The Gospel of Jesus (2)
Notes
Transcript
Matthew 5:17 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.
Years ago, back when I was a teenager, me and some buddies were hanging out in town one night. And as usual in the thriving metropolis of Mayo there was not a lot going on. So after we had made multiple passes form one end of town to the other we gathered up at an old gas station. We were all standing around our trucks and since it was hunting season it looked like a small arsenal. Most of the truck would have had a least a shotgun and a rifle, maybe a .22 as well. However, one of my friends has a pistol laying in the seat. This caught the attention of one of another friend. In which he thought it would be a great idea to grab it out of the seat and fire it up in the air in the middle of town.
Now to his defense, I don’t think we had seen a cop all night. But, what he didn’t consider is the sound a .22 magnum makes on main street when you squeeze off a round. When he pulled the trigger, almost instantaneously 3 cop cars surrounded us with lights flashing. We were all looking for somewhere to run but there was now where to go. And of course being in a small town, the cops new us and our parents. So the questioning began, we were all silent, and finally the sheriff at the time said OK, we will start calling parents until somebody talks. At that time my friend that shot the pistol stepped up and confessed to shooting the pistol and breaking the law. This would be one of many times I was a partaker of the benefit of living in a small town. The sheriff chastised us and reminded us that there was already an arrow hanging out of the red light, and someone had shot the courthouse clock so they were on high alert and let us go.
Here is the point:
1. There was one of us who pulled the trigger and initially broke the law, being with him were caught up in the guilt of his law breaking. He represented all of us.
Sound familiar?
The 1689 London Baptist Confession states,
God gave Adam a law of comprehensive obedience written in his heart and a specific precept not to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
We all know what happened, as our representative, he ate the fruit,
Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—
2. He thought he would be able to break the law and no one would ever know, he had no idea we would be surrounded and confronted about our law breaking within seconds.
And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.
3. It was only because of the grace and mercy of the lawmen that they let us go. I am not sure what all laws we were breaking that night, but the initial gunshot was more than likely just the tip of the iceberg.
Make no mistake we were all grateful for the grace shown to us by the officers not arresting us, confiscating all our weapons, and even worse than all of that, calling our parents.
But here is the main point, the grace that they showed us in the midst of our transgression, pails in comparison to the grace God has given us in sending his Son to fulfill the law which we all have broken.
Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Tonight we will be considering one of the most important purposes of Christ coming in all of the Scriptures. It is this understanding of Jesus fulfillment of the Law which teaches us of our sinful nature, our transgression of God’s holy law and Christ perfect obedience to and fulfillment of God’s righteous demands in the Law.
John Bunyan said, “The man who does not know the nature of the law cannot know the nature of sin. And he who does not know the nature of sin cannot know the nature of the Savior.” (Reisinger pg. 33)
It is the believers understanding of how he or she has sinned against God, by breaking his Law, which brings eternal condemnation upon him. It is our recognition that we are unable to keep God’s Law because of our fallen nature that causes us to run to Christ, understanding he is our only hope in being justified by fulfilling the Law’s demands.
James makes clear our guilt under the law,
If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing well. But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it.
Therefore as we come to this pivotal verse and teaching of Scripture that Jesus fulfilled this law and we cannot, I pray tonight that we would all see how even as believer we can fall into the ditch of minimizing the righteousness and purpose of the Law or wrongly respond as the Pharisees and legalistically add to the Law of God. Or as Josh often reminds us to avoid the ditch of antinomianism and the ditch of legalism. In other words, thinking we have no duty to keep the law at all or on the other side thinking our salvation depends on our perfect law keeping.
The 1689 London Baptist Confession is helpful here as well,
6. True believers are not under the law as a covenant of works, to be justified or condemned by it. Yet it is very useful to them and to others as a rule of life that informs them of the will of God and their duty. It directs and obligates them to live according to its precepts. It also exposes the sinful corruptions of their natures, hearts, and lives. As they examine themselves in light of the law, they come to further conviction of, humiliation for, and hatred of sin, along with a clearer view of their need for Christ and the perfection of his obedience.
Let’s consider now the words of Jesus.
“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.
Here is the first truth we learn from Jesus’ own teaching that he fulfilled the law.
I. Jesus Did Not Destroy the Law
I. Jesus Did Not Destroy the Law
A. Corrective Purpose
A. Corrective Purpose
Matthew 5:17a Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets;
Here Jesus begins to address the problem he is seeking to correct. The Scribes, Pharisees, and religious leaders of the day had corrupted the Law and misinterpreted the Prophets. They had taken what God has spoken and abused it in a way that was causing them to draw God’s people away from God’s righteous intent of the Law and the Prophets.
What had the Pharisees done, they had added to the Law they tried to create more laws to ensure they would not break God’s law.
Jesus says, Do not think…or don’t misunderstand the purpose of the law or my coming.
Consider what Jesus does following this passage.
He says, You have heard.....But I tell you...
Jesus does this in verse 21 regarding murder.
In verse 27 regarding adultery
In verse 31 regarding divorced
In verse 33 regarding oaths,
In verse 38 regarding retaliation,
In verse 43 regarding loving your neighbor.
What Jesus does here is continue to correct the wrong thinking and understanding of the Law and teach his disciples that the Law is not just about outward obedience but an inward change of heart that results in an outward submission.
Here Jesus words in the gospel of Mark,
And he said to them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, “ ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’ You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.” And he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition!
Jesus rails against the wrong thinking and teaching of the religious leaders. He says, your worship is in vain. You have raised your traditions above the commandments of God. You have made your teachings more binding than the Law of God. You have put a yoke and a burden on people you cannot keep yourself.
Jesus was accused of violating the law, but it was not the law of God he violated, but the additional traditional Jewish understanding of the law.
That is why he had to correct them and tell them he had not come to abolish the law.
This word abolish,
abolish = καταλύω kataluō; - to end the effect or validity of something., put an end to; to cause to be no longer in force; abolish, annul, invalid
The leaders of the Jews, the Scribes, Pharisees, and experts of the law saw Jesus as “setting aside the law.”
They accused Jesus of:
Spending too much time with women.
The Mishna states,
Matthew, Volumes 1 & 2 The Context: Jesus and the Law
“He that talks much with womankind brings evil upon himself and neglects the study of the law and at the last will inherit Gehenna.”
Spending too much time with sinners.
Matthew, Volumes 1 & 2 The Context: Jesus and the Law
“Keep thee far from an evil neighbour and consort not with the wicked.”
Jesus did both of these things as he ministered to the people. As he preached the gospel, and called men and women to repent and believe. Again, he was not setting aside, abolishing, or annulling the law. He was just going against the Jewish misinterpretation of the law.
Jesus also,
Said all foods were clean,
And he said to them, “Then are you also without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, since it enters not his heart but his stomach, and is expelled?” (Thus he declared all foods clean.)
He healed on the Sabbath,
He corrected the Jewish teaching on divorce,
He cast Jewish money changers out of the temple which was approved,
He forgave sins apart from the priest.
In all of these things he was not violating the Law of God but the traditions of men. The Jews of the day, completely missed the point of the prophets and the Law. The purpose of the prophets was to point us to Christ. They were pointing us to a New and Better Covenant that would come because of man’s inability to meet the demands of the law.
Jesus when he came, knew the law perfectly, and obeyed the law perfectly. Therefore, in His Sermon on the Mount, he sets out to teach the people that he has not only come to keep the law, but to fulfill its demands.
This brings us to the second point of this text, Jesus did not come to destroy the Law,
II. Jesus Fulfilled the Law
II. Jesus Fulfilled the Law
Matthew 5:17b I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.
Jesus makes it clear that they think he has come and disregarded the law, and he says no in fact I have come to completely fulfill it. Jesus affirms, I am the one who the Prophets pointed too, I am the one who was not born into sin so that I can obey the law, I am the the perfect, pure lamb of God that all other sacrifices in the OT ceremonial law pointed to.
Christ is not diminishing the OT but affirming it. He is not rendering the law useless, but reinforcing its truthfulness. He is not invalidating the law but validating it.
We need a full understanding of what this word fulfill means.
Ernie Reisinger writes, “This word “fulfill” in this context means a great many things:
To obey the precepts of the moral law in its conventional form.
To endure the curse of the Lord’s people.
To verify the various types and figures of the ceremonial law.
To introduce that spiritual system of government which the judicial law was an emblem.
To accomplish all the various predictions in the prophets respecting the Messiah (Luke 24:44)”
Reisinger sums it up this way, “to fulfill the law is to carry it out, to give full obedience to it, literally carrying out everything that has been said and stated in the law and prophets.”
This is what Jesus came to do, he cam to meet every demand, to fulfill every prophecy, to pay the penalty for every sin of God’s people.
Paul writes to the Romans,
English Standard Version Chapter 5
18 Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. 19 For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.
It is through the perfect obedience of Jesus that sinners and law breakers can escape the judgment and condemnation that our transgression of the law reveals to us.
Jesus goes on to say, let me affirm that continual goodness and necessity of the law,
For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.
Even thought Jesus fulfilled the Law, the Law of God is still good and has its righteous purposes for God’s people. Until this heaven and earth pass away and the New Heavens and New Earth is consummated God graciously uses his Law to bring us to repentance and restrain us from evil.
Romans 3:10....
Romans 3:21....
1 cor 9:20...
Not free from the structure of moral obligation, but under Christ Law.
the continuation of law as prescriptip…adultery
Trajectories of various kinds