The Fourth Sunday of Easter
And Rite of Christian Confirmation for Tierra Franzisko and Aidan Rottmann
Stay Inside the Fence
Christ is risen! (He is risen, indeed! Alleluia!) In today’s Epistle, God the
Holy Spirit preaches to you, Tierra and Aidan, and this is what He says:
“Whoever keeps [God’s] commandments abides in Him, and He in them.” Of course,
God the Spirit not speaking to you alone. He is speaking and preaching also to
your parents, your grandparents and to every other Christian here who will
listen and not ignore: “Whoever keeps [God’s] commandments abides in Him, and
He in them.”
When God the Holy Spirit speaks to you about keeping the commandments, He is
NOT telling you how to be saved or how to gain eternal life. God has already
saved you! You already have His gift of eternal life! God saved you on the day
He baptized you, when He washed away your sins (Acts 22:16) and adopted you as
His dearly loved child (Romans 8:15, Galatians 4:6). When you were baptized,
the forgiving blood that Jesus shed for you upon the cross became yours
forever, and all your sins were given to Jesus. Forgiveness is now yours;
salvation is now yours; eternal life is now yours; resurrection to happiness is
now forever yours—and God’s Ten Commandments have given you NONE of these
things! It was Jesus, NOT the Ten Commandments. Jesus has given you all these
things and more!
So the Spirit is NOT telling you how to be saved, or how to gain eternal life,
when He preaches to you today, “Whoever keeps [God’s] commandments abides in
Him, and He in them.” Rather, God is telling you in these Words that His Ten
Commandments have now become a gift and blessing of your Baptism.
I am going to repeat what I just said, because some people will think it sounds
strange: God’s Ten Commandments are now a gift and a blessing to you because
God baptized you.
Some of your fellow Christians—maybe some of your own family members—will think
it sounds strange that I would call the Ten Commandments a gift of your
Baptism. That is because many people think of God’s Ten Commandments as nothing
more than a list of things God requires us to do. And by all means, God
certainly requires us to obey His commandments! God not only requires us to
obey, but He also threatens to punish everyone who ignores His commandments.
For that matter, God will even punish people who say that they are Christians,
and say that they have Jesus in their hearts, but then live every day as if God
and His Words do not matter. That is why Jesus spoke to each of us the very
serious warning, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the
kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 7:21).
Yes, God’s commandments tell us what He wants us to do. But the Commandments
also do more than that. As you both learned in confirmation class, the Ten
Commandments also show us our great, on-going need for Jesus. While they tell
us what God wants of us, the commandments also show us how miserably we all
fail in each and every thing God has said. Lord, have mercy! God forgive us for
the sake of Your Son Jesus! Because the Ten Commandments do such a good job of
showing us our sin, they help us to get ready for worship each Sunday (among
other things). After a week of incurring guilt upon guilt by breaking the
commandments—after a week of having other people break the commandments against
us—what could be better than the cool water and green pastures of Sunday
morning worship?
• Here Jesus confirms and repeats the promises He made to you in your
Baptism, that you will be His beloved child forever—even when you do not feel
very much like a child of God.
• Here Jesus speaks His life-giving Word of forgiveness to you, never
holding against you the ways you have broken the commandments—even when you
fall back into breaking them again.
• Here and only here Jesus serves His body and blood to you, given for
the forgiveness of your sins: given this week, given next week, given yet again
the week after that.
God’s Ten Commandments get you ready for these things. God’s Ten Commandments
give you the gift of showing you your sin, so that you will wake up and
recognize your need for your Savior. If you should foolishly ignore the Ten
Commandments, reject the Commandments, or pretend the Commandments do not
matter, then you will never turn your attention to God’s Word; you will never
want to come to church; you will never desire to hear Jesus’ forgiveness and
assurance and peace, all of which He gives here.
Listen again to what the Holy Spirit is saying to the Church: “Whoever keeps
[God’s] commandments abides in Him, and He in them.” With these Words, the Holy
Spirit wants you to know that His Ten Commandments do more for you than 1) tell
you what He wants you to do, and 2) get you ready for Sunday morning. In
today’s Epistle, God the Holy Spirit is telling you that the Ten Commandments
also have the power (compare Acts 7:38) to give you help and comfort for every
single day of your life! This is an amazing thing: “Whoever keeps [God’s]
commandments abides in Him, and He in them.”
Pause a moment and check these Words out:
• Whoever: that means you. It means me, it means your family, and it
means all these other Christians here, too. “Whoever” includes everyone.
• Keeps: cherishes, loves, holds close to the heart, and yes, obeys. Even
if you should end up foolishly breaking the Commandments, “KEEP” still speaks
about your high regard and love for the Commandments—a love that God Himself
first gave to you.
• Abides: this word means that the living, eternal God is so deeply
connected to you, that you might as well say He is inside you and you are
inside Him. “Abide” is a word that speaks about living and dwelling and
keeping residence.
Put all these things together, and you have a wonderful promise from God:
“Whoever keeps [God’s] commandments abides in Him, and He in them.” Stated
another way, whoever holds and cherishes and loves God’s Commandments continues
to live and remain and dwell in God, and God in Him.
Do the Ten Commandments give you God’s grace and mercy? No so much. Do the Ten
Commandments help you to know that you have God’s grace and mercy, and it will
never be taken away from you? Exactly! “Whoever keep His commandments abides in
Him, and He in them.”
Think of it this way. Suppose you are a cow or a sheep. Your farmer or shepherd
leads you into a rich, wonderful pasture and says to you, “All this is yours.
Eat, drink, and rest here. You will be safe here.” Now, running around the edge
of this pasture is a good, sturdy fence. What does that fence do for you? That
fence lets you know where the good pasture ends and the rough wilderness
begins. That fence shows you where the Good Shepherd and the Gentle Farmer
wants you to be, so that he may watchfully care for you and protect you.
That fence is just like the Ten Commandments. Jesus is your Good Shepherd, as
you heard in today’s Gospel. When Jesus baptized you and brought you into His
eternal kingdom, that is like a shepherd who leads his sheep into a rich
pasture. The grass—to so speak—of Holy Communion will continue to nourish you.
The refreshing water of Baptism will continue to satisfy your thirst.
The fence is the Ten Commandments. The fence shows you where the good pasture
ends and the rough wilderness begins. “Whoever keeps [God’s] commandments
abides in Him, and He in them.” That is to say, whoever remains inside the
fence abides in God, and God in him. Whoever does not jump over the fence and
run away abides in God and God in him. Whoever loves and respects and observes
the fence of the Ten Commandments will continue to know where the good pasture
is, and where the cool water can be found. That fence shows you where the Good
Shepherd and the Gentle Farmer wants you to be, so that he may watchfully care
for you and protect you.
In confirmation class, you learned to think about God’s Scriptures in terms of
Law and Gospel. God says to you today in His Scriptures, “Whoever keeps [God’s]
commandments abides in Him, and He in them.”
• Here is the Law: Stay inside the fence. If you jump over the fence,
abandoning God’s Commandments and living as if you do not even know them, then
you should not expect to receive any good thing from God, either in this life
or in the life to come.
• Here is the Gospel: Stay inside the fence. The pasture of Jesus’
forgiveness is thick and green and it will feed you for eternity. Stay inside
the fence. The water of Jesus’ Baptism has already cleansed your sins, and will
continue to do so all your days. Stay inside the fence, because that is where
your Good Shepherd is and that is where you will always find Him. Stay inside
the fence: “Whoever keeps [God’s] commandments abides in Him, and He in them.”
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