{"id":4302,"date":"2021-09-11T16:51:37","date_gmt":"2021-09-11T16:51:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/christforus.org\/NewSite\/?p=4302"},"modified":"2023-01-14T22:31:51","modified_gmt":"2023-01-14T22:31:51","slug":"the-law-and-the-gospel-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christforus.org\/NewSite\/index.php\/2021\/09\/11\/the-law-and-the-gospel-3\/","title":{"rendered":"The Law and the Gospel"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>The Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity<\/strong>| <strong>September 30, 2018<\/strong>| <strong>Matthew 22:34-46<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-audio\"><audio controls src=\"https:\/\/christforus.org\/NewSite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/cfus-100718.mp3\"><\/audio><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>But when the Pharisees heard that He had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together.&nbsp; Then one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, and saying, \u201cTeacher, which is the great commandment in the law?\u201d&nbsp; Jesus said to him, \u201c\u2018You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.\u2019 &nbsp; This is the first and great commandment.&nbsp; And the second is like it: \u2018You shall love your neighbor as yourself.\u2019&nbsp; On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.\u201d&nbsp; While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, saying, \u201cWhat do you think about the Christ? Whose Son is He?\u201d&nbsp; They said to Him, \u201cThe Son of David.\u201d&nbsp; He said to them, \u201cHow then does David in the Spirit call Him \u2018Lord,\u2019 saying: \u2018The LORD said to my Lord, \u201cSit at My right hand, till I make Your enemies Your footstool\u201d\u2019?&nbsp; If David then calls Him \u2018Lord,\u2019 how is He his Son?\u201d&nbsp; And no one was able to answer Him a word, nor from that day on did anyone dare question Him anymore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Today\u2019s Gospel reading provides us with a summary of the two main teachings of the Holy Scriptures: the law and the gospel.&nbsp; The law teaches us how to live.&nbsp; The gospel teaches us what to believe.&nbsp; The law tells us our obligations to God.&nbsp; The gospel tells us of God\u2019s grace to us.&nbsp; The law promises us a good life here on earth if we obey it.&nbsp; The gospel promises us eternal life in heaven if we believe it.&nbsp; The law was given by Moses in the Ten Commandments.&nbsp; The gospel is revealed by Jesus Christ, the Son of David.&nbsp; There is no greater knowledge in the world than the knowledge of the law and the gospel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The lawyer who tested Jesus believed that the law showed you how to get to heaven.&nbsp; He was a Pharisee.&nbsp; The Pharisees extrapolated hundreds of rules from God\u2019s law and taught that the way to God\u2019s favor and eternal life was by following their rules.&nbsp; They were legalists.&nbsp; They believed that obeying their rules was obeying God.&nbsp; They argued among themselves about which rules were more important than which.&nbsp; Where did Jesus stand?&nbsp; Which rule would Jesus choose?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jesus did not pick one rule among several hundred as the greatest of them all.&nbsp; Instead, he summed up the whole law in two simple commands: \u201cYou shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind,\u201d and, \u201cYou shall love your neighbor as yourself.\u201d&nbsp; Jesus concluded by saying that all of God\u2019s law depended on these two commandments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>God\u2019s law requires us to love.&nbsp; It\u2019s easier to obey rules than it is to love.&nbsp; You may have a rule that tells you to go to church on Sunday.&nbsp; That\u2019s a good rule.&nbsp; But you can go to church and still despise the word of God in your heart, thinking that his holy teaching is boring and preferring something else.&nbsp; You may have a rule that forbids gambling.&nbsp; That\u2019s a good rule, too.&nbsp; Gamblers can win only when their neighbor loses.&nbsp; But obeying that rule won\u2019t make you sincerely desire for your neighbor as much prosperity as you desire for yourself.&nbsp; You cannot produce love by setting down rules.&nbsp; It doesn\u2019t work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Ten Commandments are more than ten rules to follow.&nbsp; Consider what God requires in these commandments: You may not participate in false worship, lie or deceive by God\u2019s name, ignore church services, dishonor your parents, hurt your neighbor physically, have sexual relations with anyone but your own husband or wife, steal, tell lies about your neighbor, or try to get what you have no right to get.&nbsp; Now what do these commandments teach us?&nbsp; They teach us to love God with our whole heart, soul, strength, and mind and to love our neighbors as ourselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>God wants our whole heart, our whole life, and our whole mind.&nbsp; He demands it all.&nbsp; He made us for himself and he has the right to demand our loyalty and obedience.&nbsp; Forget about your rules.&nbsp; Love God above everything else.&nbsp; Love your neighbor as yourself.&nbsp; Forget about your rules.&nbsp; But most people would rather have a list of rules to obey because it\u2019s easier to obey the rules than it is to love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Manmade religions invent rules that they attribute to God and teach that if you obey these rules you will get to heaven.&nbsp; But they lie.&nbsp; In order to get to heaven, you must be holy.&nbsp; Nothing sinful can enter into heaven, or it wouldn\u2019t be heaven.&nbsp; Obeying rules doesn\u2019t make anyone holy.&nbsp; Sinners cannot make themselves into saints.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you do your best to obey the Ten Commandments, you will live a better life than if you ignore them.&nbsp; If you cheat on your husband or wife, you will have to live with the consequences.&nbsp; If you steal, you\u2019ll get caught, sooner or later.&nbsp; If you get drunk \u2013 and that\u2019s a sin \u2013 you will suffer for it.&nbsp; If you tell lies, you\u2019ll lose friends and honor.&nbsp; On the other hand, it you put into practice the Ten Commandments and attempt as best as you can to obey the law of love, loving God first and most, and loving your neighbor as yourself, you will be richly rewarded for it in this life.&nbsp; This is the law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Even the ancient pagans knew this.&nbsp; They taught that virtue is its own reward.&nbsp; That\u2019s true.&nbsp; But the law is only for this life.&nbsp; The law cannot give eternal life.&nbsp; The law promises life only to those who obey it.&nbsp; In the life we live in this world, an imperfect obedience will bring an imperfect blessing.&nbsp; But only perfect obedience can bring the perfect blessing of heaven.&nbsp; The Bible says,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For if there had been a law given which could have given life, truly righteousness would have been by the law.&nbsp; But the Scripture has confined all under sin, that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. . . Therefore the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith. (Galatians 3:21,22,24)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is why, after addressing the law, Jesus asked those who were testing him about the Christ.&nbsp; Who was he?&nbsp; This was the question they needed to consider.&nbsp; They needed a Savior from their sins.&nbsp; When we consider God\u2019s law, and not just the rules, we are forced to confront this deep, unfathomable darkness, this wickedness inside of us, what the Bible calls sin.&nbsp; It lies within you.&nbsp; It hates God.&nbsp; It loves self.&nbsp; It doesn\u2019t want to do anything for God.&nbsp; It wants only to live for self.&nbsp; The Bible calls this the flesh.&nbsp; The flesh can obey rules.&nbsp; That\u2019s easy.&nbsp; But he cannot love.&nbsp; This we must learn.&nbsp; It is a painful lesson.&nbsp; Who wants to admit that he doesn\u2019t even love the one to whom he owes everything?&nbsp; We must learn to despair of ourselves.&nbsp; Only then will we care to learn about the Christ.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That crowd of legalistic, religious, rules obeying and God despising hypocrites knew exactly what Jesus was doing when he changed the subject from the law to the gospel.&nbsp; They knew that Jesus was claiming to be the Christ, that is, the Son of David, but not just his son \u2013 his Lord and his God.&nbsp; Jesus is Lord.&nbsp; He is the only one who can bring you to heaven.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>God\u2019s law exposes our sins and spiritual poverty.&nbsp; Two simple commands: love God with your whole heart, soul, and mind and love your neighbor as yourself, show us to be guilty before God.&nbsp; No amount of rulemaking or rule obeying will change this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Only Jesus Christ can change this.&nbsp; He asks, \u201cWhat do you think about the Christ?&nbsp; Whose Son is he?\u201d&nbsp; He is David\u2019s son.&nbsp; But David calls him Lord!&nbsp; David wrote in Psalm 110, \u201cThe Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand till I make your enemies your footstool.\u201d&nbsp; If the Christ is David\u2019s Lord, how can he also be his son?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Nobody can explain how, but we certainly confess that this is true!&nbsp; Only David\u2019s Lord, the same God who gave the law on Mt. Sinai, could save us from our sins against that holy law.&nbsp; Only David\u2019s son, true man, conceived by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, could take our place under God\u2019s law as a real substitute for us.&nbsp; David\u2019s Lord and David\u2019s son are one and the same:&nbsp; Jesus Christ, true God and true man.&nbsp; He is our answer to the Law\u2019s demand that we love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our mind, and that we love our neighbors as ourselves.&nbsp; He is the answer because he, our God and our brother, has obeyed the law in our place and has given us the credit for it.&nbsp; He is the answer because he, our God and our brother, received the just punishment for our disobedience as he suffered for us on the cross.&nbsp; He is the answer because, instead of giving us rules by which we could evade the law of love, he lived the law of love for us in every thought, every word, and every deed.&nbsp; He is the answer because in him and only in him we have the power to love.&nbsp; The Holy Spirit himself lives in us, killing our legalistic flesh every day, working in our hearts, souls, and minds that love which is from God alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Who is Christ, and what is he to you?&nbsp; This is the question you must answer.&nbsp; Not, \u201cHave I obeyed this or that rule which people have invented as a means of loving God?\u201d&nbsp; Because when you know this Christ, who humbled himself to the death of the cross, although he was and remains the Creator and Judge of all people, then you know love, a love that empowers you to love God and to love your neighbor.&nbsp; It is a love that turns selfishness into generosity and bitterness into mercy.&nbsp; It is a love that attacks the legalistic and unredeemable flesh inside of us.&nbsp; It is a love that changes us, giving us the desire to fear, love, and trust in him who loved us in our wretched, sinful, loveless, blindness and elevated us to heaven.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To the legalist, every theological discussion is essentially self centered as he seeks to gain God\u2019s favor by obeying man-made rules.\u00a0 To the Christian, every theological discussion is centered in Christ who has gained for us God\u2019s favor by obeying the law of love.\u00a0 The legalist stands over God\u2019s law, carefully constructing rules by which to show he has mastered it.\u00a0 The Christian stands under God\u2019s law, crying out for mercy and forgiveness because he knows the law condemns him for his lovelessness.\u00a0 God, for Christ\u2019s sake, for the sake of the doing and dying of David\u2019s Son and Lord, Jesus, hears the cry of his child who admits his failure to love.\u00a0 God absolves him.\u00a0 God forgives him.\u00a0 God takes him out from under the burden of the law\u2019s judgment and gives him the treasure of Christ.\u00a0 This is why we want to hear this gospel more than we want anything else in this world.\u00a0 And we know, as God\u2019s own children, that he will always give it to us. Amen. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity| September 30, 2018| Matthew 22:34-46 But when the Pharisees heard that He had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together.&nbsp; Then one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, and saying, \u201cTeacher, which is the great commandment in the law?\u201d&nbsp; Jesus said to him, \u201c\u2018You shall love&#8230;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"><a class=\"btn btn-default\" href=\"https:\/\/christforus.org\/NewSite\/index.php\/2021\/09\/11\/the-law-and-the-gospel-3\/\"> Read More<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">  Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,17,4,78],"tags":[575,238,221],"class_list":["post-4302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latest-sermons","category-sermons-by-historical-lectionary","category-sermons-by-rolf-preus","category-trinity-18","tag-matthew-22","tag-rolf-preus","tag-trinity-18"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christforus.org\/NewSite\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christforus.org\/NewSite\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christforus.org\/NewSite\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christforus.org\/NewSite\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christforus.org\/NewSite\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4302"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/christforus.org\/NewSite\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4302\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4304,"href":"https:\/\/christforus.org\/NewSite\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4302\/revisions\/4304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christforus.org\/NewSite\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christforus.org\/NewSite\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christforus.org\/NewSite\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}