Proper 22 Year A 10/4/2026
Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20; Psalm 19; Philippians 3:4b-14; Matthew 21:33-46
Rev. Mark A. Lafler
Our first reading comes from the second book of the Bible – Exodus.
It is part of the Torah (in Hebrew) …
Or Pentateuch (in Greek) …
Meaning the Books of the Law…
In the Old Testament.
And our reading is the famous story when Moses received the Ten Commandments.
Our text says: Then God spoke all these words…
And it lists the Ten Commandments in order.
The Ten Commandments are the laws given to Moses and the people of Israel to show them their duty to God and their duty to their neighbors.
And they are important for us today as well.
The first four commandments have to do with our relationship to God.
The next six commandments have to do with our relationship with each other.
You can find a summary of them in our Prayer Book in the catechism on pages 847-848.
Nevertheless, the Ten Commandments are not the whole of the Law.
There is a total of 613 laws in the Torah.
The Ten Commandments aren’t even close to all of them.
And if that’s the case…
Why do we as Christians single out these ten from the rest of them?
Are we supposed to keep all 613 laws or just these 10?
Why or why not?
And it doesn’t help when we enter the fray of our cultural wars…
Whether it’s a social platform or some sort of expert in the media…
Many columnists, pundits, journalists, and social media darlings dismiss Christians as inconsistent because “they pick and choose which of the rules in the Bible to obey.”
Some people say “Christians ignore lots of Old Testament texts—
about not eating raw meat or pork or shellfish,
not executing people for breaking the Sabbath,
not wearing garments woven with two kinds of material and so on.
Then they condemn homosexuality.
Aren’t you just picking and choosing what they want to believe from the Bible?”[1]
Is that a fair assessment of many Christians?
Perhaps you wouldn’t know how to respond to this criticism of the interpretation of the Law…
Or perhaps you have the same criticism, but are unsure if we are to obey the Old Testament Law or not…
So, to try to make things clear…
Let’s dive into a Christian understanding of the Old Testament Law.
First, the Old Testament Law gives various laws for a variety of purposes.
For instance, some of the laws are related to the sacrificial system for animal sacrifice to atone for the sins of the people.
The rules were the only way they could approach a holy God.
Many had to do with ceremonial purity and cleanness.
You could only approach God in worship if you ate certain foods and not others, wore certain forms of dress,
refrained from touching a variety of objects, and so on.[2]
And so, over 200 laws in the Old Testament are related to ceremonial laws…
However, many Old Testament writers hinted that the sacrifices and the temple worship regulations pointed forward to something beyond them.
Such as the prophet Hosea (6.6) who wrote:
For I desire mercy, not sacrifice,
and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings.
(also see 1 Samuel 15:21-22; Psalm 50:12-15; 51:17).
In the New Testament, when Jesus the Christ appeared he declared all foods ‘clean’ (Mark 7:19) and he ignored the Old Testament clean laws in other ways…
As he went about touching lepers and touching dead bodies…
Both clearly taboo according to the Old Testament Law.
You see when Jesus came, he came not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it.
In him the ceremonial law is made complete.
When he died on the cross the veil in the temple was ripped through, showing that the need for the entire sacrificial system with all its clean laws had been done away with.
Jesus is the ultimate sacrifice for sin.
It is in Christ Jesus that we have the forgiveness of sins and are made clean…
Which is why you didn’t bring a lamb or a dove into church today…
We don’t need animal sacrifices…
Jesus was and is the ultimate sacrifice for the sins of the world.
And to put it a step further…
For Christians to obey the ceremonial laws is to deny that the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross is complete…
That would be inconsistent with the New Testament teaching of atonement.
If I believe Jesus is the resurrected Son of God,
I can’t follow all the ‘clean laws’ of diet and practice,
and I can’t offer animal sacrifices.
All that would be to deny the power of Christ’s death on the cross.[3]
Contrary to the fabric of the Christian faith.
The New Testament, though, says more about how to read the Old Testament.
St. Paul makes it clear in Romans 13…
(a text we just heard a few weeks ago) …
that the apostles understood the Old Testament moral law to still be binding on us.
He wrote:
Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law.
The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,”
“You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,”
“You shall not covet,” and whatever other command there may be,
are summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
Love does no harm to a neighbor.
Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.
The Messiah, Jesus, changed how we worship but not how we are to live.
As the late minister, Timothy Keller writes:
The moral law is an outline of God’s own character—his integrity, love, and faithfulness.
And so all the Old Testament says about loving our neighbor,
caring for the poor, generosity with our possessions,
social relationships, and commitment to our family is still in force.
The New Testament continues to forbid killing or committing adultery, and all the sex ethic of the Old Testament is re-stated throughout the New Testament
(see Matthew 5:27-30; 1 Corinthians 6:9-20; 1 Timothy 1:8-11.)
If the New Testament has reaffirmed a commandment, then it is still in force for us today.[4]
So we have ceremonial laws and we have the moral and ethic laws of the Old Testament…
There is still another set of laws – the civic laws of the Torah…
There are about 150 of these.
These have to do with penalties of breaking the law…
In the nation-state of the Jewish people.
Civil penalties…
In the Old Testament things like adultery or incest were punishable with civil sanctions like execution.
Think of how Jesus went against the civil law in the Gospel of John (8:1-11) where a woman was caught in adultery…
The law said that she was to be killed…
And her accusers were ready to do just that.
Jesus though showed mercy and grace…
And after the scene he commanded her to leave her life of sin.
In the age of the church… sins are dealt with by exhortation and, at worst, exclusion from membership.
In the two letters of Paul to the church in Corinth, we have the case of how incest was dealt with in regards to the church…
And it wasn’t with the Old Testament Law of the death penalty.[5]
So, just to summarize…
Part of the Old Testament Law is renewed in the New Testament…
That would be the moral and ethical laws…
But not the ceremonial and civil laws.
All of the Old Testament Law is still the Word of God for us even though it is not still the command of God to us.
We are to know about the commands, but they are not directly toward us personally.
To pinpoint it clearly – only that which is explicitly renewed from the Old Testament law can be considered part of the New Testament “law of Christ” (Galatians 6.2).[6]
So going back to some of our original questions…
Christians are not just picking and choosing what we want from the Old Testament if we are consistently pointing toward the moral law that is in both the Old and New Testaments.
And we are to obey the moral law that is given in both Testaments.
But you know what…
That is really hard…
Just look at the Ten Commandments…
Have you ever placed something else in life above God?
Have you always been honest and fair in all your dealings… truthful and not misleading?
Have you ever fallen for envy, greed, jealousy, or lust?
You see the Ten Commandments and the rest of the moral law…
Including the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5,6, and 7…
Show us just how far sin separates us from God.
We can’t fulfill the law of God on our own.
The Law of God teaches us that we need help…
That we need a savior…
That we need someone to fulfill the law on our behalf.
And that person is Jesus Christ.
Who lived a perfect life…
He never sinned against the Law of God…
He fulfilled it…
And yet died the penalty of sin…
Even death on the cross.
Yet, he rose again.
By faith in Jesus, through the grace of God, we can be set free from the Law of sin and death.
And we being empowered by the Holy Spirit learn to walk in the way of Christ – to love God and love others.
I really like the summary that the Heidelberg Catechism (from 1563) has it (this around the same time the original Book of Common Prayer came out in 1549)…
It asks the question:
Why then does God so strictly enjoin the Ten Commandments upon us, since in this life no one can keep them?
It gives the answer…
First, that as long as we live we may learn more and more to know our sinful nature, and so the more earnestly seek forgiveness of sins and righteousness in Christ;
Second, that without ceasing we diligently ask God for the grace of the Holy Spirit, that we be renewed more and more after the image of God, until we attain the goal of perfection after this life.[7]
To summarize that with our Prayer Book…
I will, with God’s help.
The Law of God points us toward the savior of the world…
Jesus Christ.
That’s who we need…
More and more and more…
Let us go to him and receive his grace.
Amen.
[1] Excerpted from Timothy Keller, Old Testament Law and the Charge of Inconsistency, June 12, 2012 (Online)
[2] Keller.
[3] Keller.
[4] Keller.
[5] See 1 Corinthians 5:1ff. and 2 Corinthians 2:7-11.
[6] Gordon D. Fee and Douglas Stuart, How to Read the Bible For All its Worth (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1993), 153-154.
[7] Q. 115.
