Abridged Worship – January 5, 2025

Over my years as a Christian, I have heard, and it is possible you have heard the same thing, Christians speak very negatively about the Law by which the children of Israel were expected to live. I have heard quite a spectrum, that the law is archaic, barbaric, oppressive, and legalistic, plus some derogatory stuff, I won’t mention.

I always assume that when people look down on the Law of the Old Testament, they aren’t looking down on all of it, because that would include the Ten Commandments, and I don’t think many Christians would say that, thou shall not kill, and thou shall not steal are oppressive and archaic. So what are peoples’ issue with the Law?

It makes it more complicated to hear Christians bash the Law, especially when you encounter a passage like this where Jesus shows love and respect for the law, and says, for truly I tell you, not the smallest letter will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.  And then further goes on to say there are consequences for those who do not teach according to the law.

So, how do we understand all this, and make sense of this command to honor God’s law from Jesus?

Let us first make sense of why people might have an objection to God’s Law, then we will try to make sense of Jesus’ command.

One of the reasons that Christians look down on the Law is that Law has become associated with the Pharisees of the Bible who often used God’s law as a weapon against others, or as a point of pride for themselves. When Jesus rebukes them and their abuse of the Law, the abuses and the poor judgment of the Pharisees become pseudonymous with the Law itself.

Second, the Law is difficult, this is a known fact, and it is hard to live up to the law. And so, part of what happens when Jesus comes and dies for our sins, the requirements to live to the law changes in a manner, and Christians are not bound to the law in the same way the Jews were. But just because it changes, and we will talk about that more in a moment, doesn’t mean the Law is bad, and just because something is and was difficult to accomplish, doesn’t make it bad either. But people don’t like change, people don’t like difficult, and so those get compounded into the idea of the Law.

So many Christians first encounter the Law through the lens of an old way which has changed, which was difficult, and often used as a weapon or a source of pride. An old, difficult prideful weapon. Doesn’t sound appealing.

This is the part that always makes me ponder when I hear Christians badmouth the law because of the lens they view it. Who gave Israel the Law in the first place? Answer: God. Is anyone in this world worthy to look down on anything that God gives to us? Answer: no! Christians can be so quick to act like they are higher than God’s wisdom.

If you ever have that impulse, remember Isaiah 55:8-9

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.”

So, we cannot look down on the law like this, we are called to honor it. And to honor it, we need to understand the Law of the Prophets, and further, we need to understand how Jesus would expect us to react to the law as Christians today.

To understand the Law, we must go back in time to a time before the Law, to the very beginning.

God creates the world and into the world he creates humans. Humans were created in a high place, in a high garden, and were created to live with God in this garden. There was always meant, from the very beginning, to be a closeness between God and people. In fact, we were supposed to participate in creation with God by helping to care for and manipulate creation.

But something happens, you know that whole snake, tree, fruit thing. Humanity falls to the temptations of pride and idolatry, and they become corrupted by sin. In dishonoring God’s command to not eat of the tree, the humans violate the authority of God. And this is the tricky thing people often don’t understand. God is perfect, God is eternal, God is just and good and so are his laws and commands for us. When we violate God’s authority, we violate what is good, true, pure, authoritative, and eternal. We become agents of sin against God.

God’s presence cannot permit sin, injustice, and evil to exist. This means God has two routes of dealing with sin, injustice, and evil. God will overcome these evils, and he could do it by completely and swiftly destroying all evil. But if God did that, he would have to destroy the creation, the human creature which he loves because they have become seduced by evil too. So to preserve life, God can destroy evil in a way that gives opportunity for the creation he loves to survive, he destroys evil the slow way, by repairing what is broken, healing what is ill, and purifying what is corrupted. This is a longer process.

Think of it this way. If a watchmaker’s prize watch breaks and it no longer works. He could throw it out and just make a new watch. Which is likely the quickest fix, he has all the material needed. Or, he can take the broken watch, open it up, try to find the source of the problem, and then repair it. That takes more time, that takes love and care for what is broken.

This is where the law enters the picture. Because now humanity is broken, and because of that God will take the slow process to repair the people. But unfortunately for the time being the people cannot live in the garden anymore, they cannot be in the high place close to God for God’s purity, light, and goodness are so powerful, that humanity cannot survive the very pressure from God presence upon their brokenness, they have to now be at arm’s length from God’s might and authority.

Think about it this way, I’ll keep using the watch metaphor. Do you remember those underwater watches they promoted a lot back in the 80s and 90s, we saw a similar thing with smartwatches and phones in the 2010s. If you have a smart-watch that can go into the water, one of the things that must be in place for that smart-watch to survive the nature of the water, the liquidness, and the pressure, for the smart-watch to survive it cannot has a crack in it, it cannot have any weak spots. If it is broken, the very pressure and nature of the water will destroy an imperfect watch.

When humanity fell, we got some cracks, we gained weak spots, and we could no longer withstand the awesome power of God. So, God sends us out of the waters, he removes us from the garden.

But God doesn’t want us removed forever, God’s plan is to still have us with him. So the Law is revealed to us through time by a covenant with the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The Israelites are given and Law and a Tabernacle. The Tabernacle becomes an access point for people to encounter God’s presence among them. There will be an inner room, in which God’s presence will dwell, and the Law creates a way for people to keep themselves pure enough to withstand the pressure of God’s presence. Like putting a cracked watch in a plastic bag so it doesn’t get too wet. It is like God wants the Israelites to hang on to God’s presence, even in this more controlled way.  

The law as a result contains three things important details.

There is a set of ceremonial laws that signify the Israelites as unique among all people. These laws dictate the clothes they wear, what they eat and drink, and how they live. This is to show the world a clear understanding of those who are in a relationship with God, versus those who are not.

 Second the law contains a moral standard; to be in a relationship with God’s presence, Israel must do everything they can to live a moral life, a moral law directed not by the human person, but by God Himself, the source of all that is good and just. When the world sees those ceremonial markers, the clothes, the dietary life, etc., they should also see attached to those markers a moral person who follows God’s goodness in every way they can.

Third, there is a collection of laws within the Law of Israel on how to atone for a sin committed when one fails to live up to the law. Remember people cannot encounter God’s presence if they have sinned, and because people are now fallen creatures, and easily stumble, the Law makes room for people to rectify these mistakes and allows the people to cleanse themselves of sin through ritual atonement so they would continue to live with God.

In short, all the Law of the Prophets are God’s gift to humanity to allow a portion of humanity to retain connection with God, despite their sinful nature.

But the Law is just the first step to the plan, Jesus at the cross is the second part of God’s Law plan, through Christ, God takes on the ritual atonement needs for all sin, his very body and blood are sacrificed for all sin, all evil deed, thoughts and the like. Through Jesus we all become ritually clean before God, allowing us to experience God’s presence, no longer through the tabernacle, but right at the core of the heart of the faithful.

So, Jesus, as he says, completes the Law, he does what the Law was preparing the world for. Jesus reestablishes a connection line so people can be in communion with God.

And because the cross allows us broken sinful people to withstand God’s presence, it allows for the tabernacle to be brought into the individual person, once God is in there, that is when God starts to repair us. The Watch Maker, through the law and Jesus, now gets into the internals of the broken watch and begins to tinker and fix it. If you welcome God into your heart, he will fix you.

This is why Christians should not look down on the Law. It serves and served a purpose, though some have been outdated through Jesus, it doesn’t mean it wasn’t still a gift from God. And some of the laws, the Moral Law, for example never dies. We are still called to live to the moral law in every way we can, went we break God’s moral law, we are still called to repent and atone to the best of our ability, and that is all so much lighter now because through Christ dwelling within, we can work in that landscape directly with God’s help.

This is how I believe Jesus wants us to honor the law, first to understand it, second for the parts that still apply to us, we need to live by it, thirdly to recognize that Jesus is the completion of the law is to reconnect us with God, and fourth to see the Law and the Christ as God methods of restoring us to what we were always meant to be.

For the faithful, God is inside us, tinkering on us broken watches, he will fix us. Let us pray…

Lord, we seek to trust the wisdom of the Law, the fulfillment of it through Christ, and by this practice of trusting You with the bounty of our livelihoods, may we deepen our faith, and may Your will and power begin to fix us broken watches, so that we can ever swim in the glory of Your presence. Amen.

Homework: