Jesus Fulfills the Law
We are now three weeks into our look at Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. For those of you who are new this week, we have been discussing a fictitious wager between Satan and God that no man can live out the Sermon on the Mount in today’s world. This idea is from the movie The Wager with Randy Travis. But in order for us to decide for ourselves if we can live out the Sermon on the Mount, we need to know what Jesus preached on.
Here are a few facts about the Sermon on the Mount before we get too deep into the discussion. First the “mount” was just a good sized hill. It was not a mountain. There was a large gathering of people around Jesus and it would have been wise of Him to teach from the hill: logistically, acoustically, and symbolically. Logistically, it would prevent the people from crushing Him. Acoustically, He was able to preach more effectively to a larger crowd. It is not known from which hill Jesus preached from, but scholars agree that it was probably near the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee near the town of Capernaum Mount Sinai . The sermon, which was a collection of what Matthew and Luke recorded and should not be thought of as a word for word transcription, covers three chapters, 109 verses, and used over 2,400 words.
Two weeks ago we discussed the “Beatitudes” which is a ten dollar word that means extremely blessed. These were the teachings Jesus gave us to show us how we can be extremely blessed. Last week we discussed what it meant to be the salt and the light of the world, and what that would look like in our schools. Today we are going to discuss Jesus being the fulfillment of the law.
Matt 5:17-20 “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. 18I 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. 19Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20For 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.”
There are two key words in this passage: abolish and fulfill. Jesus sets these two words up in opposition of each other. Abolish comes from the Greek word Kataluo which means “to loosen down” and was used to describe both the destruction of the Temple
The irony is that Jesus was constantly hounded by the religious leaders of the day for breaking the law. Jesus was accused of: healing on the Sabbath, picking grain on the Sabbath, not washing His hands before He ate, eating with ceremonially unclean people/ sinners, touching a man with leprosy, and forgiving sins/ blasphemy.
Jesus said, “I did not come as an enemy of the law. I came as a friend of the law.” When we say “law” what do we mean? All laws? Speed limits? No Trespassing? The law refers to the first five books of the Bible, aka The Torah, aka The Pentateuch, aka, The Books of Moses. But more specifically it refers to the Ten Commandments. But the Jews, desperately not wanting to break the Ten Commandments set up other laws to be a barrier around them to protect themselves. For example: Let’s say your mom tells you not to be around Old Man Johnson. That’s the law. So to make sure you don’t break that law you won’t even go on his block. That would be one of the protective barriers to protect you from breaking the law. Over time, the Jews literally had thousands of these protective barrier rules to protect them. And as time progressed, there emerged groups of people called the Pharisees and the Scribes who built their entire lives around these laws--not breaking them, making new ones, teaching them to others, and of course looking down on those who didn’t keep them.
Law Illustration
It all started in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve sinned by disobeying God’s only law, “Don’t eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” Before that God walked with Adam in the garden in the cool of the evening. After they sinned, they were separated from God. A perfect and holy God cannot be in the presence of sin. As our sin nature was passed down from generation to generation, God designed a plan that would redeem man to Himself. Contrary to popular belief, the Ten Commandments was never set up as a way for a person to go to heaven. If you ask random people on the streets how a person gets to heaven, most would answer that you have to be good enough. Then if you ask the follow up question, “How do you know what’s good enough?” They will answer something about keeping the Ten Commandments.
Even if we were capable of keeping the Ten Commandments perfectly from this point on, all of our sins up to this point would keep us out of heaven. And even if we were able to remain sin free up to this point and all the way to our death, the sin nature we inherited from our parents would keep us out of heaven. The only thing the Ten Commandments do for us is to show us just how bad off we are, and how much we need a savior.
Out of all of the evangelism tools there are in the world there is only one that the Bible says is perfect in converting lost souls. Wouldn’t you like to know what it is? It is the law. Psalm 19:7 “The law is perfect, converting the soul.”
Let’s take a closer look at the Ten Commandments to see why that is.
1. You shall have no other god before me.
This one may seem like an easy one because in our culture we don’t worship idols, and we don’t have thousands of gods like the Hindus. But what we do have is sports teams and sports stars, and celebrities. We have TV, Ipods, Ipads, and DVR’s. We have Facebook, Myspace and Youtube. How many of you initiated a conversation about a sports team or a game in the past week? How many of you initiated a conversation about Jesus Christ this past week? How many of you spent at least 3 hours watching television, a sporting event, or messing around on Facebook, Myspace, or Youtube? How many of you have read one whole chapter in the Bible this past week?
We may not feel like we are worshiping these things but we are definitely putting them before God. If you are not spending time alone with God, you are spending it with whatever has become more important to you. What if you made a rule—one for one. One hour of TV= one hour of Bible study/ prayer. Would your life be different?
2. You shall not make any graven images of God
God chose to be image-less except for His time here on earth. Any image of Him would be a misrepresentation of Him and, therefore, a sin. We might think we are in the clear again here, but have you ever said, or heard anyone say anything like, “A loving God wouldn’t send so and so to hell…” or “The God I serve won’t allow innocent people to….” Isn’t this making God into something He’s not? Or isn’t it trying to make God into a God we can feel more comfortable with? The truth is bad things happen to good and innocent people all the time. God is still the same God as He always has been and always will be whether we feel comfortable with Him or not.
3. You shall not take the Lord’s name in vain
The name of the Lord is a special thing, so special rabbinical Jews will not even spell it. They write G*D in English. They won’t pronounce the name. Both of these rules are some barrier rules that we spoke of earlier. They were so concerned of misusing His name that they eliminated it completely. But in our culture, we seemingly have no problem saying GD this, GD that, or replacing a four letter word with the name of our precious savior and the one that gave us life. Or let’s say you’ve never uttered His name as a cuss word in your life. Have you ever prayed a prayer that sounds like, “O Jesus, be with Bill, Jesus, because, Jesus, he really needs you, Jesus. And Father, heavenly Father, be with my mom, Father, O loving Father….” If anyone had a conversation like that to me, “Hey Adam, can you, Adam, meet me at 7:00, Adam. O Adam, sweet Adam, if you could Adam, bring your truck, Adam, I need, Adam, to move a couch, Adam,” I would punch them in the face.
The Lord’s name is precious and we shouldn’t treat it like it was a cuss word, or punctuation marks in our prayers.
We’ve made it through 3. How are you doing? Don’t worry. It gets worse.
4. Keep the Sabbath day holy.
I’m not a big Saturday vs. Sunday guy. If you want to worship on Saturday because the Jews did, that’s fine. If you want to worship on Sunday because that’s the day Jesus rose from the dead, that’s fine, too. But you ought to keep that day sacred. Have you ever done any work on the day set apart for worship? There’s a Little House on the Prairie episode where Charles is overly tired, sleeps in and misses church. He then wakes up and plows the field. His wife Caroline comes home and finds him in the field and tears him up for it.
5. Honor your mom and dad.
Do you do everything your parents expect of you without them having to ask you…over and over and over again? Do you honor them with the clothes you wear? With the friends you hang out with? With the grades you make at school? With the way you treat other people?
6. Don’t murder.
This one is easy until we get to next week’s lesson. Jesus said if you hate another person you already committed murder in your heart. And then there’s abortion. Remember what Horton said, “A person is a person no matter how small.”
7. Don’t commit adultery.
Is pre-marital sex adultery? What if you are absolutely sure you are going to get married? What if you are marrying the person the next day? Sex with anyone you are not married to is adultery. You might say, “I’m cool with this one. I’m a virgin.” Again Jesus upped the ante on this one when He said, “If you have looked at a woman with lust, you have already committed adultery in your heart.” Have you ever looked at a man or woman with less than pure motives?
8. Don’t Steal
Everybody at some point has taken something that doesn’t belong to them. Or when you are at work and you get paid by the hour, but don’t stay 100% productive at all times. That is stealing from your employer who is paying you to work.
9. Don’t Lie
Everybody has told a lie at some point in their life. If you haven’t you’re lying.
10. Don’t covet your neighbor’s stuff
Have you ever wanted something your neighbor has and it caused you to be angry or resentful towards them? Or did it cause you to think less of the things you already have? You can want the things your neighbor has without it being a sin. For example a kid at school gets a new CD and you get a chance to listen to it and you liked it. You decide you’d like to have it to. So the next time you’re at the store you buy a copy of it. Here’s an example of where it could turn into sin. A girl at school gets a new pair of jeans. You just bought a new pair last week, but these are better than yours. You start mumbling things under your breath about that person’s character. You beg your mom for an advance on your allowance. She doesn’t give it to you. So you steal money to go buy the new pair of jeans.
If we were in a court of law and God was here as the judge, based on the Ten Commandments, would you be found innocent or guilty? So would you go to heaven or would we go to hell? Every one of us has broken every one of the commandments. Just being sorry about it and swearing we will never do it again won’t get us off the hook. A rapist and murderer who swears he won’t do it again would still go to jail. We wouldn’t let him go free would we? No there must be punishment.
That’s where Jesus comes in. In order for man to be made right with God, there needed to be a perfect sacrifice. And bulls and lambs weren’t cutting it. It had to be something that had experienced all of the temptation we have experienced and still overcame and remained sin free. Jesus was the fulfillment of the law because He satisfied the law’s requirements. And when Jesus died on the cross for our sins, He became that perfect sacrifice that satisfied the wrath of God.
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