Greetings to you in the name of our Savior, Jesus Christ. I will try to post an update about things going on in my life with a psalm devotion later this week, but for tonight I just want to post my sermon I preached yesterday. I got told by several people it was a very powerful sermon. I was even told the member who has been most critical of my preaching that I am getting better as the year goes on, so thanks be to God for that. So here is my sermon on the Matthew 5:21-37 text.
Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Our text for today comes from the Gospel reading of Matthew. We get a look into these 17 verses which are taken from the Sermon on the Mount. Now the Sermon on the Mount is a beautiful sermon that comes directly from the mouth of our Savior. That is what you heard last week from Pastor Wurm; that Christ says these words, so believe them. However, when you take these specific 17 verses out of the sermon and separate them from the rest of the sermon, they do not seem like very comforting words by themselves. Pastor Wurm just read these verses and then concluded with, “This is the Gospel of our Lord.” However, in my mind it seems much more fitting if he would have said, “This is the Law of our Lord.” That’s what these words are, they are purely law. There is hardly any Gospel in them, if any at all. There are four sections in these verses coving Anger, Lust, Divorce, and Oaths. However, all four start with Jesus saying, “You have heard that it was said, like this.” But I say to you, it is this also”. Christ is clarifying these four laws for His disciples and everyone else listening. “You have heard it said you shall not murder and whoever murders will be liable to judgment, but I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother is liable to judgment.” He is saying just because you have never physically killed another human being, does not mean you have kept this commandment. Oh no, let me tell you, it’s not just murder, but anger and insult make you guilty of failing to keep this law too. Christ is clarifying these laws for us.
Now I assume if Pastor would have said, “This is the Law of our Lord,” not very many of you would have responded with “Praise to you, O Christ.” Not very many of us like the law. We as a people in general do not like authority and rules. However, we especially do not like the law that reminds us we have failed in the eyes of God. There are two extremes on the spectrum of how people deal with the law. Because again, we do not like the law, so we have to find some way to deal with it.
The first extreme way on this side is to just dismiss the law all together. To say that Christ has fulfilled the law, He has forgiven me of my sins so the law does not apply to me. People on this side have the attitude that they can do whatever they want. I can keep living the life same sinful life I have been living, I can keep speeding, cheating on my taxes, getting drunk, being a jerk to people, etc. Even though I know this is wrong, God forgives me. As long as I say I am sorry to God after I do it, I’m covered by His forgiveness. Why would I not have some fun in life when there is free forgiveness? The law no longer applies to me because even when I break it, God still loves me and forgives me. I don’t have to worry about this law thing.
The other side of the spectrum is to think that God gave us the law that means we had better keep it. He wouldn’t have given us this law, if He didn’t expect us to keep it perfectly and live by it. He is a just God who can only judge me by my actions, so I had better make sure my actions are good enough. That way when I meet Him on judgment day, I know I can get into heaven because I have kept His demands and His laws. now with this I can never be quite sure when I have been good enough, so I will just always try to be the best person I can be to make sure I am safe. I have to be a perfect person, a saint that lives by God’s law or else I might not get into heaven. I have to have this law to know when I have been good enough.
We as good LCMS Lutherans do not side with either one of these extremes on the spectrum. No, we land right in the middle. We know that the law does apply to us, that even though Christ fulfilled it, we still strive to keep it; however, we also know it is not our deeds and actions but Christ’s actions on the cross and out of the grave that our salvation depends upon. So how does this work?
For those of you who were there Wednesday night for Greg’s presentation, this will hit a little closer to home maybe. However, even if you weren’t there it should still make sense. What a powerful presentation he gave, heart-retching and eye-opening all at the same time. If you do not know what presentation I am speaking about, Greg Stern who owns the powershop here in town, went to India with Crisis Rescue International. He and the other guys who went on the trip posed as clients and met with the local guys who are involved with human sex trafficking. These Indian men buy and sell young girls and even a few boys to be used in brothels and as sex slaves. Greg and his team from Crisis Rescue International were able to buy over forty young children and this organization has saved I believed over three hundred children from the human sex trafficking realm that exists very prominently in India. Like I said it was a very powerful presentation.
As I listened to Greg’s presentation with this text in the back of my mind already working on this sermon, there were two parts of his presentation that really stuck with me. First, was the part where he was speaking about not feeling anger towards the guys who are in charge of selling these little girls. He is standing in front of one of the main bosses who runs this human sex trafficking ring, and he said everyone always asks, “Didn’t you want to strangle him, beat him up, or kill him?” Greg admitted that through the events that led up to meeting the boss, he was scared for his life, not sure what would happen or how he would react. However, he said once he stood in front of the boss with the children in the background, a peace came over him and he didn’t feel anger or the urge to kill this guy. Greg understood by the grace of God that this man is no different than himself in the eyes of God. As hard as it is to fathom, this boss is just a sinner like Greg, like you, and like me. Now in our minds, this guy is the worst of the worst, buying and selling young children for unspeakable things, how could you even compare him to any of us? But Greg was right, in God’s eyes, all have fallen short of the glory and all are sinners. He may be running one of the most evil organizations we could dream of and his sins are heinous and hideous, but in the eyes of God, our sins are just as heinous and hideous. You see the law condemns us all. We are all sinners and none of us can get to heaven by our own actions. The law condemns us all, and that is the reason it makes us so uncomfortable and we dislike it so much and don’t know what to do with it. Why would we ever say, “Praise to you, O Christ”, when we just heard these words of the law that condemns us to hell?
The second part of Greg’s presentation that really stuck with me me was the transformation these girls were able to make. Girls as young as three years old had been soiled or used, some girls in their early teens were pulling 10 to 12 “tricks” a day. They had been chained, locked in cages, and broken into submission and then used and abused over and over again. These girls are sex slaves; they are in a slavery we can never imagine. However, Greg and his team left their homes and families here in America, travel overseas to a strange and foreign land. They used their own money to buy these children out of slavery, and getting them into the safety of these safe houses. Now these girls who are shown love maybe for the first time in their life begin to smile and love back. They were trapped in an unimaginable slavery, but after they are rescued they become loving, sweet little children again who are just happy to be alive and free. They cling to the Word of God learning Scripture, memorizing the books of the Bible, singing praise songs to Jesus. These girls know better than any of us what it means to be trapped in slavery, but then also rescued from that slavery. You see this is what Jesus did for all of us. We were all trapped in a slavery we could never hope to get out of. We were all trapped in the slavery of sin, heinous and hideous sin and by our own efforts and works we would be trapped in that slavery forever. However, Christ saw us chained and bound in this slavery. He left His home of heaven behind to come to this strange and sinful land. He bought us out of slavery by paying the price to buy us, the price of His blood and His very own life on the cross. And He got us into the safety of His protection and presence by rising from the dead and being our living Lord. He made the greatest sacrifice of all to free us from the slavery we were captive in.
Those girls who were freed from slavery and given the gift of a new life, they not only begin to smile and love and be happy again, but I can only imagine how willing they are to listen and be obedient to the pastors who are in charge of the safe houses. You see this new life they have comes with someone who truly cares about them and protects them, and it also gives them instructions and lessons on how they are to behave and live this new life. The children, knowing the love these people have for them that rescued them from slavery, listen and obey these leaders out of their love. They are happy to have order in their life that is for their good. This is what God’s law is for us. He has freed us from slavery, and now that He is the one watching over us, protecting us, and loving us, gives us His “law”, or His will on how He wants us to live because it is for our good that we live this way. He gives us order to keep us safe, to show us He still loves us. That is why the law is good, that’s why we could truly and gladly say, “Praise to you, O Christ” after hearing the words of law from these 17 verses. Praise be to the one who loves us enough to pay the price of His own life to free us from slavery, give us our new life of freedom, and then give us instructions on how He desires us to live in this new life that is truly for our good. In one way, the law always condemns. But in another way the law gives us order in our lives so that we do not fall back into the slavery of sin we have been rescued from.
We do not need to do the law for our salvation; we get to do the law because we have our salvation. We have been freed and rescued from the terrible slavery of sin, bought with the costliest price of our Savior’s life, and now we get to live as His people according to His will, because of His forgiveness and salvation. We have been called by the power of the Holy Spirit to be His holy people. That is how this works. The law still applies to us because it is His will of how we live in this new life we have been granted and it is for our own good. We have been freed and we strive to live as sanctified lives as we can according to His will out of loving obedience to the one who rescued us from slavery. However, we do not need to be in despair or fear of if we have done enough, because it is not our actions that matter, but the actions of Christ claiming us as His people, freeing us of this slavery, that gives us our salvation. We do not need to do the law for our salvation; we get to do the law because we have our salvation. We have been freed from the slavery of sin, and now have the gift of new life to live as his holy people, according to His will that He gives us in His law. This is truly worth saying, “Praise to you, O Christ.”
In the name of the one who rescued us from slavery, in the name of the one who gives us our new life, and the one who gives us His will to live by, Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.
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