The Law & the Prophets

SERMON: 2007-09-08--sm0716--the-law-the-prophets-part-2 SOURCE DURATION: 00:38:54.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 1.00 APPROVED: false REASON: The sermon begins with segment [0] and continues through the theological exposition in segment [568]. Subsequent segments are clearly acoustic music intervals or singing. Acoustic segmentation found sustained music at the end edge and moved the boundary to the adjacent transcript segment. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: 00:35:47.060-00:38:53.900 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 --- We're still this morning on the subject of the law and the prophets, particularly how they have been fulfilled in the Lord Jesus, and we're going to read together one more time the verses 17 and 18 of Matthew chapter 5. "Do not think," says Jesus, "that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the law until everything is accomplished." Let me begin again this morning by placing the passage in its context. The context is the charge brought against Jesus by the religious leaders of his day that by his teaching and by his ministry, he minimized the law and the prophets. It sounded to them like he wasn't taking them sufficiently seriously. And in response to that, Jesus tells us that he has not come to abolish the law or the prophets but rather that he has come to fulfill them. Far from lowering the standards of what God requires of his people under the new covenant, Jesus says, "I have come to elevate the standard. Unless your righteousness," he says, "exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven." With that in mind then, what we want to do this morning is look together in a little more detail as to how it is that Jesus fulfills the law and the prophets and what that means for you and me as we gather in this place this morning for the celebration of Holy Communion. 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. Let's begin with the law then. And the law, you'll recall, is God's wheel as it was revealed to Israel at Mount Sinai. And as we saw last week, it has three components. It has a ceremonial component. It has a judicial component. And it has a moral component. Each of these is part of the law. And each of these, Jesus comes to fulfill, but each in a slightly different and an overlapping way. And it will help us a lot in understanding and reading the Old Testament to understand what those distinctions are. So let me try to walk you through that this morning as quickly as I can. Gets a little bit complicated here and there, but try to bear with me. It'll bear a lot of fruit for you and for me. First of all, then, the ceremonial law, you will recall, is all the rules and the rituals that God put in place at Mount Sinai to govern Israel's worship of the Lord. I pointed out last week, God is holy. People are sinful. In entering into covenant with Israel at Mount Sinai, God and Israel got married, as it were. They began living together. And under the terms of that covenant, God established the ceremonial law to teach Israel two things, the reality of sin and the need for substitutionary atonement. And this was realized, then, in all the sacrifices they had to bring in the tabernacle worship, how that was built and how that was structured, and indeed, in the whole Levitical priesthood. And every time they approached God, every time they brought a sacrifice, every time the high priest annually would go into the Holy of Holies with the blood of the Lamb to sprinkle before the holy place, they were reminded that God is holy, we are sinful, and somebody has to pay the price for our sin. And we know, of course, from the New Testament that that's fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ, who is the Lamb of God, who comes to take away the sin of the world. And even as in the Old Testament, they would bring sacrifices to God of lambs and other animals that were without spot or blemish, the first fruits of the flock. So Jesus, having lived perfectly obediently before God the Father, enters into the holy place, not in the temple, but into very heaven itself, bringing his own blood and thereby securing an eternal salvation for those who are to be saved. Here is how the book of Hebrews puts it years later. It says, "The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming, not the realities themselves. For this reason, it can never by the same sacrifices, repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship. If it could, would they not have stopped being offered? For the worshippers would have been cleansed once for all. It would no longer have felt guilty for their sins. For those sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins, because it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins." But then he goes on to say, "But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins," referring now to Jesus, "he sat down at the right hand of God, and by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy." Understand the difference. The Old Testament sacrifices were a foreshadowing of the ministry of Jesus. They could not really cleanse your heart or make you a different person. They could only point you in faith to the sacrifice that Jesus came to give. And when in the fullness of time Jesus came to shed his blood, that whole sacrificial system was fulfilled, which is why when he died, the veil in the temple rent in two, which is also why later on the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed. Because today, by the blood of Jesus, we have access to God, and Jesus has accomplished once and for all everything the ceremonial law stood for. That's why today when you come to church, you don't bring an ox or a goat or a lamb in tow with you. It's all been done by Jesus. That doesn't mean the ceremonial law doesn't exist anymore. Because every time you and I come to this place or approach God in repentance and in faith, putting our hope and our trust in Jesus, we are fulfilling what the shadow of the law stood for. In other words, we bring our ceremonial sacrifices not by sacrificing animals, but by laying hold by faith of the one complete sacrifice of Jesus, whereby we are totally and radically declared righteous before God. That's why we don't observe the ceremonial law today. The judicial law referred to-- you may remember the laws that God gave to Israel to govern them as a nation. And those laws, too, had a twofold function. One was to curb evil and the other to promote righteousness. And again, those have been fulfilled in Jesus when he died on the cross. He died to absorb all the consequences of all the lawlessness in the world. If you ever want to ask yourself the question, how does God view law breaking? What does God think about people who break the law, particularly his law? Well, then look at Jesus on the cross. And look at the wrath of God that was poured out upon him. And understand that's the judgment that is stored up for everybody who does not repent and turn to Jesus. Likewise, Jesus came to live in perfect obedience before God the Father. And in living in perfect obedience before God the Father also kept the law. And so the judicial law is fulfilled in Christ, on the one hand, because Israel is no longer a theocratic nation ruled directly by the law of God. That has now been transferred to the church. And every time you and I in the church receive God's good government, submit to it, exercise collectively church discipline, exercise truth and justice and righteousness, we are fulfilling the law, the judicial law, that Jesus Christ has come to accomplish. And then, of course, there is the moral law. And that refers to God's desire that we should love him above all and love our neighbor as we love ourselves. All the commandments in the Old Testament and in the New and all the teaching of the prophets, says Jesus, are summed up under those two commandments. And again, the moral law served to restrain evil. And the moral law served to establish righteousness. And again, that has all been fulfilled in Jesus. Because Jesus, when he died on the cross, he died as God's judgment on all of our law breaking. And Jesus, when he lived his life, he lived it in perfect obedience to God. And he established perfect righteousness. And through his death and through his resurrection, as you and I are joined to him, not only is the law satisfied before God, he comes, as you know, to live in us by the power of the Holy Spirit. And now the law is not something that is merely external. It's not just out there. It is written on my heart. And because it is written on my heart, there is now an inward ability, an inward desire increasingly to love God and to love my neighbor. That's why Jesus says later on, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Why? Because to them, the law was external. To them, the law was literal. It was picayune-ish. It was all about looking good in the outside. But it had no ability to control what happened to you in the inside. Jesus says under the New Covenant, grace does not mean the law has become any less than under the Old Covenant. No, now the law is written on your heart. And now there is a new life and a new desire inside so that progressively we could learn to love God and to love our neighbor. Jesus says, I've come to fulfill the law. And that law means that he transforms our lives. It's very important to understand, as I pointed out last week, because our tendency is to put law and grace over against each other. And our tendency is to say, well, Jesus forgives me all my sins. And so now it really doesn't matter anymore how I live, because I can just go and repent and God will forgive me and everything will be OK. I was struck not long ago reading Philip Yancey's book, What's So Amazing About Grace? He tells the story of a friend who came to see him. The man had been married for 15 years, had three children, but had more recently fallen in love with another woman. And though he knew how wrong it was to break his covenantal vows with his wife and with his children, nevertheless, he had his heart set on going with this younger woman. And so he came to see Philip as a good friend and asked him the question, I know that what I'm doing is terribly wrong, but do you think God will forgive me? Now, put yourself in Philip Yancey's shoes. You're writing a book about amazing grace and how God loves to forgive. And now here's your friend. And he wants to presume upon that grace, knowing that he can see him and then later on be forgiven. What are you going to answer? Well, Yancey says it took him three cups of coffee. Took him three cups of coffee before he thought through the answer. And ultimately, he came up with, I think, the only answer that you can give biblically, and that is this. Yes, God is gracious. And no matter what it is that we do or what it is that we have done, if we truly confess our sins, repent to the core of our being, God in Christ will truly forgive because that's what it means to fulfill the law. That having been said, however, he said this. The key issue is repentance. And you have no guarantee that when you deliberately and knowingly step into this place of sin, that God will ever give you the gift of repentance and that you will ever come face to face with a living God on the basis of the cross of Jesus. And as he goes on to tell the story, that indeed is how history is unfolding. This man is further away from God now than he has ever been, is more committed to this illegitimate relationship than he has ever been, and there is no sign that there is any true softening of his heart. You see, grace doesn't mean that God no longer requires the moral law from you and me. Grace means that on the one hand, God forgives us our failures. But on the other hand, he works within our hearts so that we can learn to keep the law. That's why the New Testament is full of admonition. And that's why even while we don't drag oxen to church with us, or sheep, or goats, and while the church is no longer restricted to the nation of Israel and the kingdom of God is as much invisible as it is visible, keeping the moral law has not changed. God still wants us through faith in Jesus to love God above all and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. So the ceremonial law is gone. The judicial law has been transformed from Israel to the church, but the moral law remains in effect as much as ever. And on the day of judgment, God is going to judge us by those commandments, have we loved God above all, and have we loved our neighbor as ourselves, and have we done so through faith in Jesus. You with me so far? All right, a lot of ground to cover. That's the prophet. That's the law, rather. Then what about the prophets? Because Jesus says, not only I've come to fulfill the law, but I've also come to fulfill the prophets. Now, the prophets, you will recall, are God's spokespersons. Their job was twofold, to remind Israel of the curses and the blessings under the law, keep the law, you'll be blessed, was the deal in Mount Sinai, break the law, and you will be cursed. All of us are lawbreakers. That's why, by nature, we're all under the curse. And then the prophets also came to give them hope. That is to say, there is a new day coming when every tear will be wiped away and all things will be made new. And they always pointed forward to the coming of a Messiah figure who would make this a reality. And there again, of course, Jesus is the fulfillment of everything the prophets stood for and everything the prophets ever spoke. On the one hand, Jesus lived a perfect life of obedience before God. He kept the law perfectly and therefore was perfectly eligible for every blessing that God the Father could pour out upon him. Not only that, but when he died on the cross, he died to absorb the curse of the law. And Paul talks about that extensively, you may recall, in Galatians chapter 3, when he says, "Cursed," quoting from the Old Testament, "is everybody who doesn't abide by all the teachings of the law." You and I deserve the curse because of our law breaking. And Jesus, when he hung on the cross, he became a curse. And in becoming a curse, he has made it possible for you and me who are lawbreakers to be adopted into God's family and thus receive the blessings of God. That's the incredible good news of the gospel. Doesn't matter this morning wherever you and I have been. Doesn't matter how bad we have been. Doesn't matter how badly we're put together. It doesn't matter how deeply we have sinned. Jesus, on the cross, bore the curse for all our sin so that by faith in him, not only can our sins be forgiven, but we can be presented before God absolutely righteous and absolutely holy. You've often heard me say it before. You're never more righteous before God than when you have repented of your sin and lay hold by faith who Jesus is. And so what I'm saying, and what Scripture is saying, that because of Christ, we're no longer eligible for the curse and all that it represents. We're eligible for the blessing of God. God adopts us as his children. God gives us his Holy Spirit. He will either avert all evil, as our catechism says, or he will turn it to our good. God is favorably inclined towards us now, and he has turned his angry face away. Not only that, but Jesus also fulfills the promise of hope of which the Old Testament prophets spoke. Hundreds of Old Testament prophecies speak about the coming of a Messiah who is going to cleanse the land, who will remove all sin, who will heal every broken life and every broken heart, who will make the blind to see, the lame to walk, and the poor to have good news proclaimed. And every promise of renewal, where the reaper overtakes the sower, and there will be streams in the desert, and all that is broken will be restored, is fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ. Now, interestingly enough, because the Old Testament prophets lived in the Old Testament and saw far into the future, they were not able to distinguish between the first coming of Jesus and the second coming of Jesus. It's like they were looking at the future through binoculars. If you've ever done that and looked at distant objects, then you will know that binoculars distort the depth of field. And you can look at two mountain ranges that can be far removed from each other, and they will be like side by side because of the distortion of your depth of field. And the prophets, when they looked at the coming of the Messiah through the Holy Spirit, they couldn't understand that he would first come to sacrifice his own life on the cross for our salvation and that he would come a second time, far removed from the first perhaps, when he would come and ultimately make all things near. But that's the promise of scripture, that Jesus fulfills not only the law, but every word of the prophets. Whatever God has promised has already been fulfilled in Jesus, who today sits at the right hand of God the Father, has obtained our salvation, is waiting for history to run its course so that he can come again in glory, destroy all wickedness, pour out his judgment on all the sons of disobedience, and then take all his own children into his own eternal kingdom and reward them forever with the joy of his presence before God the Father. Don't think, says Jesus, that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets. If you think that, you ain't got no clue about who I am and what I've come to do. I've come not to abolish them, but to fulfill them. Now, just very quickly, it is helpful to note, if you listen carefully to what I've said, that there are three levels of fulfillment to both the law and the prophets. There is a past component, there is a present component, and there is a future component. Let me just very quickly, in finishing up this morning, try to walk you through that. Past in the sense that in history, in time, there was born a person whom we call Jesus, who lived his life in complete obedience before God the Father, died on Calvary's cross, and then on the third day was raised, 40 days later ascended into heaven, and 50 days later poured out his Holy Spirit. That is an historical fact in which our salvation is anchored. Peter later on says, "We were eyewitnesses of his majesty. We saw it with our eyes." And it's very important to understand that because there are a lot of people today who would say, "Whether or not that historically happened is really irrelevant. It's all the symbolism that it represents." That's not what Scripture teaches. Paul says, "I deliver to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scripture, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures." Later on, he goes on to say, "If Christ has not been raised from the dead, your faith is in vain." How do you know that you can trust Jesus? And how do you know that you can believe that by faith in him, you're going to be presented before a holy God without any wrinkle or blemish or spot or any such thing? Because there were eyewitnesses that have recorded the historicity of the death and the resurrection of Jesus. It's not a fable. It's not a figment of our imagination. It happened historically. And because it happened historically, we are building on a solid rock of God's intervention in history. Not only that, but when we've come to understand the historicity of the sacrifice of Jesus and the Holy Spirit begins to work in our hearts and we begin to understand God's demand that we share his holiness and then begin to look at our own lives to see how far short we have fallen from the glory of God. And we learn to repent of our sins and we put our hope not in our own righteousness but in the one complete sacrifice of Jesus who promised to present us without spot, wrinkle, or blemish before the presence of God with rejoicing. What happens then is that the benefits of our union with Jesus get worked out in my daily life. And so I receive forgiveness. And if you've ever walked around with a load of guilt and if you've ever sensed the absolute horror of being a thorough screw-up in some significant area of your life, you will know what an incredible relief it is to have that burden rolled off your shoulder and to know that your debt has been forgiven by Jesus who cried out on the cross, "Te talestai," it is finished, paid in full. Not only that, but as you've often heard me say, your union with Christ, the power of the Holy Spirit, comes upon you and He now begins to change you from the inside out. So there is a new desire, a new ability to love God, a new desire, a new ability to love your neighbor. It's not like you have to work at it. It happens because the Holy Spirit is helping you to put off the old and to put on the new. We know that as sanctification. And sanctification is a lifelong process whereby more and more we become like Jesus. That's why the New Testament can give us all these commandments about living in unity and forgiving each other and learning how to live righteously before God. He's not asking us to do something that we cannot do. In Christ, that's a reality. And then there is a future component because you see, no matter how much we experience of God's grace in the here and now, no matter how many times God has forgiven us our sins, no matter how many times He has healed our bodies or changed our character or judged evil in the here and now, the fact remains we all see in a mirror a dimly. And except for Elijah and Enoch, everybody, even when they have experienced God's healing power in this day and age, they're still going to die one day. And no matter how much He has poured the fruit of the Holy Spirit in your heart and in my heart, there will always be places in us that have yet got to experience the salvation of God. And no matter how many times revival takes place and how many places get healed in the history of the world, there will always be people in this day and age who hate God, who are filled with rebellion, and there will continue to be war and famine and pain and chaos and heartache. But the promise of Scripture is that because Jesus Christ has accomplished His sacrifice on the cross, He has fulfilled the law and He has fulfilled the prophets. There's coming a day when He comes again in glory when He makes all things new. And you know what that means? That pain in your body that sometimes makes life hell will one day be completely and totally eradicated when God gives us new bodies and new hearts and new minds. And those places of our character that we fight with, that we try so hard to bring under control, but they keep reemerging. You know, there is a day coming when Jesus will speak into that and by His power will totally and completely transform that. And the devil and all the enemies of God who mock God today and who try to oppose the coming of God's kingdom, they're all going to be thrown into the lake of fire. And we will have a new heaven and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. And that's not just a fantasy. That's not just a pipe dream. That's our reality because Jesus has already accomplished it and He is sitting down at the right hand of God the Father waiting for history to work its way out until every enemy should be made a stool for His feet. And you see, that is what the celebration of communion is about because when we break the bread and we pour out the wine or the juice, we confess that in history He lived and died and rose again and that in so doing He has laid the groundwork for our complete salvation. When we break the bread and when we pour the juice, we also confess that there's Jesus who now sits at the right hand of God the Father, whoever lives to make intercession for us and who has poured out the Holy Spirit is also at work in your heart and in my heart, in the world, and in Christian community to realize the benefits of His salvation. That means He's right there. He knows every tear we cry. He knows every heartache we experience, every struggle we undergo, and He has promised to send the Comforter, the Helper, the one who comes alongside us and who will help us to run the race. And how many of us aren't there here this morning who can testify to those moments in our lives when heaven has broken through, and those moments when we have known the reality of forgiveness, known the reality of His encouragement, the reality of His power. And when we break the bread and when we pour out the juice, we testify that He's coming again and that whatever there is in our lives or in this world that has not yet been able to yield to the authority of Jesus and that has not yet experienced His saving power, there is coming a day when every tear will be wiped away, every broken heart will have been mended, every valley will be lifted up, every mountain will be brought low, and all the earth will know and see the salvation of our God. [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:35:47.060; remove through 00:38:54.000] [MUSIC - "POMP AND CIRCUMSTANCE"] (SINGING) Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now am found. Was gone, but now I see. 'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved. How gracious did that grace appear, the hours I first believed. Through many dangers, toils, and snares, I have already come. 'Tis grace that brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me on. We've been there ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun. We've known as days to sing God's praise and wave. We've lost, we've lost. [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:38:54.000; resume after this marked segment]