ADVENT
HIS NAME SHALL BE CALLED JESUS
DR. JIM DIXON
DECEMBER 17, 2000
MATTHEW 1:18-25
Today in Israel, archeological teams are digging, searching for what they call the ashes of the red heifer. They have searched in the region of Qumran near the Dead Sea, and they have searched in the Negev, in the parched and barren wilderness there, and they have searched further south into Egypt, into the Sinai Peninsula. To understand this quest for the ashes of the red heifer, we must go back to the Old Testament, to the book of Numbers, to the 19th chapter where we read that the children of Israel took a red heifer and they slaughtered it outside the walls of the city in sacrifice and they brought its ashes to a special place.
Those ashes were used in the sacrificial system of Israel for the forgiveness of sins. It was said that some of the ashes of the red heifer were sealed in a special container where they could be kept in perpetuity. And for this reason, archeological teams through the last decades have searched to try to find those ashes. And it is said that if they could find the ashes of the red heifer, perhaps they would reinstitute the sacrificial system in Israel.
Why would they want to reinstitute the sacrificial system in Israel? I think for many of us, perhaps most people in the world, the Old Testament sacrificial system seems a little strange. I mean, all of those animals sacrificed on all the altars of Israel seem strange. The people of Israel would bring animals in sacrifice for their sins, and they would come to the temple in Jerusalem and the priests would take the blood of the animal and they would enter into the inner court to the altar of burnt offering and they would sprinkle the blood on top of the altar and pour the blood at the base in atonement for the sin of the people.
Then for the sins of the priests, the priest would take the blood of animals into the Holy Place and they would sprinkle the blood on the veil, the curtain, that separates the Holy Place from the Holy of Holies. And they would sprinkle the blood seven times on that veil and then they would pour the remainder of the blood upon the altar of incense in the Holy Place, seeking to atone for the sin of the priests. And of course, on Yom Kippur, on the Day of Atonement, the high priest would take the blood of animals into the Holy of Holies, into the dwelling place of God, into the very presence of God, where only the high priest could go, and he but once a year. He would there sprinkle the blood of animals upon the mercy seat of the Ark of the Covenant, seeking to atone for the sin of the people.
On that same day, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the high priest would vest symbolically the sin of the people upon the scapegoat and then send the scapegoat out into the wilderness, symbolically removing the sin of the people from them. And all of this, I think, seems very strange to most of the world. But there’s a sense in which it was all very precious to God because it was a manifestation of the fact that the Jewish people were aware of their sin. They were aware of their sin, and they had a longing to find forgiveness of sin. And if there is any indictment of our nation and our culture in our generation, it is this: we are not aware of sin and we do not long to be forgiven of sin.
You see, Christmas is about sin and forgiveness. And the Bible tells us, “His name shall be called Jesus, for He shall save his people from their sins.” And the name Jesus comes in part from a root word meaning “to save.” He is the savior come into the world and He has come to save us from sin.
Now, He saves us from sin (or offers to save us from sin) in two ways. And these comprise our two teachings this morning. First of all, He saves us from sin by His sinless life. Now I have here an email that was sent to me this past week, something that was taken off the web. I want to read it to you. “Can you imagine working at the following company? It has a little over 500 employees, with a following statistics: 29 have been accused of spousal abuse. Seven have been arrested for fraud. 19 have been accused of writing bad checks. 117 have bankrupted at least two businesses. Three have been arrested for assault. 71 cannot get a credit card due to bad credit. 14 have been arrested on drug related charges. Eight have been arrested for shoplifting. 21 are current defendants in lawsuits. And 1998 alone, 84 were stopped for drunk driving.”
Can you guess which organization this is? It’s the 535 members of your United States Congress, 435 members of the house and a hundred members of the Senate. Now, I must say I don’t believe these statistics. I don’t believe them, and I tend to question the authenticity of a lot of things that come over the web. But I will say this: there is no doubt that our political leaders are flawed. There’s no doubt of that. And there’s no doubt that our religious leaders are flawed, no doubt of that. There’s no doubt that our educational leaders are flawed. Our economic and business leaders are flawed. In fact, we’re all flawed. We’re all sinners. The Bible says, “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. There is none righteous, no, not one.” The Bible says, “All we like sheep have gone astray.” The Bible says, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”
We are sinners in need of grace. Now, most of you have heard of the cuckoo bird. There are varieties of cuckoo birds all over the world, but they have this in common. Cuckoo birds have two toes going forward and two toes going backwards. This makes them unique because birds in general have three toes going forward and one toe going backwards. Now, the cuckoo takes its name from the sound made by the old world common cuckoo, a sound which sounds a great deal like a cuckoo clock.
The old world common cuckoo has a very unusual characteristic. The female in the old world common cuckoo does not raise her young. In fact, she doesn’t even build a nest when she’s about to lay her egg. She ascends to the air and she flies around and she looks for a nest that some other bird has built. She looks for a nest with eggs in it, and she waits until the mother of that nest goes in search of food. And then she descends. And the cuckoo lays her egg in that other bird’s nest along with those other eggs. Now, when the mother of that nest returns, she doesn’t notice that there’s a new egg in her nest and it’s a larger egg, because the the cuckoo bird is unusually large. The mother warms all the eggs in her nest and they all hatch. The cuckoo bird is larger than the other birds with a voracious appetite. And the mother of the nest seeks to feed all the birds in the nest. But ornithologists tell us that sometimes the cuckoo bird, because it is larger with a voracious appetite, gets most of the food. Sometimes when the mother’s gone the cuckoo bird actually pushes the other hatchlings in the nest out of the nest and they fall and die on the ground.
Now, biblically speaking, there is something very cuckoo about the human race. Something is wrong. There’s an alien in the nest. You see, when you were born, something was wrong. We were created in the image and the likeness of God, the imago Dei, the image of God. And we were born at least residually with the divine nature. But you see, an alien has entered the nest because the human race has fallen. And we are born now with a sin nature, so that we have two natures. And of course the world and the culture oftentimes seeks to feed the sin nature and the sin nature seeks to be dominant. And it is the human predicament and the human struggle in this fallen world. But Jesus Christ was different; His birth was different.
And we read in Luke’s Gospel, the first chapter, “In the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a village of Galilee named Nazareth to a woman who was betrothed to a man named Joseph of the house of David. And the woman’s name was Mary. And the angel said to her, ‘Hail, O favored one, the Lord is with thee.’ And Mary was deeply troubled in her spirit and considered what sort of greeting this might be. And the angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God and you will conceive in your womb and you’ll bear a son and you will call His name Jesus and He will be great and will be called the Son of the most High. And the Lord will give to Him the throne of His father David. And He shall rule over the house of Jacob forever. And of His kingdom there shall be no end. ‘Mary said, ‘How can this be, since I have no husband?’ The angel said to her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore, the child to be born shall be called holy.’”
The Greek word for holy, the biblical word, is the word “hagios.” This word means set apart, and when applied to God it means set apart from sin. Jesus Christ is unique, even in His birth He is unique. He is holy. He is the holy one, and He is set apart from sin.
When you read John eight, you have that beautiful, moving account of the woman who was caught in the very act of adultery. And the Jewish leaders wanted to stone her to death for her sin. And you know how Jesus said to the crowds, “Let he who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” And they went away one by one because there was only one person there who was without sin. And that one was Jesus Christ, the holy one, set apart from sin. And later in that same chapter as he’s discussing sin with the scribes and the Pharisees, he says, “Whoever commits sin is a slave to sin.” He goes on to say, “Which one of you is capable of accusing Me of any sin?” He knew He was without sin. He is the holy, one set apart.
The Bible tells us that when we accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and our Savior, an amazing thing happens. When you come to Him and acknowledge that you are a sinner and you need grace and mercy, and you come to the cross and you embrace Him as your Lord and Savior, amazingly, the righteousness of Christ is imputed to you.
His holiness is imputed to you in the courtroom of heaven. It doesn’t mean that you are behaviorally without sin, but judicially, in the courtroom of heaven, you are pronounced righteous. The righteousness of Christ imputed to you. It’s an amazing exchange. The Apostle Paul describes it in 1 Corinthians chapter one, in Romans chapters three and four, and in Philippians chapter three. Paul said, “I don’t desire a righteousness of my own, but the righteousness of Christ imputed to me.”
This is the incredible gift of Christmas. He is the Savior who takes away the sin of the world. And how does He do it? First of all, by His sinless life. And when we as sinners come to Him and receive Him, His righteousness—His holiness—is imputed to us and vested upon us. But there’s a second way he saves us and a second teaching this morning. He saves us not only by His sinless life, but by His atoning death.
Archeologists tell us that deep beneath the streets of modern-day Rome there’s a hidden city. It is silent and ancient, complete with temples and bath houses, apartment buildings, brothels, huge stadiums, fire stations, public latrines. There is a complete city beneath a thick layer of earth. And how did that ancient city come to be buried? Archeologists tell us that ancient Roman architects, eager to build but having limited space, simply built on top of pre-existing structures, so that Hadrian built the temple of Venus and Rome on top of a bath complex. Constantine the Great built the original St. Peter’s Basilica on top of a pagan necropolis. Nero built most of Republican Rome over the rubble of the fire of 64 AD. And he built the palace and the gardens of the Domus Aurea, the golden house, over that landfill. And incredibly, Vespasian built the Flavian Amphitheater, better known as the Colosseum, on top of part of Nero’s Domus Aurea. And Trajan built his bath complex on another part Nero’s Domus Aurea, just building on top of buildings, creating a layered city.
Archeologists tell us that in that hidden city, deep beneath the streets of modern-day Rome, you can find many ancient Christian churches. And the amazing thing is that an inordinate number of those ancient Christian churches deep beneath the earth are actually built on top of Mithraic temples. In fact, in modern-day Rome, some of the churches above ground, the Christian churches, have staircases going deep into the earth and down into the ruins of a Mithraic temple, a temple dedicated to the Persian and Roman God Mithra, or Mithras. And why was this? I mean, why were Christian churches built over Mithraic temples?
Well, church historians and theologians tell us for two reasons. First of all, for the Persians and the Romans, Mithra was the sun god, the god of light. And we saw last week that they celebrated the birth of Mithra on December 25th. But in the fourth century, during the time of Constantine the Great when Christianity began to replace Mithraism, they began to build Christian churches over the top of those Mithraic temples to show that Jesus Christ is the true light of the world, the Son of God.
But there was a second reason. A second reason was that in the Persian and Roman world, and particularly in the Hellenized world (in the Greek speaking world), Mithra was called “”soter,” the biblical word, the Greek word, for savior. And archeologists tell us that Mithran worshipers went into those temples and they slaughtered bulls, and they poured the blood of the bulls into baptismals, and they were baptized in the blood of bulls for the forgiveness of sins. And this Mithran ceremony took place in Mithraic temples all over the ancient world—baptism in blood for the forgiveness of sin. And we’re told by church historians that Christian churches were built over those Mithraic temples to show that blood sacrifice was no longer needed. It isn’t needed in Judaism, isn’t needed in the Persian-related religions, and isn’t needed in the Roman religions. Blood sacrifice is no longer needed because Jesus Christ has atoned for the sin of the world once and for all. And it’s over and done. Atonement has been made.
The Bible tells us in Ezekiel 18:20 that, “The soul that sins shall die.” But you see, Jesus died for your soul. He died for your soul and for mine. The Bible tells us in Romans 6:23 that the penalty for sin is death. But you see, Jesus paid the penalty for your sin and for mine. He paid the penalty. And that’s why again and again and again in the New Testament the Bible speaks of our redemption by His blood. And the Bible says in the book of Hebrews, the ninth chapter, the 26th verse, that Christ has appeared and once and for all put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. He died in substitutionary atonement. He died for you. He died for me. In your place. In my place. And the message of the gospel is that Jesus Christ is the Savior and He has propitiated the wrath of God and expiated the sin of man. And when you receive Him and you embrace Him, your sin is forgiven you because He paid the penalty.
He paid the price in that moment in time when He died on Calvary’s cross. As you come to the communion table this morning, if you believe in Christ as your Lord and Savior, then your sins are forgiven by His atoning death and by His sinless life, His righteousness imputed to you. It’s an incredible, incredible expression of grace. And we celebrate as we come to this table this morning. We celebrate that through His body broken and His blood shed, our sin is forgiven.
You know, this last week, Barb and I were shopping a little bit at Park Meadows and on the opera floor there is a shoe store called The Finish Line. It’s a big giant shoe store. And out front they had an exhibit of a new Nike shoe, a new Nike shoe called shocks, S-H-O-X. And this shoe has taken 16 years to develop. The technology in this shoe is said to be extremely unusual. In the heel of each shoe, there are five brightly colored springs which are made out of high density foam. And when you push down on the heel of the shoe, the heel pushes back so that you get an extra spring in your step. And when you run, you run a little faster. And when you jump, you jump a little higher. I mean, it makes you able to do things you would not normally be able to do. And Bruce Kilgore, who’s the director of Advanced Research and development at Nike, said that when they tested the shoes, every single participant, when they put the shoes on and ran, immediately a smile would break out on their faces as they were able to do what they were not normally able to do.
When you leave this place this morning, if you believe in Christ, after you’ve taken communion you should have a smile break out on your face. There should be a spring in your step, not because of the shoes you’re wearing, but because of the grace of Jesus Christ, the Savior who has come into the world, Jesus who saves His people from their sins. Let’s look to the Lord with a word of prayer.