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
