Sermons 2024

Video

Text: Exodus 20:1-17

Outline
I.    Covenant
II.    Expectations
III.    Freedom
 

Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
 

My dear beloved flock, the text for our meditation today is the Old Testament Lesson of Exodus chapter twenty verses one through seventeen.
Introduction: Boys and girls, I pray that you are doing well today. Are you wondering why I have two chairs up here with me today? Well, they help to illustrate what God is talking about in our Old Testament lesson today. Think you can jump from one chair to another. Yep, that seems easy. Move chairs far apart what about now? Now, it seems impossible. There is no way that you could make that jump. What if you had help? Help one of them make the jump, yep that was easier was it not? Because you had me helping you make the jump. How does Jesus help us when it comes to the Law of God? Ponder that question as you hear the rest of the sermon. You may go back to your seats and those who love you.
 

I.    Covenant
 

Often we as Christians take the Ten Commandments out of their original context. This is very easy to do because we so often encounter the Commandments as excerpted material in our church bulletins or on a plaque on the wall. While the Ten Commandments are representative of the timeless standards of God’s moral law, we nevertheless increase the risk of misinterpreting them when we strip them from their covenantal and redemptive-historical context.
 

The Law was shared with Moses and Israel at a time when they were fatigued from their wilderness wanderings. They were between the great victory of the Red Sea and the borders of the land of promise. They wanted to enter the land that God had promised them, but they were not ready. God had not finished his preparatory work. The people of Israel needed to understand what it meant to live in covenant with the God who had brought them out of Egypt. They needed to understand God’s love and his expectations. This is the context in which the law was given. It was given to immature believers who had to learn how to respond to God’s grace and to live a life pleasing to him. 
 

This is what we see in Exodus 20, God was making his covenant with the people whom he had freed from slavery in Egypt. He had claimed them, giving them this gift apart from anything they had done to earn this freedom. With God’s gift came His expectations. These expectations were also a good gift, a plan for enjoying their identity as his creatures and his children. They show the relationship between God as the One who has redeemed them from slavery in Egypt, and them as His people. They show how God’s people are to act within the relationship that they have with Him. God expected that the Israelites were going to live different from the people around them. Thus, the Ten Commandments are given as their guide, curb, and mirror. Not as a means of earning redemption by their works, but rather as a means of expressing gratitude for that redemption. 
 

II.    Expectations
 

We have a similar covenant. A covenant made and signed in blood. We have been freed from our slavery, not a physical slavery but a spiritual one. We have been freed from the dark slavery of our sins. All of the times we have broken the law of God, when we try to make the perfect jump ourselves. What happens? We fall flat on our faces. God has rescued us through Christ’s sin-abolishing death and his righteousness-bestowing resurrection (Rom 4:25). It is important for us to remember that our redemption was secured not only through Jesus’ death on the cross, but also through the righteous life that he lived upon this earth. Jesus lived for our salvation as much as he died for it. Without the life and death of Jesus, the law that came through Moses could only bring condemnation and death to us. But by Jesus’ perfect obedience imputed to us and by his perfect sacrificial death on our behalf, Jesus accomplished what the law never could—he made his people righteous and holy:   Through His perfect life, death, and resurrection from the dead Jesus picks us up and makes the jump on our behalf. He clears the distance by the forgiveness of our sins between sinful humanity and a just and righteous God. 
 

We have been given new birth without any conditions fulfilled on our part. We have received the gift of identity as God’s children through the waters of Holy Baptism where He calls us His very own as He seals us with the sign of the holy cross both upon our foreheads and hearts, as He places His very name upon us. As parents who give life to a child have expectations for the child’s performance, so God has expectations for us. Our fulfilling them does not determine whether we are his children but does reflect our faith in his word that gives us our new identity. It guides us as Christians, it shows that because we are God’s people, we live different than those around us. We do our best, living in the forgiveness that Christ gives to us, to obey His commands.

III.    Freedom
 

God’s law comes with the label “handle with care.” Our sinfulness has turned this good gift of God’s design for good human living into a killer that strangles the sinner. It says, “you must make the jump on your own no matter how large it is.” It turns that good gift that Christ has done everything on our behalf, that He has made that jump to reconcile us forever, into death. Seeking the guidance of the law for fulfilling our desire to be God’s faithful children can end up in shame or guilt when we focus on our sinfulness rather than recognize that Christ has claimed our sins for his tomb and placed us in his own kingdom, freed from defending ourselves with our sinful exploitation of others and our rebellious rejection of his love.
 

Conclusion: Thanks be to God that we do not have to keep the Law perfectly on our own. Christ has taken on our flesh, borne our sins in His holy flesh, lived a perfect live in our place and gives us His perfection through His suffering, death, and resurrection from the dead. May we always, with the help of the Holy Spirit, strive to keep the Commandments, not as a means of our salvation, but as a way of thanksgiving to God for everything He has done for us for our salvation.
 

The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard and keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.