SPEAKER_00: This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.
SPEAKER_01: Good morning.
SPEAKER_01: I so appreciate the worship and singing that we've had this morning.
SPEAKER_01: Because there is nothing better for God's people than to be reminded of the holiness of their God.
SPEAKER_01: That's been the theme of Scripture from page one.
SPEAKER_01: God is unique, God is separate, God is unlike anything else, and only He can speak to the darkness and chaos and say, Let there be light.
SPEAKER_01: He's the only one that can bring form to something that is formless.
SPEAKER_01: Cause something to exist that did not exist before.
SPEAKER_01: And into that new formed world, he places a man and a woman and he tells them, Be holy as I am holy.
SPEAKER_01: And they couldn't.
SPEAKER_01: And didn't.
SPEAKER_01: So they ate of a fruit that God told them not to eat of.
SPEAKER_01: From then on, Scripture is an account of people seeking to be what God wants them to be.
SPEAKER_01: Trying desperately in some way or another to appease God, to be made right with God, to be brought back into relationship with Him.
SPEAKER_01: And all throughout the beginning pages of Scripture, from Genesis to Malachi, we see failure after failure after failure.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, there are some bright spots in there, of course.
SPEAKER_01: But again and again and again we see people failing in their pursuit of being made right with God.
SPEAKER_01: And then when we turn to the pages of the New Testament in Matthew chapter 1, we see an interruption where God says to Mary, you're going to bear a son, and you're going to call his name Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Because he will save his people from their sins.
SPEAKER_01: We've been working our way through the Gospel of Matthew, and in the last few weeks we've been in Matthew chapter 5 looking at the Beatitudes.
SPEAKER_01: Where Jesus, the promised one, the Savior, begins to outline this is what it looks like to be made right with God.
SPEAKER_01: Last couple of weeks we've looked at the end of his introduction, where he begins to apply the truths of the Beatitudes in Matthew chapter 5.
SPEAKER_01: And we're going to continue there this morning, but our text for today is somewhat difficult.
SPEAKER_01: It's somewhat difficult because it addresses a multitude of different kinds of subjects.
SPEAKER_01: So it is difficult to determine where do you go with a passage of scripture like this?
SPEAKER_01: We could spend weeks here.
SPEAKER_01: Might just do that.
SPEAKER_01: I haven't decided yet.
SPEAKER_01: So I want to approach this a little bit differently this morning.
SPEAKER_01: So if you're visiting with us, we're so glad that you're here because you get to hear from the pages of Scripture and see from God's own word how to be made right with God.
SPEAKER_01: But we're going to approach it a little bit differently than I normally preach on Sunday mornings.
SPEAKER_01: So let's look first at Matthew chapter 5, beginning in verse 17.
SPEAKER_01: Matthew chapter 5, beginning in verse 17.
SPEAKER_01: The scripture says, this is the Lord Jesus speaking at the end of his introduction to his sermon.
SPEAKER_01: Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets.
SPEAKER_01: I haven't.
SPEAKER_01: I've not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them.
SPEAKER_01: For truly I say to you that until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a not a dot will pass from the law until all is accomplished.
SPEAKER_01: Therefore, whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven.
SPEAKER_01: But whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
SPEAKER_01: For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
SPEAKER_01: Pretty astounding statement.
SPEAKER_01: Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees.
SPEAKER_01: So that's that's the bottom line.
SPEAKER_01: As we look at this passage this morning, that is the basis upon which everything else rests.
SPEAKER_01: We must have exceeding righteousness.
SPEAKER_01: Your rightness, if you will, before the Holy God must exceed that of the righteous scribes and the righteous Pharisees.
SPEAKER_01: Now, if you can, I want you to sort of compartmentalize what we've just read.
SPEAKER_01: Set it aside in a side compartment.
SPEAKER_01: We're going to work our way back to it.
SPEAKER_01: We're going to go somewhere else for a moment.
SPEAKER_01: And I want you to look with me at what the Apostle Paul said about himself.
SPEAKER_01: And we're going to look at this from the book of Philippians.
SPEAKER_01: The book of Philippians and chapter 3.
SPEAKER_01: An amazingly powerful passage of Scripture about the man that many consider to be the greatest Christian that has ever walked the face of the earth.
SPEAKER_01: This is his autobiography.
SPEAKER_01: He's telling the story about his own life.
SPEAKER_01: He tells us from his own lips, his own pen, what happened to him.
SPEAKER_01: So this is Philippians chapter 3, beginning in verse 4.
SPEAKER_01: So he's making an argument here, kind of comparing himself to other people that are claiming to be righteous.
SPEAKER_01: And in Philippians chapter 3, the middle of verse 4, we read If anyone thinks that he has reason for confidence in the flesh, that is in his body, what he does in this life and this body, he says, I have more.
SPEAKER_01: He says, I can make a case for my own personal righteousness by what I do.
SPEAKER_01: He says, Here it is, I was circumcised on the eighth day of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews.
SPEAKER_01: In other words, he says, you can't question my genealogy.
SPEAKER_01: You can't question where I come from.
SPEAKER_01: I'm there.
SPEAKER_01: I've arrived simply because of who I am.
SPEAKER_01: And he says, as to the law of God, a Pharisee.
SPEAKER_01: Remember Matthew 5, 20?
SPEAKER_01: Your righteousness must exceed that of the Pharisees.
SPEAKER_01: He says, as to the law, the words of God in the Old Testament, he says, as to that, I'm a Pharisee.
SPEAKER_01: As to zeal, I was a persecutor of the church.
SPEAKER_01: As to the righteousness that the law demanded, that's blameless.
SPEAKER_01: He says, that's my pedigree.
SPEAKER_01: I could stand before God and all of those things would be absolutely true.
SPEAKER_01: 100%.
SPEAKER_01: Then he says, but whatever gain I had, I counted it as loss for the sake of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Wow, there's a change there, isn't there?
SPEAKER_01: Indeed, he says, I count everything in my life, my history, my genealogy, my education, my upbringing, everything about my life I count as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.
SPEAKER_01: For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I count them as trash, as rubbish, so that I may gain Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Now listen to what he says next in verse 9.
SPEAKER_01: And be found in him, in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, comes from who I am and what I'm doing in my obedience to God.
SPEAKER_01: No.
SPEAKER_01: But that which comes through faith in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: The righteousness from God that depends on faith.
SPEAKER_01: So from a typical Jewish perspective, Paul had it made.
SPEAKER_01: In the religious view of the time, he was spotless.
SPEAKER_01: There was no outward, overt sin that anybody could see and point to and say, uh-uh, Paul, you haven't, you're not perfect yet.
SPEAKER_01: You haven't dealt with that issue yet.
SPEAKER_01: But then, in his own words, an exchange took place.
SPEAKER_01: He exchanged the righteousness that he had through this outward following of the law of Moses, the Torah, the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_01: He exchanged that for a righteousness that came through faith from Christ.
SPEAKER_01: He chucked what had been a lifetime of effort and achievement to gain Christ.
SPEAKER_01: And to be found in him.
SPEAKER_01: To have a righteousness that comes by faith.
SPEAKER_01: It's pretty astounding.
SPEAKER_01: It's a complete reversal of direction that came through the arresting grace of Christ on that road that he was traveling to the city of Damascus to arrest Christians.
SPEAKER_01: God just sort of stopped him in his tracks and said, Paul, you need to know something.
SPEAKER_01: You need to know that I exist and who I am.
SPEAKER_01: You need to know my grace.
SPEAKER_01: But on a practical level, how could Paul so suddenly just ditch his conviction in and his approach to that Old Testament law?
SPEAKER_01: I find that difficult to process through.
SPEAKER_01: A lifetime of work and effort and achievement just tossed out the window for something else.
SPEAKER_01: How could he let go of it like that?
SPEAKER_01: Well, there are several passages that provide some answers to that question, but I think the clearest place to find those answers is in the book of Romans.
SPEAKER_01: And so we find in Romans chapter 3, this is written by the Apostle Paul.
SPEAKER_01: So we again get to see his processing, his thoughts about this whole issue of this exchange that he made.
SPEAKER_01: In Romans chapter 3, we begin reading in verse 20, where he writes, We know that by works of the law, no human being will be justified in God's sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.
SPEAKER_01: But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, they refer to it, they speak of it.
SPEAKER_01: That is the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.
SPEAKER_01: So in verse 20, we see that obedience to God's laws, to God's rules in the Old Testament only brings knowledge of sin, not righteousness.
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't bring justification, a right standing before God.
SPEAKER_01: No, and in verse 21, he in fact makes it very clear: God's righteousness comes apart from that kind of obedience.
SPEAKER_01: It comes in verse 22 through faith in Jesus for all who believe.
SPEAKER_01: So on that Damascus road, when God shone down, the Lord Jesus Christ blinded him with a bright light and stopped the whole caravan in its tracks, and God arrested the Apostle Paul with his grace and his mercy.
SPEAKER_01: The Apostle Paul came to understand the Old Testament scriptures better than he ever had before.
SPEAKER_01: His education had never prepared him for something like that.
SPEAKER_01: As the fog cleared, he began to understand that obedience to the law of God shows us our sin, but it doesn't give us the right kind of rightness to be accepted by God.
SPEAKER_01: God's too holy for that.
SPEAKER_01: So we look over then at Romans chapter 7.
SPEAKER_01: Beginning in verse 7, we read, What then shall we say?
SPEAKER_01: That the law is sin?
SPEAKER_01: If it shows me my sin, is the law sin?
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely not.
SPEAKER_01: Some of your Bibles, if you have an old King James, will say, God forbid that.
SPEAKER_01: Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known what sin is, for I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, You shall not covet.
SPEAKER_01: But sin, seizing an opportunity through God's commandment, produced inside of me all kinds of covetousness.
SPEAKER_01: For apart from the law, sin lies dead.
SPEAKER_01: Was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died.
SPEAKER_01: Aaron Robinson was telling us a little bit ago in our morning breakfast time about people in France really being agnostic or atheist.
SPEAKER_01: And thank you, thank you, Aaron.
SPEAKER_01: I appreciate that so much.
SPEAKER_01: That you have to develop a knowledge of God first, because without a knowledge of God, there's no knowledge of sin.
SPEAKER_01: That's kind of what the Apostle Paul's saying here.
SPEAKER_01: He says, when I became aware of what God said of who he was and what he expects and what he demands, I became aware of how sinful I was.
SPEAKER_01: He says, I once was alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, when I began to understand this, sin came alive and I died.
SPEAKER_01: The very commandment.
SPEAKER_01: Whoops.
SPEAKER_01: The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me.
SPEAKER_01: For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment deceived me.
SPEAKER_01: And through it, it killed me.
SPEAKER_01: It's powerful.
SPEAKER_01: The Apostle Paul had spent his life learning that law.
SPEAKER_01: Inside and out, frontwards and backwards.
SPEAKER_01: He says it's it's good, but in its goodness, what it did is it showed me how sinful I am.
SPEAKER_01: It showed me how much I can't keep God's laws.
SPEAKER_01: The rest of this chapter in Romans 7 is Paul's expression of frustration with sin in his life.
SPEAKER_01: It's one that we all can relate to to some extent or another.
SPEAKER_01: He says, I want to obey God, I want to please him, I want to honor him, I want to be holy like he is holy, but I can't.
SPEAKER_01: Because I live in a sinful body that just keeps fighting against that.
SPEAKER_01: Therefore, he says, I need, I need something else.
SPEAKER_01: I need something outside of me because I can't do it.
SPEAKER_01: Therefore, he says in verse 1 of chapter 8, therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.
SPEAKER_01: Been set free in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: For what God has done, for God has done what the law could not do.
SPEAKER_01: How did God do that?
SPEAKER_01: Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: By sending his own son in our likeness.
SPEAKER_01: And for sin, God condemned sin in the flesh.
SPEAKER_01: So that, in order that the righteous requirement, what God expects, what God demands in the law might be fulfilled in you.
SPEAKER_01: The person who can't do it.
SPEAKER_01: God says, I want to fulfill the law in you, the person who can't do it.
SPEAKER_01: How does that happen?
SPEAKER_01: Through Jesus, by the means of the Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: Do you see that this is the exact same thing as what Paul was saying in Philippians 3?
SPEAKER_01: Because I had it made.
SPEAKER_01: That was all trash.
SPEAKER_01: I needed Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: I needed his righteousness.
SPEAKER_01: He needed the righteousness that comes by faith in Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And it's through that faith in Jesus that Paul could then actually fulfill the law.
SPEAKER_01: Because Jesus fulfilled the law perfectly.
SPEAKER_01: He did not sin.
SPEAKER_01: And that perfect obedience was applied to Paul by faith in Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: For that reason, Paul exchanged the law for faith in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Now that helps us understand another passage of Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: Galatians chapter 3, beginning in verse 19, where we're told that the law was added because of transgressions, because of sin.
SPEAKER_01: Until the offspring should come, and when he refers to the offspring, he's referring to Jesus in previous verses.
SPEAKER_01: Until Jesus should come to whom this promise had been made.
SPEAKER_01: Till that happened, the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin.
SPEAKER_01: So that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.
SPEAKER_01: Now, therefore, before faith came, we were held captive under the law.
SPEAKER_01: God's demands sat there and we were trying to obey them.
SPEAKER_01: Imprisoned there until the coming faith would be revealed.
SPEAKER_01: Paul says, so that the law is kind of our tutor, our guardian, sticks with us until Christ comes in order that we might be justified, not by what we do, but by faith.
SPEAKER_01: God established a covenant with Israel based on obedience to his rules and laws, but that changed when Jesus came.
SPEAKER_01: Because Jesus would fulfill all the law and release those imprisoned under sin who believed in him.
SPEAKER_01: That's what Jesus has been teaching us in the Sermon on the Mount.
SPEAKER_01: Now that's a very long introduction to our text in Matthew 5.
SPEAKER_01: Bear with me.
SPEAKER_01: It's going to all make sense, I trust, in the end.
SPEAKER_01: Matthew chapter 5.
SPEAKER_01: We know that Jesus was mocked and chided for his views on certain biblical issues.
SPEAKER_01: Just a little bit later in the book of Matthew, that we'll get to in a while.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus was criticized harshly for healing a man on the Sabbath.
SPEAKER_01: The Pharisees said to Jesus, That is not biblical.
SPEAKER_01: You are not following the law.
SPEAKER_01: You're lowering God's standards.
SPEAKER_01: Later, Jesus' disciples would pick grain and eat it on the Sabbath.
SPEAKER_01: Another act that the Pharisees said was contrary to the law of God.
SPEAKER_01: So they were looking at Jesus and saying, You're not a lawkeeper.
SPEAKER_01: You don't keep God's rules.
SPEAKER_01: How could you be God's son if you don't keep God's rules?
SPEAKER_01: That doesn't make sense.
SPEAKER_01: So he was mocked and chided for not holding to the standard teaching of the time.
SPEAKER_01: The scribes and the Pharisees were the standard bearers.
SPEAKER_01: The Pharisees would be the talking heads on all the news channels.
SPEAKER_01: While the scribes would be the ones providing all the supporting documentation and background.
SPEAKER_01: Everyone looked to the Pharisees as the epitome of holiness, as the standard of what God expected in his people.
SPEAKER_01: You want to know what God expects?
SPEAKER_01: Follow Pharisees.
SPEAKER_01: Look to them, learn from them.
SPEAKER_01: You'll be good then.
SPEAKER_01: The Pharisees were looked to as the most righteous and holy people of the time because more than anyone else, they labored to be right with God.
SPEAKER_01: They wanted desperately to be right with God.
SPEAKER_01: Then along comes Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: His popularity.
SPEAKER_01: Soars such that crowds are constantly surrounding him in the thousands upon thousands.
SPEAKER_01: And one day Jesus is preaching on a hillside, and in his preaching, he lays out the standards for God's kingdom, standards that say nothing about following God's law, that say nothing about imitating the standards of the Pharisees.
SPEAKER_01: It's as if the Pharisees were filling the primetime news networks and streaming Facebook live speeches on how to be right with God.
SPEAKER_01: And suddenly they're overtaken in popularity by this up-and-coming grassroots guy who never mentions obeying the law ever.
SPEAKER_01: So they begin to accuse Jesus of lowering the standards, of even discarding the whole Old Testament.
SPEAKER_01: That guy's ignorant.
SPEAKER_01: He's destroying the law, doesn't he know that?
SPEAKER_01: He just wants to get rid of God's requirements.
SPEAKER_01: Now, whether that was an actual interjection as Jesus preached, or whether it was something Jesus knew they were thinking, we don't know.
SPEAKER_01: But it's the kind of thing that generates a statement in verse 17.
SPEAKER_01: Don't you ever think that I've come to do away with that.
SPEAKER_01: Don't let that even begin to enter your thinking.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus looks at the Pharisees and the scribes, I imagine, in my own mind, and he says to them, It's not that I think too poorly of God's word.
SPEAKER_01: It's that you don't think highly enough of God's word.
SPEAKER_01: The Pharisees are confused, Jesus says.
SPEAKER_01: They thought and acted in what they believed were, in our modern terms, conservative biblical ways.
SPEAKER_01: But in reality, Jesus says they're only touching the surface of what God expected in terms of righteousness.
SPEAKER_01: The religious leaders that everyone thought were righteous and holy weren't righteous enough.
SPEAKER_01: And you can include our beloved apostle Paul in that group.
SPEAKER_01: Before he met Jesus on the Damascus Road, he said, I was a Pharisee.
SPEAKER_01: Let's look more carefully at what's happening here.
SPEAKER_01: Let's do that by asking three questions.
SPEAKER_01: Who is Jesus?
SPEAKER_01: What is Jesus' view of the Old Testament?
SPEAKER_01: And how should we view the Bible?
SPEAKER_01: Let's start.
SPEAKER_01: Let's start with who is Jesus?
SPEAKER_01: Who is Jesus?
SPEAKER_01: Now, some of you may already be answering me in your head.
SPEAKER_01: Come on, we're in church.
SPEAKER_01: You think I'm dumb?
SPEAKER_01: No, I don't think you're dumb.
SPEAKER_01: But it's a serious question and it demands a serious answer.
SPEAKER_01: You know, some of you may not know the answer.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not going to assume that every single one of you here this morning knows the answer to that question.
SPEAKER_01: You might be thinking, oh, oh, oh yeah, he's that guy that got killed for thinking that he was God.
SPEAKER_01: Some of you might be thinking, oh, he's a really good guy.
SPEAKER_01: He was a good teacher, I think.
SPEAKER_01: At least that's what I've heard from time to time.
SPEAKER_01: Those of you who've been in church for a while may think, well, he's God in the flesh.
SPEAKER_01: He's the Savior.
SPEAKER_01: But those aren't the kinds of answers that we're looking for.
SPEAKER_01: You'll notice in verse 17, Jesus' words, I have come, and then I have not come.
SPEAKER_01: He's making a statement about himself.
SPEAKER_01: He's wanting us to understand and to think about who he is.
SPEAKER_01: So when we ask who is Jesus, we need to think in terms of what Matthew has already told us about Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: So let's do that.
SPEAKER_01: Matthew chapter 1, verse 1.
SPEAKER_01: The book of the genealogy of Jesus, Messiah, the son of David.
SPEAKER_01: From the very first line, what we're told about Jesus is he is a man with royal lineage.
SPEAKER_01: All you need to understand about royal lineage is think about the Queen of England and her son and her grandsons, and you begin to grasp a little bit of the importance of royal lineage.
SPEAKER_01: That's the very first thing said about Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Actually, it's the second thing.
SPEAKER_01: First is he's Messiah.
SPEAKER_01: We look down at verse 17, it's repeated.
SPEAKER_01: All the generations from Abraham to David.
SPEAKER_01: We are to know that this person is born in the royal line of Israel.
SPEAKER_01: Then in verse 23, we are told that he was conceived in fulfillment of prophecy.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 21, he's named by means of his purpose.
SPEAKER_01: That is, you will name him Jesus because he will save his people from their sins.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 23, he fulfills the prophecy of Emmanuel.
SPEAKER_01: Chapter 2, verse 5, he fulfills prophecy of being born in Bethlehem.
SPEAKER_01: Chapter 2, verse 15, he fulfills another prophecy about coming out of Egypt.
SPEAKER_01: Chapter 2, verse 17, there's another prophecy fulfilled.
SPEAKER_01: Chapter 2, verse 23, another prophecy fulfilled.
SPEAKER_01: Chapter 4, verse 14, another prophecy revealed.
SPEAKER_01: In these first four or so chapters of Matthew, this person is called a ruler.
SPEAKER_01: He's called a shepherd.
SPEAKER_01: He's called beloved son.
SPEAKER_01: He's called Son of God.
SPEAKER_01: He's called Emmanuel, God with us.
SPEAKER_01: Chapter 4, verse 15, Jesus is being baptized by John the Baptist, and he says, Let's do this because it's important for us to fulfill all righteousness.
SPEAKER_01: This is important as part of the process of God bringing true righteousness.
SPEAKER_01: Chapter 4, verse 17, Jesus begins to proclaim a message: repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus, the Messiah, the Christ, God's king, proclaiming that the kingdom is present because the king has come.
SPEAKER_01: And so at the end of chapter 4, we begin to see what the king does.
SPEAKER_01: He preaches, he teaches, he heals, and he then leads into, in chapter 5, the standards of his kingdom.
SPEAKER_01: All fulfilling, by the way, Isaiah 61, 1 through 3.
SPEAKER_01: So who is this Jesus?
SPEAKER_01: Who is this Jesus that says, I have come and I have not come?
SPEAKER_01: He's the promised, expected, and realized fulfillment of the Old Testament scriptures.
SPEAKER_01: If you are uncertain of who Jesus is, you need to know that this whole book is about him.
SPEAKER_01: It's who he is.
SPEAKER_01: And he didn't come to do away with the law of Moses.
SPEAKER_01: It was never his intention to destroy the Old Testament or to render it useless.
SPEAKER_01: No, he says just the opposite.
SPEAKER_01: I've come to bring all of it into fulfillment by providing a true righteousness that can't be obtained by simply following God's rules.
SPEAKER_01: That's what Matthew wants us to see.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is the promised one.
SPEAKER_01: What does that then mean?
SPEAKER_01: Well, it means, at least in part, that Jesus is found throughout the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_01: Luke chapter 24, verse 27, Jesus is walking along a roadside with some disciples after his crucifixion and after his resurrection, except they don't know yet that he's been resurrected.
SPEAKER_01: They're all despondent, thinking our Savior's gone, he's dead, he's in the tomb, we're never going to see him again.
SPEAKER_01: When he's walking right beside them.
SPEAKER_01: Luke tells us that beginning with Moses and the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.
SPEAKER_01: Moses and the prophets, or in Matthew chapter 5, the law and the prophets, is simply a Jewish way of referring to the entire Old Testament.
SPEAKER_01: So it's not referring to a portion of the Old Testament or to prophetic portions, but to the whole.
SPEAKER_01: The Old Testament points to Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: It was never intended to be an end in itself.
SPEAKER_01: It always pointed to someone greater, to a fullness intended to be realized in Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: So when God moved people to write those books in that first testament, God knew before the very first letter was penned that more was coming.
SPEAKER_01: He knew before the first penstroke was made that it was not the end, but that it would lead to Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is the perfect fulfillment of the Old Testament, the one to whom God pointed.
SPEAKER_01: So if you've never read the Old Testament, if you've looked at all those lists of genealogies and said, nah, I can't do that.
SPEAKER_01: If you've never read the Old Testament, then you will be missing something about your Lord.
SPEAKER_01: If you purposely avoid the Old Testament, sticking only to the New Testament, what you're in essence saying is, by implication at least, yeah, I don't want to know that much about my Lord.
SPEAKER_01: I love you, Jesus, but you know what?
SPEAKER_01: I don't need to know that.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus fulfills the Old Testament in so many ways.
SPEAKER_01: He came to live it perfectly so that he could be a perfect substitute.
SPEAKER_01: He came to fulfill every prophecy.
SPEAKER_01: We've seen that again and again in Matthew.
SPEAKER_01: He came to fulfill the righteous requirements of the law.
SPEAKER_01: He came to fulfill the ceremonial laws that pictured the law of Christ through these sacrifices upon sacrifices upon sacrifices.
SPEAKER_01: In coming weeks, we're going to see that he came as lawgiver who could correctly and properly interpret the law.
SPEAKER_01: Who is Jesus?
SPEAKER_01: He is the one who came to fulfill the Old Testament by bringing in a proper righteousness.
SPEAKER_01: So our second question: What does Jesus think of the Old Testament?
SPEAKER_01: That's the Bible that he's referring to, the law and the prophets.
SPEAKER_01: He fulfills it, yes.
SPEAKER_01: So if it's fulfilled, does that mean now that it's outdated?
SPEAKER_01: That it no longer applies to us?
SPEAKER_01: Can we dismiss the law or dismiss parts of it?
SPEAKER_01: What does Jesus say?
SPEAKER_01: 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.
SPEAKER_01: That's a statement of fact.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus isn't expressing an opinion.
SPEAKER_01: He's making a dogmatic statement about the enduring nature of the Word of God.
SPEAKER_01: It wasn't that the Old Testament was old and outdated and pointless.
SPEAKER_01: It was misunderstood, misinterpreted, and sometimes disregarded.
SPEAKER_01: But Jesus sets that straight.
SPEAKER_01: He says the Old Testament isn't going away.
SPEAKER_01: He didn't come to abolish it or to render it useless.
SPEAKER_01: It's God's word, it's living, it's eternal, it's settled, it's determined, and every bit of it will come to pass.
SPEAKER_01: Notice the time frame mentioned here.
SPEAKER_01: Twice Jesus says, until.
SPEAKER_01: It's going to endure until.
SPEAKER_01: Until heaven and earth pass away, and until all is accomplished.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is using that phrasing to tell his listeners the law is going to be around until time as we know it is no more.
SPEAKER_01: Your Old Testament will continue to endure and be applicable to your life until time is no more.
SPEAKER_01: When God completely fulfills everything he's intended to do.
SPEAKER_01: And we need to hear this clearly, friends.
SPEAKER_01: We live in a time when the Bible is attacked from all angles.
SPEAKER_01: It's even attacked sometimes by those who ought to uphold it as the word of God.
SPEAKER_01: Not every pulpit in America will tell you that the Old Testament is the living and active word of God.
SPEAKER_01: Some even mock it and at worst tell us to ignore it.
SPEAKER_01: But the Old Testament will continue to exist and have purpose until time comes for God to completely change things in this present universe.
SPEAKER_01: It's at that time that all will be accomplished.
SPEAKER_01: Those are the same times.
SPEAKER_01: Some portions may be fulfilled prior to that time, but all of it will be fulfilled by that time.
SPEAKER_01: God's purpose and plan for all things, including everything He said in the first Testament, will be completely accomplished at the same time that God recreates everything that is.
SPEAKER_01: The Old Testament will remain as God's revealed and authoritative word until then.
SPEAKER_01: That means that you never have to question whether or not God has given the Old Testament for you to read, learn, and know.
SPEAKER_01: God has purposely caused his word to endure for your benefit.
SPEAKER_01: And it will be around longer than you.
SPEAKER_01: Now notice the second portion of this illustration.
SPEAKER_01: He says, Not an iota, not a dot will pass from the law until all is accomplished.
SPEAKER_01: If you're using an old King James, the King James popularized the translation, a jot or a tittle.
SPEAKER_01: That may be familiar to some of you.
SPEAKER_01: A literal translation of what Jesus said would be, not an iota or a horn.
SPEAKER_01: Not an iota or a horn.
SPEAKER_01: So what's Jesus referring to there?
SPEAKER_01: What iodas and what horns can or cannot pass away?
SPEAKER_01: Well, those are both, both words are aspects of the alphabets that Jesus' hearers would be familiar with.
SPEAKER_01: The iota is the smallest letter of the Greek alphabet.
SPEAKER_01: You can see it here.
SPEAKER_01: This is the word think, namidzo from verse 17.
SPEAKER_01: Do not think, and that circled little letter is an iota.
SPEAKER_01: It's the smallest letter of the Greek alphabet.
SPEAKER_01: The Jewish listener would understand exactly what Jesus is referring to.
SPEAKER_01: Now the horn is a little bit different.
SPEAKER_01: The horn is basically a penstroke.
SPEAKER_01: It's sort of attached to a letter.
SPEAKER_01: It might be comparable to a modern seraph, if you're familiar with printing today.
SPEAKER_01: Now, most of Jesus' listeners might be listening in Aramaic or even perhaps Hebrew.
SPEAKER_01: So if we think about it in those terms, which many scholars think we should, the comparison to Hebrew would be the smallest letter in Hebrew is a yod, very similar to an apostrophe in English.
SPEAKER_01: A horn would be that very tiny little pen stroke that distinguishes one kind of letter from another.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is making a statement here that's deliberate hyperbole.
SPEAKER_01: It's an overstatement on purpose, designed to drive home the main point to his listeners.
SPEAKER_01: He's not speaking here about translation.
SPEAKER_01: He's not speaking about transcription, the process of copying the scriptures and putting them into other languages.
SPEAKER_01: He's addressing fulfillment.
SPEAKER_01: The Old Testament will be fully fulfilled in and through him, and it will be fully preserved by him until it is fulfilled.
SPEAKER_01: Everything that Jesus teaches will be completely faithful to the Old Testament scriptures, and even the smallest part of God's scriptures will not ever be overlooked in his plan.
SPEAKER_01: The tiniest part is important.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, in a confrontation with Sadducees later on in Matthew 22, Jesus had an argument with them, and he based his argument on a single verb tense: is versus was.
SPEAKER_01: He said that God is, not was, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
SPEAKER_01: In Galatians, through the Holy Spirit, the Apostle Paul argues a point over the plurality of a single word, whether there's an S in English on the word.
SPEAKER_01: Every single detail is important.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus confirmed the Old Testament as a standard that ruled until Jesus came and that it would be perfectly fulfilled.
SPEAKER_01: That's partly why we should hold firmly to the Old Testament scriptures.
SPEAKER_01: If even the smallest stroke of a pen is not going to be left unfulfilled, then we ought to receive it for what it is: the living and active word of God.
SPEAKER_01: And we should receive it with joy because it contains the words of life, and we should love it and contend for it and look to see how it points to Jesus and is fulfilled in him.
SPEAKER_01: That leads us then into our third question.
SPEAKER_01: How should we view the Bible?
SPEAKER_01: Well, I would hope, at least in this room, at this moment, we don't have to ask that question.
SPEAKER_01: I hope you know the answer to that question.
SPEAKER_01: If you don't, I'll give it to you and then we'll explain it a bit.
SPEAKER_01: How should we view the Old Testament and really the whole Bible?
SPEAKER_01: No less than Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: It's the enduring word of the living God fulfilled in Jesus that will be fully accomplished in due time, so we should believe and uphold every detail of it.
SPEAKER_01: So Jesus says, therefore, whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven.
SPEAKER_01: But whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
SPEAKER_01: Notice that Jesus has moved here in verse 19 from I to whoever.
SPEAKER_01: He's no longer talking about himself, he's talking about everybody else.
SPEAKER_01: He's addressing those who have realized their sin in verse 3 and are poor in spirit as a result of their sin, who are who are mourning over that sin and who have come to hunger and thirst for a righteousness that comes from somewhere else.
SPEAKER_01: These are people who belong to him, who are residents of the kingdom of heaven.
SPEAKER_01: They're the blessed ones.
SPEAKER_01: They're the in the kingdom of heaven, folks.
SPEAKER_01: And we might call them in our terms Christians.
SPEAKER_01: Genuine Christians.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus expects every one of them to have the same attitude, the same value of God's word that he does, to see it as fulfilled in and through Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And he pictures it by a simple cause and effect relationship.
SPEAKER_01: He says, let's consider relaxing the laws.
SPEAKER_01: That word relax means to annull or to render it useless.
SPEAKER_01: Whoever does that and teaches others to do the same will be called least.
SPEAKER_01: And whoever does the law and teaches others will be called great.
SPEAKER_01: It's easy to be distracted here by the rewards, you know, the least and the great, and try to figure out what's going on there.
SPEAKER_01: But the emphasis isn't on the reward or even the lack of reward.
SPEAKER_01: The emphasis isn't even primarily on scripture or or on the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_01: The emphasis here is on one's relationship to the kingdom of heaven.
SPEAKER_01: Do you see that both the least and the greatest are in the kingdom?
SPEAKER_01: They're both in the kingdom.
SPEAKER_01: That's significant.
SPEAKER_01: They exist as legal residents of the kingdom of heaven over which Christ rules as king.
SPEAKER_01: We're still in the context of the introduction of Jesus' sermon.
SPEAKER_01: That means that the Beatitudes are still a major part of the context.
SPEAKER_01: So let's look back at verse 3.
SPEAKER_01: Blessed are the poor in spirit, those who recognize I can't get there.
SPEAKER_01: For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
SPEAKER_01: It's not by thinking that you've got it made that gets you in.
SPEAKER_01: It's by thinking I can't make it that gets you in.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 10, blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom.
SPEAKER_01: They're persecuted because they now possess the righteousness of the king.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 16, those who have God as their ultimate father.
SPEAKER_01: Where's the father?
SPEAKER_01: In heaven.
SPEAKER_01: Are children of God.
SPEAKER_01: Those who have a righteousness greater than the Pharisees.
SPEAKER_01: Have citizenship in the kingdom of heaven.
SPEAKER_01: All along here, Jesus has been talking about being in the king's kingdom.
SPEAKER_01: He says if you pursue it like a Pharisee, you won't get in.
SPEAKER_01: Those who have exchanged the righteousness of performance for the righteousness that comes by faith in Jesus will then uphold the scriptures in the way that Jesus does.
SPEAKER_01: And the issue here is what kind of righteousness do you possess?
SPEAKER_01: There are two kinds of righteousness that exist in this world.
SPEAKER_01: There is a righteousness that you develop by means of doing something, by activity, by action.
SPEAKER_01: Let's say you're an alcoholic with cirrhosis of the liver.
SPEAKER_01: If you work hard and diligently to establish routines and rhythms in your life so that you cease consuming alcohol and you thus bring health to your liver, you have developed a level of righteousness by your doing.
SPEAKER_01: That's the kind of religious righteousness that most people today pursue.
SPEAKER_01: Even many who call themselves Christian.
SPEAKER_01: That's the kind of righteousness that Paul, when he was a Pharisee called Saul, pursued so vigorously.
SPEAKER_01: He says, I'm blameless before the law.
SPEAKER_01: I'm a Pharisee.
SPEAKER_01: I'm a Hebrew of Hebrews.
SPEAKER_01: I developed a righteousness by doing.
SPEAKER_01: The second kind of righteousness that exists is a righteousness that you receive by means of faith.
SPEAKER_01: The first comes by your own diligence and labor.
SPEAKER_01: The other comes from the perfection of another.
SPEAKER_01: Christ Himself.
SPEAKER_01: That's the overarching theme of Jesus' introduction to the Sermon on the Mount.
SPEAKER_01: He says, You need to see me, and you need to come to me for my righteousness.
SPEAKER_01: So the poor in spirit come to him, mourning over their sin.
SPEAKER_01: In faith they come hungering and thirsting for righteousness in order to receive the righteousness of the King.
SPEAKER_01: While the scribes and the Pharisees are examples of those who work to develop a higher level of righteousness by doing what they think God wants.
SPEAKER_01: And the Apostle Paul was once a shining example of that kind of righteousness.
SPEAKER_01: Now see what see what Jesus says about this doing kind of righteousness.
SPEAKER_01: He says, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
SPEAKER_01: If your way to please God is to develop yourself, to be better, to be good, to rid yourself of sinful habits by doing, you will be pursuing a kind of righteousness.
SPEAKER_01: Just like Saul the Pharisee.
SPEAKER_01: But it's only legitimate in the eyes of other people.
SPEAKER_01: Others will see you and think that you are righteous and holy and good, while on the inside you're full of rottenness.
SPEAKER_01: God doesn't see it as legitimate for his kingdom.
SPEAKER_01: He sees you as falling short.
SPEAKER_01: You must have a greater righteousness, a righteousness that is far superior to anything a human being can ever achieve because obedience to God's standards only shows us how far we fall short.
SPEAKER_01: That's why it's a received righteousness.
SPEAKER_01: Because it's impossible from our viewpoint.
SPEAKER_01: It must be granted to you from the king when you come to him in recognition of your sin, seeking his grace, his mercy, his salvation, and his rightness.
SPEAKER_01: Now, what does that have to do with what Jesus says here about Scripture in the Old Testament?
SPEAKER_01: Well, I think there's a couple of implications that stem from what we've just covered.
SPEAKER_01: First of all, those who bear Christ's righteousness treat all scripture with the same weight that Jesus did.
SPEAKER_01: If you're in the kingdom, you're going to see the Old Testament the same way Jesus does as pointing to him.
SPEAKER_01: You see it as God intended to be fulfilled in Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Some still waiting to be fulfilled, showing us sin, showing us faith in some instances, but you see it the same way Jesus did.
SPEAKER_01: And those who are in the kingdom, secondly, because of the king's righteousness, see the Old Testament as pointing to the King.
SPEAKER_01: That's important because those who are not in the kingdom, who are on the outside looking in, see the Old Testament simply as a standard of rules and regulations as a human means to please the King.
SPEAKER_01: If I can speak very pointedly.
SPEAKER_01: If you are not a Christian, stop pursuing righteousness by what you're doing.
SPEAKER_01: You'll never make it.
SPEAKER_01: You will only fall short of God's standards, and that's sin.
SPEAKER_01: But Jesus came to fulfill God's standards, and he desires to give you his righteousness.
SPEAKER_01: Believe in him, confessing your sin and resting in his work.
SPEAKER_01: But I'm not so naive as to think that that's only non-Christians.
SPEAKER_01: I know that there are many, many Christians who, after coming to faith in Christ, still think they have to work to please Christ.
SPEAKER_01: If you are a Christian, are you still trying to work your way into God's grace?
SPEAKER_01: We obey, yes, we do.
SPEAKER_01: But that's as a result of grace.
SPEAKER_01: Not as a means to obtain grace.
SPEAKER_01: Rest in Christ's righteousness, not your own.
SPEAKER_01: Ultimately, what we've just looked at in Matthew 5 is not about the scribes and the Pharisees.
SPEAKER_01: It's about Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus bringing in a new kind of righteousness that fulfills God's word and supersedes anything that had been before.
SPEAKER_01: From the viewpoint of the lawkeepers, Jesus is just a new fad trying to gain followers by lowering standards.
SPEAKER_01: From the viewpoint of kingdom citizens, Jesus is the fulfillment of all that God has been saying from day one.
SPEAKER_01: The king has come and he gives righteousness to all who believe in him.
SPEAKER_01: Paul was a Pharisee who exchanged one kind of righteousness for another.
SPEAKER_01: Do you need to make that exchange?
SPEAKER_01: Do you need to ditch your own attempts and believe in Jesus, seeking his righteousness?
SPEAKER_01: The Apostle Paul would tell you his story.
SPEAKER_01: But whatever gain I had, I count it as loss for the sake of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Indeed, I count everything as loss.
SPEAKER_01: Because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.
SPEAKER_01: For his sake, I've suffered the loss of all things.
SPEAKER_01: I count them as rubbish.
SPEAKER_01: In order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law.
SPEAKER_01: But that which comes through faith in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Even a Pharisee can repent and receive Christ's righteousness.
SPEAKER_01: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_01: Lord Jesus, convict us.
SPEAKER_01: Convict us and enable us to come in humility before your holy throne, before your holy presence.
SPEAKER_01: Confessing our sin and acknowledging our need for an alien righteousness, one that comes from you outside of us.
SPEAKER_01: Save us, Lord Jesus, because we can't do it ourselves.
SPEAKER_01: Enable us to bring glory and honor and praise to you forever and ever.
SPEAKER_00: That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.
SPEAKER_00: Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.