December 4, 2016 A.D., by Pastor Ben Willis

Luke 1:67-80
As our reading begins, John the Baptist has just been born…
May the Lord add His blessing to the reading of His Word:

67 Then his father, Zechariah, was filled with the Holy Spirit and gave this prophecy:
68 “Praise the Lord, the God of Israel, because He has visited and redeemed His people. 69 He has sent us a mighty Savior from the royal line of His servant David, 70 just as He promised through His holy prophets long ago. 71 Now we will be saved from our enemies and from all who hate us. 72 He has been merciful to our ancestors by remembering His sacred covenant—73 the covenant He swore with an oath to our ancestor Abraham. 74 We have been rescued from our enemies so we can serve God without fear, 75 in holiness and righteousness for as long as we live.

76 “And you, my little son, will be called the prophet of the Most High, because you will prepare the way for the Lord. 77 You will tell His people how to find salvation through forgiveness of their sins. 78 Because of God’s tender mercy, the morning light from Heaven is about to break upon us, 79 to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, and to guide us to the path of peace.” 80 John grew up and became strong in spirit. And he lived in the wilderness until he began his public ministry to Israel.
The Word of the Lord…

Sermon
When friends, coworkers, husbands and wives, and others end an argument or a fight these days, you can hear one ask the other, “So, are we good?” And sometimes the other person can be heard saying, “Yeah, we’re good,” even when they’re still holding a grudge and things really aren’t “good”.

But God’s not like that. He wants us to know – to be assured – when we are “good” with Him and when we are not.
Under the Old Covenant, God created a “way” for His people to be in right relationship with Him. This “way” was dependent upon people obeying God’s commands, His Law.

Let’s take a look at this by opening our Bibles to Deuteronomy 30:15-18…
After Israel’s exodus from Egypt – when God set them free from their slavery there (about 1,200 years before Christ) – Moses preached to them as they were getting ready to enter the land God had promised to give them, the land we today call “Israel”. And Moses preached these words that are now recorded in Deuteronomy 30,
“Listen! Today I am giving you a choice between life and death, between prosperity and disaster. For I command you this day to love the Lord your God and to keep His commands, decrees, and regulations by walking in His ways. If you do this, you will live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you and the land you are about to enter and occupy.
“But if your heart turns away and you refuse to listen, and if you are drawn away to serve and worship other gods, then I warn you now that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live a long, good life in the land you are crossing the Jordan to occupy.”

So, through Moses, the Lord was giving His people a choice: Life or death. And, how did Moses say that the people could be assured of a prosperous life in good-standing with God? Showing God they loved Him by obeying His commands.
Now, that’s not all that different from how Jesus would later talk about how we relate to God: In John 14:15 the Lord Jesus said that if we love God we’ll obey His commands. But look at verses 17-18 and we see the difference between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant: What did God say would happen to His people if they didn’t keep His commands? He says that they would be punished for their sin: God would punish them with death for their disobedience.
Now, God is unchanging. There really isn’t a “God of the Old Testament” and a “God of the New Testament”, as some will say. No. God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And yet we can tend to think that God was harsher in the Old Testament and more forgiving in the New Testament.

But this isn’t really an accurate way of thinking about God. God showed compassion and grace all throughout the Old Testament, as time and time again Israel disobeyed and turned from following Him. God even allowed for the sacrificial system so that people could have their sins paid for by the life of an animal instead of their own lives.
Even so, under the Old Covenant, if you didn’t obey all of God’s commands – if you sinned against Him – you were unable to completely clear that debt you owed God. You could sacrifice animals, but you had to sacrifice them again and again, never being truly clean; never really being “good” with God.

How many of you wanted something that saw someone else having today? I mean, did you see someone’s dress and think: I wish I had that dress? Anyone here look at someone else’s car and think: I wish I had that car? Did you look at someone else’s parents or someone else’s kids and think: I wish they were mine instead of the ones I have? (Don’t raise your hands…) Have any of you been worried at all today? Anyone here had feelings of worry about our nation? Had worries about money? Had worries about the health or safety of any of your loved ones?

I ask you all that because it’s all sin: Wanting what others have or being worried about how-things-are or about what-might-happen is sin. And sin always comes between us and God. And since God’s commands tend to show us just how often we’re sinning, the Law really just showed Israel how impossible it was to be at peace with God because sin was always there and because sin always got in the way!

But the prophets said that “The Old System under the law of Moses was only a shadow, a dim preview of the good things to come, not the good things themselves. The sacrifices under that system were repeated again and again, year after year, but they were never able to provide perfect cleansing for those who came to worship.” The Old Covenant was good because it provided a way for God’s people to know Him. But it wasn’t perfect. From the beginning God had planned to put into motion a perfect plan, a new “way”, a New Covenant.

This is where Jesus comes in.
In our Scripture reading, John the Baptist’s dad, Zechariah the priest, is filled with the Holy Spirit, praising God as he anticipates the birth of Jesus Christ. Because in Jesus, Zechariah says,
• The Lord has visited and redeemed His people;
• According to Zechariah, the Lord Jesus is a mighty Savior!
• Jesus will save God’s people from our enemies and from all who hate us;
• In Jesus Christ we have been rescued from our enemies so we can serve God without fear, in holiness and righteousness for as long as we live!
And how will Jesus do all of this? How will He bring to us this great salvation? Through the forgiveness of our sins.
As Zechariah thinks about the Lord Jesus’ birth he says, “the morning light from Heaven is about to break upon us! To give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, and to guide us to the path of peace!”
In the Old Covenant, the blood of animals paid for the sins of the people. But these sacrifices needed to be offered over and over again, and were a constant reminder of the distance between God and His people because – as we showed in asking about wanting what others have and worrying – just as we constantly sin, God’s Old Covenant people constantly sinned. However, as God’s Son, Jesus’ life was the perfect offering to cover the sins of all people once and for all.
Jesus is the new “way”. He doesn’t point to the new “way”. He doesn’t represent the new “way”. He doesn’t teach us the new “way”. He is the new “way”!

In His love and wisdom, God sent His only, perfect Son to die in our place. This ushered in a New Covenant, one marked by grace through faith in His sacrifice to forgive us our sins. If we believe in Jesus and accept His sacrifice on our behalf, we are once and forever saved from our sins.

It’s not, “Did I do more good today than I did sin?” No. We don’t have to keep track of our sins, beating ourselves up for each and all the ways we’ve failed and fallen out of step with God. No. We are covered: Once on the cross, and for all of our sins – once and for all – we are covered. Through Jesus’ selfless sacrifice on the cross for us, we can have peace with God – even while we’re sinning – for eternity. And, as we’re sinning, and we’re realizing that we have peace with God, even so, it makes us want to stop sinning: [To the Lord] “I don’t want to do that to You!”

When the angel announced Jesus’ birth to the shepherds, what did the angel say? The angel said he had “good news” that would bring “great joy” for all God’s people: A Savior has been born! With His death and resurrection, Jesus forever took away the burden of our sins and created a new “way” of relating to God, through Himself, through His once and for all sacrifice!

Christmas is a celebration of the Lord Jesus’ birth, but is also be a celebration of the freedom we have to be God’s children. We don’t have to work to be His children, we can just be…

On account of the birth of Jesus Christ, we have been rescued from our enemies – including sin and death and self-condemnation – so we can serve God without fear, in holiness and righteousness for as long as we live.