What's In It FOR ME? Law and Gospel (Luke 4:16-30)

“We don’t need no education”

“We don’t need no education”. That bit of double negative from psychedelic philosopher Roger Waters in the 1970’s served as an anarchic and subversive protest against supposed education oppression in Britain’s post-war schools. Waters’ use of another double negative immediately following the first offered a solution to that supposed oppression, “We don’t need no thought control”. Use of the double negative serves Waters’ and Pink Floyd’s protest well. If you think about what is being said in the double negative, we do need education. We just don’t need the education currently being offered by the British crown. We need thought control... but not the kind the establishment offers. In the end, Waters’ solution to the education problem is the same as it has been since the early days of humanity. He himself will provide his own education. He himself will control his own thoughts.

Mankind has always been in need of education. Life needs wisdom. Someone must tell me what happens when I attempt to occupy the same space at the same time with a semi truck. Someone must tell me that the word “OK”, spoken with a certain inflection and with a certain look, may not mean what I think it means. More importantly, someone must tell me the meaning of life. Someone must tell me how it is I am made right with the Creator and what pleases Him. The question has never been whether or not man needs an education. The question is just *who* will provide man with that education. Is man left to educate himself? Or does he need outside help?

We continue our series on how to read our Bibles… What’s in it FOR ME? One of the things we realize right away about our Bibles is that our Bibles are telling us something. And if our Bibles are telling us something, and if we affirm that God’s Word is from God, then it is incumbent on us to know what the Bible is telling us. And not surprising to us is the constant, nagging thought that a lot of times, we just aren’t much interested in what the Bible is telling us. We have an internal aversion to being taught.

The Bible is God’s Word for sinners

From the very beginning of time God has been teaching. No sooner has God created the world, God is teaching the creatures he created. He tells them be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth. He also tells them what they aren’t to be doing: eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. From the very beginning, God is not only a Father, but a teacher. And humanity are his students, the world, his classroom.

But we didn’t want that. We defiantly cast off the education we’d been given. The knowledge of God has been traded for knowledge of good and evil. We will teach ourselves. The classic conflict of student vs. teacher is born here. Even the seemingly innocent Ferris Bueller candy coats this rebellion as some kind of teenage angst. It’s not angst. It’s rebellion. Indoctrination from Someone on the outside becomes something to be avoided. We’ve jettisoned God from the educational process in the delusion that he has no need of an objective teacher with life-giving information. “We don’t need no education” means, yes, we need an education, but “no” we will not tolerate a Teacher outside of ourselves giving us that education. The student defiantly declares independence and autonomy from the Creator-Teacher and his classroom. God, the authoritarian tyrant teacher, has engaged in an education of “suppression” and “oppression” and is in need of overthrow. God is a barrier isolating man from “true knowledge”. There in the garden God, the all-Wise, all-Knowing, all-Loving Teacher becomes “just another brick in the wall”.

Yet, God in his grace and love continues to provide an education for humanity. The Bible is God’s Word for sinners. He continues to give His Word that humanity doesn’t want, but desperately needs. That Word that He gives to his creatures and even the way God reveals himself to his creatures comes in two forms.. two ways that we are considering today: Law and Gospel. If we are to understand the Bible rightly and if we are to know what the Bible is telling us and what God wants from us, and what we are to receive from him, we must know how to distinguish law and gospel. God, our Teacher, provides us with the education that we need, and even more importantly the life in Christ that we need through Law and Gospel.

The Bible is Law and Gospel

Law and Gospel are present from the very beginning of time. And they are throughout the entire Bible, giving us the story of Jesus. You hear us use the word “law” here from time to time. When we talk about “law”, we’re not talking about the US constitution, or the Texas tax laws. We’re going to keep it really, really simple for our talk today. It can get very, very complex real fast because most of religious history is one big argument about what we mean by God’s law. Some will think this is too simple. That’s OK. There are five things we are going to say about law and gospel this morning, and keep in mind, I’m talking about law and Gospel as we think about them in our Christian lives. What can we say about law and gospel as they flow through the pages of our Bibles?

The first is this:

the law is anything God commands. Law tells us what to do.

We’re going to come back to this again and again for a variety of reasons… but if we’re going to understand how we are to hear God’s word, then we must understand that the law tells us what to do or what not to do. The Gospel is not anything we do.

The Gospel tells us what God is doing and has done for us.

What Jesus has done for us. Full stop. Anything else is law. And anything else is of no consolation to the sinner. The moment we add anything else to the definition of the Gospel is the moment the Gospel is no longer the Gospel and the law is now in full control. And we want it that we. This is how the Bible gets turned into an instruction manual. We go looking for all those things the Bible is telling us to do, forgetting that it’s the Gospel that we need for all of life.

The second thing we say about the law is a result of the first:

the law always accuses us of not doing what God requires.

This is why we’ve decided that we don’t need God’s education. When God tells us to do something, not only are we inclined to not do it, we instinctively know that we haven’t done it perfectly, which is the standard. The law is a mirror. It lets us know how far short of what God expects we are.

The Gospel tells us that we are forgiven.

We can’t do the law. We are forgiven in Christ.

The third thing.

The law threatens us.

The Bible is clear that if we fail to do what God commands, we are cursed. The law is full of threats. If you don’t do this, this will happen to you.

The Gospel provides comfort and consolation and rest.

There are no threats in the Gospel.

The fourth thing we can say about Law and Gospel is that

the law brings death, but the Gospel gives life.

The law kills. If there’s any one point to spend some time on this morning, it’s that the law cannot give life. The law cannot make us better. When the law says “husbands, love your wives”, yes… it is giving us instructions that we are to love our wives… and the tall order… just as Christ loved the church. There’s the impossibility. But there’s also this.. the law cannot make you love your wife, the law cannot produce in you, love for your wife, much less a love that is exactly like Christ’s love for the church. That’s the dirty little secret about the law. But we fall for it every time. I’ve heard this over and over again as a pastor in counseling… just give me something to do. Give me 5 things that will make me a successful person, give me 5 things that will help me love my wife better. We turn to the law to help make our lives better… and part of the problem is that for a while, it may look like life is better because I’m doing the law. I can give you 5 things, but we are delusional if we think that those 5 things are actually changing the heart. And the reality is that we don’t ever really do the law. We don’t ever really “obey”. We can’t. And Romans 7 tells us deep down, we really, really don’t want to. The law's standard is perfection. And if we can’t keep it perfectly, even in the Christian life, it’s death for us. There is no hope in the law.. in fact, if our hope is in the law, our hope is in ourselves because somehow we’ve convinced ourselves that the law is doable. Only the Gospel can change our hearts and change our lives. I was raised to think that if somehow I could change my behavior, at some point, my heart would change. ‘You’ll be happy if you obey” is the philosophy. The Bible says it doesn’t work that way. That’s a terrible life to live. That’s behavior modification. That’s the hamster wheel of performance. That’s works salvation parading itself as “the good Christian life”. That’s not the Gospel. There is no hope there. The only hope is in what God is doing for me and to me… and has done for me. Even as I live out the Christian life.

I’m emphasizing this point because we live in a Christian world that is absolutely drunk on the law. “Obedience” is the buzzword, and any time you hear that word, you can be sure that law is sitting there ready to do its enslaving work. The Bible has been turned into an instruction manual. A one big long “How to” book. I heard a sermon recently and coincidentally on Boaz. And the point of the sermon was to be holy like Boaz in the book of Ruth. Boaz is presented as a godly figure in the book of Ruth. Someone we are hoping that will save Ruth because she needs a good man. And so the point of the story is that we need to be more like Boaz. No mention of the fact that this is not the point of the story or what we’re supposed to see in Boaz and no mention of the fact that we cannot live up to that kind of ideal. And ultimately, no mention of Jesus as the one who is holy on our behalf. There was no Jesus to turn to when we can’t live up to the standard in the Christian life. But that kind of preaching is everywhere in our Christianity. Old Testament figures are moral examples to be emulated, instead of sinners who point me to Jesus.

And that brings us to this… because the law isn’t doable,

the law shows us our need for Christ.

When I see a command in the Bible, my first response cannot be… oh this is a way to stay on God’s good side. Oh, this is how Jesus is pleased with me. Again, there is no hope in that. That’s expecting the law to make things OK between me and Jesus. Instead, the law points us to Christ who has already made an end to the law and its terrible claims on us. The only way for me to be on God’s good side is for Jesus to be my obedience for me. So as I read the Bible, I see that the law is a problem, and the gospel is the remedy because it is showing me what Jesus has done for me and calling me to faith in Christ again and again. Why is it that we emphasize grace and the gospel here? Because that’s our only hope for life change. That’s our only hope for real life. We preach the law to show us how much we need Jesus.

Does this mean that the law does not provide help for our lives? Of course it does. Just read Luther’s Small Catechism for an example of this. Just like we need the law in our society to provide order, we have the law that shows us how our lives are to be lived in an orderly way. I am to love my wife. But my love for my wife earns me brownie points with her, not with God. We can’t. Only Jesus can do that.

Jesus IS the Gospel

To get back to our story, throughout all the pages of Scripture, you have this rhythm of this is what God expects, I’m a sinner and cannot do what God expects, and so here’s the gospel. That’s in every story we’ve ever told from the Bible here. And that’s what’s happening when Jesus comes to Nazareth and begins to teach. Christ enters the picture of public ministry in Luke 4 and he shows up teaching. This is an amazing story because it is very obvious that Jesus knows the human condition and our fallen propensity to want to run after the law and preach and teach and hear the law as if it can help make things better.

Do you hear what Jesus is preaching in that synagogue that day?

Luke 4:18-19 “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

When Jesus goes to his hometown and has the opportunity to teach and preach, what is the education he is providing? The Gospel! Jesus is saying I’m your Teacher. I’m the One who is the Good News. And that’s what you need for this day and every day. People like us who are broken and messy and so self-reliant we think we are OK, and we know that we are not. Jesus says I’m your Good News. This is what you need to hear and receive and believe.

But this story also contains everything we’ve been talking about in terms of the law. Here’s the response:

Luke 4:22 They were all speaking well of him and were amazed by the gracious words that came from his mouth;

Why do you think they were amazed by the gracious words coming from Jesus’ mouth? Because that’s not what they were looking for. And it becomes obvious when in the next few moments they attempt to throw Jesus off of a cliff. They want law. Just give us something to do. Just give us something to obey. And Jesus is standing there saying no, what you need is the Good News of the Gospel of Me.

In one sermon, Jesus is answering all of those basic questions of our human existence are answered. He sets himself as the answer in the Gospel, not the law. Who are we? Why are we here? What is it that will make us right with our Creator? Is it in whatever I can do? Just give me something to do, Jesus… because that’s where I find my identity. And yet our answers to those questions totally fail. The world is a messed up place. We are a messed up people.

What is is that we really need? What is the effect of Christ’s words and his gospel?

Luke 4:21 “Jesus began by saying to them, “Today as you listen, this Scripture has been fulfilled.”

It’s easy to look at that and say, YAY Jesus… way to make good on the prediction. But that’s not how we are to understand fulfill here. As we listen to Jesus, Jesus is in that moment, releasing captives, freeing the oppressed, and giving sight to our terrible blindness. This is good news to the poor, liberty from the law to the captives, sight to the blind, liberty for those who are oppressed by the law, and the year of the Lord’s favor. What is the effect of the Gospel? Do you hear these words this morning?? Good news, liberty, sight, relief, and God’s favor. There is no more isolation. There are no more bricks in the wall.

Let’s Pray.

The Table

This right here is pure Gospel. This is why we insist that the Lord’s Supper or what we call the Lord’s Table isn’t about what you or I bring to the Table. This isn’t about being worthy enough. That’s the law. This is about Christ’s grace FOR YOU.

Benediction

Numbers 6:24–26 “May the Lord bless you and protect you;

may the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you;

may the Lord look with favor on you and give you peace.”