Heart Matters

The New International Version Chapter 5

The Fulfillment of the Law

17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. 18 For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. 19 Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20 For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.

Interpretation

SLIDE: MT. OF BEAUTITUDES

Jesus begins his ministry by proclaiming the good news of the kingdom (). The Old Testament prophets looked forward to a time when messiah would come and usher in the reign of God. This is what Jesus is doing by proclaming the kingdom - the long awaited time when God would usher in his reign had finally dawned.

background information

The Old Testament prophets looked forward to a time when messiah would come and usher in the reign of God. This is what Jesus is doing by proclaming the kingdom - the long awaited time when God would usher in his reign had finally dawned. And yet we look around the world and see mass shootings, threats of war and violence, we have turmoil in our own homes and in our own hearts. We don’t see a world that looks like God’s kingdom, and yet in Jesus ministry we see little glimpses, seed-like forms of the kingdom. One commentator says that the kingdom is “both a future event and a present reality” (Gordon Fee, quoted in Kingdom Ethics, 20). There is an already-not-yet reality of the kingdom

And yet we look around the world and see mass shootings, threats of war and violence, we have turmoil in our own homes and in our own hearts. We don’t see a world that looks like God’s kingdom, and yet in Jesus’ ministry we see little glimpses, seed-like forms of the kingdom. One commentator says that the kingdom is “both a future event and a present reality” (Gordon Fee, quoted in Kingdom Ethics, 20). There is an already-not-yet reality of the kingdom

We simply cannot understand the Sermon on the Mount correctly if we do not understand it in light of the Kingdom for this reason:

Proclaiming the Gospel of the Kingdom

The Sermon on the Mount is Jesus telling us what life in the kingdom looks like (Kingdom Ethics, 31).

Verse 17

Christ: The Fulfillment of the Law

Verse 17

SLIDE: MT. SINAI

One of the coldest experiences in my life was not trudging through a blanket of snow on a frigid Minneosta January day…it was in of all places the Middle East. For part of my studies I traveled to the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt to St. Catherine’s monastery at the base of Mt. Sinai. Early in the morning around 430, I along with about 20 other students arose and hiked to the top of the mountain. After the hour hike we made it to the top summit where the distant granite peaks were shrowded by the black of night only to be exposed by that piercing ray of light of the morning sun. We were all standing there shaking, chilled to the bone. I couldn’t help but think what it was like for Moses? Did he experience the same cold before God appeared in a flame or fire. It was a majestic and historical experience for me.

Mountains in particular play an important role in the Bible. It was on a mountain where Elijah slew the prophets of Baal. It was on a mountain that God told Abraham to go and sacrifice his only son Isaac. It was on a mountain that Moses and the Israelites looked into the promised land. But perhaps the most famous mountain in the Bible is mount Sinai. It is there that Moses stood before the flaming presence of the Almighty and received the law, the Ten Commandments etched into those granite slabs. It was there that God established his covenant relationship with Moses and the Israelites.

It is no accident that in the Gospel of Matthew Jesus goes upon on a mountain and teaches about the law. Matthew is presenting Jesus not just as a new Moses, but a better Moses.

SLIDE: Christ: The Fulfillment of the Law

Mou

But so that no one would think that Jesus is somehow standing against or contradicting the law of Moses, Jesus early on in the sermon says, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to ablish them but to fulfill them.”

The three important words in this verse that we need to investigate if we are going to understand the rest of the passage are: law and the prophets, abolish and fulfill.

Law and the Prophets

As Pastor Vonn spoke about last week, a team of ten of us just recently returned from Israel and Jordan. One of the things that strikes me every time I travel to the Middle East and in particular the lands in which the events of the Bible actually took place, I am reminded about how foreign the land and culture of the Bible is to our land and culture. We would be wise to remember this and do the hard work of seeking to understand the cultural background of the biblical events. In many ways we have westernized and sanitized the biblical events and we lose the real shock and radical nature of these events.

We read the words of Jesus as if they occurred in a vacuum without regard for any of the surrounding context. Jesus lived in a culture that deeply cherished and treasured the Scriptures that we call the Old Testament. They were deeply immersed in the history of God dealing with his people.

Jesus has in view the Old Testament, the law referring to the first five books and the Prophets is probably another way of referring to the rest of the Old Testament (WBC, 105). We need to have the entire Old Testament in view.

One of the things that we commonly hear today is that the Old Testament is all about trying to earn favor with God by keeping the law and the New Testament is all about grace. This could not be further from the truth, and Jesus himself in this passage shows that this is not a correct understanding of the Old Testament.

The law, and obedience to the law of God was always viewed as a response to God’s grace when God delivered the Israelites from captivity in Egypt. The law was a blueprint of what it looks like to live in a covenant relationship with God. Keeping the law was never viewed as a way of earning favor with God, or earning salvation (Brown, 62). God’s grace has always been the clarion call of his dealings with his people.

Now the law in the Old Testament and how it relates to the coming of Jesus in the New, is a topic that is so complex that we don’t have time to give adequate attention to it here, but one thing must be said, the entire Old Testament law must be now read in light of Jesus’ words and deeds.

Israel had a long history of misunderstanding the true intent of the law. Perhaps one of the most famous instances comes from :

School of Hillel

The New International Version Chapter 6

7 Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams,

with ten thousand rivers of olive oil?

Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression,

the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?

8 He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.

And what does the LORD require of you?

To act justly and to love mercy

and to walk humbly j with your God.

School of Shammai

Abolish

Verses 17-20 introduce the following section vv. 21-48 where Jesus takes six different examples from the law of Moses and sheds new light on how to understand these laws. Perhaps you recognize the statement of Jesus, “You have heard that it was said…but I tell you.” It is easy to assume that Jesus was doing away with the law or giving a new law, because what Jesus taught was so different from what the crowds had heard before (WBC, 104).

But in v. 17 Jesus twice says, “I have not come to abolish them.” He wants to make sure that no one is going to misinterpret him. He is not overthrowing the law that God gave to them through Moses. There were probably some already early on in Jesus’ ministry that thought that Jesus was ignoring, or worse, contradicting the deep foundation of the Old Testament law.

The implication here is that already in Jesus ministry there may have been the thought that Jesus was by his teaching was ignoring the deep foundation of the Old Testament law.

Throughout the Gospel of Matthew the religious leaders frequenlty confront Jesus and his disciples with the accusation that they are law breakers.

In many ways I think many Christians today have a similar perception of Jesus, not that Jesus was a lawbreaker perse, but that he has indeed abolished the law Old Testament law, and that because of Jesus the law doesn’t matter anymore.

The Old Testament law is still relevant, but in order to understand what this means we have to understand our next key word: fulfill.

John Stott sums it up well how we ought to think about the law:

The Message of the Sermon on the Mount 1. Christ and the Law (17, 18)

For the moment it is enough to emphasize that according to this verse (17) the attitude of Jesus to the Old Testament was not one of destruction and of discontinuity, but rather of a constructive, organic continuity

“…the attitude of Jesus to the Old Testament was not one of destruction and of discontinuity, but rather of a constructive, organic continuity” (Stott, 72).

Fulfill

We can understand Jesus fulfilling the law in two different ways:

Jesus has come to fulfill the law, not abolish it, but what does this mean?

First, He Brings About its Intended Meaning

Jesus actually does the exact opposite of what many of us think. He is not relaxing the law, he is heightening it. You actually have too low a view of a the law in Jesus’ mind (Darling, 41). Jesus has heigtened what obedience to the law looks like. The law forbade murder, Jesus said that anger itself will bring judgment. Moses outlawed adultery, Jesus said that looking at a woman lustfully is as if one committed adultery. The law called one to look after one’s neighbor. Jesus takes it a step further and says you are to actually love your enemies.

Jesus shows us the actual intent of the law, he shows us what the law requires. In doing so he shows our inability to actually keep the law’s requirements. For John Calvin, this was one of the functions of the law - to serve as a mirror to show our deep sinful flaws, and to reflect the holiness of God.

Jesus shows us the actual intent of the law.

Illustration

Second: He Brings to Completion what the Law Looked Forward To

The fourth century bishop of Nyssa, Gregory said:

“One can divide wickedness under two headings, one concerned with works, the other with thoughts. The former, the iniquity which shows itself in works, he [God] has punished through the old law. Now, however, he has given the law regarding the other form of sin, which punishes not so much the evil deed itself, as guards against even the beginning of it” (Gregory of Nyssa, quoted in Theology of the New Testament by Frank Thielmen, 89).

Many of the Old Testament laws are ceremonial, proscribing how the sacrifical system was to operate. For instance, if you ever have read through the book of Leviticus, where most of us stop on our annual Bible reading plan, you will notice how the laws are very detailed in their proscription for how one is to ritually purify themselves, how sacrifices are to be made, etc. The religious festivals and the temple system looked forward to something much better. Paul says in

“

Colossians 2:16–17 NIV

Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ.

Similarly the author of Hebrews tells us:

Hebrews 10:1 NIV

The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming—not the realities themselves. For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship.

The sacrifices in the Old Testament looked forward to the perfect sacrifice of Christ. This means that the worship practices proscribed by Moses have reached their intended goal in Christ. Timothy Keller says it well, “The coming of Christ changed how we worship but not how we live.” God’s perfect standard of holiness still stands, but the means by which we have relationship with God has taken a new twist in Christ’s coming.

Hebrews 10:19 NIV

Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus,

Hebrews 10:19

Timothy Keller says it well, “The coming of Christ changed how we worship but not how we live.”

SLIDE: The Law: As Enduring as the Universe

Verse 18

Verse 18

Jesus goes on to say that the law will not go away until all things are accomplished, and this won’t happen until the end of the age, as Jesus says, “until heaven and earth disappear…or until everything is accomplished.” John Stott says it well, “…the law is as enduring as the universe” (Stott, 73). When God makes all things new at the end of the time, the law will be completely fulfilled at that time. The phrase, “not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of pen” is Jesus way of saying every aspect of the law is important.

But there is one caveat, it is the law as Jesus teaches it, because he alone as the correct interpretation of the law (WBC, 108).

Verse 19

Because the law is as abiding as the universe, all of it matters- from the least commandment to the greatest. Jesus says that kingdom rank is decided by one’s attitude toward the law. Those who live in accord with the law as Jesus teaches and teach others to do the same Jesus says will be considered great in the kingdom of heaven.

Need to flesh this section out more

SLIDE: The Kingdom Life

Verse 20

If this doesn’t get your attention, Jesus takes it a step further, “For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Who were these Pharisees and teachers of the law?

The Pharisees get quite a bad rap today. If someone calls you a Pharisee, that is not a compliment. But this was not the case in Jesus’ day. The Pharisees for the most part were well-liked and respected among the common folk. They even had more say and influence over the masses than the high priest (Josephus, Antiquities, 354). They were the relgious heroes of the day.

It is difficult to find a parallel in the church today because quite frankly there are a probably few who actually take God’s law as seriously as the Pharisees did.

SLIDE - TEMPLE MODEL

The Pharisees were concerned with ritual purity, a purity which would allow them to participate in the daily temple practices. They placed many restrictions and additional rules around the law to ensure that they could maintain this purity. This is why they were astonished that Jesus would eat with sinners and tax collectors because, certainly tax collectors were ritually unclean.

The Pharisees put a fence around the law to prevent them from trampeling upon the law’s demands, but in doing so failed to smell the fragrance of God’s decrees (Ladd, 128).

In scolding the Pharisees Jesus says in ,

The New International Version Chapter 23

23 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former.

Notice that Jesus does not scold the Pharisees for paying great attention to parts of the law, he chastises them for neglecting the most important matters. In other words, they failed to practice true righteousness that God requires.

So what is the righteousness that surpasses the righteousness of the Pharisees? Righteousness means a few different things. It can refer to:

SLIDE

Religious Practices

Right Relationship

Be in right relationship with someone else

Requirements of God

Doing what God requires

Illustration - Illustration about how shocking the statement Jesus made regarding the Pharisees really is

It seems as though the religious leaders of Jesus’ day equated the first with the last, that engaging in religious practices was doing what God requires. Now in some sense this is true, because God did proscribe the rules assocated with temple worship. But God also commanded the weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy and faithfulness - as George Ladd says, “inner righteousness” (Ladd, 128).

“The most casual reading of the Mishnah makes it clear that the focus of rabbinic ethics was upon outward obedience to the letter of the Law. In contrast, Jesus demanded a perfect inner righteousness” (Ladd, 128).

Jesus was concerned with the heart and for inner purity (Ladd, 128). To think of it another way, Jesus went strait to the heart of the issue and in effect was saying that sin had to be dealt with in its infant stages.

Jesus was most concerned with an “inner righteousness” to actually do what God requires. But here is where the problem lays. The problem is the human heart. The human heart needs a radical change. This is why earlier I said that by heightening what the law requires, Jesus shows that we cannot keep it. The religious leaders were fooling themselves into thinking that by scrupulous attention to purity laws that they were doing what the law commanded, when the very source of motivation and doing what the law required was flawed. According to Jesus, a change is required that comes about solely by God’s grace. The righteousness that Jesus was talking requires a radical work of God in one’s life (Holman 64-65).

The New International Version Chapter 1

14 but each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. 15 Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.

“The righteousness of the Kingdom therefore can be experienced only by the one who has submitted to the reign of God that has been manifested in Jesus, and who has therefore experienced the powers of God’s Kingdom” (Ladd, 129).

“When a person has been restored to fellowship with God, that person becomes God’s child and the recipientof a new power, that of the Kingdom of God” (Ladd, 129).

“He clarified God’s longstanding desire that his creation be characterized by both internal (attitudes) and external (actions) obedience and holiness (Holman, 63).

Illustration

Illustration

Gardening illustration - tree roots die, the tree is going to die

Let my illustrate what I mean. Suppose I have a water bottle filled with water to the brim and squeeze the sides, what is going to come out? Water of course.

Now if water is the content of our heart and squeezing the water bottle are the circumstances, we can say that the circumstances of our lives are going to reveal the contents of our heart.

SLIDE: PICTURE OF ELLA AND MYRA

My wife and I recently had a daughter Ella. One of the most amazing things for me as a dad has been to see Myra interacting with Ella. But as every parent here knows parenting has its challenges. Parenting is hard work and I think one of God’s ways of revealing how sinful we are, of revealing the contents of the bottle. That and Minnesota traffic.

Minnesota traffic is going to reveal something in your heart, and either good or bad fruit is going to come out.

We can do two things, we can try and change our circumstances - we take the bus. We can try and sell our kids. This may work for a time, but changing our circumsances does not change the contents of the bottle. The contents of the bottle need to change and this is somethign you cannot do on your own. We need a change of heart.

Application

This passage can be summed up in theI think it can be summed up in the phrase:

Jesus fulfills what we couldn’t

Jesus fulfills the Law

Preaching Idea: Doing what God requires is an inside-out work of grace.

From this passage we see that the Christian life is enlivened by two realities:

Jesus give the true understanding of God’s law

Doing what God Requires

Jesus fulfills the

The demands of righteousness have already been satisfied

Jesus give the true understanding of God’s law

Jesus reveals the Law

Jesus perfectly lives out God’s law

Jesus fulfills the Law.

Two words that I want us all to rememer as we leave here today: Jesus reveals and fulfills.

SLIDE: Why it Matters that Jesus Reveals the Law

Jesus is concerned about the heart

Jeremiah 31:31–34 NIV

“The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord. “This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time,” declares the Lord. “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,” declares the Lord. “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”

The Gospel is bad news before it is good news. It is bad news because it shows us how perverted our hearts truly are. It is amazing the things that can come out of your mouth when you are tired, running on little sleep, and trying to manage all of daily demands of life.

What Our Culture Says?

Now our default is to blame our sin on our surrounding cirucmstances. It is not my fault, it is the crying baby, or the driver that cut me off in traffic, or the unequitable boss that made me do it. But all of these are circumstances that show us what is deep inside. It shows us that we lack the true righteousness that Jesus says is required for kingdom entrance. Jesus does not let us off the hook and he does not allow us to think that God can be satisifed with rule keeping. It is much deeper than that. The reason we are so attracted to religious observance and rule keeping is because it allows us to neglect the weightier matters of the heart. Religious rule keeping is sort of like changing the route you drive to work, you may avoid the agonizing traffic, but you have not addressed the actual issue that causes you to burst out in anger.

What Jesus Says?

The prophets of the Old Testament knew this as well. They looked forward to a time when things would be different, when God would do a new work.

Jeremiah 31:31-34

Ezekiel 36:26–27 NIV

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.

Ezekiel

This is where the Gospel becomes good news. God promised that one day a new heart would be possible and that following his laws and decrees would be the work of the Spirit in us. George Ladd says,

Our natural default is to conern ourselves with external appearance

Illustration

The fourth century bishop of Nyssa, Gregory said:

“One can divide wickedness under two headings, one concerned with works, the other with thoughts. The former, the iniquity which shows itself in works, he [God] has punished through the old law. Now, however, he has given the law regarding the other form of sin, which punishes not so much the evil deed itself, as guards against even the beginning of it” (Gregory of Nyssa, quoted in Theology of the New Testament by Frank Thielmen, 89).

“When a person has been restored to fellowship with God, that person becomes God’s child and the recipient of a new power, that of the Kingdom of God” (Ladd, 129).

The Law’s Demands are inherently Relational (Brown, 62)

Relationship with God

Relationship with Others

See Brown, 62.

How is this fellowship with God possible?

It is obedience empowered by the Spirit that was one of the marks of the Kingdom of God.

Why it Matters that Jesus Fulfills the Law

What Our Culture Says?

Is this still grace?

The dangers of righteosness

not thinking it is attainable

The Apostle Paul says in in the ESV:

What Jesus Says?

Romans 10:4 ESV

For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.

thinking it is attainable

Jesus perfectly fulfilled the moral requirements of the law, and he was the perfect sacrifice that the sacrificial system anticipated. In other words, Jesus has become our righteousness for those who believe. At the cross there is a dual transaction, our sin is placed upon Christ and his righteousness is placed upon us. In other words Jesus satisfies the just requirements of the law on our behalf, and we gain his righteousness.

Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos is now the richest man in the world with a net worth of $112 billion. Imagine Bezos is your rich uncle who decides to pay off your student loans that would be forgiveness, your debt is gone. Grace would be receiving the full share of his worth. This pales in comparison to what God has done for us in Christ because not only have received forgiveness for those in Christ, but we have been given an exceeding inheriatnce, which is guaranteed by the Holy Spirit given to us.

The new heart promised in Ezekiel only comes about through the work of Christ in one’s life. It is those who beleive as Paul says who are citizens of the kingdom that Jesus proclaimed.

Jesus’ fulfillment of the law marked the beginning of the kingdom of God and because of his work, he invites those who trust in him to participate in the kingdom now marked by those who have received the Holy Spirit.

Jesus tells us in , “Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them” (NIV).

So while as followers of Jesus Christ we receive a righteousness that makes is right before God, we also receive the Spirit who works out this righteousness in our life, this deeper heart righteousness that Jesus talks about.

We Try and Do What Jesus Accomplished

We Li

Paul speaks about it in this way,

False forms of righteousness in our surrounding culture in our church

Philippians 2:12–13 NIV

Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.

Philippians 2:12 ESV

Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling,

This means we daily submit our attitudes, our thoughts, our behvaiors, our motivations, our loves to Jesus Christ himself, our true righteousness. The hope for this sanctification process in our lives, comes from the fact that we have already been made a new creation in Christ, we already have a perfect righteousness from God. Yes, it is certainly true that we will only truly live righteously in the new heavens and new earth, but because Jesus has fulfilled the law and given us a perfect righteousness, he empowers us to pursue the kingdom life now. In many ways the Christian life is like the already not yet kingdom. We are already righteous because of Christ’s work, but we await the time when when our sinful thoughts and lustful appetities will be purified, and in this we can have great hope.

Christological Application

Jesus is completely righteous when we are not.

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