Mid-Lent 2 4th Commandment
3/3/21
During Holy Week, Jesus was under constant
attack from his opponents, as they tried to trip him up and get him to say
something they could use against him.
After Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees took another run
at Jesus as they sent a lawyer with a question to test him. The lawyer asked, “Teacher,
which is the great commandment in the Law?”
Jesus replied, “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.”
Jesus said that the Law and Prophets
could be summarized in two brief statements: Love God with all that you are.
Love your neighbor as yourself. This parallels
what we find in the arrangement of the Ten Commandments. The first three commandments – the “first
table” of the law as it is often called – are all about God. The next seven commandments – the “second
table” – are all about our neighbor.
As we move from the Third to the
Fourth Commandment, we pass over this division.
The Fourth Commandments proves to be the perfect transition between the
two. On the one hand, it teaches about
how we are relate to other people, and so it definitely falls on the side of
the commandments the deal with our neighbor.
However, these people are not just anybody. They are in fact God’s
representatives, and so the Fourth Commandment also calls to mind the first
three commandments.
In the Large Catechism, Martin
Luther says that of the commandments in the second table of the law, the first
is the greatest. He says, “God has given
this walk of life, fatherhood and motherhood, a special position of honor,
higher than that of any other walk of life under it.” He says this because parents function as
God’s representative with their children.
Luther adds: “For God has exalted this walk of life above all others;
indeed, he has set it up in his place on earth.”
The Small Catechism explains this
commandment by saying that we are not to “despise or anger our parents and
other authorities, but honor them, serve and obey them, love and cherish
them.” Children need to recognize that
it is God who has placed their parents over them. When they obey they parents,
they are obeying God. They are not to disrespect their parents or cause them to
become angry due to disobedience or the way they speak to them.
Naturally, children need to serve
and obey their parents. But beyond this, they need to honor, love and cherish
them. They need to recognize the great blessing God has given to them in their
parents. This is too easily overlooked and forgotten, and so we have the Fourth
Commandment to remind us of this fact. Luther comments in the Large Catechism,
“God knows well this perversity of the world, and therefore, by means of the
commandments, he reminds and impels all people to think of what their parents
have done for them. Then they realize
that they have received their bodies and lives from their parents and have been
nourished and nurtured by them when otherwise they would have perished a
hundred times in their own filth.”
Of course, parents never cease to be
parents, even as children turn into adults.
And so the Fourth Commandment is something that guides our actions as we
deal with our parents who are becoming older.
We honor, love and cherish our parents by caring for them as they become
less able to care for themselves. St. Paul wrote to Timothy and said, “But if a widow has children or grandchildren,
let them first learn to show godliness to their own household and to make
some return to their parents, for this is pleasing in the sight of God.” Luther echoes this thought when he wrote in
the Large Catechism, “you are also to honor them by your actions, that is, with
your body and possessions, serving them, helping them and caring for them when
they are old, sick, feeble, or poor; all this you should do not only
cheerfully, but also with humility and reverence, doing it as if for God.”
But the Fourth Commandment does not only provide
direction for children. It also tells
parents what they must do. Parents have
been placed as God’s representatives, and so they have duties that they are to
carry out. Obviously they must provide
for the physical well being of their children. Yet Luther teaches that not only
are they to do this, but they are “especially to bring them up to the praise
and honor of God.” In fact he adds,
“Therefore let all people know that it is their chief duty - at the risk of
losing divine grace – first to bring up their children in the fear and
knowledge of God.” If you are parent, every other activity and interest with
which you involve your child is meaningless when compared with raising them to
be Christians who know and practice the faith.
Children and youth know that they do disobey their
parents, and act in ways that prompt anger.
As adults, we recognize that we did this as well. What is more, those of
us who are parents recognize the ways we have failed to carry out the
responsibility God has given us in raising our children. We have not lived as if raising our children
in the fear and knowledge of the Lord is our most important job. We have placed other things ahead of this,
and invested far more time, money and energy with our children into these
things. I will give only one example
because it is probably the greatest way this occurs – sports – but there are
certainly others.
We have broken the Fourth Commandment, but Jesus Christ
did not. He did not as he lived with his
earthly parents, Mary and Joseph. When
Jesus was twelve, they accidentally left him behind in Jerusalem when they had
gone up for the Passover. After finding
him in the temple, Luke tells us, “And he went down with them and came to
Nazareth and was submissive to them.”
Yet as the One who is true God and true man, Jesus Christ
stood in another and far greater relationship.
When Mary and Joseph found Jesus he said to them, “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must
be in my Father's house?” God the
Father had sent the Son of God into the world in order to carry out his saving
will. He has sent the incarnate Son to
be the suffering Servant – the One who would bear our sins and receive God’s
judgment.
Our Lord Jesus obeyed the Father’s
will and was faithful to it. In the
Garden of Gethesemane as he was about the be betrayed into the suffering and
death of the cross, he prayed: “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from
me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.” Jesus drank the cup of God’s wrath – the
wrath that we deserved because of our sin. By his death he atoned for our sin,
so that now we can stand before God forgiven. And then on the third day God
raised Jesus from the dead. In the
resurrection God has given us victory over death, for we will share in our
Lord’s resurrection on the Last Day.
This victory that is ours through
the Gospel enables us to obey the authorities God has placed as we keep the
Fourth Commandment – and also to disobey if they tell us to violate God’s Word
and will. The Small Catechism’s
explanation says that we are not to “despise or anger our parents and other
authorities.” As we live in the world, chief among those other authorities
is the civil government.
God’s
word is clear that we are to obey the government. The apostle Paul told the Romans: “Let every
person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no
authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by
God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has
appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment.” Paul went on to say that we are to pay taxes:
“Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God's wrath but
also for the sake of conscience. For because of this you also pay
taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very
thing. Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed,
revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom
honor is owed.”
Paul tells us that we are to pray
for our government and leaders. He
write, “First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions,
and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in
high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly
and dignified in every way. This is good, and it is pleasing in
the sight of God our Savior.” We do this every Sunday in the Prayer of the
Church, and you should be doing it in your own prayer life each day.
The government is what Luther calls
God’s “left hand rule.” His “right hand
rule” occurs through the Gospel as it is proclaimed by the Church. There is no
force or coercion here, but only the work of the Spirit through the word about
Christ. God’s left hand rule takes place through the law as it is imposed by
the government. Because we live in
fallen world where sinners will sin wherever they can, the government is means
by which God represses and controls sin so that we can live in peace and
safety. Even those who don’t believe in God become God’s means by which he does
this.
The peace, security and order God
provides to us through the government is a great blessing that we should not
take for granted. Wherever you see a breakdown of government – or where the
government refuses to carry out its duty – you see the anarchy, chaos and
destruction that follows. You don’t have
to look to some Third World country to observe this. Think about the scenes that played out in New
Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, or what we saw this summer in riots inspired
by Antifa and Black Lives Matter.
When the government does what God
has given it to do, it is a great blessing from God. But in these times, we also see that the
government can be a force that promotes things that violate God’s will. It can
turn its coercive power towards the promotion of sin and evil. When it seeks to force us to accept and take
part in this sin, then we must disobey the government. We say with the apostle
Peter, “We must obey God rather than men.”
We must not be naïve.
Powerful forces in our culture are seeking to promote an understanding
of sexuality that violates God’s will. Our culture seeks to force acceptance of
homosexuality and so-called “transgenderism,” and to eradicate the biblical
worldview. There are those who want to use the government as the tool achieve
this. The “Equality Act” currently being promoted by our president and his
party is a powerful tool that, if passed, will be used to place Christians in a
position where they must either deny what God’s Word says about these matters
or face punishment and penalties.
When the government tells us to disobey God’s word, we
must disobey the government and be willing to suffer for the sake of the truth. Our Lord’s suffering that we are preparing
during Lent to remember provides the model for us. The apostle Peter wrote, “For this is a gracious
thing, when, mindful of God, one endures sorrows while suffering
unjustly. For what credit is it if, when you sin and are beaten for it,
you endure? But if when you do good and suffer for it you endure, this is
a gracious thing in the sight of God. For to this you have been
called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example,
so that you might follow in his steps.”
If God wills, we follow in Jesus’
steps as we accept unjust suffering. We can do this because we know that by his
death Christ has won forgiveness for us. We can do this because we know that on
Easter Jesus rose from the dead. In Jesus’ resurrection, we have the confidence
of the victory that has already been won. We can live in the certainty that
through baptism this victory is already ours and that we will receive its
consummation when the risen and ascended Lord returns in glory.
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