Why Christmas?, Pt. 2 - The Law

If you are the rare American who likes roundabouts, you have the British to thank. In 1966, they figured out what was going wrong. According to the original design of traffic circles, entering cars had the right-of-way, so drivers charged in at high speed without paying attention to vehicles already circling. Once inside, they had to both watch for their exit and avoid incoming drivers. If traffic was heavy, the entire circle filled up with cars and came to a standstill. The British realized they needed to reverse the right-of-way, giving priority to the cars inside the intersection. Entering vehicles then had to pause and make sure there was space for them. Circulating drivers could focus on exiting safely rather than dodging incoming cars. Once the correct right-of-way was established, capacity went up by 10 percent and crashes went down by almost half. Americans still took a lot of convincing. We didn’t build any more roundabouts until 1990.

The story of the traffic circle is an example of coordination for the greater good of everyone. The drivers inside the circle aren’t more important than those outside it, but there has to be a prioritized sequence in order for everyone to get where they’re going. Everyone benefits, even though incoming cars may have to slow down momentarily to find a gap. The difference between an efficient driving experience and total gridlock is the application of appropriate right-of-way rules.

This Christmas, we’re asking the question - Why Christmas?......or to draw that out just a bit more......Why do we even need Christmas? And we began to answer that question last week as Derek walked us through Genesis 3 and its description of the Fall, which helps us to understand the fundamental and foundational reason for why we need Christmas. The entirety of human history since the Fall has been marked by sin and shame and guilt which lead to death, all of which can only be wiped away and ultimately defeated through the seed of the woman mentioned in Genesis 3:15.

Today we now continue our search to answer the question “Why Christmas?” by considering how God instituted a system that would begin the process of righting all the wrong that ensued post-Fall. Remember how Genesis 3 ended with the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. The generations that followed would experience and be guilty of even more sin and rebellion against God, so much so that God would have to wipe the world clean of the majority of mankind and create a new beginning with Noah and his family. After Noah came Abraham, through whom the nations would be blessed, followed by Moses as the next great figure in the history of God’s people.

And it was through Moses that God instituted a new system through which God’s people could rightly worship God, exercise Godly righteousness, and also become set apart from the rest of the world. This system, generally referred to as the Law, began with 10 Commandments given to Moses at Mt. Sanai, and then expanded into 613 laws that governed every aspect of the life of the faithful Jew. In the 12th century AD, an Italian theologian and philosopher by the name of Thomas Aquinas, drawing from Augustine and many other early church fathers, formalized and popularized a concept of dividing the Law of God into three categories - the Moral Law, the Ceremonial Law, and the Civil/Judicial Law. While these delineations aren’t expressly defined in Scripture, and while the categories certainly overlap and blend together in many instances, they can nevertheless help us conceptualize the Law and see how the Law functions differently in different situations. We’ll flesh these categories out a little bit more in just a bit, and they will also be highlighted in this week's devotional.

So what does this have to do with Christmas? Well, remember the original intent and purpose of the law of God. In general, it was intended to help instruct God's people in how to live their lives in every way. And specifically, it sought to address the many deficits and deficiencies that came about as a result of the fall in the garden of Eden.

And for the purposes of what we are to consider for today, I want us to focus on four of those deficits.

Presence of God.

The ultimate effect of the Fall was the separation between God and man, culminating in the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden. This separation only continued , which God personally sought to remedy in various ways throughout the OT. God met Moses through a burning bush on Mt. Sanai.....he walked with the people through the wilderness following the exodus, manifesting himself as a cloud of smoke by day, and a pillar of fire by night.....God’s Spirit would then reside within the tabernacle that traveled with His people......and once the temple was built by Solomon, the Spirit of the Lord would reside within the Holy of Holies.

And yet, this system established under the ceremonial Law only allowed certain people to come into the presence of God once a year. And therefore, the presence of God with His people was still a tenuous thing for the people of God.

Sacrifice for sin.

Beginning in the garden and spanning throughout the old testament narrative, a series of offerings and sacrifices offered God's people the means by which they could remain in right relationship with God through forgiveness of sin.. Hebrews 9:22, drawing from Leviticus 17:11, says (SLIDE) “...without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.”

The first instance of this is implied in the text towards the end of Genesis 3 where God clothed the naked Adam and Eve with animal hides. Then in what is likely the most famous and important historical instance of animal sacrifice to the Jewish people, the Passover commemorates when God ordered the blood of a spotless lamb to cover the doorposts of the homes of God’s people in order to protect them as the Lord brought judgment upon Egypt.

And then through the Mosaic Law, the Jewish sacrificial system as laid out in Leviticus and other OT texts established the religious and ceremonial protocol to atone for the sins of God’s people. However, under the Law, atonement for sin was temporary and therefore on-going over the course of a lifetime. And this simply created a pattern of religious ceremony adherence involving animal sacrifices and other offerings to temporarily atone for sin and appease a holy and perfectly just God.

3. Mediation between God and man.

If there’s a sacrifice for sin and there’s a system of rituals to keep, then there’s the need for someone to administer them - a priest. The Levitical priesthood, beginning with Aaron and continuing on through a specific lineage of men connected together by blood and calling lived a life of service unto God and acted as a mediator between God and man. They were the go-between as it were, an avenue through which man could be made right with God.

While functioning as the mediation between God and man, the priests’ rituals, their words and tools and even the clothes they wore and all the features of the tabernacle and temple were specifically designed and ordered by God to address various aspects of the effects of sin and the forgiveness thereof. And Hebrews 5:1-4 tells us that among the priests was one man chosen to conduct the ultimate priestly duties by going into the very presence of God in the temple, and to do this once a year for the atonement of the sins of the people as well as for his own sins.

4. Rest in God.

At the end of the day, after all the ritual and all the ceremony and all the work that needs to be done for God and on behalf of God, man needs rest. This rest was established very early on, by God himself in the creation of the world in which God created for six days and rested on the seventh. This was then commanded within the Law as one of the 10 Commandments, to keep holy the Sabbath Day by patterning our lives after God himself.

This idea of the Sabbath rest was also related to the promised land that was sworn to the nation of Israel. In Joshua 1:13 we read (SLIDE) “Remember the word that Moses the servant of the Lord commanded you, saying, ‘The Lord your God is providing you a place of rest and will give you this land.’” However, Hebrews in Hebrews 4, which cites Psalm 95 amongst other passages, we see that because of Israel’s stubbornness and hardened hearts, they never actually entered into that rest.

And so these deficits, among the many others that were created as a result of the Fall and were addressed by the Law, served two primary purposes that are brought to light in the New Testament. For starters, the Law was designed by God to create a holy nation for himself and for his glory. However, because of our sin and our human frailty, we could never keep the law perfectly. God knew ahead of time, and therefore the Law ultimately served ahigh purpose.

This purpose is brought to light by Paul in various NT texts, such as Romans 4:15 which says (SLIDE) “For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law there is no transgression.” and then a chapter later, he continues (SLIDE) in Romans 5:20 “Now the law came in to increase the trespass,...” You see, the Law wasn’t designed to save us from our sins as much as it was designed to reveal our sin and point to our need for salvation that could only be fulfilled in a Savior.

Paul says in Galatians 3:24 (SLIDE) “So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith.” The Greek word that is translated here as “guardian”, or in other translations as “tutuor” or “schoolmaster” , its the Greek word paidagogos, and it spoke of a person who guided or directed others. Specifically, the terms was used for slaves who were entrusted with the responsibility of moral education and upbringing of young children.

In other words, the Law was designed to show mankind his utter sinfulness and spiritual depravity and only our faith in a perfectly righteous one could ever make us completely right with God. And looking back, the Law, and the Old Covenant as a whole was insufficient in their efficacy to completely right all the wrongs that were a result of the Fall. Therefore, the Old Covenant Law was ultimately pointing to something, and someone, better, who would complete the job.

The writer of Hebrews clarifies this in Hebrews 8:6–7 (SLIDE) “But as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant he mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises. For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second.” In other words, everything about the New Covenant is better than the Old Covenant because the Old Covenant was insufficient to save, but Jesus is sufficient.....the Old Covenant was imperfect, but Jesus is perfect.

And this now brings us to another answer to the question “Why Christmas?” Why do we need Christmas? Because the Law showed us the need of the One who would fulfill all its demands. And this is what we find in Christ alone, which Matthew lays out beautifully in Matthew 5. In his most famous Sermon on the Mount, Jesus explains what it look like to be a citizen of this new Heavenly Kingdom that he is inaugurating here on earth, but he clarifies that his introduction of the new isn’t necessarily putting an end to the old, but that his coming is actually a fulfillment of the old.

Jesus says in Matthew 5:17–20 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

The key to understanding Jesus’ relationship to the Law is found in properly defining what Jesus meant by “abolish” and “fulfill”. By abolish, Jesus meant that he didn’t come to destroy or tear down or abrogate the Law. The Law of God is eternal, and it is good and holy and perfect. And as an obedient Jew who is the incarnate Son of God, it wouldn’t make sense for God the Son to do away with the commands of God the Father.

Rather, he came to fulfill the Law. And in this context, to fulfill means to carry something out to its intended end. Furthermore, famed Bible scholar D.A. Carson says that Jesus fulfilled the Law by being the one to whom the Law was pointing. So not only did Jesus obey the Law perfectly, but the Law was always pointing to Him. Jesus alone fulfilled the righteous requirements of the Law, but he also met the expectations of the predictions about him in the writings of the prophets, which we’ll look at next week.

So in the context of what we’re looking at for today, Jesus’ fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets is seen in how he fills those four deficits we previously considered.

Jesus is our Immanuel.

Christmas is the celebration and announcement that God is with us. In the Old Testament, God was in the garden with man before sin, and after sin, His presence was in the tabernacle....He was in the temple, but there was always a firm separation between God and man because of the Fall.

However, the birth of Jesus fundamentally changed all of this. And this is powerfully stated in John 1:14 where the Apostle John writes, (SLIDE) “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” That word translated as “dwelt” literally means “to dwell in a tent”, which serves as a clear allusion to the OT tabernacle. Before there was a temple, there was a tent of meeting referred to as the tabernacle, which was where God would meet with his people through the High Priest.

God commanded Moses in Exodus 25:8 (SLIDE) “And let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell in their midst.” Even though man hid from God in the Garden, and God had to eventually expel man from the Garden, He was always in pursuit of His people. God’s ultimate desire has always been to be with his creation, and this was made more clear when he came down to us in the flesh, in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus is our Immanuel, the one spoken of in Isaiah 7:14, which Matthew connects to Jesus through an angelic visit with Joseph in a dream in Matthew 1:23 (SLIDE) “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” (which means, God with us).”

Jesus is our sacrifice.

The manner in which Jesus was introduced and announced by his most immediate forerunner, John the Baptist, says it all. We read of this in John 1:29 “The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” The Levitical sacrificial system required the blood of bulls and goats and other animals to be shed and sprinkled over the brazen altar in the temple to atone for the sins of the world. In a sense, the blood covered the sins of the people and protected them from the wrath of God that would be poured out on sin.

However, we see the concept of blood-covering pre-figured in the Passover, and so Jesus is our spotless Passover lamb who’s blood covers us from the wrath of God that we actually deserve because of sin. And this identification of Jesus will continue until the very end of time as we see Him referred to as much in Revelation 5:12 where the four living creatures and the 24 elders and the myriads of angels say with a loud voice (SLIDE) “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!””

The baby born in the manger who is the very presence of God is also the one who was slain on our behalf and whose blood was shed to cover us from the wrath of God to come. Hebrews 9:13–14 fleshes this out even more......(SLIDE) “For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.”

Jesus is the better sacrifice.....the more full sacrifice.....the one sacrifice for all time who purifies us and cleanses us from our sins so that we can actually live for God and serve him rightly. But not only that, Jesus is also the one who is responsible to carrying out the sacrifice to God on behalf on mankind, which means........

Jesus is our Mediator.

Hebrews 4:14–16 says (SLIDE) “Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”

As we previously considered, the High Priest acted as the mediator between God and man. He performed the sacrifices and made offerings to God on behalf of the people. Just as mediators are used in the legal system to bring reconciliation and agreement between two opposing parties without having to go to court and be seen by a judge, the high priest’s job was to mediate the separation between God and man by helping to deal with sin.

And yet the high priests of the Old Covenant as defined in the Law were incomplete and only temporary, pointing to a greater and ultimate High Priest to come. The apostle Paul reminds Timothy in 1 Timothy 2:5–6 “For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time.”

Jesus is the true mediator between God and man, for he himself is our ransom, our sacrifice, and all this was accomplished at the proper time, Paul says, speaking of how Jesus fulfills the Law and the Prophets, which is exactly what we saw in Matthew 5.

And finally.......

Jesus is our rest.

There’s fair debate and healthy disagreements amongst Christians as to what extent does Jesus fulfill the Law in time and how that should affect how faithful Christians should live today. All agree that Jesus will ultimately fulfill every aspect of the Law at the end of time when heaven and earth pass away, for that’s what Jesus himself said in Matthew 5. But since that time hasn’t come yet, the question for many is what aspects of the Law are still binding on God’s people.

Now we see clearly that in the New Testament, particularly in Hebrews, the ceremonial aspects of the Law are done away with as Jesus is our sacrifice and our High Priest, therefore eliminating the need for the Jewish sacrificial system. So in that way, Jesus fulfilled and completed that ceremonial aspect of the Law.

Furthermore, many aspects of the civil law as a whole are done away as God inaugurated a new kingdom here on earth through the incarnation of Jesus and established new kingdom principles, if you will. Then with the death of Christ on the cross, this sealed the fate of the nation of Israel who rejected their Messiah, resulting in God’s judgment, the destruction of the temple, and the end of Israel as a holy nation set apart by God and for God.

However, there remains the moral aspects of the Law which are for all time and for all people and are summed up in the 10 Commandments. And yet, even within the moral law, there is one aspect that has been completely fulfilled in Christ and we see is no longer binding (and this is where some Christians disagree). As Baptists, as do most other non-reformed Christian denominations, we believe that Jesus fulfilled the 4th Commandment which governs the Sabbath.

We read in Hebrews 4:1–3 (SLIDE) “Therefore, while the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it. For good news came to us just as to them, but the message they heard did not benefit them, because they were not united by faith with those who listened. For we who have believed enter that rest,...”

In contrast to the rebellious and disobedient Israelites in the wilderness who were denied entry into the rest of the Promised Land, we who have put or faith in Jesus find our ultimate rest in him, for he is our Sabbath rest. We read on in verses Hebrews 4:8–10 (SLIDE) “For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on. So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his.”

Moses was unable to lead the people into the Promised Land, and he himself was even restricted from entering, and so his successor Joshua was then charged to lead the people. And even though Joshua eventually led the conquest of the promised land, this was merely pointing to a greater meaning and fulfillment, another day later on mentioned by the writer of Hebrews. Therefore, there remained an ultimate Sabbath rest, and we find that in Jesus. So just as God rested from his work, when we come to put our faith in Jesus, we effectively rest from trying to work our way to God. In Jesus, we’re simply allowed to rest and enjoy the very presence of God.

And then over the course of the next few chapters, we’re taught how Jesus is the better rest.....the better High Priest....the better sacrifice, and all this culminates in the supremacy of Christ and his new covenant in Hebrews 10:1 (SLIDE) “For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw near.”

As God’s response to the Fall and the consequences of sin, The Law was simply a shadow of good things to come....it was never the true from of the reality that man would be made perfect by something else, and by someone else. The Law could never make us perfect, but only highlight our imperfections, and therefore, when Christ came into the world, we’re told in Hebrews 10:9–10 “He does away with the first in order to establish the second. And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.”

We are sanctified in Christ alone....through faith alone.....by grace alone.....to the glory of God alone! This is what Christmas is all about. So.....Why Christmas?....because if sinful man wants to enjoy the presence of God for eternity, if we want the wrongs to be made right, then we need to be sanctified by something or someone outside of ourselves. And Jesus Christ......our Immanuel.....God in the flesh who came to tabernacle with his people.....has come and in him we find that sanctification. And we look forward to his second-coming when all aspect of the Law and the Prophets will finally be accomplished!