Sermon on the Mount (Part 4)

Today we'll be in Matthew chapter 5, and we'll be reading verses 17 through 20 this morning.

Matthew chapter 5, verses 17 through 20, as we continue our study of the

Sermon on the Mount. Let's begin with a word of prayer. Father, we thank you for the day that you have made.

We thank you for giving us to your Son and giving your Son to us. We thank you that he reigns from your right hand and that you have not left us orphans, but you have sent your

Holy Spirit who indwells us, intercedes for us, and comforts us.

We pray now that as we read your holy word that you would give us understanding, that you would give us encouragement, that you would shape our faith, and that you would glorify yourself in our lives.

We pray these things in the name of Jesus. Amen. Okay, Matthew chapter 5, beginning in verse 17.

Jesus says, Do not think that I came to destroy the law or the prophets.

I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. For assuredly,

I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled.

Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

For I say to you that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.

So in the first 16 verses of the sermon, Jesus defines the people of His kingdom.

Who are the promises for? Who are these commandments to? If He's a king and He has authority, over whom does

He exercise His authority? And by defining the people of His kingdom,

Jesus is thereby defining the borders of His kingdom. As you see in the Beatitudes, the first and the last

Beatitude both say, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. So the standard issue kingdom

ID is the beatified, the blessed. Here's who they are. And Jesus is beginning to showcase

His authority by definition and by command. He's already issued two commands between verses 11 and 16.

So He's beginning to tell people what to do. And of course, everybody knew He was going to do that at some point, having ascended in the place of Moses.

With all the momentum of chapters 1 through 4, obviously, there's a new sheriff in town. Somebody new is in charge, and He is not like the scribes who teach by citing

Moses all the time. He cites Himself, as we'll see in our text.

He comes with His own authority. Now, the nature of that authority and the realization that there's a big change happening demands some explanation.

Well, okay, Jesus of Nazareth, what are you going to do with Moses and the prophets?

If you're the one we should be looking to, and you're the one in charge now, you're the king of the kingdom, how are we to relate and understand the whole

Old Testament, or as they would have thought, the law, the prophets, and the writings, the

Tanakh? How do we understand the Scriptures then? These are the issues that Jesus now takes a moment to address.

And so we have the kingdom's pinnacle here in verses 17 through 20. These four verses are the interpretive key for the entirety of the

Sermon on the Mount. Now, how somebody studies and understands and interprets these four verses, if they're being consistent, determines how they interpret and understand the rest of the

Sermon on the Mount. And so we have such key terms like destroy, fulfill, pass away.

Jesus speaks of these commandments. What is He referring to? And they matter a great deal, especially when you put them into correlation with the other key theological themes in these four verses, such as the law, the prophets, heaven and earth, the kingdom of heaven, righteousness.

It's hard to compact more important ideas in a shorter amount of space, but Jesus does it. And so it's important for us to give some thought to these four verses on their own and do our best to understand what

Jesus is clarifying. What questions is He answering? What objections is He getting out in front of?

How is He smoothing the way for our understanding of the rest of the Sermon on the

Mount? We come with a presupposition that Jesus is not here confusing people.

He's clarifying things for people, right? So, the way we read this should not end up being confusing to Jesus' original audience, even though it may go against our immediate instincts.

So, the first thing that we see in verses 17 through 18 is that the old is satisfyingly fulfilled in the new.

I think we can see that just simply by looking at what Jesus says there, that the old is satisfyingly fulfilled in the new.

And we're going to spend probably the majority of our time clarifying that, without which the next two verses don't make a whole lot of sense.

But the second two verses, verses 19 and 20, the new is fully superior to the old.

Let's hold those two things in together. Let's hold those two ideas together. First of all, the old is satisfyingly fulfilled in the new, that's what

He says in verses 17 and 18, and in verses 19 and 20, He says that the new is fully superior to the old.

Now, I think that those are sentiments that accord with the rest of Jesus' teaching ministry.

I think that agrees with His parables. I think that agrees with His miracles. I think that agrees with His apostles and how they teach and the letters that they write.

And so, as we think about this newness, He is certainly representing something new.

He's talking about a blessedness. He's talking about a kingdom of heaven that is new and is different somehow, but there's something still very familiar about it all.

How can it be both new and familiar? Because Jesus is not, notice, He's not forsaking the old,

He's finishing it. He has a plan to bring about His purpose, and in the timing of His truth, it all will be established.

So His stated purpose is in verse 17. He's not unclear about what He has come to do.

Do not think that I came to destroy the law or the prophets. I do not come to destroy but to fulfill. Notice, this is

Jesus' third command of the sermon, but His first prohibition, thou shalt not think wrongly.

Okay? Do not think this. This is

His first prohibition. So He's saying there's the great potential here to think wrongly.

I don't want you to think wrongly. Don't think this. Rather, I want you to think something else. It's very helpful to get clarity to say, this is what we deny, this is what we affirm.

Many statements of faith go through that process. We deny this, we affirm this. This clarifies where we are.

Jesus is clarifying, He's not confusing. Now, given the trajectory of Matthew's gospel and Jesus' sermon, this is a great time to answer the question, okay,

Jesus, if all this is true, what about everything that has come before? What is your relationship to everything that has come before?

And you could even rephrase it to be more about personal authority. Hey, Jesus, are you overruling

Moses and the prophets? Are you saying that they were wrong?

What are you trying to do? Now, you'll remember that He got accused of this more than once, of being unbiblical.

He was accused by the religious leaders of being anti -biblical, against the

Holy Scriptures. But here, He's clarifying what He's all about. Although His coming radically affects the common interpretation of the law and the prophets, the changes that Jesus Christ constitutes are not destructive.

His changes are not destructive, they are culminating. The changes that He brings are not dismissive, they are honoring.

His changes are not rejection, they are satisfaction.

First of all, He talks about the law and the prophets. Now, when we think about the law and the prophets, we might think of the little cartoon picture on the wall of the

Sunday school classroom, where the Old Testament is divided up into the various categories of books, right?

The first five books is called the Law, especially if it's the younger class.

Here's the first five books, there's the Law, Genesis through Deuteronomy. And then what comes next on the picture on the wall in our

Sunday school classes? History! Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1 and 2

Samuel, so on and so forth, okay? There's the historical books, okay? And then what comes next?

The wisdom literature, okay? We have the wisdom literature. And then what comes next? Now we have the major prophets, then the minor prophets.

And that's the way we've been taught to divide up the books of the Bible in the Old Testament.

Now, the Jews in Jesus' day, the way He was taught in synagogue, was that the

Old Testament or the Holy Scriptures, the Holy Writings, was divided up into three types. There was the

Law, first five books of the Old Testament, often referred to as Moses, Moses, and then there were the prophets.

They included the historical books in the prophets. Samuel was a prophet, that was prophets.

The Book of Kings, 1 and 2 Kings, that was prophets. And they had former prophets and latter prophets, but they were all prophets.

And so what we would often think of historical was mostly prophets. Some of what we think of historical was put with the writings, the writings.

And the writings tended to come a little bit later, but included the Psalms, included

Proverbs, included all those types of Scripture that we would call wisdom literature.

So when you read in the Bible, sometimes we'll have citations from the

Law and the Prophets, and that means just the Old Testament. It means the Scriptures, the Holy Writings that they had as a way of summing it all up.

Sometimes Jesus would even say the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms as a way of saying the whole

Bible. Sometimes even just the word the Law was used, just Torah was used to sum up the entirety of the

Old Testament. It was shorthand for the Bible. How do we know that?

Because there are places in the New Testament where the apostles or Jesus quote something from the

Law and quote Isaiah. Oh, hang on a second. How did they... They weren't confused.

It was just a way of talking about the whole Bible. So you have to keep it in mind when

Jesus is using this shorthand describing the Scriptures. He says, do not think that I came to destroy the

Law and the Prophets. Do not think that I came to do away with holy writing. Do not think that I came to do away with the Scriptures, with what they say, what they mean, their significance.

I did not come to destroy that. Notice he talks about the

Law and the Prophets on the same level and in the same relationship. His approach to one is the same as the other.

Now, this is important because he will have people in his audience that swing with the Sadducees and others who are for the

Pharisees. Sadducees denied the authority of the Prophets on the same level as the Law, whereas the

Pharisees would accept both. Jesus relates to both in the same way. He destroys neither but fulfills both.

Would it be strange to know that people read this verse and say, well, he fulfills the

Law in one way that he doesn't fulfill the Prophets in, or he fulfills the

Prophets in a certain way but doesn't fulfill the Law in that same way. He fulfills it in a totally different way. Would you be interested to know that that's often the way that this verse is read?

But we've got nothing in the text to tell us that. Jesus is, again, not infusing complexity.

He's offering clarity. He fulfills the

Law and the Prophets. He does not destroy them. Notice he does so through his coming.

I do not think that I came to destroy the Law and the Prophets. I do not come to destroy but to fulfill.

And the whole weight of what that coming means is found in the first four chapters of Matthew. If you want to know what the significance of Christ's coming is, read the first four chapters of Matthew.

There is heavy, heavy significance. The whole idea of why Christ came is there in the first four chapters.

So Jesus is saying, I do not come as the royal Messiah. I do not come as the fulfillment of the old

Scriptures to destroy it, no, but to fulfill. Jesus' self -awareness of his own significance is seen in his encounter with John the

Baptist in chapter 3. We see his awareness of his own significance in his resistance to the temptation of Satan early in chapter 4.

We see that he knows exactly what he's doing with his gospel preaching and his miracles at the end of chapter 4.

Even his approach to the sermon was highly significant. Jesus knew what he was doing in filling out the robes of Moses by going up the mount and approaching this entire sermon in the way that he did.

Someone greater than Moses is here. Jesus comes as the

Messiah, as the seed, the son, the sovereign. He comes at all of his supremacy.

He comes announcing the kingdom of heaven. He redefines the people of God. All of it lays him open to the charge that he is denying the law and the prophets, that he's destroying the law and the prophets.

This is the grave concern of the more initiated among his audience.

Now, he says, no, I do not come to destroy. The term means to dissolve, to cause to come to nothing, to overthrow because I'm in opposition to it, right?

So he's saying, I'm not in opposition to the law and the prophets. I didn't come to dissolve them. I didn't come to overthrow them.

I'm not getting rid of them. To use a more modern term, Jesus didn't come to unhitch us from the

Old Testament, meaning we're not going to dissolve ourselves of any connection and leave it far behind while we move on.

That's exactly what Jesus says he has not come to do. We are not to find the

Old Testament done away with in Jesus, but fulfilled in Jesus. Now, this term fulfill, we know that these four verses are the interpretive key for the sermon.

The term fulfill is the key for the key. What does it mean? Well, there's some things that we need to think about.

We can look at the dictionary term. We can get out the lexical and semantic range of the term fulfill, but we also need to understand what error

Jesus seeks to correct in the minds of his hearers. He just forbade them of thinking a certain way.

And by extension, we're also thinking, Matthew, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, what error does he seek to correct in the minds of his readers, which would be the same as what

Jesus is saying. The second consideration is how has this word already been used in Matthew?

How has it been used thus far? That's going to give us an indication of how it's going to be used here. Third, we need to think about what ideas are we bringing to the text with the ideas of kingdom, law, righteousness, so on and so forth.

And then we need to check whether or not how we're reading fulfill. Is that in agreement with the rest of the context?

So, first of all, the definition of the term, it means to fill to the full. Strange that fulfill would mean to fill to the full,

I know. It means to render full, to bring to completion, to finish up in a complete way.

Now, 100 percent, because it wasn't complete, right?

So, it is, it was doing exactly what it was supposed to do in God's good design, which means get ready, right?

But of course, it can't stand on its own and be sufficient now that Christ has come, right?

He's the completion of it. Now, what's the error? Jesus is not making a contrast between destroy and fulfill out of thin air.

The trajectory of His gospel ministry is such that everyone's wondering, what in the world are you going to do with Moses and the prophets?

There is this transformative moment in redemptive history happening, and the question is, what kind of transformation is this?

So, is the error that the Old Testament should be laid aside all together, is that the error?

Is the error, you know, don't think that Jesus is changing too much now.

No, that's not the error. Jesus is not saying, He's not saying, I have not come to destroy the law, but to fully establish it.

You know, it's been read that way. When Jesus comes and He's trying to answer the question of why everything's changing, and He says,

I have not come to destroy the law and the prophets, but to fulfill it, this verse has been read by many as Jesus saying,

I have not come to destroy the law, and they just kind of leave out the prophets part, but to fully establish it as legally binding.

Now, this has been read by many in this way. For a theonomist, you can look that up later, they see it as binding now.

Everything in the law has to be followed now. Your job as Christians is law -keeping. The other reading would be the dispensationalist reading of saying,

Jesus is saying, I have come to establish the kingdom of God as the law of old covenant

Israel. I'm here to execute the laws of Israel. And because Israel didn't like Jesus and crucify

Him, God said, we'll put that plan on pause, and then we'll have a church age while we wait for the

Jews to get their act together, and then we'll come back, and then they're all going to follow the law. Okay? However, I would say that when you read the text,

Jesus is talking to those whom He expects to be fully in His kingdom, following Him, in His authority, in His interpretation of the law.

And it's not one of saying the law keeps going, but He's saying, I have come to satisfyingly fulfill it, to satisfyingly complete it.

He is making changes, but the nature of that transformation is being explained here as fulfill.

So, the idea is that the changes that Jesus brings are a result of Him fulfilling the law, filling the law to the full.

He renders the law and the prophets full and complete. He completes it with satisfying finality.

If we're going to ask what remains beyond the law, that's no mystery. It is

Jesus Himself in all of His authority. The first six times that the term fulfill is used in Matthew, Matthew chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, and now here in chapter 5 is the seventh use.

This term is used to express a prophecy fulfilled, something in the

Old Testament, something in the law and the prophets that has now come to pass and is now fulfilled. So, let me ask you something.

When a prophecy is fulfilled, what remains?

That which has come to pass. You don't then say, well, the prophecy is now destroyed.

No, it's fulfilled. It remains meaningful and rich and full of the glory of Christ because it's been fulfilled.

Just because a prophecy is fulfilled, the virgin shall be with child, doesn't mean now, oh, now it's fulfilled, now we throw it away.

No, and we're also not still waiting for the virgin to be with child. Notice, right?

The prophecy is fulfilled, so we're not still, hey, we're still waiting. It still has to be fulfilled. No, well, it says it in the future tense.

Yes, it's been fulfilled in Christ. So, we don't throw it away, and we don't think it's still being used in the same way.

Right? So, Christ has come to fulfill the law and the prophets. Now, does this work with the rest of the context?

Well, for example, you can look at Matthew 5, 18, the very next verse, that stands in reinforcing parallel to verse 17 so that we may be even more clear about what

Jesus is saying about His relationship to the law and the prophets. He says there in verse 18, "'For surely

I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled.'"

Notice the last bit of verse 18. Now, we're going to look at verse 18 in detail, but first, let's look at this last bit.

When He says, "'Till all shall be fulfilled,' He's not using the same word as He used in verse 17.

How common is this in Hebrew parallel poetry? They have two ideas right next to each other and reinforcing each other, a very

Hebrew way of thinking and teaching, to put two ideas right next to each other that reinforce one another, clarify one another."

So, what does He say here? The verb is different. It means to come into being, to all has come to pass, all has come to be.

That's what He's saying. So, the word fulfill means when everything has come to pass and come into existence as promised, as intended, as anticipated.

So, moving through the remainder of the Sermon on the Mount, especially in what's called the antitheses, you have heard it said, but I say unto you, you have heard it said, but I say unto you, we see that though there is clear contrast where Jesus is saying, hey, there's a contrast between what you have been taught and what

I am saying to you, this is not an abandonment of what they have been taught from the

Holy Scriptures, right? He's not saying, you have heard it say to you, thou shalt not kill, but I say kill all you want, right?

That would be an abandonment, okay? No, and it's also not one of remodeling.

You have heard it said, thou shalt not commit adultery, and I'll tell you what that always meant from the first place, and there is no change at all.

So, he's not saying that we're just keeping things going as normal, we just need a little bit of fresh paint and some trim work done, and you'll see it for what it always meant all the time.

He's also not saying we're getting rid of this. So, what he's saying is he's fulfilling what has come before.

So, he has a plan, and in verse 17, again, he says, do not think that I came to destroy the law of the prophets.

I did not come to destroy, but to fulfill, right? So, there is a change. He's answering how that change is coming to pass.

It is not a forsaking, it is a fulfillment. It is not an abandonment, it is a satisfying completion.

Verse 18, for assuredly, I say to you, here's his plan, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled.

Now, what did Jesus come to do? Verse 17, he came to fulfill, all right?

That's his stated purpose. I have come to fulfill. Here's my plan.

His plan is going to involve fulfillment, isn't it? Verse 18, when fulfillment occurs, what is tied to fulfillment?

The passing away of heaven and earth, and the passing away of the jots and tittles of the law.

You notice that? Now, the reason why sometimes there's confusion about what he's saying here is that some people look at the word destroy in verse 17, and they look at the word pass or pass away in verse 18, and they say, well, that means the same thing.

But it doesn't mean the same thing. Destroy has the idea of dissolving and abandonment and see you later, we don't need you anymore.

A pass away has the idea of the passage of time or a person moving a distance away, but it doesn't mean there is a destruction of the past or an elimination of the person.

It's a change of things. So, let's think about what he's saying here. First of all,

I want to talk about the totalities that Jesus deals with and then also the timing. First of all, the totalities.

Notice Jesus says in verse 18, he says, for assuredly I say to you, does anybody have something different than assuredly, truly?

Get the King James, is it verily? Verily. In the Greek, it's amen, amen, amen.

You know Jesus amens his stuff before he says it, right?

He does. He says, amen, and I'm going to tell you what I'm going to tell you. He didn't teach like the scribes did.

He taught with authority, right? He amened his stuff before he said it. I think the closest analogy that we have is that we laugh at our jokes before we tell them because we know how funny they are.

And Jesus knows how true it is that what he's saying. So, he says amen before he even says it.

Now, it's also encouraging because he doesn't do this every time he says something, but there are times when he knows this is going to be hard for us to believe.

And so, he reinforces what he says for the sake of those whom he's talking to.

And so, he says, verily, surely, truly, I say to you. Now, what's so hard to believe about verse 18?

I'll tell you what's hard to believe about verse 18 given modern presuppositions.

We would assert that the basic challenge to the faith of verse 18 comes from two vectors. One, we are challenged to believe in the perfection of every jot and tittle of Scripture.

With the battle for the inerrancy of Scripture, given the presuppositions of the Enlightenment, the great fight has been, is every jot and tittle of Scripture accurate and true and preserved and right?

That's been the great battle. Second vector, we are challenged to continue submitting to God's authority expressed in the

Bible. Do we have to keep on looking at the Bible as true and relevant, powerful and authoritative today, given the changes of our culture?

Those are the two vectors mainly upon which the battle for the Bible is fought. Instinctually, we grab at this

Scripture and say, and we bring it to the fore as ammunition for our side of saying, no, everything here is perfect and everything here is still relevant.

And both things are true, and these pastoral concerns have validity, and many

Scriptures support these ideas, not just this one. But how do you consider that those challenges were not particularly pressing to Jesus' audience?

This is not what bugged them. They weren't bugged about the inerrancy of every jot and tittle.

So, He's not saying to them truly to get them to buy into this idea. That wasn't their concern.

It wasn't their issue, original audience. They weren't wondering whether or not the authority of God was really spoken through the

Scriptures. In fact, they were a little concerned that Jesus may have forgotten that idea. Like, they're trying to figure out, well, what is your relationship to Moses and the prophets?

This was not their major concern, what they were struggling with in their faith. So, why is

He saying truly, truly? Why is He saying verily to them? The challenging notions of what

Jesus is doing in the Sermon on the Mount and saying in verses 17 and 18 has to do with Him saying, heaven and earth passes away in the fulfillment of the law and the prophets.

That's a hard sell. Well, hang on a second. So, Jesus, you're saying you didn't come to destroy but to fulfill, but when you fulfill, it coincides with the passing away of heaven and earth and the law and the prophets?

Oh, that's hard to believe, very hard to believe. And so, He says assuredly.

He says this in other places too where you come up against things that are hard to believe. He says verily, He says assuredly. Now, what in the world?

Heaven and earth. Heaven and earth, that language starts from the very beginning of Genesis, doesn't it?

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And because of the way that God made everything through His word and arranged everything, structured everything, and it's all summed up as heaven and earth, the prophets in the

Old Testament began to use the expression heaven and earth as a metaphor to speak of an ordered arrangement, an ordered adornment, to speak of a system of governance of a given particular age.

Think about the way God made everything in six days. The heavens and the earth were filled up with God's hosts, meaning sun, moon, and stars that governed the day and the night and the skies and the seasons.

Man lived according to their rhythm as man exercised their dominion over all the earth.

Time, order, adornment, system of governance established at the heart of it is mankind.

And so, heaven and earth becomes a metaphor for systems of government, the way the world works.

For example, in Isaiah 13, verses 9 through 13, everything in heaven fails and the earth melts and blows up.

And it happened when Babylon went down. So, you can read Isaiah 13 for yourself.

Walk through. The stars don't work. The sun doesn't work. The moon doesn't work. It all falls apart.

Mountains start melting. Islands hitch up their skirts and run away. The earth melts. Almost everybody is dead.

World's over. It's ended. Boom, done. And it happened centuries and centuries and centuries and centuries ago.

Already happened. And it happened several times in the Old Testament where heaven and earth failed, the world ended. Edom, Babylon, Egypt, Assyria.

This language gets used time and time and time again to talk about when an ordered governance comes to an end, when an age comes to an end.

In fact, Peter says that the world ended and the heavens and earth failed and went away in the flood.

In 2 Peter chapter 3, he says that world ended. It's gone. Boom, done. Hang on a second. This is the same planet. Because, I mean, you look at the striations in the layers and you can see all the fossils.

And this is the same earth that the flood happened on, Peter. But Peter's using the language of Old Testament prophets.

The whole way everything worked before the flood was not the way it worked after the flood. It was a brand new world, a new arrangement of things where God started making covenants with man.

Noah, Abraham, Sinai, David. It was a whole new arrangement of things.

And Peter says, likewise, we're waiting for this current heaven and earth to melt and be done away with, to burn up, because we're looking for a whole new arrangement, a whole new arrangement, a new heaven and new earth where righteousness dwells, where Christ is running things.

Now, this is especially challenging. However, this is the way the Old Testament talks about the passage from pre -covenant into the covenants, which we call the

Old Covenant, and the passage from Old Covenant to the New Covenant, the passing away of heaven and earth. And this is very consistent.

I don't have time to get into it at all today. It will be in the blog when I get to it. But I want you to study it for yourself.

I want you to read the Scriptures for yourself. I want you to study the examples time and again. So everything's going to be hyperlinked to the

Scriptures. You go look for yourself. Okay? I want you to study it on your own. But when a system of governance was overthrown, heaven and earth pass away.

Now, Jesus is saying He's come to fulfill, and in His fulfillment, heaven and earth pass away. And this is when the jots and tittles are finished.

Meaning the jots and tittles of the law. Now, He doesn't say they're destroyed. He didn't come to destroy the jots and tittles of the law, but to fulfill them.

But in His fulfillment of them, they pass away. In what way? We're not still waiting for the virgin birth.

That's not a live prophecy, is it? It's a live word from God. It's living and active, sharper than any two -edged sword.

It's true. But that prophecy has been capped off. It's done. We're not waiting around for that prophecy to be fulfilled.

In the same fashion, the jots and tittles of the law pass away in their authority.

But what's left? The same person who's left after the virgin birth prophecy is fulfilled.

Christ. His authority. And His authority is higher, greater, more full, more righteous than that of Moses.

Doesn't that make sense? That someone greater than Moses is here. Someone wiser than Solomon is here. Someone greater than the temple is here.

That's the theme of Matthew and the New Testament. So, Jesus is saying these things are going to pass away.

He's not saying, I'm getting rid of them. I'm not abandoning them. I'm fulfilling them. Now, another example that you can study for yourself is to read

Isaiah 51 and see in there the promise of the new covenant and how it is that God is pretty frustrated with the way that the

Jews are acting in Judah and Jerusalem. And He says, you know, this whole thing is going to come to an end.

And He says that in Isaiah 51 verse 6, lift up your eyes to the heavens and look on the earth beneath, heavens and earth, for the heavens will vanish away like smoke.

The earth will grow old like a garment and those who dwell in it will die in like manner. Well, that sounds bad.

I mean, if we don't have an atmosphere and we don't have dirt to stand on, we're in pretty bad shape.

No wonder everyone's going to die. But what is the prophet talking about? This is not the first time he's talked about the overthrow of a regime, the end of an era by talking about heaven and earth failing.

This is not the first time in Isaiah he said this. But he says, but, here's the promise of God, my salvation will be forever and my righteousness will not be abolished.

And if we're worried about what we're going to do without the heavens and the earth, no worry, God makes new ones. In verse 16 of the same chapter,

God says, I have put my words in your mouth, I have covered you with the shadow of my hand that I may plant the heavens, lay the foundations of the earth and say to Zion, you are my people.

So, what is he doing? The heavens and earth pass away, are going to roll up and fade away and pass away.

However, I plant the heavens. Well, planting indicates seed with a beginning and a fruitful future, right?

You plant something to see it come about. Lay the foundations of the earth as a beginning to build upon.

Now, what is the significance of all this heaven and earth speech? Well, it's hinted there at Zion, the mountain, the crossroads between heaven and earth are the mountains where the covenants were made, were always on mountains, the intersections of heaven and earth.

The tabernacle was made with the artifacts of heaven and earth, it was where God met with man.

Where do God and man meet except at an intersection between heaven and earth? And so, when Jacob has his vision and there's a ladder that stretches all the way to heaven, what does he call the place in which he slept?

Bethel, the house of God. And so, they build temples, they built the temple, the tabernacle, the house of God, where man and God meet, the intersection of heaven and earth.

And thus, the tapestries and the arts and the artifacts, the furniture, everything in the temple and the tabernacle were artifacts of heaven and earth coming together in the same place until Jesus comes and says,

I'm the intersection of heaven and earth. I'm the temple, destroy this temple and I will raise it up in three days.

And so, we look to Christ and in Christ, we are living stones and that the intersection of heaven and earth is there in Zion in the living temple because of the work of Christ.

A lot of massive implications that we only see properly by the analogy of Scripture when we look at verses 17 and 18.

However, I think it's consistent to follow it up in verses 19 and 20, the new is fully superior to the old.

Now, Jesus, having established the relationship of things and how he has come to fulfill and take things unto his own hand, says, whoever, therefore, breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven.

But whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. Now, remember, he has already defined who is in the kingdom and he's already been issuing commands.

He's about to issue a whole bunch more commands throughout the rest of the chapters of the Sermon on the Mount and his teaching ministry.

But what does he say about the commands that he issues? When he says these commands, he's not referencing the

Ten Commandments, right? Because we know that to be the case because when we read verses 17 and 18, when it says law and the prophets and then it talks about the law, this is not referencing a handful of commandments from the

Old Testament. These are referring to the entirety of the Scriptures. That was the concern. So, what commandments is he talking about?

The ones he's issuing, the ones that they're wondering, why do you have the authority to say these things?

Who are you to tell us what to do? And so, he says these commandments means the commandments that he himself issues.

Now, notice what happens in the New Covenant about your relationship to the commandments of the king and let's contrast that to how things work in the

Old Covenant and following commandments, shall we? What does he say in the text? He says, whoever therefore, and the whoever is defined as those who are in the kingdom, as you notice in verse 19, whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever doesn't teaches them, he should be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

So, the whoever is defined by those who are in the kingdom. He's talking about those who are in the kingdom. So, whoever in the kingdom, and there's a scale here.

There are those in the kingdom who don't follow my commandments and don't teach others to do so, all right?

So, they're not getting it right and there are those who are getting it right and notice that they're both in the kingdom.

Now, we're going to come back to that for a second, in a second. How'd that work in the Old Covenant? If you didn't keep the commandments in the

Old Covenant, guess what? You were out entirely. Bye -bye.

In the New Covenant, Jesus is saying, if you're getting it wrong, you'll be least in the kingdom of heaven. If you're getting it right, he's talking about those who are in the kingdom, all right?

He's not talking about those who are unsaved, unregenerate, living however they want to.

He's talking about those who belong, they have the kingdom -issued ID, they are the beatified, they're the blessed ones, but let's say they're getting some stuff wrong.

Guess what? You don't stay in the kingdom because you get it all right. But you know what?

If you honor the king and you rejoice in the king and what he has to say, and you want to encourage everybody else to do what the king says, guess what?

You'll be considered the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. But if you don't pay a lot of attention to the king and you say,

I don't really think we have to do that, and so on and so forth, if you have some problems with that, then you're going to be called least in the kingdom of heaven. Apparently, service in the kingdom is all about the king.

The more loyal, more obedient, the greater we are in the kingdom. The more blessed we are in the kingdom. Now, kingdom belonging, very clearly,

Jesus is saying, is not based upon performance, but it doesn't mean that our behavior and beliefs don't matter.

They actually matter a great deal. So, having thus clarified the big change and the importance of his authority,

Jesus now speaks about the requirement for entry into the kingdom in verse 20. Like, okay, so you're saying that if you're in the kingdom, and let's say you have all these commands there in chapter 5, you've heard it said, but I say unto you, and I don't like that thing about turning the other cheek and going the extra mile.

That's just nonsense. And this whole thing about reconciling with somebody before I go worship,

I'm not into that. I need to worship God before I could ever go talk to anybody, you know. You know,

Jesus has got some really good ideas. I'm just not ready for them. You'll be considered least in the kingdom of heaven.

But we know that God continues His work in us to sanctify us and to bring us into the image of His Son, and so sanctification is ongoing.

So, we know that we're in, but we're not staying in and getting in by performance.

So, how do we get in? So, Jesus has made this contrast between His kingdom in verse 19 and the old covenant, but how do you get in?

Verse 20. For I say to you that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.

Now, what was the righteousness of the Pharisees and scribes, essentially? How would

Paul put it? In his personal testimony in the passage

I'm going to preach today, it was working day and night, working day and night.

To put a fine point on it, if you were born a

Jew, you were in by birth, but you had to stay in by works. But again,

Jesus is talking about a kingdom that spreads to all the world and all the earth. And so, how did the Gentiles get into the old covenant?

How were they brought in? They had to do a lot of different works to become

God -fearers and then proselytes and be brought in all the way and be considered members of the old covenant.

There are a lot of things that they had to do to get in. And Jesus has just announced that you can't get in unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the

Pharisees. How is that going to work? Because He says, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.

There is no possible manner in which you can enter other than by a righteousness that exceeds that of the people you consider to be the most holy in your whole culture.

So, there has to be a righteousness which exceeds the joss and tittles of Moses.

There has to be a righteousness that exceeds because our belonging is not performance -based like scribes and Pharisees teach.

But by what righteousness can the poor in spirit and those who mourn and those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, how can they even enter?

Remember that the very IDs issued, the standard identification of who belongs to the kingdom precludes their possession of any righteous boast.

They are the poor in spirit. They're the ones who say, I've got nothing.

So, how are those who are saying, I've got nothing, going to get in when they don't have more than what the scribes and Pharisees do?

There is a predicament here. They've got to enter by the sake of righteousness, but this righteousness has to be better than what the scribes and Pharisees has.

But no fear, Emmanuel has come to save His people from their sins, Matthew 1.

The Messiah is the Son who pleases the Father. In Him, He is well -pleased.

He is the Son who stands in for the whole group, Matthew 2 and 3. Jesus Christ is the

Son who is well -pleasing to the Father, and Yeshua is the one who fulfills all righteousness.

He's already clarified that in Matthew 3. So, who are we looking for to enter into the kingdom?

The King. All right. Who gets to say who gets to be in His kingdom?

It's not hard to guess. The King gets to say who is in His kingdom, doesn't He? By whose favor, by whose merit, by whose will comes into His kingdom, is it all determined by the

King? He's already said, those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake are blessed. And then

He follows it up and says, those who are persecuted for my sake are blessed. He's already identified Himself with the righteousness that is a blessing.

So, when we look at Matthew chapter 5, verses 17 through 20, the relationship that Jesus describes is not one of forsaking the old, but of fulfilling it.

It's not one of reestablishing the old as continuing with not much difference, but one of fulfillment that satisfies it, that the whole point why it was given in the first place is found in Jesus Christ.

And indeed, as many as are the promises of God and Christ, that they are yes. That indeed, the end of the law is righteousness.

The end of the law is in Christ unto righteousness for all who believe. And that means for the

Jew, but also for the Gentile. All right. That was a lot of material.

I can't answer probably one or two questions before we close. Yes. It's a sense of culmination somehow.

The way that the Scriptures put it is from shadow to soma, so to body.

There's two things there. When Paul says, these are the shadow, but Christ is the substance, the light of God's revelation shines upon Christ, and it casts a rather zany -looking shadow throughout the entirety of the

Old Testament. But wherever the saints lay hold of that shadow, they are united to Christ in his fullness. Tracing the shadow to his feet, we find the true substance and we rejoice in him.

Additionally, yeah, yeah. Exactly.

There's a familiarity to it, but there's also fulfillment to it. Additionally, the term for Christ is the substance or the body is the same word used of light sources in the heavens that God put.

So remember that everything in the Old Covenant was run by the lunar calendar. Everything was always in shadow. When Christ has come, we're in his light.

Paul was giving us a two -for -one in that one. Anybody else? All right.

Let's close with a word of prayer. Father, we thank you so much for the day that you have given. I thank you for your word.

I thank you for the supremacy of Christ and him we rejoice. I thank you that we have such a powerful and righteous and good king for us to follow, to bow the knee to, and to obey in great love and confidence.

Thank you for his promises. We thank you for your salvation. We pray these things in Jesus' name.