SERMON: The Mosaic Manger

Thank you for subscribing to the Shepherds Church podcast. This is our Lord's Day sermon. We pray that as we declare the word of God, that you would be encouraged, strengthened in your faith, and that you would catch a greater vision of who

Christ is. May you be blessed in the hearing of God's word, and may the Lord be with you.

Yesterday I got the privilege of going to the movies, which is something that I rarely do.

And with friends and family, I saw the movie David. And there's a scene in the movie, in fact, it's a scene from the

Bible itself, where two men meet on the battlefield as individuals. But yet curiously, the entire fate of their nation lies within this single battle,

Royale. One is a ruddy, rough, and tumble runt plucked out of the fields that he was tending the sheep in.

And the other was a bona fide giant, standing nearly 10 feet tall by modern measure, and not the kind -hearted kind of giant like Andre the

Giant in The Princess Bride, or the jolly mythical giant on your cans of peas.

He was a man who carried the unholy, half -blooded DNA of fallen angels and men, demigods according to the legends of Greece, anarchy in the

Babylonian traditions, and man -eating giants in some of the most ancient texts that exist, but that's for another sermon.

The reason I'm bringing it up, and there is a reason I'm bringing it up, is because each man represented his nation.

He was a representative of the whole. Each nation agreed to let their entire fate as a country be decided upon the competition of these two men.

And if Goliath won the rumble in the Middle Eastern jungle, the entire nation of Israel would become

Philistine slaves. If David, the humble shepherd boy, figured out somehow a way to win, then the nation of the

Philistines would be routed, becoming indentured servants of Yahweh and his host.

And it is in this arrangement that we learn much about what covenants actually are.

Because in a covenant, God picks out a man from among a people, and he begins doing business with that man, and then

God brokers a deal with that man that will impact the entire nation and the race of people.

So long as their representative keeps the terms of the covenant, then they will be blessed. So long as the stone lands, they will not be in slavery.

But like Goliath, if those men sin against the living God, those representatives, those covenant heads that we call federal heads, if they sin against the living

God, then they not only are punished, but everyone who's connected to them inherits their fate in the same way that the

Philistines inherited the fate of the downfall of the mighty giant Goliath. Because they are our representatives.

Now in this, we've seen so far in this Advent series on covenant theology, which by the way, has been way better than just that sentence

I just said, like, oh, what are you guys doing for Christmas? Oh, we're doing this great series on something.

So what are you guys doing? We're talking about covenant theology and Christmas. But yet it's been awesome because we've gotten to see the bones of the

Bible and how it all connects to Christ. And we've gotten to see that, that this, how this thrice holy

God actually comes down into earth and creates a pocket of sacred space where he and man can dwell together in peace and blessing.

And to do that work, God chooses human representatives to represent us in covenant with God.

Men who will stand in our place and God doing this enters into the solemn agreements with these men, agreements that are cut, signed, and sealed in blood so that whatever the outcome of these men are would be the outcome that we receive as well.

And we've seen that the outcome has been abysmal for the heads of covenant so far.

Adam 1 .0, his name is Adam because he's man. That's what Hebrew word for man is.

So hey man, he's, hey Adam, he became literally the first man. And he's the first man that entered into covenant with God and God fashioned

Adam out of the dust. We remember outside of the region of Eden, God breathed life into his nostrils and God brought him into a garden land filled with animals.

And Adam is commanded to rule over and take dominion over this land and these animals to be fruitful and to multiply and to fill it and to spread it out and subdue the entire world and make the entire world a garden.

But Adam, not very long into his covenant representation failed and he ate from the wrong tree and he ended up naked and ashamed and his son

Cain inherited even deeper curses than he and the line of men collapsed and was pulled down into pollution and they would be almost entirely destroyed by a totalizing judgment.

That's Adam 1 .0. Adam 2 .0 is who I'm calling Noah and I'm calling

Noah Adam 2 .0 because if you examine the life of Noah, it looks a lot like Adam. It says that Noah was a man of the soil.

Adam was made from the dirt. You see the connection. Like Adam called, like Adam, God called

Noah out of the dusty parts of the earth. Like Adam, God breathed in such a way that gave life to Noah, but he also breathed in such a way that that broke the world.

The word in Hebrew for breath, Ruach, means both breath and spirit.

So Noah was given the breath of God in a way that made him be classified as a righteous man on earth and the rest of the world received the breath of God that broke forth the foundations of the deep and the floods of the deep and drowned them under the fury of God's wrath.

After the flood, Noah plants a garden. Who does that remind you of? After the flood, he rules over the animals.

Who does that remind you of? After the flood, he gets off the boat, plants the garden, drinks from the fruit, becomes naked and ashamed, and his son

Canaan is more cursed than he. Who does that remind you of? And like Adam, whose descendants descended deeper into pollution and received this totalizing judgment, the descendants of Noah did the same, and they all ended up in the plains of Shinar at the

Tower of Babel, and all of them were judged with confusion and language and spreading out.

So you have Noah basically walking through every aspect of the life of Adam because he's a covenant representative, and God cuts him from the same kind of cloth as his father

Adam, and he, like his father Adam, does the same things. And we receive the punishment.

We receive the representation. Now so far, the story of the human race is not going so well, and we're only in Genesis 9.

We have two Adam figures, two very similar men. Both of them are fallen. Both of them are failed representatives, and God would have been just if he would have abandoned the redemption project in Adam.

He would have been just if he abandoned the redemption project in the flood. He would have been just if Noah, who was said to be a righteous man, but we know that there's no one righteous.

We know that in comparison to the evil that was on the world in the days of Noah, Noah was righteous.

But Noah also deserved to be drowned in the waters of the flood, and his family as well. So God would have been just if he washed the world away of humans, and yet God raises up a third representative, a third covenant head that we called last week

Adam 3 .0, which is Abraham. And we call him

Adam 3 .0 because he has roughly the same story as Adam. It's fascinating when you look at the details of it because there's so many similarities between Abraham and Adam.

Like Adam, Abraham was chosen out of a dusty place called Ur. Like Adam, the breath of God calls him up and out of the dust and gives him glorious covenantal life.

Like Adam, he's placed in a garden land that is said to flow with milk and honey. When it says that the land of Canaan is a land flowing with milk and honey, you're meant to see, oh, that's a garden.

Oh, that's a new Eden. Like Adam, he is blessed and he has promised offspring so much that would number the stars.

He's fruitful and he multiplies. That would eventually fill the world with worshipers just like it's promised to Adam.

Like Adam, he's given ownership and dominion over the entire world. Like Adam, he's put into a deep sleep we talked about last week.

The word that Adam was put into a deep sleep and Eve was cut out of him through his rib,

Abraham was put into a deep sleep. But unlike Adam who was cut, Abraham would not be cut.

But God would promise that he would be cut if the covenant did not come true. In every way,

Adam and Abraham are connected. Like Adam, Abraham eventually did have a child, a child named

Isaac, a child of the promise who like Abel was in constant conflict with his brother. One of them,

Ishmael, was cursed to wander like Cain. One of them, Isaac, was given the blessing of the land like Seth.

Just like Adam, two angels show up in Abraham's life with swords and they make war against sin like the cherubim who guard the way to the garden.

And like Adam, Abraham's descendants end up enslaved to the serpent because they end up in Egypt under the rule of Pharaoh who, oh, by the way, wears a serpent on his headdress.

So here you have three covenants that are basically telling us the same story. God raises up a covenant head and they represent us poorly and people end up in slavery and human representation fails.

So today, instead of a human representative, today we're going to look at a national representative.

We're going to look at a corporate representative and we're going to look at how Israel is brought into covenant with God as a nation.

And oh, by the way, the pattern continues, Israel is a type of Adam, but we'll save that for a moment.

Let us now begin. I'm not going to ask you to turn with me because I'm going to read several passages to show you what the

Mosaic covenant looks like. I call it the covenant with Israel because Moses was a mediator.

Israel was the one who was responsible for stewarding the covenant. So I'll read some passages to you, we'll pray, and then we will dive in.

Exodus 19, five through six. This is the Israel being placed as head over the entire world.

Now that if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, then you shall be my own possession among all the peoples for all the earth is mine and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.

These are the words that you shall speak to the sons of Israel. So Israel's called to be head. Here's the stipulations of the covenant.

Some of them, I'm not going to read the 600 plus that show up in the covenant.

Then God spoke all these words saying you shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol. You shall not take the name of the

Lord your God in vain. Remember the Sabbath to keep it holy. Honor your father and mother. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery.

You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness and you shall not covet. We know that as the 10 commandments. Those are the stipulations of the covenant.

Now there's also signs, seals, and meals in this covenant. Exodus 24, four through 11, Moses wrote down all the words of the

Lord. The stipulations. Then he arose early in the morning and he built an altar at the foot of the mountain with 12 pillars for the 12 tribes of Israel signs.

He sent young men of the sons of Israel and they offered burnt offerings and sacrificed young bulls as peace offerings to the

Lord seals. Moses took half of the blood and put it in basins and the other half of the bloody sprinkled on the altar.

And then he took the book of the covenant and read it in the hearing of the people and said all that the

Lord has spoken we will do and we will be obedient. So Moses took the blood and sprinkled it on the people and said, behold, the blood of the covenant, which the

Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words. Then Moses and Nadab and Abihu and the 70 elders of Israel went up with Aaron and they saw the

God of Israel and under his feet there appeared to be pavement of Sapphire as clear as the sky itself.

And he, yet he God did not stretch out his hand against the nobles of the sons of Israel and they saw

God and they ate and they drink signs, seals and meals. Then you have the blessings and the curses.

I'm not going to get into all of these. You should read Leviticus 26. You should read Deuteronomy 28.

You should look at these because they're so fascinating, but I'm going to give you a smattering Leviticus 26, three through 13 and 14 through 39.

If you walk in my statutes and keep my commandments so as to carry them out, then I will give you rains in their season so that the land will yield its produce.

Your thriving will last for you. You will thus eat your food to the full and live securely in the land.

Verse six, I shall also grant peace in the land. I shall also eliminate the harmful beasts from the land and no sword will pass through your land.

Verse seven, but you will chase your enemies and they will fall before you by the sword. Verse nine, so I will turn toward you and make you fruitful and multiply you.

There's Adamic language again, and I will confirm my covenant with you. Verse 11, I will make my dwelling place among you.

There's Eden language and my soul will not reject you and I will walk among you. There's Eden language and be your

God and you shall be my people. Here's the curses. But if you do not obey me and you do not carry out all of these commandments, if instead you reject my statutes and if your soul abhors my ordinances, then

I in turn will do this to you and it is rough. It comes in sequential periods of increase in intensity.

Here's how it begins. I will point over you a sudden terror. This is how it begins. Consumption and fever that will waste away the eyes and cause the soul to pine away and will sow your seed.

You will sow your seed uselessly for your enemy will eat it up. I will set my face against you so that you will be struck down before your enemies and those who hate you will rule over you and you will flee when no one is pursuing you and I will punish you seven times more for your sins.

Verse 19, I will also break down your pride of power. I will make your sky like iron and your earth like bronze.

It doesn't rain, nothing grows. Verse 20, your strength will be spent uselessly.

Your land will not yield its produce and the trees of the land will not yield their fruit. If then you are still unwilling to obey me,

I will increase the plague on you seven times according to your sins. I will let loose among you the beast of the field which will bereave you of your children and destroy your cattle and reduce your numbers so that your roads lie deserted.

I will act with hostility against you and I, even I will strike you seven times for your sins and I will bring upon you a sword which will execute vengeance for the covenant.

And when you gather together into your cities, I will send pestilence among you so that you shall be delivered into the hands of your enemies.

I will act with wrathful hostility against you. You will eat the flesh of your sons and the flesh of your daughters you will eat.

I will destroy your high places and cut down your incense altars and heap your remains on the remains of your idols.

I will lay waste your cities as well. I will make your sanctuaries desolate and I will not smell your soothing aromas.

I will make the land desolated so that your enemies who settle in it will be appalled by it.

You however, I will scatter among the nations and will draw out a sword after you as your land becomes a desolation and your cities become a waste.

And those of you who may be left will rot away because of their iniquity in the lands of your enemies and also because of the iniquity of their forefathers.

You will rot with them. It's unbelievable.

It's almost hard now to transition because the covenant also doesn't just have curses, it has a legacy.

So it's a hard transition here from that. That's the covenant curses if you don't obey, but if you do obey, you get a legacy and here's the legacy

Deuteronomy 30 verses one through six. So it shall be when all of these things have come upon you, the blessing and the curse, which

I have set before you and you call them to mind in all nations where the Lord your God has banished you and you return to the

Lord your God and obey him with all of your heart and soul according to all that I command you today, you and your sons.

Then the Lord your God will restore you from your captivity and have compassion on you and will gather you again from all of the peoples where the

Lord your God has scattered you. If you're outcaster at the ends of the earth from there, the Lord will gather you and from there he will bring you back.

The Lord your God will bring you into the land which your father's possessed and you shall possess it and he will prosper you and multiply you more than your fathers.

Moreover, the Lord your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants to love the

Lord your God with all of your heart and with all of your soul so that you may live by obeying the terms of the covenant.

Look at all that God is doing to bless his people. Let us, let us pray and let us examine

Israel as covenant head. Lord, we thank you that even in the depths and the, the deeps of what we're calling covenant theology, this attempt by us to understand multi thousand year arrangements and covenants and agreements that you made with representatives to rescue the human race.

You went with Adam to rescue the human race and yet it descended into ruin.

You entered into a covenant with Noah and yet it ended in confusion. You entered into a covenant with Abraham and yet it ended in slavery.

And today we're going to examine how you entered into a covenant with national Israel in the old

Testament to be the head over all the nations to produce for yourself that which you had purposed in the garden of Eden, that the entire earth would be filled with worshipers and with the glory of God.

And Lord, today we examine just how tremendously you have extended grace to these representatives and just how tremendously they have failed and just how tremendously we need you,

Jesus. It's in your name we pray, amen. So Adam 4 .0,

the nation of Israel. How is the nation of Israel a type of Adam?

Well, there's lots of parallels in the story. The pattern that began in Eden does not disappear after Adam falls,

Noah stumbles, or Abraham wanders. It expands, it intensifies, and now in the covenant with Israel, it becomes corporate, it becomes a collective, it becomes nationalized.

Israel is not merely another covenant partner. Israel is Adam reenacted,

Adam enlarged, Adam expanded, Adam placed as the head over all the nations.

For instance, like Adam, Israel was called out of the dust. Where did God call Israel? Out of Egypt, the dust.

Adam was formed in the ground, animated by the breath of God in the same way Israel was called by the breath of God out of Egypt through the word of his messenger

Moses. Like the first creation, this is fascinating. This is not

Adamic typology, this is creation typology. I'm a nerd, so you're just gonna have to deal with it. But like the first creation, the spirit hovered over the waters of chaos in Genesis, the spirit hovers over the waters of the

Red Sea in the Exodus. The same God who spoke creation into existence in Genesis 1 is the same

God who speaks over the people in the book of Exodus. The same son who walked with Adam in the garden is now showing up in the book of Exodus as the angel of the

Lord, and what is he doing but walking his people through the water? So you have God speaking, spirit hovering, son walking, it's

Genesis 1 all over again. And when the waters are separated from the dry land, what does that remind you of?

The first week of creation, day two, waters and dry land are separated. Red Sea, water and dry land are separated.

The boundary between water and earth is eliminated, just like it was in the first creation. So should we be surprised that God is gonna draw out of this creative moment an

Adam to put into a garden, land, and like Adam, God calls

Israel his firstborn son. That's why he says out of Egypt I called my firstborn son, that passage was not first applied to Jesus, it was applied first to Israel.

Like Adam stood in the world as God's son and image bearer, Israel is explicitly named

God's son and heir, which is entirely federal. What Adam was to the garden, now

Israel is supposed to be to the nations, that's what we should see here. Like Adam, Israel encounters a serpentine enemy, which is a fancy way of saying someone who's of the serpent.

Pharaoh is not merely an ancient tyrant, he's a theological antagonist and a representative of evil. He enslaves, he deceives, he hardens, and he questions the word of God, just like his father

Satan. And he seeks the destruction of the seed of God, the seed of the woman, throwing the babies into the

Nile River, he's just like the serpent. So what you have is the same old serpent that we met in Eden, this time using a

Pharaoh as a proxy to do his bidding against the plans of God. Like the original creation, the chaotic waters are restrained by the breath of God through ten successive acts of judgment in the book of Exodus.

The waters are also restrained by God, holding them back so that the people of God could walk through and become new creation, new people, a new nation, birthed in that moment.

Like Adam, Israel is placed into a garden land, Canaan was not just their territory, it was a sacred space where they would interact with and worship this

God, a land that's described in Edenic terms, where it took two men to carry one bushel of grapes, they were so big.

It flowed with milk and honey, this is a land that looks a lot like the Garden of Eden, where their temple is decorated like the

Garden of Eden, where the tabernacle is decorated like the Garden of Eden. As you walk through the tabernacle and the temple, you walk past the tree of life, you walk past the cherubim, you walk to the place where God and man dwell, it's all

Edenic language. Like Adam, Israel was given a priestly, kingly vocation.

The same word that is used of Adam, to keep and to till, to keep and to work the garden is used of the Levitical priest who served in the tabernacle, which as we've said is decorated like a garden.

So they're little Adams, working and serving their God in a garden space. Their calling like Adam is mediatorial, they're to bring

God's presence to the world through their faithfulness and worship. Like Adam, Israel is commanded to drive out the serpent and his seed.

Think about this, Adam is commanded to keep and to work the garden so that when the serpent comes in, he was supposed to cast it out.

Israel is called to cast out the Canaanites who worshiped the serpentine gods.

The conquest narrative of Joshua is not random, it is Adam being commanded to redo what he should have done originally in the garden land.

Israel fails. Israel is commanded to be fruitful and multiply, actually spoken over them at the very beginning of the book of Exodus, and they were fruitful and they multiplied.

God is laying these crumbs down that lead us through the forest and he's being lavish with it.

Like Adam, they're given a dominion mandate. Like Adam, they're given a territory.

Like Adam, they're told to fill the world with the light of God and they will be a light to the Gentiles. Like Adam, Israel sins and the law is violated.

Like Adam, trust gives way to presumption, worship gives way to idolatry and the gifts are despised.

Like Adam, Israel is barred from the garden land and they die in the dust. Remember the first generation were barred from entering into the garden, were cursed to wander and die in the dust.

Adam was told, you will return to the dust from where you were made. It's Adam language.

Like Adam, the sanctuary is defiled. God's presence withdraws and the land vomits them out. Like Adam, Israel is exiled eastward.

Did you know that Adam was cast in an easterly direction out of Eden and so the people of Israel were cast to the east to go to Babylon, which by the way, was a place where the serpent was worshiped.

Like Adam, Israel's mission collapses. Instead of ruling the world under God, they became like all of the nations and instead of the head, they became the tail.

Like Adam, their offspring came to a calamitous end. Adam's offspring came to an end at the flood.

Israel's offspring came to an end as we read in Deuteronomy or Leviticus 26 in the flood of God's wrath in AD 70, where they ate the flesh of their children and where they died desolated and their house was abandoned and everything that's, that's why it's so important to read these chapters.

Everything in Leviticus 26 and 28 happened to Judah and Israel in AD 70 because they rejected the

Christ. And that's the point that we're watching all of this. There's nothing random about this.

There's no way that all of this is accidental. There's no way that all of these things, Israel being called out of the dust, brought to a garden land, water being separated from dry land.

There's no way that all of this is random. We're watching God raise up another

Adam. And this is apparently the way that God raises up an Adam. He raises him up from the dust, brings him into the garden, puts his breath into him, gives him the stipulations, the commands, promises blessings if he obeys, promises curses if he disobeys and cuts him out and cast him out if he fails.

This is just the way that God raises up his federal heads, Adam, Noah, Abraham, and now

Israel. And in this way, Israel, the nation is what you would call, if you want to sound fancy at dinner parties, a corporate singularity of Adam.

They enter into a similar kind of covenant that Adam entered into, which we call the Mosaic covenant, which

I like to call the covenant with Israel. So with that, now that you can see that Israel is a second

Adam, I think you can see that, right? I just want to make sure it's pretty obvious to me.

Now that we've seen that, let's see how God enters into covenant with Israel. We've been talking about the last three weeks that there's seven aspects of a covenant, seven elements of a covenant.

So we're going to look at those seven elements of the of the Mosaic covenant. And just so you know, Mosaic covenant starts in Exodus and it ends at Calvary.

So you're looking at a massive portion of the Bible. Almost 75 % of the

Bible occurs under the banner of the Mosaic covenant. So we ought to understand it so that we can understand his word so that we can understand what

Christ has done. So number one, every covenant has a head that's appointed.

Israel is appointed head over God's covenant with them. The Mosaic covenant does not treat

Israel as if they're just one nation among the many nations. It treats Israel as if they are

God's appointed means by which he's going to reach the entire world, that they're going to be a kingdom of priests.

They're going to be a holy nation that's going to serve in a capacity by which to bring the entire world under the dominion of God.

So when Israel in the old Testament thinks that they're kind of special, they have warrant, but they're not special because of themselves.

God did not choose them because they were the greatest or the biggest. He chose them to showcase his greatness and his glory.

They're special because he chose them, not because intrinsically they are special. Just as Adam was head over all humanity,

Israel was placed as head over all the nations. So long as she would have been obedient. God says it plainly in Exodus 19, before the stipulations are given, before the law is given,

God places Israel as head over the world. If you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, he tells them, verse six, my possession among you will be my own possession among all the peoples of the earth, a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.

That's headship language, not headship in the sense of Israel being divine or somehow special or sinless or above critique.

Headship in the covenantal sense that they are placed as a representative over the world with a unique calling and a unique accountability before God for the health and the life of the nations.

And notice what's embedded into the text. God says for all the earth is mine. We get this idea that God chooses

Israel because he lost the world and he's going to regain it back by picking this small, piddly little place in the

Levant. Fancy word for that area of Israel. No, all the earth belongs to God.

The redemption plan is going to start with Israel. God does not say this little strip of land is mine and everything else belongs to the devil.

He doesn't say that. He says all the earth is mine. And then he places Israel right in the middle of that claim as his covenant people and the covenant head over his redemption project to save the world.

In other words, Israel's calling was never meant to end with Israel. It was always meant to end with a world worshiping

God. That's why they're called a kingdom of priests because priests bring people into relationship with God.

And it says that they're a kingdom of priests, which means that all of them were priests, which means that they were not supposed to be focused on themselves, but focused on how do we serve the world and bring the entire world into relationship with this

God. And they were to do that by bringing people into clean and unclean or helping them become clean when they've become unclean, helping guard them in their holiness, helping them enter into God's dwelling place, helping preserve the worship of the one true

God in the middle of a world full of lies. If Israel is a priestly nation, that meant that their function, their job, their role was a priest of God to the nations.

They were to hold forth the law of God, guard the worship of God, and stand in the presence of God as a living testimony that Yahweh is the only

God. And that right there is precisely why the

Old Testament reads the way that it does. That is precisely why you see

Joshua, Judges, Ruth, first and second Samuel, and all the prophets hearkening back to this.

Because if Israel is the covenant head, then Israel's failures are not small occasions in the same way that if Goliath loses, the

Philistines lose in the same way that if Adam loses, we all lose. If Israel loses, the world loses.

If Israel loses, there is no light on earth. If Israel doesn't do what God has called them to do, there is no pathway to God, at least in the

Old Testament. We see when their kings rule unjustly, it's not just local politics, they're destroying the earth.

When the people chase down idols, it's not just a religious preference, a tip of the hat to ancient pluralism, it is treason and it is pollution of the earth.

And this is why so much of Exodus through Malachi, as you're getting ready to find out for yourself in January, as we read through the

Bible together, so much of Exodus through Malachi is God prosecuting them, bringing them up on charges like an attorney and bringing them ultimately to the point, not just of warning, but of conviction for their sins and their crimes.

You are watching headship playing out across a nation in the nation of Israel, in the covenant that God gave to Moses and the people of Israel.

They are head over the world. That's the point. Number two, there's stipulations in every covenant. Every covenant has stipulations.

If the headship falls, everyone who's connected to that head falls with it in the same way that if your head is cut off, your body doesn't go very far.

In the Mosaic covenant, God does not leave Israel to guess on what he wants them to do. He speaks clearly, publicly, loudly from a mountain, just like he did in Eden.

Ezekiel says that the garden of Eden was a mountain garden, which is fascinating. God meets with Adam on a mountain and gives him his commandments just like he does with Moses.

And when you think about the stipulations of the Mosaic covenant, we're talking about the entire law, or maybe you would call it the

Torah, or you maybe would call it the first five books of the Old Testament. It is a very specific legal system that God installs for the people to follow.

And it is the most detailed and in depth of all of the covenant stipulations and all of the other covenants.

And it's the one that everybody gets tripped up on, because you'll have conversations with atheists and they'll say, oh yeah, you're

God, he doesn't want me to eat shrimp. Loser, that's not what that means. My wife just shook her head at me,

I'm sorry, forgive me. We have to understand what this law is. We have to understand what these stipulations are because they're very specific and they're broken into three categories of laws.

So the stipulations with Adam are simple. There's one category, do it, obey and live, don't you die.

But the covenant with Moses in Israel is very specific. First, there's the moral law of God.

There's the moral stipulations that they need to follow. You must be holy for I am holy.

If I'm going to live in your presence, you must be holy. So at the center of all of this is the 10 commandments.

The 10 commandments are for every person on earth. The 10 commandments are not just for the

Old Testament folks. When you hear men like Andy Stanley say that we need to unhitch ourselves from the

Old Testament, he's throwing out the moral law of God. That's for all people.

The moral law is not just a Jewish rule book. It's the eternal word of God for all people at all times so that they will know who this

God is and why we worship him. That's why in this church you may wonder why do we go through the law of God every week because it tells us who

God is and it tells us who we are. And these commands are not suggestions, they're rooted in the character of God.

You shall not murder because he's life giver. You shall not commit adultery because he's ever faithful.

You shall not have no other gods before me because he's ever dedicated to his own triune beauty and glory.

And these rules, these stipulations apply to everyone on earth. That's why

Paul could say that the entire world is under the condemnation of God and they are without excuse.

The entire world is not under the Mosaic covenant, but they are under the moral law of God and they are without excuse.

And this is where the pressure begins to mount because the moral law carries with it absolute demands. If you're going to dwell with a holy

God, you must be holy. And how many people in Israel were holy? Their leader, Moses, who says of himself that he was the most humble man on earth, which is a funny statement.

And Moses was the most humble man on earth. I think he was telling the truth because if you're not telling the truth, that's a crazy thing to say.

And yet he fails and he doesn't enter the promised land because he sins against God. So the best of them fail.

And there's no loopholes in this. The moral law does not forgive sin. The moral law does not forgive sin.

The moral law does not forgive sin. The moral law exposes it. The moral law is a mirror to the depravity of man and it is not there to coddle us or soften us.

It is there to drown us in the understanding that we are wretched and it shows

Israel what righteousness actually looks like and that they are not and that they are not.

That's the first law. That's the first set of stipulations is the moral law. The second set of stipulations is called the civil law or the civil aspect.

That's the second layer of the Mosaic stipulations and that tells Israel how to be Israel. That tells them how to be a nation.

We have speed limit signs that tell us how to be Americans. We have laws for everything.

We have laws for the most ridiculous things like don't tie your alligator up to a parking meter in some town in Florida.

In Boston it's still in the books. Not to snore with your windows open. You are a felon or a misdemeanor person if you do that.

I don't remember. But it's all in the books. I do remember that. These laws tell Israel how to be

Israel. These laws are called the civil law and they create a nation with real structures like a court system, a judicial system, kings, property laws, restitution, warfare, justice, and the aspects of these laws are land bound and time bound in a way.

Because like for instance, let me give you an example. If you have a house, you're supposed to have a parapet around it.

What is that? It doesn't mean a pair of pets. It means you're supposed to have a fence around your roof.

Why would you have a fence around your roof? Because people gather on top of your roof because the house is hot.

It's made of stone. It's in the Middle East and it's an oven. It is like a brick oven pizza oven.

So you don't stay there. You don't hang out there. You wait till the sun goes down to go down there and you go up to your roof to fellowship because the air conditioner wasn't invented.

Now if you're up on your roof and your friend is with you and they're reclining as they speak to you and they fall off your house and break your neck, you are liable because you did not love your neighbor enough to protect them.

So that's a law for the people of Israel and how to be Israel in the ancient world. And yet underneath that law is what we would call the general equity or the principle of the law, which is love your neighbors yourself.

So what do we do? We have handrails. We have salt whenever friends come over and it's icy and we salt our steps so they don't fall, not just because we don't want to get sued.

We do it because we love them. So a pair of pet in the modern world might be a handrail, but it's the same principle.

The third aspect, oh sorry, one more thing about this. The law of God in the ancient world for the people of Israel is the most righteous and glorious and moral law in the entire ancient world and it's not even close.

Read Hammurabi, read the Hittite law codes, read the Assyrians, read the Mayans, read the publications that were put out by the

Medes. There is nothing in the ancient world that comes close to the law of God.

So when moderns like to look at it and make fun of it, they really are ignorant and they really are foolish.

That's the second aspect of the law of God is the civil law. The final aspect of the law is the ceremonial law and that's there as grace and as mercy because they know that God knows they're not going to obey the moral law.

After five minutes of saying, yes, we will obey everything God says, they'd already screwed it up.

They'd already messed it up. So God gives them a ceremonial law to bring them back into fellowship with him, to forgive their sins, to cleanse their sins, to help them be forgiven so that they can live in the presence of this holy

God. And this includes things like a priesthood who will mediate between you and a holy

God. This includes altars where you will offer various sacrifices, animals that will function as a substitute that will take your judgment, that they will stand in your place, dietary laws to protect people from pollution, cleansings, prayers, and a host of other things to make sure the people of God remain in a state of cleanness so that they can live in the presence of God.

The law of God was not cumbersome to the people of Israel, it was there to help them live with God. And if you consider that the greatest blessing on earth is living in the presence of God, these are wonderful things.

And if you think about it, costly things. If the law is followed perfectly, a man with 10 ,000 cattle will have zero very quickly because his sin will deserve so much atonement that he would have to sacrifice his entire herd and God still puts up with them.

They forget their sacrifices and he doesn't destroy them immediately. God has long -suffering grace for this people.

What I'm saying is that this is very gracious. That's the law, that's the stipulations.

You have the moral law, the ceremonial law, and the civil law, and those laws were supposed to be obeyed so that Israel could be a people, so that they could be head over the entire earth, so that they could help the world and bring the world into relationship with God.

That's what the book of Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy are all about in a nutshell.

There's also blessings and curses that I want to cover. And I want to cover them quickly because we read a host of them earlier and we understand,

I think, that if Israel obeys God, then God will bless them. Rain will come in its season.

The land will yield its strength. Families will multiply. Enemies will retreat and run, even if no one's chasing them.

Peace will settle over daily life, and most importantly, God will give them his presence like Adam walking with God in the garden.

Israel will live with God in the garden and live in the presence of God. He says,

I will make my dwelling place among you, and I will walk among you and be your God. That is the great blessing of the Bible. There's no blessing better than that, rain, produce, children, family, none of it.

The best blessing in the Bible, and also the deepest curse, is to have

God's face given or God's face taken from you. That is the benediction in numbers.

The Lord's face shine upon you, and that is the malediction that Christ endured. God turned his face.

If Israel disobeys, then death spreads, crops fail, bodies weaken, fear settles, pestilence overcomes them, enemies rule over them, and the land turns hostile to them and begins attacking them and vomiting them out.

And eventually, the unthinkable happens, as we read earlier. God entirely withdraws himself away from them.

Their cities are laid to waste, and they are desolated into absolute ruin, which, again, we saw in the downfall of Jerusalem.

In Leviticus 26, it says that the pagans will come in and take over, and they will be shocked. Do you remember reading that?

They will come in, and they will see your ashes laying on top of the ashes of your idols, and they will be appalled by it.

If you read, if you enjoy such things, there's a book by Josephus called

The Jewish War, and he records Titus, the future Roman emperor, who is appalled at the devastation that he presided over when he was used by God to destroy the covenant -breaking

Jews. And this pairing of life and death, blessing or curse, is key to understanding the entire

Bible, from Joshua to the book of Kings, from Psalms to the Proverbs. Israel's entire history is the outworking of these covenant modalities.

And this kind of clarity raises the next unavoidable question. If the covenant offers life for obedience and death for rebellion, and if Israel stands as the covenant head, well, then how is this covenant going to be marked, remembered, and publicly inaugurated for the propagation of the good of God to the world?

Well, that brings us to the seals and the meals. As we said before, covenants are ratified with blood, and they're remembered through shared meals.

In Exodus 24, Moses does something very deliberate and very unforgettable. He builds an altar, he offers sacrifices, and he sprinkles blood on the altar, and then he sprinkles blood on the people, and he declares, behold, the blood of the covenant.

And you're like, that is gross. And before you give in to your modern sensibilities and sense the apparent strangeness of the ceremony, this is exactly what happened to Adam as well.

After his sin, the blood of an animal was spilled. And then the skins of the animal, before they even had time to dry, when the blood was still tacky on the corpse of the animal, was placed on Adam.

We tend to think about it like he got a nice leather coat. He had a carcass wrapped over him, and it was bloody and gross to show him that death occurred in his sin.

And before we, by the way, now stack two ancient examples on top of each other and say, I would never do that, you do it every week.

Every single week, you are wrapped in the carcass of Christ. Think about what you do at the

Lord's table. At the Lord's table, blood binds these parties together, us and God, his blood.

Just like blood binds a newly married man and woman together, blood binds life and death together, covenantally sealed, and it's sealed in this covenant participation that we come to the table wrapped in the clothes of Christ, given the blood of Christ, given the flesh of Christ.

Every week we do this in a different way, in a better way, in a much more tasty way.

Praise God, the new covenant is better than the old, but we do this every week.

We are wrapped in the robes of the blood -soaked Christ for our salvation, and then something extraordinary happens,

Exodus 24, 8 through 11, which I think is so fascinating. Moses took the blood, sprinkled it on the people, this is not a normal day in Israel, and he said, behold, the blood of the covenant, which the

Lord has made with you in accordance with all of these words, all the stipulations, all the things that I've promised I will give you if you obey, and I will take from you if you disobey.

Then Moses, without a single verse in between them, then

Moses went up with Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu and the 70 elders, and they saw the God of Israel, and they ate and they drank.

This is so fascinating because what Moses intuits and what the Holy Spirit leads him to do is in the cutting of the covenant, he sees that also it brings life and feasting in a meal, which is what we do every week at the

Lord's table. In the cutting of Christ, we are welcomed to the table of Christ, and we see

God, and we live in his presence. And I will tell you that we, if you could see with your physical eyes, which we can't, but if you could see what was happening, it is a much more glorious thing than a sapphire floored ballroom like Moses had that pales in comparison to the table of Jesus Christ.

But what this shows is how sacrificial blood and feasting are intimately connected.

The blood once spilled for the people of Israel brought them into feasting. The blood that was spilled by Christ brings us into feasting.

Bread and sacramental flesh, wine and blood, these things are connected in a covenant manner so that when you are cut into the covenant, you were given the blood and you were given the flesh so that you can be the people who

God lives and dwells among. My only point here is that the entire nation of Israel was brought into this covenant, and the

Passover is the meal that they would feast in in remembrance of what God has done.

The final aspect of a covenant, I've combined a couple categories, by the way, so that we could be expedited because I'm preaching 55 and hour -long sermons again, so I'm trying to help, that there's a generational impact.

The covenant will extend to your offspring and to your ancestors like Adam's covenant was to extend to his progeny and so with Noah and so with Abraham and now so with Israel.

The stipulations in this covenant with Israel were commanded so that they would be obeyed and if they would have been obeyed, they would have lived in blessing and the people would have been blessed and they would have become a blessing to the entire world.

It says that they are to be a light to the Gentiles. They are to be the spotlight on which the entire world sees the glory of God.

They were to be the lampstand on which the world beheld the glory of God. They were to be the lighthouse by which the world could come home to this

God that they had disobeyed and were in the storm of his wrath. And yet the

Old Testament ends with this very interesting statement, the people who walk in darkness.

Isn't that fascinating? This people who were commanded to obey and to pass the torch of the light of God to the next generation, to the next generation, to the next generation failed so tremendously that by the end of the

Old Testament, they're a people who live in utter darkness. But it says to the people who walk in darkness, there will be a great light, which we'll get to in just a moment.

By the time that the Old Testament closes, the situation is painfully clear.

The people of Israel were not a good head. Adam 4 .0 failed and the nation was plunged into total darkness.

They were subjugated by different empires in the same way that Israel was led into slavery in Egypt. Israel again is led into slavery through Babylon, through Persia, through Greece, through the

Seleucids, through the Edomites, through the Romans. They're handed off from one empire to the next.

And isn't that fascinating that the people who were called to be head over the world have no headship at all and they become the slave instead of the head.

And this is precisely why Christmas is so important and why it's such good news.

Because it's way more than what you realized it is. When the prophets speak of people waiting for a great light, they're admitting to you that that covenant failed, that its light didn't shine, that it was snuffed out by sin.

But yet, it also promises us that a new light is coming, a new covenant is coming.

The reason that it says that the people who walk in darkness have seen a great light is because it's telling the people of Israel that God is going to raise up a new

Adam, a new covenant. In day one of the first creation, the light exploded onto the scene and in Christmas, the light of God explodes into the world again and a new creation will follow.

So the solution to the law of Sinai is not a new law. The solution to Israel being an immoral nation is not us trying to be more moral.

The solution to Adam being our fallen head is not for us to try harder, work harder, do more.

See, the point of it, Adam failed, Noah failed, Abraham failed, Israel failed.

The point is that the Old Testament is trying to show us that we can't do it. Over and over and over again, the best of us fail and then an entire nation falls.

So the answer has to come from outside of the system. The answer has to come into the system.

And this is where Christmas speaks. Into the mosaic world of fallen temples, priests and sacrifice and offerings and festivals and everything else came the true light of the world to put all of the broken flashlights away and to inaugurate a kingdom of light that would never end.

And just like Adam, Jesus was called out of the dust, out of Egypt, I called my son,

Matthew tells us, but unlike Adam and unlike Noah and unlike Abraham and unlike Israel, he obeyed.

He bore the stipulations perfectly. He obeyed them precisely.

He fulfilled the moral law of God without exception. He fulfilled the civil law of God by establishing, by obeying it and also by establishing a brand new kingdom and writing that law on our hearts.

He fulfills the ceremonial law of God by being the true high priest, the true sacrifice, the true temple, the true feast, the true

Passover lamb. He fulfills every aspect of the mosaic covenant so that he can be all in all.

And if Israel is supposed to be head over all the nations, why did Jesus do it? Because in obeying the covenant of Moses, he takes it from Moses and he grabs it and he says,

I will be head over all the nations. That's the point. In his death, he fulfilled everything.

In his resurrection, he sat down and was inaugurated king over the cosmos. And now because the mosaic covenant is fulfilled, what do we have left?

We have the Abrahamic covenant where God chooses a family, the church, and God promises that that family will bless all the families on earth.

The church, the mission of God for 2000 years, Jesus as king over the cosmos has been presiding over his mission that Israel failed and Abraham failed and Noah failed and Adam failed.

And guess what's going to happen? Because I know every one of you are not going to come on Christmas Eve. I already know it.

I've done this long enough. I'm going to tell you the point. Adam failed.

Noah failed. Abraham failed. Israel failed. David failed. Now I want you to see how Jesus fulfills them in perfect order.

David is the king. Jesus is born king. Israel, head over all the nations and Jesus's resurrection becomes head over all the nations.

That's why in Matthew 28, he says, all authority in heaven and earth belong to me. He's saying, if you're precise and you're paying attention,

I fulfilled the Mosaic covenant. I own it now. I'm head over the world. I'm the king of kings, the

Lord of Lords. I am the one by which all nations will stream to and come in.

So he fulfills David in his birth. He fills Mosaic in his death and burial. He fulfills the

Abrahamic by choosing a church and using them as his emissaries to send out into the ends of the earth.

He fulfills the Noahic covenant. What was the Noahic covenant? That you'd be fruitful and you'd multiply and you'd fill the earth with worshipers.

He fulfills that, not by flooding the earth with water, but by filling it with the fire of the Holy Spirit. And then at the end, what does he do?

He fulfills the Adamic covenant because he brings us into a paradise where we live with God forever in a garden. Everywhere we failed,

Jesus succeeds until he brings us back to where we first belonged. And the only thing left for us to do is to stop and stare and be grateful and say, all hail the name of King Jesus, because he will succeed where we fail.

The gates of hell will not stand against this king. And he says, I will build my church. The gates of hell won't stand against it.

So brothers and sisters, trust. And if you trust him, love him. And if you love him, adore him.

And if you adore him, worship him. And as you worship him, the cycle continues again.

Trust him. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you that these covenants are so important to the story of the entire

Bible and that they're so subtle and yet so beautiful in their expanse of what it actually means to be your people.

That you draw us out of dusty places and bring us into garden spaces and give us stipulations to follow and curses and blessings if we do, and yet, and Lord, all of us as men and women have failed.

So we needed a better Adam to succeed. We needed a better Adam who would be head over new humanity.

We needed a better Adam who would rise to life and bring us into a new creation.

And that, Lord, is what you have done. Help us, God, as there's so many distractions in the season.

There's so many shiny lights and plastic wrapping papers and all sorts of distractions from this singular, beautiful,

God -glorifying point that the babe in the manger becomes the king of the world. And in him, we find our true hope.