Why Do We Need to Know the Difference between Law and Gospel?

 

Series: Growing Together in God's Grace

Third Sunday in Advent

December 16, 2012

Dear friends in Christ.

When Dr. Carl Ferdinand Wilhelm Walther was a Professor at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, MO, he had the practice of gathering the entire student body of the seminary, together with visiting clergymen and laymen, for a weekly Friday evening lecture.  Now, from what I understand, Walther loved these lectures because it allowed him to speak to the gathered assembly in a more or less informal manner.  He could talk to them about different doctrinal subjects and present those subjects to aspiring pastors and others from a practical standpoint.  This is exactly what Dr. Walther did during the school year of 1884 and part of 1885.  He talked to the student body and presented them with 39 evening lectures on the topic of Law and Gospel.  In these lectures, which were recorded by students and finally compiled into a book, Walther talked at great length and with great passion why it is so important for pastors, in particular, teachers, and all Christians to be able to properly distinguish the differences between God’s Law and God’s Gospel and then properly apply them to the situation at hand.  Though we haven’t set aside 39 evenings, 39 hours, or even 39 minutes to learn more about this subject, as we Grow Together in God’s Grace this morning, we do want to discover exactly why we need to know the difference between the Law and the Gospel.

Why do we need to know the difference between the Law and the Gospel?  Well, the simple answer to that is that we need to know the difference between them because the Law and the Gospel are two different doctrines of the Bible.  They are two different teachings of the Bible, which are designed to have two different effects on the person who hears them, because they both were given by God for a specific purpose.  Take, for example, the events that took place when God gave the 10 commandments to the people of Israel.  Turn with me to Exodus 20,(page 73) and we’ll take a look at the events that took place there.  Now, as you remember, the Lord had led the people out of Egypt.  He had led them through the wilderness.  They were trapped between the waters of the Red Sea (which is the Gulf of Aqaba today), the desert and the Egyptian Army.  The Lord had divided the sea for the Israelites.  The Egyptians were drowned.  The Israelites rejoiced in the Lord, and then, three months to the day after they left Egypt, they came to Mt. Sinai and there, the Lord gave them his Law: “And God spoke all these words: 2 “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. 3 “You shall have no other gods before me. 4 “You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments. 7 “You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name. 8 “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. 11 For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. 12 “Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you. 13 “You shall not murder. 14 “You shall not commit adultery. 15 “You shall not steal. 16 “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor. 17 “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.” 18 When the people saw the thunder and lightning and heard the trumpet and saw the mountain in smoke, they trembled with fear. They stayed at a distance 19 and said to Moses, “Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die.” 20 Moses said to the people, “Do not be afraid. God has come to test you, so that the fear of God will be with you to keep you from sinning.” 21 The people remained at a distance, while Moses approached the thick darkness where God was." (Exodus 20:1–21, NIV)

In no uncertain terms, as God gave the Law to his people, he showed them everything that they had to do perfectly in order to attain eternal life.  When they heard what God demanded of them, they were frightened and they trembled with fear, because as God gave this law, they clearly recognized that they could not keep it perfectly.  They recognized that they were sinful people who had broken each and every one of these commandments.  They had failed to follow what God says, and as would later remind them, “Cursed is the man who does not uphold the words of this law by carrying them out.” (Deuteronomy 27:26, NIV84)

This is what God’s law was designed to do!  It was designed to show us our sins.  It was designed to demonstrate that there is no possible way that we have ever or can ever appease our God by keeping his holy and righteous law perfectly.  As James tells us, “Whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.” (James 2:10, NIV84) And how often hasn’t the Law done exactly that in our own lives?  For in the same way that a mirror is designed to show us our reflection, so the Law of God has been designed to show us our sins.  How often haven’t we looked intently into God’s perfect Law only to see our sins clinging to us like leaches that we just cannot get rid of?  How often haven’t we simply glanced in the direction of God’s Law and felt our heart sink as we felt the full weight of God’s judgment against our own failure to keep God’s law perfectly?  How often haven’t we suddenly and unexpectedly been convicted to our core as the acid of God’s law burns through the hardened layer of our sins and we realize even the sins with which we’ve become comfortable are working to separate us from the Lord our God?  How often hasn’t God’s law worked exactly how it was designed to work, calling each and every one of us sinners, convicting us and leading us to repentance?  This is why God gave his Law.  He gave it to show us what we must do and what we must not do.  He gave it to make us realize that we can, in no way do what our God demands of us.  He gave his law to leads us to realize that we need someone who can do it for us.  He gave his law to us to prepare us for the Gospel message; the message that teaches us what our God has done to save us.

Could there be a greater message than the message of the Gospel!  Could there be a greater message than the message of all that our Lord has done to free us from our sins!  Could there be a simpler message of the Gospel than the Gospel in a nutshell as Jesus, himself, reveals to us when he said:  “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." (John 3:16, NIV84)  Such great comfort from our God who assures us that he loved us so much that he willingly sacrificed his Son in our place to free us from our sins!  Or as Paul tells us in Colossians chapter 2, turn there with me, if you would, Colossians 2 found on page 1166.  Now, as Paul wrote these words to the Colossians, he was writing to remind them of the all surpassing greatness of Christ Jesus and how through faith in Jesus they had been set free from the requirements of the Law and free to live for Christ.  Paul writes, “For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, 10 and you have been given fullness in Christ, who is the head over every power and authority. 11 In him you were also circumcised, in the putting off of the sinful nature, not with a circumcision done by the hands of men but with the circumcision done by Christ, 12 having been buried with him in baptism and raised with him through your faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead. 13 When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, 14 having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross. 15 And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross." (Colossians 2:9–15, NIV84)

This is the comfort that we all share!  No matter what sins we have committed, through faith in Jesus, they are forgiven.  This is the message of salvation only recorded in the pages of the Scriptures.  This is the message of salvation that assures us that no matter what we may have done wrong, no matter how we may have crossed the line, no matter how we may have failed to keep God’s law, we are forgiven through faith in Jesus Christ our Savior.  Not only are we forgiven, but even the guilt associated with those sins has been expunged.  Our guilt has been removed, our slate is clean, and our God has completely forgotten all the things we had done wrong because through faith in Jesus, everything that Jesus did right has been applied to us, and when our God looks in our hearts he sees that we are his children, because through faith our Savior has taken up residence in our hearts.

Though God has written his law on our hearts and in his word, it is only in the pages of the Scriptures that he has written his Gospel.  It is only through the Word of God that we learn the Gospel message of how he accomplished his plan for our salvation.  It is only through the pages of the Old Testament that we see the promise of the Savior being proclaimed from generation to generation and it is only in the pages of the New Testament that we see how all those prophecies and promises were fulfilled.  Now, because we know the love of the Lord Jesus Christ our Savior, we are compelled by that great love, as Paul tells us in his second letter to the Corinthians: “For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. 15 And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again." (2 Corinthians 5:14–15, NIV84).

Now, if you’ve never slid into the ditch in the middle of winter you are truly blessed.  Personally, I’ve slid into the ditch on a number of different occasions.  The most recent was about two years ago coming home from Mankato at night.  Our tires were well worn, I saw some deer coming up on the road, I tapped the breaks, and my back wheels decided they wanted to be in front, and we spun out into the ditch.  When we came to a stop and found out that we were all fine, we simply called 911, the tow truck came, towed us out and we went home.  Oh, sure, we were thankful for him towing us out, but my thankfulness only goes so far because towing me out was his job, for which I paid him.  On the other hand, there are two people for whom I still thank the Lord, because they stopped and towed me out of the ditch out of the goodness of their own hearts.  One was a man named Mike who was a volunteer fire-fighter form Timber Lake, SD.  The other was a semi driver (I never learned his name) who pulled me out of the ditch when I was a teenager.  Neither man would take anything for helping me out.  Both simply stopped to help out of the goodness of their own hearts, and both still occupy my thoughts and my prayers of thanks whenever the winter roads become icy and slippery. 

Well in the same way that I am compelled to thankfulness by these two men, so also as Christians, it is Christ’s love that compels us to live for him.  It is Christ’s love for us that moved him to lay down his life for us that now moves us to live our lives for him.  It is Christ’s love for us that moves us to take a new and different look at the Law that God has written down for us.  For you see, now that we know that we cannot possibly keep God’s Law, ever, and now that we know that Christ has done it for us, as Christians, we seek to live our lives according to God’s Law.  We seek to live our lives according to God’s Law not because we have to and by no means because we think we can ever earn God’s favor for it!  Absolutely not!  We know that we have God’s favor because he loves us and because he has freed us from our sins by the blood of his son.  Rather, we seek to live according to God’s Law because we are compelled by Christ’s love for us to live our lives out of love for him, and we show our love for him by seeking to live according to his will.  

This is why we need to know the difference between the Law and the Gospel.  We need to know that the only thing that the Law, which is written on our hearts and in the Bible, can only condemn us and show us our sins.  We need to know that the Gospel, which is only written in the Bible, is the only thing that can comfort us and assure us of our God’s love for us and how he forgave all our sins through Jesus Christ, his Son, our Savior.  It is only the gospel message of God’s love for us that now moves us to live our lives according to the will of the Lord our God out of love for him and for all that he has done for us.  

Amen.

Pastor David M. Shilling

Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church--Le Sueur, MN

Why Is the Bible so Important?

Series: Growing Together in God's Grace

December 9, 2012

Dear friends in Christ.

On June 27, 1991, Bits & Pieces, which I believe is, or was, a magazine, printed a brief story about a man named Irving S. Olds.  According to that story, “When Irving S. Olds was chairman of the U.S. Steel Corporation, he arrived for a stockholders' meeting and was confronted by a woman who asked, ‘Exactly who are you and what do you do?’ Without batting an eye, Olds replied, ‘I am your chairman. Of course, you know the duties of a chairman—that's someone who is roughly the equivalent of parsley on a platter of fish.’”   By using self-deprecating humor, Olds was able to disarm what could have been a rather tense situation.  Rather than assert his importance as chairman, he downplayed the importance of his position to the point of being someone, or something that was not needed, but was simply there for decoration.  Well, in many ways, this is what people have done and continue to do with the Bible.  There are many people in our world today, even Christians in Christian churches and families, who treat the Bible as if it really isn’t all that necessary other than to be a bit of decoration on the coffee tables of our homes.  So, as we take time to study the Word of God this morning, we want to take a closer look at the Bible, and as we do so we want to answer the question, “Why is the Bible so important to us?”

Why is the Bible so important to us?  Well, to answer that question we want to take a look at what the Apostle Paul writes, 2 Timothy 3: “But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, 15 and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work." (2 Timothy 3:14–17, NIV84)

In such a simple way, in three short verses, Paul assures us, as well as a young Pastor named Timothy, that the Bible is important because it is God’s Word.  The Bible is important because it is the only source through which we become wise for salvation.  The Bible is important because all of it; all of the Bible is God’s Word and all of God’s Word has been breathed out by God, or inspired by God, for our learning, correcting, and training in righteousness.   Thus, we know that God inspired, or breathed into his prophets and his apostles so that they might write down his words for us.  Though there were roughly 40 men who wrote over a period of 1400 years, we know that God is the real author of the Bible, because he is the one who gave these men the words to write, just as Peter declares in his second letter, “We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. 17 For he received honor and glory from God the Father when the voice came to him from the Majestic Glory, saying, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” 18 We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with him on the sacred mountain. 19 And we have the word of the prophets made more certain, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. 20 Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation. 21 For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit." (2 Peter 1:16–21, NIV84)

The Bible is so important to us, because we know that no prophecy of Scripture has ever come about by the prophets own interpretation!  Rather, God moved the men he had chosen to write down the very things that he wanted them to record.  But the amazing thing about this process is that these men were not robots.  They were not human Dictaphones.  Rather, the Lord used each man’s individual talent, writing style, and expressions as they recorded the Scriptures for our learning.  So, as you read the book of Matthew, you will find that Matthew’s writing style is different than that of Mark’s or Luke’s or John’s; and you will find that each one of the gospel writer’s style is completely different than the style of the Apostle Paul whom the Lord privileged with writing most of the New Testament.   Yet, because we know that all the writers of God’s Word were carried along by the Holy Spirit, we can be confident that the Bible is God’s Word.  The Bible is the message of God’s grace, through which we become wise for eternal life in Christ Jesus our Savior.  It is God’s Word, which he has given to us for our learning.  It is his word, about which we pray that we would read, mark, learn and inwardly digest it.  It is his Word, which teaches us the things he wants us to believe and do.  It is his Word and because it is the word of our holy and righteous God we know that it is completely true.  We know that it contains no errors.  We know that not one of God’s promises has ever failed.  We know that even though there may seem to be contradictions, those seeming contradictions are simply opportunities for us to study God’s Word all the harder so that we can discover what he is teaching us in those sections that are a little more difficult to understand.  Thus, the Bible is important to us because as we read and study the Word of God we learn God’s good and gracious will for our lives.  We learn the message of God’s Law—the very law that we have written on our hearts; and we learn the gospel message of salvation that is ours through faith in Jesus Christ our Savior. 

Could there be any book more precious in all the world—a book that teaches us the message of God’s Law—what he wants us to do and what he doesn’t want us to do!  Could there be any book more precious in all the world than the Bible which also teaches us the message of our God’s salvation through the message of the gospel?  Though it is never easy to hear the message of God’s Law, we know that God’s Law is good and righteous.  We know that God gave us his Law for a purpose, and that purpose was to prepare our hearts for the Gospel by clearly and unquestioningly showing us our sins.  Take for example what the Lord teaches us through the Apostle Paul in Romans 3, “What shall we conclude then? Are we any better? Not at all! We have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under sin. 10 As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one; 11 there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. 12 All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.” 13 “Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit.” “The poison of vipers is on their lips.” 14 “Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.” 15 “Their feet are swift to shed blood; 16 ruin and misery mark their ways, 17 and the way of peace they do not know.” 18 “There is no fear of God before their eyes.” 19 Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. 20 Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin." (Romans 3:9–20, NIV84)

These are not easy words to hear!  For these words of God’s Law leave absolutely no wiggle room.  They leave no loopholes.  They leave no question that no matter how good we think we are, we cannot become righteous in God’s sight by striving to keep his law, because the purpose of the Law is to show us our sins.  The purpose of the Law is to make us realize that by ourselves all our righteous acts are nothing more than filthy rags.  The purpose of the Law is to make us realize that no matter how hard we’ve tried to jump over the chasm of our sins and reach our God on the other side, we have always fallen short of his glory and as another Scripture says, “The soul who sins is the one who will die.” (Ezekiel 18:4, 20) and as another scripture says, “The wages of sin is death.” (Romans 6:23)

These are indeed difficult words to hear.  They are so difficult to hear, in fact, that I have had members of this congregation, members who learned these truths in confirmation class, accusing me of being hateful, and fomenting hate crimes against them because they didn’t want to hear God’s Law.  They, like all of us, did not want to see their sins reflected in the mirror of God’s Law.  They did not want to be reminded of their guilt, and they bucked and they flailed and they did everything they could to escape the reality of what God’s Law says to each and every one of us.  “There is no one righteous!  Not even one!”  Not even Pastor!  “All have sinned and fallen short (completely missed) the glory of God.”

This is the purpose of God’s Law, and believe it or not, as difficult as it is to hear God’s Law proclaimed to us, we recognize just how important it is, and we even praise our God for recording his Law for us in the pages of the Bible.  We praise God for including his Law in the Bible because it is God’s Law, and God’s Law alone that prepares our hearts for the message of salvation revealed to us in the Gospel!  For immediately after Paul lays out the air-tight case of God’s Law, he switches gears and begins soothing our troubled hearts with the Good News; the Gospel message of salvation through Jesus Christ our Savior.  “But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. 22 This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. 25 God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— 26 he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus. 27 Where, then, is boasting? It is excluded. On what principle? On that of observing the law? No, but on that of faith. 28 For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from observing the law." (Romans 3:21–28, NIV84)

What greater message could there be than the message of God’s love for us!  What greater message could there be than God’s Love for us, which he reveals to us in the Gospel message of salvation, which is now ours through faith in Jesus Christ our Savior!  For it was Jesus, himself, who assured us that our God loved us so much that he sent his one, and only son, Jesus, into this world, so that every single person who believes in him shall not perish, but shall have eternal life! (John 3:16).  This is why the Bible is so important to us!  It is so important to us because it teaches us God’s plan for salvation.  It assures us that “When the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, 5 to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship. 6 Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.” 7 So you are no longer a slave, but God’s child; and since you are his child, God has made you also an heir.” (Galatians 4:4–7, NIV)

This is why the Bible is so important to us!  It is so important to us because the Bible is the Word of our God.  It is the Word that God himself breathed into the prophets and apostles who recorded it for us today and the generations who follow.  The Bible is so important to us because it is the true, unchanging, errorless word of our God, which he recorded for us so that we could know exactly what his good and gracious will is.  Though it is never easy to hear his Law and all that we have done wrong, it is God’s Law that prepares us for God’s Gospel.  It is God’s Law that prepares our hearts to receive the Gospel message that salvation is ours through faith in Christ Jesus our Savior.  Though there are still many people in our world today who feel the importance of the Bible is not much more than a simple ornament on their coffee tables, we know its importance.  We know that the Bible is God’s Word, written down for us, that we may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God and that by believing we might have life in his name.

Amen.

Pastor David M. Shilling

GraceEvangelical Lutheran Church--Le Sueur, MN

How Can We Know who our God really Is?

Series: Growing Together in God's Grace 

December 2, 2012

Dear friends in Christ.

I know for a fact that not one of us here today ever had the pleasure of meeting George Washington.  Though it was only a little more than 200 years ago when George Washington lived, we have been completely separated from ever having the pleasure of knowing him personally by those 200 years.  And yet, even though none of us has ever met him, we do know quite a lot about him because of all of the things that have been revealed to us through books, encyclopedias, magazines, television shows, movies, and yes through all the information posted today on the internet.  Even though we have never met him personally we can still know who he was and what he was like.  Well, the same thing can be said about the Lord our God.  Even though we have never met the Lord face to face, like we meet each other every day, we can still know exactly who the Lord our God really is.  We can know exactly who the Lord our God really is from the ways in which he has revealed himself to us.  For example, in the Bible, in Psalm 19 we learn, “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. 2 Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. 3 There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. 4 Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world." (Psalm 19:1–4a, NIV84)

Now this is truly an amazing thing!  The Lord our God reveals himself to us as the master creator by revealing himself through the very things he created!  For in the same way that we can look at things like: the Pyramids in Egypt, Skyscrapers throughout the world, even the International Space Station, and know that these things had to be conceived, planned, and built by someone, so also, when we look at the beauties of our God’s creation, we come to realize that there must have been someone who made all that we see around us.  There must have been someone who had great power and might to create such a beautiful place for us to live.  In fact, as we scan the pages of God’s book of creation, we begin to recognize that this great and powerful someone who created all these things must, at the very least be filled with divine powers, because there is no human being on earth who could make anything like the world we see around us.  This divine being must be at the very least, long lived, if not eternal, because in order for him to create the universe and everything in it, he would have had to have been around long before creation took place.  In fact, in the book of Romans, Paul reminds us, “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse." (Romans 1:20, NIV)

In such a simple way, Paul reminds us of our Lord’s amazing wisdom in revealing himself as he does!  For in the same way the wisdom of the builders is clear from the ways they built the Pyramids, Skyscrapers and the International Space Station, so also our God reveals his wisdom, his strength, his eternal power and his divine nature through the very things he has created for us!

Yet, these are not the only things that the Lord has revealed about himself, nor is this the only way the Lord our God reveals himself to us so that we can know him.  For the truth is, the Lord has also revealed himself by writing his will, his law upon our very hearts, which is something that Paul also reminds us of in chapter two of his letter to the Romans.  “There is no favoritism with God. 12 All those who sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and all those who sinned under the law will be judged by the law. 13 For the hearers of the law are not righteous before God, but the doers of the law will be declared righteous. 14 So, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, instinctively do what the law demands, they are a law to themselves even though they do not have the law. 15 They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts. Their consciences confirm this. Their competing thoughts will either accuse or excuse them 16 on the day when God judges what people have kept secret, according to my gospel through Christ Jesus." (Romans 2:11–16, HCSB)

In short, Paul is telling us what we already know.  It doesn’t matter if we’ve been taught the Law of God or not.  The Lord our God has revealed himself to each and every person, by writing, branding if you will, his Law upon our hearts.  He has given each and every one of us a conscience—a conscience, which gives us a moral compass; a moral compass that helps us to know the difference between right and wrong.  For in the same way that the gauges in the cockpit of an airplane monitor the status of the flight and alert the pilot of something has gone wrong, so also our conscience monitors or watches over our conduct and alerts us when something is wrong.  It’s that little voice inside of us that condemns us for our sinful actions.  It’s that little voice that accuses us of doing wrong when we do not follow or live up to God’s commands.  It’s that feeling of shame that floods over us when we know we haven’t acted honorably.  It is that knowledge that just as our parents punished us when we were naughty, so also our righteous God will punish us for breaking his Law.

Yet, even as our conscience reveals our God to be a righteous God who punishes sins, it also assures us and comforts us when we do the right thing.  It is also that little voice of congratulations when we follow the will of our God.  It is that feeling of pride when we know we did the right thing.  The problem, however, is that even our conscience can become clouded and confused.  They can be taught to believe that innocent things like card playing and dancing are absolutely sinful.  (How many of your parents or even grand-parents were conscience bound by ideas like this?)  Not only that, but our consciences can even come to terms with sinful actions, accepting them as good things, and even going so far as to approve of and encourage those who practice the same things, if we continue to ignore our conscience or fill them with the idea that what we’re doing isn’t all that bad anyway.  This is exactly what Paul is talking about when he writes in another place in his letter to the Romans, “Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them." (Romans 1:32, NIV84)

These are but two of the ways that the Lord our God has revealed himself to us so that we might know who he is.  But if truth be told, if these two ways, through nature and through our conscience, if these two revelations had been all that we knew about the Lord our God, then we would be very miserable indeed!  Even though we would know about his eternal power, his divine nature, and his glorious wisdom from the very things he had created; from the Law that the Lord had written on our hearts, we would also know that we did not measure up to his standards.  Even though we might be able to cloud our consciences and sooth them into believing that our sinful actions were actually God pleasing, deep down we would still know that we deserved nothing but God’s punishment.  We would never be able to know if we had done enough to please him or if he even loved us, or if he even remotely cared about us.  If all we knew about our God came to us from his creation and our consciences, then the guilt we felt over all the things we had done wrong would continue to fester and bubble in our hearts until it finally boiled over and filled our hearts and our lives with despair.  Despair from which there could be no escape except for us to completely turn away from the Lord and seek salvation from ourselves and from the world around us.  For in the same way that a dashboard light can only tell you that something is wrong with your car and not how to fix it, so also our conscience can only tell us that something is wrong with us.  Neither our knowledge of creation nor the pangs of our conscience can ever tell us how we can fix it.

But thanks be to God that he has not only revealed himself through the dashboard lights of creation and conscience, but he has also revealed himself to us through the instruction manual of his Word.  For in the same way that instruction manuals help mechanics find and fix the problem when a dashboard light comes on, so also it is through the instruction manual of his Word that our God has reveals himself to us and shows us exactly how he fixes our problems with sin.  Just as we sang this morning, “These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name." (John 20:31, NIV84)

Though we can truly learn a great deal about our God from the things he reveals to us through his creation and our conscience, neither of these can ever teach us about Jesus Christ our Savior.  For it is only through the work the Holy Spirit accomplishes in our hearts Holy Scriptures, that we come to faith in Jesus.  It is only through the Holy Scriptures, which many of us have known since we were infants that we have been made wise for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ our Savior! (see 2 Timothy 3:15)  It is only through the Holy Scriptures that we know how the Lord our God revealed his plan to save the human race already back in creation when he promised Adam and Eve, “And I will put enmity (hostility) between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” (Genesis 3:15, NIV84)  It is only through the Scriptures that God revealed how and where the Savior would be born when he promised, “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel." (Isaiah 7:14, NIV84)  and “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.” (Micah 5:2, NIV84)

It is only in the pages of the Scriptures that we have the account of Jesus’ birth, announced in Luke 1 and completely revealed in Luke 2.  It is only in the pages of the Scriptures where we have the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John telling us all about Jesus, how he was born and how he lived a perfect and holy life, how he preached and taught the message of salvation wherever he went, and how he willingly gave up his life in our place and rose again from the dead, just as the Prophets of old that foretold.  It is in the Bible where we have the records of the Apostles going out and preaching and teaching the saving truth of salvation to all people.  We have the records of those who taught the word to assure us that when Jesus went to his death he went in our place.  When Jesus went to the cross he took every one of our sins with him and paid the price that God demanded.  Now, because of what the Lord our God has revealed to us in the pages of the Holy Scriptures, we have the assurance that through faith in Jesus all our sins and wrongdoings have been forgiven.  We have the assurance that eternal life is waiting for us in heaven.  In short, it is through the Bible that the Lord our God completely reveals himself to us through his Son, our Savior, in whom we believe because the Holy Spirit has worked through that word and created faith in our hearts; faith which knows exactly who the Lord our God truly is.

Now, because of this, we know who our God truly is.  We know that he is the all powerful Lord who created all that exists by his eternal power and divine nature.  We know that he is our glorious Savior because “We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth." (John 1:14, NIV84) We know that we are in a right relationship with him because through faith in his Son our Savior, we now know the Lord who “blots out our transgressions for his own sake and remembers our sins no more.” (Isaiah 43:25, NIV84) 

We know all these things about the Lord our God, and even more than that, because these are the things that the Lord our God has revealed about himself in the pages of the Scriptures.  He has revealed them to us so that we might know him, even as he knows us and loves us.  Though we have not yet met the Lord our God face to face, we know him just as well as we know each other, if not better than that, because through faith in Jesus—faith created in our hearts by the Holy Spirit—we have a personal relationship with the Lord our God.  We have a personal relationship with the Lord our God, and we know exactly who our God is because he has completely revealed himself to us so that we can know him.

Amen.

Pastor David M. Shilling

Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church--Le Sueur, MN