Themes of the Bible: Fulfilled (Matthew 5:17)

 

Themes of the Bible: Fulfilled (Matthew 5:17)

This morning we will be in Matthew chapter 5. [And just so you know, for next week, it’ll be Matthew chapter 6.] Matthew 5 was the beginning of Jesus's Sermon on the Mount. As many of you already know, it's this big address that he gives, the largest public speech that we have a record of. And so obviously, there is a lot of gold in there, and I hope you go home and read the whole sermon and you’ll really be encouraged, but today we're just picking out parts of it. But first, let me start by sharing a letter with you that was sent to a prominent pastor. This is what the sender writes:

“I don't know if you know anybody like this that would have written something like this to you. I think most of us have someone probably in our lives that would fall into this kind of a category. So, here's where I'm coming from. I'm not a Christian, but I've decided that I like Jesus. I like his teachings, his kindness and compassion. I like that he seemed to have little use for overly religious people. I like that he was straightforward and that he didn't hesitate to blast people for not caring for the sick and the poor. And I like most of all, that he taught people not to judge. But as much as I like him. I won't become a Christian because of your God. He is totally different than Jesus and it's weird. You worship both or think they're the same. Jesus was tolerant to people with different beliefs. God had them all murdered. Jesus cared for needy people, God drowned them all in a flood. So, if you know of any religion that follows Jesus, but not God, let me know because I might be willing to sign up for that.”

Now, I don't know if there's anybody in your life that would write something similar to that, but here's what I'm hoping you pick up on, that “picking and choosing” is the Burger King approach where we take the pickles and the onions off of Jesus because they're not culturally acceptable and keep the parts we want and call it a complete picture of our Lord. We toss aside the elements of Jesus that we don't like, and instead of worshipping the biblical Jesus, we make for ourselves a God in man’s image. Did you pick up on that there? This person wrote that Jesus was loving and tolerant, and he loved people of different beliefs. Very true. But they're going to ignore the part where he said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life, nobody comes to the Father except by me” (John 14:6). In this approach, we take the elements of Jesus that we do like, and we ignore the parts that we don’t, or the parts that are uncomfortable for us to hear. In other words, we take that story of the woman caught in adultery and we really like it when Jesus says, “let he who is without sin cast the first stone” (John 8:7). We accept that part of Jesus, but we ignore the other part in the same paragraph, verse 11, where he says, “Go. From now on sin no more.” We pick the parts of Jesus we like, and we ignore the parts that we don't like, that's Burger King Christianity, or my wife informed me of a more health-conscious “salad bar” Christianity.

You see that when we take this approach, and it’s tragic because it’s not the full Jesus that we’re getting. It's not who he really is, and I think, if you are anything like me, that there are people in your lives that reflect the same attitude. “Well, that part of the gospel message is admirable, but how dare you even suggest that He’s telling me to live differently than how I want to live. . .” I’ve had those conversations, but I don't think that it surprises God. I think he knew that people would gravitate towards this kind of confusion, which is exactly why Jesus spent so much of his time stressing that he and the Father are one. Remember how John’s gospel begins? “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” This stresses that Jesus and the Father are one. Yet, you see the tendency to pit the message and the mission of Jesus somehow against the acts and the expressions and the expectations of the God of the Old Testament.

It's really not uncommon these days. If you look around, you see it everywhere. There are especially theologically progressive liberal churches that you'll see totally ignoring the Old Testament. You see it in groups like the Red-Letter Christians, which is a progressive Christian organization, that says that they're ‘not going to pay attention to all of the black letters in the Bible. We're just going to look at the red letters in the Bible.’ In case you don’t know what I mean, red letters is, in some Bible versions, the words of Jesus are in red, and then everything else is in black. They say, “we're only going to pay attention to the red letters. That's a higher Christian ethic than all of the rest of Christendom that follows the black letters too.” Well, wait a minute, what about the red letters where Jesus says that ‘all of those black letters, that's the word of God. You should obey those things, like in Mark 7:13’ Apparently, they're not totally Red-Letter Christians, because they're going to ignore those red letters. . . We're back to the pickles and the onions thing. You have New Testament only churches that never open the Old Testament. Either they are that by definition, or they're that simply by practice. This leads to massive illiteracy when it comes to what the Old Testament was and what it meant.

So, this week we’re in Matthew chapter 5, specifically, one key section of what Jesus drops here in the Sermon on the Mount, that I think God wants us to grasp and hold on to.

If you’ve got your Bible, we'll start in Matthew chapter 5. Look at verse 17. Jesus’ speaking and says, [Read Matthew 5:17-19]. Those are big words. Jesus has not come to abolish everything that happened prior to His coming. He's come to fulfill it all.

Now, understand that Jesus has just gotten done in this chapter giving the beatitudes. The beatitudes would have rocked a lot of people back then, it would have been radical, right? Blessed are the meek and blessed are the merciful and blessed are the peacemakers. In his era, just like in our era, now, those kinds of people are not the ones we gravitate towards. Our society doesn’t really esteem the meek, or the merciful, or the peacemakers. Every Thanksgiving dinner I thank God for giving us peacemakers, and I know some of you know what I mean and had dinners like that just a few days ago. But who is it that the world esteems and values? It's the rabble rousers. It's the provocative people, the ones that get on television and say things that shock us. That's who we gravitate towards. And here's Jesus speaking these words and the tendency is to look at this and say, ‘Wow, what a brand-new philosophy. We've never heard this before.’ The idea is that Jesus came on the scene late and totally changed the game. The world was going in one direction, God directed in one direction, then Jesus comes here and totally does a U-turn and sends everybody back in the other direction.

But wait a minute. I briefly mentioned John 1:1. What did John 1, verses 2 and 3 say? “He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.” Does that sound like Jesus just suddenly shows up on the scene and totally changes everything that we thought? Of course not. He didn't just come onto the scene late, he created the scene. The scene was not here without his acknowledgement. Without his involvement. He was there from the beginning. In other words, he was there from the start working through every word of the Old Testament. Jesus is involved in every sacrifice, every festival, every ceremony. Every single event of the Old Testament, Jesus is present for, and he is involved in, and he is working through. He and the Father are one. They were together at the beginning through all of that. Every page of the Old Testament, it all points to one person. It's all pointing to Jesus, and that's what Jesus is stressing in Matthew 5. In essence, he's saying, ‘nothing I'm saying now makes what was said before irrelevant. Don't misunderstand what I'm doing here. I'm not replacing what was there. I'm helping you understand what it means, because a lot of you don't get it.’ Every law, every sacrifice, every ceremony, every event of the Old Testament, all of those things that we scratch our heads and say, ‘why in the world did they do that? Why couldn't they eat shellfish? Why were they supposed to offer this sacrifice and then they turn around on Tuesdays and offer this sacrifice over here?’ Every law, what Jesus is saying, all of them, all of that is predictive. You will think that the law is just a bunch of rules to follow, but He’s telling us that every law that was written was a prediction of what was coming. The Messiah, God with Us. That's what Jesus is getting across here. All of those Old Testament words in the law and all of that other stuff, the regulations, all of those words have become the word. It's all encompassed and embodied in the person and work of Jesus Christ. It's what John 1 meant when he wrote that, “the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth” (Verse 14).

All the words of God in the Old Testament are embodied in Jesus of Nazareth, as the written word became the incarnate word. What that means is a couple things. Jesus is saying all of the Messianic prophecies, going back to Genesis 3:15, the protoevangelium, the very first messianic prophecy moving forward, hundreds of them in the Old Testament, they are all either fulfilled now in Jesus’s first coming, or they will be fulfilled in his second coming. All the way back to Genesis 3:15. That very first one, that the Messiah would be born of woman. To all of those people who heard and read this before the first Advent of Christ, that would have made no sense. People were born of man's seed, not woman’s seed. People were born of man via woman. It’s even in the name ‘Son of man.’ That's the way we understood it, and yet, Scripture says that the Messiah is going to be born of woman, and then Jesus comes along in the New Testament and he's born not of a man, he's born of a virgin woman, fulfilling that prophecy, and of course the rest of that prophecy would be fulfilled on the cross and through the empty tomb. The fact that the Messiah would come through Abraham’s lineage and then they whittle it down to Jacob and Judah and David, and that he would be born in Bethlehem. Jesus is saying, ‘I'm fulfilling all of these’ and then the day of His crucifixion 29 prophecies are fulfilled. They were written thousands of years before Jesus shows up on the earth, and in one day, he fulfills 29 of those Messianic prophecies.

Even so, I think what Jesus is talking about here in verse 17 has more to do with the shadows of the Old Testament. This is what I really wanted to bring out with this passage is the shadows of the Old Testament, where it's not perfectly clear. When a prophet says, ‘hey, the Messiah will be here, and he'll be born in Bethlehem’ it's pretty obvious that is a prediction of what is to come. But a law? Well, that isn't necessarily as clear that it's predicting something. So, what you have to intentionally look for when you're reading the Old Testament is, where is Jesus in this passage? Where is the gospel message in this passage? What does this mean as far as the way God is going to save people? The inadequate sacrifices of the Old Testament? Yeah, they had to keep offering them over and over and over every week, come back with a new sacrifice every month, a different grain offering, etc. The abusive shepherds that were taking advantage of people, the corrupt kings that would take people's property for their own. Every page of the Old Testament, you're sitting, you're saying, ‘wait a minute, these people, they're supposed to be godly people and look what they're doing!’ Right! That's what you're supposed to be paying attention to. Because all of these things are begging for fulfillment. The inadequate sacrifices of the Old Testament, you sit there and say, ‘how do these people keep all of the sacrifices straight when they're supposed to offer and who's supposed to offer?’ What is that begging for? It is begging for a once-and-for-all perfect sacrifice that will take care of all of this. Do you not see that in the New Testament? This is what Jesus is saying, ‘It's all fulfilled in me.’ The abusive shepherds that Ezekiel writes about, the way the abusive shepherds were acting in Israel. What is it begging for? It's begging for the Good Shepherd who will take care of his flock. Do you not see that reflected in Jesus Christ? The corrupt kings, and even the godly ones, who take advantage of people, fall into sin, worship pagan idols. What is it begging for? It's begging for a righteous and just and perfect King of Kings. Every page of the Old Testament is begging for fulfillment. That's what Jesus is saying in Matthew 5:17. That one of the primary reasons he came as a little baby in a manger was to be all this and so much more for us in fulfilling every word and letter of the Old Testament.  

Just some quick examples, Genesis chapter 12, where Abram is told by God, ‘leave your home, walk away from what is comfortable for you, follow me, it will be dangerous sometimes, but if you do, you will be blessed in the end.’ Does that sound familiar? Like in the New Testament, someone calling us to leave the land of sin that we're used to, follow me even though it won't always be easy, but if you do, you will have a rich reward and enter the Promised Land. Do you not see the way it is reflected in the New Testament? It gives me chills. The Bible was written in three different languages, dozens of authors, 2000 years separating the authors, and they’re writing the shadows in the Old Testament that are perfectly fulfilled in the New Testament.

Genesis 22. What do you have in Genesis 22? Abraham being told to take his miraculously born, pre-named, only begotten son and sacrifice him on a hill, and by the way, the one that is to be sacrificed has to carry his own wood up the hill for the sacrifice. And then when he gets there, what does Abraham find? Abraham finds that obedience towards God is rewarded with what? What was in the thicket? A substitute, for a substitutionary death. It’s the perfect shadow, the perfect New Testament embodiment of the person and work of Jesus Christ.

We could do this with every page of the Old Testament, or what Jesus refers to as the Law and the Prophets. Over and over. You see in Esther chapter 4 an unlikely savior for her people. Is there an unlikely savior that comes along from a backwater town? ‘Nothing good comes from Nazareth,’ Nathaniel said in John 1:46. Psalm 23, a shepherd brings peace to the flock. Psalm 51, undeserved mercy, and undeserved favor. Isaiah 53, there will be a suffering servant who will be wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities and by his scourging will be healed. Anything in the New Testament that seems to be the fulfillment of that powerful prophetic promise?

See, every page of the Old Testament is pointing towards someone. This is exactly what Jesus will say to the people of his day. ‘You studied the Scriptures diligently, all of you teachers to the law, all your people who go to Sunday school. You're studying those scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. But these are the very Scriptures that testify about me (John 5:39). How are you missing this? How do you not see me when you're reading the story of Abraham and Isaac? How do you not see me when you're seeing Jonah three days metaphorically “dead” under the sea in the belly of a fish?’ It's all about Jesus. That's what this entire story is about. It's all about Jesus, meaning if you want to understand what the story of the Bible is about, you can’t read it like Aesop's Fables. You can’t read Scripture like a little moral instruction book and keep out the things that you don't like because you don’t like them. But if you want to understand the meaning of all of this, every page of it is unlocked by the death and the burial and the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Now look at verse 18. We just now got through the first verse. . .  Verse 18, “For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished.” Jesus says that everything is going to be accomplished. Isn’t that a powerful statement? You’ve got God as the master chess player always 50,000 moves ahead of everyone else. Over and over, Satan is trying to outsmart him, over and over man's trying to find his own way around God's will, and it always looks like it's going to happen. I mean, Haman thinks he's got him, in the book of Esther. And then God uses Esther to save his people. Who saw that coming? And Jonah, how proud Satan must have been of himself. God wanted the people of Nineveh to repent. So, he told his prophet to go and tell them of their need to repent, but his prophet is in rebellion. So not only are the people of Nineveh going to perish, but his prophet is going to perish in a storm. It looks like the whole thing has fallen apart. Satan's probably loving it, and then what happens? God uses Jonah's rebellion to lead the sailors on a ship, a bunch of pagan sailors to faith in him. Jonah gets swallowed up by a fish, has a change of heart, is belched out on the land, then goes to Nineveh preaches repentance, and they all repent. Every time Satan tries to pull this off, he gets devastated, nobody can thwart God's will. That's what Jesus is saying in verse 18. Satan has been trying this for thousands of years, and he's failed miserably and terribly and awfully every single time and you're not going to thwart the will of God.

All the people that will live their life in rebellion to God, people who say, ‘well, I'm going to do things my way. I'm going to be God in my own little universe. Nobody can tell me what to do. I'm not going to look at a book that’s 4000 years old and follow its rules. That's silly. I'm going to do my own thing.’ That may be your choice, but I guarantee you that God is working through your rebellion. To bring others into obedience to Christ, and he's letting you make that choice. But in the end, he will accomplish all that he has set out to accomplish; he will be glorified, his people will be saved, and his promises will be kept. Which is why I look at this and say, ‘I want to be on that team. I don't care what men may say about me. I don't care how silly people think that I am. I don't care how obvious it seems that the ways of the world are winning. Put me on God's side because it's all going to end up the way it needs to end up.’

That is the message of Scripture and is what Jesus is saying in verse 18. And why he warns in verse 19, look at this, “Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.” Jesus is warning people who would say things like, ‘oh, well, the Law and the Prophets don't matter anymore. We don't need those things anymore. We got Jesus, all that Old Testament stuff is outdated. It's archaic. It's not necessary or relevant anymore.’ The lesson of this passage, the testimony of Jesus himself, is that all of it is very relevant. It's relevant because it's pointing to him. And that's what you and I are to see. Don't say that you're following Jesus if you're diminishing or disregarding the fullness of Scripture. You're not following Jesus if you do that. Why? Because you're diminishing the work of Jesus. Because if you eliminate the plot of the story, then you're diminishing the greatness of the climax of that story.

If you think of any epic story that we all know, like an epic movie in our day, and you eliminate all the details of the plot, and you just sum it up with one central line, you've kind of undermined the whole swing and thing haven't you? Don't believe me? Let's try this. ‘A guy thinks he's alone in the forest and kisses a young woman whom he believes to be dead while seven short miners watch.’ Anybody know what that is? Okay, that's the story of Snow White, but I've eliminated the plot. I've eliminated all of the details. It kind of takes away from the greatness of the story, wouldn’t you think? I've got two more for you. ‘A guy who wants to be a pilot lets a talking frog-like alien convince him to kill his own dad, and he’s friends with robots.’ Anyone? My fellow nerds know this one, obviously, that is Star Wars right. The last one is one of the greatest tragedies in American history. One of the most horrific events and scandalous things that have ever occurred. ‘A rich girl let's a poor man freeze to death because the weather report was ignored.’ What is it? [pause. . .] Titanic. Look, you and I both know, if you saw that movie, that there was plenty of room on that door for Jack. It is one of the greatest scandals in American cinematic history.

Anyway, my point is that the plot matters. God would not have given us the Old Testament and preserved it for us if it didn't matter. Now, really quickly as we finish up, look at verse 20. Because this is the one that would have shocked people then, “For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.” People would have dropped their jaws at that line and why? Because those were the religious people of the day. These Pharisees knew the law, they memorize the law, and they publicly follow that law, but Jesus is teaching that there's more to it than this. You understand the law. I'm fulfilling that and teaching you that there's more to it than just checking the boxes of the law. He fulfills it by showing us that this is about more than just outward actions. You remember what Jesus said about murder, in the next verse? Verse 21-22, [Read Matthew 5:21-22]. Yeah, you've seen that it's written you shouldn't kill somebody. Of course, you shouldn't kill somebody. But I tell you what, don't even be angry with them in your heart, that anger and that hatred, that's what's leading you to these types of actions. It's your inward self that I'm looking at. That's the fulfillment of the law. This is the new way of living that I'm trying to teach you. It's much more about inward thoughts and inward attitudes than the technical legal letter of the law.

Let me remind you in case you forgot, in the book of Amos, what does God think about outward expressions of faith that are inwardly dead? This is what the Prophet said in relaying God’s words, Amos 5:21-24, “I hate, I reject your festivals, nor do I delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer up to Me burnt offerings and your grain offerings, I will not accept them; and I will not even look at the peace offerings of your fatlings. Take away from Me the noise of your songs; I will not even listen to the sound of your harps. But [instead] let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”

 He has stressed over and over that the mere outward appearance of faith disgusts him. The outward experience and appearance of obedience is not what he wants. In verse 20, Jesus is saying you must have heart level obedience, surrendering your heart to Him. That's what makes you more righteous than the Pharisees, and that's what he's called us to.

 

And where does that begin? Well, for those of you that don't have Christ, it begins right here and right now, with you understanding that this isn't about perfecting yourself before you come to Jesus. No, it's acknowledging you are not the way you need to be, and you want Jesus to fix you. You come to him so he can begin to work on you and give you new life. That's what it's about. Your inward heart will follow when it's been surrendered to the Master of the Universe. If you haven't made that decision. Why wait?

Let’s pray.