This sermon was preached at Mill Creek United Presbyterian Church on Sunday, May 24th, 2015.
At Trinity, I help to manage the international house, where students from other parts of the world stay during their studies at the seminary. I've done this for the last two years, and mostly I've had students from the continent of Africa staying with me in the house. Even in the years before this, I've had a good relationship with the students coming from overseas. Each year at the end of the Fall semester, when the temperature drops to the mid-forties, the same thing happens. The heavy winter coats are brought out, as the African students are exposed to the coldest temperatures they had yet experienced in their lives. One of my friends in particular asked me just this past year, “so this is Pittsburgh winter?” And I gently warned him that there was worse to come.
When the semester ended, and the temperatures drop to the low thirties or twenties, again, he asked me, “so, now this is the winter you were talking about.” Again, I told him that there is still a colder winter to come.
Paul writes in his second letter to the Corinthians, “Now if the ministry of death, carved in letters on stone, came with such glory that the Israelites could not gaze at Moses' face because of its glory, which was being brought to an end, will not the ministry of the Spirit have even more glory?”
When we read the Old Testament, we are getting a glimpse of what life looked like before Jesus Christ was revealed to us in his fullness. Since the Fall of Adam and Eve, God has slowly been moving his people toward the fullness of his glory. His glory is the beauty and magnificence of who he has revealed himself to be. He did this first through the Law of Moses. The thing is, we and the people of Israel are not able to comprehend the glory of God-- how great God is. Like my African friends, who needed to bundle up in large winter coats for what we would consider cool autumn weather, Moses had to cover his face with a veil to protect the people from the great glory that was revealed when God gave him the Law on Mount Sinai. Yet even that glory was only a taste of the fullness to be revealed in Jesus Christ.
This morning I want to talk to you about the glory that of the Law of God as it has been revealed to us in the Old and New Testament Scriptures. It is because of the Law that the character of God is made known to us. It is through the Law that we are able to understand not only his holiness and righteousness, but our own sin and brokenness.
First, let's talk about how the Law of God reveals his character to us.
When we talk about God's Law, there's another word that often comes up in conversation. It's an old Hebrew word from which we get the word Law. Many of you, I'm sure, know it: Torah. The word Torah has many different ways of being translated. The most common is “law,” but it can also be understood to mean “instruction,” or “teaching.” There isn't really a suitable single word in English to get the full meaning of Torah, but a helpful way of understanding it is as an “instruction of the faith.” What I mean by this is that Torah is not just a list of “dos and do nots,” as the English word “Law” might imply. Instead, Torah is intended to be a teaching of who God is and who we are meant to be as creations in God's image. It's a passing down of family tradition, only this family is the family of God, whom he has chosen to be his own.
When I was a kid, my grandmother used to make a special Chinese pastry she called a “sausalo” at every family gathering, which were meat filled pockets of soft, buttered dough. After she died, one of the things that our whole family wanted to be sure to do was to continue making these special pastries in her honor. But because she had died rather suddenly, we weren't able to get the instructions for her sausalo pastries. We decided to see if we could find the recipe online. We tried for a very long time, but no matter how we spelled the word, there was no evidence of a Chinese pastry called “sausalos.” We eventually gave up, and had to do without her pastries for a couple of years. But, one day, my dad was out at a Chinese shop and saw the small meat-filled pastries sitting in the window. He looked up at the sign to finally find out what they were called, and there was very simple, descriptive title hand written over them, “Sausage Rolls.”
My grandmother never learned much English. Even though she had been saying the simple phrase “sausage rolls” this whole time, none of us could understand her. She was speaking a different language, and we never took the time to sit down and let her guide us in the instruction of how to understand what she was saying and how to properly prepare these small pastries.
God is on a different level than my grandmother. He's on a different level than all of us. His “language,” so to speak, is different than our own. Even when he speaks to us in our own language, we still have trouble understanding. Jesus says, “If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things?” God's holiness is greater than our understanding, so he reveals himself through his Torah. The Torah is God's way of speaking through earthly things to reveal his heavenly character. He declares “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me.” His first commandment is a lesson in who he is, what he has done, and a hint at what he will ultimately do. Our God is a god who frees the slave and demands that he alone be the object of our worship.
Through the ten commandments and the rest of Scripture, we see that God desires absolute perfection because he is absolutely perfect. He will not settle for any less. Jesus says that not only should you not murder, but “everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment.” God's perfect character is one that does not hold on to his anger, but is full of steadfast love. His standard, the standard he holds up to all of his people, is that we also should not remain angry with those who do us wrong. Do not steal, do not lust, do not envy. Do not boast of your own deeds. Always do to others as you would have them do to you. Love your enemies and bless those who persecute you. Lay down your life.
Whoever does not live up to this standard is unfit for life in God's eternal Kingdom and is liable to judgment. The Torah of God reveals to us that we are deserving of death because we cannot live up to his perfect standard to which he holds his people accountable. He holds his people accountable to this standard because this is the standard that he follows in his own character. God is the perfectly good and perfectly righteous creator of the universe. He wants to bring his creation back to perfection, and to do that he has to get rid of everything that falls short of perfection. When we look at the Law, the Torah of God, we see God's perfect character. We see a God who loves the poor and needy, who sets captives free, who is faithful even to his unfaithful people. And when we see this perfect God, we realize that we are anything but the perfect people he desires us to be.
Because God has given the Torah, there is no longer any excuse to live apart from the standard that he sets. No one can plead ignorance to this standard, and even as the letter to the Romans bears witness, “when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts.” The law has been revealed to all people to show God's standard for those he calls his own.
Anyone who fails to live up to that standard is unworthy of being in the presence of God. So, the very thing which reveals the perfect beauty of holiness and righteousness in God is the same thing that condemns us before him. When we know who God is, we know who we are. When we see that God is good, we see that we are not. In God's perfection is revealed our imperfection. Or, more accurately, our wickedness and perversion. We twist everything for selfish gain. We not only worship other gods but seek to become gods. Because we know that we cannot live up to God's Law, we create our own Law so that we can live unto ourselves. We determine our own standard of good because that is the only way we can ever be considered good in our own efforts.
But this is what God's Torah reveals about us: That we are murderous adulterers seeking to be our own gods through slander and envy. But what it reveals about God is that he is abounding in mercy and steadfast love. God has “no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live.” God has revealed himself in his Torah. But he proves himself to us by coming to us as one of us. The character that he revealed himself to have in the Torah is the character of a God that would do anything to be with those he loves. This is a God that would come to us and lay down his life for us in the person of Jesus Christ.
In Philippians we read that Christ, “though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”
And in Colossians, Paul writes, “For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.”
Jesus died on the cross because we were unable to meet God's standard. God wants us to know him, so he revealed himself knowing that doing so would also condemn us before him. He revealed himself to us knowing that doing so would bring upon us the judgment for sin. But the fullness of who he has revealed himself to be in the person of Jesus Christ, is a God who takes that punishment upon himself for our sake. Because we are unable to live up to his standard, he died for us on the cross. It's one thing to point to the Law and say that God is love because he has said so. It is an entirely other thing to be able to point to the cross and say this is how he loves. But his love doesn't end there. The cross is the end of the ministry of death through the Law, but the resurrection of Jesus from the dead is the beginning of the ministry of the Spirit.
In the Western Church, this Sunday is the Sunday of Pentecost. Fifty days after Jesus rose from the dead, he sent the promised Holy Spirit to fill his people and be his presence among them. Because he has died so that he would “reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven,” then this ministry of the Spirit is intended for the whole world. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
Paul writes in Colossians, “For if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation, the ministry of righteousness must far exceed it in glory.” When we believe in Jesus Christ, we are no longer under the condemnation that comes from the Torah of God. We are under a new Law, a new Torah, which brings life. We now enter into the ministry of righteousness. This ministry doesn't count our own sin against us, but the righteousness of Jesus Christ in his sacrifice. In Romans we read “For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be filled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.”
We want to do it on our own. We want to be good. But we can't change the standard of what is good. We can only lie about what is good and meet a new standard of our own creation, or we can accept that we are not good. But through him, we can receive the merits of goodness that aren't our own. In him, we can pursue the standard of God without condemnation. We no longer live according to the flesh and what we do, but by the Spirit and what he has done. And he has shown that when we can't meet the standard of good, he still loves us and even lays his life down for us. So we can move forward with confidence that we have in him the righteousness of God by the power of his Spirit.
“I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me.”
He has set us free from the slavery of sin, and now we have the freedom to worship him as the one true God. We see that we don't need to set our own standards to be good, but by turning to him, we are considered righteous apart from our own actions. And we can turn to him knowing that he has already proven his love by coming to us in the flesh and offering himself as a perfect sacrifice for sin. We don't need to be our own gods. In fact, he shows that he is more God than we can ever be. And when we believe in his promise of life through his Spirit, he makes us children of God by adoption through that same Spirit which brings us the ministry of righteousness. If you have the Spirit of God, you are a child of God, and you are bound to inherit his eternal kingdom with Christ.
This was revealed to us first in the Torah. Like my friends in heavy coats, those who only know the Torah only get a taste of the beauty and majesty and all-surpassing love of God. But the fullness of God was revealed in Jesus Christ. Suddenly, that old glory revealed in the Law has become nothing compared to the glory of God revealed in Jesus Christ and in the Holy Spirit who saves us from condemnation. The veil which kept us from God has now been torn, and we are welcome into his presence. We no longer rely on our own ability to meet his standard. By his Spirit, we have the righteousness of Christ. Not only can we worship him as God, but we can call on him as Father because he has made us his own. And he loves us, even to the end that he would lay down his life for us.
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