Exodus 20:1-17; Romans 6:(1-2)3-11; St Matthew 5:(17-19)20-26
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
The Law kills. Every time. You shall have no other gods before Me. The First Commandment is the greatest. Your encounter with it will determine whether you shall try to satisfy yourself with false joy or be drowned, raised, and declared righteous with the eternal righteousness of the One true God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Who or what shall be your god? To whom or what shall you look for blessing, confidence, security? What do you desire? What do you fear? What do you love? What do you trust? Already we are cut to the quick, slain through the heart, and dead.
But the Law goes on. The First Commandment instructs the heart. The Second instructs the lips. How often they fail. How often, in a fit of sinful rage, do words, even the Divine Name, cross your lips in anger? How lacking are your prayers? The Law kills. Every time.
It continues: Do you despise the Word by neglect or pay little attention when is it read and preached? Are you faithful in attendance of the Divine Service or prefer to be elsewhere? Have you been angry, stubborn, or disrespectful toward those in authority? Do you honor your father and mother, teachers, employers? Do you faithfully represent God the Father in disciplining, caring for, and catechizing your children? The first, second, third, fourth commandments. The Law kills. Every time.
Then we arrive at the Fifth. You shall not murder. At first glance it seems we can make short work of this commandment and move to the next, the dreaded Sixth Commandment. After all, “I’m no murder.” Not too many people are. It is unlikely that the seeming crowd of folks from St Peter’s who have been called for jury duty lately will be seated on a murder trial. Murder is evil. Wicked. But its even worse than it appears. For since man was made in God’s image, every attack on man, is an attack on God. So ultimately, murder of man can be seen as murder of God.
As with all the Law, God not only requires your hands, feet, and mouths to do and say the right things, but He also expects your thoughts to be sinless. Jesus will summarize only twenty verses later: Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect (Mt 5:48).
He does not lighten the burden of this commandment. Rather, He increases it exponentially. Jesus lays bare the anger that gives birth to murder. So while the seventy-fourth homicide occurred on the streets of Indianapolis last week, thousands of Indianapolis Christians sat behind closed doors stewing with anger, resentment, and bitterness toward God. Last week Christians gossiped about the reputations of fellow believers. Last week, Christians from this very congregation talked about the actions and behaviors of their fellow saints and though to themselves, “What a moron.” Last week, there were actually Christians who instead of forgiving those who sinned against them, showed their hatred of the Gospel by continuing to nurse their cherished grudges.
Young, old, Christians all over Indianapolis and beyond, this congregation, it doesn’t seem to matter, according to Jesus’ interpretation of the Fifth Commandment, all murderers.
You may think its ridiculous and foolish and unreasonable to compare your brand of murder to the bloody homicides on the streets of Indianapolis, but God’s Law doesn’t. Try to make the case that your gossip makes you less guilty than a real killer and those stone tablets will just mercilessly stare back at you. Try to justify your anger, your bitterness, your discontentment with God’s purpose and plan, His Law doesn’t care. It simply puts in the condemned category of murders of man and God. Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer (1 Jn 3:15). And everyone who keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it (James 2:10).
Repent. Hiding your anger and meanness with a two-faced smile won’t work. You might be able to hide the blood from others with a pleasant smile, but you can’t hide it from the long-arm of the Law, those two stone tablets carried down the hill in Moses’ arms that condemn us all. Repent. Out with the truth. Confess your sins and crimes against God and man.
Then be of good cheer. For while the hard stone tablets of the Law have no mercy, you have a Rock who is merciful. A Rock named Jesus. A Rock who is patient and tender-hearted, compassionate toward the humble and broken and contrite. He is not deaf to your cry. He does not just stare back at you, but hears your pleas for mercy and is not silent as you go down to the pit as you sang in the Introit. He speaks forgiveness that lifts and absolves even the murderers and given them what the Law could never do - entrance into the Kingdom of God.
For the One who preaches the Sermon on the Mount this morning and kindly clarifies for you the strict standards of the Law is not just another man made in God’s image. He is the image of the Invisible God. He is God in the flesh, come to enact and to give a righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees. Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.
St Matthew portrays Jesus as the new and greater Moses. For though He climbs the mountain like Moses and speaks God’s Word, it is different. Moses relates the Word of the Lord. Jesus speaks it with His own mouth. I say to you. Jesus is the Word made flesh. When He finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at His teaching, for He was teaching them as One who had authority, and not as their scribes (Mt 7:28-29).
He also descends differently than Moses. Moses not only threw the Ten Commandments in anger when he saw the false worship. He commanded the slaughter of 3,000 idolators around the golden calf (Ex 32:28). Jesus doesn’t descend that way. He descends to have mercy. Those Ten Commandments may condemn you, but they describe Him. And He fulfilled them perfectly for you.
He feared, loved and trusted in God because you haven’t. He didn’t stew with resentment, but prayed with confidence to His Father. He cherished His Father’s Word on your behalf. He perfectly honored His heavenly Father, His mother Mary and Joseph. He never got angry or insulted sinners, but helped them in body and soul. He was the one perfectly faithful Husband. He didn’t steal for Himself, but gave of Himself. He didn’t lie, but spoke the truth even when it cost Him His life. He didn’t covet heaven and let you be damned, but desired that you have a share, and He earned it for you and bestows it upon you.
For Jesus went down that mountain to accomplish your salvation. He descended that mountain so that He could end His earthly life in Jerusalem. The city that murdered the prophets and killed those sent to her. But that is where He wanted to go. He went there to take all of your resentment, your bitterness, your hatred into His pierced side, so that He could bury it. He went there to suffer the insults and the mockery. His gruesome, bloody death depicted for you in art and Word shows you that your sin is no trifle. Others didn’t do this. We did this. Murderers all.
Yet be of good cheer, dear Christian, for His thoughts toward you are good. He bears all that you can dish out willingly. And He turns in compassion and love to lift His face upon you, smile upon you, and say, Father, forgive them. Indeed, He bears it all so that He can rise over it victorious. And then He comes to you to baptize you into His death and resurrection. To join you to His perfect righteousness according to the Law. To make you dead to sin and alive to His Father in Him.
Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Do you not know that your old gossipy self was buried? Put the best construction on your spouse’s actions. Do you not know that your old, angry, bitter self was put to death? So speak tenderly and gently to each other. Do you not know that the old backstabber, your fleshly Adam, was put to death in the most blessed murder to all, your Baptism into Christ? And for a blessed purpose: Just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
There is no one to accuse you. The Law which kills has been silenced in Jesus’ death. Come receive the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets, the fruits of the Resurrected One, His Body and Blood given and shed for you for the forgiveness of all your sins and the strengthening of your faith and love. He gives you a seat at the Table in His Kingdom and calls you great in the greatness of His love and mercy and compassion.
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
The Law kills. Every time. You shall have no other gods before Me. The First Commandment is the greatest. Your encounter with it will determine whether you shall try to satisfy yourself with false joy or be drowned, raised, and declared righteous with the eternal righteousness of the One true God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Who or what shall be your god? To whom or what shall you look for blessing, confidence, security? What do you desire? What do you fear? What do you love? What do you trust? Already we are cut to the quick, slain through the heart, and dead.
But the Law goes on. The First Commandment instructs the heart. The Second instructs the lips. How often they fail. How often, in a fit of sinful rage, do words, even the Divine Name, cross your lips in anger? How lacking are your prayers? The Law kills. Every time.
It continues: Do you despise the Word by neglect or pay little attention when is it read and preached? Are you faithful in attendance of the Divine Service or prefer to be elsewhere? Have you been angry, stubborn, or disrespectful toward those in authority? Do you honor your father and mother, teachers, employers? Do you faithfully represent God the Father in disciplining, caring for, and catechizing your children? The first, second, third, fourth commandments. The Law kills. Every time.
Then we arrive at the Fifth. You shall not murder. At first glance it seems we can make short work of this commandment and move to the next, the dreaded Sixth Commandment. After all, “I’m no murder.” Not too many people are. It is unlikely that the seeming crowd of folks from St Peter’s who have been called for jury duty lately will be seated on a murder trial. Murder is evil. Wicked. But its even worse than it appears. For since man was made in God’s image, every attack on man, is an attack on God. So ultimately, murder of man can be seen as murder of God.
As with all the Law, God not only requires your hands, feet, and mouths to do and say the right things, but He also expects your thoughts to be sinless. Jesus will summarize only twenty verses later: Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect (Mt 5:48).
He does not lighten the burden of this commandment. Rather, He increases it exponentially. Jesus lays bare the anger that gives birth to murder. So while the seventy-fourth homicide occurred on the streets of Indianapolis last week, thousands of Indianapolis Christians sat behind closed doors stewing with anger, resentment, and bitterness toward God. Last week Christians gossiped about the reputations of fellow believers. Last week, Christians from this very congregation talked about the actions and behaviors of their fellow saints and though to themselves, “What a moron.” Last week, there were actually Christians who instead of forgiving those who sinned against them, showed their hatred of the Gospel by continuing to nurse their cherished grudges.
Young, old, Christians all over Indianapolis and beyond, this congregation, it doesn’t seem to matter, according to Jesus’ interpretation of the Fifth Commandment, all murderers.
You may think its ridiculous and foolish and unreasonable to compare your brand of murder to the bloody homicides on the streets of Indianapolis, but God’s Law doesn’t. Try to make the case that your gossip makes you less guilty than a real killer and those stone tablets will just mercilessly stare back at you. Try to justify your anger, your bitterness, your discontentment with God’s purpose and plan, His Law doesn’t care. It simply puts in the condemned category of murders of man and God. Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer (1 Jn 3:15). And everyone who keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it (James 2:10).
Repent. Hiding your anger and meanness with a two-faced smile won’t work. You might be able to hide the blood from others with a pleasant smile, but you can’t hide it from the long-arm of the Law, those two stone tablets carried down the hill in Moses’ arms that condemn us all. Repent. Out with the truth. Confess your sins and crimes against God and man.
Then be of good cheer. For while the hard stone tablets of the Law have no mercy, you have a Rock who is merciful. A Rock named Jesus. A Rock who is patient and tender-hearted, compassionate toward the humble and broken and contrite. He is not deaf to your cry. He does not just stare back at you, but hears your pleas for mercy and is not silent as you go down to the pit as you sang in the Introit. He speaks forgiveness that lifts and absolves even the murderers and given them what the Law could never do - entrance into the Kingdom of God.
For the One who preaches the Sermon on the Mount this morning and kindly clarifies for you the strict standards of the Law is not just another man made in God’s image. He is the image of the Invisible God. He is God in the flesh, come to enact and to give a righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees. Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.
St Matthew portrays Jesus as the new and greater Moses. For though He climbs the mountain like Moses and speaks God’s Word, it is different. Moses relates the Word of the Lord. Jesus speaks it with His own mouth. I say to you. Jesus is the Word made flesh. When He finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at His teaching, for He was teaching them as One who had authority, and not as their scribes (Mt 7:28-29).
He also descends differently than Moses. Moses not only threw the Ten Commandments in anger when he saw the false worship. He commanded the slaughter of 3,000 idolators around the golden calf (Ex 32:28). Jesus doesn’t descend that way. He descends to have mercy. Those Ten Commandments may condemn you, but they describe Him. And He fulfilled them perfectly for you.
He feared, loved and trusted in God because you haven’t. He didn’t stew with resentment, but prayed with confidence to His Father. He cherished His Father’s Word on your behalf. He perfectly honored His heavenly Father, His mother Mary and Joseph. He never got angry or insulted sinners, but helped them in body and soul. He was the one perfectly faithful Husband. He didn’t steal for Himself, but gave of Himself. He didn’t lie, but spoke the truth even when it cost Him His life. He didn’t covet heaven and let you be damned, but desired that you have a share, and He earned it for you and bestows it upon you.
For Jesus went down that mountain to accomplish your salvation. He descended that mountain so that He could end His earthly life in Jerusalem. The city that murdered the prophets and killed those sent to her. But that is where He wanted to go. He went there to take all of your resentment, your bitterness, your hatred into His pierced side, so that He could bury it. He went there to suffer the insults and the mockery. His gruesome, bloody death depicted for you in art and Word shows you that your sin is no trifle. Others didn’t do this. We did this. Murderers all.
Yet be of good cheer, dear Christian, for His thoughts toward you are good. He bears all that you can dish out willingly. And He turns in compassion and love to lift His face upon you, smile upon you, and say, Father, forgive them. Indeed, He bears it all so that He can rise over it victorious. And then He comes to you to baptize you into His death and resurrection. To join you to His perfect righteousness according to the Law. To make you dead to sin and alive to His Father in Him.
Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Do you not know that your old gossipy self was buried? Put the best construction on your spouse’s actions. Do you not know that your old, angry, bitter self was put to death? So speak tenderly and gently to each other. Do you not know that the old backstabber, your fleshly Adam, was put to death in the most blessed murder to all, your Baptism into Christ? And for a blessed purpose: Just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
There is no one to accuse you. The Law which kills has been silenced in Jesus’ death. Come receive the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets, the fruits of the Resurrected One, His Body and Blood given and shed for you for the forgiveness of all your sins and the strengthening of your faith and love. He gives you a seat at the Table in His Kingdom and calls you great in the greatness of His love and mercy and compassion.
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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