Lent 3B

Third Sunday in Lent, Year B

In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Brothers and sisters in Christ: grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

For a change of pace, I want to start the message this morning with a pop quiz. Everyone ready? Let’s recite together the 10 commandments. You just heard them listed in the first lesson, so it shouldn’t be that hard, should it? Ready? And....GO:

You shall have no other gods (or idols).

You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.

Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.

Honor your father and your mother.

You shall not murder.

You shall not commit adultery.

You shall not steal.

You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

You shall not covet your neighbor’s house.

You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, servants, cattle, or anything that is his.

Ok, so how did we do? Was it hard to remember all of them? Or just to remember them in order?

I remember trying to memorize them for confirmation class WAYYY back when. Even though it’s only 10 things in this list, something made it seem hard to do. But I’ve heard the 10 Commandments in one form or another for quite a few years now. There’s no reason I should stumble over them. But I do.

I read something that really hit me hard. This is from the book Exodus: Saved for God’s Glory:

In their book The Day America Told the Truth, James Patterson and Peter Kim lay down the law for postmodern times. They observe that today there is “absolutely no moral consensus at all.… Everyone is making up their own personal moral codes—their own Ten Commandments.” Patterson and Kim proceed to list what they call the “ten real commandments,” the rules that according to their surveys people actually live by. These rules include the following:

—I don’t see the point in observing the Sabbath;

—I will steal from those who won’t really miss it;

—I will lie when it suits me, so long as it doesn’t cause any real damage;

—I will cheat on my spouse—after all, given the chance, he or she will do the same;

—I will procrastinate at work and do absolutely nothing about one full day in every five.

These new commandments are based on moral relativism, the belief that we are free to make up our own rules, based on our own personal preferences. The law is not something that comes from God, but something we come up with on our own. And our laws usually conflict with God’s laws. It is not surprising that what Patterson and Kim call the “ten real commandments” generally violate the laws that God gave to Moses: Remember the Sabbath; six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work; thou shalt not commit adultery; thou shalt not steal; thou shalt not bear false witness; and so forth. We have become a law unto ourselves.

One would hope to find that the situation is somewhat better in the church. Surely God’s own people honor the permanent, objective standard of God’s law! Yet the church is full of worshipers who do not even know the Ten Commandments, let alone know how to keep them. This problem was documented in a recent report from The Princeton Religion Research Center. The headline read, “Religion Is Gaining Ground, but Morality Is Losing Ground,” and the report showed how recent increases in church attendance and Bible reading have been offset by a simultaneous decline in morality.

How is this possible? How can people be more interested in God and at the same time less willing to do what he says? The only explanation is that people do not know the God of the Bible, because if they did, they would recognize the absolute authority of his law. Respect for God always demands respect for his law. And whenever people have a low regard for God’s law, as they do in our culture, it is ultimately because they have a low regard for God.

Philip Graham Ryken and R. Kent Hughes, Exodus: Saved for God’s Glory (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2005), 522–524.

Here’s what hit me hard: “The church is full of worshipers who do not even know the Ten Commandments, let alone how to keep them.” and “Respect for God always demands respect for his law. And whenever people have a low regard for God’s law, as they do in our culture, it is ultimately because they have a low regard for God.” Those 2 statements right there just really grabbed my attention and my heart.

Let’s start with the second one. Do you think people have a low regard for God? I could say “well, that depends on which people you mean: believers or non-believers?” but honestly, I don’t think that really matters. Look at the Christian church! Look at what has happened. We have divided and split into hundreds and hundreds of divisions and denominations. Much of it stems from disagreements we have over the meaning of God’s Word itself, but some of the most significant of the divisions are about how we interpret God’s Law. Our own church body - the North American Lutheran Church - is the child of such a split.

For the record - if you are asked why we split, the proper response is because we had a disagreement about the authority of Scripture. Confessional Lutheran teaching - that is teaching that follows the instructions of Martin Luther and the fathers of our denomination - tells us that there is no authority as high as God’s Word. Our previous denomination does not hold to that. They have allowed secular writings outside of God’s Word to drive and shape how we understand God’s Law. And yes, much of that deals with the modern issues of sexuality. But that issue is subordinate to the larger issue - the authority of Scripture.

So if we can take something written by someone outside of the church, and then apply that to God’s Law and how we understand its meaning…can you see how quickly that can become a problem? But the only way to do that is to have a lack of respect for God and His Word. Of course, it never sounds like that. Usually it sounds like “well, that was 2,000 years ago, and they just didn’t understand things correctly back then.” Or “that culture was so different, God made that law for way back then; He didn’t intend for those rules to apply to this far more modern society.” Notice how wrapping those arguments in nice-sounding language makes it almost acceptable? It certainly sounds logical…at least on the surface.

The problem is that both of those statements assume that the person who said it knows better than God. Let me say that again a different way: to say something like that, you have to believe that you know better than God. And I think that is FAR MORE common than any of us really know. I think we all are aware that this is a growing trend, but I think it’s grown a lot more than we’re aware.

On Feb 25, the US House of Representatives was debating the very controversial Equality Act, which I encourage everyone here to do your homework on. If this Act is passed, freedom of religion will be dealt a huge blow. In the debate, a conservative congressman, Rep. Greg Steube from FL, spoke about gender issues and the Christian belief of how God made each of us unique - boys and girls. “The gender confusion that exists in our culture today is a clear rejection of God’s good design. Whenever a nation’s laws no longer reflect the standards of God, that nation is in rebellion against him and will inevitably bear the consequences,” he said. In response, Rep. Jerry Nadler stated “What any religious tradition describes as God’s will is no concern of this Congress.” [https://www.lifenews.com/2021/02/26/congressman-jerry-nadler-gods-will-is-no-concern-of-this-congress/]

I guess we should give Representative Nadler credit for being willing to admit that publicly. But he is certainly not the only elected official who feels that way. God, His Law, and His Word are constantly being pushed to the sidelines and backed into a corner inch-by-inch, day after day. It’s rarely a big shove…always just a little bit here, a little bit there. Of course, over multiple decades, an inch a day adds up to quite a bit. And that’s what we’ve been seeing: did you notice that we don’t use “BC” and “AD” anymore? Now it’s BCE and CE - the “common era” is now the reference instead of the life of Jesus Christ. City parks may no longer display a Christian nativity scene during Christmastime. You can’t even say “Merry Christmas” outside the church anymore. A public cemetery was sued to remove a cross that was erected in World War I to commemorate the fallen soldiers from their town. And of course, court houses must take down their images and replicas of the 10 Commandments. All under the guise of “separation of church and state” - a statement and idea that doesn’t appear anywhere in our nation’s Constitution, only in a personal letter by Thomas Jefferson. It is not part of the First Amendment. Secularists, however, have grabbed onto this phrase with both hands, and they throw it into the fray every chance they get.

So over time, our country has been slowly but steadily turning its back on God. Many of our citizens don’t even know the first thing about God, let alone have any respect for Him. And a great number of people who might call themselves “Christian” in a survey, if you actually talk to them will find out that they “believe in God, but not in organized religion.” Which means they believe in the kind of god they want Him to be, not the kind of God He says He is. Again, this is more evidence that we don’t respect God…not as a society.

Now back to the first statement that bothered me. “The church is full of worshipers who do not even know the Ten Commandments, let alone how to keep them.” You’ve heard me describe in the past that the Old Testament has 613 laws that Moses gave to the Hebrew people from God. And every one of those laws was intended to protect the people and their community, by giving them rules for living together and for how they are to enjoy creation the way God intended them to. That doesn’t sound tyrannical at all, does it? But 613 is a LOT of laws.

And the Hebrew people came to realize that over time. Eventually they resolved themselves to the idea that “well, there’s just so many that I don’t know them all, and I certainly can’t keep them all…I’ll just go to the Temple and offer the sacrifices I’m supposed to for my atonement.” In seminary they told us that the people really didn’t expect anyone but the priests and scribes to know and keep all of God’s Laws. For the regular Jew, yeah, you should try, but you’ll never keep them all. Just make your sacrifice at the Temple once a year and you’ll be fine. At least in the eyes of your fellow Jews.

How do you think that kind of approach makes God feel? “Well, I know I can’t keep them all…so I’ll just offer the sacrifice at the Temple when the priest tells me to.” Is that the attitude of a believer who truly loves God? Let’s put that in Christian language: “I just don’t think I can keep all 10 commandments. So when I break one, I’ll just confess it on Sunday and put a nice offering in the plate. God will forgive me.” Is that the approach of a Christian who loves the Lord his God with all his heart and mind and soul and strength? Do you think such a Christian also loves his neighbor as himself?

The church is full of worshipers who do not even know the Ten Commandments, let alone how to keep them. Do you think if we knew God’s Law better, that we’d be better at following it? I read part of Martin Luther’s Large Catechism. In that book, he talks about how even the priests in his day didn’t know the 10 Commandments very well, let alone could they teach them to their churches. And the reason the priests didn’t know them well is that they seemed to think they could read the Commandments once, and they would know everything they need to know about them in one sitting. Listen to how Luther responds to that:

7 As for myself, let me say that I, too, am a doctor and a preacher—yes, and as learned and experienced as any of those who act so high and mighty. Yet I do as a child who is being taught the Catechism. Every morning, and whenever else I have time, I read and recite word for word the Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments, the Creed, the Psalms, etc.

8 I must still read and study the Catechism daily, yet I cannot master it as I wish, but must remain a child and pupil of the Catechism, and I do it gladly. (Large Catechism, Martin Luther’s Preface)

Remember Luther spent a year in hiding translating the Bible from the ancient languages into his native German. He studied the Scriptures more deeply than most pastors. And he still came to God’s Word like a child - reading it new and fresh every day, hoping to learn even more. Here's what Luther said about God’s Commandments:

What does God declare concerning all these commandments?

Answer: He says, “I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.”

22 What does this mean?

Answer: God threatens to punish all who transgress these commandments. We should therefore fear his wrath and not disobey these commandments. On the other hand, he promises grace and every blessing to all who keep them. We should therefore love him, trust in him, and cheerfully do what he has commanded.

Theodore G. Tappert, ed., The Book of Concord the Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. (Philadelphia: Mühlenberg Press, 1959), 344.

Notice that nothing Luther says has anything to do with obeying the law to earn God’s favor, or to gain our justification or our salvation. That is *not* why we are called to obey God’s Law. Following God’s Law is not a condition or a requirement of the covenant. God doesn’t say, “I’ll love you if you obey my commandments.” What He actually says is “if you love me, you will keep my commandments.” (John 14:15) Notice the difference? If we want to show God that we love Him, we will strive to follow His Law. It’s a faithful response to God’s love for us. He loves us regardless. And His love came first.

For those who are not believers, this just doesn’t make sense. “For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” (1 Co 1:18.) That’s us - we’re the ones being saved…by the cross of Christ, not by our obedience or our good works. We are saved *only* by the cross and the love that God poured out for us in the death of His Son on that cross. And on that cross, Jesus showed ultimate obedience, and in doing that, fulfilled all of God’s Law…the Law that God gave us to protect us from ourselves and from His Wrath. You know, the kind of wrath the makes whips and flips tables over when people are being disobedient.

Looking around at all the violence and chaos and division in our country, I can’t help but wonder if perhaps we’re feeling God’s wrath as a not-so-gentle reminder of what happens when a society turns away from God. Remember: when God let His people feel His wrath in the Old Testament, each time He did, it was an opportunity for the people to turn back to Him before it got worse. So how do we fight that turning away? How do we get the country to turn back to God?

Mahatma Ghandi once said “Be the change you want to see in the world.” I think this is profound wisdom. If we want to see the world turn back to God, that change has to start right in our own hearts. The season of Lent is a season of repentance, which literally means turning back to God. I submit to you now that if you couldn’t rattle off the 10 Commandments this morning, why not add that to your devotional life? If each one of us read the Small Catechism every week…ok, maybe that’s too ambitious. If each one of us read the Small Catechism once a month, how much more deeply would we understand the fundamentals of our faith? Some of you are VORACIOUS readers and knock out large novels in a couple of days. The Small Catechism is probably a half-hour of reading at most. And yes, you can get an app on your phone that has the whole thing.

Would you be willing to read the Small Catechism once a month? Is that too much to ask? How about this: Easter Sunday is exactly 4 weeks from today. I want to challenge every single one of you Christians in here to read the Small Catechism at least one time through by Easter Sunday. Families - read it together. Read a page or 2 a day. Talk about it. Ask that good Lutheran question: What does this mean? Talk about your faith! Will there be questions you can’t answer? Sure there will! Call me. Come see me. I can help! And if you don’t have access to a Small Catechism, I can help there, too.

If we can do this, we can make sure that we’re not part of that statement: The church is full of worshipers who do not even know the Ten Commandments, let alone how to keep them. I don’t WANT to be a part of that statement. I don’t WANT to be the kind of Christian who doesn’t understand God’s Law. I *do* want to be the kind of Christian who tries to do better. I *do* want to be the kind of church where we are growing in our faith and working to become better disciples. And brothers and sisters, that is what Lent is all about.

In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.