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In the name of Jesus, amen. We’re saints of God. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. We rejoice in another year of the Lord’s mercy, even as last year, no matter how the world would have us think of it, even though last year also was a year of the Lord’s mercy and kindness to us. The Lord bringing us through, the Lord blessing us, the Lord teaching us, and the Lord giving us all that we need for this life and the life to come.
We start this year by hearing of Jesus, a 12-year-old boy, visiting his father’s house in Jerusalem. That house was the temple, and to understand the text, we have to understand the purpose of the temple, and that takes us all the way back to the Garden of Eden. A few weeks ago we heard, or maybe it was Christmas Day, we heard the reading from Genesis chapter 3, the fall into sin, when Adam and Eve ate the fruit that was forbidden in the garden, and they clothed themselves to cover their shame in fig leaves, and then they heard the sound of the Lord in the garden.
And as hard as this is to admit, they did the only thing that they could do. They ran from the Lord. Now, I want to make sure we get this. For you and for me, the children of Adam and Eve, sinners, the presence of the Lord is dangerous. As hard and as frightful as it is for us to imagine Adam and Eve running from the presence of the Lord, that’s all they could do in that situation because the Lord is holy and they, and you and I, are not.
And because of that, because of our sin, His holiness is dangerous to us. God says to Moses, he says it like this in Exodus 32, he says, “no one can look on my face and live.” It’s not a problem with the Lord’s face. It’s a problem with your eyes. It’s a problem with our sinfulness. Because of our fall into sin, the Lord’s presence is a consuming fire. The Lord’s presence is dangerous to us. God, can you imagine? This is horrible, but it’s true: God is dangerous to us in His unveiled majesty.
But the Lord comes down and He finds Adam and Eve and He gives them this promise that the seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent. That’s the promise that God Himself would be born of a woman and in His death would destroy sin, death, and the devil. That’s the promise of Jesus, and then to drive home the point, the Lord goes and takes an animal—we don’t know what animal it is—and He kills it. He sacrifices it and skins it and wraps Adam and Eve in that animal skin.
You have to think that Adam and Eve are sitting there watching the Lord grab a hold of the animal, whatever it was. What are you doing with that animal? Lifting up the animal and, who knows, cutting its throat and taking a knife and gutting it and stripping the skin off. I don’t know if any of you have done that, have been out and have cut the hide off of a dead animal. The Lord there in the garden, it’s not a pretty sight, cutting the hide off of this particular animal and then wrapping the warm and bloody flesh around the nakedness of Adam and Eve to clothe them.
Now, there’s one thing that Adam and Eve must have known, and that was that that animal didn’t do anything wrong. That animal didn’t take from the tree that was forbidden and eat the fruit of it. Adam and Eve did, and yet the Lord has now killed another in their place. And these two things belong together: the promise of the gospel and the sacrifice. They belong together all through the Old Testament.
Whenever we hear of the fathers of the faith, of Noah, for example, who comes off of the ark and the very first thing he does is offer a sacrifice, an animal there on the altar. Or Abraham, wherever he was as he wandered around the promised land, he would build altars to offer sacrifices. And then when the Lord rescued the people from Egypt, He said, “Tell Pharaoh to let my people go so they can go out into the wilderness and worship me.” And there the Lord gives instructions for sacrifice, for the morning sacrifice, for the evening sacrifice, so that every day in the tabernacle there was a goat or a lamb that was being killed and bled and cooked on the altar.
Anytime the people had to offer a sin offering, they would take an animal and they would bring it to the priests, and the priest would kill it, and the blood would flow out. In fact, during the Passover, it was said that there were so many lambs killed in Jerusalem that the Kidron Valley, the Brook Kidron, would flow red with blood from the sewer from the temple. In fact, it was almost in passing in the Old Testament text that it said that that’s where Solomon used to go and make offerings, and he would go and offer a thousand bulls.
Just stop for a minute and think about that. A thousand bulls. How many priests would it take to sacrifice that many? How big of a barbecue pit to burn that many bulls? A thousand bulls, and that’s what Solomon would offer. This is how it was in the Old Testament—bulls, and goats, and rams, and lambs—all spilling their blood. And this is why, because the Lord accepts the death of another in the place of sinners.
And this is the Father’s business. God the Father knows that His holy presence is dangerous to us. So, He has made a way that He can be with us and not destroy us, and the way is the tabernacle and the sacrifices of the tabernacle; that’s what it’s about. If you were an Old Testament Israelite, and you sinned, you knew exactly what you were supposed to do. You were to go and take a lamb or a ram out of your own flock, and you were to take that lamb, carrying it on your shoulders or maybe leading it on a leash or whatever you do to get the lamb to Jerusalem, take it up the hill to Jerusalem, sing the psalms as you go, take it into the temple and hand that lamb over to the priest who would dispatch with it, who would drain the blood and cut it open and lay it on stretched out all fours on the fire of the altar to burn.
And as you watched the lamb burn, you would know, if nothing else, you would know this: that another has taken your place. You’re the one that sinned after all. You know that lamb—you were watching it—you know that it didn’t do anything wrong. It was your sin that put that lamb on the altar, and yet the Lord was graciously accepting that lamb for you.
I don’t, dear saints, I don’t think it’s any surprise that the angels come to announce the birth of Jesus to the shepherds who were looking after the sheep living outside of Jerusalem. How many of those lambs would have ended up on the altar? I don’t think it’s an accident that Jesus was born in the midst of farm animals in Bethlehem, right down the street in the shadow of the Temple of Jerusalem, because Jesus Himself came to be, at last, that final sacrifice, the one that all the bulls and goats and rams, the one that all of them pointed to.
Jesus came to make a way for us sinners to be able to stand before the Holy God. And He did that by His sacrifice. Behold, remember John the Baptist? “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” That’s what Jesus has done. That has been, dear saints, the business of God all along, from the Garden of Eden to Mount Sinai to the building of the temple by Solomon and the rebuilding by Zerubbabel.
That was the Lord’s business for His people, for the Holy Land, for the people, for the holy city, for the holy things, for the holy place. That was His plan all along, to make a way to be able to stand before His presence, and He has made that way finally and at last in Jesus, which is why Jesus is so surprised when His parents are looking for Him when he’s 12 years old in Jerusalem. Where else, He says, would I be? I was born in the midst of sacrificial animals, and now I’m here in the temple to do my Father’s business, to accomplish His plans in the midst of His whole big effort to redeem humanity. Where else would I be?
And this is true every time we find Jesus. When we find Him praying in the garden of Gethsemane, sweating great drops of blood, where else would He be? When we find Him whipped and scourged and crowned with thorns, where else would He be? When we find Him nailed to the cross, why are you surprised? Where else would He be? Or laid in the tomb, or seated at the Father’s right hand, or here present in His Word and with His body and blood on the table, where else would He be?
Jesus, this one, is and always is about His Father’s business, which is your salvation, your redemption, and the forgiveness of all of our sins. Jesus is God’s Lamb who has carried your sin and carried your sorrow, who has forgiven you and given you His righteousness so that now, so that now you are fit for the presence of God. When the Lord comes back, we will not, like Adam and Eve, run and hide because we’ve already been clothed in the sacrifice, the righteousness of Jesus Christ. We will run to meet Him, our Redeemer and our Savior and our Friend.
God be praised that Jesus, already twelve years old, was about the Father’s business. And God be praised that He saw it through all the way to the end, to His death and resurrection, so that we might have life and life eternal. God be praised. Amen. And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
