Sermon for May 9th: Why do we have the Law?

When most people hear the words, “The Law”, I bet they think of this: (cop siren) and recount the image of a flashing light in theirr rearview mirror. You may have only been going a couple of miles over the speed limit, but cops can still write you a ticket. You can fight the law, but the law will win if it wants to. But why do we have “The Law”? Why do we have cops? The cops are there to make sure that you drive the speed limit for two main reasons: to keep you safe and to keep others safe. That’s the point of God’s law as well: to keep you safe and to keep others safe. And for the most part it works.

But in the third chapter of the book of Galatians, we hear another reason that God created the law . . . this is what it says, “The Law was added because of transgressions until the Seed to whom the promise referred had come.” Now what does THAT mean? Well, transgressions is another word for sins, so the apostle Paul is saying that God gave us laws not just to point out our sins but he gave us laws BECAUSE of sin. But why would he do that? Isn’t that like beating a dead horse?

Here’s the problem with having laws: we want to trust in them. So, when Jillian and Bob, the trainers on the TV show “The Biggest Loser” scream at people about how important it is to eat right and exercise in order to stay healthy and have a long life, I start believing them. I start believing that by running a lot and eating whole wheat pasta that I will live a really long time . . . but the problem is, that this isn’t always true. On the one hand, you’ll hear health magazines talk about how important it is to stay away from fat and to exercise, but one of my great grandmothers lived well into her eighties by eating Lard and sugar sandwiches and never working out. Laws make us want to believe that, if we follow them, we will live better because of them. And while that often works, it is not foolproof, as any number of tragedies you hear of will attest to. People often die, quite young, not because they were unhealthy, but because of accidents, or genetic problems, or rare diseases. We cannot trust in the law to give us eternal life.

So, God gave us laws for two reasons: to point out sin, like when you are speeding and putting your life and other lives in danger, but also to show that we cannot be perfect. There is nobody on the face of the earth who can stay away from sin, even if they try to follow every rule and regulation. And even if you could do everything right, you would start relying on your own strength of character to save yourself and, as God has stated clearly, no one can be made right in God’s eyes just by doing the best that they can. We need more than the law, we need more than ourselves, we need more than rules in order to find peace with God. By ourselves, no matter how good or bad we are, we are cursed—everything we do, no matter how good it looks, is under the power of sin.

Many Christians think of sin as temptations floating around in their world that they can either take in or push away, but God wants us to realize that sin is a prevalent in our lives as the air we breathe. It permeates us as much as the water in the very cells that make up our skin and bones. It is not something we can just choose to stay away from: it covers us completely.

God is just beating a dead horse by giving us rules, it’s more like putting a horse down because it is too sick. God wants to put us out of our misery, so to speak. We are people that not only do sick things, but we are actually sick. We WANT to do bad things. If you are anything like me, it’s not just that you make bad choices, but you often WANT to make bad choices. You LIKE to do it. It PLEASES you. “The good things you want to do, you don’t do, and the bad things that you don’t want to do, that’s what you do.”

I remember speeding through a town in Connecticut once to get some medicine to take care of a bad case of poison ivy when I saw the cops in MY rear view mirror. And you know what my first thought was? Maybe I should put on my clergy collar . . . would I have a better shot of getting out of a ticket if they knew I was a pastor? Should I make them believe that I was off to some important visit? Would I have to outright lie or would silence be the best trick? Well, I didn’t lie, I didn’t put on the collar and I didn’t get a ticket either . . . BUT, just because I didn’t lie, doesn’t mean I still didn’t sin. First of all, I was speeding and endangering lives. AND sin isn’t just about actions, but about thoughts, words and actions. When you start realizing how much you not only DO bad things, but how much you WANT to do them, you may come to the same conclusion that the apostle Paul comes up with: We cannot escape sin. We are all under the curse of sin.

When you realize how incredibly strong the power of sin is in your life, then God’s final purpose for having all these rules and regulations is truly revealed: God’s laws point out your need for a Savior—for Jesus. You cannot please God all by yourself, you need an advocate, a redeemer, a Savior. You cannot please God by following his rules, you please God most by following his Son and trusting in Jesus alone. “The righteous will live by faith”. When you believe that Jesus Christ has died for your sins once and for all on the cross, then you become pleasing in God’s sight.

How does this happen? Doesn’t God still care about those sins of yours? Well, of course he does, but they are not yours any longer. “Jesus Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us”—by becoming a curse for you. Jesus, the only person in the world who didn’t sin, became sin. He died so that you would live. Jesus gets your misery, your guilt, your death and you receive everything he has: life, salvation and forgiveness.

When you give up trying to save yourself, you die, you lose hope, you give up. God keeps piling up the rules until he finally puts you out of your misery (because trying to be perfect is, after all, a very miserable experience, isn’t it?) Yet amazingly, it is in that moment, when you stop trying to win God’s affection, and surrender, when you despair of doing it on your own, that you can finally believe that God loves you free of charge. It was never about what you could do, Jesus loves you—you can trust in that love, not in your own power.

Every once in awhile, one of my older children will start throwing a temper trantrum. And, depending on the situation, sometimes Kristy, my wife, ends up holding a kicking and screaming little person tightly in her arms while they do everything that they can to escape, or hurt her or burst her ear drums. But when, after a minute or two or crying out in despair and anger, they give up, they soon realize something else . . . they are in the arms of their Mother who loves them and would give up anything and everything for them. That’s a mother’s love, you see. A mother loves her children with a passion that few people can fully understand and still, a mother’s love is nothing, absolutely NOTHING compared with the loving passion that God has for you, each one of his children.

There may be a few of you here this morning that have spent your life kicking and screaming against God. You want nothing to do with him. Christianity embarrasses you. You just can’t believe that all this could possibly be true. You might even be angry with God. You seldom come to church and you are certainly not interested in committing your life and lifestyle to Jesus Christ. What might happen if you just gave up and surrendered all that anger and frustration into his loving arms, for he is already holding you with hands that will never let you go.

In some churches, they have something called an altar call, where people are called to confess their sin and accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, but Lutherans have never been much for that kind of thing. That’s because it happens already each Sunday morning when you confess your sin to yourself and to God, and receive the promise that God forgives you completely. Some of you have done this so many times that you cannot remember. But for some of you, this may be the first time that you truly admit to yourself and to God your need for forgiveness and your need for Jesus Christ. No doubt you have done much that is wrong in the eyes of the world and in the eyes of God. But, I want you to be assured that God’s forgiveness is for you. Jesus already has you in his loving arms. He has been knocking on the door to your heart for a long time. I invite you to rest in his arms, now, and to believe that God can transform your life today, and give you eternal life forever. The curse is no longer yours to bear. Jesus became a curse for you. Come to Jesus and live.