Dr. Bradford Reaves
Crossway Christian Fellowship
Hagerstown, MD
www.mycrossway.org
We’ve come to a transition in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Remember that Jesus is preaching this sermon to the multitudes of people on the hillside near the Sea of Galilee. He is introducing the Jewish people to the Kingdom of Heaven. All their life they’ve lived as citizens of Israel. Doing all they can to be good, practicing Hebrews. And in his introduction of the sermon, what we call the Beatitudes, Jesus brings a series of paradoxes on what it means to be happy or blessed. These paradoxes climb a ladder that begins with the realization of our spiritual poverty, followed by our repentance, which leads to meekness and increasing hunger for the things of God. All the while we are being transformed in our rebirth in the renewing of our mind until we find ourselves so different from the world that the world begins to persecute us. Our distinction from the world acts as influential change agents to the world as Jesus compares us to the Salt and Light of the World.
In an interview on October 15, 2013, Billy Graham said, “There are two basic needs that all people have: the need for hope and the need for salvation. It should not be surprising if people believe easily in a God who makes no demands, but this is not the God of the Bible. Satan has cleverly misled people by whispering that they can believe in Jesus Christ without being changed, but this is the Devil’s lie. To those who say you can have Christ without giving anything up, Satan is deceiving you.” That’s pretty strong language. Dr. Graham said that before his conversion he thought he was a Christian. But his life changed on November 1, 1934, when he repented and turned his life over to God. Listen to the comment that he then makes in the interview. “If there is no change in a person's life, he or she must question whether or not they possess the salvation that the gospel proclaims. Many who go to church have not had a life-changing transformation in Christ.”
(Credit: Sermon Central: Billy Graham's Warning Against an Epidemic of 'Easy Believism'”, Christianity Today, OCTOBER 15, 2013)
Now Jesus is shifting his focus from who we are as citizens of God’s Kingdom to how we should live. He does this through an important transition that takes place in verses 17-20. He is making it perfectly clear that anything he is establishing and presenting is not in replacement of Scripture or to devalue its authority. It is quite the opposite. He is reinforcing it.
The question before us is what was Jesus’ view of Scripture? This is an important issue for us today as it was when Jesus delivered this sermon. There are many liberal pastors and scholars who have dismissed the authority of Scripture, particularly the Old Testament. Even more, there are many who teach the Law and the Prophets of the Old Testament are irrelevant to the Gospel and abolished by Jesus. This is not only categorically and biblically false, but it is also tragic, leading to a false Gospel, false converts, and an apostate Church.
Let us listen and examine Jesus’ words in Matthew 5:17-20
“Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill. 18 “For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished. 19 “Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20 “For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven." (Matthew 5:17–20)
I. Christ and Scripture
There is quite a bit to unpack in these 3 verses. I’m going to do my best to bring to light some important points. The first of which is the Doctrine of Scripture. This is a vital topic for us today because we live in a day when society says there is no absolute moral truth. In a recent survey, the Wall Street Journal found that the values of patriotism, religious faith, and family have dramatically shifted downward in the United States. “Some 38% of respondents said patriotism was very important to them, and 39% said religion was very important. That was down sharply from when the Journal first asked the question in 1998 when 70% deemed patriotism to be very important, and 62% said so of religion.”
This is a direct correlation to the departure from understanding truth. We live in a time that has rejected exclusivity. Jesus and the Bible make exclusive claims that demand you accept or reject their claims. “…when Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes unto the Father but by me,” it is a reasonable statement. The question is, “Is it true?” It is a most reasonable statement because truth by definition is exclusive. The moment you affirm something you exclude anything that challenges that.” (Zacharias). That is exactly what Jesus is saying here in his sermon.
"The words of Yahweh are pure words; As silver tried in a furnace on the ground, refined seven times.” (Psalm 12:6)
The authority of Scripture is exclusive. 2 Timothy 3:16 “All Scripture is God-breathed and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness,” That is another exclusive claim made in the Bible about itself. When Paul wrote this, he is echoing the Lord’s words specifically in reference to the Old Testament. However, in accepting that statement as truth, we must now decide if we are willing to accept Scripture exclusively as God’s Word and in doing so, reject anything in our own thinking and character that is contradictory to the truth of God’s Word.
So with his transition, Jesus is telling us two important propositions, according to D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones. First Jesus is telling us that everything that he teaches is in absolute harmony with the Old Testament Scriptures. There is nothing that Jesus says that is in contradiction to them. In verses 19-20, the second is that what he is teaching is in disharmony with the Scribes and Pharisees. In other words, Jesus did not come to supplement or replace Scripture, but to fulfill them in law and prophecy, down to the smallest of marks written in Scripture, meaning the dot and iota.
People today want to reinterpret the Bible. They want to deny its authority. Chapters that are written by God are now said to be written by some rabbi or priest who added to them. The reason is that we don’t approve or agree with Scripture personally or as a society. So we just change the image of Scripture (or even worse, the image of God) to suit our preferences instead of being hungry for God. Instead of allowing God to change our hearts to fit the perfect standards of God in both truth and morality, we demand that God be the one to change. The results are always disastrous for both people and nations.
“Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away." (Matthew 24:35)
II. Christ and the Law
With that, we must have an accurate understanding of the role of the Law in the believer’s life. It is important to know that the early disciples never stopped being Jewish with their faith in Jesus. They never stopped going to the Temple and they never stopped teaching the Old Testament Scriptures. The New Testament Church was firmly rooted in the Old Testament. It was the pattern of the early Apostles to go first to the synagogues to teach and present the Gospel. Why? Because the early Apostles saw Christ, his death, and resurrection as the fulfillment of the Old Testament Law and prophets, not to be something that replaced them.
Over the years, and especially in the last several decades, it has become popular for liberal scholars to teach that the Old Testament, and specifically the Law of Moses and the Prophetic writings are irrelevant to the believer’s life. Nothing could be further from the truth. If anything, Jesus enhances the Law. He brings better clarity to the Law of Moses and introduces grace.
God’s law is absolute. It is the standard for the life of the believer. In it, we see God’s holiness and our depravity at the same time. To the Lord Jesus Christ, the Old Testament was essential for our life and relationship with God. In his High Priestly Prayer, he prayed, “Sanctify them by the truth; Your word is truth.” (John 17:17).
So we come to an important question. What is the role of the Law in the life of the Christian and are we to observe it in our daily life? To expound that question fully would take more time than we have here, but let me introduce the answer to that question first by delineating the extremes. One extreme says because of Christ and his death on the Cross, the Law is irrelevant and abolished. The other extreme says the Christian is to observe the fullness of the Law.
Jesus said that He came "to fulfill the law, not destroy it." What does that mean? It means that the law has a purpose beyond itself. If carefully obeying every nuance of the law was all that God wanted of us, the Pharisees would have been sitting pretty and Jesus wouldn’t have rebuked them. However, the Law isn’t an end in itself. The law was first to establish Israel as a set apart-society from the rest of the world. Secondly, the law forms an example of righteous living. Third, the Law provides a mirror for us to see our own sinfulness. Lastly, the Law provides a means to provide atonement for sin. Jesus fulfilled these yet not abolished their purpose.
Most Christians know that the law is important but we don’t know is why it’s important. In his Pilgrim’s Progress, John Bunyan describes the Interpreter’s house, which Pilgrim entered during the course of his journey to the Celestial City. The parlor of the house was completely covered with dust, and when a man took a broom and started to sweep, he and the others in the room began to choke from the great clouds of dust that were stirred up. The more vigorously he swept, the more suffocating the dust became. Then Interpreter ordered a maid to sprinkle the room with water, with which the dust was quickly washed away. The interpreter explained to Pilgrim that the parlor represented the heart of an unsaved man, that the dust was the original sin, the man with the broom was the law, and the maid with the water was the gospel. (Sermon Central/ Matthew Kratz).
His point was that all the law can do with sin is stir it up. Only the gospel of Jesus Christ can wash it away. Dietrich Bonhoeffer worded it this way: "It is Jesus himself who comes between the disciples and the law, not the law which comes between Jesus and the disciples." (The Cost of Discipleship 123). We must know, understand, and apply the Law of Scripture. This is vital to understand as we move on through the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus is not relaxing or teaching anyone to relax any of God of commands. Instead, he is living out and teaching us to live out God’s every command. We must never drive a wedge between the Old Testament and the New Testament.
For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. 3 For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, 4 so that the righteous requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. (Romans 8:2–4)
III. Christ and the Believer
If we can learn anything from the Old Testament Law and Prophets is that God’s standards and God’s truth are absolute. Moreover, without God’s intervention, we are hopelessly condemned to satisfy God’s standards. The Law doesn’t impose God’s condemnation, it exemplifies his marvelous grace Ravi Zacharias said, “How does one really ever come to grips with the truth if it is not put in contrast with conflicting truth claims? This is what is seen in Scripture in the contrasts between God’s character and Kingdom versus the nature and character of the world.
We read in Leviticus high standards for living, judgment, and ceremony. These were all fantastic foreshadows of Christ’s redemptive work during his life, death, and resurrection. The life of Jesus saturates the overarching narrative of the Bible and he fulfills the prophecies in the Old Testament pertaining to his first advent perfectly and precisely. J. Barton Payne has found as many as 574 and conservatively we can say that Jesus fulfilled 300 during his earthly ministry (Got Questions).
Since the probability of any one of these prophecies having been fulfilled by chance averages less than one in ten (figured very conservatively) and since the prophecies are for the most part independent of one another, the odds for all these prophecies having been fulfilled by chance without error is less than one in 102000 (that is 1 with 2,000 zeros written after it)! (Credit: Reasons to Believe, reasons.org). The point is that Jesus in his fulfillment of these prophesies first brings absolute credence to His life and divine origin. In a day absent of absolute truth. We can certainly put our hope in that. But what that means for you is even greater.
“For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven." (Matthew 5:20 LSB).
The Law also lays out God’s perfect requirement to satisfy His atonement for our sins; both in our nature, what we have done, and what we have failed to do in our lives. The Law must be fulfilled. God does not grade off a slide, nor does he turn a blind eye to the sin in our lives. So when Jesus was speaking of fulfilling the Law, he was in part eluding to his own death.
Jesus was punished on Calvary to fulfill the absolute punishment due to us as directed in God’s law. Christ is fulfilling the law on the cross, and unless you interpret the cross and Christ’s death upon it in the strict terms of fulfilling the Law found in the Old Testament, you have no hope. Without a Scriptural view of Jesus’ death on the Cross, it serves no purpose because Christ bears the punishment required in the Books of Numbers and Leviticus (Lloyd-Jones).
For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. 3 For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, 4 so that the righteous requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. (Romans 8:2–4 LSB)
Now, if Christ could accomplish all of this in the fulfillment of his first coming, how much more should we eagerly be awaiting his second coming? The Old Testament has more to say about His second coming than it does His first. The fulfillment of those prophesies is imminent and certain. Have you put your faith in Him?
Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. (2 Corinthians 5:17 LSB)
