The Ten Commandments require further explanation

Sermon for Trinity 6

Romans 6:3-11  +  Matthew 5:20-26

The Ten Commandments have been in the news again lately. We talked about it a little bit in Bible class. A lot of people seem to think it’s a great idea to post them in elementary school classrooms in the public schools of our country. The thing is, the Ten Commandments require further explanation. Even the Jews in Jesus’ day, who grew up learning the Ten Commandments, didn’t understand them rightly. That’s why Jesus stepped in in today’s Gospel from the Sermon on the Mount and explained the Law further. In order for the Ten Commandments to be used beneficially, they first have to be read correctly, and that requires knowing some other very important things—five things, actually, two of which Jesus addresses in today’s Gospel. The rest we glean from the Epistle and from the rest of the Scriptures.

To read the Ten Commandments beneficially, you have to know, first, the context in which they were originally given. The Ten Commandments were not just dropped down out of heaven. They weren’t delivered from on high to all men. They weren’t even given to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They were thundered down from Mt. Sinai by God Himself to the people of Israel who were gathered at the foot of the mountain. And how had they gotten there? 430 years earlier God had made a solemn vow to Abraham to rescue his descendants from slavery in a foreign land and to return them to the Promised Land of Canaan. That foreign land turned out to be Egypt. God revealed Himself to Moses and raised up Moses and Aaron to lead the people out of Egypt with great signs and wonders and ten plagues that forced the Egyptians to let the people of Israel go. The Lord God parted the waters of the Red Sea for His people to get to safety. He destroyed the Egyptian armies. He provided food and water for them in the desert on their way to Sinai. And now, 50 days or so after He rescued the Israelites from Egypt, God begins the Ten Commandments with these words: I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before Me. The First Commandment makes no sense at all apart from that context. The Second Commandment—You shall not misuse the name of the Lord—makes no sense unless you know His name, Yahweh, the LORD, He-who-is, the only true God, the God of steadfast love and faithfulness who deserves to be worshiped, not only for who He is, but for the steadfast love He had shown to Israel in bringing them out of the house of bondage.

Second, to read the Ten Commandments beneficially, you have to know which parts applied specifically to Israel under the Old Testament that God established with them there at Mt. Sinai, and which parts reflect the timeless will of God for us Christians and for all people. The Third Commandment, for example, Remember the Sabbath Day by keeping it holy, had very specific applications to Old Testament Israel. Under the New Testament, it’s no longer about resting for 24 hours, from Friday evening to Saturday evening. It’s about regularly setting aside time to hear God’s Word and to honor the preaching of it. The Fourth Commandment, Honor your father and mother, has the promise added to it, that your days may be long upon the land which the LORD your God is giving you, referring to the land of Canaan that God was giving to Israel, not to the United States of America.

Third, to read the Ten Commandments beneficially, you have to know what it actually means to keep the Ten Commandments. And this is one of the things Jesus spelled out so clearly in today’s Gospel. The Fifth Commandment simply reads, You shall not murder. Most people think that, as long as they don’t kill anyone, they’re keeping this commandment. But Jesus explains that it goes far beyond taking another person’s life. I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. So the Fifth Commandment commands not only the hands but also the heart. Hatred and anger toward your brother make you guilty of breaking the Fifth Commandment. And whoever says to his brother, ‘Raca!’ will be subject to the council; but whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be subject to hellfire. Saying “Raca” to someone was a slur that carried civil penalties. The Jewish council had apparently made a law against it. Even their manmade laws prohibited certain forms of speech. But Jesus reveals that just using the hurtful phrase, “You fool!”, made a person “subject to hellfire,” as far as God is concerned. In other words, to keep the Fifth Commandment, you have to avoid, not only killing a person, but also hating and becoming angry at a person, and speaking hurtful words to him.

Jesus does the same thing with the Sixth Commandment in the verses right after our Gospel. You shall not commit adultery. To understand what it is God actually commands, you have to know what it means to commit adultery. It includes all sex outside of marriage. It includes homosexuality. It includes divorce for unscriptural reasons. But Jesus goes even further: I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. “Lusting” is the same word as “coveting,” which means to set your desires on something you’re not supposed to have. Coveting another person’s body sexually is just as sinful as coveting a person’s house is just as sinful as coveting a person’s wealth, or even a person’s life. You have to understand that all God’s commandments command the hands, and the mouth, and the heart itself. No human law can regulate such things. But God’s law can and does.

Fourth, to read the Ten Commandments beneficially, you have to know, you have to understand that God’s commandments cannot save anyone. As Jesus said in our Gospel, I say to you that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. The scribes and Pharisees had about as much external righteousness, external obedience to the commandments as anyone in Israel, as anyone anywhere. But, Jesus says, it wasn’t enough. To keep the Commandments, you have to obey them also on the inside, with the mind, mouth, and heart, and you have to do it perfectly, without failing. Because, as James says, Whoever keeps the whole law but stumbles at one point is guilty of breaking all of it. But, as Scripture clearly reveals, man, since the fall of Adam, is turned away from God, unable to trust in Him and worship Him, unable to hear Him, unable to keep His commandments from the heart. The commandments command well enough, but the commandments cannot save. As Paul writes to the Romans, We know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin.

Well, if the commandments are there, primarily at least, to show us our sin, to show us how far short we fall of the true righteousness that God demands, then, finally, to read the Ten Commandments beneficially, you have to know the Gospel that can save, the power of salvation for everyone who believes. In the Gospel, Paul writes, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “The just shall live by faith,”… even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe. For there is no difference; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as the place of atonement, through faith, in His blood…to demonstrate His righteousness at the present time, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

That’s the Gospel, that God has given His Son Jesus Christ to shed His blood for our sins, so that we might be saved and made righteous before God through faith in Him, not through our attempts at obeying the Ten Commandments.

You see, then, how important it is to read the Commandments correctly. Teaching people the Ten Commandments would be worse than worthless if we don’t accompany that teaching with the further explanation that the Holy Scriptures provide in both the Old and the New Testaments. At best, we would turn people into little hypocrites, little Pharisees, who seek to please God by doing enough good things and avoiding enough bad things, by being obedient enough, by being upright and moral people. But you can’t be upright and moral people until you understand that you’re already not upright and moral people by nature, until you understand that you need a Savior, until you repent of your sins, until you believe in the Savior whom God has provided to be your righteousness before God. Then, through faith in Christ, the truly Righteous One, God forgives you your sins against all His commandments. And only then can you begin, as Christians, to truly obey them, from the heart, as those who have brought by the love of God to love God, to want no other God but Him, as those who have been born again of water and the Spirit, adopted as beloved children of the heavenly Father, as those who have been buried with Christ through Baptism, into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we, too, should walk in a new life. And the Ten Commandments serve as an indispensable guide for what that new life is supposed to look like.

Without that further explanation of the Ten Commandments, in the context of the whole Bible, they do more harm than good, because, by themselves, they allow people to fool themselves into thinking that they’re godly when they’re really not. But with the explanation provided by Scripture, a Christian can use the Ten Commandments beneficially. So learn them. Post them in your home, if you like, and recite them every day. But add an explanation of them, like Luther’s explanations in the Small Catechism, which are outstanding and Scriptural. And, even better, add the Apostles’ Creed and its explanations in the Small Catechism. Add the explanations for the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer, and for Holy Baptism, and for the Lord’s Supper as well. Fortified with those explanations, and spurred on by faith and the Holy Spirit, you will be well-prepared disciples of Christ Jesus, ready to live more righteously than the scribes and Pharisees, as the righteous people whom God has called you to be. To that end, let us pray with the Psalmist: Teach me, O LORD, the way of your statutes; and I will keep it to the end. Give me understanding, that I may keep your law and observe it with my whole heart. Lead me in the path of your commandments, for I delight in it. Amen.