KEEP IT SIMPLE”
Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 17)
August 30, 2015
Bethel Evangelical Lutheran Church
Glenshaw, Pennsylvania
TEXT:
“You shall not add to the Word that I command you, nor take from it,
that you may keep the commandments of the Lord your God that I command
you.”
Deuteronomy 4:2 (ESV)
There’s a story that I heard a number of years ago about a great
theological convocation that was held at a major university. The most
well-educated and highly respected theologians of the Church came
together to draft a statement that would express the essence of the
Christian faith in a profound yet concise way. After four days of
committee reports, proposed statements, proposed resolutions,
amendments, and points of order, one of the oldest and most respected
gentlemen present slowly made his way to the podium to offer his
suggestion for the statement that they wanted to prepare. The entire
assembly was on the edge of its seat, eager to hear what great gems of
wisdom this learned man had to offer. As silence fell over the crowd,
the frail old man looked over his audience and with a wry smile
offered his suggestion for a profound theological statement that would
express the entire Christian message. What he said was: “Jesus loves
me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”
Moses may very well have shared the feelings of that elderly
theologian as he spoke the words of our text to the children of
Israel. The Lord Himself had called Moses to be His spokesman and
the leader of His chosen nation. Now the people of Israel were
nearing the end of their journey to Canaan--the promised land--and
Moses, the servant of the Lord, was nearing the end of his life. He
knew from his own experience the futility and the danger of trying to
improve on what God has revealed. He had done it himself at Meribah
and, because he thought that he knew better than God, he would not be
allowed to enter the promised land. In order to help us avoid
repeating this same mistake, made by so many through the years, let’s
listen this morning to the Lord’s instruction about taking away from
His Word and adding to it.
Of the two, taking away from the Word of God seems to be the more
prevalent problem in our day. One way in which people take away from
what God has revealed is to blatantly deny that there is a God, or to
say that, if there is, He has no right to give us commandments, or to
claim that there is no such thing as right and wrong anyway. It never
ceases to amaze me how ignorant so many otherwise intelligent people
in our world today can be when it comes to seeing what is right and
what is wrong. People for the most part have come to look at
everything as being subjective--or at least negotiable. According to
them, what is wrong for one person might be okay for next or what is
wrong in one given set of circumstances may be okay in another. They
don’t think that anything is to be considered wrong in an absolute
sense unless it infringes on the rights of on another individual. The
obvious problem with this attitude, from a Christian perspective, is
that, if there is no knowledge of sin and no fear of the judgment of
God, neither can there be any understanding of or appreciation for the
redeeming grace of God in Jesus Christ.
Another (and perhaps more subtle) way in which some people take away
from God’s commands is to qualify those commands in some way, thus
confusing their clear and simple meaning. For example, by today’s
standards murder isn’t really murder if the victim provoked or
harassed the murderer over a period of time or if the murderer suffers
from some kind of psychological or emotional disorder or if the
victim’s life isn’t considered to be worth much. Adultery isn’t
really adultery if the adulterer’s spouse is no longer satisfying or
if the adulterer has “fallen out of love” with his or her spouse and
“fallen in love” with someone else. Stealing isn’t really stealing if
you steal from someone more wealthy than yourself or from a company or
(better yet) from the government, rather than from an individual who
will actually suffer from the loss of whatever it is that you stole.
People who do this kind of taking away from what God has commanded
don’t feel guilty about it because they’re not really denying God’s
Law; they’re just qualifying it in such a way as to excuse sin
(usually their own). It’s no wonder that so many of us nodded in
agreement when ABC’s Ted Koppel, more than a generation ago, made the
observation that “what Moses brought down from Mount Sinai were not
'the Ten Suggestions.’” The problem here for the believer is the same
as before: Unless I am convinced that I am a sinner and that my sin
warrants the judgment of God, I will never be interested in the grace
and forgiveness that He offers me in the Gospel of His Son.
But taking away from what God has commanded isn’t the only problem
that results in wandering from the Word of God. At the other extreme
are those who add to God’s commands by making them more in number and
more difficult to obey and by arrogantly injecting their own personal
preferences into the revelation of God. This has been an ongoing
problem among the people of God since the very beginning. Adam and
Eve turned God’s one simple and loving command into an intolerable
burden. The Pharisees of Jesus’ day added hundreds of specific
regulations to the Law of God. The Judaizers in the early Church
taught that in order to be a good Christian you first had to become a
good Jew, observing all of the ceremonial and dietary traditions of
the Old Testament. And the Church of the Middle Ages was notorious
for substituting human laws for divine ones. The Reformation became
necessary because the Gospel of Christ had for all practical purposes
been replaced by more Law (and much human tradition) in the preaching
and teaching of the Church.
But let’s not get the idea that adding to the Word of God is
something that only happened a long, long time ago in a place far, far
away. It still happens today--even right here in this “enlightened”
land of ours. It happens every time that we try to make people feel
as if our preferences are God’s command--as if our way of doing things
is the only right way. It happens whenever we allow human tradition
to become more important than what God Himself has clearly revealed.
It happens whenever we are so sure that we know it all and that we’re
right that we stop really listening to what God has to say in His
Word. And worst of all, it happens when poor helpless sinners are led
to believe that forgiveness and salvation are things that they have a
part in bringing about.
The “bottom line” is that our Lord is a perfect Lord who has
perfectly revealed Himself in His perfect Word. He has especially
made Himself and His will known to us in His perfect Son Jesus
Christ--the Word Incarnate. It is a well-known and often-stated fact
that you can’t improve on perfection. Where has our collective human
wisdom gotten us? Can we honestly say that that the accomplishments
of humanity have solved the problems that we have created for
ourselves? I don’t think so. But the Good News for us is that God
has given us His perfect Law to show us our sin and His perfect Gospel
to show us our Savior, so that we might know and appreciate the grace
that we have received from Him--grace that justifies us in His sight
and empowers us to respond to it with a life that glorifies Him and
serves our neighbor.
Amen.
May the Lord bless your hearing of His Word, using it to accomplish in
you those things for which He gave it. May you be enriched and
strengthened in faith that you may leave here today to go out into our
world armed with the whole armor of God, prepared to be able
ambassadors of your Savior Jesus Christ. He who calls you is
faithful, and He will do it. Amen.