GOD GAVE THE LAW THROUGH MOSES BUT GRACE AND TRUTH CAME THROUGH JESUS CHRIST.
Tonight were going to take time out from the worries of Christmas
from the worries of what gifts to buy
from the dilemmas over how much we should spend on a gift for Aunty Mavis.
Because we are going to look at gifts that we can receive.
The gifts that God has given to us.
When I say that I am not referring to spiritual gifts either but the gifts that God has given to the whole world,
the gifts God has given to each one of us.
PAUSE
The first we’re going to look at is the law.
Now that doesn’t sound much like you’re ideal Christmas present
but it is a gift from God,
you might even say it is a love gift.
PAUSE
You probably remember the story from Exodus,
of how Moses climbed Mount Sinai to receive this gift,
And you probably remember that this gift came in the form of two stone tablets.
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Moses received these gifts from God on behalf of the whole of the Jewish nation,
infact he received them on behalf of the whole world,
you and me included.
But on the way down the mountain Moses got angry He’d almost been forgotten by his fellow countrymen and women,
and in his absence they decided they would fashion a god out of gold
a god in the form of the gods they had known in Egypt
So when Moses saw them worshiping an ornamental bovine and when he heard the cow bells ringing
He got angry
Moses flipped
and so he took the gift and smashed it into pieces.
These people did not deserve any gifts from the most high God or so Moses thought.
God thought differently though.
In his mercy, love and compassion for us all he gave us another gift.
Two more stone tablets,
an expression of love from a living God to his people
two stone tablets for them to treasure.
And that is exactly what the Jews did
they treasured them putting them safety in a treasure box
a box that they took with them where ever they went.
when they eventually found a home they loved this gift so much that they built a home for it also
a temple to hold the love gift.
The Jews had fallen in love with this gift,
they even wrote song about it to express how much they loved this gift.
In psalm 119 the Psalmist wrote :
with all my lips I recount
all the laws that came from you’re mouth.
I rejoice in following you’re statutes
as one in great riches.
I meditate on your precepts
and consider your ways.
I delight in your decrees
I will not neglect your word.
Do good to your servant, and I will live
I will obey your word.
Open my eyes that I may see
wonderful things in your law.
And the psalmist goes on to compose the longest psalm recorded in the book of psalms,
a psalm about this love for the law.
The law was surely not a burden to the psalmist,
but a symbol of love,
an expression of a covenant of love.
So what went wrong,
because by the time of Jesus something had gone
wrong,
terribly wrong.
This once beautiful love gift seems to have become a burden to the people.
Like a beautiful rose it had once bloomed
but now it was just a dry old stick.
PAUSE
What happened was that despite being treasured by the people
it had also been corrupted by them too.
That old sinful nature had caused the love gift to crumble.
The two pieces of stone were disintegrating in our
hands.
People had fallen in love with the gift instead of the
giver,
the gift was always meant to point the way too God but now it had almost taken the place of God,
it had become like the golden calf,
an idol that reminded them of better times.
PAUSE
In first century Palestine you had too religious schools of thought about this love gift the law.
First you had the Saducees,
now these people were the conservative Jews,
the law to them was everything and everything out side of the law was ignored,
that meant they only read the first five books of the Old testament,
they did not believe that God had any purposes
outside of the law,
no eternal life,
no resurrection
nothing,
the law was it
no more no less.
PAUSE
The other law school around that time belonged to the Pharisees.
These were the intellectuals the students of the law, and in the words of Jesus the hypocrites.
As a group of people they saw the laws short comings,
they saw how certain aspects of the law were gradually becoming obsolete,
and so they set out to reinterpret the law,
to contemporize the love gift,
and make it speak to future generations.
However all they succeeded in doing was confusing
people
making a moral millstones out of the love gift.
They took a great deal of pleasure in following the precepts that they had instigated though,
precepts that only they could hope to follow,
in doing so they drew a great deal of attention to them selves,
people would gasp at the feats the Pharisees performed
they would call out surely thess Pharisee are men of God.
Yet Jesus called them hypocrites,
because they built a fence around the law,
a fence that meant the law could not be broken
but a fence that also stopped people from living,
The love gift had become a whip in their hands to beat people into submission.
We only have to look at the plight of the local tailor to see this,
Now the tailor was not allowed to leave the house with a needle in his pocket if it was late in the day just prior to the Sabbath.
You’re probably wondering why,
well the answer is easy because if that needle was still in his pocket as the Sabbath began it was regarded as work.
Its laughable but it is also true
The fence around the law had become so high people could no longer see its purpose,
peole could no longer see it as a pointer to God.
In the hands of men this gift had become a burden, the purpose of the gift had been lost.
You might say it had become like the jigsaw puzzle with out a picture,
no one was able to piece it together
and no one new what it was meant to look like.
But what is far worse than this is that these two law schools believed that this loving merciful God was only concerned with telling people how to live,
they believed God was only concerned with the demands of the law.
The law had become a barrier to God instead of a sign post,
a burden instead of a love gift.
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But there is Good News ,
there is some real Good News.
God did not forget about us,
he didn’t forget how much he loves us and so when the time was right he sent us another gift.
PAUSE
This gift was different though
It wasn’t a third set of stone tablets,
but a living
breathing gift.
This gift came in the form of flesh,
and this gift brought with it the bits that those stone tablets could not,
This gift brought with it grace and truth.
No longer did human kind have to settle for a shadow of the truth of God,
like the original love gift was
because this gift wasn’t a symbol
it wasn’t an artificial representation
you see this gift was the covenant a new covenant, this gift is Gods love for us.
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This gift is also a bearer of Gods grace,
because it tells us that God loves us anyway.
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This new gift does not mean that we throw the other one away though,
it doesn’t make the original love gift obsolete,
so don’t walk out of here tonight and think that its all right to break the stone tablets,
because it isn’t.
It does mean that the law is put back in its place though,
as a symbol of the love pact .
The heart of faith has become what it was always meant to be,
the grace and truth that was demonstrated by the life of this new gift,
this living breathing gift.
PAUSE
Do you see who this new gift is,
Jesus Christ,
God made flesh.
Its not a pale shadow of the truth of God like the law is,
because Jesus Christ contains the fullness of God this grace and truth.
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The only decision about this gift is what do we do with it ?
how will you respond to this new gift.
Will you break it in two like Moses broke the original.
Will you place it in a treasure box in an attempt to preserve it
Will you try to reinterpret it make it more modern and contemporary.
Then again will you discard it because you’re quite happy with the original gift the tablets of stone. Alternatively you could just nail it to a cross and raise it up for the world to see.
I think the best thing to do though is to accept this gift into our lives
and allow this gift to change our lives.
The choice is yours though
because the gift has been given to you.
Each of you
I ask you one thing though
please use this gift wisely.
