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.
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