January 3 2010    Reading:  John 1.10-18

Second Sunday afterChristmas

 Text: ‘The law came through Moses, grace and truth through Jesus Christ’ John 1.17

We are now three days into the year 2010, standing at the beginning of another year.

You’ll remember how 10 years ago the world waited with great anticipation for the year 2000, the Millennium. Some looked forward with hope, others with fear. Some thought the world would change at midnight on the 31st. of December 1999, either coming to an end or when the world’s computers ground to a halt. But 2000 came and went, ten years ago and we entered the Third Millennium. A new era

Now, we are entering a new era of a different kind. In 1896, Svante Arrhenius a Swedish scientist, published a new theory in a scientific paper. He said that as industry burned fossil fuels such as coal, and oil, this would add carbon dioxide gas to the Earth's atmosphere. And his theory was that in time this would raise the temperature of the planet. He was made a member of the Swedish Academy of Science in 1901 for this work, but there was a lot of opposition. Some Swedish scientists insisted that the smoke from factories could never affect something so huge as the climate of the earth. That could only happen over tens of thousands of years. But Arrhenius was right.

Now scientists look at samples of ice from the Greenland ice sheet, and can see that there have been changes in temperature, different eras with different climates.

Different eras.

That’s exactly what John is speaking about in the first chapter of the gospel of John. He declares that a new time, a new era has begun......... and we are in it. Nothing to do with the Millennium,

or the climate......... this a new era that God has brought about for the world........... and we live in it.

what kind of new era is this ?

John puts it like this:

The law came through Moses, grace and truth through Jesus Christ

two ages, two eras: the era of the law, the new era, now, of grace and truth in Jesus Christ.......

What then, was the era of the law ?

We may think of the law in the first five books of the Bible, as rules for daily life in Israel, with the dietary regulations, the regulations for the building of the Tent of Meeting. But these rules and regulations are only the outward parts of the law.

In the Ten Commandments, at the heart of the law of God in the Old Testament is a deep, profound, demand for perfect obedience, perfect love for God from the beginning of life to its end.

The law says: love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength......... and, love your neighbour as yourself. We are to live in perfect communion with God, in unbroken, perfect knowing of His will, obeying Him perfectly.

We are to be perfectly holy, and righteous.

And we are to show that love for God, in the way we treat others around us.

So, you could sum it up like this, the law in the Old Testament, is the reflection of God Himself, towering in majesty, wonderful in its perfection.

And in the light of that Law we are to be perfectly holy, completely righteous.

The apostle Paul understood all this. This is the way he understands the law, its holiness and perfection. The Law of God, he says, is completely holy, completely righteous and perfect.

But here’s the astonishing thing,

Paul, looks around the world of his day, and his conclusion is this:

there is no one who keeps it.

No one, no man or woman can stand in the searching light of God’s law.

On the one hand Paul exalts the majesty of the law. And on the other our complete failure to follow, and to obey God’s Law.

There is, he says, no way we can live according to the law, by the law,

because of the reality of our sinful hearts

I am the Lord your God, you shall have no other gods before me....... says the first commandment,

a command that we are to love and trust God 100%.

But we don’t, can’t. That’s our situation.

But, Paul’s next astonishing, wonderful declaration is that God has acted to do something about our situation. This was promised right through the Scriptures. God would bring about a new situation, God Himself would break in,

and offer a new way.

And that is exactly what He has done.

What has God done ? He has sent His Son Jesus Christ.

to put it in the words of John’s gospel:

The law came through Moses, grace and truth through Jesus Christ

The law came through Moses, that’s the old era,

grace and truth have come through Jesus Christ that’s the new.

The New Testament proclaims that Jesus has lived the only, holy and perfect life

walking in love and trust with God, 100%.

And at the Cross, Jesus, has taken our sin, all our failure to keep the law,

all our guilt upon Himself and has taken it away.

so that we, in the new era that began at the Cross,

can walk ourselves in God’s presence.

From the very beginning of his gospel John leaves no doubt that he is speaking of a new creation in Jesus.

A new creation, a new era has dawned in Jesus Christ.

And a new order in the history of God’s purposes for this world.

Jesus is greater than the law and the prophets.

Jesus Christ is greater than Moses, greater than Abraham, greater than the Temple

He is the one that the prophets of old, longed for,

hoped for, the One of whom the great prophecies of old spoke.........who would bring God’s new age, a new era.

What a deeply wonderful thing, that we know Jesus Christ,

and all that God has done for us in Him. We, as John says, have seen His glory.

The law came through Moses, that’s the old era,

But we, you and I, live in the new era, the one that the prophets of old longed for,

hoped for, we know that grace and truth have come through Jesus Christ

AMEN