Sermon Tone Analysis

Intro

Alright.

Go ahead and grab a seat and as you do, you can turn in your Bibles to .

This morning we are starting a new 3 week Christmas series called The Promised Christ.

As colloquial as it is,Jesus truly is the reason for the season and because of that, we want to spend our time leading up to Christmas remembering just why Christmas is so amazing in the first place.

It is common for us to remember that Christmas time is when we celebrate the birth of Jesus, but what can tend to happen for many Christians is that we forget why the birth of Jesus was absolutely necessary for our salvation.

We don’t celebrate Christmas every year just because a baby was born 2,000 years ago in Bethlehem.

The reason we celebrate Christmas each and every year is because 2,000 years ago God himself became a man.

The birth of Christ was the fulfillment of God’s promise to send his Christ, his Anointed One, his Messiah to save sinners.

Christmas is a time where we worship God for the glory of the Incarnation, the glory that the Father sent the Son to be born of a virgin under the Law to live a sinless life on our behalf and eventually die in our place for our sins.

Christmas is the celebration that God sent his promised Christ.

That God fulfilled his promise to send his Anointed One, his promised Messiah who would save his people from their sin.

Ultimately, Christmas is all about the glory of the birth Christ.

Now the word Christ refers to God’s promised Messiah.

The Christ, in the OT, was God’s promised Anointed One who would save his people from their sins.

Therefore, when we call Jesus the Christ, we are worshiping God for fulfilling his promise and delivering us from our sin in the Lord Jesus.

Now as the Christ, as the Messiah of God, Jesus saved his people by serving as a mediator between humanity and God the Father.

For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.

A mediator is a go-between.

They are an intermediary.

Someone who stands between two or more parties and works to unite them in a common agreement.

By saying that Christ is our mediator, we are saying that he is the one who reconciles us to God.

That He is the one who absorbs God’s wrath against our sin and also pays our debt of sin to God on our behalf.

By saying that Christ is our mediator, we are saying that he is the one who reconciles us to God.

That he is the one who absorbs God’s wrath against our sin and also pays our debt of sin to God on our behalf.

And the Bible is clear.

There is no mediator between God and man other than Jesus Christ.

Salvation is in Christ and in him alone.

And the Bible is clear.

There is no other mediator between God and man.

Salvation is in Christ and in him alone.

But what exactly does it mean that Christ is our mediator?

How does he serve as an intermediary between us and God?

To answer that, we need to understand the three offices of Christ.

It may be imperfect, but think of Christ as Jesus’ job title, and the three offices as his job description.

They are how Christ serves us as our mediator.

The offices of Christ speak to his function, or the roles he plays to serve us as the Christ of God, as the Mediator between God and men.

And historically, these three offices refer to Christ’s work as our Prophet, Priest and King.

Now you will not find a passage in the Bible that explicitly talks about Christ being our Prophet, Priest, and King, so where did this theology come from?

I will say, that there is no explicit passage which speaks to Christ performing all three of these offices so where did this theology come from?

Before Christ, God interacted with his people through three types of mediators all throughout the OT.

These mediators were the prophets, the priests and the kings of Israel, and each of these Old Testament mediators were established by God to point to how Christ himself would ultimately serve his people as our perfect Mediator.

A mediator is a go-between.

They are an intermediary.

Someone who stands between two or more parties and works to unite them in a common agreement.

The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), .

By saying that Christ is our mediator, we are saying that he is the one who reconciles us to God.

That He is the one who absorbs God’s wrath against our sin and also pays our debt of sin to God on our behalf.

And the Bible is clear.

There is no other mediator between God and man.

Salvation is in Christ and in him alone.

However, before Christ, God interacted with his people through three types of mediators all throughout the OT.

These mediators were the prophets, priests and kings of Israel, and each of these Old Testament offices were established by God to give his people a picture of how Christ himself would serve as their perfect Mediator.

A prophet was called to be God’s spokesperson.

They spoke on behalf of God to God’s people and in doing so, revealed who God is so that his people could know and worship him.

The priests were established by God to lead his people in true worship and they would also offer sacrifices to God on behalf of the people’s sins.

And finally, God established the kings of Israel through the line of David to rule over his people and lead them to keep his Law as a holy nation.

And the glory of Christ is that he fulfills all of these OT offices in one person, Jesus Christ.

He is our perfect Prophet, Priest, and King.

Jesus reveals God to humanity as our Prophet and shows us the way to eternal life.

He reconciles us to God through the sacrifice of his blood as our Priest.

And he rules over all creation and all people as the King of kings and Lord of lords.

And if we don’t believe in Jesus as our Prophet, Priest, and King, then we don’t believe that he truly is the Christ who saved us from our sins.

The great Reformer John Calvin

So when we celebrate Christmas, when we celebrate the birth of Christ, we should do so by celebrating all that Christ has done for us as our perfect Mediator.

That is why we are going to spend the next three weeks focusing on how Christ fulfills each of these offices so that we can truly worship him and celebrate all he has done for us this Christmas.

My hope is that as we study what Christ has done for us as our Prophet, Priest, and King, we will grow in our love for Christ by seeing all that he has done for us on our behalf.

So this morning we are going to spend all our time looking at Christ and how he serves us as our Prophet who reveals who God is and shows us how we might have eternal life in him.

The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), .

The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen— 16 just as you desired of the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly, when you said, ‘Let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God or see this great fire any more, lest I die.’

17 And the Lord said to me, ‘They are right in what they have spoken.

18 I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers.

And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him.

19 And whoever will not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him.

In this passage Moses is speaking to the people of Israel before they enter the Promised Land.

This is after God has led Israel out of Egypt.

This is after God gave them the 10 Commandments and the Law.

And this is after God led Israel in the wilderness for 40 years in order to kill off the generation that did not trust that God would give them the Promised Land even though they had seen for themselves the power of God in delivering them out of Egypt.

So now that that faithless generation is dead and gone, Moses is speaking to their children and the entire book of Deuteronomy

is Moses leading them to renew the covenant God had made with their parents.

In that covenant Israel promised to keep God’s law and God promised that if they did, he would give them the Promised Land and bless them in it.

And here is what you need to remember about the Old Covenant or else you’ll start twisting God into something he is not.

Some people think the Old Testament is all about obeying rules and the New Testament is about God’s grace.

But here’s the thing.

God didn’t command Israel to keep his law so that they could be his people.

They already were his people.

According to , God had saved them and chosen them solely based on his gracious will.

So then, why did God give the Law?

The reason is because God had chosen Israel to be his people and to be a light to the nations of his salvation.

To be that light, God gave them the Law so that Israel could reflect God’s holiness to the world so that God might be worshiped by all people as the Holy and True God.

So then, why did God give the Law?

The reason God gave them the Law was to show Israel what it looked like to be his holy people.

In choosing Israel, God set his covenantal love on them as his holy, set apart people.

Therefore, if Israel was truly going to be God’s people, they needed to be taught what that actually looked like hence, the Law.

You shall be holy to me, for I the Lord am holy and have separated you from the peoples, that you should be mine.

God gave Israel the law to show them what it looked like to walk in his covenantal love.

What it looked like to be his people and worship him alone and turn from the idols of the world.

Israel’s obedience to God’s Law was meant to be the natural outworking of their identity as God’s chosen people.

Not the means by which they became God’s people.

For the people of Israel, their obedience to God’s Law was always meant to be a reflection their status as God’s chosen people.