Will you kindly turn with me to the
Gospel recorded by St. Matthew in chapter 5?
And we come this morning in the Sermon
on the Mount to the passage beginning with
verse 17, and it continues to verse 20.
Though this morning we shall only be dealing
with a half of this, I think it
may be appropriate and helpful that we read
the passage as a whole.
Do not think that I have come to
abolish the Law and the Prophets.
I have not come to abolish them, but
to fulfil them.
I tell you the truth, 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.
Anyone who breaks one of the least of
these commandments and teaches others to do the
same will be called the least in the
kingdom of heaven.
But whoever practices and teaches these commands will
be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
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.
Our subject, our sovereign Lord, His subjects, or
the subjects of His kingdom, and the Scriptures.
Jesus has already quite firmly, quite clearly laid
the foundation of His teaching concerning life under
His rule.
In other words, life in the kingdom over
which He is God's anointed King.
Basic to everything else is the production of
character.
That was the burden, and that is the
burden of course, of the Beatitudes.
We are not actually graduating out of the
school of the Beatitudes when once they have
had their first major impression upon our lives.
We may have been once impressed by them
and we may in some measure have become
poor in spirit and begun to mourn and
so forth, but we do not thereby leave
the Beatitudes behind us and graduate to a
higher school of sanctity or of Christian living.
Far from it.
We have to come back over and over
again to the Beatitudes because there are various
levels of experiencing every aspect of experience referred
to there.
There are various levels in the discovery of
our own poverty.
There are various levels at which we may
mourn for our sins.
There are various levels to everything that we
have here.
The meek, we may be meek according to
degrees.
We may become more meek than we were,
and we should.
Hungering and thirsting after righteousness, this allows of
degrees, being merciful, being pure in heart, acting
as peacemakers or persecuted.
So you see, though we may have entered
into the experience envisaged here on some level,
it would seem that the Scriptures always call
us back to these basics and experience them
and move into them, as it were, into
the enjoyment and experience of them on an
ever-deepening level.
And that is primary to the kingdom of
God.
That is primary to the teaching that Jesus
gives concerning life under his rule.
And of course, I must add this, with
the development of character goes also the deepening
sense of blessedness.
Blessedness and character are integrally woven together in
the mind of our Lord Jesus Christ.
You cannot know the true blessedness of the
kingdom if you do not daily grow in
character and in God-likeness and Christ-likeness.
It is the Christ-like soul that has
the Christ-like peace and hope and joy
in all its fullness.
Now moving this way, this is how the
subjects of the kingdom are to be taught.
Moving in this way, our Lord has shown
us that we are capacitated now to become
the salt of society and the light of
the world.
That's the way the reasoning moves in chapter
5 in the early part.
When character is formed and blessedness comes to
the fore and our hearts are filled with
the knowledge of the glory of God in
the face of Jesus Christ, as Paul puts
it, now we become increasingly capable of going
out into the most dismal, unbelieving world and
there to act as salt and stop the
rot and as light to bring the knowledge
of God into the darkest place.
We are capacitated to do that insofar as
we are developing a character that is consistent
with the basics of the Beatitudes.
Now our Lord has come to a turn
in the road, as it were, and a
division, a new division, a new landmark in
the exposition of this great theme in the
Sermon on the Mount.
He now wants to proceed away from the
general towards particulars.
He aims at specifying what he meant earlier
when he said that our good works should
be seen of men and that they should
result in glorifying our Father which is in
heaven.
That was a general statement.
What does it mean in particular?
Now it is more than probable that we
are to understand the rest of the Sermon
on the Mount from 5.17 to 7
.12, over two chapters, we are to understand
this large section in the sermon as actually
telling us in detail what that means, the
kind of good works that our Lord expects
of those who have put their necks under
his yoke, who own him as Lord in
this world.
And so we begin a new section.
Before we move into the section, or rather
at the very entrance into this new section
of teaching, our Lord deals with a basic
and very fundamental issue.
How are we going to know what constitutes
good works?
Well, as far as the immediate listeners were
concerned, of course, Jesus was going to tell
them and he was going to be with
them for a while.
But our Lord could see down the centuries
and he could see you and he could
see me.
And he could see his people down to
the end of time until the great day
when he comes to gather us from the
graves to be his own and clothe us
with a new body and consummate the purpose
of history.
He could see his people floundering.
How am I going to know what's right
and wrong?
How am I going to know what is
good in the sight of God?
And so he had this dissertation with his
disciples and then later caused it to be
written down by the Holy Spirit so that
we should have no doubt at all as
to what is to rule, regulate our conduct.
What we have here is our Lord's understanding
of the scriptures then in existence.
The scriptures of the Old and New Testaments
and the place they should occupy in the
lives of his people, particularly the subjects of
his kingdom.
Jesus chooses to begin and end this large
section in the sermon with the same theme,
with a reference to the Law and the
Prophets.
If you have your New Testament before you,
you can see it.
I'll read it for you anyway.
In verse 17 Jesus says, Do not think
that I have come to abolish the Law
and the Prophets.
I have not come to abolish them but
to fulfill them.
Now that's right at the beginning.
And so you go right through chapter 5,
chapter 6 and you come to chapter 7
and you come to verse 12 and this
is what it tells you.
This is the end of this main section.
In everything, do to others what you would
have them do to you.
For this sums up the Law and the
Prophets.
In other words, the whole of the teaching
of the sermon is as it was sandwiched
between these two references, the Law and the
Prophets.
And when we realize that the term, the
Law and the Prophets, was synonymous in our
Lord's day with a reference to the whole
of the Old Testament scriptures.
Very often it includes the Psalms, it includes
every aspect of the Old Testament.
We can then understand what Jesus is saying.
Now we come to examine this very important
section then and we see two main things
here, two main divisions of the verses before
us this morning.
We can only deal with the first today
and we'll come to the second God willing
next Lord's Day morning.
The first has to do with the scriptures
as envisaged by the King himself.
And the second division, the last two verses,
the scriptures as they then apply to the
King's subjects.
Now we are not coming so much to
the application of the scriptures today to the
King's subjects, but please don't run away with
the idea that they don't apply.
They do.
You read on.
This morning we are going to consider a
more basic issue.
How did the scriptures relate to King Jesus?
How did the King of the realm himself
react to the Law of God and the
Prophets, the whole of the Old Testament scriptures?
How did he see them and how did
he react to them?
The scriptures as envisaged by the King.
Do not think that I have come to
abolish the Law of the Prophets.
I have not come to abolish them but
to fulfill them.
I tell you the truth 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.
Now I am concerned that we should get
the right perspective here.
I have stressed it already, but let me
please underline it again.
Jesus is speaking as the King here.
He is the King of the Kingdom.
Many theologians have said that He is another
Moses standing on another mount, declaring not so
much the Decalogue but all that the Decalogue
stood for and pointed forward to.
He lays down the rules for His realm,
His Kingdom.
That is true.
But I want to add to that.
He is not only standing here as Prophet
He is standing as King.
His is the authority of the King of
the realm and He lays down the rules
for His subjects.
You do not have to take them.
You may say it is too high for
me, but if you are going to be
His subject you have got to respect Him
and His laws.
You may reject Him and you may choose
your twenty or thirty pieces of silver or
you may choose the pleasures of sin for
a season.
You may choose to live outside His realm
and His Kingdom, but these are the terms
of living under His rule and He is
very clear about it.
Now this exercise of His kingly rule publicly
began, of course, at the beginning of the
course, in chapter four.
He exhibited it in chapter three that He
was Lord, that He was King.
He dealt with Satan in the wilderness.
And rather than depend upon His divine power,
you notice what He did?
I am so glad of this.
Our Lord Jesus Christ could have called all
the angels of glory to come and wrest
Him from the power of Satan and temptation.
He did not do that.
You remember what He did?
He did what I can do and what
you can do.
He used the Scriptures.
And three times over He rebutted the enemy
by saying to him, look Satan it is
written.
It is written.
And because it is written that rules my
life.
I am a king, but I am a
king under authority.
I was made king by my Father.
And as man made king of the nations,
I fight my battles by the word of
God.
Then He goes out as preacher and He
begins His public ministry.
And I want you to notice the authority
with which He declares His word.
He preached repent, for the kingdom of the
heaven is at hand.
You must get the background if you are
going to see the significance of this.
He is not only speaking to ordinary insignificant
people of the street, if any man or
woman is insignificant.
He was addressing these words to the scribes
and the Pharisees.
He was addressing these words to the intelligentsia
of the land, to the established leaders of
current religion.
And He was standing there with due authority
and with authority He was declaring to them,
you have to repent and to bring forth
fruit, meat for repentance.
See, He was speaking as the king.
And He was saying, there is no way
into my kingdom unless you come down from
your self-esteem which is too high and
learn to take your place for what you
are in my sight, sinners, lost, rebellious, wayward.
And acknowledge yourselves to be such.
And turn away from sin and come under
my rule.
The wonderful thing about it of course is
there is this kind of coverage, this reassurance
that He really has that authority.
Because alongside the authority of His word was
the power of His miracles.
This is probably why John uses the word
for miracles, the word sign.
That's usually the word in John, we translate
miracle, the miracle says John, were signs.
They indicated something, they said something.
What did they say?
Well you read, you read what had happened
at the end of Matthew chapter 4 and
you see the crowds coming from all over
the place.
And He's touching the sick and He's healing
them.
And He's uttering His word without touching them
and He's healing them.
You see the point.
He has power, power over our bodies, power
over our minds, power over demons, power over
nature, power, the first miracle He performed was
in Cana of Galilee to change water into
wine.
And as we go through the Gospels we
shall see that this power was all extensive.
You see He's the King.
Oh brothers and sisters this is our Lord.
I wish we could forget for a thousand
years that little song, gentle Jesus meek and
mild.
Look upon the little child, it makes you
sleep doesn't it?
And that's the sole concept that some of
us have of our Lord Jesus Christ.
I tell you He's the King.
He is meek and He is mild and
He is King.
Now what does He think of the Scriptures?
How does He the King of the realm
react to the law and the prophets?
First of all Jesus corrects a false impression.
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.
I have not come to abolish them but
to fulfill them.
Excuse me.
The language there is best understood on the
supposition that there was a misunderstanding abroad concerning
our Lord's precise attitude to the Old Testament
and Jesus would nip it in the bud.
He categorically denied that He had come into
this world to dishonor the law or the
prophets in any respect.
Certainly not to put them on one side,
to abrogate them or to belittle them in
any way whatsoever.
On the contrary as we shall see in
a moment He's come to fulfill them.
Now it may be asked why should anyone
think otherwise?
What possible basis could there have been for
believing that Jesus was in any kind of
conflict with the law and the prophets?
In reply we may probably legitimately say that
some of the disagreements that had arisen between
Himself and the teachers of the law up
to this point in time were being misinterpreted.
Now let me give you an example of
a disagreement let me just illustrate this and
I can only use one illustration in the
time at our disposal this morning.
Before this point in time our Lord Jesus
for example had had a real come to
with the scribes and the Pharisees concerning the
Sabbath day.
Now some people might have understood it as
meaning that Jesus was not going to honor
the Sabbath day and the Old Testament law
said that the Sabbath is the Sabbath of
the Lord our God, that God ordained it.
It is a creation ordinance.
And then again for God's redeemed people the
fourth commandment stands as something that is required
of us.
Honor the Sabbath day, sanctify the Sabbath day,
set it aside, it's got to be distinct
from all others.
Take as much of the Sabbath day with
you into the Monday and so forth.
But nevertheless it's got to be separate.
It's a different day, it's the Lord's day.
Now you remember that Jesus did not do
what the people of His day did.
He for example, and this is one of
the first things that irked the teachers of
the law and the Pharisees, He healed on
the Sabbath day.
He went into the synagogue for example in
Capernaum where He was, and here comes in
a man with an evil spirit, a demonic
spirit.
And Jesus exorcised the demon.
And they were absolutely mad.
Not because they didn't like the man or
had some animosity against the man who was
healed, but because Jesus had done it on
the Sabbath.
You see we've got to distinguish between two
things.
What the Old Testament law says about the
Sabbath, and then the multiplicity of details that
the scribes or the teachers of the law
had woven together telling the Jews of the
day how to apply the law of the
Old Testament to life.
For example, let me give you one or
two.
On the Sabbath day all work was forbidden.
Now that of course comes from the Old
Testament.
That's not scribal tradition, that's in the Word
of God.
The Jewish law was quite definite and detailed
about this.
Medical attention could only be given if life
was in danger.
If you did anything when life was not
in danger, well then you were breaking the
law, so said the scribes and the Pharisees.
A woman in childbirth might be helped on
the Sabbath, now I'm quoting from their Midrash.
An infection of the throat might be treated.
If a wall fell upon anyone, enough might
be cleared away to know whether he was
killed or whether he was not, whether he
was dead or whether he was alive.
If he was alive you could haul him
out from the rubble, if he was dead
he has to be left there until the
Sabbath is gone.
A fracture could be attended to.
Cold water might not be poured, sorry, cold
water could be poured on a sprained hand
or a foot.
A cut finger might be bandaged with a
plain bandage, but not with ointment.
Now I don't want to go any further
into this, but I hope that's enough to
give you some idea of the kind of
reasoning that had emerged, the kind of rules,
thousands of them attempting apparently to relate the
commandment of God to the demands of life.
Now what our Lord rejected was not the
commandment of the Old Testament, the law, but
what he rejected was the interpretation that men
had put upon it.
And therefore when he healed a man in
the synagogue on the Sabbath day, he insisted
that he was doing exactly what God required
of him to do on such an occasion,
on the Lord's day, as he says in
another place, my father is working hitherto even
on the Lord's day and I am working
too.
Now that is probably why this misunderstanding had
arisen.
But I want to turn from that to
the next matter.
Jesus next positively affirms his personal attitude to
the Scriptures.
I have not come to abolish them, but
to fulfill them.
This is a crucial statement.
Those who conclude that he was at loggerheads
with the law and the prophets were wrong.
He says so.
He denies it categorically.
He denies that he was at loggerheads.
He says, I did not come to abolish
Catilusae, but to fulfill Plaerosae, to fill them
out to the full, to bring them to
completion.
Now we've already noted that the law and
the prophets stood for the whole of the
Old Testament.
So this statement means that our Lord came
to fulfill the Scriptures in their totality.
At the end of his earthly life, you
remember, this proves the point I'm saying.
At the end of his earthly life, Jesus
said to the two on the road to
Emeus, quote, how foolish you are and how
slow of heart to believe all that the
prophets have spoken.
Did not the Christ have to suffer these
things and then enter his glory?
And beginning with Moses and all the prophets,
he explained to them what was said in
all the Scriptures concerning himself.
You see the point?
They couldn't see any sense to Calvary and
the death of our Lord Jesus.
Oh foolish men, he says.
It is written in all the Scriptures and
he took them through all the Scriptures to
show these things had to be fulfilled because
they were written of me.
They had to be fulfilled.
And later on that very same day, speaking
to a much larger group, including these two,
Jesus said, everything must be fulfilled that is
written about me in the law of Moses,
the prophets, and the Psalms.
There he distinguishes the Psalms from them, as
if to make it quite clear that the
people who took the Psalms as the hymn
book of the Old Testament, without having the
same kind of authority as the law and
the prophets, do see the Psalms as equally
authoritative for life.
Their teaching too has authority over us.
Now, this is a very important statement that
Jesus is making here.
I have not come to abolish, I've come
to fulfill.
And when I've gone through my life, I'll
be able to take you back and lead
you through the Scriptures and show in all
the Scriptures how the things concerning myself will
have been fulfilled.
It must be so.
Now, let me illustrate some aspects of the
rich fulfillment of the Scriptures by Jesus.
One note, perhaps, one word that ought to
be said is that Jesus does not fulfill
all the Scriptures in exactly the same way.
I just want to say that one is
aware of that and it will be reflected
in what I'm going to say now, though
I've no time to deal with it and
to indicate the real difference between the way
in which he would fulfill certain aspects and
in which he would fulfill others.
Let me give you four or five illustrations
of our Lord's fulfillment of Scripture.
First of all, Jesus fulfilled the Scriptures by
bringing to completion the revelation found in the
Old Testament.
True scholars, biblical scholars and teachers of the
Bible, have discovered that it is very rarely
that you have any strand of teaching in
the New which does not have its roots
in the Old.
Dr. F.
F.
Bruce has a book out on the development
of themes in the New Testament and he
very magnificently traces the roots of some of
the doctrines and some of the themes away
back into the Old Testament.
For example, when somebody asked Jesus, which is
the greatest commandment?
Which is the most important commandment of all?
Well, you might have expected Jesus to speak
off the chest, as it were, and specify
it without any relation to Scripture.
He didn't.
He quoted from the Old Testament.
He brought two Old Testament Scriptures together and
he says, Thou shalt love the Lord thy
God with all thy heart, with all thy
mind, with all thy soul, and with all
thy strength.
And the second is like unto it, Thou
shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
Now, they come from the Old Testament, you
see.
Why am I saying that?
Every doctrine, I believe, that we have in
full bloom in the New Testament finds its
embryonic form away back in the Old Testament.
Jesus fulfilled the Old Testament by taking the
little, the diminutive in some cases, revelation that
we have there and expanding it and enlarging
it and filling it out and bringing it
to completion in his own person or in
his own teaching or in his own dying
and resurrection.
I would just illustrate this with reference to
one particular point.
You will be able, I believe, to find
illustrations from your own experience and your own
reading of Scripture.
Take the doctrine of God.
Take the doctrine of the fatherhood of God.
Now, theologians have over the years said that
perhaps the most characteristic feature of our Lord's
teaching in the New Testament is his teaching
of the fatherhood of God.
He came into the world and he expounded
that God was Father and we could call
him Father.
And he would care for us as Father.
We'll be going into that in Matthew 6,
for example.
But all this was new, they said.
God was God.
God was creator.
God was the provider in the Old Testament,
but the Old Testament knew nothing about the
fatherhood of God.
Well, now that is not quite true.
Even in the Old Testament there are indications
of the fatherhood of God in relation to
some individuals such as Abraham, but especially in
relation to the race of Israel.
And when you come to the book of
the prophet Isaiah, he speaks of God as
Father.
And in order to enlarge the fact that
he meant also to refer to the tenderness
of God, he even speaks of God as
Mother.
He's Father and Mother.
He is all that a parent can be.
Nevertheless, all that was said in the Old
Testament was but a fragment of what emerged
when Jesus came.
He lived as a Son.
And men couldn't see what it means to
be able to trust God as Father in
living without a banking account, in facing your
enemies and every day and its exigencies, in
coming to die.
Don't forget that it was his confidence in
the fatherhood of God that kept him as
he was kept on the cross of Calvary,
so that at long last when all was
over and the pain and the anguish of
body, mind, and soul had gone as far
as it could go, the blessed Son of
God could say, Father, Father, into your hands
I commit my spirit.
See?
He could see the enemies around.
He could feel the pain.
He smarted.
He swooned.
He bled.
He died.
But there was something more real than anything
else.
He could see the Father's hands awaiting him.
And he says, Father, Father, into your hands.
And that's only illustrative.
He'd been doing that all through his life.
God was to be trusted as Father, you
see.
And if you're a child of God, you
can depend upon his fatherly care of you.
He filled out.
He fulfilled the doctrine of the fatherhood of
God, whatever, however great it is in the
Old Testament.
He made it full.
He made it open.
He made it clear.
He brought it to its completion that men
may see the glory of God the Father.
Again, Jesus came to fulfill the scriptures by
making himself subject to them, and finding in
them the pattern and principle by which to
shape his own life, even his own death,
and his ministry in life and in death.
Now if anyone anywhere, anytime, might claim exemption
from the need to be directed in life
by any objective standard, surely that would have
been Jesus.
He was the Son of God.
He was the incarnate Lord.
And you might well say, He doesn't need
the scriptures of the Old Testament to tell
him what's right.
He doesn't need the law.
He doesn't need the prophets.
He doesn't need any of these.
He can live above them.
He's the Lord.
He didn't reason like that.
Having become man, he subjected himself to the
law and to the prophets.
He found the pattern for his living and
dying in the scriptures, and he put his
feet in the footmarks laid down in scripture.
And he went on through his life and
into his death as it was written in
the scriptures.
Can you see that?
Someone has said that the most gigantic statement
of the scriptures—I don't necessarily agree with this,
but I get near to it—someone has said
the most gigantic statement in all the scriptures
is this.
It's found in Galatians chapter 4.
When the time had fully come, God sent
his Son, born of a woman—here it is—born
under the law.
Have you ever pondered that statement?
Born under the law.
You say, what does it mean?
Well, in order to explain what it means,
we've got to go a little bit behind
it.
God, the Godhead, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
The Godhead was eternally over the law.
The law is the law of God.
God made it Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
God promulgated it Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
and promulgated it for his creatures, God's creatures.
And now the eternal Son of God takes
our flesh to his deity and becomes a
man.
And lo and behold, he is not only
coming to be born of a virgin conceived
of the Holy Ghost and be born of
a woman, but he places his own neck
under the law.
And he makes himself obedient to it, and
he so organizes his life and living that
in all things, as he told John the
Baptist, I must be baptized, he says, for
it must fulfill all righteousness.
He came to fulfill the law.
He came to bow under the law.
He who was over the law, who gave
the law, because he was greater than the
law, put his neck under it.
And here are some of us who are
too proud to obey the law of God.
God have mercy on us.
If the king of the realm thus fulfills
the law and the prophets, can it be
demeaning for any of his subjects so to
do?
If the eternal Son of God could express
himself fully by placing his life under the
word of Scripture, can it be spiritually or
psychologically damaging for any of us to do
so?
Any scheme of psychology that suggests otherwise betrays
its alien origin and its ungodlike nature.
And I don't care who's in church this
morning.
If your psychology goes contrary to this, and
you tell people that obeying the law of
God can do damage to their personalities, I
tell you, you're not a man or a
woman of God.
And you read on to the next verse
and you will see what I mean.
You will be called the least in the
kingdom of God.
Jesus came to the fullness of his divine
human glory under the law in one sense.
Has one pledged to fulfill the law?
Do you think it will damage you?
Change your mind if you do.
It makes no sense.
Thirdly, Jesus fulfilled the law by accepting its
condemnation of transgressors and by offering to take
the condemnation and curse of our guilt upon
himself.
You see the point, don't you?
Jesus came to take the curse of our
sin.
Now, he didn't argue with the Father and
say, look, I'm willing to save sinners.
I'm willing to do anything to save sinners.
But, but, but, but, but, this is too
much.
The law is too stringent.
The wages of sin go too far.
To demand death, the soul that sinneth it
shall die.
That's going too far.
Did Jesus speak like that?
No, he didn't.
He didn't argue with the curse of the
law and the condemnation of the law.
He didn't argue with it at all, even
though it meant that he had to die
the death of one accursed.
He accepted its standards.
He accepted its condemnation as just.
And you see, I believe, now this is
my belief, I may be wrong.
I, I believe that when Jesus refused to
talk and say anything when he was charged
before Pilate and others, he was silent.
One reason he was silent was this.
He realized that as the one who was
coming to represent sinners, and he represented sinners
before Herod and Pontius Pilate, as the one
who was bearing the sin of the world
before them, there was a sense in which
he was guilty.
Not in his own person, not for himself,
but he bore the sins of the world,
and the sins of the world deserved a
thousand deaths.
He did not argue with the law.
He came to fulfill it, even though it
meant his death upon the cross as a
curse.
Fourthly, Jesus fulfilled the prophets by coming as
one to whom they had borne witness, however
faintly.
Yes, and with the prophets, we may say
also the types and the shadows of the
Old Testament.
The skins that God gave Adam and Eve
in the garden were pointing to something beyond
themselves, to the garment of righteousness that Isaiah
speaks of, and the justification that the Apostle
Paul speaks of.
When God's righteousness is imputed to men, and
their sins are taken away, Abel's sacrifice spoke
of a sacrifice beyond itself, so did all
the sacrifices of the Old Testament, and Jesus
came to fulfill them.
You see, without our Lord's coming, all those
Old Testament sacrifices, the types and the shadows,
would stand in history like signposts that had
misled the ages.
They had said that someone was coming to
bear away the sin of the world, to
die for sin.
And if he hadn't fulfilled them, all those
signposts would appear to say that they were
pointing to something that never happened, to someone
that never came, to something that did not
exist.
No, no, says Jesus, it cannot be that.
The Scriptures cannot be broken.
They must be fulfilled, and he came to
fulfill them, and he did so.
Can I say one other thing?
Jesus also fulfilled the Scriptures in planning to
provide such a salvation for sinners as would
transform us.
Every regenerate, every justified soul of man, every
believer, every subject of King Jesus in this
world, he would transform us to seek to
obey his law.
Indeed, the very codicil in the New Covenant,
there is a codicil in the prophetic word
relating to the New Covenant which says that
God would write his law upon the minds
and hearts of his people.
He honored the law, you see.
He came to fulfill it.
And Paul puts it like this, what the
law of the Old Testament in written form
was powerless to do in that it was
weakened by the sinful nature in us, God
did.
By sending his own Son in the likeness
of sinful man to be a sin offering.
And so he condemned sin in sinful nature
in order, now this is a point I
want to get to, in order that the
righteous requirements of the law might be fulfilled
in us.
Our Lord died and rose again and sent
the Holy Spirit into the lives of his
people.
Why?
One reason is this, that the law should
be written on our hearts and we have
a predisposition to obey.
And that we have the power of the
Spirit to obey and to obey to the
glory of God.
You see, he fulfilled the law, he honored
the law, there's no way out of it.
Now, I conclude with this.
Jesus makes a general statement therefore concerning the
permanence of the law.
He says, I tell you the truth, 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.
Now, I don't know how to get this
across in just two or three sentences.
Jesus refers to two small little spots, little
dots are their equivalent in the Hebrew alphabet.
The first is a glorified in our English
alphabet it's just a comma, upside down kind
of thing.
Nothing more than that.
And then the other is the least stroke,
or the King James Version speaks of it
as a tittle.
It's just a tiny projection that distinguishes one
letter from another.
The nearest in our English equivalent is, you
know, on a capital Q there's a little
squiggle down the bottom there, isn't there, to
distinguish it from an O.
Now, says Jesus, not the least dot or
squiggle of a pen will Sorry, that's not
good pulpit language.
But whatever it is, not the least bit
of the law will be unfulfilled, he says.
As long as earth and heaven remain, the
law stands until it is altogether fulfilled.
Let all your liberal scholars go wherever they
will.
The Lord Jesus Christ says, the law stands.
I am bewildered by some of our liberal
men and women in our colleges these days.
And I'm frightened by them, because they're going
in a way that is contrary to our
Lord Jesus Christ.
They're dishonoring my Lord.
To believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, to
believe he is the Son of God, means
this.
I must believe that he knows what he's
talking about, better than Professor so-and-so,
or Principal so-and-so.
He's better, he's bigger, he's greater, he's omniscient.
Or is he?
Now, we've got to get our categories clear.
I respect men for their positions, but I
will not allow a man to assume a
place in my thinking which belongs only to
one, the only Son of God, the incarnate
Lord of glory.
The King of the Kingdom of God says,
it stands until heaven and earth pass away.
Oh yes, heaven and earth will pass away,
and all men will pass away.
All flesh is as grass, and all the
glory of man is the glory of the
grass, and it withers and wilts beneath the
midday sun.
You know how grass withers after a little
heat, but the word of our Lord will
endure forever.
And he says, this law and the prophets
are not going to pass away.
You will have to meet their teaching in
eternity.
You will have to answer for what you
read in them when you come before God.
You will need to know the Savior that
forgives your sins, and you will need to
give proof that you have the divine life
in you that has brought you to a
point where you are, by God's grace, wanting
to honor the Father and his law as
the Son of God himself did honor.
I apologize for rushing through this this morning.
I apologize more to my Lord than even
to you.
This is one of the great statements of
the New Testament.
I urge you to go home and read
it and pray about it.
And let us remember this, that its practical
implication for the moment—we'll come back later—but its
practical implication is this.
It requires a recognition on our part, as
subjects of his rule, if we are his
subjects, that this Word of God is to
have final authority in all matters of faith
and conduct in the lives of the subjects
of the heavenly realm.
Let us pray.
O God, most high and most glorious, we
thank you for your Word, and for the
fact that it is not a dead end,
but that it always leads the humble to
yourself.
So that we were able to sing this
morning, beyond the sacred page, we seek thee,
Lord, and we have found thee.
You have been among us again today, and
we pray that, O Lord, none of us
present in this morning hour will be able
to shrug our shoulders and presume that we
have not heard your voice.
Rather, may your voice follow us and bring
us all, preacher and people alike, bring us
all increasingly under the dominion of your holy
Word.
Forgive our sins, therefore, and not only forgive
our sins and take away those things that
are as heavy weights upon our consciences, but
strengthen us in mind and heart and will
to be faithful to the heavenly vision for
the glory of your name.
Amen.