Walking in the Word-LWML Sunday

The text for our meditation on God’s Holy Word is the Old Testament lesson assigned for this LWML Sunday. I bring you grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Along with our reflection on God’s Word this morning we are going to have a little catechism lesson on what I think is one of the most neglected and misunderstood parts of Christian teaching—and that is the place and role of the law of God in guiding a believer’s life—what the church calls the “third use of the law”—what our LWML theme identifies as “walking in the Word”

Christians identify in the Bible three uses of the Law: the first use of the Law curbs violent outbursts of sin and helps keep order in the world. Throughout the world, there is an understanding of right and wrong. There are laws that govern society--among Christians and other religions and among unbelievers. All people know that there are actions that are good and actions that are bad-- because their own consciences tells them that it is so. God has placed his law in every human heart and people feel guilty and fear punishment when they do wrong. This is the first use of the law—a curb.

The second use of the law is like a mirror. When we look at our behavior and thoughts and words compared to God’s Law, we cannot help but see that we have done wrong. Like a mirror, the law shows us the truth about ourselves—what we look like morally in God’s sight. This second use of the law also applies to Christians and non-Christians—all people can see that we have not done as God desires us to do when the mirror of the law is held up to our lives.

The third use of the law is that of a rule—like the word “ruler”—this use of the law lays out the straight path that we are to walk as God’s children and helps us to measure our progress—like a ruler it lays out a straight line and measures progress along that line. But this use of the law—this third use of the law—the lesson we are going to be talking about today--is only for Christians.

Those who do not have Jesus Christ as their Savior cannot please God with their actions—they cannot progress in holiness. Only when our sins are taken away by Jesus—only when we are right in God’s sight on the basis on what Christ has done—can we then begin to please God with our lives and move forward in holy living.
This third use of the law answers the questions that every true believer asks: How can I please God with my life? How can I thank God for what he has done for me in Jesus? How can I serve my neighbor as God in Christ served me?

In other words, standing in faith at the foot of Calvary—seeing the incredible sacrifice of love that God has made for me in the death of Jesus Christ—knowing that his resurrection is my own eternal life, apart from anything that I do—I want to please and serve my Savior and I ask the Lord: how? God says:

Walk in my Word! We are not left to our own devices when it comes to pleasing him as his people-- and this is an important point to remember. People have done- and still do- all kinds of odd things to try and please God with their lives: they fast and join monasteries and refrain from marriage and go on pilgrimages and on it goes. But none of these things are commanded by God.

Instead, the answer that God gives to the believer who stands at the cross and sees his salvation as an accomplished fact of history-- and wants to know what God would have him do-- is found in the law. Someone who is truly a child of God cannot help but want to please their heavenly Father-- and the way to do that is by living a holy life guided by the law in service to one’s neighbor to the glory of God. That is what these verses before us today are all about. The psalmist says: Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path.

I mentioned earlier that the third uses of the law works like a ruler—in setting out a straight path in which we are to walk but also in helping us to measure our progress in holy living. And that is the very thing that is being taught in this first verse. God’s Word is a light for my path.

The path that we are to walk and the road that we are to travel in life is clearly marked out for us in God’s Word just like a streetlight that lightens a dark road. We never have to be in doubt in the least as to the direction that our Lord would have us travel as his children. There are words concerning our family life as children and parents and wives and fathers. There are precepts guiding our economic life as employers and employees and how we spend our money. There are laws governing our speech and our possessions and our bodily lives.

The God who created us- and who saved us- and who called us to be his own children- has a very specific will for the direction that our lives ought to go and he does not keep us in the dark about it but shines the bright shining lamp of his Word upon every aspect of it so that we can be certain of the road of life that the Lord wants us to walk.

I also mentioned that the third uses of the law functions like a ruler in another way—that it helps us to measure our progress in holy living just like a ruler has tic-marks to measure inches.

From the moment that we are included in God’s family by faith in Jesus (whether through baptism or preaching as the means that brought us there) our heavenly Father expects us to grow up in Christ-likeness—to progress in obedience—to become more holy—more set apart from the world around us.

It is a gross distortion of Christianity—in fact it is no Christianity at all-- to say that since our salvation is a free gift from God that we are free to live our lives as we see fit. Nothing could be further from the truth! We have been set free from the accusing curse of the law in Jesus Christ because he fulfilled it for us and suffered our punishment-that is true—SO THAT --we can begin to live as who God created us to be: his children whose delight it is to know and do his will.

The psalmist says: I have taken an oath and confirmed it, that I will follow your righteous laws. We too have taken an oath to follow God’s righteous laws. We took it for the first time in Holy Baptism where our parents and sponsors gave voice to the fact that we renounced the devil and all his works and all his ways. We took it again when we were confirmed and used our own voice to reaffirm that promise.

We make that promise to follow God’s righteous laws each time we are absolved and each time we come to Holy Communion—promising that, with the help of the Holy Spirit, we will amend our sinful lives. We make it each night when we go to bed—promising God that the next day we will try harder and do better in our Christian life.

That solemn promise—that oath—to follow God’s righteous laws -has to be made again and again- and we have to be strengthened by God’s grace to that end again and again- because we face mortal enemies who do no want us to keep God’s law.
There are enemies outside of us in the unbelieving world around us and the devil and his angels—and there is an enemy inside of us—our old sinful flesh that wars against the new person that we are in Christ. It is a life-long spiritual battle to follow God’s righteous laws. The psalmist writes:

I have suffered much; preserve my life, O LORD, according to your word. Accept, O LORD, the willing praise of my mouth, and teach me your laws. Though I constantly take my life in my hands, I will not forget your law. The wicked have set a snare for me, but I have not strayed from your precepts.

The wicked have set a snare for me. How easy it is to for us today to understand these words that were written by the psalmist 3000 years ago! It is the challenge that every believer faces every day of his life even when we are fully committed to Christ!

We ARE thankful for what God has done for us in Christ! We DO want to live a life that is worthy of him! We KNOW what God would have us do and how he would have us live. But what we find (from the moment we wake up to the moment we go to sleep) is that there are snares that trip us up in our walk with the Lord and unlike the psalmist, I have strayed from the precepts of God—and I bet you have too.

How easy that is to do! We want to avoid sexual temptation- and yet there are images all around us that tempt us to lust. We want to keep God first in our lives- but we live in a culture where we are told that we ought to put ourselves first. We want to honor those in authority over us in our nation- but their dishonorable behavior undermines that desire. We want to be thankful for what we have- but marketers make their living trying to convince us that our possessions aren’t good enough.

We live in a world that increasingly does not share our faith and doesn’t even share our concern for basic, decent moral living and ridicules us for being old-fashioned and puritanical—and we are affected by it. We find ourselves straying from the precepts of the Lord—from the straight path he would have us walk--sometimes unintentionally—sometimes intentionally. That is when the cry of the psalmist becomes our own: Preserve my life, O LORD, according to your word! And he does!

When the world, the devil, and our own sinful flesh threaten to overcome our faith and overwhelm our life with God, he comes to us with his comforting words of life: that we are his children—that Christ has forgiven us—that he will be with us always—words that we hear as we read our bibles and listen to sermons and come to the Sacrament of the Altar—words that restore us and forgives us and preserve our life of faith.

Hearing these words of life we begin again to follow the Lord—praising him for what he has done for us and desiring to know more about the will of our heavenly Father. This joy of a life lived in fellowship with God is what led the psalmist to write:
Your statutes are my heritage forever; they are the joy of my heart. My heart is set on keeping your decrees to the very end.

That obedience to the statutes of God is a joy, is something that only the believer can say. The unbeliever experiences the law of God as a burden that hinders his life and reveals the unpleasant truth about what kind of person he really is. But the child of God knows that Jesus fulfilled the law in his place and suffered his punishment and so it is our highest pleasure to live in fellowship with God—it is a blessing to obey—and the only way to a joy-filled life. It is what we were created for!

And so on this LWML Sunday we join our voice to that of the psalmist and make the same promise and commitment that he made: Lord, my heart is set on keeping your decrees to the very end. From this moment forward, throughout my life, I am resolved to walk according to God’s Word. May God grant it for Jesus' sake! Amen.

And now may the peace of God that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus unto life everlasting. Amen.