Sermon Tone Analysis

SERMON: Pentecost 2 June 22, 2003

Deuteronomy 5:12–15

Other Lessons: Psalm 142; 2 Corinthians 4:5–12; Mark 2:23–28

 

Suggested Hymns:                                              /LW         TLH       LBW      CW/

O Day of Rest and Gladness                             203         9              251         (229)

To God the Holy Spirit Let Us Pray                 155         231         317         190

This Is the Day the Lord Has Made                                200         10           (555)      225

Voices Raised to You                                         */HS98      /*895

 

O Day of Rest and Gladness

Theme: O Day of Rest and Gladness

Goal: That the hearers recognize that God’s gracious work of mercy and forgiveness given through his Gospel is the core of the Sabbath for Christians today.

Rev. Paul Gregory Alms, pastor, Redeemer Lutheran Church, Catawba, North Carolina

Liturgical Setting

This Sunday begins the long period of Sundays often called “ordinary time.”

From Advent to Holy Trinity is a church-year journey that follows Christ’s earthly ministry.

After Pentecost, with the Holy Spirit having descended at Pentecost and the Holy Trinity acknowledged and praised, the church now travels with her Lord from Pentecost to the end of time on the Sunday of the Fulfillment.

These Sundays, as a whole, sketch out the character and contours of the church’s life.

This particular Sunday serves as foundation and starting point for the church’s journey.

Our life as Christians is rooted in, and ever springs from, the hearing of God’s Word, the receiving of God’s grace, and the acquiring of Christ’s righteousness through faith.

In light of today’s theme, a close look at the same-named hymn (/LW/ 203) and the thoughts it expresses will benefit sermon preparation.

The hymn traces how Sunday, as our day of worship, is primarily a time of God’s gracious work for us and of his giving to us.

/St 1 /points out the purpose of the day: for God to give rest and gladness and “balm” (i.e., medicine, a cure) for our sinful condition of sadness and care.

/St 2/ traces the three principal “Sundays” in Scripture in which God’s mighty acts are displayed: the first day of creation when “light first had its birth,” the Resurrection of Our Lord, and the Day of Pentecost when the Spirit descended.

/St 3/ forges a crucial link from these mighty acts of God to the presence of God now among his people with the word /today./

Heavenly manna is given today, now, in this Divine Service, to you as a Christian whom God loves.

The Gospel refreshes our weary souls.

Here the true content of the Sabbath is proclaimed: God’s giving of rest, forgiveness in the proclamation of the Gospel, mercy, Christ himself in the manna of the Lord’s Supper, and our grateful reception of his gifts.

This grateful reception is highlighted in the doxological conclusion of the hymn in the fourth stanza.

Textual Notes

The text is the Third Commandment in the second giving of the Law.

A primary tool for homiletical reflection, therefore, ought to be the Small Catechism’s simple, profound explanation of this commandment.

“Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.

/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.”

Immediately our focus is turned to God’s work through his Word: his speaking and our hearing, his giving and our receiving.

The/ /Large Catechism amplifies this core message of the commandment.

It emphasizes:

/1.

The treasure of the Sabbath is God’s Word./

“The Word of God is the true holy thing above all holy things.

Indeed, it is the only one we Christians acknowledge and have. . . .

God’s Word is the treasure that sanctifies all things” (Theodore Tappert, ed., /The Book of Concord/ [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1959] 377:91).

/2.

God’s Word makes us holy./

“At whatever time God’s Word is taught, preached, heard, read, or pondered, there the person, the day, and the work are sanctified by it, not on account of the external work but on account of the Word which makes us all saints” (Tappert, 377:92).

Note, therefore, that the force and power of this commandment lies not in the resting, but in the sanctifying, so that to this day belongs a special holy exercise.

For other works and occupations are not properly called holy exercises, unless the man himself be first holy.

/But 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./

For this, then, fixed places, times, persons, and the entire external order of worship have been created and appointed, so that it may be publicly in operation.

(/Concordia Triglotta/ [St.

Louis: Concordia, 1921] 607, 94; emphasis added)

/3.

We are to keep God’s Word in our hearts./

Even though you know the Word perfectly and have already mastered everything, still you are daily under the dominion of the devil, who neither day nor night relaxes his effort to steal upon you unawares and to kindle in your heart unbelief and wicked thoughts against all these commandments.

Therefore you must continually keep God’s Word in your heart, on your lips, and in your ears.

For where the heart stands idle and the Word is not heard, the devil breaks in and does his damage before we realize it.

On the other hand, when we seriously ponder the Word, hear it, and put it to use, such is its power that it never departs without fruit.

It always awakens new understanding, new pleasure, and a new spirit of devotion, and it constantly cleanses the heart and its meditations.

For these words are not idle or dead, but effective and living.

(Tappert, 378–79:100–101)

This emphasis on God’s activity to redeem us through his Word as the true meaning of the Sabbath observance for the church today fits well with the rationale in Deuteronomy for Sabbath observance.

The grounds given here differ from that in the first giving of the Law on Sinai.

There, God based the Sabbath observance on imitation of his own divine activity as Creator and his resting on the seventh day (Ex 20:11).

In our text God expands the motivation for the Sabbath to include remembrance of his saving work of redemption from Egypt: “You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.

Therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day” (Deut 5:15 ESV).

This remembrance was no mere mental recalling of a past irrelevant event, but was a proclamation of God’s activity, a statement of God’s intent, will, and purpose for his people in the present.

For Israel to remember God’s salvation of his people from Egypt was to place themselves under his mercy, to locate themselves as people of that God of salvation.

The connection between Israel’s remembering and our own is made in the Catechism.

The Sabbath is often misunderstood in a legalistic manner.

The “Pharisee spirit” lives on in each of us!

Our Sabbath is not an observance by which we please God.

(See the conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees in today’s Gospel.)

Our going to church, not working on Sunday, praying, giving offerings, or any other religious activity is not the way in which we “keep the Sabbath” and thus make ourselves holy to God.

Rather, it is God’s actions of redemption, of rescuing us from the Egypt of sin and death through the cross and resurrection, which form the content of the Sabbath.

When we “gladly hear the Word and learn it,” we are “remembering” God’s mercy and grace.

That is the Sabbath.

By his Word, God points out and condemns our false pride and Pharisaical urge to puff up ourselves with religious pride and be worthy of acceptance.

The Gospel gifts given in Word, Absolution, Holy Baptism, and the Lord’s Supper bestow Christ’s work of redemption on us.

We keep the Sabbath when we receive these gifts in faith.

Sermon Outline

/Introduction:/ Every day seems to have its own personality.

Fats Domino sang a song called “Blue Monday.”

Monday is back-to-work or back-to-school day—back to the grind.

Wednesday is called “hump day,” getting over the hump moving towards the weekend.

We all know the phrase “Thank goodness it’s Friday!”

What about this day—Sunday, the day of worship, the day we gather together as God’s people?

What kind of day is this?

What personality, what purpose, does our Sunday observance have?

Our readings center on the Sabbath, that time God commanded be kept as special day of worship.

What is the Sabbath now?

Why and how do we keep the Sabbath?

What Kind of Day Is the Sabbath?

I. Is the Sabbath a workday?

A. The Pharisees thought so in today’s Gospel.

1.

They imagined the Sabbath was a day to work: to keep rules and observances by which God would accept them as holy.

2. Therefore they were offended when Jesus’ disciples didn’t seem to keep those rules.

B. We easily slip into this attitude.

1.

We imagine our prayers, church attendance, offerings, service in the church are what make us “good Christian people.”

2. We could not be more wrong.

This is religious pride, a sin!

That is what Paul calls works-righteousness.

God condemns all our efforts to keep the Sabbath holy by our religious activities.

C.