The Law & the Prophets

SERMON: 2007-02-18--sm0715--the-law-the-prophets-part-1 SOURCE DURATION: 00:38:01.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 0.98 APPROVED: false REASON: The sermon content concludes with candidate 5, which discusses the fulfillment of the law in Christ. Candidate 6 marks a clear transition into musical material (a hymn), signaling the end of the spoken sermon. Acoustic segmentation found sustained music at the end edge and moved the boundary to the adjacent transcript segment. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: 00:34:32.220-00:37:54.980 ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: yes ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: end Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- Now, if you've been coming to this church for any length of time or otherwise been exposed to some of my teaching and preaching over the months and years, then you will probably have noticed that I put a lot of emphasis on living out our faith in practical daily living. It's not enough just to believe that there is a God or that Jesus died on the cross for our sins somewhere along the line that has to translate itself into a changed and a transformed life. And I was reminded of that again two weeks ago when I was doing the service over at Coburg. One of the men came to me after the service and he said some nice things about what I had shared and he went on to mention that he was struck by how practical it was and how often he missed that in the teaching and the preaching that he was exposed to. Well, I hasten to assure him that not everybody is equally enthused about practical preaching that lays bare what is in your heart, but it sort of enabled my thinking to follow a train of thought that had started previously a few days earlier as I had been working on this particular message and I asked myself the question, "Why do I do what I do?" It's a good question to ask sometimes. Why the emphasis on transformed and changed lives? And it occurred to me there are really two biblical reasons for doing that. The first is that's how Paul writes his letters. You don't know if you've ever sat down and looked carefully at how Paul puts the general epistles that he writes to the churches together, but they almost all follow a similar pattern. He begins in almost every letter with an exposition of a theological truth, who God is, who Christ is, who in Christ we are. And then once he has established a theological basis of that reality, then he makes a switch, usually accompanied by the word "therefore." And then he turns towards practical Christian living and he says, "In light of all that I have just presented you, in light of who God is, in light of who Christ is, in light of who you are in Christ, now therefore, this means that for practical Christian living." Take for example the book of Ephesians. Paul starts off in chapter one by this marvelous theological truth that it's God's purpose in Christ to unite all things in heaven and on earth. Then in chapter two he talks about how God in Christ has removed the dividing wall between Greek and Gentile. Then in chapter three he talks about the incredible riches of God through the Holy Spirit who makes all of his real inner lives in practical daily experience. And then when he gets to chapter four, he drives the point home and he says, "I therefore as a prisoner for the Lord urge you to live a life worthy of the calling that you have received." And in all the rest of the book then, he talks about the practical outworking of faith in life and in relationship. Same thing in the book of Romans. The book of Romans begins with an exposition of our sinful status before God and how both Jew and Gentile are equally guilty before God because all have sinned and fallen short of his glory. How nobody can be saved and justified by the law. How all of us are saved through faith in Jesus. And how already Abraham in the Old Testament was a man who lived by faith and not by law. Then he carries on in that vein covering a number of topics until you get to chapter twelve and there again he drives the point home. "Therefore, I urge you brothers in view of God's mercy to offer your bodies as living sacrifices holy and pleasing to God. This is your spiritual act of worship." "Faith without works," said James many years ago, "is dead." And Paul models the reality of that in the way that he structures his letters. That's one reason but there's an even more important reason I think and that is this. It is what Jesus commands us to do. For note again how he puts it here in Matthew chapter five. "Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called," what? "Least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven." Now I don't know about you. There certainly was a day when I was a lot younger that I wanted to be great in the world and I must confess that every so often that reasserts itself. But mostly I think I've died to it and I trust that you have too. But to be great in the kingdom is something else altogether, isn't it? Worldly greatness is temporary, it passes away. You can be at the top of your game today but tomorrow nobody will remember you. But to be great in the kingdom of God is to have God's favor, God's approval, God's intimacy, God's blessing, God's glory. And that is glory that lasts forever. So here's the big question. How do you become great in the kingdom? How do you become great in the kingdom? Well Jesus in this passage tells us it is by keeping the commandments of God and teaching others to do the same. For notice again how he puts it, "Anyone 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. However practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven." In other words our status in the kingdom is determined by our heart for obedience. Grace and law in Christian circles are often placed in opposition to each other and the argument goes something like this. Under the old covenant God gave his people the law and nobody could keep it and so God in his grace sent the Lord Jesus to live our life and to die our death and when by faith we belong to him he forgives us all our sins and then some people will go a step further and say keeping the law is no longer important now because as Paul puts it in the New Testament we're no longer under law but we're under grace. And there's room there to wiggle as if the demands of the new covenant are less than the demands of the old covenant and that is a problem that is inherent in the teaching of grace. Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones used to say if people never walk away from your sermons wanting to interpret grace as licentiousness then you haven't ever really preached grace. Paul ran into the same problem when he says shall we sin then in the book of Romans that grace may abound if my sin gives glory to God why not sin. Well interestingly enough it is the same charge that was already laid against Jesus at the beginning of his ministry because you'll recall that Jesus when he appeared came onto the scene at a time when Israel's religious life was carefully controlled by a studious interpretation of the law led by the scribes and by the Pharisees. If Israel's besetting sin prior to the Babylonian captivity was to break the commandments and to drift away from God their besetting sin after the Babylonian captivity was to make sure they never broke the law and they became extremely legalistic. Their religious leaders determined there were 613 commandments in the Old Testament that God had wanted his people to keep and so afraid were they of breaking those commandments that on top of those 613 commandments they created legions of others to make sure they never crossed the line. And so it wasn't good enough just to wash your hands as part of ceremonial cleansing no they told you exactly how long and in what way to wash your hands. Wasn't good enough not to travel on the Sabbath they determined exactly how far you could travel and at one point your travel became work and on and on it went and it became a yoke that was extremely heavy to bear because you were always looking over your shoulder saying to yourself I wonder if I'm doing it right and is God mad at me now because I've fallen short. The law always condemns. So long comes Jesus and Jesus of course comes to teach the spirit behind the law as opposed to the letter of the law and he is more concerned about people's hearts being right before God and their hearts being right in relationship to each other than he is about the letter of the law and so in his teaching and in his practice he goes out of the way to expose the hypocrisy of the religious teachers of his day. And so he deliberately heals people on the Sabbath which really gives them a conniption because how can you say that you are a prophet of God and you're not keeping the commandment to keep the Sabbath and when his disciples walk through the field on the Sabbath and they you know they grab some of the grain and they eat it as food they're absolutely scandalized and when they refuse to when they don't wash their hands prior to sitting down and having a meal well they are just beside themselves and so it didn't take very long for Jesus to get a reputation of being a theological liberal. Here is a man who doesn't take seriously the commandments of God and is teaching you to live a you know an undisciplined and a carefree life. Now that's the context in which this passage occurs and it's in that context where Jesus speaks these words then, "Do not think that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets, I have come not 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." Jesus says you look at me and you listen to me and you think that I'm a libertarian that I have come to break the law and to introduce a way of life that somehow falls far short of the standards that God has established in the Old Testament and he says you got it all wrong under the new covenant the standard isn't lower the standard is higher unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees you will he says by no means by no means enter the kingdom of God. Grace and law are not in opposition to each other grace fulfills the law I have come he says not to abolish the law or the prophets I have come not to abolish them but to fulfill them in the time that remains this morning and Lord willing in subsequent messages let's start taking a look at what it means that Jesus comes not to abolish the law or the prophets but that instead he has come to fulfill them first of all what are the law and the prophets but God's revelation of himself as given to the people of Israel in the Old Testament and the law is God's will as revealed to us in the Old Testament particularly in connection with God's covenant at Mount Sinai. So recall God delivers the people of Israel out of Egypt leads them into the wilderness brings them to Mount Sinai and there at Mount Sinai he enters into covenant with them the closest thing that we have to that as you've heard me say many times is marriage he says I will be your God you will be my people but because I'm a holy God and you're a sinful people these are the terms under which we're going to get together and he gives them the law which says do this and you will live break this and we can't be with each other. Now the law is revealed at Mount Sinai and listen to this carefully because it is critical has three distinct components gets a little tricky stick with it if you can it'll pay rich dividends the first is what's known as the ceremonial law and the ceremonial law refers to all the rituals and rules that God established at Mount Sinai to govern Israel's worship of the Lord remember the big issue is here is a holy God who's going to live in the midst of an unholy people how can he keep from destroying them well he sets out a whole system of worship that enables the two of them to get along it all focuses on the tabernacle and tabernacle worship it includes the whole sacrificial system and the whole Levitical priesthood all you have to do is read a book like Leviticus and I understand David has been talking about that here the last two Sunday mornings all you have to do is read passages in the Old Testament and you get a picture there of that whole sacrificial ceremonial system by which God and his people were able to get along with each other and if you look at that carefully you will discover that whole ceremonial system for Israel really had two functions besides being able to get along with each other and the first is to teach Israel the reality of sin if ever you want to try to figure out whether a religion or a system of teaching or a system of philosophy is based on truth then always begin by asking yourself the question what is its teaching on sin there are many people today who teach that the human race is inherently good and as long as you think that you are inherently good you never need a savior the biblical teaching is quite the opposite it says all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God and as Jesus points out later on in the Sermon on the Mount the only difference between you know a murderer who goes out and slaughter somebody's life and somebody who wishes his enemy dead is one of degree not of kind and it is all equally sinful before God and so every time these Israelites came to worship God at the temple and they had a drag along a calf or a sheep or a goat every time the priests lay their hands on you know the scapegoat that gets sent off into the wilderness and the other one who got slaughtered in his blood gut sprinkled they were constantly reminded this God we're dealing with is incredibly holy he cannot and will not stand my sinfulness and my sinfulness needs to be addressed by need by by means of a substitutionary atonement that is the second thing God is trying to teach his people if you and I are going to get along and you are guilty as seen that sin must be atoned for and somebody must die and so every time they brought this lamb that was without blemish every time they made the sacrifice of the best and the first fruits of their flock or their herd God was reminding them you're not only sinful but somebody must die for you and the New Testament of course tells us that this was all a foreshadowing of the ultimate sacrifice on the cross the Lord Jesus the lamb who for sinners was slain that's the ceremonial law with me on that this morning then there is the judicial law and the judicial law is the law that governs the people of Israel as a nation because you see not only were they the people of God they were also constituted as a legal entity as the nation of Israel and as a nation they don't only have a constitution but they have laws to govern their behavior and so if you steal something from somebody you gotta pay it back with 20% interest if you kill somebody you're gonna be killed in turn if you gouge out somebody's eye your eye is gonna be gouged out in return eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth if you commit adultery they're gonna take you outside the camp and kill you by throwing stones at your head and many laws that govern the nation of Israel if you're caught with a communicable disease out of the camp you go and again the purpose of all of these laws was really twofold it was to curb evil and to establish righteousness you and I we grumbled sometimes particularly if a policeman pulls us over or we grumble by you know when we run afoul of law and order and all of this sort of thing but as I've often said before all you have to do is look at a nation like Iraq or places in the Middle East where law and order have not been established and you get a picture of the kind of chaos that happens the chaos that happens when there is no strong hand to restrain evil and to establish righteousness and so when Israel had good kings they prospered when Israel had bad kings they suffered and all of that is a foreshadowing of that day when the Prince of Peace comes to reign over the nations of the world and the Lord Jesus will rule over the nations with a rod of iron and all injustice will be held accountable and justice and truth and righteousness will be established forever and ever and ever the judicial law is a foreshadowing of God's perfect reign in the person of Jesus Christ so you've got the ceremonial law you've got the judicial law and you've got the moral law and the moral law refers to the instructions that God gives to his people on how to relate to each other and how to relate to him those instructions are best summarized for us in the Ten Commandments and they are reduced even more succinctly by Jesus in the two great commandments when he says love the Lord your God with all of your heart and with all of your soul and with all of your mind this is the first and the greatest commandment and the second is like it love your neighbor as yourself all the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments and again the moral law has a number of purposes it is to show people how to live before the face of God because left to our own devices and left to satanic deception we err we stray we will always take the path of least resistance and in showing us God's way it also shows us our weakness and our inability Paul talks about that a lot later on in the New Testament when he says the law cannot save us cannot change us all it does is it exposes our sin he said about himself I used to think I was pretty good a Pharisee of the Pharisees until the law came along and God showed me what it really was that he was looking for and then I stood condemned the good that I would I do not and the evil that I would not do that I do all the time who will deliver me from this body of death Romans chapter 7 the moral law according to Paul's teaching in the New Testament then is a custodian to lead us to Christ it was God's way of keeping a check on things so that life didn't get out of hand it didn't have the power to really change people but it had the power to show people how desperately they needed God's help and God's grace and so the moral law is pointing to Jesus as the one who not only dies for all of our sins but who then by the power of the Holy Spirit comes to leave it us and changes us from the inside out from glory to glory the prophets or the law rather is God's wheel as revealed in Mount Sinai and it sets the stage for the coming of the Lord Jesus now the same thing is true concerning the prophets who were the prophets they were God's spokespersons raised up by God to call his people back to himself remember now rules alone cannot change you oh they can box you in they can help you toe the line at least externally but they cannot change you internally and so you look at the history of the people of Israel in the Old Testament what do you discover prone to wonder Lord I feel it prone to leave the God I love and so time and time again they drifted into sin and when they did God would raise up the prophets and you can read about them in the Old Testament the major prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah and Daniel and more minor prophets like Zechariah and Habakkuk and Joel and all the game and their message to Israel or their purpose in being sent to Israel was again twofold it was first of all to remind Israel of God's provisions under the law provisions of blessing if they would obey and provisions of curses and judgment if they disobeyed and so every time Israel got into trouble and life came glued apart or fell apart the prophets would rise up and they would speak into a situation they would say this is happening because you have seen you need to repent you need to return to the God who owns you and I can't help but think sometimes what would happen if God raised up a day or a Jeremiah or an Isaiah or one of the prophets in this day and age how would he address the significant issues of our day I thought of that on Wednesday Michelle and I we spent the week up Ottawa way and on Wednesday afternoon we went to Parliament Hill and the House of Commons was in session so we sat in question period and if you've ever watched question period on cable television then you know that it's quite an exercise in dialogue and the topic that was being addressed was the issue of global warming and the opposition was trying to pin down the Prime Minister on having switched his position over the years from being strongly against global warming at least the science of it and the Kyoto Accord and now of course in preparation for the next election the conservatives have become very green and so almost every question that was addressed to the government in the question period had to do with something like this will the Prime Minister finally admit did he deceive the people of Canada years ago when he said the Kyoto Accord should be thrown out the window or is he deceiving the people of Canada today well I learned a very interesting thing about parliamentary procedure the trick is never to answer a question you just ignore what's being asked and you go into your own tirade of how much good you're doing to the country today and this went on for hours and hours or at least a good hour and it seemed like hours and hours I'll tell you but it was quite an experience and you wonder how a Jeremiah would address the issue of global warming wouldn't you because biblically speaking of course the prophetic declarations are always the world groans under the weight of sin because we have sinned and part of the biblical answer is to call the nations to repentance and to faith now that would sound a little funny you know in the House of Commons but is really the job of the church to call the nation to that kind of recognition that's what the prophets did the prophets also promised blessing obey God seek him the prophets always took you back to the law into the promises that God made under the law and when people heeded the prophets responded to their prophetic declaration God would show his mercy he would forgive them life would be restored and healed and when they didn't ultimately he brought upon them all the judgments that he had warned them about and Israel ended up as you know into captivity but that's not all the prophets did if ever you've read the prophets and there's sometimes a tough read because you know it's hell fire and damnation most every other page if ever you've read the prophets carefully you will notice they all end with a promise to give hope to the people of Israel have you ever noticed that when sin has run its course when God enters into history there is coming a day when he will change the hearts of stone to hearts of flesh the covenant breakers will become covenant keepers the earth will be restored in all its glory the blind will see the deaf will hear the lame will walk the poor will have good news proclaimed to them God's enemies will be destroyed sin will be decisively defeated the wolf will lie down with a lamb and the reaper will overtake the sower and the whole earth will be filled with the glory of the Lord as water covers the sea that's the prophetic word of hope and now Jesus comes along in this passage that we have read together and he says don't think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets no he says I have come to fulfill them I have come by my life by my death by my resurrection by my ascension into heaven and by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit I have come to fulfill the law and the prophets not a stroke or the smallest letter is going to be diminished but everything will be fulfilled don't you ever think he says that under the new covenant the demands of the law or the claims of the prophets will be any less than what they were under the old covenant in fact they will be greater because unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees you will never enter the kingdom of heaven what was wrong with the scribes and the Pharisees they kept the letter of the law but they didn't have the heart and the spirit to love God above all and to love their neighbor as they love themselves and so Jesus says my job is to complete the law and the prophets everything they stood for will be completely fulfilled in my life and in my ministry so that every promise that God has given to his people in the Old Testament a promise of righteousness and hope and a future will be totally and completely fulfilled in that final day when I make all things near that's where we're going to stop this morning Lord willing we can go back to this again we're going to look more closely then at what does it mean that Jesus fulfills the law and fulfills the prophet what does it mean that he fulfills the ceremonial law why don't you drag an ox in tow when you come to church next Sunday morning why don't we take adulterers outside the camp and still them to death on the other hand why is it still wrong to commit adultery or to steal what does it mean that the law is [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:34:32.220; remove through 00:38:01.000] fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ Jesus I love you I know that one for thee all the follies of sin I resign my gracious Redeemer I say no harder if ever I love thee my Jesus 'tis now I love thee because thou hast first murdered me and purchased my pardon on Calvary's tree I love thee for wearing the thorns on thy brow if ever I love thee my Jesus 'tis now I love thee in life I will love thee in death and praise thee as long as now and justly breath I say when the teth to ice fall on the ground if ever I love thee my Jesus 'tis now I love thee in death and praise thee as long as now and justly breath I say when the teth to ice fall on the ground if ever I love thee my Jesus 'tis now I sleep with my glittered brow on my brow if ever I love thee my Jesus 'tis now [ [CUT]BLANK_AUDIO] [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:38:01.000; resume after this marked segment]