Scripture Fulfilled at the Birth of Christ

Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, saying, “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.” When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him; and assembling all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea, for so it is written by the prophet: “‘And you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.’”(Matthew 2:1-6 ESV)

He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end. (Luke 1:32-33 ESV)

An ancient Christian writer once said that there are four Gospels in the New Testament to match the four winds of heaven that blow throughout the earth. An interesting thought. The four Gospels tell the same story of Jesus, but from slightly different perspectives and for different purposes. In certain Gospel there are some details omitted altogether. For example, the birth of Christ is only told by two of the Gospel writers: Matthew and Luke. John takes a more theological path and speaks of the pre-incarnate Christ. Mark begins with the ministry of John the Baptist. So Matthew and Luke include the infancy accounts. For these two writers the details about how Jesus was born are important. But even they do not record the same events. And they seem to have different strategies in mind. Matthew appears to be writing with a Jewish audience in mind. Luke is tailored for the Gentile mind, Luke himself being a Greek. Matthew shows that Jesus is the Messiah, or the Christ, who was promised to Israel. Luke seeks to demonstrate that Jesus is for the whole world and not just for Israel. The differences in their accounts add richness and fullness to the meaning of the Gospel message.

Matthew wants his readers to see that Jesus is the King who would reign on David’s throne forever, which was promised to Israel in the Old Testament Scriptures. However, there is every indication in Matthew that the people of Israel would not recognize or welcome their King. Only the Magi from the East seek to worship Jesus. Luke seems to emphasize the lowliness and the humility of Jesus’ birth. Jesus was born in obscurity and the only people invited to celebrate were some lowly shepherds. Jesus did not come into the world in power and glory as we might expect. Even though Jesus was a king He did not look like the kind of king the world would recognize as great. Of course, God did it this way intentionally to overturn the world’s pride and vain wisdom.

One of the most important facts of Christ’s birth is something that both Matthew and Luke emphasize: the connection between Jesus’ birth and the Scriptures. The Scriptures they refer to are the Old Testament. Jesus is the One anticipated by the inspired writers of Scripture and all the true people of God in Israel. So there is some continuity between the New and the Old. God was fulfilling the words He had previously spoken to the people of Israel through Moses in the Law and in the Prophets, not to mention God’s promises to Abraham and to King David. God had prepared for this very moment in history and He had used the people of Israel to accomplish His purpose.

The true meaning of the Scriptures and the prophecies God had given previously to Israel were being fulfilled and made clear by Christ’s birth. These things had not been made clear to previous generations, not even to the very Prophets who spoke for God (See 1 Peter 1.10-12). There was a new revelation being given when Jesus was born, but it had been anticipated in the Old Covenant era. Jesus’ birth was like the coming of a greater light, like the rising of the morning sun, which would illuminate everything God had said previously in the Scriptures.

Both Matthew and Luke makes connections between the birth of Christ and the Old Testament Scriptures. They are showing us that Jesus is the Christ. He is God’s chosen agent to bring salvation and reign eternally over the Kingdom of God. We must be able to identify the Christ. We cannot worship or trust in a person we cannot identify. The real Christ is always known through the Scriptures and He perfectly conforms to everything God had previously revealed.

Jesus came into the world through a prepared People: the nation of Israel. If we are not familiar with what God had said to Israel to prepare the way for the coming of Christ, then we will probably not understand the Gospel. The Law and the Prophets prepare us to receive Jesus as the Christ. God had a consistent plan from which He never deviated that was being fulfilled when Jesus was born.

The Gospel writers interpret or understand Scripture in light of who Jesus is. Christ illuminates Scripture because He is the theme and the message of all of Scripture. All Scripture must be interpreted with Christ at the center of it or we will never really understand what God is saying. Any interpretation of the Bible that that does have Christ as the ultimate goal and meaning is spurious and potentially misleading.

Preparing for the Christ

A Prepared People

The Bible begins with the glory of creation, which culminated in the creation of man in the image of God. But disaster soon followed. The man and his wife disobey God and are cast out of the Garden. As we continue following the narrative in Genesis, things get progressively worse. Cain kills his brother Abel. And then things get so violent and wicked in the earth that God determined to destroy the whole human population with a great flood, except righteous Noah and his little family. But even after getting a fresh start, the human race soon goes back to its wicked ways and attempts to build a city with a tower reaching to heaven. This was done in direct rebellion against the God of heaven, who comes down to confuse their language and scatter humanity over the face of the earth. It is immediately following the judgment at Babel that God calls Abram out of the pagan city of Ur and makes an astounding promise to him concerning a blessing for the entire world that had just been scattered in judgment.

From this one man, whose name was soon changed to Abraham, God created a special nation: the people of Israel. Later at Mount Sinai, after bringing them out of slavery in Egypt, God made a covenant with the people of Israel and gave them His law. Beginning with Moses, God sent a steady stream of prophets to the people of Israel who spoke God’s words to them. These words were also written down and preserved in what became the Scriptures. It was the people of Israel who heard the Word of God and who wrote it down. All of God’s prophets, His spokesmen, were sent to speak to the people of Israel.

Among all the nations of the world, Israel alone knew the one, true living God. All the other nations worshiped idols. God was preparing to send the Christ, His Son, in the world through this special nation that He had created. The Christ would not be born in the midst of one of the pagan, idolatrous nations. The Christ would come into the world through a nation specially prepared by God, cultured by His Law, and with His Word ringing in their ears. At just the right time in human history, God would send His Son into the world, to be born of a Jewish woman, and raised up in submission to the Law of God. The nation of Israel had been created for this very purpose: to be the nation that would produce the Christ, the Son of God, and the Savior of the world.

The Christ would come through the people of Israel but He was not sent only to the people of Israel. God had not forgotten the nations He had scattered at Babel, nor had He forgotten His promise to Abraham concerning a blessing for the whole world. The Christ would come as a light to the Gentiles. The nations that had for so long walked in darkness and in ignorance of the one, true, living God would receive a revelation from God in the person of Jesus Christ. The nation of Israel had been the only group of people on the planet who knew anything about the true God and how to worship Him (See John 4.21-26). But when Jesus was born, all of that was about to change. The Christ would also be a light to the nations of the earth (Isa 49.6). The world-wide Kingdom of Christ had always been God’s plan. The Jewish people were at the center of this plan but it was much larger than them and their nation or ethnic group.

A Consistent Purpose

It was not as if God had suddenly changed His mind about Israel and decided to do something different by sending His Son into the world. The coming of Christ was not a departure from God’s original promises to bless the world through the Seed of the Woman (Gen. 3.15) and the Seed of Abraham (Gen. 12.3). Christ was the fulfillment of these promises. Jesus is the Seed (descendant) of Abraham through whom God blessed (and still blesses) anyone who believes the Gospel of Christ (Gal. 3.16). God never changed His mind or His purpose. In fact, God’s promises in the Law and the Prophets, like the promises about the Seed of the Woman and the Seed of Abraham in the book of Genesis, provide the context for understanding the narrative flow and unity of all Scripture - both Old and New Testaments. The New Covenant is not a radical departure from the Old but is its fulfillment and Divinely-ordained goal. All of Scripture must be viewed as a single story or Divine purpose. This does not minimize the differences between the Covenant of Law made through Moses and the Covenant of Grace made through Christ. But we should not see the coming of Christ as a radical departure from what God had said to Israel. The Gospel of Christ is in harmony with the Law and the Prophets, with what we call the Old Testament today, and is not in opposition to the revelation God gave to Israel. There were two covenants and two dispensations, but a single divine purpose.

This also means that God did not change His mind about the people of Israel. The Christ came to the Jewish people first. And the Gospel message was preached to the Jews first (Rom. 1.16). The Jews were the people who had been divinely cultured by the Law to receive the Christ when he came. The privileged position of the Jewish people cannot be denied and God never repudiated the words He spoke to them, especially those promises that had to do with the coming of Christ and His Kingdom glory (See Rom. 9.4-5). This was in spite of the fact that many, if not most, of the Jewish people were unbelieving and disobedient to God. Most of the Jewish people did not recognize Jesus as the Christ and still remain hardened in unbelief today concerning Christ and the Gospel. But this has also allowed the Gospel to be preached to the Gentiles. Gentile believers who receive Jesus as the Christ are “grafted in” the family tree of the true, spiritual Israel of God (See Romans 11.17). And we expect that the “times of the Gentiles” will eventually come to an end and God will turn the hearts of the Jewish people to their Messiah, Jesus (See Romans 11.25-32).

God has never received anyone simply on the basis of his or her physical descent. Faith in the promises of God has always been the thing that justified a person before God. This was demonstrated by the father of the Jewish people, Abraham, who believed God and was declared righteous because of that faith (Gen. 15.6). All who believe, Jew or Gentiles, are the true children of Abraham. This means that Jews and Gentiles all enter the Kingdom through the same Door: faith in Jesus. All without faith are excluded, Jew of Gentile, without any favoritism being shown by God. So there is one God, one Plan, one Gospel, one Faith, and one Body (See Eph. 2.11-22).

It is important for us to understand that God’s original plan and purpose was revealed in His promise to Abraham. The Law of Moses was added to that original promise because of the problem of sin, until the time came for the Christ to come into the world (Gal. 3.19). This means that the coming of Christ, and the New Covenant that He established, are actually all in fulfillment of God’s original promise to Abraham (Gal. 3.8-9; 14, 29). God is faithful!

A Necessary Introduction

Everything that God said to Israel through the Law of Moses and all the Prophets is designed to bring us to faith in Jesus. In fact, if we do not believe the Law and the Prophets then we will not believe the Gospel of Christ. Without the Law and the Prophets as an introduction to the Gospel it becomes nearly impossible to even understand who Jesus is, why He came, and what He did. The Law of Moses, for example, introduces us to the very concepts of sin and salvation. How can we understand that Jesus is our savior unless we understand the meaning and effects of sin? Perhaps this is why many today do not understand the message of the Gospel because there has not been a proper introduction. In the past the great preachers of the Gospel understood the importance of first making people aware of their sin through preaching the Law of God. But in our generation this necessary introduction has been neglected. Jesus is not viewed as a savior who rescues us from sin, but something like a spiritual guru, a moral teacher, or a problem solver. We must come to know the true Christ who was promised in the Law and the Prophets. Unless we know the Law and the Prophets we cannot come to know the Christ.

Most of the first Christians were people who had first come into contact with the Law and the Prophets. The Jews heard the Scriptures read in the synagogue meetings each Sabbath day. And there were Gentiles who were often attracted to the faith of Israel. Philip preached the Gospel to an Ethiopian eunuch who had been to the Temple in Jerusalem to worship and was reading from the prophet Isaiah. Philip began with that very Scripture and preached the Gospel of Christ to him (Acts 8.35). These kinds of conversions should be more common today.

Identifying the Christ

God’s Chosen One

It seems that many people do not really know what is meant when we call Jesus “Christ” or “the Christ.” I suppose some folks think that is simply Jesus’ last name! But it is actually a title and not just a name or a nickname. Calling Jesus “Christ” means that He is the anointed one. The tradition of anointing a man is found in the Old Testament Scriptures. Priests, Kings, and Prophets were all people who were anointed as a sign of their Divinely-chosen work. Anointing meant that the person was set apart for a special task related to the work of God. So when we use the title “Christ” to speak of Jesus we are saying that He is chosen by God to do something for God. Of course, Jesus is a Prophet, a Priest and a King!

God had already set a precedent that when He wanted something done He would send a single person to do His will and accomplish His work. This pattern actually stated very early in human history. When God decided to destroy the early world with a flood because of its wickedness, God found a single man named Noah who would be saved from the judgment and repopulate the earth. God later called another solitary man, named Abram, from whom God would create the nation of Israel. When there was a famine that could have wiped the chosen nation before it even got started, God sent Joseph down to Egypt to save them. When God was ready to bring Israel up from Egypt and into the Promised Land, He sent Moses to lead the Exodus. God also chose Moses’ brother, Aaron, to serve as the High Priest. When Moses died Joshua then took the people of Israel into Canaan. When Israel was in Canaan God raised up a succession of men (a one woman!) to be judges and deliver the people from their enemies. When the people wanted a king to rule them, God gave them Saul. But God actually chose David to lead the people after Saul’s disobedience and demise. And when the people of Israel fell into idolatry and sin, God sent them prophets. These prophets were men (and again, at least one woman) who were usually solitary figures sent to speak the Word of God. Although the entire nation of Israel belonged to God, there were also special servants of God raised up individually to do God’s work. All of this helps us to understand who Jesus is and what He came to do. From the nation of Israel, which was chosen by God out of all the other nations of the world, would come a single, chosen individual who would be God’s chosen agent. That would be the Christ.

This chosen agent would work in behalf of all the people of God and would be our representative as well as God’s servant. That is why the one who would come from God had to be like us. Angels could also be sent to do God’s will, but an angel could not be our representative. This had to be a member of the human race. Choosing one man to represent all the people was first illustrated in the ministry of the High Priest. Aaron and his sons were set aside to serve as High Priests and intercede for the rest of the nation. By this God was showing that He could use one special person to bring the rest of the people to Himself. Jesus would come into the world to reconcile all of us to God.

As God’s chosen and anointed agent, Jesus would come into the world to accomplish what no one else could have done. Even though God had used other men and women in the past to accomplish His will, there was no one who did it perfectly. All had failed. The very first man God created disobeyed God’s command and every other man has followed his example. “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” Collectively, the human race has been a dismal failure. Even when all the people in the world shared a common language and a single purpose, as was the case in the building of the Tower of Babel, the people were in opposition to the will of God. When God called Abram and created the nation of Israel from him, we would expect Israel to be different from other nations. But they also failed to obey God and God eventually sent His own people into captivity. No one has done the will of God perfectly and that means we all need someone who can. Jesus would come into the world to do the will of God and do it perfectly. The Christ would succeed, even when tempted by the Devil, where all had failed.

And so we would expect God’s Christ to be completely holy, completely dedicated to God, and separate from all sin and defilement. When it came time for the Christ to be born, He was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of a virgin. The Virgin Birth not only fulfills prophecy (See Isa 7.14) it also identifies Jesus as the Son of God. Jesus is a completely unique person, even in the way that He came into the world. It should not surprise us that Jesus was born of a virgin because we know that nothing is impossible for God. Anyone who refuses to believe that Jesus was born of a virgin is questioning the very foundation of the entire Biblical record. If God could not make a virgin conceive, then there is no compelling reason to believe anything else miraculous or supernatural recorded in Scripture and the whole thing falls to the ground. How would we recognize the Son of God when He came into the world? He is the One who would be born of a virgin and would live a life of holy, sinless perfection before God. This can be said of no man other than Jesus. This is how we know that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.

A Ruler and a Savior

The prophets God sent to Israel revealed that a King would come both to rule and to save the people of God. This King would come from David’s line, as God had promised to David personally (See 2 Sam. 7.11-13; Luke 1.32-33). What was not made clear was the nature of this King’s reign or the kind of salvation he would accomplish. The people of Israel had been ruled by a series of world empires: Babylon, Persia, Greece, and then Rome. Most Jews assumed that the Christ would liberate the nation of Israel from foreign oppressors and make the Jewish people a powerful Kingdom again as they had been in the days of David and Solomon.

When Jesus was born in Bethlehem, as the prophet Micah had predicted (See Micah 5.2; Matthew 2.4-6), there was another king ruling over Israel. King Herod was a puppet set up by the Romans and was not even a true Israelite. The true King of Israel was born in obscurity and His birth would probably have never even been known except for the visit of the mysterious Magi from the East who followed a star all the way to Jerusalem. These Magi came to worship the one born to be King of the Jews. Jesus was born to be a King and deserved to be worshiped even as an infant in Bethlehem. While His own people did not yet recognize that their King had been born, God made this known through these Gentile Magi from the East, which also anticipated the salvation of the Gentiles. It was being revealed that the King sent to Israel would not only rule over Israel. God’s kingdom and salvation would extend over the entire world.

The salvation and reign of the Christ would be much larger than even the people of Israel had anticipated. The Kingdom of God would not be like the corrupt kingdoms of men but would be of an entirely different order. And the kind of salvation the Christ would bring would involve something more profound than deliverance from a political situation. The real liberation that was needed was from the bondage of sin and death. Jesus was born to save people from sin and all its effects. The corrupt political institutions that have oppressed mankind were just symptomatic of the real Power that had enslaved the human race. God’s salvation would address the real needs of the human race. The kingdom and salvation brought by Jesus would have eternal consequences. His Kingdom would never end. His salvation included the gift of eternal life.

The birth of Jesus in David’s city of Bethlehem was just the beginning. And it was a humble beginning. The Christ who would rule the nations and bring eternal salvation would first have to descend in humility and obscurity before ascending in glory. Saving the human race from sin and death would involve suffering and death for the Savior. Jesus was born to die. The Cross would prove to be the one thing that was the most difficult for the Jewish people to understand about the Christ. This King would be victorious by laying down His own life. The Christ would suffer before entering into His glory. As important as the birth of Jesus was, this event did not accomplish salvation. To finish the work He was sent to earth to accomplish, Jesus had to suffer the death of the Cross. To really understand the true nature of the Kingdom of God and salvation we must go beyond the manger to the Cross.

The Scriptures Fulfilled

Everything about Jesus is in complete agreement with what God had revealed previously through the Law and the Prophets. Jesus fulfilled the Scriptures. False teachers and false Messiahs twist the Scriptures to fit themselves and their own agendas. But the true Christ fulfills the Scripture. This is how we recognize the One God sent. There have been and will continue to be many false Messiahs. Any version of Christ that does not conform to what has been revealed about Him in Scripture cannot be the real thing. We would expect the real Christ to conform to what God had previously revealed and not to contradict it. This is a key point concerning the fulfillment of Scripture. God is consistent and does not contradict Himself. Of course, we must make sure that we are familiar with what God has said in the Scripture. The Jews were people who were familiar with Scripture and had a reverence for the written word of God. This prepared them to recognize the Christ when He came into the world. The Scriptures point to the Christ and reveal who He is and what He would come to accomplish in the world.

So the coming of Christ was not something completely unexpected or unannounced. Jesus did not simply appear without any prior preparation for His coming. The birth of Christ was an event for which God had been preparing from the very beginning of human history. After Adam and Eve sinned God promised that the Seed of the Woman would come to bruise the Serpent’s head (Gen. 3.15). God also promised Abraham that his Seed (descendant) would come to bless the world (Gen. 12.3). So what God was doing was not completely hidden from view. Neither was Christ’s birth a completely new and different plan. God did not suddenly change His purpose or forsake the promises He had made previously to Abraham and the people of Israel. Jesus is the fulfillment of all those promises, not something completely different or incongruous.

Until the time came for God to fulfill His Word, much of what God had said in the Law and the Prophets concerning the coming of the Christ remained vague. Now that Christ has come the true meaning of the Scriptures have been illuminated. Jesus is the light that illuminates everything God has said in the Law and the Prophets. The Scripture is understood correctly in the light of Christ. So Jesus did not come to contradict or to nullify the Law and the Prophets (Matt. 5.17). He came to fulfill the Law because Christ was the end, or the true goal, of the Law (See Rom. 10.4). The Law was given to lead us to Christ (Gal. 3.24). In the past God spoke through Moses in the Law and the Prophets. But now God has spoken to us through His Son, Jesus (Heb. 1.1-4). Are you listening to what God has said through Jesus Christ?

"What is this that you have done?" Genesis 3.13

Anyone who has ever got caught doing something wrong can remember being asked, usually by some authority-figure, “what did you do?” It was not always a question asked in ignorance. More often than not, the person asking us this question knew full-well what we had done. Now, what if the person asking this question “what have you done?” is God Himself? That is exactly what happened in the Garden of Eden after Adam and Eve had eaten of the Forbidden Fruit. God, it seems, sought them out even though they were trying to hide. God confronted them, though He surely had to know what they had done and knew ahead of time that they would do it. So if God already knew what they had done, why ask them the question?

But before we answer that question we have to ask another question first. Why did God set up the circumstances that brought about the fall of mankind? I am referring of course to that Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Why did God put that tree in the Garden in the first place? So much sorrow and misery could have been avoided if the possibility of evil had not been allowed. Why give evil a chance? This may be a dangerous path because we are beginning to speculate and that is not the reason for Biblical revelation. The Bible is not concerned about the “what if?” The Bible is concerned about what is. The Bible gives us the truth about the way things really are. This is what makes the Bible different from a work of philosophy. Philosophers are always asking questions, but not always arriving at answers. The Bible is not just raising questions for us to think about if we find the time. The Bible is causing us to face certain realities that are not very pleasant and that we might otherwise choose to avoid altogether.

And the first reality the Bible is causing us to confront is God Himself. That is the point of this entire Creation account. “In the beginning God…” Everything starts with God. So let’s start there too. That Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil has something to do with God and our relationship with Him.

God had given the commandment concerning that tree. And so the knowledge of good or of evil has something to do with God. I don’t think there were poison apples on that tree. The tree was not off-limits because it was inherently bad. Everything God created was called “good” by God Himself. God doesn’t make bad trees or bad fruit! Adam and Eve were immediately confronted with the option of good or evil which was defined for them and made concrete by the commandment of God and nothing else.

And then the Serpent appears in Eden. We know from other Scriptures who and what the Serpent is, but Genesis does not tell us anything except that the Serpent is crafty or subtle. That description of the Serpent becomes the most important feature of the very first account of temptation. The Serpent just wants to talk. But it doesn’t declare its intentions. Deceivers never tell you what the real game is until they have won and you have lost. The game the Serpent was playing with Eve was that of poisoning the mind. It has to do with changing the way one person thinks about another person. It is usually used by someone who wants to disrupt a relationship and separate friends, lovers, or spouses. All you have to do is introduce a thought that causes doubt in one person’s mind about the intentions of the other person. When this seed of doubt is sown it begins to grow if not immediately uprooted and produces suspicion and distrust. Suddenly the other person begins to seem selfish or manipulative. Maybe everything they do is for some ulterior motive. Maybe they don’t care about you at all and are just using you. The person who introduces this thought knows that if the strategy works, you will do yourself what he or she could not have ever forced you to do. The Serpent’s poisonous thought is introduced into Eve’s mind in this way:

“God is keeping you from something that is really good. He is withholding a wonderful experience from you because He wants to keep you down. God cannot really be trusted. He is just pretending to care about you and really just wants to control you. You need to break free and do your own thing. Take what you want. Determine your own destiny and don’t let yourself be ruled by this Tyrant” (See Gen. 3.4-5).

Strangely enough, it is the Serpent’s words that come true when they eat the fruit and not God’s word. They did not die, at least not immediately or visibly, but they did experience a new kind of knowledge. That knowledge was the experience of shame. At first they were naked and unashamed. Now they are naked and ashamed of themselves. But what are they afraid of? They are the only two people alive on earth! Who is going to see them naked? In whose presence were they ashamed to be caught naked? They were hiding from God. That relationship had been forever changed, which was exactly what the Serpent had wanted. But it seems that the man and the woman did not get what they wanted or expected, which is often the case when we sin. There were unforeseen consequences. Now there was shame, guilt, fear, and alienation between man and God. And mankind has been hiding from God ever since, trying to avoid Divine scrutiny and accountability.

But God will not allow them to remain hidden from His view. He will not let them go or let them off the hook. God pursues them and there is a confrontation there in Eden between God and the entire human race. God begins by asking that question that every guilty conscience fears more than anything else: “What is this that you have done?”

The response of Adam and Eve to God’s question should not surprise us because it is something that any of us could have done and probably have done in similar situations. Adam and Eve tried to blame someone else for what they had done. Eve blamed the Serpent. Adam blamed Eve, and indirectly he also blamed God who had made him a wife. They did not take full responsibility for their actions. Do you see how much like Adam and Eve we really are? Modern people have become adept at blaming everyone and everything for what is wrong in their lives and in the world. No one wants to take responsibility and say “it’s my fault.” We should be able to see ourselves in Adam and Eve. I think that is the point of the text. We are truly sons of Adam and daughters of Eve. The Apostle Paul argued that Adam represents the entire human race so that his sin has impacted all of us (See Rom. 5.12-21). What Adam did is what all of us would have done if we had been there. In some sense we were there, in the loins of our father Adam.

In our individualistic culture it seems unfair to be held responsible for what someone else did. But we have all done what Adam did. We have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Rom. 3.23).

Not only have we sinned like Adam, but we also tend to try to hide it, avoid God, and transfer the responsibility to someone else, just like Father Adam did. Being honest and truthful about sin (our own sin not someone else’s sin!) is one of the hardest things to do. It is no wonder that the whole concept of sin has all but disappeared from the modern vocabulary. We speak ourselves in psychological terms now and seek self-actualization and self-esteem. Modern people eschew guilt. We go to therapy and get counseling to get rid of guilt like we might go to the doctor to get rid of an infection or the dentist for a tooth-ache. We want to silence that annoying conscience rather than get to the source of the problem.

But God will not let us get away so easily. God does not choose to ignore our sin but to confront it directly. Until we are truthful and acknowledge what we have done there can be no reconciliation and healing. Salvation does not amount to God ignoring sin and pretending like it is not there. In His questioning of Adam and Eve after they sinned, God is teaching us about the importance of confessing our sins and acknowledging the truth about what we have done. Until this happens we remain in a state of alienation from God. But it is God’s good purpose to bring us to a point of salvation and reconciliation.

The account of the Fall of Man is really about alienation and what has caused it. Mankind is alienated from God, from the Creation, and from each other. They were cast out of Eden. This act of being cast out or exiled is another way of showing this fundamental alienation that pervades human life. We seem to sense that there is something wrong. Life is not what it should be. We find that life is frustrating and we never really get what we want, no matter how hard we try. And then there is the sentence of death that hangs over us all of our lives. Where did this alienation begin? That is the question the Genesis account of the fall of man is answering. What Adam and Eve did is the source of this alienation. And the human race has continued what they started.

The idea of alienation is taught throughout the Bible in various ways. I will mention two examples here:

1. Alienation is taught by Solomon in the entire book of Ecclesiastes. Solomon was blessed with more earthly wisdom than any other man. And here was Solomon’s astute observation about human life: “Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity” (Ecclesiastes 1:2).

2. Alienation is also taught by Paul, echoing this theme of vanity, frustration, or futility: “For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it…” (Romans 8:20).

Solomon is really giving a commentary on the effects of sin on human life. Life is vanity because of what happened in Eden. And the Apostle Paul is also commenting on what happened in the Garden of Eden. The Creation has been subjected to futility or frustration because of Adam’s sin. In other words, life is inherently flawed and imperfect because of our alienation from God. Apart from God life is simply not what it was meant to be and we seem to be able to sense that, even without the revelation of the Scriptures. Frustration is just a part of life. We were not created to be independent from God and so in a state of alienation life simply does not make sense. We can’t understand ourselves apart from God and we can’t understand the meaning of life. We have gained our independence from God, but have become like a ship that has lost its mooring and is drifting aimlessly at sea.

But the world did not start that way. When God had created everything He said that it was good, very good. What made everything so good? I don’t think this goodness was simply a description of the natural beauty of Eden, though I am sure it was very beautiful. The original goodness of Creation was not just the outward beauty that pleases the physical senses, the world still has that even in its fallen condition. The original goodness (the Hebrew word is “shalom”) of creation is a state of being that is completely wholesome. Nothing is missing. Everything is full and complete.

And at the center of it all is the presence of God Himself. With God everything is good. It is really impossible to even understand what “goodness” means without God. Goodness is not some philosophical abstraction. God is good. His presence sanctifies everything else and makes everything good, as it was meant to be.

But take God out of the equation and life loses its quality. That is not to say that human life is devoid of everything good. That would literally be Hell. God has not completely withdrawn. You might say that there is still a scent of His presence, but it can be very faint and fleeting.

In spite of the alienation, life is still good because God has not completely abandoned the human enterprise. Things are not as they were. But that does not mean we should despair of life. In the darkness of sin and alienation, even in death, the goodness of God continues to shine through. God’s goodness is seen in how He deals with Adam and Eve even after they had disobeyed. God is incredibly patient with them. His questioning of Adam and Eve is not done harshly or in an adversarial fashion, as if God is trying to drag a confession from them, like on a poorly played TV detective show. God does not beat a confession out of them. God is not simply trying to point out their sin, gather the evidence, and then thunder forth His verdict of swift justice. If God had wanted to simply find fault and punish Adam and Eve He could have done that.

But what Adam and Eve did was not the end of God’s dealing with humanity. The fact that God had any dealings with them at all after their disobedience is a revelation of God’s goodness and His good purpose. Why not just dispose of the disobedient rebels and start over? Clearly God had something else in mind for humanity. What God wants to do and what He wants to reveal about Himself would not be accomplished if God were only looking for a reason to find fault or destroy. God is already beginning to reveal something of His mercy and grace.

From what we know about the fall of Satan and his angels God had not given them any mercy. They were cast out and that was the end of the matter, until the Day of Judgment when they will finally be cast in the Lake of Fire. There is no record of God coming to Satan to ask him “what have you done?” There is no hope held out to Satan and his fallen angels after their rebellion in heaven.
But there is hope for fallen man on earth, though he has also rebelled against God. Surely the angels are watching God’s dealings with fallen mankind (1 Peter 1.12).

In God’s dealing with mankind, He is not just looking for a reason to condemn and to destroy. God is not harsh, hard, uncaring or unkind. It is important that we understand this about God. God is not a cruel and heartless tyrant. The closest God came to destroying the human race was the Flood. We should not think that God is soft on sin. He does have His limits. But even before the Flood came it said that, as God surveyed the wickedness of that antediluvian world, “The LORD regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart” (Genesis 6:6). Sin grieves God in His heart. Do we think of God in these terms or is God something like a cool, calculating judge who renders an objective verdict without any personal feelings in the matter? God is the judge of all the earth and He will do what is right. But God is also a Father who cares for His wayward children. How different would our lives be if God had no care for us and only treated us as our sins deserved? Not only would we be unredeemed, but there would be things about God that would never be made known. In redemption more about God is being made known than would have been possible if God had simply cut us off in His wrath.

God’s desire and purpose was to overcome sin and its effects and to bring reconciliation. That is why God has not completely cast off humanity. But God cannot bring reconciliation by simply ignoring our sin. That is why God confronted Adam and Eve and asked “what have you done?” You don’t bring reconciliation by ignoring the cause of the alienation and enmity. It is wrong to think that forgiveness means ignoring or tolerating sin. That is denial, not forgiveness. Being in a state of denial and ignoring the truth does not heal a relationship.

In fact, it will only make things worse because now there is not only the original offense but also a fundamental dishonesty. You can’t have a relationship that is based on lying. There must be honesty and truthfulness for there to be a healthy relationship. Now we know that God is incapable of lying. God never misrepresents Himself and He demands that we also be honest. But this can be difficult for us.

Why do we lie and misrepresent ourselves?

1. First, we are trying to make ourselves look better than we actually are. We are ashamed of ourselves and trying to cover ourselves. This is exactly what Adam and Eve did with the fig leaves.

2. Secondly, we may want to try to avoid the consequences of what we have done. There may be some very unpleasant consequences that we would rather avoid and so we lie. Many times we are more concerned about the consequences of getting caught than about the nature of the wrong that we have committed! In other words, we are not really all that guilty about what we have done, we just don’t want to get caught!

3. Thirdly, we may actually be afraid of the person that we have wronged and we lie to stay in their favor and good graces. Perhaps we don’t think the person will be fair with us and we are afraid their punishment and anger will be too much to take. Adam and Eve probably reasoned that it would be easier to hide from God and avoid the truth because they did not really know what God would do. Was it not reasonable to assume that if God is the creator then He can also destroy?

We may conclude that God is hard and harsh, like a man with a really bad temper, and we don’t want to provoke Him to anger. Some people have had an earthly father who got angry and lashed out and so it becomes easy to think that God is that way too. You don’t want to make Dad mad, and you certainly don’t want to make God mad!

Men who are fathers may lose their tempers and lash out at their children without thinking about what is best for them. But God is not like that. God can get angry, but He is slow to anger. And while God’s wrath can be aroused it is not God’s first intention to just blow us away in His anger. God’s intention is to bring salvation, healing, and reconciliation.

And that is why God does not leave just us alone in our alienation. God pursued Adam and Eve as they hid among the trees of Eden: “Where are you?” And then: “what have you done?” This is a loving God asking these questions, not some angry tyrant.

Most people don’t really know what they are asking for when they want God to love them! Sometimes I think people just mean they want God to leave them alone. But that is not God’s nature. We have to learn to trust God and believe that His intentions toward us are good and that He wants what is best for us. If we don’t trust God then we will keep hiding from Him and avoiding the truth.

I don’t think Adam and Eve really knew that much about God. There is no timeline in Genesis so we don’t know how much time had passed since God had created the man and the woman before they took of the forbidden fruit. But it does not appear to have been a long time. Though Adam and Eve were in a state of innocence when they were created, this does not imply that they really knew that much about their Creator. I am of the opinion that we know much more about God than Adam and Eve knew, though we have never lived in a state of sinless innocence. We know more about God simply because we have more revelation. We have certain precedents we can consider because of the record of the Scriptures. We have the greatest revelation of God in Christ and the Gospel. Unlike Adam and Eve, we know the rest of the story and what would happen following the fall of man in Eden.

There were some immediate consequences for their sin in Eden. Not only did they realize they were naked and hide from God, which was a picture of shame and alienation, but God Himself announced some more far-reaching consequences (Gen. 3.14-24). These consequences included a disruption and inequality in human relationships, a frustrating and toilsome relationship with the natural world, and then the final curse of physical death. The way to the Tree of Life was blocked. This looks like a very bleak future for the human race.

But if we read about the fall of man with the Gospel in mind we can see a couple of bright spots where God gave some hope:

1. First, there is the prophecy that God gave to the Serpent, with the man and the woman listening in: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel” (Genesis 3:15). A member of the human race would come and defeat the Serpent and his malevolent intentions toward humanity. God’s purpose was to overcome the evil and the alienation that the Serpent had wrought by his temptation. A man would overcome the Serpent and crush its head. God would have the last word. This was not the end of the matter. The power of sin and death would be undone.

2. Second, this is not the last time we will see the Tree of Life. The next time we read about the Tree of Life in the Bible is in John’s vision of the New Heavens and Earth (Revelation 21-22). In Genesis access to the Tree of Life is blocked because of what the man and his wife had done. Death would rule the human race. (Even this was a kind of mercy in that God was not making man live in perpetual alienation.) But God imposed the sentence of death in view of bringing life. In the World to Come death is no more and there is access to the Tree of Life. What made the difference? Remember how the Tree of Life was guarded? There was a flaming sword, flashing back and forth. Anyone who got to the Tree of Life had to pass under the sword. Death would be the price for access to the Tree of Life.

By sending His Son into the world to die it was God Himself who suffered the death necessary to open up the way to the Tree of Life. “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23).

Receiving the gift of eternal life begins by answering this question: “what have you done?” God is still asking humanity this question. Confessing our sins is necessary if we are going to be saved. Those who do not know they are sick, or who will not admit it, do not think they need a doctor. If we do not acknowledge the problem then we will not receive the solution. Those who are not convinced of sin will not receive the Savior. Self-righteousness or legalism is an attempt by man to undo or atone for his own sin. It is like we are sewing together fig leaves to cover our nakedness. God will not receive this. We cannot make-up for what we have done. Only God can correct the problem and we must receive His remedy. As uncomfortable as it might be to admit that I am a sinner who cannot save himself, that is exactly where we must be to receive the gift of salvation.

God is greatly pleased with honesty and truthfulness as opposed to lying and pretense, which He hates. God wants us to be honest and truthful about ourselves. The opposite of this would be to lie and practice hypocrisy. Real change begins here. Without honesty there is no hope of salvation. Blaming others for our sin is also a form of dishonesty.

God wants us to trust Him that He has our best interests in mind and that He is good. This is true even if the truth is painful for us. God’s desire is for our salvation and transformation and not just a temporary or superficial fix. God always wants to get to the real issue. This is not so that He can condemn us, but so that He can save us.

Confidence to Enter the Holy Place (Hebrews 10.19-22)

Ask almost any religious person today what they think is the most important aspect of God’s character, and they will probably say it is love. This has some profound implications for how people practice their religion. Religion is really just the externalization of what we think about God. And most people seem to be very casual about their relationship with God. This relatively comfortable feeling is perfectly logical if we believe in a God who loves and accepts us, no matter what.

But this casual attitude about God would seem very strange to the Jewish people. The people who are responsible for writing most of our Bible would probably not say that God’s dominant character quality is love. They would probably say it is God’s holiness that defines the nature of God. And holiness is not something you can take casually. Holiness can kill you, and that is why no sane Israelite would have wanted to get very close to the presence of God. When the people came out of Egypt and stood together at Mt. Sinai, the presence of God scared them so much they asked God to leave them alone and just talk to Moses. Moses got closer to God than perhaps any other man ever has, yet God did not allow Moses to see very much because full exposure would prove fatal to human flesh. Isaiah saw the glory of God in the Temple and thought he was going to die. The priests who served in the Tabernacle were risking their lives when they came into the presence of God. The Law that God gave to Israel at Mt. Sinai seemed to say “stay back!” The presence of God was an experience to be feared and avoided if possible.

With that Old Testament background in mind, the whole argument in the New Testament book of Hebrews sounds strange, almost unbiblical. Hebrews tells us to draw near to the presence of God!

The book of Hebrews is an elaborate argument that what we have in Christ is better than what the people of Israel had under the Law of Moses. The primary difference between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant has to do with our approach to God. Coming into the presence of God under the Old Covenant was facilitated by bloody animal sacrifices and the intercession of the priests. But Jesus brought something much better.

He is a better priest and He has offered a better sacrifice, which was His own life. Jesus has opened up a new way to come to God that was unheard of under the Old Covenant. This new way to come to God has made the old way obsolete. There is no reason to cling to the old when something new and better has come.

Most of the book of Hebrews is a series of contrasts between the Old Covenant that God made with Israel through Moses at Mt. Sinai, and the New Covenant that God made through Christ. There is a contrast between ceremonial religion and spiritual faith, between a shame-filled fear of God’s presence and a confident access to God. The Old Covenant had a physical, earthly sanctuary. The Tabernacle Moses built in the wilderness was a symbol of the presence of God among the people of Israel as they wandered toward the Promised Land. There were elaborate ceremonies by which the priests ministered to God in behalf of the people, who could not come near. But in the New Covenant there is no physical earthly place of worship. And we don’t come to God by a ceremony, we must come to Him by faith (Heb. 11.1, 6). Christ is our priest in heaven where He has entered the very presence of God and opened up a way for us to come after Him – to a holy place that was once forbidden and full of fear. We can come into that Holy Place, into the very presence of God, with confidence and even with boldness, knowing that we will be accepted there.

The book of Hebrews is arguing that the Old Covenant is now obsolete because Christ has established a New Covenant. But what was the purpose for the Old Covenant if it was simply meant to pass away? The writer of Hebrews argues that the Old Covenant, particularly the Tabernacle, the priesthood, and the sacrifices, were shadows or types of Christ.

So the Old Covenant was given to help us understand what Christ would come to do and why He needed to do it. How could we understand what a sacrifice would mean unless there was some kind of introduction to this concept? How would we understand the function of a priest unless we had seen this in action? And how would we understand the idea of approaching the presence of God unless there was an earthly sanctuary to show us what this looked like? What all of these types and shadows seem to emphasize is that there is a great distance or alienation between God and people.

God is holy, or separate, from the people. Sin is the cause of this separation and something must be done to make the people acceptable to God. It was not left up to the people to decide or to negotiate with God. It was God who gave the commandments concerning the Tabernacle, priesthood, and the sacrifices. The solution for overcoming the alienation between God and the people came directly from God. A crucial precedent was being established: the way for the people to come to God is established by God Himself. In other words, the only way to approach God is if God opens up the way for us to come to Him. The way to the presence of God is like a door that only has a handle on the inside and can only be unlocked and opened from one side. God must open the door.

We cannot force our way into His presence or perhaps negotiate some kind of deal with God. God cannot be bribed or appeased. Either He lets us in or we remain locked out. We do not come to God in just any old way and we do not have the freedom to invent our own personal, private, religion or worship and expect to be accepted by God.

Hebrews was originally written to Jewish Christians who were being tempted to go back to Judaism. The writer is warning them that if they reject the way that God has opened through Christ, then they will have cut themselves off from God completely. There is no going back to the old dispensation because God has opened up a new way. You must come to God by the way that He has opened and prescribed. Hebrews argues that if disobeying the Law brought the sentence of death, what will happen to those who reject Christ (See Hebrews 10.28-29)?

God Himself has provided a way for us to come to Him and we dare not reject it or try to come another way. Jesus is the way to God (John 14.6). There is no other way. That “New and Living Way” was opened by Christ’s death. What Jesus has done is our source of confidence in the presence of God.

The fact that Jesus gives us full, unrestricted access to God is almost blasphemous to anyone familiar with the Old Testament and the Law of Moses. The Israelites could not just come into the presence of God whenever they wanted. Only the priests had some access to the presence of God and it was a very limited and regulated access. The reason for this restricted access had to do with the nature of God.

All true knowledge, even the knowledge of ourselves, begins with the knowledge of God. We must become familiar with God. It is in the Old Testament Scriptures, the Law and the Prophets, that we are introduced to God. The primary revelation in Scripture is God.

The primary revelation of the character of God under the Old Covenant was holiness. All of God’s dealing with the people of Israel had to conform to His nature, which could never be compromised. The love of God was also seen under the Law. God often referred to Israel as His wife or as His firstborn son. But what we must see is that the love of God does not simply cancel out God’s holiness. In other words, we must not think that God’s love makes Him “soft.”

It is a mistake for us to think of God in purely human terms, as if God is just like us. That is why we need to understand the holiness of God. Holiness means that God is not like us but is someone unique. God is not a man. God is in a class all by Himself. This is why the people of Israel also had to be different from the other nations. If you belong to a holy God you must reflect His character. (That’s the book of Leviticus in a very condensed form!)

God taught about holiness through a Holy Place (the Tabernacle), the priesthood, and the sacrifices. The Tabernacle represented the holy presence of God. The priests were to act as intercessors, or mediators, between God and the people. And the sacrifices were to make atonement for the people’s sin.

These were the things that had to be done if the people were to be acceptable in the presence of a holy God. And there could be no compromises or exceptions to what God commanded. Holiness was a life or death matter.

Some people almost seem to think that God changed at some point between the end of the Old Testament and the coming of Christ. Maybe God has relaxed a bit and softened up, perhaps lowering His impossibly high standards. The book of Hebrews is arguing that Christ has brought a significant change in how we come to God. But it is not the nature of God that changed. Our coming into God’s presence could not be on the basis of God having to compromise His holiness.

When you read about God’s dealings with Israel under the Law you might conclude that God can hardly stand being anywhere near the people. He is constantly angered by them and kills large numbers of them with poisonous snakes, plagues, and fissures opening up in the earth. But for Moses’ intercession, God would have wiped them out. God finally appears to be fed up with the people and their disobedience and grumbling and He tells Moses that He will not go up with them to the Promised Land lest He lose His patience with them and destroy them on the way (Ex. 33.3-5). God always seems to be restraining His wrath. God doesn’t want to destroy the people, even though that is what they deserved. God doesn’t give us what we deserve and that is what we call mercy, which is another aspect of God’s character. The only reason the human race has endured is because God is merciful. We deserve to die in our sins and yet God has allowed us to live. That does not just apply to the “really bad sinners” but to all who have ever sinned and fall short of the glory of God… yes, it even applies to you! But God is willing to forgive sin and He does not take pleasure in the death of wicked people like us.

The Law reveals a God who is both holy and merciful. It was Moses who received what is arguably the greatest revelation of God recorded in the Scriptures. This revelation came from God Himself and it summarizes everything God revealed to Israel in the Old Covenant:

The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation” (Exodus 34:6-7).

How can we reconcile the fact that God is merciful, gracious, and loving yet also holy and righteous? If God is going to treat us according to His holiness then there is no question that none of us would survive! But if God is merciful and allows sinners to live, then how can God still be true to His character?

It is almost as if humanity has presented God with a dilemma, if it is possible for God to have a dilemma. On the one hand, God wants to be with His people. (God dwelling in the mist of His people was the whole point of the Tabernacle.) But on the other hand, God’s holy wrath is aroused by the people’s sin and unrighteousness. It is actually dangerous to be in God’s presence. We could die in the presence of a holy God!

How can we come to God without being consumed by His holiness? He cannot simply pretend that our sin is not there. That is not an option. Obviously God does not immediately strike everyone dead the first time we sin. God is patient with us and some have interpreted God’s patience and His mercy as tolerance of sin. This is a grave error. There were times in history when God let the nations go their own way and seemed to turn a blind eye to their sin (Romans 1.18-32). But just because God seems to take no obvious action against sin does not mean that God’s disposition toward sin is neutral. God is always against sin because sin, by its very nature, is unlike God. God is righteous. Sin is unrighteousness. Sin is really rebellion against God. Does God simply ignore rebellion? What happened when Satan and his angels rebelled against God in heaven? They were cast out. Likewise, when Adam and Eve sinned they were also cast out. Sin casts us out.

So how can we get back in? I am afraid the answer is much more complicated than people tend to think. People seem to think that forgiveness is easy for God. After all, God can do anything, right? God does forgive sin. But if you think that forgiveness is easy then you don’t really understand the nature of God or what it means to sin against God.

Consider how difficult forgiveness is in human relationships. The need for forgiveness implies some kind of debt. We often hear of “debt forgiveness.” What does that mean? It means that someone owes something to someone else. There is an imbalance.

Picture an old scale that rests on a balance. We use this kind of scale to illustrate the process of justice and the legal system. Why? Because justice means a perfect balance. But if the scale is tipped in one direction, something is out of balance and must be corrected. If someone wrongs you and offends you, your relationship is out of balance. They are in debt to you. Will you forgive? You may be willing to forgive, but what has to happen? They have to “make it right.” They have to tip the scale back to zero. In other words, you expect them to pay the price necessary to repair the relationship. There is always a price to be paid in order to bring justice or repair a relationship. Who is going to pay the price? Now if someone is in your debt and you just forgive the debt, does that mean there was no price? No. It just means that you decided to absorb the debt and pay the price yourself. But there was still a cost. That’s why forgiveness is usually a very painful process.

Likewise, our access to God comes at a price. Someone or something has to pay a price because of the debt of sin. God’s love does not cancel out that debt, as if it doesn’t really exist. That debt must be paid. Who will pay that debt? Paying the price of sin will cost all we have to give. If we pay for our own sin then we will just be dead. This may sound extreme, but we must consider what it means to sin against God. God is not just another person. Offending God is a serious liability.

If God wanted to destroy us He could have found any number of good reasons to do that. But instead of destroying the people God gave them a way of atoning for their sins.

The idea of atonement, or offering a sacrifice, includes a covering and a substitute. The sin is covered, and the debt removed, but the payment is made vicariously. In other words, God provided a way for sin to be covered that did not require the life of the people to be taken as the payment. God accepted the life-blood of animal sacrifices as an atonement for the people’s sin.

So the Law of Moses gave rules and regulations concerning various animal sacrifices. The priests were to offer these sacrifices in behalf of the people. And the sacrifices had to be offered in the Holy Place that was the Tabernacle. Of particular importance was the sacrifice offered each year on the Day of Atonement (See Lev. 16). The sacrificial system was not something that the people negotiated with God. God is one who established it. God is the one who provided for the atonement of the people’s sin.

Some modern people find all of the blood in the Old Testament offensive. Is God some kind of blood-thirsty tyrant? What many do not understand is that when the Bible uses the word “blood” it is actually talking about the taking of a life. “The life is in the blood.” If the blood is shed the result is death. So it is not just the blood that makes atonement, but the taking of a life. A life is taken so that another life may be spared. That is atonement.

But animal sacrifices could never really pay the debt of sin, which is why these sacrifices had to be brought continually. That is one of the great arguments of the book of Hebrews (10.1-4). The animal sacrifices were a temporary provision, but not an ultimate solution to the problem of sin and alienation from the presence of God. No animal sacrifice could deal with sin in the aggregate. If an animal sacrifice could have taken away sin in its totality then there would have been no reason for more sacrifices.

But God has now provided a Sacrifice through the blood of Christ that effectively paid the debt of sin, all of it at one time. God paid the debt Himself and absorbed the cost of our sin. Jesus was the propitiation for our sin (Rom. 3.25). Jesus became the lightning rod for God’s holy wrath against sin. Christ’s sacrifice is superior to all the sacrifices under the Old Covenant because Jesus only had to die once (Heb. 9.12).

Jesus could not have saved us just by coming to earth as a man. The Incarnation alone did not atone for sin. The Incarnation was in order to make atonement for sin. Jesus had to have a physical body if He was going to offer Himself as a sacrifice.

But Jesus could not have saved us just by bleeding. When Christians say that we are saved by the blood of Christ we are really saying that we are saved by the life (blood) of Jesus being poured out until He died. So it is the body and the blood of Jesus that gave us access to God. There is a sense in which the body of Christ is the veil through which we can have access to God. When Jesus died the veil separating man from God was torn apart and the way into the Holy Place was opened. If we don’t come through Him we will not get to God.

But there is more to the Atonement than just His death on the Cross. There was something else that Jesus had to do in order to open up the way to God. He had to go back into Heaven.

The Tabernacle that Moses built was really a pattern, or a kind of earthly model, of Heaven itself and the presence of God. There was the Holy Place that was separated from the Most Holy Place, or the Holy of Holies, by a veil. Behind that veil was the Mercy Seat on top of the Ark of the Covenant. That Mercy Seat was an earthly symbol of the Throne of God. Only the High Priest could enter beyond the veil on the Day of Atonement. And he could never enter without the blood of a sacrifice being offered.

All of this is showing us how Jesus has given us access to God. Jesus offered the sacrifice on earth when He offered His own life. But then Jesus had to enter the presence of God. The Resurrection and the Ascension of Christ is when our great High Priest entered the Holy Place. Jesus did not stay on earth. He entered the heavenly sanctuary which is the true presence of God and not just symbolic (Heb. 9.24). His being there as our eternal High Priest before God is what gives us access to the presence of God. If Jesus were not there we could not go there either. (I am not talking about when we die and go to heaven. I am talking about us entering the Holy Place now! Jesus gives us access even now to the presence of God!)

If we really trust in the sufficiency of Christ’s death and eternal priesthood, then the result is that we will have full confidence that God has accepted us and all fear of punishment and alienation will melt away. What is your source of confidence in the presence of God? Is it your own morality? Your religious practices? Your doctrinal orthodoxy? None of those things provide an acceptable basis for approaching God. All of those things involve us earning our standing with God. If your focus is on yourself and what you do then you will not have an adequate basis for coming to God. Our confidence must be in Christ alone and His atoning death, as well as His current intercession. Christ is our confidence, not what we do. So we do not earn our standing with God. That is Old Covenant religion. It is for us to believe the Gospel and accept what Christ has done to bring us to God. We live by faith in Christ, not by religious ritual. Christ is the LIVING way to come to God. The way to come to God is a Person, not a religious ritual or ceremony.

Learning to live in the presence of God is now our goal. What does it mean to enter the Holy Place? It simply means that God dominates our attention. This is preparing us for the World to come where we will be forever with the Lord (Rev. 21.16, 22; 22.3-4). How can a person who never had any interest in the presence of God here expect to then be at home in a world in which the presence of God is pervasive? There can be no more separation of the sacred and the secular. We LIVE in the Holy Place! Everything in our lives in now holy to the Lord. We have a constant access to God. We can go to Him at any time and in any place. There is no longer an earthly holy place to which we must go to have contact with God. Everywhere is the Holy Place. Now we worship God in spirit and in truth (John 4.21-24).

This has a particular application to our prayers. We can approach the Throne of Grace in our time of need (Heb. 4.16). Notice that the Throne of God, which was once a place of fear, is now a place of grace and acceptance.

There remains a danger that we substitute ritual or ceremony for actually entering the Holy Place. For example, coming to church is not a substitute for entering and living in God’s presence each day. You cannot worship God by proxy. You have to come to God yourself.

This is why a system of priests or a clergy/laity division in the Church is so wrong. That system is essentially a reinstitution of the Law of Moses in which the people are kept at a distance from God. No person or priest on earth can bring you into the presence of God. Only Jesus can do that and we dare not settle for any substitute.

Coming to God is not only a personal, private activity. There are times when we need to come to God together. But those times of fellowship with other believers is not the thing that ushers us into the Holy Place, nor should it be the only time we spend in God’s presence. We should come together to exhort each other to stay in the Holy Place. We don’t come to Church to GET in the Holy Place. The presence of God is now our home every moment of every day.

There is no greater blessing or privilege than having access to God. “Blessed is the one you choose and bring near, to dwell in your courts! We shall be satisfied with the goodness of your house, the holiness of your temple” (Psalm 65:4).

The Silent Sovereignty of God (Esther 4.13-14)

Would it surprise you if I told you there is a book of the Bible that does not even mention God? Maybe you think I am making that up. How could a book of the Bible leave out God? Isn’t God the focus of Scripture? Well, yes, God IS the focus of Scripture. But the book of Esther does not mention God. At least, not explicitly or by name. However, the sovereign hand of God is evident in the events recorded in the book of Esther.

There are times in life when we don’t see how God is working. He is that silent, invisible Presence behind the scenes. He is the omnipresent and omniscient Author of the Story who does not always tip His hand about the plot until the time is right.

Even though the book of Esther does not mention the name of God, it certainly has a place in the Biblical canon. It tells part of the story of the history of Israel. The point of this history is not just for posterity, but for theology. It is theological history, or the revelation of God and His purpose. God made certain promises to Abraham and his offspring (Gen. 12.1-3). Part of this promise was the Land. But in the book of Esther the people are not in the Land but are in exile because of their sin. Had God deserted them completely? Was God still going to honor His promise to Abraham? The book of Esther is showing us that God was still with His people even in the Exile. We know that another part of that promise to Abraham involved the coming of Christ, who is the “Seed” of Abraham (See Gal. 3.16). So God had not abandoned His purpose, His promise, or His people.

The book of Esther tells about a significant threat to the People of God in their exile and how that threat was put down. God is not mentioned explicitly in the book, but it is clear that He was delivering His people, just as He had done when they had been slaves in Egypt, by using individuals to do the work. These individuals were Esther and her uncle, Mordecai. It becomes clear that both Esther and Mordecai have been put in these positions at just the right time.

A wicked man named Haman rises to power. He is an Agagite, an Amalekite, descended from a lineage God had ordered Israel to destroy because they had opposed Israel when she had come out of Egypt (See Exodus 17.8, 14, 16; Deut. 25.17, 19; 1 Sam. 15.2-3, 33).  Mordecai refuses to honor Haman. So Haman plots to not only kill Mordecai, but all of the Jews.

But through Esther’s and Mordecai’s bold efforts, the tables are turned. The Jews triumph over all those who sought their demise because of Haman, and the people establish the Feast of Purim to commemorate their victory. The victory of the Jews was made possible by the shrewd and courageous acts of Esther and Mordecai. They both made crucial decisions to act in just the right way and at just the right time. Though God is not mentioned, it is made clear that Esther and Mordecai are being helped by God and are acting as His servants in behalf of the Jewish people.

The book of Esther concerns a difficult period for the People of God. They are captives in a foreign land. The Persians were idolatrous and did not know or worship the God of Israel. It seemed like the enemies of the Jews had the upper hand, that God had deserted them, and that they would probably be wiped off the face of the earth.

God’s people are placed in circumstances that are far from ideal or perfect. They will face enemies and opposition as well as difficult problems that are not easy to resolve. The People of God will be tempted to compromise and disobey the Law of God in order to avoid pressure from the pagans. God’s people may face persecution, violent threats, loss of property, and even death. God does not always mitigate these circumstances and His people must learn how to pass through these times and remain faithful.

How can the People of God keep their faith in God in a context of hostility and opposition? Can the people count on God’s deliverance, or is it a futile exercise to do anything? Should the people of God be active or passive when facing opposition?

The book of Esther teaches the People of God today how to think and how to act when faced with difficult and hostile circumstances. Esther and Mordecai are excellent examples of how believers in every Age of history should conduct themselves in an evil world. The book of Esther is relevant for us today because our situation is similar to that of the Jews: we are exiles. We are strangers and aliens in the world. So how should we live in a place that is strange and potentially hostile to us?

We must avoid two extreme reactions not justified by Scripture: 1. we could compromise and just blend in with the surrounding culture and society. 2. We could try to physically separate ourselves and have little or no contact with the world around us. The third option might be called “righteous engagement.” This is where we neither compromise nor do we withdraw completely. Instead, we function in the world while refusing to be of the world.

We can count on God’s help because we are convinced that God is for us. The book of Esther is a perfect illustration of the principle that the Apostle Paul expounded in Romans: “We know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28). God will not desert His People in their time of need. However, this does not mean that we are to be passive. We must trust God, yet we must also think and act in a way that serves the purpose of God.

Now it has often been noticed that those things that God works together for the good of His Elect may not be good in and of themselves. It is not that God only sends good things our way because we are His children. Rather, God is able to work out a good ending, one that is according to His purpose, even when the individual threads of our lives were less than ideal. Since there are no ideal situations in a fallen world, we must rely on God’s ability to work good things out of this mess.

The book of Esther is yet another Biblical illustration of God’s sovereign grace toward His people. We should remember that God had put the people of Israel in captivity, which is the setting for the book of Esther. But God was still God in Persia. He is over all of the nations, which is one of the things revealed to the prophet Daniel while he was also in captivity in Babylon and then Persia (See Daniel 2, 7-8). When bad things happen to the people of God, this does not in any way contradict the rule and reign of God. The prophet Ezekiel also received revelations of God in the time of captivity. Ezekiel, like Daniel, saw the Throne of God. Yes, God was still on His throne even though Jerusalem was destroyed, along with Solomon’s Temple. God was no regional deity like the false gods of the heathen. Ezekiel saw a Throne with wheels (See Ezek. 1)! God’s glory is everywhere in the Earth, even in places of captivity, and that means the people of God have a reason to have hope even in their exile.

Times of suffering, trial, and opposition from wicked men are not necessarily signs of God’s abandonment or displeasure. Now this contradicts a lot of popular teaching in the Church today. The Prosperity Gospel is embraced by millions who want to believe that the sign of God’s love and favor is a happy, healthy, wealthy, and successful life. We must conclude that if you are not enjoying prosperity in this sense then you must be spiritually deficient. During their darkest nights of trouble, when they need the most comfort and encouragement, many of God’s people are told that they lack faith or they would not be in that difficult situation! Now we know that God can prosper and deliver His people. That is illustrated in the book of Esther. But what I am utterly rejecting is the idea that God will spare His people from all adversity. Actually, the adversity may be evidence that God is working with His people.

For example, some adversity is the discipline of the Lord. This was certainly true of the Exile. God was treating Judah like a wayward son who needed discipline. Believers in Christ are to also accept hardship as discipline (Heb. 12.5-11).

Furthermore, adversity in the form of opposition is simply the natural consequence of living in a world that is wicked and opposed to God. God’s people have enemies, like wicked Haman, who hate them for no good reason, except perhaps because the people of God are different and won’t bow to the world’s demands. Jesus warned the disciples that the world would hate them because it hated Him and it hated His Father (John 15.18-25). So let us dismiss any foolish and unrealistic notion that if we are the people of God we will float through this world on a couch of ease and comfort!

But when we are in the midst of some kind of trouble it can become very difficult for us to see the hand of the Lord. In fact, we may conclude that He has abandoned us. It is not hard for us to feel that God is blessing us when everything is going the way we want. It is extremely difficult for us to see God’s hand in our troubles. And so this is why we need the book of Esther. God is hidden in the book of Esther. Sometimes God hides Himself from us and we cannot always see how He is working out His purpose. But the truth is that God never stops working. He is moving both people and events toward His ultimate goal, and we must learn to trust in the Lord, even when we can’t see Him.

Actually, theologians have a term for this invisible work of God: Providence. The book of Esther is a case-study in the providence of God. There is a series of events in Esther that we might call coincidence. A string of events just seem to happen at exactly the right time:

 It all began when the King of Persia got drunk (1.10). In his drunken state he wants his queen, a woman named Vashti, to make an appearance before him and all of his nobles. For reasons every woman can immediately understand, Vashti refused to obey the King’s request (1.10-22). This was a brave move that cost Vashti the throne.

 Esther just happens to be chosen as one of the young women to go before the King. She wins everyone’s approval, especially the King’s, and is chosen by him as the new queen (2.1-18).

 Because Esther is in the palace, Mordecai, Esther’s uncle and guardian, is hanging around the palace and overhears a plot to assassinate the King (2.19-23). The deed is recorded, but Mordecai is not rewarded.

 Meanwhile, Haman rises to power and is enraged that Mordecai will not honor him and so decides to build a gallows on which to hang Mordecai (5.9-14).

 It just happened that one night the King couldn’t sleep and for some strange reason he wants to read the royal records where he is reminded of what Mordecai had done for him (6.1-3). Haman was at that very moment on his way to the King to get Mordecai hanged on the gallows Haman had constructed earlier. Instead, Haman is humiliated and Mordecai is honored (6.4-13).

 All of that had to happen first so that when Esther finally reveals herself and the plot of Haman, Haman can be hung on the very gallows he built for Mordecai, while Mordecai is already known to the King and is therefore easily exalted to Haman’s place to undo the evil planned against the Jews (chapters 7-8). Because of Mordecai’s exalted position and favor with the King, everyone is now afraid to attack the Jews and they overcome their enemies (9.3-4).

Who could have made that happen so perfectly except for God? It is a story no Hollywood writer could invent! Only God can write an ending like that!! But the writer of Esther never mentions God in these events. We must conclude that this was an intentional omission. We are left to fill in the blanks and read between the lines. In this way Esther is different from every other book in the Bible. But even in its silence about God, the book of Esther is teaching us about God.

All of these events in the book of Esther are rather mundane and coincidental. Where is God in that? When we read the Bible we get used to God showing up and doing spectacular things for His people. In the Exodus He brought 10 plagues on Egypt. He parted the Red Sea. When God shows up we expect miracles, fire from heaven, the mouths of lions to be shut, and fiery furnaces not to burn human flesh. But that is not what happens in Esther. And that is probably not what happens in our lives. God is there, but He is hidden. If we are looking for God only in the thunder and lightning then we will probably conclude that He is not involved in our lives at all. But He IS there in a thousand little things that we usually do not see or that we simply chalk up to coincidence. Sometimes in retrospect we can look back and see the invisible hand of Providence in our lives. We see that if THIS thing had not happened like it did then THAT wonderful blessing would not have been possible. I suppose we will have to wait to see all of the ways God worked in our lives as He brought His dear children along the path to Glory.

We usually come to understand things in retrospect. But understanding what God is doing in the middle of any given situation, especially a trial, is impossible unless we were to have some kind of direct revelation. When we read the Bible we are used to God giving this direct revelation. But in Esther there is no such revelation. There is only silence. It is the silence that disturbs us. We usually want to know what God is up to. So how do we deal with the silence? We have two excellent examples in Esther and Mordecai.

We have to first deal with the fact, however, that Esther is initially reluctant and needs a rather heavy push to enter the fray and do her duty. She was afraid. If she went to the King without being invited, she was risking her very life. She lets Mordecai know her hesitancy to go to the King uninvited (4.11). She does not look like a person of faith here who is as bold as a lion. But that was not the end of Esther’s story. God was working with her and he was doing so through her uncle, Mordecai. Mordecai’s answer to Esther’s fear is probably the most important statement in the book of Esther:

“Do not think to yourself that in the king's palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews. For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father's house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this” (Esther 4:13-14)?

We should take notice of Mordecai’s confident faith in God, though he does not mention God: “Deliverance WILL rise for the Jews.” The only question was whether or not Queen Esther would be willing to play her part in God’s work. Even when we are afraid, and even when we do not understand what God is doing behind the scenes, we must always live by faith and according to what we know is right. We have to learn how to live wisely and to be bold when necessary. God will bless our efforts if we do these things. But if we draw back and allow fear to dominate God will not be pleased with us (See Heb. 10.39). God’s work and purpose will continue on without us.

Mordecai’s crucial word to Queen Esther shows us that the work of God must be done by the people of God. If God was working in the background, it was Mordecai and Esther who were working in the foreground. We don’t see what God was doing but we DO see what God’s people were doing.
Now this seems to be wrong. We are used to God performing mighty acts which are impossible for men to do. We have been trained to think that it is only God’s work that matters and our work only gets in the way of what God wants to do. So the best thing we can do is to just do nothing and let God do it all! What if Mordecai and Esther had reasoned like that? What if Esther had refused to go to the King? What if Mordecai and Esther had organized prayer meetings and then done nothing else at all? Mordecai was confident that deliverance would arise for the Jews. And then he purposed, with Esther’s help, to BE that very deliverance! Mordecai exhorted Esther to be active, not passive, and to do what was in her power to do. Later, when the King had exalted Mordecai, he was again proactive in countermanding the plot of Haman (8.8-14).

Mordecai seemed to be confident that whatever he and Esther did would be successful. Why was he so confident? Was he just arrogant? Some people do act out of pride for their own purposes and self-aggrandizement. That is exactly what Haman did. And Haman’s plans come to nothing. Haman is a perfect example of the fact that “pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall” (Proverbs 16:18). In this way Haman and Mordecai provide an instructive contrast. Haman is a proud man working for himself. Mordecai is a faithful man working for God. And we know who was successful. Mordecai was confident and proactive because he knew that no man can successfully oppose God, as Haman was doing, and, conversely, no man can fail who has aligned himself with God. So Mordecai knew he had to do something, but whatever he did would be successful because he was doing the will of God. You can’t beat God’s people because you can’t beat God! “If God is for us, who can be against us” (Rom. 8.31-39)?

At every stage of the story of Esther and Mordecai we see that there was a kind of synergy between those providential “coincidences” and the bold, wise actions of the human actors. It is as if Esther and Mordecai were in perfect sync with what God was doing and were making all the right moves and decisions at those crucial moments. Clearly the Jews were saved by the brave actions of Esther and Mordecai. While we cannot claim all the credit for the victory, we do participate in the purpose of God and what we do does matter.

But it is equally clear that God was working, albeit silently, to save His Covenant People. There are some things that only God can do. God’s people always trace their salvation back to what God has done. However, God does not simply thunder out of heaven and command salvation, like He did at the creation of the world. Salvation is a more complicated work than creation. The book of Esther is really about how God provides salvation. Esther is an Intercessor for the Jews who pleads for their lives before the King. Mordecai is an Exalted Ruler who is placed in a position of authority for the sake of his people. For the Jews to be saved and to be victorious over their enemies, they needed an Intercessor and an Exalted Ruler. Esther abandoned herself when she determined to go before the King and intercede for her people: “if I perish, I perish” (4.16). And she was received by the King and her intercession was heard. This reminds us of  “the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us” (Romans 8:34). It was Mordecai’s position that made the final victory of the Jewish people possible. “For Mordecai was great in the king's house, and his fame spread throughout all the provinces, for the man Mordecai grew more and more powerful” (Esther 9:4). This reminds us of how God has exalted Jesus: “he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all” (Ephesians 1:22-23). We are victorious because Jesus has been exalted. God has provided for our salvation by supplying both an Intercessor and an Exalted Ruler.
Salvation requires a sovereign God. What if God wanted to save His people, but could not carry out His desire? On the other hand, what if God did not want to save His people? Would anything that we do to save ourselves amount to anything? If God had not been working behind the scenes in the story of Esther, would anything that Esther or Mordecai did have been effective?

But there are some people who interpret the sovereignty of God to mean that there is nothing that we do that makes a difference. In fact, you can push sovereignty and predestination to such an extreme that even prayer becomes irrelevant. If everything is already determined by a sovereign God, then why do anything at all? If Esther and Mordecai had thought that way then they would have accepted the fate of the Jews as a God-ordained decree. So we must strike a balance between trusting in God’s sovereignty while also being willing to do the will of God in concrete ways. I do not mean to imply that we can earn salvation. Being saved by grace means we also do good works God has prepared beforehand for us to do (Eph. 2.8-10).

Trusting in the sovereignty of God does not imply that the people of God can afford to be simple or foolish. Esther and Mordecai both acted with forethought, wisdom, and tactfulness. Furthermore, the people of God are exiles and that means there will be a strong temptation to compromise with the pagan culture. We see this pressure on Mordecai when Haman is exalted by the King. Mordecai is the only one who refused to bow to Haman. God’s people must understand that the world is not really tolerant of those who will not conform. There are times when we have to draw a line and refuse to bow. Trusting in the sovereignty of God does not mean we expect God to make everyone our friend. It means that when we do have to take a stand, a stand we know will probably have consequences, we trust in our sovereign God to take care of us. “Therefore let those who suffer according to God's will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good.” (1 Peter 4:19) We don’t always know what will happen when we live to please God. But we trust Him no matter what happens to us.

Even after Esther exposes the plot of Haman and Mordecai is exalted to take Haman’s place, the Jews still have to fight (9.5, 16). But now their fighting is effectual and they triumph over their enemies. In some sense it had been Esther and Mordecai who actually won the victory, and then the rest of the Jews benefitted from that victory. The rest of the fighting was just a consolidation of that victory. Now the Christian is in a similar position. Christ has already won the decisive victory. He has spoiled Principalities and Powers through His Cross. And He is seated at the right hand of God in Heaven – far above all other earthly Powers. The plots of our Enemy, Satan, have been exposed and utterly defeated. However, there is still some fighting to do. God’s people still have enemies and we are still aliens and strangers in a world that is opposed to Christ. Even though we do not fight a physical kind of war, we must be armed for a spiritual battle and not intimidated by conflict. We are not confident in our own ability. But we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us (Rom. 8.37).