Trinity 6

Good Shepherd

2004 Pass Rd, Biloxi, MS 39531

Draft Exodus 20:1–17; Romans 6:1–11; Matthew 5:17–26; Psalm 19   –     07/27/25

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

Jesus said, whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

Before I get to the meat of our Gospel text, I must first teach you, if you have not been before, or remind you if you have, what categories of law God gave Israel in the Bible. There is is positive law, ceremonial law, and Natural or Divine Law.

Positive law concerns only the individual country or state which makes or is given laws specific to itself: for these you should think traffic laws, tax laws, zoning laws—or for the Israelites, things like laws against intra-racial marriage, laws of inheritance, laws about foreign versus native slavery, and so on.

Ceremonial law concerns the worship of the Israelites, those requirements God gave them for becoming pure so that they could go to the Temple, partake in the Passover meal, and keep the feasts. They are things such as how and when they were to wash when defiled by dead bodies, bugs, foreigners, etc., what they were to allowed to eat versus not: not birds of prey, carnivores, carrion, pigs, shellfish, etc., what and how they were to make sacrifices, and how they were to worship.

Natural or Divine Law concerns how God, according to His nature, has made humanity and the world to exist. Our OT reading of the Ten Commandments is in this category. Male-female only marriage is as well, just as is only permitting sex within such a marriage, the protection and faithful rearing of children inside or outside the womb, and male headship in the family and the church.

When Jesus speaks of God’s Law in the Gospel reading, He means all three categories which He gave through Moses to Israel, this is why in the next verse He said, For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. So what is Jesus doing? Is He applying all of the OT to you and me?

Luther explains: Jesus teaches, “in the first place, against false teachers who do not handle the Law correctly and who teach nothing more than works, without the heart; in the second place, so that the true understanding of the Law might be revealed to the godly, namely, that everything must be done from the heart. But it is at this point that all things are discovered to be impossible.” (AE 67:¿31?) I’ll deal with Luther’s explanation in reverse order.

Secondly, then, Jesus is showing these people who are listening to this long sermon how strict God’s standards of law keeping, of purity, of righteousness are: Everyone must keep all the Ten Commandments, all the ceremonial laws, and all the state laws, and do them more perfectly, more righteously than the men whose life work is to teach and keep the whole OT perfectly. There is no one in that crowd, or here who could do that, as I will explain more fully later.

Then to Luther’s first point: Consider the language Jesus uses when describing those who mistreat and mis-teach the commandments: Our English says they ‘relax’ one of the least commandments, but the Greek is more forceful than that, They do not relax, but destroy the commandment. When these men and women warp even one, as it were, minor commandment, they are not merely weakening it so it is easier to keep, but they destroy it altogether. If they have destroyed one commandment, then they have, for all intents and purposes, destroyed all the commandments. Remember the second verse from James which I refer to so often: For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it. (2:10) The violation of one commandment, automatically leads to the violation of more and more of them: Take laziness, for instance. When you or I are lazy, which of the ten commandments do we break?

After a fashion, the eighth: You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor, because in work or in friendship if we are lazy we harm the reputation of the business or the friendship. Also the seventh: You shall not steal, because we steal the money of our employers or the time of others when we do not do what we are asked. Which also leads to breaking the fifth: You shall not murder, if we are lazy at our jobs, because we hurt the business and therefore hurt the ability of our boss and fellow laborers to earn a living. But also the fourth: Honor your father and your mother, because we do not honor our parents or other authorities when we stain our family names by lax work or friendship. Then there is the second: You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain, because though we claim to be Christians we put Christ to shame by breaking these other commandments, meaning any unbeliever would look at us and think: ‘So this is what it means to be a Christian, lazy and useless.’ Lastly and most importantly, the first: I am the Lord your God, …. You shall have no other gods before me, because we have made leisure or whatever more important than God and His commandments, which is the same as breaking the fifth by committing spiritual adultery with a false god.

But Jesus does not settle merely with warning our societal betters against loosening or destroying minor laws for themselves, but He also condemns those who would be teachers of God’s Word: the scribes and Pharisees, or in our modern day, teachers and preachers. To what standard does God hold teachers and preachers? Those who twist and break God’s Law Jesus says will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; they will be rebuked, and perhaps be allowed into Christ’s kingdom by the skin of their teeth, like those of whom Paul speaks in 1 Cor 3: no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire. (11–15)

Hear also what James also has to say about that: Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness (3:1). Greater strictness than the common man and woman. On the other hand, Jesus says, all those who teach the law faithfully and all those who keep the whole law faithfully will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. Yet we know, as Luther reminded us earlier, we cannot keep all of the laws from our heart and faithfully, whether Positive, Ceremonial (NT or OT), or Natural.

What then? Is there no hope for us since we cannot live up to even the inadequate standard of the scribes and Pharisees? By no means! What does Jesus mean when He says, Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them? Jesus Himself came to keep the whole of the Law and the whole of the Prophets because we cannot. Paul says in Romans, For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. For Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law, that the person who does the commandments shall live by them. But the righteousness which Christ gives us is based on faith, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved (10:4–9). And he reminds us again in Galatians, So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ (24–27). Christ, when He fulfilled the Law for His whole life, and then gave Himself as the final sacrifice on the cross for our sins, changed the Law from being our guardian and our judge, to become our friend and our guide.

The Law continues with Christians, but is not binding on us. Luther explained it this way, “A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.” (AE 31:344). That is, in regards to our righteousness, eternal life, and salvation, we do not have to keep any law. But as regards our fellow man, we keep the state laws, the church ceremonial laws, the Ten Commandments and Natural Law because we love our fellow men and want what is best for them, further, the Natural Law, of which David will speak in a minute, is good for our own well being in this world: The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple; the precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes; the fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever; the just decrees of the Lord are true, and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb. Moreover, by them is your servant warned; in keeping them there is great reward.

Likewise, while we live in this fallen world our old sinful flesh will continue to war against the new man in Christ. Thus David sang: Who can discern his errors? Declare me innocent from hidden faults. Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me! Then I shall be blameless, and innocent of great transgression. And Paul asks, What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. And James warns us: be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing. (1:22–25)

The devil, through false teachers would tempt us either to the burden of the Law, so that we forget Christ fulfilled it for us, or through the world and our own flesh to continue in sin since the Law no longer applies to us. We must resist both of these temptations, but keep our eyes on Christ who has washed away our sin in His precious blood.

Let us close with this prayer at the end of Psalm 19: Dear Father in heaven, Let the words of our mouths and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.