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Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-18 w/gloss and notes

Text: Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-18

¹ The Lord spoke to Moses, ² “Tell the whole congregation of Israel: You are holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy...

⁹ ...“When you harvest the grain in your land, don’t harvest the grain in the corners of your fields or gather what is left after you’re finished. ¹⁰ Don’t harvest your vineyard a second time or pick up fallen grapes. Leave them for poor people and foreigners. I am the Lord your God.

¹¹ “Never steal, lie, or deceive your neighbor.

¹² “Never swear by my name in order to deceive anyone. This dishonors the name of your God. I am the Lord.

¹³ “Never oppress or rob your neighbor. Never keep the pay you owe a hired worker overnight. ¹⁴ Never curse deaf people or put anything in the way of blind people to make them stumble. Instead, fear your God. I am the Lord.

¹⁵ “Don’t be corrupt when administering justice. Never give special favors to poor people, and never show preference to important people. Judge your neighbor fairly. ¹⁶ Never gossip. Never endanger your neighbor’s life. I am the Lord.

¹⁷ “Never hate another Israelite. Be sure to correct your neighbor so that you will not be guilty of sinning along with him. ¹⁸ Never get revenge. Never hold a grudge against any of your people. Instead, love your neighbor as you love yourself. I am the Lord.

Theme & Summary of Scripture: The Gospel announces salvation to the most unworthy(Lev. 19:1-2). Thereafter, God sends His “holy” people to serve (bear the Cross for) their neighbor in and through God-pleasing vocations (Lev. 19:9-18).

Theological Gloss:

• Read incorrectly, Leviticus 19:1-2 teaches us we are to be holy like God (“Whoever does this will live by it”! - Rom. 10:5), then gives us a list (Lev. 19:9-18) of works which will transform us so we can, if we work at it faithfully, become more like God (Faith without works is dead - Jam. 2:20).

• Read correctly, God announces the Good News to his congregation of the unworthy (Lev. 19:1-2). Thereafter, He sends them out into the world to serve (bear the Cross for) their neighbor through God-pleasing vocations (Lev. 18:9-18).

This is the theology of the Cross brought to bear on Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-18.

Illustration: Love your neighbor in the same way that you love yourself (Lev. 19:18).

Growing up in a small town on the Iron Range, surrounded by mining pits and jack-pines, if your last name did not have nine consonants and a vowel, and go back at least four generations you were not “local.” My parents lived in Ely 21 years and they were never “local.” They were outsiders simply by virtue of where they were born: outside the city limits! A small town congregation can be like that too of course. If your grandfather’s confirmation class picture is not up on the wall or your family did not put up the trusses for the building, you’re not really a member of the church. This isn’t due to a lack of faith, resolve, commitment or motivation. It’s simply that, well, you weren’t born here. You’re not “local.”

That’s the picture the Holy Spirit paints for us this morning as well, about the “congregation of Israel.” Even though Israel was a dead branch, even though they’d always been dependent on God for everything because of their spiritual helplessness, and helpless in just about every sense of the word: helpless when they were in Egypt, helpless when they were in the desert during the Exodus, helpless when they crossed the Jordan, helpless when they were brought into the Holy Land, helpless when they were given judges, helpless when they were sent prophets, helpless when they were given kings (against God’s wishes), helpless when they were given more prophets, helpless when they were given a Savior... You get the point.

Even though everything is given to them by God and He calls them “holy” because He is holy (Not because of anything they’d done) still they insist on always pruning that family tree for the times when folks that weren’t “local” came around. Instead of understanding that they were holy because of their relation to the God who’d called, rescued, and led them; instead of hearing and obeying His Word that they serve their neighbor (“love your neighbor in the same way you love yourself” - Lev. 19:18), they worried over who could trace their family tree back to Jacob, or Isaac, or Abraham (Titus 3:9)!

Jesus says about those who constantly trim and prune their family tree that their roots don’t go back to Abraham but to Satan (Jn. 8:31-47). Why? Because they’re more in love with their family tree than the Tree of Life (and if they reject the love of God in Jesus Christ what do you think they will do to their neighbor!). Yet, it is Jesus Himself who is the Root of Jesse, the Branch of David, the Tree of Life, etc. But, praise God, who is kind and gentle and patient with you as He was with the congregation of Israel, on account of His suffering, death and resurrection for your sins you (wild olive branches) are grafted on to Him, the Tree of Life (Rom. 11:24) and in this way He produces through you good fruit unto eternal life! As Paul writes: If we have died with him, we will live with him. If we endure, we will rule with him. If we disown him, he will disown us. If we are unfaithful, he remains faithful because he cannot be untrue to himself (2 Tim. 2:11-13).

Summary of Illustration:

• We are hopelessly in love with our family tree over-against our neighbor and even the Tree of Life, Christ Jesus.
• God says, “You are holy because I am holy...”
• God sends His people out, freed from guilt and sin because of Christ, to bear their neighbor’s Cross in and through in God-pleasing vocations. In this way He produces good fruit through us, His wild olive branches.

*** Affliction and crosses are beneficial for gaining an understanding of God and His Word. (See: Isaiah 28:19. Likewise, “It is good that I am afflicted, so that I might learn Your statutes” (Psalm 119:71)).

**** The Word of God:

1. Binds us under sin and condemns us.
2. Testifies to us about Christ.
3. Consoles us so we may have patience and hope
4. Teaches, rebukes, corrects, and instructs us, so that the man of God may be perfected & equipped for all things (2 Timothy 3:16,17).

Psalm 119:33-40 w/Introduction & Meditation

Introduction: The 119th psalm is a long psalm, containing prayers, comforts, instructions, and thanks in great number. It is chiefly written to make us excited about God’s Word. It praises God’s Word throughout and warns us against both the false teachers and against boredom and contempt for the Word. Therefore, it is primarily to be counted among the psalms of comfort. Its primary concern is that we have God’s Word in its purity and hear it gladly. From this concern, then, come powerful prayers, instructions, thanks, prophecies, worship of God, suffering, and all that pleases God and grieves the devil. But where one despises the Word and is satiated by it, there all these cease. For where the Word is not purely taught, there is truly an abundance of prophecies - but totally false and condemned! For it is then only service to the devil, who is this impure with all his heretics.

PSALM 119:33-40

³³ Teach me, O Lord, how to live by your laws, and I will obey them to the end.

³⁴ Help me understand so that I can follow your teachings.

I will guard them with all my heart.

³⁵ Lead me on the path of your commandments, because I am happy with them.

³⁶ Direct my heart toward your written instructions rather than getting rich in underhanded ways.

³⁷ Turn my eyes away from worthless things. Give me a new life in your ways.

³⁸ Keep your promise to me so that I can fear you.

³⁹ Take away insults, which I dread, because your regulations are good.

⁴⁰ I long for your guiding principles. Give me a new life in your righteousness.

Meditation: Our old nature that we carry around with us, with the devil pushing us and our worldly surroundings tempting us, desires “Keeping up with the neighbor.” The same was happening in the life of the Psalmist. That is why he writes, “Direct my heart toward your written instructions rather than getting rich in underhanded ways.” v.36. He desires that revived in the way of the LORD, he will look at that which makes him truly rich. He knows that the ways of the omniscient LORD, His judgments, His precepts, His statutes are the most important and other matters are worthless when it comes to his eternal welfare. Placing his trust in the all knowing LORD and His Word, the Psalmist is given a life of true riches which brings contentment to the heart.

The omniscient LORD knows our needs to make us truly rich. This is why He sent His Son Jesus Christ. “He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him freely give us all things?” Rom. 8:32. “You know the grace of our LORD Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that you through His poverty might be rich.” 2 Cor. 8:9. Trusting this omniscient LORD we will be rich into eternity. 

A New Antidote?

 By the time Martin Luther set out for Heidelberg in April of 1518 some of his previous works had already been widely circulated throughout Germany. Despite attempts to provoke a learned, public discussion Luther’s writings were not received as such by everyone. Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz recognized something was different about the works, a threat to prevailing teachings. His response to reading Luther’s works was to take action against him. Albrecht forwarded some of Luther’s tracts including the Ninety-Five Theses to Rome along with a request that Luther be censured, even inhibited in his duties as a District Vicar. By February, 1518 Albrecht’s request had been answered. Gabriel della Volta, pro-magistrate of the Augustinian order, through his correspondence with Luther’s superior Staupitz ordered that Luther be relieved of his duties as District Vicar at the annual meeting of the Augustinians at Heidelberg.

When Luther arrived at Heidelberg he was relieved of the post in favor of his friend Lang. However, Luther was still allowed to preside over the full-dress theological disputation for which he had prepared a number of theological and philosophical theses. The intent of the theses, it was presumed, was that Luther would continue the tradition of the order castigating Aristotelian Nominalism. Luther gave them something new instead. Although he focused his attention throughout the theses on sin and grace Luther did not rely on traditional Augustinian categories to argue against Nominalist opinion. He lays out his understanding of grace according to what he termed the “theology of the Cross.” 

He did not formulate the common understanding of grace as that which helps sinners seek and discover God’s righteousness. Instead, according to Luther, the theologian of the Cross understands that, “true theology is in Christ crucified, and there is the true knowledge of God.” Distinct from the theology of the Cross Luther also described what he referred to as a theology of glory. A theology of glory is a theology of speculation, ignorant to the fact that, “God is not found save in sufferings and in the Cross.”

 Instead of confining his understanding of God’s righteousness within traditional categories of sin and grace Luther formulated a critical principle for determining law and the Gospel. The former expressed God’s alien work and the latter expressed God’s work by which he makes sinners righteous.

As a result, Luther’s reading of his theses before the assembled order made for a lively debate. There was, writes Gordon Rupp:

 “…some opposition, but when the junior Heidelberg divine shouted angrily, ‘if the peasants heard that, they would stone you!’ his voice was drowned in general laughter. But it was among the younger men that Luther made his conquests that day. One of them, a young Alsatian Dominican, Martin Bucer, was overwhelmed, and wrote home in high glee because he managed to have lunch with Staupitz and Luther: ‘Their wiles were not able to move him an inch… his sweetness in answering is remarkable, his patience in listening is incomparable, in his explanations you would recognize the acumen of Paul, not Scotus: his answers, so brief, so wise and drawn from the Scriptures, easily made all hearers his admirers.”

           

Luther’s theses were a theological shock and remain so to this day. The theology of the Cross is a way of speaking and acting that appears strange, fearful and thrilling. The theology of the Cross is formulated in language which is contrary to the predominant metaphysical and moral forms of interpreting Scripture and preaching.

 Luther himself noted during 1515, that, “To no one does the preaching of the Cross appear so foolish as to philosophers and men of power because it is completely contrary to them and their sensitivities.”

  

The reactions to Luther that day have continued in some way to the present – with reactions even among certain Protestants gaining ground over time. Despite the evangelical movements that emerged from some of Luther’s discoveries, there remains essential resistance, not only by the Roman counter-reformation but even among Protestants, to Luther’s critical principle and the new theological language that emerged from him. To be certain, Luther’s difference in speaking “stands as opposed to today’s modern Protestantism as he stood against the scholastic-Catholic system centuries earlier.”

Luther’s way of doing theology is peculiar and alien not because it emerged from common sense or philosophy but from the Scriptures. It may seem counter-intuitive that theology and church would be surprised by what emerges from Scripture – but this is key to what Luther was discovering – protectors of Scripture can be overcome by it. A true critical principle, after all, lays bare a deadly truth that is at least partially concealed even when in plain sight. The force of the dialectic was emerging in Luther, in that what reveals also remains foreign, alien and hidden in the word of the Cross of Jesus Christ. In this word of the Cross, all good things are hidden, not in order for us to seek and discover them, but that Christ would become all in all.

 The hiddenness of the God of the Cross cannot be known by any other word, or teaching, or study, or discipline but only by the proclamation of his word of the Cross itself.

  

Psalm 119 w/Intro, Text & Meditation for Sunday February 13th

The 119th psalm is a long psalm, containing prayers, comforts, instructions, and thanks in great number. It is chiefly written to make us excited about God’s Word. It praises God’s Word throughout and warns us against both the false teachers and against boredom and contempt for the Word. Therefore, it is primarily to be counted among the psalms of comfort. Its primary concern is that we have God’s Word in its purity and hear it gladly. From this concern, then, come powerful prayers, instructions, thanks, prophecies, worship of God, suffering, and all that pleases God and grieves the devil. But where one despises the Word and is satiated by it, there all these cease. For where the Word is not purely taught, there is truly an abundance of prophecies - but totally false and condemned! For it is then only service to the devil, who is this impure with all his heretics - M Luther, Introduction to Psalm 119

PSALM 119

1 Blessed are those whose lives have integrity,

those who follow the teachings of the Lord.

2 Blessed are those who obey his written instructions.

They wholeheartedly search for him.

3 They do nothing wrong. They follow his directions.

4 You have commanded that your guiding principles be carefully followed.

5 I pray that my ways may become firmly established so that I can obey your laws.

6 Then I will never feel ashamed when I study all your commandments.

7 I will give thanks to you as I learn your regulations, which are based on your righteousness.

8 I will obey your laws. Never abandon me.

Meditation: Psalm 119 the longest of the Psalms speaks of God’s Word in every verse with a couple of exceptions. God’s Word is a law, testimony, precept, statute, judgment, and commandment. These are all the excellencies of the Word. Worship according to the Words is right and good and pleasing to the LORD, and displeasing to Satan. David, who in all probability wrote the Psalm, sings of that which is nearest and dearest to his heart, and it is his desire that we sing with all our heart that Word hidden in our heart. Possessing it, is the best of treasures, hearing it the most useful employment, doing it the most noble of works. It has been said, “Better never to have been born than to live and die without the Word of God.” Life is vain and valueless without the Word of God.

Trusting Him and the salvation He alone has provided for us in Christ’s suffering, death, and resurrection, and continuing in that Word; prayer and praise, comfort and hope, forgiveness and peace will go with us all our days. “Blessed are those who keep His testimonies, Who seek Him with the whole heart.”

The Importance of Justification

Later in his life, in his Latin Preface, Luther recalled how important the justice, or justification of God became to him in his early days. It was both a grammatical issue and most importantly an existential matter – it bothered him greatly since the judgment of his whole life hung on the meaning. Therefore, despite differences in scholarly opinion as to the approximate date of Luther’s discovery, one can clearly see a particular understanding of iustitia Dei emerging during the Psalms lectures.


The teaching about iustitia Dei Luther read in the Scriptures thrust him into contention with previous interpretations of iustitia Dei. Luther did not accept the doctrine that God was justified in himself, committed to aiding the very best efforts of a viator to ascend to him. Rather, Luther believed Scripture taught that God was justified through a two-fold work. God was justified when, through the opus alienum Dei, his words and deeds drove sinners into the depths, into Anfechtung and death itself so that he could then, through the opus proprium Dei, hand over Christ as pure gift, by faith. For Luther, then, the iustitia Dei and the iustitia Christi are not separate as they had been for the medieval theologians, but simultaneous.


As Luther himself professed during the lectures, on the one hand:


“If God is to be justified in his words, by which he declares that we are sinners, he must also be justified in his deeds, by which he asserts the same thing. But these works are scourges and Crosses. When they come upon us, they are like the Word of God who accuses and opposes our sin. Therefore they must be received with all fear and humility, and we must confess to Him, for he is righteous in His works.”


But, on the other hand, lest we be driven into permanent despair about the justice of God, Christ must be asserted as God’s mercy, truth, righteousness and peace for us. Luther restates God’s justice quite differently from previous theological schemes by reversing the direction of human destiny in the suffering, death and resurrection of Christ Jesus. As Heiko Obermann observed, Luther herein attacked the whole medieval scheme of justification that was later affirmed at Trent:


“According to this tradition the iustitia Christi is granted in the justification to the sinner as gratia or caritas. But the iustitia Dei is not granted together with the iustitia Christi. According to this tradition the iustitia Christi is granted in the process of justification, but the iustitia Dei is not granted together with or attached to the iustitia Christi. The iustitia Dei remains the finis, the goal, or the ‘Gegenuber’ of the viator who is propelled on his way to the eternal Jerusalem by the iustitia Christi. The iustitia Dei is the standard according to which the degree of appropriation and the effects of the iustitia Christi are measured and will be measured in the Last Judgment. The iustitia Dei is the eternal immutable Law of God.”


By asserting that the iustitia Dei revealed at the Cross is the iustitia Christi that comes extra nos Luther relativizes the medieval doctrine of “fides charitate formata.” Faith active in love as it had come to be defined by Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Gabriel Biel and others was a dead letter for Luther – old wineskins incapable of holding the new wine of the Gospel. In place of works of love, Luther put forward the living Christ who was handed over to sinners gratis through faith alone. Justice cannot be attained en route to the eternal Jerusalem. Rather, “God wills to save us, not by a righteousness and wisdom from within [per domesticam] but from without [per extraneam]. Not that which comes and is born from ourselves. But which comes from without into us. Not which rises from the earth, but that which comes down from heaven.”

The Magnificat and Theology of the Cross

Luke 1:46 And Mary said, 

“My soul exalts the Lord, 

47 and my spirit has rejoiced greatly in God my Savior, 

48 because he has looked upon the humble state of his female slave, 

for behold, from now on all generations will consider me blessed, 

49 because the Mighty One has done great things for me, 

and holy is his name. 

50 And his mercy is for generation after generation 

to those who fear him. 

51 He has done a mighty deed with his arm; 

he has dispersed the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. 

52 He has brought down rulers from their thrones, 

and has exalted the lowly. 

53 He has filled those who are hungry with good things, 

and those who are rich he has sent away empty-handed. 

54 He has helped Israel his servant, 

remembering his mercy, 

55 just as he spoke to our fathers, 

to Abraham and to his descendants ⌊forever⌋.”

Regarding this text Luther asserts, Mary “teaches us, with her words and by the example of her experience, how to know, love, and praise God.”

And, second, regarding Mary's proclamation, he explains:

“… it is a different thing when God Himself works, with His own arm. Then a thing is destroyed or raised up before one knows it, and no one sees it done. Such works as these He does only among the two divisions of mankind, the godly and the wicked. He lets the godly become powerless and to be brought low, until everyone supposes their end is near, whereas in the very things He is present to them with all His power yet so hidden and in secret that even those who suffer the oppression do not feel it but only believe. There is the fullness of God’s power and His outstretched arm. For where man’s strength ends, God’s strength begins, provided faith is present and waits on Him. And when the oppression comes to an end, it becomes manifest what great strength was hidden underneath the weakness. Even so, Christ was powerless on the cross; and yet there He performed His mightiest work and conquered sin, death, world, hell, devil, and all evil.”

Luther was making a distinction between the proper proclamation of theologia crucis and the gouty foot dragging behind the theologia gloriae. The old pagan rule that like attracts like had become determinative for how theologians come to define the Cross. That is, for the scholastic theologians of the Middle Ages, Christ had to become a curse substantively rather than indicatively. As Anselm and those who followed posited, Christ in order to be the world’s Redeemer must be a pure lamb without spot or blemish. They argued that when St. Paul declares that Christ became sin and a curse the apostle is speaking descriptively. That is, Paul does not intend to say that Christ is literally sin and a curse but rather that Christ was covered by the substance of human sin in much the same way a pearl can become encrusted with mud. However, what lay at the heart of the matter for Anselm and others such as Thomas Aquinas was their desire to escape blame for Christ’s death. And, therefore, to avoid having Christ’s Cross applied to their own persons. 


The old pagan ideal that like attracts like then not only allowed Christ to become like sinners as a sign of God’s love, it also provided the opportunity for sinners to pursue their own righteousness by following Jesus’ pure example of faithfulness to God’s immutable law. As Thomas professed, faith must be formed by love or by acts of love added to faith as directed by the law. In this way of doing theology Luther recognized that those who make a fiction of Christ’s sin likewise construct a fictitious means of salvation.¹ And, in like manner, those who refuse Christ as a curse want their sin removed not in Christ but in themselves. As a result, theologians such as Anselm, Thomas and the like manufactured righteousness for themselves by attaching faith to works of law producing not only a fictitious Savior but counterfeit sinners as well.² 


In their attempt to segregate Christ from sinners in this way Luther believed he had hit on the basic confusion that had captivated the authoritative theologians of the church. They had committed themselves to a basic confusion in the assertion of law and the Gospel. And, in the confusion of law and the Gospel the theologia gloriae drives the Old Adam to the hidden God. Fleeing to the deus absconditus in this way, the Old Adam attempts to erect a god from the finest moral tenants of philosophy³ and theology: a Manichaean god who is not behind death but is a good, benign god devoid of the Holy Spirit. 


In the Magnificat of Mary, Luther distinguishes between sign and deed in the preaching of the Cross. He does this in order to express the reality of the Cross that kills and makes new. The Old Adam dies and the reality of this death is not an endless projection into the future, but the reality of the Cross. The Cross marks sinners, not as mud covers a pearl, but in the relationship of Christ to sinners, in the justification of the Old Adam by Christ’s own sin, execration and death. For Luther, then, death is justification.

1 LW 26: 278.

2 LW 26: 34.

3 Regarding Luther’s understanding of philosophy’s relation to matters of salvation, one need only read what Luther had written quite early in his career, on the inside cover of his edition of Augustine’s City of GodPhaedo of Plato, “Divinus Plato: Philosophia esti melete thanatos.”