Well, brothers and sisters, it's a joy to be with you again this morning to worship as we come to open the Word of God and to sit under the preaching of the Word this morning. I'm honored to be before you this morning.
Well, we have been blessed the last two weeks to be in the epistle of 1 John. And as we have been going through just a little over a chapter now in 1 John, it's wonderful to be moving throughout the Bible. As your elders, we desire to to present the whole counsel of God, to give a hearty diet of strong meat and of the Word of God, that you be fed well and nourished in your own soul. And so, as we move in different portions of the Scripture, we pray this will do this, and knowing that The epistles, we have the epistles of Paul and Peter and Jude and John, they explain the gospel. They explain Acts. And so the gospels and Acts tell us what has occurred, what happened. But many times we need the epistles to explain these things.
So we are going back to the gospel, the gospel of Luke. And I pray that we'll be, for a time, maybe in a month from now, in one of the Old Testament prophets, where we periodically go to the Psalms. So we want to seek the Spirit's guidance as we move through different portions of Scripture and Possibly down the road from now, we'll be back in the epistles. I'm looking at possibly first Thessalonians. And then maybe at some point, maybe some more apocalyptic Old Testament passages. We'll just see. But we desire to traverse through the Bible in a way that's glorifying to God.
begin as we come into Luke 2, let's remind ourselves where we've been. Luke's gospel has talked of John the Baptist and prediction of a prophecy of his coming and the parallel accounts of Jesus and how the predictions of Jesus coming, being born, and the prophecy to Zacharias and how he was mute for a while and then John was born and then Zacharias' lips have opened and his tongue is loose and then Jesus is born. The Son of God coming into creation. We had a blessed time over Christmas looking at this passage and how the birth scene, and then the shepherds. Remember how they were notified and they come. Well, this is where we are back to. We are just past the shepherds. So Jesus has been born and seven days, eight days have passed, about a week. Jesus has been in this earthly ministry for about a week. And that's where we are coming today in Luke. And we will be in Luke two and through verse 21 to 24.
Let's pray before we read the text. Father, I hope, I pray that you would help us, Lord, as we come before your word. This is the word of God. This is breathed out by the spirit of God. And Lord, I pray that we would receive it as such, that we would be disciples. We would come as learners to you, not as judges, Lord, but we would come as those desiring to sit at your feet and be taught by your word. So may your spirit work in all of us today, both preacher and listener. And Lord, may you be glorified most of all. It's in Christ's name that we pray, amen.
Let us open to Luke. If you are able and would like to, we can stand for the reading of the word and we'll read starting in verse 21. And when eight days had passed before his circumcision, his name was then called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb. And when the days for their purification according to the law of Moses were completed, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord. As it is written in the law of the Lord, every firstborn male that opens the womb shall be called holy to the Lord Yahweh. And to offer a sacrifice according to what was said in the law of the Lord, a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons. Amen. Thus ends the reading of the word. You may be seated this morning.
We are looking at the early days of Jesus, the Holy One, very God of very God, coming into creation, coming into the Virgin Mary, being conceived in the womb. This is He who sustains all things. power of his own glory, that he would enter into creation as a little babe, a little babe like we have even amongst us today, some little ones that are not yet even able to crawl. And here, this babe, who is God in flesh, is dependent for a time upon his own mother for nourishment, dependent on the care of his earthly parents.
And this is amazing in itself to ponder that He, that is God, came down, condescended to us. This should bring us to amazement. We ought not hear this and think, oh yeah, I've heard that before. No, God of all creation. This should knock us to our knees. And He came down, it is as if the ladder from heaven coming down to earth. We think of Jacob and the coming from earth to heaven, this ladder to God where He has come down to us to be near to us, to be near to you, God with us, Emmanuel.
And how this infinite one, the one with no beginning became an infant. And this is the passage where we are coming to this morning. I want to remind you that he came in the likeness of men. He came as one of us, it says. We are quick and should be very aware of the divinity of Jesus. But when we come to sections like this and we look at the humanity of Jesus, actually the next four weeks as we come to the end of chapter 2, I want us to be considering the humanity of Jesus. That He came from the cradle all the way to the cross and experienced the things that you have experienced, actually much more.
There's nothing of pain and of trial and of turmoil that you have experienced that Christ is not very well sympathetic and aware of. Even one among us who's in a cradle right now, that Jesus, or even in a position now of in the mother's arms, that Jesus experienced that. And so if you are 12 years old, we're going to see in a few weeks, Jesus understood what it was to be a 12 year old and an infant and a young man and a mature man and a dying man. That sums it up, right? There's no one in here that doesn't fit one of those categories. So know that we have a sympathetic Redeemer and Savior in the Lord Jesus Christ.
The struggles you go through, young person, the struggles you go through, older person, are not foreign to Jesus, not at all. I want you to know also that he came not only in the likeness of men, but he came in the form of a servant. He came, as Galatians says, he was born under the law. The law of God, he came under the law of God into a world that was in bondage to sin, sin being transgression of the law. Galatians 4, but when the fullness of time came, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law, why? So that he might redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive the adoption as sons. When we hear in the New Testament that you are no longer under law but under grace, it is dependent upon what we're going to start to look at here in this text, that he came born under the law. So where are we going? I know that was a longer introduction as I talked about our traversing from the epistles back to the gospel and then introducing this text.
But let's look at a roadmap, if you will, at least for today. I was gonna give you the four week roadmap, but I'm just gonna throw too much at you. So today's roadmap, I want us to see the perfect obedience of the Lord. When I speak of the Lord Jesus, the perfect obedience to the Lord, of the Lord to the Lord.
Well, we're gonna see in several aspects, not only of Jesus, but of the life of the parents too, I want us to notice. Within this perfect obedience, we're going to see, and you'll have some peas here to help you memorize and to remember the parents naming of the child, the circumcision as well. And then we'll see the purification sacrifice, the purification sacrifice ceremony. And then thirdly, we'll see the presentation of the firstborn. And then fourthly, To wrap this up, we will see the purpose of this perfect obedience. Why four? What is this about?
Many times when we read this text, and maybe you're like me, you see it, and we think this is all one thing happening at one time, but it's not. We have an eight day after Jesus is born, and then we have a, as was read from brother Garrett in Leviticus, we have a 33 day span in between. So we're at day 40, 41 in part of this passage.
Now, we also might think this all happened at the temple. It probably did not, not all of this. The circumcision more than likely was somewhere in Bethlehem, maybe even by his father, not necessarily at the temple. We're not told that it was. In fact, it couldn't have been because she, at least Mary couldn't have been there because of her uncleanliness and needing of waiting the 33 days to go to the temple.
So we have several, we have three scenes. Circumcision and naming, we'll call it one. And then we have the purification that would be at the temple, and that's of Mary. And then we have another one that we might miss, the presentation of the firstborn son, also at the temple.
Okay, so two temples, and the other one probably somewhere at their home, or at their home where they're staying in Bethlehem. So we come now to the beginning, to this perfect obedience, and we need to realize that he came under the law, but he is law-fulfilling in his life, in his actual life that the law fulfilling that Adam should have done, remember the covenant of works, and he gave him a command, all of this you can eat, but not of this, and Adam failed, and therefore sin came into the world, and by one man, sin came to all of us, none of us can fulfill the law, none of us can follow the law perfectly, but Jesus did.
Jesus did from the very beginning, even as our little infants in here, of Caroline and Philip and these little ones, His parents were doing the law for this child even then. Every jot and tittle. Remember, Jesus says that he came to, not to abolish, but to fulfill, to fulfill the law.
Now we're gonna look at why these things are necessary. I know most of us are not Jewish Hebrews. We don't maybe understand all of these things, but we have the Bible. We have the word of God to help us. We have passages like in Leviticus, and we'll look at some others this morning as well. So let's come first of all, eight days and here we have the circumcision. Now we know about circumcision briefly from Genesis 17 where in our Sunday school we've been looking at Genesis and this was setting out a part, a people, The people whom God had called, starting with Abraham. Now Abraham believed God and his faith was accredited to him and then he was circumcised. So for him, it was a little bit different. It was a sign of his faith. But from all of the descendants of Abraham, those who came after him, this was the people of the nation. Jesus was a Jew. Jesus was a Hebrew. He was under that same marked out. He was to be the king of the Jews. But in order to be a king of the Jews, he must be of Jews. So he was of the same. His parents were Jewish, devout Jewish parents, Joseph and Mary. And so they did the things that the law said to do. God said to do it, we're going to do it.
The cutting of the way that was done. Think of this too, Jesus Christ, And this was a bloody ceremony, if you will. And we know later, as we're going to come to the table in a little while, of the shedding of Jesus's blood. This was almost a foreshadow of a shedding of blood for him. We might ask the question though, and we probably asked this back in Matthew about Jesus's baptism. Well, why would he need this? The cutting away of sin, he had no sin to cut away with, so what's going on here? Well, he's coming to fulfill all the law. He's coming to identify with sinners. Not that he was a sinner, but to identify with sinners. And this is all in connection to the law of the Lord. The law of the Lord is God's word. It is God's commandments. It is who God is when we think of the moral law as testifying to who God is. And you'll see, just in these four verses we've looked at, you could underline in your Bible, and you might see, according to the law of the Lord, by the law of Moses, so about three times at least, and I wrote in a blank, I wrote in a parenthesis here, before his circumcision, that was according to the law of the Lord. They're not doing just what seems best for themselves, but what God has said.
And so know this, if we don't know all there is to know about Jesus' baptism and Jesus' circumcision, two different things, by the way, they're not the same. I weary myself of having to say that, but circumcision is one thing for the nation of Israel, and baptism is for those who have believed upon Jesus Christ and have come to salvation, who have died to sin, died to self, and risen to newness of life. Very much two different things.
But here he comes to the circumcision, not only circumcision, but it says right after that, they named him. This is important. We ought not pass over the naming either. Remember the name given to John, he was given a name. Well, here it says, Jesus, his name was then called. So they're calling him something, but it's given by God. It says, given by the angel. Angel was a messenger, came from the throne of God to give the name, the name. is Jesus.
We've heard that name, we're not unfamiliar with that name, we sing about Jesus all the time, we tell our children of Jesus, we tell others about Jesus the Christ, but this is important in the meaning of the name and why he was named Jesus. It says he was named here at seven days, I wonder what they called him in that from day one to seven. Many of you have people come visit your babies and you say, this is so-and-so. I don't know, I wonder if they said, this is God's son. But at this point on day eight, they say his name is Jesus.
The Hebrew, Yeshua, this would be the, Joshua is the derivative of this. And what this word means, what this name means is Yahweh saves. Jehovah saves. What a name. Have you ever contemplated? I mean, he could have named him the lawgiver or the almighty creator. That would have been valid, but he named him Jehovah saves.
At the name of Jesus we heard of in Philippians, every knee shall bow, because it is Jehovah who saves. And not you who made a decision, not you who finally figured it out, but it is God who saves. Jehovah.
Hosea comes from that same derivative. He says, you shall call him, in Matthew, you shall call him Jesus. Why? For he shall save his people from their sins. That's why he came. The name he was given says why he came. Oh, this is glorious to contemplate.
Notice the obedience again of the parents. And we ought to pause for a moment and look at the pious character of the parents. They named him not what they saw fit, but what God had said. They did the things that they were supposed to do as this child is eight years old in the, what Israel was supposed to do. This is for a certain people. Now Christ has already come. All the things that were in the law for the Jewish people have been fulfilled in Christ. That's gonna make the point when we come to the end of the sermon, but he has done all of this. So these things are, we're all pointing to something and he has fulfilled it in himself.
I feel like there's, more than I can cover here, and pardon me if I'm moving from one thing to the next, because it's... I want us to see the parents, though. They are obedient, believing parents. They're not doing this in a pharisaical nature, well, we're just checking the box and this is what, you know, we're getting right with God by doing these things. No, they were believers in God. They were believers in the Messiah to come, the Messiah who they held in their hands. And they're obeying what God's word has said. Many times we might ask as we're coming to maturity in our own life is, what is God's will for my life? Well, first of all, follow his word. That'll keep you busy enough, by the way. Follow his word, and the parents were wanting to follow his word, to teach their children the things of God, who God is, who Christ is, to lead them to see who the Savior is, whose name is Jesus. There is no other name under heaven by which you must be saved. Jesus is the only name. But we tell them about all these redemptive acts. We share with them about who God is and how he has told us about who he is in his word.
And next we come from the naming, disobedience of the parents, the naming and the circumcision. We next come to the purification ceremony. the purification ceremony, and you most likely heard it as we heard Leviticus read. And I won't read that again, but... Well, I might. It says the days of her purification were completed. And it says that She shall bring to the priest at the doorway of the tent of meeting, so that would be the tabernacle, a one-year-old lamb. This was customary, a lamb. But if she didn't have a lamb, there was some stipulations in here that they could bring two little turtle doves, something that wouldn't cost very much, they could find in plenty. But here she comes, here they come in more obedience, more continued obedience to present their purification ceremony according to the law of Moses, she says. It's said here's in Luke. And they come to Jerusalem. They would have come up to Jerusalem. Jerusalem was always going up. It was on a higher place than where they were. And they go to the temple. and they bring their firstborn son. They present him to the Lord. This was according to the law as well. According in the law of the Lord.
And I'll read a few passages to help us take us back to this context of a Jewish family and understanding these things. If you wanna open Exodus 13, you can follow with me. Exodus 13, I'll read a longer section. In verse one and two, the Lord, so this is Yahweh, the Lord speaking to Moses. And he says to Moses, sanctify, that is set apart to me every firstborn. the firstborn from every womb among the sons of Israel, both man and beast. It belongs to me. This is God speaking. And he goes on and he speaks about the feast there of seven days.
Verse eight, you shall tell your son on that day, now your Israelite son, You shall tell him saying, it is because of what the Lord did for me when I came out of Egypt. And it shall serve as a sign to you on your hand and a reminder on your forehead that the law of the Lord may be in your mouth. For with a powerful hand, the Lord brought you out of Egypt. Therefore, you shall keep the ordinance and it is appointed time from year to year.
He says, verse 11, Now when the Lord brings you to the land of the Canaanite, as he swore to you and to your fathers, and gives it to you, you shall devote to the Lord the first offspring of every womb, the first offspring of every beast that you own. The males belong to the Lord. Here's the reason, for every firstborn, not yet, for every firstborn of a donkey, You shall redeem with a lamb, but if you do not redeem it, then you shall break its neck. Every firstborn of man among your sons, you shall redeem.
And it shall be when your son asks you in time to come saying, what is this? Then you shall say to him, with a powerful hand, the Lord brought us out of Egypt from the house of slavery. It came about when Pharaoh was stubborn about letting us go that the Lord killed every firstborn in the land of Egypt, both the firstborn of man and the firstborn of beast. Therefore, I, that is the father, speaking to the son, I sacrifice to the Lord the males, the first offspring of every womb, but every firstborn of my sons I redeem. So it shall serve as a sign on your hand and phylacteries on your forehead, for with a powerful hand, the Lord brought us out of Egypt.
He's reminding them of the delivery. The sons, the children of those first Israelites who were in Egypt wouldn't have remembered, but this is to remind them. Remember the blood on the doorpost. If you do not bring the blood on the doorpost, then your firstborn will be slaughtered. All those who believed put the blood on there and their firstborn was spared. And so from this time on, if you had your firstborn son, many of you have firstborn sons, if you were an Israelite, you would take them to the temple and you would pay, I think it was five shekels. You would redeem them. because you weren't going to slaughter your firstborn son, that's not what God said. You redeemed them. He said, but God says, because I slaughtered all the ones that did not believe that I was the redeemer to bring them out of Israel.
So this is the context of what Mary and Joseph are bringing their firstborn son. But this got me, as I was contemplating this, I've been thinking about this for days actually, of Mary and Joseph, or Mary specifically, bringing her firstborn son, presenting her son, and who she's bringing is the firstborn of all creation. Colossians. You say, how do I know that? Because Colossians 1. Colossians 1.15, this is speaking of Jesus. I'll start in verse 13. For He, that is Jesus Christ, rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us into the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption for the forgiveness of sins. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by Him all things were created, both in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities. All things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything.
Hebrews 1.6, and when he again brings the firstborn into the world, he says, and let all the angels of God worship him. The firstborn of all creation. The firstborn, the one without beginning. That's what that means. It doesn't mean He was born. It means He was the firstborn of all creation, that He created all. And here Mary is bringing her firstborn son who is the Lord and presenting to the Lord at the temple. There's more on that when you think about at the temple. And who's bringing, who's coming to the temple.
But before there, let's look at the purification sacrifice. So we've seen the presentation of the firstborn, but there's a sacrifice for her uncleanliness, and we read it in Leviticus. It would have been a lamb, should have been a lamb, right? Mary had no lamb of her own. She was a poor woman. It was a poor family. Jesus was born into poverty. He condescended from glories of heaven, from the palaces beyond any of your imagination of beauty and majesty to down to where the animals fed and to a poor, poor family. If any who are poor are hearing me today and don't have any means, Jesus knows that. Experience that. And Mary and Joseph, though they had nothing physically, monetarily, they had everything in Christ. And the baby that they were tasked with raising, they had everything.
But she brings what she could according to the law of the two turtle doves, the blood. Blood needed to be shed for sins. She brings the sacrifice of the birds and she carries in her arms the sacrifice of the world. This is who she's presenting, the one who could not afford a lamb, raised the lamb of God. The firstborn of all creation. God's only son, the one who is eternal life, the light of the world, who would come into the darkness of the fallen creation that he came into at that time, in place and time. Bethlehem, 2,000 years ago. She brings an obedience of the Lord, even in Christ's infancy. In Jesus' infancy, He obeyed completely all of what God had spoken, all of God's commands.
God said in Numbers 3, Numbers 3, 13, For all the firstborn are mine. On that day I struck down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt. I sanctified for myself all the firstborn in Israel, from man to beast, they shall be mine. I am the Lord. This is what he has said. And this firstborn son, times two, Jesus is coming, times a million, times infinity. He says in Exodus 34, 19, the first offspring of every womb belongs to me and all your livestock. The first offspring from cattle and sheep, you shall redeem. all the firstborn of your sons, none shall appear before me empty handed.
We've seen the presentation, we've seen the perfect obedience, we've seen the purification, but what is the purpose of this perfect obedience of Jesus? Well, we alluded to it earlier in the covenant of works. The one, who God, who had created man, and man did not obey, did not follow, none, Adam didn't, and none of us, and none had fulfilled it until Christ comes. And then he comes, and we're just seeing the first days of Jesus, but even in the first days, obedient to God's law. And we'll see for 33 more years, if we go through Luke, and see all of the obedience perfectly of Jesus, fulfilling all the law, His perfect active obedience, we call it in theology, active obedience. And then we think of the term for what happened upon the cross as his passive obedience. But the active obedience, he was the perfect man, the ideal man. He was the ideal infant. He was the ideal four-year-old, the ideal 12-year-old, the ideal 33-year-old. A man of perfection, par excellence. This was Jesus. This is whom God sent to save us. It is absolutely necessary that He be this perfect. If He had any flaw, any stain, He could not have been the pure Lamb of God. He could not have fulfilled the law. The righteousness that you and I have received by faith is because He fulfilled the law. The pardon you receive for your sin is because His work on the cross. But it's both. And Christ is showing us, even in this infancy account, how he fully accomplished all for all who would believe.
That the Redeemer must be perfect, and he was. Jesus says, who among you convicts me of sin? Or he says, not convict, but he, who among you says that I've sinned? And there was none, because he hadn't. He identified with sinners whom he redeems, even as a baby, even as an infant. He was numbered among transgressors, even though he knew no sin.
So I want us to meditate on this this coming week. of the great condescension coming down, condescending in many aspects, but also the great poverty that he came into. The poor family, but a poor family devoted to God. They didn't let their trials hurt their worship. They didn't let a 70-mile walk uphill to worship at Jerusalem hinder them. They didn't let a sickness bother them and keep them from the congregation. They were about God and His worship and not of themselves. And they come to the temple, not with a physical lamb, but with their lamb, with Jesus the Christ. They bring a sacrifice in the birds, but He is the sacrifice. They come into the temple, but He is the temple. The temple where God dwells with His people, that Jesus is this. Do you see the amazing imagery that's happening even in this passage? that he is presented to the high priest and he is the high priest, that he is the redeemer of sinners. What an amazing account that the righteous one would be the sacrifice for the unrighteous ones like us. And it starts even in his infancy. How He was born under the law so that all who would believe upon Him will not be under law but under grace.
And when you think about the perfect obedience of Christ and you find yourself, I don't do what I want to do and I'm not doing what I should do and there's sin in our life and we know that God is the righteous one. Do away with me because I failed, but Christ was perfect in all of it and failed not. And so your righteousness is not dependent upon your obedience. It's already been done in Christ's obedience. This should bring us great, great comfort, knowing that it is not based upon your performance. If it was, we'd all be in hell. It would all be over for all of us, but it's based upon what Jesus has done and His perfect law fulfilling, His perfect law abiding in thought, word, and deed. This is what Jesus did.
In His name, it means Savior. Jesus means Savior. Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior to the glory of God the Father. Jesus, the name that we sang about, the name that we heard about in Philippians, the only name by which man can be saved, and that is Jesus. There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven by which we must be saved, and this is Jesus the Christ.
Peter and John, the apostles, they were arrested for proclaiming His name, and then they were released, and they said, we cannot stop speaking about what we have seen and heard. They wanted to tell all about this Jesus. So as we continue to see this great infancy account in the weeks to come, I want us to think about what a precious Redeemer the Savior we have in our Lord Jesus Christ, perfectly righteous, the humbleness of Him coming. Think of the sacrifice. Think of His name. Think of where He came to the temple. Think of His priestly work.
Those of you who are in Christ, We learn more of him, we come to love him more when we hear these things. But know that we need to come to Christ. We come into this world under law, but we must have a savior, a redeemer, that is why his name is Jesus saves. But we must come in faith. We must come believing. Believing in this one true sacrifice. Believing in the substitute for me. Believing that He is my Savior and my Lord.
And when you do, God says that he will pardon the sins, forgive us of our iniquities, but also clothe us in his righteousness. And the active obedience of fulfilling all the law perfectly is applied to believers. And so I pray if you are yet to come to saving faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, that he would draw you with his cords of love, that you would see your need for a savior. that you would look at the law, the moral law, and realize that you have not even come close. There's no works of yours that will make you right before a holy God, but Jesus does. And this is the good news. This is the gospel that you are to believe if you are to be saved.
And so I pray that you would receive the Savior, believe upon Jesus Christ, and He shall save you. You shall have eternal life. You shall have joy unspeakable.
Let's pray.
Father, I pray that you would work on our hearts, Lord, that you are already working on our hearts. That you would peel back any hardness that has caused separation between us and you. Lord, you would bring hearts of flesh, tender, humble. Lord, we thank you that you are a gracious God who has sent your Son to come into this sin-cursed world to redeem unworthy sinners. We glory in your name and praise you for those whom you have redeemed, who you are sanctifying, whom you have glorified.
Lord, I pray that you would save those that are lost, that you would awaken them to their darkness and to their despair, and that you would save their soul for your glory. Lord, help us to, as we walk through this world and as we walk through the muck of our own sin, Lord, we would not rely on our own works, but on your work, your perfect obedience. Help us to follow your word, I pray, Lord. Give us encouragement. Strengthen us. Keep us on the path. Help us to focus our own spiritual eyes on the light that is Christ. We ask all of this in your son's name. Amen.
