Christ-like Righteousness

Matthew 5:17–20 “17 “Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. 18 For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled. 19 Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches men so, 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 exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Prayer

Introduction

As most everyone who has been in church for more than 15 seconds know, our passage today comes from the Sermon on the Mount.

It is the longest of the sermons from Jesus, covering Matthew 5-7

It is probably one of the most beloved of all passages in Christian history.

It is preached on often, misused by some, and beloved even by some unbelievers for its counter-cultural nature—both then and now.

Jesus has just began His ministry not long before, and as Matthew 4:17 puts it, “17 From that time Jesus began to preach and to say, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.””

But what He has also done is to attract the attention of the Pharisees and scribes because as the Bible puts it Matthew 4:23–25 “23 And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease among the people. 24 Then His fame went throughout all Syria; and they brought to Him all sick people who were afflicted with various diseases and torments, and those who were demon-possessed, epileptics, and paralytics; and He healed them. 25 Great multitudes followed Him—from Galilee, and from Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, and beyond the Jordan.”

But let’s look at the text just before ours today in order to get a grip on the teaching of the passage.

From the very beginning in the Sermon, in the Beatitudes, Jesus declared that it was the “poor in spirit, the mourners, the meek, the merciful, the pure in heart, and those that are persecuted” who are blessed and will inheret the kingdom of heaven.

Talk about counter-cultural.

This flew in the face of the common thinking of the day.

After all weren’t Pharisees and scribes supposed to be the righteous ones.

They weren’t meek.

They weren’t poor in spirit.

They weren’t merciful.

In fact, they loved to lord it over the other Jews about just how righteous they were.

They were quick to condemn anyone who didn’t follow the law exactly as they did.

After all these were the very people who had added to the fourth commandment rules like, you can eat, but not prepare food.

You can bandage a wound but not put ointment on it because that was considered positive work.

You could walk, but only a “Sabbath’s distance.”

I don’t know about you, but I don’t remember that particular rule in either Exodus or Deuteronomy.

Then Jesus tells His followers to be salt and light to the world.

Why?

Not to bring glory to ourselves.

But to bring Glory to our Father in Heaven.

And it is here that we find ourselves, firmly planted in today’s text.

So, let’s look at our passage and unpack it and find out what Jesus is really trying to teach us.

I. JESUS CAME TO FULFILL THE OLD TESTAMENT PROMISES OF GOD!

Look at what Jesus said here.

He said “I did not come to destroy the Law and the Prophets.”

What you may not know is that term is the same thing as saying, I did not come to do away with ANY of the Old Testament. It is an idiom that truly means all Scripture.

See one of the things we lose sight of is that Jesus, as the second person of the Trinity, is the AUTHOR or scripture.

So how, logically, could Jesus even begin to destroy any of the commandments of the Old Testament.

It makes no sense.

One of the things we often say in the military when we are teaching a class is that you always do these three things.

You tell them what you are going to tell them.

You tell them.

Then you tell them what you told them.

This is no different than what Christ is doing here.

Because as the author of the Old Testament, He started by telling the Israelites what He was going to tell them.

After all there are over 300 prophecies of Messiah in the Old Testament.

One ancient Jewish scholar said of the Old Testament that there is not a single chapter in the Hebrew Bible in which you cannot find Messiah.

See, Jesus Christ stood firmly on the foundation of the truth, and power and majesty of the Old Testament.

Despite popular modern “Progressive” theology, Jesus Christ NEVER ONCE contradicted or did away with any verse of the Old Testament.

On the contrary, from the very beginning of His ministry to the very last minutes on the cross, Jesus built His ministry on the rock that is the Old Testament cornerstone.

In Matthew 4, after fasting for 40 days, he was tempted by satan.

And what was His response to the temptations.

First, He quoted Deuteronomy 8:3 “3 … that man shall not live by bread alone; but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord.”

Then, after satan tempts Jesus by incorrectly quoting from Psalm 91, Jesus responds with Deuteronomy 6:16 “16 “You shall not tempt the Lord your God as you tempted Him in Massah.”

Finally, in His death blow to the temptations of satan, Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 6:13 “13 You shall fear the Lord your God and serve Him”

Oh but He didn’t stop there!

NOOOO!

Instead in Matthew 19:16–30 when Jesus was asked, “Good Teacher, what good thing shall I do that I may have eternal life?”, Jesus didn’t come up with some new theology. He didn’t say throw away the Ten Commandments.

Instead, Jesus said to the questioner, “But if you want to enter into life, keep the commandments.” 18 He said to Him, “Which ones?” Jesus said, “ ‘You shall not murder,’ ‘You shall not commit adultery,’ ‘You shall not steal,’ ‘You shall not bear false witness,’ 19 ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ ”

And that is the same thing He is saying here.

Look at what He says:

Matthew 5:18 “18 For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled.”

The jot or yud is the smallest of the Hebrew letters.

And the tittle is like the serif. You know that little hangy down thing on some fonts like Times New Roman that isn’t there on Arial.

Jesus is saying, Not even the smallest stroke of a pen will fail to happen until all has been completed.

So I ask you, saints, if Jesus stands on the truth of every crossed t and dotted i of the Old Testament, shouldn’t we?

You see, we are believers in Christ, and the whole of the Old Testament points to Christ.

John 5:46 “46 For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote about Me.”

Luke 24:25–27 “25 Then He said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! 26 Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory?” 27 And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.”

But the next question we have to ask ourselves is this: what exactly does the Bible mean when is says: Matthew 5:17–18 “17 “Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. 18 For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled.”

First thing we need to realize is that the Greek words for fulfill and fulfilled here are not the same words.

They are similar, no doubt.

But let’s look at these two words a little more closely.

The first one is the Greek word πληρόω (plēroō) – To fill, complete, fulfill.

It is a sense of completeness - of bringing the fullness of the Scriptures alive in the person and works of Jesus Christ.

There are two ways in which Jesus was the fulfillment of the Law in this context.

First, Jesus fulfilled Old Testament prophecy about Messiah.

Genesis 3:15 “15 And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, And you shall bruise His heel.””

Genesis 22:18 “18 In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice.””

Genesis 49:10 “10 The scepter shall not depart from Judah, Nor a lawgiver from between his feet, Until Shiloh [another name for Messiah] comes; And to Him shall be the obedience of the people.”

Psalm 22 is the greatest and most detailed description of Roman crucifixion. The only kicker is that it was written some 700 years before the invention of crucifixion by the Persians and some 1000 years before Christ died on the cross.

Isaiah 53

He is despised and rejected by men, A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.

He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.

Surely He has borne our griefs And carried our sorrows; Yet we esteemed Him stricken, Smitten by God, and afflicted.

But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed.

All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, every one, to his own way; And the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.

He was oppressed and He was afflicted, Yet He opened not His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, And as a sheep before its shearers is…”

For He was cut off from the land of the living; For the transgressions of My people He was stricken.

And they made His grave with the wicked--But with the rich at His death, Because He had done no violence, Nor [was any] deceit in His mouth.

Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise Him; He has put [Him] to grief. When You make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see [His] seed, He shall prolong [His] days, And the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in His hand.

This chapter is so obviously about Christ, that for years skeptical scholars thought that is must have been added after Christ died on the the cross.

But in 1947, the Dead Sea Scrolls were found, and in it was the Great Isaiah scroll.

And lo and behold, that scroll contained the entirety of Isaiah 53, proving that it was written long before the time of Christ.

It is also so obviously about Jesus, that in modern synagogues today, they skip over that chapter in their readings of the scroll of Isaiah.

Jesus kept the Old Testament Law perfectly.

Matthew 3:15 “15 But Jesus answered and said to him, “Permit it to be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he allowed Him.”

Galatians 4:4 “4 But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law,”

Romans 8:4 “4 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.”

The second word there is fulfilled and the Greek word there is γίνομαι (ginomai), which means: to be; become; take place)

I love how the The Complete Jewish Study Bible words this verse – “18 Yes indeed! I tell you that until heaven and earth pass away, not as much as a yudor a stroke will pass from the Torah—not until everything that must happen has happened.”

How exactly has this been accomplished by Jesus, you ask?

Jesus, in His incarnation, and most fully in His atoning death on the cross has shown us and completed for us all requirements of the law by dying on the cross and thereby satisfying forever the demands of the law against those who would believe on Him.

Matthew 26:26–28 “26 And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to the disciples and said, “Take, eat; this is My body.” 27 Then He took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you. 28 For this is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.”

Romans 5:6–8 “6 For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

1 Corinthians 15:3 “3 For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,”

Hebrews 9:11–15 “11 But Christ came as High Priest of the good things to come, with the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands, that is, not of this creation. 12 Not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood He entered the Most Holy Place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption. 13 For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh, 14 how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? 15 And for this reason He is the Mediator of the new covenant, by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions under the first covenant, that those who are called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance.”

Jesus has fulfilled the Law and ushered in the Kingdom of Heaven that is already but not yet.

It is here.

It is now.

But oh glory, it will be even better when heaven and earth meet in th eNew Jerusalem, and I CANNOT WAIT!

But the question we all have to ask ourselves is “What does this all mean to us here today?

II. TRUE RIGHTEOUSNESS IS A GIFT FROM GOD AND COMES FROM THE HEART.

Man’s righteousness is external.

Just look at the pharisees and the scribes.

They wore long tassels on their garments.

The announced their prayers for all to hear.

The wore their phylacteries proudly on their foreheads and arms.

And they thought that by putting a hedge around the Ten Commandments and following every little picky thing about the 613 Old Testament laws they would earn their way to heaven.

But Jesus had something else to say about that.

He said they were whitewashed tombs that were pretty to look at on the outside but inside were full of stinking rotten corpses.

See by whittling down the law to mere man-made movements, they had nullified the law.

They were self-glorifying and not God-glorifying.

After all, didn’t Jesus say that it was the Pharisee who prayed thanking God that he fasted and tithed and wasn’t like the tax collector who had already received his due reward from men; whereas the lowly tax collector who beat his breast and simply through himself on the mercy fo the Almighty God that was the one that would inherit the kingdom of God?

What those folks, like the modern day Roman Catholic and Mormon and Jehovah’s Witness believers fail to understand is that Isaiah 64:6 “… And all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags; ”

But what these folks had forgotten was that the Law was ALWAYS intended to be a heart level love of God and Man.

The first table of the Law wasn’t about following rules.

It was about Man and HOW HE CAN SHOW HIS LOVE FOR GOD.

And the second table wasn’t about rules to follow either.

No—It was about HOW WE CAN LOVE EACH OTHER

IT WAS ALWAYS ABOUT LOVE—NOT RULES.

After all didn’t Jesus himself say Matthew 22:34–40 “one of [the pharisees], a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, and saying, 36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?” 37 Jesus said to him, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and great commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.””

a. Godly righteousness is one from the HEART!

Godly righteousness is brought about through transformation by the Holy Spirit!

Godly righteousness comes from letting our Heart of flesh be filled with the Love of Christ and our fellow man.

Godly righteousness comes from a Heart that has been justified by the sacrifice of Christ, is filled by the Holy Spirit and is being sanctified by the Holy Spirit to mold us in Christ’s image.

Like Paul said in Philippians 3:4–9 “4 though I also might have confidence in the flesh. If anyone else thinks he may have confidence in the flesh, I more so: 5 circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews; concerning the law, a Pharisee; 6 concerning zeal, persecuting the church; concerning the righteousness which is in the law, blameless. 7 But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. 8 Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith;”

How Can We All Live By It?

Accept Jesus Christ into our hearts

Put away man-centered righteousness

Be transformed by the Holy Spirit

Live with a God-centered righteousness that comes from a heart-level change

Not the labors of my hands can fulfill thy law's demands; could my zeal no respite know, could my tears forever flow, all for sin could not atone; thou must save, and thou alone.

Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to the cross I cling; naked, come to thee for dress; helpless, look to thee for grace; foul, I to the fountain fly; wash me, Savior, or I die.

Rock of Ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee; let the water and the blood, from thy wounded side which flowed, be of sin the double cure; save from wrath and make me pure.

Closing Prayer and Invitation