Mercy Over Sacrifice: How Jesus Fulfills the Law We Can’t Keep

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[00:08:37] it's easy at lowes okay good morning everyone make your way to your seats uh we are gonna go

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[00:09:39] through a few quick announcements here at the the top uh we actually have some important ones so uh put on as they say in uh elementary school you know put on put on your listening ears
[00:09:51] everybody put on your listening ears um okay uh i'm gonna try to do this in chronological order The first one is inside of your bulletin today. You have a little purple Insert this is for our Ash Wednesday service. So
[00:10:10] Go ahead and grab this. Let me Let me know that you see this This is our first time doing Ash Wednesday since I've been here and I want to invite you to come to it
[00:10:22] We have two services one's gonna be at 1215 during our typical midday communion that's going to be a very traditional service. It'll be about 30 minutes long, and then we will have the church open all day for anyone who would like to come
[00:10:36] and have a time of self-guided prayer and reflection. And then at 6 30 p.m., we're going to have a full service with music, and our sister congregation, Story Hill, is also going to be joining us. And so a couple of their pastors will be here, a couple of their musicians will be here,
[00:10:53] and so, and hopefully a few of their congregants will be here as well. And so I'm really excited about this event and hope you'll make time in your schedule to come and check it out. We'll
[00:11:02] talk about it a bit more in the service today. Secondly, on the 21st, so next Sunday, we are having our annual Vision Lunch. That's the 22nd, by the way, is next Sunday. It's amazing that I
[00:11:18] still managed to get that wrong after all the reminders to say it right. 22nd, after the service, it's a potluck, so please come and bring some food to share. This is the time when we tell about kind
[00:11:30] of all the great things the Lord has done in the past calendar year, and we look forward to some of the dreams for the upcoming year. We'll also give a short budget presentation. I heard there was a
[00:11:40] much longer one yesterday that went well, and I hope you'll make a point to come to that. And then finally, I want to let you know we're having a congregational meeting on the 8th of March. That'll
[00:11:52] be really short, right before the service starts at 10 15, and that will be for the purpose of electing new officers. And so write that down, and please be present to come here and vote if you're
[00:12:04] a member of the church. All right, that's enough announcements, enough business. Let's now transition our hearts towards worship. Let's just take a moment and take a deep breath here, collect ourselves. It's raining outside. I don't know what your drive over here was like, but let's just
[00:12:29] become aware for a moment that in this space, however you're coming, the Lord sees you. We've come here today to worship the Lord, and the Lord has prepared this place for you. Through Christ, his face shines upon you, and he's inviting you in this space for this next few moments to be with
[00:13:12] him. And so with that, I want to invite you to stand for our call to worship. The law of the

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[00:13:27] Lord is perfect, refreshing the soul. The precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart.

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[00:13:47] They are more precious than gold, than much pure gold. They are sweeter than honey, than honey from

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[00:13:54] the honeycomb. As we continue to worship, you know, usually we will pray right now and sometimes we'll

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[00:14:15] do something like a spontaneous prayer and the point of prayer in this time is just to recognize that we're here to worship Jesus we're not telling him to come here he's already here but it's just kind of like asking him to open our hearts to see him and sometimes this will
[00:14:33] be spontaneous and sometimes it will be a written prayer written prayer might be something that you guys are really used to sometimes people are not used to written prayer but written prayer for me and Abby particularly was something that was refreshing to us in a really hard
[00:14:49] season we were new to the Presbyterian tradition and when we came to a Presbyterian Church in Florida at a really weak time written prayer and liturgy was something that sustained us in a really hard time it's something
[00:15:05] special about knowing that there's fellow believers that have prayed this prayer before so sometimes it could feel like a ritual but I invite you when we we are doing the liturgy in this service and we're reading written prayer together
[00:15:18] to just give a fresh set of eyes to it. So as I read this invocation prayer, as we continue to worship, you can close your eyes. It says, guide and direct us, O Lord, always and everywhere with
[00:15:33] your holy light, that we may discern with clear vision your presence among us and partake with worthy intention of your divine mysteries. We ask this for Jesus Christ's sake. Amen.

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[00:16:26] The greatest your name Stand above and all And position your Stand up, cry and forgive Sing this song forever to And freedom Sing this song forever to And you will sing this song Your name is the greatest
[00:18:49] Your name above and all you can be seated father we come before you this morning we just take a moment to

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[00:25:10] let that truth sink in that we've just sung about in romans paul says that he prays that we would be able to grasp how wide and high and deep your love is but even as we sing songs about it and
[00:25:34] read scripture about it, Lord, there are no words that can fully express it. Lord, your faithfulness to us is beyond compare. It makes no sense, especially when we look at our own lives and we recognize this week how many times our love for you ran dry, how shallow it could be. And so,
[00:26:03] Father, we begin our worship this morning coming before you in confession. And so we take this moment to confess our sins before you. And now together, I want to invite you into this time of
[00:26:41] confession as we read through the law of God. God spoke these words and he said, I am the Lord your God. You shall have no other gods but me. Lord, have mercy upon us and incline our hearts to keep
[00:27:00] this law. You shall not make for yourself any idol. Lord, have mercy upon us and incline our hearts to keep this law. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. Lord, have mercy upon us
[00:27:18] and incline our hearts to keep this law. Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. Lord, have mercy upon us and incline our hearts to keep this law. Honor your father and your mother. Lord,
[00:27:36] have mercy upon us and incline our hearts to keep this law. You shall not murder. Lord, have mercy upon us and incline our hearts to keep this law. You shall not commit adultery.
[00:27:53] Lord have mercy upon us and incline our hearts to keep this law you shall not steal Lord have mercy upon us and incline our hearts to keep this law you shall not bear false witness
[00:28:11] against your neighbor Lord have mercy upon us and incline our hearts to keep this law you shall not covet Lord have mercy upon us All right. In our hearts, we beseech you. The law is heavyweight. And yet, as we've confessed our
[00:28:36] sins and we've approached the Lord through Jesus, here's the promise that we find in the book of Galatians. It says, when the time had fully come, God sent his son, born of a woman, born under the
[00:28:50] law to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship. Because you are his sons, God sent the spirit of his son into our hearts, the spirit that cries out, Abba, Father.
[00:29:06] And so you're no longer a slave, but God's child. And since you're his child, God has also made you an heir. All those who repent and look to Jesus Christ for their salvation are guaranteed the
[00:29:19] forgiveness of their sins. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
[00:29:25] Amen. Well, I've already mentioned as we've come in today about our Ash Wednesday service that is coming up this week, but if you're like me, this is perhaps a newer tradition for you. I did not
[00:29:39] grow up celebrating Ash Wednesday, and it's only recently that some of these older traditions have really started to take root in my life, but I think that just because we are in such a busy world. Just because we are surrounded by so much distraction and stimulation,
[00:30:02] drawing into some of these older traditions can be really helpful for us as we learn to slow down and make time to be with Jesus. And so I really want to commend this service to you
[00:30:17] and the opportunity to celebrate Lent. If you have heard about Lent before, you know that Traditionally, it's celebrated through a time of repentance, a time of fasting, and even a time of almsgiving, service to others.
[00:30:33] It's a time for self-reflection.
[00:30:35] Usually, a lot of people talk about it as 40 days of fasting, but actually, if you look at the number of days, it's about 46 days long leading up to Easter.
[00:30:46] And that's because when we are participating in Lent, whatever it is that we give up, we actually bring it back into our lives on Sundays.
[00:30:54] Because Sundays are meant to be a day of rest and worship.
[00:30:57] And so I want to invite you all to consider not what you can give up in some legalistic way, but instead what might you be able to put aside that would help you put Jesus in the center?
[00:31:14] What might you be able to do in these next days leading up to Easter that would give you a greater intentionality and a thoughtfulness in drawing near in relationship with Him?
[00:31:23] And so we'll be talking a lot about that on Wednesday.
[00:31:25] I hope you'll join us.
[00:31:27] As I always say when we put cards in flyers, you already know when the event is.
[00:31:31] That card's not for you.
[00:31:33] But if you'd give that to a neighbor who might be interested in coming with you to the service, I think it's something that will be accessible and understandable for anybody who shows up.
[00:31:42] And so with that said, I want to collect our tithes and offerings.
[00:31:47] This is a moment when we are giving back to God from what he's graciously given us.
[00:31:54] It's, in fact, not voluntary if you're one of his followers, but instead our theology is that everything we have belongs to God, and we give back just that first bit as a sign.
[00:32:06] Of course, if you're a visitor here, we're not twisting your arm.
[00:32:09] We're so glad you're here.
[00:32:09] feel free to let the offering pass you by, but we're going to collect that now as we sing our

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[00:32:14] next song. Well, I have forgotten to mention two things, so I've got to do it before we

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[00:35:09] dismiss the kids. In your bulletins, we've also added a QR code to scan if you would prefer to give online. I mentioned this because we are also changing the system that we've been using for
[00:35:21] online giving. And so if you're like my family that you've set up online giving to just kind of recur with every paycheck and it does it all automatically, we are asking that you would go
[00:35:32] and change over to this. And our administrator is ready to walk you through that step-by-step if you have any challenges with it. But this new system will actually enable you to much more easily keep track of giving and even see it on your phone and all that good stuff. So know that.
[00:35:50] And then finally, every Tuesday morning at nine, we get together and we pray for everybody in this space. And if you have not had a chance to fill out a prayer card today, please do so in the rest
[00:36:00] of the service and throw it in the offering or in a basket on the way out the door so we can be praying for you this week it would mean a lot last week i forgot to mention and i was reprimanded for
[00:36:09] us not having enough cards so anyway with all that you can now pass the peace of christ to your neighbors and kids you're dismissed for children's church if you would make your way

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[00:37:32] back to your seats and join with me as we sing the doxology praise god from whom this

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[00:38:24] morning comes from 1 Samuel, selections from chapter 21 and 22. David went to Nob, to Ahimelech the priest. Ahimelech trembled when he met him and asked, why are you alone? Why is no one with you?
[00:38:41] David answered Ahimelech the priest, the king has sent me on a mission and said to me, no one is to know anything about the mission I'm sending you on. As for my men, I've told them to
[00:38:51] meet me at a certain place. Now then, what do you have on hand? Give me five loaves of bread or whatever you can find. But the priest answered, I don't have any ordinary bread on hand. However,
[00:39:04] there is some consecrated bread here, provided the men have kept themselves from women. David replied, indeed, women have been kept from us as usual whenever I set out. The men's bodies are holy, even on missions that are not holy. So how much more so today? So the priest gave him the
[00:39:21] consecrated bread, since there was no bread there except the bread of the presence that had been removed from before the Lord and replaced by hot bread on the day it was taken. Now one of Saul's
[00:39:33] servants was there that day, detained before the Lord. He was Doeg the Edomite, Saul's chief shepherd. That day David fled from Saul. Now Saul heard that David and his men had been discovered and Saul was seated spear in hand under the tamarisk tree on the hill at Gibeah with all
[00:39:56] his officials standing at his side. He said to them, listen men of Benjamin, will the son of Jesse give all of you fields and vineyards? Will he make all of you commanders of thousands and
[00:40:09] commanders of hundreds? Is that why you all have conspired against me? No one tells me when my son makes a covenant with the son of Jesse. None of you is concerned about me or tells me that my son
[00:40:22] has incited my servant to lie in wait for me, as he does today. But Doeg the Edomite, who was standing with Saul's officials, said, I saw the son of Jesse come to Ahimelech, son of Ahitub at
[00:40:36] Nob. Ahimelech acquired the Lord for him. He also gave him provisions and the sword of Goliath, the Philistine. The king sent for the priest Ahimelech, son of Ahitab, and all the men of his family who were priests at Nob, and they all came to the king. But the king said, you will
[00:40:55] surely die, Ahimelech, you and your whole family. Then the king ordered the guards at his side to turn and kill the priests of the Lord, because they too have sided with David. They knew he was
[00:41:07] fleeing, yet they did not tell me. But the king's officials were unwilling to raise a hand to strike the priests of the Lord. The king then ordered Doeg, you turn and strike down the priests. So Doeg
[00:41:21] the Edomite turned and struck them down. That day he killed 85 men who wore the linen ephod. He also put to death, put to the sword Nob, the town of the priests, with its men and women, its children
[00:41:35] and infants, its cattle and donkeys and sheep. This is the word of the Lord. You can be seated.
[00:41:42] Let's pray. Father, as we open this, your word, Lord, we come with open hands and open hearts.
[00:41:54] We come hoping to hear from you and to receive from you. Lord, we come recognizing that this is no ordinary moment, but this is the hour set aside where we seek your face. Lord, we pray that
[00:42:08] your kingdom would come in our hearts and in our community, that your will would be done in our lives. We pray that you would give us what we need, our daily bread. We pray for those who are
[00:42:19] sick in our midst, in need of your healing. We pray for those who are in need of provision that you would provide, for those who are lonely that you would comfort, for those who are traveling
[00:42:32] that you would care for them. And Lord, we pray these things the way you taught us to pray, saying Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
[00:42:44] Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
[00:42:50] Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
[00:42:57] And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
[00:43:02] For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen.
[00:43:09] Amen. Well, have you ever heard Christians being called out for hypocrisy because they don't follow every one of the laws in the Old Testament? You know, usually it goes something like there's some kind of moral issue that's being debated, and then somebody says, well,
[00:43:30] you know, the Bible, it also says you're supposed to stone false prophets, but I don't see you doing that. So why do you care so much about this particular law? I actually think that is a fair
[00:43:43] question. Why don't we? Why does it seem like we value certain biblical laws more than we do others? Is it just haphazard? Is it cultural pressure that we've caved to? Or is it something more? Why do we seem to obey some rules and ignore other ones? That is where we're going to start
[00:44:06] this morning as we jump into this passage, because that's kind of the issue at the core of this whole scene. It is an account that teaches us how do we understand and how do we apply the
[00:44:21] law of God. And I actually think as we study this, if we learn to understand what's happening here in this little passage, we'll actually get a lens to understand all the rest of scripture and
[00:44:35] and how it applies to each one of us in our everyday life.
[00:44:39] And so I want to do that by splitting this passage up under three headings, and here they are.
[00:44:44] It's the law that David breaks, the law that Saul makes, and the law Christ fulfills.
[00:44:53] And each one of these things is going to tell us a little bit about how we understand God's law.
[00:44:58] So let's first look at the law that David breaks.
[00:45:04] Okay, so if you were here last week, you might remember we talked about friendship.
[00:45:08] We talked about the relationship between Jonathan and David.
[00:45:12] And that story ended with David fleeing Saul at the spur of the moment, finding out that Saul was out to kill him.
[00:45:20] And so chapter 21, we pick up right where we left off.
[00:45:23] David, he is on the run.
[00:45:25] He is unprepared.
[00:45:27] He is exhausted.
[00:45:28] He is hungry.
[00:45:29] And he is unarmed.
[00:45:31] and so he finally gets to this town of Nob and he enters into the tabernacle and he's trying to find some help.
[00:45:41] There he meets Ahimelech, the priest and Ahimelech's confused.
[00:45:48] He doesn't know why David, this great military leader, is going to show up in his town all by himself without any resources.
[00:45:56] He's a little bit suspicious and so David makes up a story.
[00:45:59] He tells him, oh, well, I'm on a secret mission.
[00:46:03] The king has sent me out, and that's why I'm here.
[00:46:06] And then he says, and do you have any food?
[00:46:09] We're really hungry.
[00:46:11] And so Ahimelech says, yeah, we have food, but the only food we have, the only thing that's available is this consecrated bread.
[00:46:20] The bread that they had was technically called the bread of the presence.
[00:46:25] And if you're curious about it, you can actually read about the bread of the presence in Leviticus, Leviticus chapter 24.
[00:46:32] It spells out exactly what this bread is and what you're supposed to do with it.
[00:46:36] But basically, the bread of the presence, it was a part of the daily worship for the people of Israel.
[00:46:45] Each day, they had these 12 fresh loaves of bread that were baked, and they laid out on the altar, and they were symbolic.
[00:46:56] These loaves of bread represented God's constant presence with his people and his continual provision for the people of Israel.
[00:47:05] It was a reminder, on one hand, that when their ancestors wandered in the wilderness for 40 years, that each and every day he fed them with manna, he fed them with bread.
[00:47:19] And also, those 12 loaves, well, they were food for the priests.
[00:47:24] And so it was, in a sense, a continual provision.
[00:47:28] It represented, this bread's here because God wants to feed you.
[00:47:33] And then there's even more than that, because every day these priests, well, they'd get together and they would eat this bread.
[00:47:39] They'd sit around the table and they would eat it.
[00:47:41] And that was also symbolic.
[00:47:43] It was showing that each and every day God welcomed his people to come and sit around his table and be in the feast with him.
[00:47:55] It says, God is with you and he wants to dine with you.
[00:47:59] But in addition to all that details about the bread, there was some specific rules.
[00:48:05] And one of those rules, is my microphone going out?
[00:48:08] Oh, okay.
[00:48:09] One of those specific rules was that this bread is only for the priests.
[00:48:14] Nobody else is allowed to have it.
[00:48:16] And that's because in their culture, the priests, the Levites, this class of people, they didn't own land, they didn't farm, and so the way they survived was through the sacrificial system. That was their portion of everything, and so nobody else could
[00:48:30] have this bread. Well, nobody else except here, it seems like, after a very short discussion, he just asks a couple questions about their ritual purity. Ahimelech gives it to David with really no resistance at all.
[00:48:49] So what gives?
[00:48:49] What's going on there?
[00:48:51] That's my question.
[00:48:52] Is the priest corrupt?
[00:48:54] Is David being sinful?
[00:48:56] Is David disrespecting God by doing this?
[00:48:59] Well, no, he's not.
[00:49:02] But in order to understand why he's not, you need to realize what's happening here.
[00:49:08] You need to realize that in the Old Testament, there are actually three different kinds of law that you come across.
[00:49:15] And here they are.
[00:49:16] There's three kinds of law in the Old Testament.
[00:49:18] There's the moral law.
[00:49:20] I have misspelled civil law.
[00:49:22] I don't know how that happened.
[00:49:23] Hopefully it won't be on every slide.
[00:49:25] The moral law, the civil law, and the ceremonial law.
[00:49:30] And so let's talk about each one of these.
[00:49:31] The moral law, first of all.
[00:49:33] The moral law is the declaration of God's will for human morality.
[00:49:41] And these laws are laws that reflect his holy character.
[00:49:45] They are laws that describe what perfect righteousness really is.
[00:49:51] And because that's what moral laws are, that means these laws are perpetual.
[00:49:57] They are unchangeable.
[00:49:58] It is a rule that God's people are supposed to live by at all times and all ages.
[00:50:03] Not just God's people, but it's intended for all people to live by these laws.
[00:50:09] And the moral law, it's best summed up, it's best seen in the Ten Commandments.
[00:50:14] That's why we read the Ten Commandments as a part of our confession today.
[00:50:18] But also Jesus, he summed up the moral law in Matthew chapter 22.
[00:50:23] He said that the law could be summed up like this.
[00:50:26] Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind.
[00:50:31] That's the first and greatest commandment.
[00:50:33] And then he said the second is like it.
[00:50:35] Love your neighbor as yourself.
[00:50:38] All the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments.
[00:50:43] So the moral law, it teaches us what holiness is.
[00:50:49] And by doing that, it shows us who God is.
[00:50:52] It shows us what God is like.
[00:50:53] And the moral law, it's never supposed to be broken.
[00:50:56] It's never supposed to be bent.
[00:50:58] It's never supposed to be violated in any way.
[00:51:01] That's the first kind of law.
[00:51:02] The second category of law in the Old Testament are civil laws.
[00:51:07] Now, civil laws are the laws that refer specifically to how you're supposed to run the nation-state of Israel.
[00:51:18] These laws apply directly to the people living in Israel during the time when they were written.
[00:51:23] And it might sound complicated, but it's very easy to figure out which laws these are because when you're reading through the Bible, they're the laws that have a consequence assigned to them.
[00:51:35] They are the laws that expect there is some legal authority that will enforce these rules.
[00:51:42] And so here's like a couple examples so you know what I'm talking about.
[00:51:45] Whoever steals an ox or a sheep and slaughters it or sells it must pay back five heads of cattle for the ox and four sheep for the sheep, right?
[00:51:57] There's the law. There's the penalty.
[00:52:00] There's also some other kinds of civil laws.
[00:52:02] In Deuteronomy, there's one like this.
[00:52:04] It says, when you build a new house, make a parapet around your roof so that you may not bring the guilt of bloodshed on your house if someone falls from the roof.
[00:52:15] It's a building code, essentially, right?
[00:52:19] That's the whole thing with the civil law.
[00:52:21] They are written for a specific place and time, and they're still useful for us to study because they all flow from the principles of the moral law, But these specific laws, they expired when the nation-state of Israel expired.
[00:52:39] And so that's the second category, the civil law.
[00:52:41] And then the third one is the ceremonial law.
[00:52:45] These are the laws that are all about temple worship.
[00:52:49] They're laws about the sacrificial system.
[00:52:52] They are the laws about ritual purity, cleanliness, uncleanliness.
[00:52:57] A couple examples, there's laws like Leviticus 2.
[00:53:01] It says, when anyone brings a grain offering to the Lord, their offering should be the finest flour. They are to put olive oil on it and put incense on it. Or Leviticus 11, the pig is unclean
[00:53:14] for you. You must not eat their meat or touch their carcasses, for they are unclean to you.
[00:53:21] Well, another example of a ceremonial law is the law we're dealing with in this passage about the bread of the presence. That's a ceremonial law about how we're supposed to worship. And as Christians, we no longer follow the ceremonial laws because the book of Hebrews tells us Jesus
[00:53:40] fulfilled these. That means these laws are no longer necessary because all the ceremonial laws were pointing towards Jesus. He was the ultimate sacrifice. All the other sacrifices pointed towards. He is the great high priest who reigns forever, and so priests are no longer needed.
[00:54:03] He is the one who touches the unclean and makes them clean forever so that you can enter the presence of God. Get it? Moral, civil, ceremonial. You can say, okay, okay, fine. That's how the
[00:54:16] ceremonial laws work, but what about David? What about Ahimelech? Seems like they were supposed to keep these rules. They were still living in that time. Weren't they supposed to follow them?
[00:54:28] Well, yeah, they were. But you also need to know that even in ancient Israel, the ceremonial law and the civil law, they were subordinate to the moral law. And that means the civil law, especially, it had some flexibility in it based on different situations and circumstances.
[00:54:49] The point is that these laws are helping us to worship God rightly, and that means that what's most important about the ceremonial law is not so much the letter of the law, but the heart behind the law.
[00:55:06] And so, again, here's an example of what I'm talking about.
[00:55:09] In Numbers, Moses is telling the people about how to celebrate the Passover.
[00:55:15] And he says, well, you've got to celebrate the Passover, This is the wrong verse, but he says, you've got to celebrate the Passover, and you do that at twilight on the 14th day of the month, according to all the rules and regulations.
[00:55:32] Now, that's the law. 14th day of the month at twilight. But in Numbers, there's this incident where some people come, and they say, well, we want to have Passover, but we've been out at war.
[00:55:42] We're unclean. What are we supposed to do? And then God says to those people, tell the Israelites, when any of your descendants are unclean because of a dead body or they're away on a journey,
[00:55:55] they're still to celebrate the Passover, but they can do it on the 14th day of the second month at twilight.
[00:56:02] Or there's another story in 2 Chronicles.
[00:56:06] Later in the history of Israel, there's this long period of time where a lot of the law gets forgotten about, and they rediscover it in the temple, and there's this amazing revival where they get together and they read the law,
[00:56:20] the people consecrate themselves, and they have this big Passover sacrifice.
[00:56:25] But because it all happened there, kind of on the spot, a bunch of people took Passover and they weren't ritually clean.
[00:56:34] But we read here in 2 Chronicles, it said, Although most of the people had not purified themselves and still ate the Passover, contrary to what was written, Hezekiah prayed for them, saying, may the Lord who is good pardon everyone. And so God says, you're always supposed to do it this
[00:56:55] way. Here is the exact rule. Here is the exact time. But ultimately, your heart of worship is what really matters. And so with that idea, Jesus actually talks about our passage in 1 Samuel.
[00:57:14] He picks up on this very story.
[00:57:16] Maybe you remember in the Gospels, he talks about this.
[00:57:19] In Matthew, he and his disciples, they're walking through a field, and they start plucking the heads of grain and kind of snacking on them as they go through.
[00:57:27] And some of the Pharisees get on to them because, oh, you're not supposed to thresh on the Sabbath.
[00:57:32] And here's what Jesus says.
[00:57:35] Haven't you read what David did when he and his companions were hungry?
[00:57:39] He entered the house of God, and he and his companions ate the consecrated bread, which was not lawful for them to do, but only for the priests.
[00:57:50] If you had known what these words mean, I desire mercy, not sacrifice, you would have not condemned the innocent, for the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.
[00:58:02] So, there you go.
[00:58:05] David and Ahimelech, they do not follow the letter of the ceremonial law, but in breaking that law, they uphold the moral law.
[00:58:16] He loves his neighbor.
[00:58:18] He gives him food to eat.
[00:58:19] He provides for him in his time of need.
[00:58:22] And so that's the first thing.
[00:58:23] That is the law that David breaks.
[00:58:26] Now let's go on and let's look at the law that Saul makes.
[00:58:30] Okay, I understand.
[00:58:32] I hope you're still with me.
[00:58:33] I know this has kind of been a little bit of a theological exercise so far, but hang in there.
[00:58:37] This is going to get practical in just a second.
[00:58:40] Things take an ominous turn in the story after David eats the bread.
[00:58:45] We read that one of Saul's servants was there that day, detained before the Lord.
[00:58:50] He was Doeg the Edomite, Saul's chief shepherd.
[00:58:55] So one of Saul's men is there.
[00:58:58] It's an ominous verse, right?
[00:58:59] Just, oh, and by the way, here he is.
[00:59:02] And of course, he witnesses everything, and he runs off to report it.
[00:59:06] and this moment, this whole event, is really a disaster from Saul's perspective, because after this, after David gets the provisions that he needs, he leaves the tabernacle, and in some of the verses we didn't get a chance to read this morning, he goes and 400 more men join his side,
[00:59:24] and it says they are disgruntled and distressed people. They are his allies, and so now he has this militia formed around him. And we also read that he manages to rescue his parents, and he
[00:59:37] sweeps them up and takes them out to Moab, which, just a side note, if you're around during Advent, Moab, the homeland of his grandmother Ruth. So who knows, maybe they had like some family connections or something that their elderly parents stayed with. But here suddenly,
[00:59:53] David's position is now much stronger than it was when he ran out in the middle of the night.
[01:00:00] and Saul, when he finds out about it, he is furious, right? He says, no one tells me when my son makes a covenant with the son of Jesse. None of you is concerned about me or tells me that my son
[01:00:16] has incited my servant to lie in wait for me as he does today. Now, I think in the psychology world, we call that projecting, right? It's not David that's going out trying to kill Saul. Saul is the
[01:00:33] one trying to kill David, and yet here's Saul kind of wrapped up in this paranoia, this anxiety, this fear, and when he hears what has happened, when Doeg gives his report, well, he demands that
[01:00:49] Ahimelech, not just Ahimelech, but all of the priests and their households all come and stand before him. And so Ahimelech gets there, and he tells Saul, hey, yeah, I helped him, but I didn't really know what was going on. And Saul just doesn't believe him. And he orders his men to kill
[01:01:09] Ahimelech and all of his household. I want to make sure you understand what that command means.
[01:01:17] Saul, the king of Israel, orders all of the priests of God to be killed. The verse, it says, then the king ordered the guards at his side, turn and kill the priests of the Lord, because they too
[01:01:34] have sided with David. They knew he was fleeing, yet they didn't tell me. And it says, but the king's officials were unwilling to raise a hand to strike the priests of the Lord. Okay, so we're talking
[01:01:50] about the law again. Specifically here, now we're talking about dealing with Saul and his civil authority as the king of the nation. It's hard for us to relate to this exact moment, I think, because our world is so different. But you need to remember, all of the Old Testament civil laws,
[01:02:12] all those little laws I told you about, you know, building parapets on your roof and all that stuff, they were written before the era of kings. All of those laws, where did they come from?
[01:02:24] Think about it. Who wrote those laws? God, right? Moses heard them from God and transcribed. These were laws directly from God. All of their civil law was in perfect conformity to the moral law.
[01:02:42] But now that Israel has a king, for the first time they have a flawed human being who's able to make laws and able to enforce laws. Do you remember back in the fall when we were at the beginning
[01:02:59] of this book and we were hearing all those speeches, those passionate speeches from Samuel where he was telling the people, you really don't want this. He said, talking about how bad it is to choose some power-hungry, sinful human being to lead them when God himself was already their king.
[01:03:18] and they didn't listen to him and they said, no, we want a king just like everybody else.
[01:03:24] Well, now everything Samuel warned them about has come true.
[01:03:30] Saul is drunk with his own power and he is in this worked up, angry state and in the middle of that, he just makes this horrible, ungodly command.
[01:03:43] Murder the priests.
[01:03:47] And the Israelite men refuse.
[01:03:50] They don't do it.
[01:03:53] They disobey the direct orders of this king.
[01:03:58] They defy his law.
[01:04:02] And of course, they're right to do so.
[01:04:05] I think all of us would agree that was the correct choice.
[01:04:09] But now, with these different categories of the law that we talked about a moment ago, I think, hopefully, you could tell me why they were right to do that.
[01:04:18] because this law, from this civil authority, well, it wasn't in line with the law of God.
[01:04:27] This civil law, it was a violation of the moral law.
[01:04:32] And so these guys, these guards around Saul, they knew instinctively what it still took a few hundred years for Augustine to write down.
[01:04:43] Famously, he said, Lex inusta, non est lex.
[01:04:49] An unjust law is no law at all.
[01:04:55] You need to understand, right?
[01:04:57] Again, this is an unprecedented moment in Israel.
[01:05:01] Never before had there been a civil law that required people to sin.
[01:05:09] Before this, God made all the laws.
[01:05:12] And yet, in this moment, here they were having to choose whether to disobey the king, the crazy king, and face whatever consequences might go along with that or carry out his command and face the Lord
[01:05:31] and whatever consequences would come along with that for eternity.
[01:05:38] It was kind of a watershed moment.
[01:05:42] But sadly, God's people throughout history have continued to face this dilemma, right?
[01:05:52] There has never been another society where all the laws were written by God.
[01:05:57] And so we see all throughout history moments like this from the early Christian martyrs who were forced to choose whether they would deny Christ and be put to death, whether they would deny Christ before the king
[01:06:13] or be put to death by the king.
[01:06:16] Or we look at people like Corrie ten Boone, right, who had to choose between handing over her Jewish neighbors or maybe going to a concentration camp herself.
[01:06:28] It's the kind of thing that Martin Luther King wrote about during the Civil Rights Movement when he said a just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law.
[01:06:41] It goes along with the law of God.
[01:06:44] But an unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law.
[01:06:49] And he said one has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.
[01:07:01] Okay, so again, Saul's guards, they were legally bound to follow their civil authority, but they were first bound to submit to their God.
[01:07:15] And that's true still today for all of us, for every one of God's people.
[01:07:22] And so that means for us, practically speaking, just, if our government were to one day declare, maybe like Nebuchadnezzar did with Daniel, that you could no longer worship God, but instead from now on you need to bow down to a golden statue of
[01:07:40] the president or whoever it would be, you would say, no, of course not. We're not going to do that because that law violates the moral law. God says, I am the Lord your God who brought you up
[01:07:52] out of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, you should have no other gods before me. He says, don't make any idols and bow down to them. And similarly, if the government were ever to give
[01:08:04] us a law that says you have to lie or you have to steal or you have to commit adultery, if it gave you a law that commanded you that you must stop loving the Lord your God with all your heart,
[01:08:18] soul and mind, if you got to stop loving your neighbor as yourself, well, then we would be required to disobey that kind of law. But also, it's worth noting here, the other thing we see
[01:08:30] modeled here is that if we choose to do that, if we resist an unjust law, that still doesn't give us permission to then go on and break God's law in a different way. So for instance, our Christian
[01:08:45] obligation, if there's an unjust law, it doesn't mean we now have an excuse to then go out and be violent, right? It doesn't give us an excuse to then become hostile and angry. But in fact,
[01:08:58] Jesus models this for us, right? He even commands it for us, that even in those moments of where we're choosing to disobey, we are still commanded to love our enemies, pray for those who persecute
[01:09:12] us and to bear whatever consequences come under the law. Now, of course, it's kind of a moot point for this story because as soon as the guards disobey, well, there's a devastating twist.
[01:09:32] None of the men of Israel are willing to do this, but look over here. Here's Doeg, and it's not coincidence that they keep saying he's an Edomite. He's from Edom. He's from a pagan nation. He is not bound by God's law. And so he said, I'll do it. And then he slaughters Ahimelech.
[01:09:56] He slaughters all of his innocent family members. And then it says he destroys everything they had.
[01:10:04] And it is, guys, it's bleak. We're left with a really horrible scene here. I don't know if it jumps off the page at us the way it should, but Saul has gone from this man who was once a humble
[01:10:18] leader seeking the Lord's will, and now he is a deranged and vindictive and bloodthirsty tyrant who is actively defying the Lord in the most repulsive kind of ways. He's the authority.
[01:10:37] He's the civil authority. He's the one who makes the laws, but in doing so, he has become guilty before a higher law, and one day he's going to have to make an account, and we'll get to that
[01:10:52] later in the story.
[01:10:55] But that brings us to the third thing we see here, which is the law that Christ fulfills.
[01:11:02] Okay, I feel like there's a lot of information in this sermon.
[01:11:06] I know it could be a lot to digest, but I hope as we're getting here towards the end, we're not just leaving here thinking, man, yeah, Saul was a bad guy, right?
[01:11:18] If anything, what I hope we're starting to consider and contemplate in this sermon is that when it comes to the moral law of God, we actually all stand guilty before it.
[01:11:30] There's that famous prayer of confession that sometimes we pray here at the church where we pray, God, forgive us for what we have done and for what we've left undone.
[01:11:43] That prayer, it's a reminder that it's not only our active breaking of God's commandments that bring us guilt.
[01:11:53] It's not just the bad things that we've done, but it's also our failure to do the good things.
[01:12:01] Jesus, when he was preaching, he said, the commandment is not simply do not murder, right?
[01:12:06] But he extends it, and he says, it also means you're guilty because this commandment says you shouldn't even be angry with your brother.
[01:12:13] If you've done that, you've already committed murder in your heart.
[01:12:17] And then in our tradition, in the Westminster Confession, it picks up on that line of teaching, and it says, well, not only is the commandment you should not murder, but also there's a positive side to that command as well.
[01:12:30] It means that you are called not only to avoid anger, not only to avoid violence, but you are positively called to love those around you and to do everything within your power to improve the life of your neighbor.
[01:12:49] That's the law.
[01:12:51] You think do not murder, oh, that's the easiest one.
[01:12:54] It might be the hardest.
[01:12:57] See, the law, when we fully understand it, it reveals to us the very heart of God.
[01:13:05] And then when we stand there in the light of God's perfection shown to us in the law, the truth is when we're standing in that light, we are all exposed.
[01:13:19] But here's the good news.
[01:13:21] We talked a lot about the law today.
[01:13:23] Ceremonial law, civil law, moral law.
[01:13:27] Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, his most famous sermon, Most of it was about this exact topic.
[01:13:34] And what was amazing was as he was pointing out how this law is far more demanding than anybody ever conceived of, well, right in the middle of that, he also says this.
[01:13:47] Do not think that I've come to abolish the law or the prophets.
[01:13:53] I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them.
[01:13:59] Now look, I don't think, I mean, who knows what's going to happen, but I would imagine not many of us will probably end up being remembered in the same breath as the great early Christian martyrs
[01:14:14] or Corrie Ten Boone or Martin Luther King.
[01:14:19] But here's the truth.
[01:14:21] If you believe the gospel, then it means when you stand before God, you're actually not going to be judged in comparison to those people anyway.
[01:14:32] In fact, it tells us you're not going to be judged on your own worthiness at all.
[01:14:37] You're not going to be judged on what you've done.
[01:14:42] Instead, Scripture tells us that every person who comes to Christ by faith is wrapped in his worthiness.
[01:14:50] Jesus, the one who came and perfectly kept the law.
[01:14:57] Jesus, the one who actually surrendered himself over to the unjust laws of the corrupt authorities.
[01:15:05] and he died so that we could live.
[01:15:11] Jesus, he was the fulfillment of the moral law.
[01:15:17] And he says he fulfilled it.
[01:15:18] We know he fulfilled it because, one, he did everything it required.
[01:15:22] But then he also paid every bit of its penalty on behalf of the people who broke it.
[01:15:31] He didn't just fulfill the moral law, though.
[01:15:34] He also fulfilled that ceremonial law, remember?
[01:15:38] And so just like David came into the temple and he ate the bread of the presence to satisfy his hunger and to save his life.
[01:15:47] Jesus says to each and every one of us today, he says, I am the bread.
[01:15:54] I'm the bread of life.
[01:15:57] Whoever comes to me will never be hungry.
[01:16:01] Whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.
[01:16:05] And so I guess for us today, what that means is we are all invited to come and feed on him.
[01:16:15] We're invited to come to him and find new life and joy and strength.
[01:16:22] We're invited to come to him and let his Holy Spirit transform us and change us and change the way we live.
[01:16:33] And as that happens in us, when the world starts to see a people like that, they're gonna start to see the holiness of God.
[01:16:45] When they see you, they'll see Jesus.
[01:16:49] When they see our church, they're gonna see his love on display.
[01:16:54] And so I wanna invite you to just bow your head for a moment.
[01:17:02] The question that first we need to ask is this.
[01:17:10] Are our lives surrendered first to God?
[01:17:24] What might he be calling to your mind in this moment?
[01:17:32] Know that whatever it is, he's inviting you to freedom.
[01:17:49] Lord, we've chased after so many things that will not satisfy our hearts.
[01:18:00] You have the bread of life, and yet we've chased after things that cannot fill us.
[01:18:10] We've put our own priorities and our own kingdoms, just like Saul, ahead of yours.
[01:18:21] But Father, would you meet us in this moment?
[01:18:24] As we come to you in faith, would you clothe us in the righteousness of Christ and make us more like him?
[01:18:32] We pray in Christ's name, amen.
[01:18:36] Let's stand together and sing.

[01:18:53] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_11]
[01:18:53] Send you out with this blessing from the Lord.

[01:23:57] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_04]
[01:23:57] May the God of peace himself sanctify you completely.
[01:24:02] And may your spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, he who calls you is faithful and he will surely do it amen go in peace