Christ and The Law- Part 4
The Sermon on the Mount • Sermon • Submitted
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Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.
For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.
Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.
Introduction:
Introduction:
To begin with today I want us to notice a parable that Jesus taught that goes right along with what we are going to be looking today.
It is in the Gospel of Luke chapter 18:9-14.
And he spake this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others:
Just the people to whom Jesus is addressing in the parable; He is addressing those that trusted in themselves.
The self-righteous, the religion of human achievement.
Those that believed that they could merit their own way to the Father.
Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican.
The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican.
I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess.
Now, there is an exercise in futility by a self-righteous man.
As a Pharisee, he was considered to be the most righteous man in the society.
And in his own mind he was because he had convinced himself that those things were true about him.
He spent his time thanking God that He was not like other people, that he went beyond the behavior of other people and fasted twice a week.
But on the other hand:
And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner.
There is a marvelous contrast here.
The man, the publican, was the least esteemed person in the society because as a tax collector he worked for Rome.
He exacted taxes from his own people.
Hired by Rome, he was seen in the society as a traitor and was; therefore, despised.
He had chosen to betray his people for money.
He had forsaken his loyalty and nationalism, even his religion, for money.
This one was in the corner and beating on his breasts begging God to be merciful to him, THE sinner.
Jesus, in the original text adds the definite article “the.”
This man just did not see himself as a sinner, he saw himself as THE sinner.
I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.
You could very well say that this parable is about a bad man that went to heaven and a good man that went to Hell.
This serves a fitting beginning to what we are going to be looking at in our text for this morning.
Because in this passage, you have a very similar situation.
The average person who would read Luke 18 would not quite understand it.
Because most people think that good people go to heaven and bad people go to Hell.
The man crouching in the corner beating on his breasts and saying, “God be merciful to me, the sinner,” is admitting that he is ripe for Hell.
While the other guy does not extort, or commit adultery, and who fasts twice a week, and gives tithes of all the he possesses, and is a super-religious person, is certainly a person on his way to heaven.
Most people in society believe that if you are good enough, you will get there, and if you are bad, you will not.
But to hear Jesus tell the story in Luke 18, it seem that the opposite is true.
He went even further in Matthew 5.
Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.
For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.
Then our verse for this morning:
For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.
What Jesus is saying is that if you want to go to Heaven, you have to be better than the Scribes and the Pharisees.
Over the years in the ministry I have, as you have, had that opportunity to ask a lot of people about heaven.
And over the years I have asked them, “How do you get to Heaven?”
A lot of the time what I have heard, as you have, “By being good.”
“Well,” I said, “How do you do that?”
“By being very good. You know, obeying the Ten Commandments.”
But the best of the people in all of the society of Israel, the very best, will by no means enter the Kingdom of Heaven based on their own goodness.
And the worst in the society, the tax collector, a traitor, went home justified, which raises this question.
“How good do you have to be to get to Heaven? What is the criteria?”
That is precisely what Jesus is attempting to teach here.
Let me remind you of the thrust of verses 17-20 so that you will better understand the meaning of verses 20 in its context.
Christ came along and was teaching, and His teaching was extremely paradoxical.
His teaching was radical, and very different than the teachers of the day; the rabbis, the leaders, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Scribes.
Theses guys were only dealing with the externals, but Christ came along and was teaching about the internal.
His teaching was so different and so radical, that the people believed that He was going to start a revolution.
And because of the thoughts of the people, Jesus felt the need to clarify his relation to the OT, the Law of Moses, or all of the Scripture at the time.
In this passages, Jesus begins to develop what it is to be in the Kingdom and He does so by launching into a sermon.
And in this sermon, He wants them to know that His message is not something new, this is not a dramatic change.
He is not rejecting the OT or giving them something that obviates or nullifies the OT, but rather He clarifies that He has a total commitment to the OT revelation.
Listen, this whole point and the point of Christ and the point of these sermons is simple: God’s people need to understand the Gospel.
If I were to go around this auditorium today and ask each of you, “are Muslims going to heaven?”
All of you all would say, “no.”
However, in a current poll taken that 50% of professing evangelicals believe that Muslims will be in Heaven, that what they believe is good enough to get them there.
If I were to go around this auditorium today and ask each of you, “will Jews that reject Jesus as Messiah go to Heaven?”
You all would say, “no.”
But 50% of professing evangelicals believe that Jews that reject Jesus as the Messiah will go to Heaven one day.
Because evangelicals today do not know the true Gospel as laid out by Christ.
We need to understand and defend the true Gospel, folks.
We must reject the Gospel self-righteousness, the gospel that only looks at the outward actions and pays no attention to the reality of the heart.
And Christ began His minstry by preaching a lengthy sermon on the Gospel.
We must reject the gospel that does not teach that we must realize that we have true spiritual poverty and that in our strength, we have no ability to remedy that situation.
And Christs’ point here that an outward display of righteousness is not what it takes to be made right before God.
Because there are groups of people that are fastidious to the outward morals of the law and yet Christ says in our text:
For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.
Because He is simply saying that the Scribes and the Pharisees have not lived up to the OT standard.
Jesus is saying that He is totally committed to the OT law, so much so that there is a blessing if we obey it and a cursing if we do not.
I. The Laws Preeminence (vs. 17)
I. The Laws Preeminence (vs. 17)
II. The Laws Perpetuity (vs. 18)
II. The Laws Perpetuity (vs. 18)
III. The Laws Pertinence (vs. 19)
III. The Laws Pertinence (vs. 19)
IV. The Laws Purpose (vs. 20)
IV. The Laws Purpose (vs. 20)
For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.
The purpose of God’s law is to show you that you have to have more righteousness than you could ever come up with on your own; and that is the point.
Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.
The law was the perfect standard which would show us our sin.
The law is to show us that we cannot do it on our own, that even the best; the scribes, and the Pharisees, with all their religiosity, trappings, ceremony, and ritual, could not gain the righteousness required to enter the Kingdom.
In other words, if you want it simply, the law was given with the purpose of frustrating us, showing us our inadequacy.
The law was not given to tell us how good we are, but to show us how rotten we are.
That is why the man in Luke 18 that is over in the corner beating his breasts and saying, “God be merciful to me,” went home justified, because he responded to what God’s law intended to show him; that he was a sinner.
But the other man, who was self-righteous, did not see the meaning of God’s law.
He saw it as a goal to achieve to be made right with God, instead of a mirror that shows that by your own ability you cannot be right with God.
This is really the whole purpose of Matthew 5-7, to show what true righteousness is.
Being preached to a massive amount of people who have believed all of their lives that as long as they adhere, outwardly, to the commandments as the Pharisees had interpreted them, they would be OK.
You hear people all the time talk about being raised in Church and had gone to Church all of their lives.
They had been involved in the ceremony, all of the trappings, but never knew the reality.
We see people that have substituted the form for the substance.
And the laws purpose is to show us that at our very best we could never make it into the kingdom.
The very best, the very noblest, the most religious, if they are depending on that will be excluded from Heaven.
Jesus says, “Look at the religious leaders of the day. Fastidious to obey all the law requires, and you revere and follow them because of that. But I am telling you that unless your righteousness is better then that, you will enter Heaven.
Jesus says, “οὐ μὴ,” which is a double negation.
It would be almost like saying, “you will no, not ever, enter Heaven.”
Because the standard of true righteousness are not the actions of others, good or bad, but the standard of true righteousness is the perfect law of God.
Back up with me a few verses and remind ourselves where it all began.
Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
And the religious system at the time was not poor in spirit but was proud, boastful, arrogant and feeling that they had arrived spiritually.
The religion of the day knew nothing of what it was to have the understanding that you bring nothing to your salvation except the sin that makes it necessary.
It knew nothing about what it was to see yourself in deep spiritual poverty.
Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.
And because the religion of the day knew nothing of what it was to understand their own spiritual condition so there was no understanding of feeling the deep anguish over sin that accompanies that understanding of poverty.
They are not the people like the publican in Luke 18 who beat on his breast and begging God to be merciful because you see yourself, not as others see you in your outward obedience (as you interpret it), but as God sees you and you beg Him for forgiveness and mercy.
Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.
They were anything but meek, they were boastful.
Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.
They did not hunger and thirst for righteousness, they thought they had their fill of it already.
Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.
This religion was not in the habit of being merciful to people, they were merciless.
Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.
They were not pure in heart, they were white outside and filthy, vile, and wretched on the inside.
You see, Jesus is running right smack into the system of the day.
He is running right smack into the Pharisaical system of the hour that said, “A man gets to Heaven, he gets into the Kingdom, on the basis of his own goodness.”
Jesus Christ comes in and says, “No! It is on the recognition of his own wretchedness. The law is not established for you to show how good you are; it is established to prove to you how bad you are because of your inability to keep it.
I want to answer a few questions as we look at verse 20, and as we do, we will see the picture very clearly.
Question one: Who were the Scribes and the Pharisees?
I mean, if we have to have a righteousness that exceeds them, we ought to know who they were.
Scribes, which is γραμματεύς in the Greek, where we get our English word “grammar, grammatical” were simply those those dealt with the letter of the law, the interpretation of the law, the recording of the law.
They wrote down the law, studied the law, were authorities on the law, scholars of the law.
They were those that struggled with the finer points of the law.
And one thing that this tells us is that someone can study the Bible, study the Bible their whole life and still come up with the wrongs answers, just like the Scribes and Pharisees.
You hear people that are in cults or unbiblical religions say, “well, we study the Bible so we know that this is what it says.”
Well you may study the Bible, but you are just like the scribes and Pharisees, who studied the law, but came up with the wrong answers.
Unless your heart is right, and you are truly redeemed, and you are being taught by the Spirit of God, you will come up with human conclusions even though you are using a Divine Word.
The Scribes spent their lives in the text of the OT; studying it and writing it down, yet they came up with the wrong answers.
What about the Pharisees?
The Pharisees was not an office, it was a sect.
Within Judaism, there were several sects.
There the sect of the Zealots and they were basically the political radicals.
There were the Essenes, and they were kind of the drop outs, the hippies of the time of Christ.
They lived down in the Qumran community, on the edge of the Dead Sea in a bunch of caves.
They were the spaced out, the antisocial type.
So on the one hand, there were the political radicals who were trying to overthrow Rome and going around stabbing Romans, and doing all kinds of things sort of underground.
Then there were the Essenes, a mystical, almost monastic order, who were stuck on the edge of the Dead Sea near no one.
Then in the mainstream, there were two other groups: The Sadducees and Pharisees.
“Pharisee” comes from the root word which means “to separate.”
They were the separatists, the super-duper fundamental legalist of their day.
They separated themselves from everything.
They separated themselves from Gentiles, from other Jews that they did not think lived with enough concern for the law.
So the Pharisees kind out lifted themselves out of Jewish society as a super-elite group who alone knew what it was to really walk with God.
They convinced themselves that they were the real spiritual hotshots.
The Pharisees differed from the scribes inasmuch as they did not particularly study the law as a scholar would; they simply developed out of the law a system of rituals.
A scribes for all intent and purpose, could be a Sadducee or a Pharisee.
The Pharisee took the Word of God and developed a rigid, ceremonial, ritualistic system, not so much based on the law of Moses as it was on tradition.
The problem was is that they really could not keep the law of Moses.
I mean, the Pharisees did what every unregenerate person does.
If you believe that you are OK and righteous and you cannot keep the standard, then you change the standard to accommodate your unrighteousness.
And the people so revered theses guys.
In fact the Jews had a saying, “If only two people go to heaven, one will be a scribe, and the other will be a Pharisee.”
I mean, in the eyes of the people to whom Jesus was talking, you could not get any better than these guys.
John MacArthur Sermon Archive Christ and the Law, Part 4
I mean, you couldn’t get any better than them. The average guy on the street in this time in history would say, “I can’t be as good as a Pharisee! I can’t be like a scribe. I mean, those guys study the Old Testament day and night, day and night. They have every hair split and every fine point memorized and they know that stuff cold.” In fact, most scribes could probably recite verbatim the entire text of the Old Testament from copying it so many times. The average citizen would say, “I have no chance. I can’t do that.” Then he would look at a Pharisee and say, “I can’t live like that; I can’t keep all those rules. I’ll never make it to Heaven. Those people are so holy! Their whole life is given to the religious, moral, spiritual pursuit.”
Imagine the shock When Jesus said:
For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.
That is the first question.
Let me ask the second question?
What was the nature of their righteousness?
I mean if we are going to find out what true righteousness is and it has to be more then theirs, what was theirs?
The question is: What were they depending on for their salvation?
He was depending on the external, the system of human achievement.
“Look what I have done, look what I do not do. I do this; I fast twice a week, I tithe.”
Holy on the outside.
Let me see if I can break this down even farther for you by giving you several thoughts.
First, their righteousness was external.
In fact, it was only external, only an outward appearance of the law.
They did not get involved in adultery, murder, idolatry, but they had a lot of impure and rotten thoughts, and they coveted like mad, and they hated with a fury, and they were cold in their hearts towards God.
The inside was all fouled up, but the outside, they were able to maintain.
That is why the main focus of the remainder of this sermon was dealing with the internal verses the external.
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess.
Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also.
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.
Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.
Observance of the ceremony was the big issue, and their whole system was superficial.
Folks, may I encourage you to examine your own heart in this regard?
Because it is very easy to get wrapped up in the superficial kind of religion.
It is very easy to go through the motions of prayer, reading the Bible, attending Church, going to a Bible study, but there is nothing going on on the inside.
Life can be superficial.
These people had it all, on the outside, but on the inside, that was the problem.
Saying, The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat:
All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not.
For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers.
But all their works they do for to be seen of men: they make broad their phylacteries, and enlarge the borders of their garments,
In other words, “when they speak the law of Moses, do it, but do not pattern your life after them. They say and don’t do.”
And he said unto them, Ye are they which justify yourselves before men; but God knoweth your hearts: for that which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God.
Second, in understanding the nature of their righteousness, it was not only external, but it was partial.
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.
Anise was some kind of herb, some kind of small plant.
You tithe those tiny things, you are right down to the nub on those externals, but you have neglected the weightier matters.
Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.
John MacArthur Sermon Archive Christ and the Law, Part 4
In those days, when they wanted to drink something, they had a little strainer to get gnats out of it. They were picking the little gnats out of things but swallowing a whole camel.
And the point that Christ is trying to make here is that they were really big on the little things, the external things, and ignored justice, mercy, and faith.
Their righteousness was only partial; they only accommodated themselves to what they could handle, nothing more.
Their obedience fit their capability.
Howbeit in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.
Their righteousness was not only external and partial, but it was also redefined.
Their righteousness was the kind of external, partial righteousness that had to redefine everything that God had said.
“Yes, that is what God said, but what He meant was this.”
And then they would go and give it a new meaning.
Just went about redefining terms and taking an internal thing and making it external.
They redefined it and made it a system they could maintain.
Fourth, their righteousness was not only external, partial, redefined, but it was self-centered.
John MacArthur Sermon Archive Christ and the Law, Part 4
They manifested a lack of dissatisfaction, they weren’t dissatisfied, and true holiness always comes out of dissatisfaction. When you are dissatisfied with your life, mourn over your sin, cower in a corner as a beggar, hunger and thirst for a righteousness that you know you can’t earn, then that’s true righteousness.
They did not need God to make them righteous because they believed they were righteous already.
So here they are; the Scribes and the Pharisees, with a righteousness that is external, partial, redefined, and self-centered.
Now comes the third question, and hold onto this: what is the righteousness that Christ requires?
You know the answer, He requires absolute holiness, absolute perfection, internal and external righteousness.
The standard of righteousness that Christ sets is absolute righteousness.
The king’s daughter is all glorious within: her clothing is of wrought gold.
Meaning this: God wants you all glorious on the inside, and pure gold on the outside.
And that leads to a fourth question: how is this kind of righteousness obtained, where do we get that?
Listen, you and I cannot be righteous on our own, and that is what Jesus meant by verses 20 of our text.
And to the people that held up and admired these Scribes and Pharisees really to the point of perfection must have thought within themselves, “how am I going to get a righteousness greater than these guys?”
“I cannot do that, how will ever get a greater righteousness?”
Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.
How are we justified? By faith in Christ.
How are we made righteous? By faith in Christ.
But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets;
Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference:
For what saith the scripture? Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness.
John MacArthur Sermon Archive Christ and the Law, Part 4
Just as righteous, just as holy as God. You say, “Well, Abraham isn’t going to make it, because he committed a lot of sin!” You’re right, so how could he ever attain that righteous character? It says right in Romans, “He believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.”
For if by one man’s offence death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ.)
That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.
John MacArthur Sermon Archive Christ and the Law, Part 4
It is a tremendous concept. If you’re complacent about hearing this, then you’re being complacent about the greatest truth in all the Bible, as far as we’re concerned, that God has set a standard we could never attain, and then given us the fulfillment of that standard as a gift by simply putting our faith in Jesus Christ.
And that brings a final question: What is the result of those people who do not obtain this righteousness?
They who work religiously like mad to get in?
I always think about Jehovah’s Witnesses and other door to door cults that are working themselves into a frazzle to get into the kingdom, and are striving with all their might to obtain their own righteousness.
They have said that Jesus is not God, and therefore they have not only denigrated His personhood, but they have removed, abrogated, and nullified His work on the cross and in the empty tomb.
John MacArthur Sermon Archive Christ and the Law, Part 4
Without Christ as God, without a substitutionary death on the part of the God-man, and without a literal, bodily resurrection of the God-man, there is no attainable righteousness for men. So these people are working themselves right into the deepest Hell imaginable
Our Lord lays that out in Matthew 5 very simply, I believe.
For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.
Here is the standard and you reach the standard by faith in me.
If you try and do it on your own, you will never make it.
Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.
Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?
And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.
Conclusion:
Conclusion:
There was once a Pharisee that was the Pharisee that beat all Pharisees.
Listen to what he said:
Though I might also have confidence in the flesh. If any other man thinketh that he hath whereof he might trust in the flesh, I more:
Circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, an Hebrew of the Hebrews; as touching the law, a Pharisee;
Concerning zeal, persecuting the church; touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless.
So he must be a shoo-in, right?
But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ.
And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith:
Perhaps you are here today and you have come face to face with the reality that you are standing in your own righteousness.
That you, perhaps for years, have been depending on that righteousness and not the righteousness of Christ that is given by faith.
That is the religion on the Scribes and Pharisees and unless you have a better righteousness than that, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
I promise you, today, that if you will shed your self-righteousness and cling to the Lord Jesus Christ, who alone can clothe you in the necessary righteousness fit for Heaven, you will find Him to be a perfect Savior.
He will wash you, He will cleanse you, and give you a righteousness that you could never attain on your own, and He will give it to you forever.