blemish and free from accusation.”

And Hebrews 2:14, “Since the children have flesh and blood, He too shared in their humanity so that by His death He might destroy him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil.”

 

That is not the end of Jesus, however. For, it is also necessary for our Savior to be true God in order that His fulfilling of the Law, His life, suffering, and death might be a sufficient ransom for all people in any case! “No man can redeem the life of another or give to God a ransom for him” (Ps. 49:7). Yet, Jesus came to serve, and as God He serves in an eternal way, making propitiation by His Blood, holy and precious Blood, that no one else has.

 

He also has to be able to overcome death and the devil for us. Only God can do this and our Official with the dead son knows this today, which is why he comes to Jesus. Life is hard. Life is impossible, with death stalking everyone. But with God, life is not just possible but certain.

 

The Official comes to Jesus in faith, honoring Jesus as God. Faith is the only true way to honor God. First because faith only comes from God and second , because faith trusts that God’s Way is the only Way. In the case of the Gospel today, the Way that is shown goes through death. The Official honors God by trusting Him, even though his child dies.

 

And, instead of the false and external Worship of inventing human traditions, experiences, or special clothing to merit God's grace, Faith believes and rests in the completed work of Jesus Christ. That is, His suffering, death, and resurrection.

 

Our service and obedience, then, is only possible within this perfect service and obedience of Jesus. We do not get to obey God in our own way. We do not get to serve Him in any way we see fit. We only approach Him by His rules, that is, with a clean conscience through the forgiveness of sins, in Jesus’s Name.

 

Hopefully, you remember how to love and cherish God, as the 4^th Command teaches. That our love is giving His love back to Him. He first loved us, then we love. And that goes for the whole thing. He first cherished us, He first served and obeyed us, He first honored us.

 

Because Jesus was walking around in His own flesh and blood, this Official was able to find Him, beg Him, and receive an answer to his begging. If Jesus had not, then there would be no point, no meaning. But since the Father wills the resurrection of the dead, Jesus comes.

 

This is where our part comes in. To honor father and mother is to honor the heavenly Father. To honor the heavenly Father is to Honor the Son. To honor the Son means trusting in His work, His Word and Sacrament, in which He promises to serve us the forgiveness of sins, faith in Him, and eternal life.

 

True service and obedience is hearing the Word, believing it, and communing the way God is communing with you, in bread and wine. True love and cherishing God, is not you inventing new and exciting ways to worship and experience God, but submission to His Way of doing things.

 

We get to fall at the feet of Jesus, in His Church, in His Liturgy today, because He promised to be working for us. Not in our old dusty ceremonies, but in His Word and His Sacrament. For true faith trusts in Christ and centers around two things: Justification by grace, through faith, for Christ’s sake, and the true presence of Christ’s Body and Blood.

 

In Whose presence we then get to approach and pray that Jesus come down and heal our own sin and death. And His answer is the medicine of immortality: His Body and Blood.

 

Amen.

The Lord's Day: the 3rd Command [Trinity 20]

 LISTEN TO THE AUDIO HERE 

READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:

• Isaiah 55:1-9

• Ephesians 5:15-21

• St. Matthew 22:1-14

May grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord

(2 Pet 1:2)

 

Who speaks to you today, only through His Gospel, saying,

“Again he sent other servants, saying, ‘Tell those who are invited, “See, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding feast”’”

 

The Bible is emphasizing speaking and telling, in the Gospel today, and the Lord’s 3rd Commandment also emphasizes this. That it is love that fulfills God’s Law and it is hearing and believing that saves (Jn 5:24). So when we are attempting to figure out Old Testament laws, we begin first at Jesus Who fulfills, authorizes, and perfects faith. Then puts all that in His Church, for us.

 

When certain Christians argue against Christmas trees, they will cite Jeremiah 10 in support of their claim. It says, “Learn not the way of the nations, [and their false idols]…a tree from the forest is cut down and worked with an axe by the hands of a craftsman. They decorate it with silver and gold; they fasten it with hammer and nails so that it cannot move” (10:2-4).

 

Jesus responds to those types of people by calling first dibs. He says all trees are created by Himself and though they are abused into false gods, they are not false gods themselves, but good created things.

Likewise, when certain Christians and or people who wish to tarnish God’s Word argue “in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath”, says Colossians, or a wedding feast says the Gospel today, Jesus likewise responds that all food and drink and all days are His to begin with and they will serve His purpose, no matter how many ego trips are taken (Col 2:16).

 

Colossians goes on to interpret these things as shadows. “These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ” (Col 2:17). 

Thus our Lord’s 3rd Command, “Remember the Sabbath Day by keeping it holy” (Ex 20:8). 

What does this mean? We should fear and love God so that we do not despise preaching and His Word, but hold it sacred and gladly hear and learn it.”

 

Two words people use, when thinking about the Sabbath and other demands of the Old Testament, are replacement or abrogation. One side says the Sabbath Day is replaced with the Lord’s Day and the “abrogation” side says that the Sabbath is discontinued. Many enlightened Christians have settled on these two terms to describe what God was doing in the Old Testament and what He is doing now in the New.

 

God in the Old was demanding sacrifices, but in our days He has replaced that with the sacrifice of Jesus. God, back in the day, was demanding purity by shopping cart, saying this or that animal was clean or unclean. Today, He has abrogated, caused the old to be erased in favor of new, those verses with freedom in Christ.

 

What is the problem with replacement and abrogation? It means God changed His mind. It implies God started out one way, but has chosen to continue in another. This would contradict other verses that say, “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever” (Heb 13:8) and as Revelation 13:8 teaches, "...the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world." 

 

Weaseling into the gap between these words that appear to punch a hole in God’s trustworthiness, we, the Jews, and “those who were invited” from the Gospel reading today, throw it in God’s face and dare Him to go against the contract. 

 

You said sabbath on the seventh day and we keep that seventh day, as we see fit, so You must accept us.

You said we were invited and here we are. What do you mean we can’t “come as we are” and instead need special clothes??

You said New Testament, what do you mean we can’t forget the Old?

 

Dear Christians, it was never about the day, or the food, or the new moon. Notice our friends in the Gospel reading. They do not despise God’s gifts, but run to their lands, business, and family. They do not forget that God Himself has invited them, and defend that honor with violence. They uphold God’s commands better than God Himself, knowing their rightful, promised place is sonship, and not this fake son that has come to them.

 

So we believe that the outward rest of the Sabbath was given for our bodies and our servants, yes, but its true spiritual purpose is to sit us at the feet of God. What do these guests do? They elevate their worldly labor, their farms, and their commerce above the King's invitation. And what else is the invitation, but His Word.

 

To despise preaching and God's Word does not only mean openly mocking it; it means treating it as a matter of secondary importance. It is prioritizing your daily bread over the Bread of Life. When a man says he is too busy with his trade to hear the Gospel, he acts precisely like the wicked guests who turned away from the King's table to tend to their own molehills.

 

Rather, Christ is Lord of the Sabbath and has come not to abolish the Law or Prophets, not to erase an iota or a dot, but to fulfill. Jesus’s job is not done until all the Law has been accomplished, has “come to pass”. As St. John says it in his gospel book, “The Word came to pass flesh and dwelt among us” (Mt 5:17-18, Jn 1:14).

 

Jesus does not replace or abrogate, but fulfills. He fills up the Law so much that there is no room for any more “doing the Law”. He fills up the prophets so much that there is no doubt that the Son of God must be sacrificed in order to make friends out of enemies of God, dying on the cross while we yet hated Him.

 

Our Large Catechism states that the day itself does not make you holy, for all days are created by God. Rather “the force and power of this commandment lies not in the resting, but in the sanctifying…here a work is to be done by which man is himself made holy, which is done (as we have heard) alone through God’s Word” (LC I:94). 

 

When we gather together to “be filled with the Spirit…singing psalms and hymns…giving thanks” to God as our Epistle taught, it is at the Word of God, accomplished with us hearing and believing, that is keeping Sabbath. When the Holy Spirit is at work through that same Word, granting Absolution, mortifying our old flesh, and filling us with His grace, that is keeping Sabbath.

 

We are not moved to laze about in idleness or even pretend idleness, such as not pushing elevator buttons. Instead, a true Christian Sabbath, fulfilled by Jesus, is a joyous, spirited feast of body and soul, a wedding feast if you will, where our mouths and our hearts are given power to house the Son of God through faith (Eph 3:14-17).

 

In the Gospel, there is no room for abrogation or replacement, because these necessitate the works of men. To replace one law for another is to trade one Moses for another. And Moses did not point to another of himself to come, but a man like him. Thus saith the Lord, “I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him. And whoever will not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him” (Deut 18:18-19).

 

It was and always will be about the Word. It was and always will be about Jesus. The Apostles knew this. This is why they gave us the Divine Service for the Lord’s Day. The same service we hear of in Acts 2:42 “And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers”. 

 

What else is the Apostles’ teaching, but the Word? What else is fellowship, but gathering together? What else is the breaking of the bread, but the eating and drinking of the Lord’s Body and Blood, as often as we come together, in order to proclaim His death until He returns? (1 Cor 11:26)

 

Remember Colossians, which we quoted earlier, “These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ” (Col 2:17). There is a darkness of understanding, a veil over the Old Testament things, just as there was a veil over Moses’ face in order that “when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away. Yes, to this day whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their hearts. But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed” (2 Cor 3:14-16). 

 

In Christ the veil is torn in two and we see Him. The Sabbath points to Him. The Old Testament points to Him. Weddings point to Him. And we are wed to Christ. He the Head and we His Body. And in that baptismal wedding, “we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit” (2 Cor 3:18).

 

You are not a replacement, but an invited guest. You are not a change of plans, but the plan from the beginning. The Sabbath is God’s rest for you, that you may set aside the work you do so that God may work in you. This is accomplished any day. Any day the Word is heard, held sacred, and believed.

 

And where does one receive this lifted veil, this wedding garment? It is not woven by our own hands, nor by our own good works or legalistic keeping of days. This garment is Christ Himself which includes the very righteousness of Christ, given to us freely by grace through faith. And how is this faith kindled? It comes by hearing, and hearing through the Word of Christ! 

(Complete Sermons of Martin Luther III:3.1:234)

 

For everything is already ready. 

 

Amen.

 

 

Call upon it: The 2nd Command [Trinity 17]

LISTEN TO THE AUDIO HERE 

READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:

• Proverbs 25:6-14

• Ephesians 4:1-6

• St. Luke 14:1-11

May grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord

(2 Pet 1:2)

 

Who, once again speaks to you today, saying: 

“But when you are invited, go and sit in the lowest place, so that when your host comes he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher.’”

 

We have heard this Word from God at His Divine Providence this day, that we may reflect on what it means to have received God’s Name in Baptism and what it means to call upon it. It is no small thing that God has shared His very own Name with us and so we should seek it out and speak of it to others.

 

In the Second Commandment, we hear God commenting on the ignorance of Him. He has given the world His own Name, and yet our sinful nature, the world and the devil want it both ways. They want their gods to play the role of Christ while still rejecting Christ. they want all the “nice” of Jesus, but they just don’t want Jesus doing them.

 

Why? Because Jesus is a person. He has thoughts, words, and ideas. He will be nice, but He will be nice in His own way. In fact, this is the problem men have with gods: if their help is not a metaphor, then neither are their commands. If it can answer when you call, then it can speak without your asking. And if you can go to it, it can come to you. 

 

Thus the Name of God and its command: You shall not misuse the Name of the Lord your God. 

What does this mean? We should fear and love God so that we do not curse, swear, use satanic arts, lie, or deceive by His Name, call upon it in every trouble, pray, praise, and give thanks.

 

The Gospel we heard today, has laid out a man in need of healing, the Sabbath Day, a wedding, and a friend. And there are names attached to all of those things, ownership. Who’s Name is on the letters of the Law? Who’s Name is on the wedding invitations? Who’s Name is on the sinners and friends that Jesus has come to? 

 

You see, the greatest breaking of the Second Commandment is when preachers falsely say, “Thus says the Lord.” That is when they put words in God’s mouth that He hasn’t said and when they take words out, which He has said. 

 

Everyone cries out for help. They disguise it and dress it up in other words, like justice and love, but it is the same. Something is not right in the world and they have just the thing to solve it. Something has gone wrong, but it was because we really never tried before. But today will be different. Because today we are strong. We are together. We are one.

 

Here now are the demonic trumpets of the Last Day sounding before the end. They sing of unity. They sing of the strength of men. They preach tolerance, but are disgusted by it. They preach harmony, but it makes them sick. They preach prosperity, but hate to see it wasted on anyone but themselves.

 

Here now, back to the Gospel reading. The Pharisees were watching Jesus carefully, not to see if He was truly God or not. That didn’t matter. They wanted to see if He would follow the Law or not. Their laws. Yes, free healthcare for all, but if you cannot be cured immediately, you must be euthanized to make room for others. It is a kindness, is it not? And even God is kind.

 

Be careful what you wish for, they say. In this case, be careful who you pray to, He just might hear it. More than that, you just might find yourself on the wrong side of things, having gone against who you’re praying to, rather than for. 

 

All our cries for help reach the same ears and there is only one pair of ears listening. Jesus comes to teach that. There are no other gods to listen. Men appeal to men and set it up so that might makes right. If I can arrest you, sue you, or kill you then your beliefs were weaker than mine.

 

Call him louder, cries Elijah to the prophets of Ba’al. “For he is a god. Either he is musing, or he is relieving himself, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened. And they cried aloud and cut themselves after their custom with swords and lances, until the blood gushed out upon them. And as midday passed, they raved on until the time of the offering of the oblation, but there was no voice. No one answered; no one paid attention” (1 Ki 18:27-29).

 

And in His own turn, patiently, God answers Elijah’s prayer with fire from heaven even before he is finished praying!

 

If you notice, the man who is sick in today’s Gospel says nothing. He is just there, in front of Jesus, and Jesus does His work. He does not wait for a prayer. He does not wait for a decision. He does not wait for a cry. This we are taught in the Lord’s Prayer, “the Name of God is certainly holy in itself”, without our prayer.

 

So it is for us today, that God does His work without asking us for permission and before we were even born. Surely His Name is great. But how? Is it great because we don’t use curse words or swear like a sailor, as the meaning of the 2nd Commandment says? Is His Name great because we don’t use satanic arts, whatever those are?? Is it great when we don’t lie or deceive? 

 

Then it isn’t, because we do.

 

You know how God’s Name is great? Because we call upon it. We use it. 

God gave His Name in order that we use it at His Word and according to His Will. Who are the ones calling on that Name, as commanded, in the Gospel? The man with dropsy is in trouble, he cries out. 

 

The men who need help with son and ox, pray for aid. those who have received invitations praise God for His favor shown to them, and the “friend” who is low gives thanks for being brought up on high.

 

You see, God’s Name is on His creation. He knows what’s His and it is all His. He created it. He named it. He gave it life. And He has handed over all things to His Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus does the Father’s will is not taking the Name of the Lord in vain and fulfilling it for us.

 

He does that by curing the sick, which is not just a show of force, but a proof of His authority over creation and that He is our substitute. This man will no longer be sick, but Jesus will be. He will be sin-sick leading to His death on the cross.

 

Jesus lifts the poor out of the pit. Not because they have no money, but because they are dead in their sins. All the sons who sleep the sleep of death will be raised, because Jesus fell into the pit of hell and returned as conqueror.

 

Jesus sends out only one invitation: His. Many are invited, because He shares His Sonship with all, baptizing them into His Body. That is being invited in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. One Name. One God.

 

Jesus is the friend Who humbles Himself, even below sinful man, taking the lowest seat on the cross and purchasing their crown with His holy precious Blood. With His Name on the line, He takes action and secures faith in Him, the forgiveness of sins, and eternal life.

 

Jesus fulfills the 2nd Commandment by fulfilling all of God’s promises to hear, to heal, and to raise up. The Name of God is not just for diplomacy, but for mercy. A Crucified Mercy. A mercy that has been through suffering, death, and hell to come out clean on the other side. A mercy that is merciful without our prayers.

 

Which do not know the first thing about what we need in this life or the next. We think we need healing, justice, and love, but what we need is salvation. We need dropsy healed forever. We need all the pits filled, forever. We need an invitation of the highest order, out of the corruption of this world. 

We need to be called friend by the Most High God of all.

 

Calling on the Name of Jesus brings this to the believer. Not health, justice, or love as we give it, but Jesus. Jesus and all He has to give: life, forgiveness, and faith. Jesus and His eternal kingdom. Jesus and His Name that is above every Name. Not just because He is almighty, but because His Name is mercy. His Name is “He will save His people from their sins” (Mt 1:21).

 

Amen.