The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1900, Page 26

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26

The Lutheran Pioneer.

(For the LUTHERAN PIONEER.)
The Third Commandment.

Which is the Third Commandment?

Thou shalt sanctify the holy-day.

What does this mean?

We should fear and love God, that we may
not despise preaching and His word; but hold
it sacred, and gladly hear and learn it.

Luther has seemingly taken great liberties
with the Third Commandment as he gives it in
the Small Catechism. For he does not only
omit a portion of the words spoken by the Lord
on Mount Sinai, as he does in the case of the
First and Second Commandments, but he gives
the Third Commandment a new construction,
casts it, as it were, into an altogether new
mold. Whence does Luther derive the au-
thority todo so? Answer: From God’s Word;
for thus writes the holy apostle, Col. 2, 16. 17:
**Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in
drink, or in respect of an holy-day, or of the
new moon, or of the sabbath-days: which are
a shadow of things to come; but the body is of
Christ.’? To the Jews the Lord had indeed
said: ‘‘Remember the sabbath-day to keep it
holy.’’ And He had furthermore told them
how they should keep this day holy. On the
Sabbath no labor except that connected with
divine service should be performed. No fire
durst be kindled, no burden carried, no jour-
ney undertaken. To disobey these injunctions
meant death for the transgressor. — But this
law was not for all time. Together with the
other Ceremonial Laws which God gave the
Jews, it was ‘‘a shadow of things to come,’’
a type of the Sabbath, or rest, of Christ at
the end of His work of redemption, a figure
of the rest of the believer in the merits of his
Saviour, and a shadow of that eternal rest in
heayen which is in store for the people of God.
With the coming of Christ the type must give
place to the anti-type, the shadow to the body.
The Ceremonial Law with its countless direc-
tions and regulations was null and void the
moment Christ cried out: ‘‘It is finished,”’
and the veil in the temple was rent in twain.

The Sabbath is abolished by God Himself,
and therefore no man has the right to com-
mand us to keep any certain day as the Sab-
bath. Therefore also Luther in his explana-
tion of the Third Commandment enters upon
no explanation of the word “tholy-day.’? The
Third Commandment in its New-Testamental
sense commands nothing but the hearing of
the public preaching of God’s Word, leaving
us Christians to choose the place and time for
such hearing. While God has abolished the
Sabbath, He has not appointed any other day
to take its place. We Christians do indeed
generally observe Sunday, but we do it not
because of any divine command. Sunday is
observed in Christian liberty, like Christmas,
Easter, or any other holiday, and rests upon
no command of God as did the Jewish Sab-
bath. The Sabbath had to be observed for
conscience’ sake, but Sunday is a mere human

ordinance of thechurch. Itis therefore a great
mistake to think that our Sunday has taken the
place of the Sabbath.

But since we must have time and opportu-
nity for public worship, it is necessary that a
certain day be set aside for such purpose. And
so then the Christians in the days of the apos-
tles, recognizing this necessity, chose the first
day of the week as their chief day of public
worship. Their reason for choosing this day
before any other is beautifully given in the
words of one of our hymns:

“To-day He rose and left the dead,
And Satan’s empire fell;

To-day the saints His triumph spread,
And all His wonders tell.’’

The observance of Sunday as a holiday thus
only resting upon an old custom dating back
to the days of the apostles, and not upon a
divine ordinance, it is in itself no more wrong
to work on Sunday than on any other day.
Working on Sunday can only become a sin
through other circumstances; namely, when
we let it prevent us from hearing God’s Word,
or when we thereby give offence to weak Chris-
tians, contrary to Rom. 14, 14—23, or when
we thereby transgress the laws of the state. —

‘‘But,’? someone may here say, ‘‘do you not
by your way of reasoning declare the Third
Commandment null and void?”’? By no means!
We only strip it of the outward shell which
concerned the Jews exclusively, and leave the
kernel. But what the kernel of this Command-
ment is Luther most beautifully expresses in
his explanation: ‘‘We should fear and love
God, that we may not despise preaching and
His word; but hold it sacred, and gladly hear
and learn it.’”

We are forbidden to despise preaching and
God’s Word. God’s Word is preached in
church. By not attending church, or public
worship, we despise the preaching of God’s
Word, and plainly show that we are not God’s
children; for Christ says, ‘‘He that is of God
heareth God’s words.’”’ It is an open false-
hood for anyone to say that he loves God and
yet habitually absent himself from public wor-
ship. He that loves God loves God’s Word also
and the place where God’s Word is proclaimed.

But even among those that go to church
there are despisers of God’s Word. ‘There
are, namely, many that do not come to hear
the Word of God, but only out of custom or
to give themselves the appearance of being
good Christians. Others come, but pay no
attention to the sermon, either laughing, talk-
ing, sleeping, or thinking about other things
the mean while. Still others listen, but they
do not apply what they hear to themselves,
but to others; they hear, and yet do not hear.
To all these churchgoers may well be applied
the word. of the Lord: ‘Because thou hast
rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee.”’
(Hos. 4,6.) Then there is yet another class
of hearers, which continually forgets the fact
that it is God’s Word that is preached; that
the preacher isGod’s messenger. Such hearers

Christ warns when He says: ‘He that heareth
you heareth me; and he that despiseth you
despiseth me; and he that despiseth me de-
spiseth Him that sent me.’’ (Luke 10, 16.)
But the Third Commandment refers not only
to the spoken word of God, it also forbids us
to despise the written and visible word. « The
written word we have in our Bibles, and the
Sacraments are the visible word. To neglect -
the reading and study of our Bibles and to re-
fuse to be baptized and to go to the Holy Sup-
per are therefore also transgressions of the
Third Commandment, and he that is guilty of
these sins is just as little a child of God as is he
that despises the preaching of God’s Word. —
From the above it is easy to see what is en-
joined in the Third Commandment, namely,
to hold preaching and God’s Word sacred and
gladly hear and learn it. Unlike the scribes
and Pharisees who rejected the preaching of .
John the Baptist (Luke 7, 30), we should fol-
low the example of the ‘Thessalonians, who re-
ceived the word of Paul as the Word of God
(1 Thess. 2, 13). God’s Word should be unto
us better than thousands of gold and silver
and sweeter than honey and the honeycomb.
And this we should prove to be the case by
gladly hearing and learning it. God’s Word
is preached in church, therefore we should at-
tend public worship and listen with devout at-
tention to what God there tells us. As Mary
sat at Jesus’ feet and listened intently to His
Word and for Jesus forgot all earthly con-
cerns, so also we should turn our undivided
attention during the sermon to the word which
the preacher proclaims to us in God’s name.
And having heard the word, we should also
learn and keep it. We should think over what
we have heard, keep it in our hearts, and apply
it to our lives. Of the Bereans we are told,
that they not only received the Word with
readiness, but searched the Scriptures daily.
This we should also do. God’s Word should
be our daily food, our rod and staff on the
way toheaven. And in this manner the Chris-
tian does not sanctify but one day in the week,
but every day ; he has not only one holy-day in
seven, but every day is for him a holy-day.—
It is almost needless to say that he who loves
preaching and God’s Word will do all in his
power to uphold the office of the public minis-
try, and will therefore gladly give of his tem-
poral means to the support of his pastor, being
mindful of the words of the apostle: ‘‘Let him
that is taught in the word, communicate unto
him that teacheth in all good things.” ae

———s + o~< oo

The Christian’s Life.

‘CA Christian,’’ says Dr. Luther, «does not
live for himself, but for Christ and bis neigh-
bor: for Christ through faith, for his neighbor
through love. Through faith he ascends above
himself to God; from God he descends peneath
himself through love.”’