The Mandate: Positive And Purposeful
Sermon
When God Says, “Let Me Alone ”
First Lesson Sermons For Sundays After Pentecost (Last Third)
No other God, no graven images, no taking of the name of the Lord in vain, no work on the Sabbath, no dishonoring of father and mother, no killing, no adultery, no stealing, no bearing false witness, no coveting. That's a rather lengthy string of nays from the eternal God.
Amid the swirling smoke of Sinai, Moses the leader of Israel, their emancipator, received ten prohibitions concerning the behavior of this newly liberated people. He received them directly from God -- ten commandments. Not ten options, not ten principles, not ten electives, but ten commandments. Together they constitute a divine mandate.
Now they were not the result of a referendum taken en route from Egypt land to the Promised Land. No opinion poll was conducted. Precipitated by human sin, the commandments, or the law, came into being for the sake of the sanity and sanctity of society.
The law represents God's eternal and unchanging will for his people for all time. It vitiates all notions of self-determination. It abrogates every doctrine of self-determination. It posits the existence of one holy God, perfect in all attributes, who demands holiness on the part of his people. It speaks to the consequences of sin and the danger inherent in offending the holy. There is nothing wrong with the law.
Now people have found it heavy and quite demanding, but the law in and of itself is not grievous. David, as terrible an offender of the law as anybody, exclaimed one day, "The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul. The testimony of the law is sure, making wise the simple." David, his rascality notwithstanding (and he was quite a rascal), had enough good sense and enough good religion to declare, "Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path."
We mortals are not regulators of divine behavior. Our behavior is under divine regulation and under divine scrutiny. But there is something in fallen humanity that rebels against ultimate authority. Call it a proclivity for pride; call it a tendency toward self-sufficiency; or call it the desire to go independent. Call it what you will. It comes down to rebellion against constituted authority.
There have always been those who resisted anything bearing the resemblance of authority and control. There are people who are insulted by anything that says in substance, "Thou shalt not." And they seek to justify their posture by putting it in the category of negativity. For many across the ages, "Thou shalt not" has been construed as absolutely negative. And I submit to you the belief that "not" is not necassarily negative. "Not" reads negative; "not" looks negative; "not" sounds negative. But, if the result is positive, then negativity is abrogated.
Theologically speaking, every seemingly negative utterance connotes the reality of its opposite. No sin, no righteousness; no night, no day; no hell, no heaven; no negative, no positive. And that's precisely why I titled this message "The Mandate: Positive and Purposeful." Measure the matter by the end result.
Let me put it plainly. I am wholly confident that I learned more from my Daddy's "don'ts" than from his "do's." When I look back on my rearing, I find it simply amazing how readily "don't" can translate into "do." Whipping is replete with negativity, so we think, and I suppose I hold the world record for the most whippings received. But those whippings, those seeming expressions of the negative, produced some mighty positive results. And that's why this Book says, "Spare the rod and spoil the child."
The mandate, although viewed and interpreted by many as negative, is utterly positive. The ten commandments are in effect stop signs on the highway to goodness and morality. I don't know what this world would be like without such stop signs. Given the inclination toward licentiousness, we would literally have hell on earth. I reiterate: the law represents God's unchanging will for his people. No less an authority than Jesus himself declared, "It is easier for heaven and earth to pass than for one tittle of the law to fail."
The mandate, I tell you, is positive. But beyond that it is purposeful. Paul, regarded by some as the cofounder of the faith, had to wrestle theologically with the problem of the law in relation to grace. He even had to struggle with the law in light of the Abrahamic promise. He argued, for example, in his missive to the Galatians, "If the inheritance be of the law, it is no more a promise. But God gave it to Abraham by promise." And he proceeds to ask the question, "Wherefore then serveth (What then is) the law?" And he answers, "It was added because of transgressions, till the seed should come to whom the promise was made, and it was ordained by angels in the hands of a mediator." Paul then asks, "Is the law against the promises of God?" He answers his own question, "God forbid, for if there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law. Before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterward be revealed." And then Paul posits the lofty purposefulness of the law. Says the tent-maker from Tarsus, "Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith." My, what an utterance! It is one of the peak passages of the entire Bible. What a phrase! Paidagogos humoneis Christon (that's what it says in the Greek -- our tutor unto Christ).
Now the idea stems from a practice in well-to-do Roman homes. The Pedagogos was a slave employed to be in charge of a boy's learning from age six to age sixteen. The Pedagogos watched his behavior at home and attended him when he left home and went away to school. Paul is saying that Christ is our schoolmaster. And the law, says Paul, kept watch over us until we came to Christ. And now since Christ has come, the Pedagogos has been dismissed. He is no longer needed, for we are in the school of the Master.
Therefore you ought to "stand fast in the liberty by which Christ has set you free."ÊI'm free now. What the law couldn't do, Christ did. No bondage, no servitude, no enslavement. Free at last. Everything that the law was incapable of doing, grace did. Grace! Grace! In a word, "The blood done signed my name." And Jesus is the only name that can calm your fears and make your sorrows cease.
The law, the mandate, the commandment is positive and purposeful in that it was our guide, our tutor to bring us to him who is the fulfillment of the law and the epitome of grace. Ain't you glad! Alleluia! Thank God for Jesus!
Amid the swirling smoke of Sinai, Moses the leader of Israel, their emancipator, received ten prohibitions concerning the behavior of this newly liberated people. He received them directly from God -- ten commandments. Not ten options, not ten principles, not ten electives, but ten commandments. Together they constitute a divine mandate.
Now they were not the result of a referendum taken en route from Egypt land to the Promised Land. No opinion poll was conducted. Precipitated by human sin, the commandments, or the law, came into being for the sake of the sanity and sanctity of society.
The law represents God's eternal and unchanging will for his people for all time. It vitiates all notions of self-determination. It abrogates every doctrine of self-determination. It posits the existence of one holy God, perfect in all attributes, who demands holiness on the part of his people. It speaks to the consequences of sin and the danger inherent in offending the holy. There is nothing wrong with the law.
Now people have found it heavy and quite demanding, but the law in and of itself is not grievous. David, as terrible an offender of the law as anybody, exclaimed one day, "The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul. The testimony of the law is sure, making wise the simple." David, his rascality notwithstanding (and he was quite a rascal), had enough good sense and enough good religion to declare, "Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path."
We mortals are not regulators of divine behavior. Our behavior is under divine regulation and under divine scrutiny. But there is something in fallen humanity that rebels against ultimate authority. Call it a proclivity for pride; call it a tendency toward self-sufficiency; or call it the desire to go independent. Call it what you will. It comes down to rebellion against constituted authority.
There have always been those who resisted anything bearing the resemblance of authority and control. There are people who are insulted by anything that says in substance, "Thou shalt not." And they seek to justify their posture by putting it in the category of negativity. For many across the ages, "Thou shalt not" has been construed as absolutely negative. And I submit to you the belief that "not" is not necassarily negative. "Not" reads negative; "not" looks negative; "not" sounds negative. But, if the result is positive, then negativity is abrogated.
Theologically speaking, every seemingly negative utterance connotes the reality of its opposite. No sin, no righteousness; no night, no day; no hell, no heaven; no negative, no positive. And that's precisely why I titled this message "The Mandate: Positive and Purposeful." Measure the matter by the end result.
Let me put it plainly. I am wholly confident that I learned more from my Daddy's "don'ts" than from his "do's." When I look back on my rearing, I find it simply amazing how readily "don't" can translate into "do." Whipping is replete with negativity, so we think, and I suppose I hold the world record for the most whippings received. But those whippings, those seeming expressions of the negative, produced some mighty positive results. And that's why this Book says, "Spare the rod and spoil the child."
The mandate, although viewed and interpreted by many as negative, is utterly positive. The ten commandments are in effect stop signs on the highway to goodness and morality. I don't know what this world would be like without such stop signs. Given the inclination toward licentiousness, we would literally have hell on earth. I reiterate: the law represents God's unchanging will for his people. No less an authority than Jesus himself declared, "It is easier for heaven and earth to pass than for one tittle of the law to fail."
The mandate, I tell you, is positive. But beyond that it is purposeful. Paul, regarded by some as the cofounder of the faith, had to wrestle theologically with the problem of the law in relation to grace. He even had to struggle with the law in light of the Abrahamic promise. He argued, for example, in his missive to the Galatians, "If the inheritance be of the law, it is no more a promise. But God gave it to Abraham by promise." And he proceeds to ask the question, "Wherefore then serveth (What then is) the law?" And he answers, "It was added because of transgressions, till the seed should come to whom the promise was made, and it was ordained by angels in the hands of a mediator." Paul then asks, "Is the law against the promises of God?" He answers his own question, "God forbid, for if there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law. Before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterward be revealed." And then Paul posits the lofty purposefulness of the law. Says the tent-maker from Tarsus, "Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith." My, what an utterance! It is one of the peak passages of the entire Bible. What a phrase! Paidagogos humoneis Christon (that's what it says in the Greek -- our tutor unto Christ).
Now the idea stems from a practice in well-to-do Roman homes. The Pedagogos was a slave employed to be in charge of a boy's learning from age six to age sixteen. The Pedagogos watched his behavior at home and attended him when he left home and went away to school. Paul is saying that Christ is our schoolmaster. And the law, says Paul, kept watch over us until we came to Christ. And now since Christ has come, the Pedagogos has been dismissed. He is no longer needed, for we are in the school of the Master.
Therefore you ought to "stand fast in the liberty by which Christ has set you free."ÊI'm free now. What the law couldn't do, Christ did. No bondage, no servitude, no enslavement. Free at last. Everything that the law was incapable of doing, grace did. Grace! Grace! In a word, "The blood done signed my name." And Jesus is the only name that can calm your fears and make your sorrows cease.
The law, the mandate, the commandment is positive and purposeful in that it was our guide, our tutor to bring us to him who is the fulfillment of the law and the epitome of grace. Ain't you glad! Alleluia! Thank God for Jesus!
