The Law & The Prophets

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 in the cross for
our sins somewhere along the line that has to translate itself into a changed and a transformed
wife.
And I was reminded of that again two weeks ago when I was doing the service over at Colberg.
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 hastened to assure him that not everybody is equally enthused about practical preaching
that, you know, 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 lawyers?
And it occurred to me there were really two biblical reasons for doing that.
The first is that's how Paul writes his letters.
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 to 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 1 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 2 he talks about how God in Christ has removed the dividing wall between
Greek and Gentile.
Then in chapter 3 he talks about the incredible riches of God through the Holy Spirit who
makes all of his real inner lives and practical daily experience.
And then when he gets to chapter 4 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 on 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.
And he carries on in that vein covering a number of topics until you get to chapter 12
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 that 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 5.
Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the
same will be called what?
Released 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.
I 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, you know, 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.
But 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.
Peace 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 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
demands of the old covenant.
And that is a problem that is inherent in the teaching of grace.
Dr. Martin Lloyd Jones used to say, if people never walk away from your sermons wanting
to interpret grace as less sensiousness, then you haven't ever really preached grace.
Paul ran into the same problem.
And he said, 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, there be setting 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.
Even 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 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 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 in 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 as 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've 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 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 and 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 Edmonds Sinai.
You'll recall God delivers the people of Israel out of Egypt, leads them into the wilderness,
brings them to Mount Sinai and their Edmonds 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 Edmonds Sinai, and listen to this carefully because it is critical,
has three distinct components.
Just 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 Edmonds 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 up a whole system of worship that enables the two of them to get a law.
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 a 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 servant of the man the only difference between 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 to drag
along a calf or a sheep or a goat.
Every time the priests lay their hands on the scapegoat that gets sent off into the wilderness
and the other one who got slaughtered in his blood, God 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
means of a substitutionary attoldment.
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 sin, that sin must be attuned
for and somebody must die.
And so every time they brought this lamb that was without blemish, every time they made
this 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 foresetters was slain.
That's a ceremony 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.
As 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 didn't only have a constitution, but they have laws to govern their behavior.
And so if you steal something from somebody, you cut a bayon back with 20% interest.
If you kill somebody, you're going to be killed in turn.
If you gouge out somebody's eye, your eye is going to be gouged out and returned.
I for an eye in a tooth for a tooth.
If you commit adultery, they're going to 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 too bold.
It was to curb evil and to establish righteousness.
You and I, we grumble sometimes, particularly if a policeman pulls us over, or we grumble
by, you know, when we run a foul 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 our nation.
Iraq or places in them at least 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.
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 rot
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 command, and a 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 were, 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
seven."
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 in God's grace.
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 us and changes us from the
inside out from glory to glory.
The prophets, or the law, or rather, is God's will 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 toll the line, at least externally, but they cannot change you internally.
And so you look at the history of the people of Israel and the Old Testament, what do you
discover?
Prone to wander, 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 Aldeghe.
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.
Because 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 sinned.
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 Jeremiah or
a 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, auto away, 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 ask answer 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?
As biblically speaking, of course, the prophetic declarations are always the world groans under
the weight of sin, because we have seen, 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.
That 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 a blessing.
Obey God, seek Him.
The prophets always took you back to the law and to the promises that God made under the
law.
And when people heated 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
hellfire 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."
Now 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.
And so do 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 in the Pharisee, you'll never enter the kingdom of heaven."
What was wrong with the scribes in 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 loved 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 in the 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 stund 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 fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ?
My Jesus, I love thee, I know thou art mine, for thee, all the follies of sin, I reason.
My gracious Redeemer, I say your hinder, if ever I love thee, why Jesus sits near.
My love thee becomes the last curse for me, and I've just not gone on, on hell, for he's dream.
I love thee for wearing the thorns on my ground, if ever I love thee, why Jesus sits near.
My love thee in life, I will love thee in death, and place thee as long as thou let us be free.
And say when the death to Christ fall under the ground, if ever I love thee, why Jesus sits near.
In vengeance of war, and endless delight, I'll never have joy in heaven so bright.
I seek with my glances, grow out on my ground, if ever I love thee, why Jesus sits near.
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