1.
Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our
Heavenly Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. Have
you ever thought, if this is Luther’s Small Catechism, then there must
be Luther’s Large Catechism? You’re right; there is. And if the Small or
Large Catechism or both of them would be unfamiliar to you our Lenten series
this year should help. Our forty-day tour is entitled “Taking On Something for Lent: Luther’s Catechisms.” It was Pastor Luther’s love for the people
that motivated him to write these catechisms. As he visited congregations he
was dismayed to find that people who called themselves Christians didn’t know
God’s Word. They didn’t know the 10 Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer, and even
the Apostles’ Creed.
2.
Martin Luther
desperately wanted people to understand what God had done for them in Jesus
Christ. Through the catechisms, they would begin to learn God’s Word. They
would learn the sternness of God’s commands and the sweetness of forgiveness. And
even today, one of the best ways to learn what’s taught in the Bible is to
learn Luther’s Small Catechism.
3.
Lent is a
time for spiritual discipline. Often people will choose to give something up
for Lent as a spiritual discipline. Instead, this Lent, you may want to take on
something. Let me suggest a spiritual discipline for you to consider: Read from
Luther’s Small Catechism every day and read through Luther’s Large Catechism
once. This will make the Lenten season a blessing for you. Okay? If you don’t
have a Small or Large Catechism, I as your Pastor will be sure to get you one
so that you can read them. Let’s begin.
4.
Everybody
wants to find love, after all tomorrow is Valentine’s Day when many people will
be celebrating it. And with good reason, right? In 1 Cor 13:13, the apostle
Paul writes, “Faith, hope, and love
abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” No question—love
has a lot going for it. And 1 Corinthians 13 is a great place to go looking for
love. Remember? Paul has those beautiful words about how love is patient and
kind; love doesn’t envy or boast; it isn’t arrogant or rude. If we want to find
love, we can learn much from this chapter.
But I want to suggest a better
starting point to learn about love. How about God’s Law in the Ten
Commandments? Hmm. Now that may not sound so lovely. The Law. The 10
Commandments. All the fuzzy feelings people get when you say “love” can
disappear when you say “10 Commandments.”
“Thou shalt”—you better do it! “Thou shalt not.” Don’t you dare! Where’s
the love in that?
5.
Jesus saw God’s love in the 10 Commandments. In Matthew 22, He
summarized all the Commandments with these words: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your
soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a
second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two
commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets” (vv 37–40). The first
three commandments (no other gods, not taking God’s name in vain,
remembering the Sabbath Day) tell you that you are to love God. How? With all
your heart, soul, and mind. The last seven
commandments tell you to love your neighbor as yourself. Love defines how
we are to relate to one another. If we love our neighbors—our father and
mother—we’re going to honor them (the Fourth Commandment). If we love our
neighbors, we’re neither going to hurt nor harm them (the Fifth). We’re not
going to steal from them (the Seventh). We’re not going to take their spouses
or their good names (the Sixth and Eighth Commandments). We’re not going to covet
their things that we can’t rightfully have from them (the Ninth and Tenth
Commandments). This is the greatest way to live. This is love.
6.
Martin Luther captured Jesus’ teaching quite well in the Small Catechism, where we read the First Commandment: “You shall have no other gods. What does this mean? We should fear, love, and trust
in God above all things.” If you can get that down, you’ve got it made! If you could “fear, love, and trust in God above all things,”
you wouldn’t need the rest of the Bible! But that’s an extremely big “if.” In
fact, failing to love God above all things is the most common sin. In the Large
Catechism, Luther points out: “Many a
person thinks that he has God and everything in abundance when he has money and
possessions. He trusts in them and boasts about them with such firmness and
assurance as to care for no one. ‘Mammon’ (i.e., money and possessions) . . .
is the most common idol on earth. He who has money and possessions feels secure
. . . and is joyful and undismayed as though he were sitting in the midst of
Paradise” (LC I 5–7). When I see beautiful homes on TV and the wonderful
locations where some people live, I can understand that the love of money often
pushes God off his throne. It’s easy to think, “If I only had a little more money, I could live like those people. It
would be heaven on earth.”
7.
Lest we get
smug while looking at the wealthy, Luther goes on to warn, “On the other hand, he who has no money doubts and is despondent, as
though he knew no God. For very few people can be found who are of good cheer
and who neither mourn nor complain if they lack Mammon. This care and desire for
money sticks and clings to our nature, right up to the grave” (LC I 8–9). The
love of money is just one way of having another god. For some, it’s the desire
for fame. For others, it’s love of friends. You name it. All kinds of things
might push God aside. This is nothing new. Whenever we love, trust, or fear
something more than God, we knock God off his throne.
8.
So where’s the love? If anything, the 10
Commandments show us that it’s misplaced. We don’t love God or neighbor as we
should. The 10 Commandments force you to enter Lent understanding exactly what
God’s Law says about you. They pierce your heart and conscience in the same way
that they pierce mine when I read them. They declare us to be sinners. For I
don’t love God with all my heart and soul and mind; neither do you. It’s this
sin that leads to death, to eternal death and abandonment by God. So where’s
love in the Ten Commandments?
9.
Love can only
really be found in the Ten Commandments when not God’s Law but his Gospel comes
along and tells us who loves according to the Commandments. God has not abandoned us. In our Old
Testament Reading, we hear the words of Joel: “ ‘Yet even now,’ declares the Lord,
‘return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with
mourning; and rend your hearts and not your garments.’ Return to the Lord your God” (Joel 2:12–13).
Although we (just as God’s people of old) can’t keep even the First
Commandment, God tenderly invites us to return for he is “merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love”
(Ex 34:6). In love God gave us his Law in the Ten Commandments so that we would
see our sin and our need for a savior. And Where We Do Not Love, God Does!
10.
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only
Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (Jn
3:16). God loved you in your sin, and
when the fullness of time had come, he “sent
forth his Son, born of woman, born under the Law, to redeem those who were
under the Law, so that we might receive adoption as sons” (Gal 4:4–5). Jesus lived under the 10 Commandments just as
we do. He understood and explained them better than ever before. In His Sermon
on the Mount, Jesus taught that our heavenly Father requires perfection (Mt
5:48). Although you and I fail miserably in every attempt to love perfectly as
the 10 Commandments demand, Jesus loves perfectly as God’s Law requires. Still,
He was tempted just as we are but never sinned (Heb 4:15). Even though Jesus never sinned, He died on
the cross for your sins and for the sins of the whole world (1 Cor 15:3). God’s
ultimate goal for us this Lent is that we would return to the Lord and fall on
our knees before the cross and say to our Savior, “Lord, have mercy.”
11.
The work of
the 10 Commandments is to help us see our sin, to drive us to our knees before
the cross of Jesus, and there receive forgiveness, life, and salvation through
faith. This is a wonderful thing. The beauty of Christ’s love and sacrifice is
something that we can never fully grasp in this life. It makes me want to say, “Thank you, Jesus, for your death, your
resurrection, forgiveness, and eternal life. What can I do for you? Not to earn
my way to heaven, but to say thank you?” And that little word love
returns. Jesus says, “If you love me . . .”—Can
you fill in the blank?—“If you love me,
you will keep my commandments” (Jn 14:15).
12.
Oh! That’s
how Christians can use the 10 Commandments—to show our love and thanksgiving
for what Jesus has done for us on the cross. This is why we worship God and serve
him only. This is why we call on his name with prayer, praise, and
thanksgiving. This is why we come to worship on Sunday. This is why we honor
our mother and father. This is why we help people who are in need and are
hurting. This is why we’re careful not to take that which doesn’t belong to us,
or even think about taking it. This is why we’ll respect another’s marriage as
we respect our own. This is why we help people protect their good names. This
is why we rejoice when others may have more than we have. All because we love
Jesus for what He’s done for us in love.
This is what Lent is all about: Jesus. This is what love is all about:
Jesus loving. And as we take on Luther’s catechisms this Lenten season, we’ll
discover that this is what they’re all about: Jesus. Amen.
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