beginning in verse 17 through verse 20. As you recall, two weeks ago, looking in verses 13 to 16, the Lord called us to good works in verse 16. And now we will begin to see how that is to be carried out in obedience to God's law. So that background, let us hear the word of our Lord for the gospel according to Matthew chapter five, beginning in verse 17. 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. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever does them and teaches them will be called great and the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. Amen. The flow of history, as it has been pointed out, often seems to swing like a pendulum from one extreme to the next. The excesses of leftist communist Soviet Russia were replaced by the excesses of Vladimir Putin of the hard right wing, the absolute monarchies of Louis XIV and Louis XVI were replaced by the extremes of the French Revolution. The austerity of Sparta and the Roman Republic were replaced by the excesses of latter Roman Empire, especially in its latter days. In the Christian life, we don't have ourselves careering from one sort of government to the next. But it's often been noticed that Christians have the same struggle with the law of the Lord. careening from one extreme of license, of what's sometimes called antinomianism, being against the law and throwing off any idea of being obedient to God and His word, and then swinging to the other extreme and finding a safe shelter, or so it seems, in legalism, of being right with God, we believe, through the law, as if that was its purpose. And sometimes we say, well, the solution is to just hit that ball right down the fairway. Just ignore either ditch on either side and just go right through those narrow gates. And why I understand why people say that, often how that translates into our life is 50% anti-gnoming is a man, 50%. The opposite. I mean, figure it this way. If you don't like cream of mushroom soup and you don't like cream of celery soup, will combining them in the same bowl and eating them at the same time taste good? No. In this equation, two wrongs do not make a right. What we actually need is a whole new way altogether. of understanding the law properly, how Christ fulfilled it, but then how Christ empowers and gives us the tools to obey it. Perhaps you grew up in a strict childhood and you grew up and you said, I'm never going to be that way with my children. And so you go to the other side. Perhaps you thought that your parents were too lax and either intentionally or just subconsciously you turn out to be very strict and domineering and legalistic with your own children out of some sense of duty. Into that confusion comes the breath of fresh air of this passage. Because here Christ sets us straight on the law. And he does so by giving us this that Christ fulfilled the law for us, as he says in verse 17, so that we can look to him in faith and lovingly obey him. Christ fulfilled the law for us so that we can look to him in faith and lovingly obey him. You'll see even in that sentence that there are two halves to this. We must understand Christ and how he fulfilled the law, which is what verses 17 and 18 are about, before we turn in verses 19 and 20 to consider our relationship to the law. Those will be our two main points this evening. Beginning with Christ and the law in verse 17, we see that Jesus says, do not think I have come to abolish the law of the prophets. I have come not to abolish them, but to fulfill them. Christ begins, you notice, by saying what he's not doing. He's not abolishing the law or the prophets. That phrase, law and the prophets, was shorthand in his day for all of the Old Testament. And the verb abolish means to dismantle, to tear down, to destroy a building or an institution. You can think of how Jesus was accused of claiming he would abolish, he would tear down the temple. It's the same concept. Anybody wonder why is he saying this now at this place in the Sermon on the Mount? I mean, he's just begun his ministry. Have those accusations already begun? It's interesting if you look over in Mark's Gospel, even in chapter 2 we have that incident of his disciples being accused of breaking the Sabbath by plucking heads of grain. We know that they weren't breaking the Sabbath. They were breaking extra laws about the Sabbath, which we'll get to in a minute. But that was before he even officially went and called the 12 disciples, which in Matthew's gospel happens before the Sermon on the Mount. So it seems that from the get-go, Jesus was being accused of abolishing or abrogating or not obeying the law. Well, if he's not abolishing it or abrogating it or desecrating it, what is he doing? Well, he concludes verse 17, you see, by saying what he is doing, he is fulfilling it. This verb to fulfill means to draw out its implications, to fill it to fullness, to complete what it was intended to do and intended to be and to intended to be obeyed. So when you hear Jesus saying he's fulfilling the law and the prophets, he's demonstrating their entire meaning and also their entire requirement. He's getting to their heart, to the core of their teaching. And he does this in two ways, at least. First, he does so by teaching it to us fully, by showing us what it means in all its fullness. This is what most of the rest of the Sermon on the Mount is about, if you recall. I mean, the very next verse after this passage, verse 21, he says, you have heard that it was said to those of old, you shall not murder. quoting the sixth commandment. So instead of saying, out with that law, no, instead he tells people just all that that law requires, cutting to the heart of hatred against one's brother. He does the same thing in verses 27 and 28 about the seventh commandment, about not committing adultery. Verses 31 and 2 about the Deuteronomic law about divorce. Verses 33 and 4 about not swearing falsely, breaking the third commandment, or some of the other commandments about oaths, the law of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, and verse 38 on and on. The Jews thought if they weren't actively murdering someone, well, then they were obeying the sixth commandment. But that's not merely a temptation of those in that day and age, that day and age, is it? We all know, or perhaps we have said ourselves, I'm a good person. I'm going to heaven because I'm better than my neighbor. I'm not a murderer. I don't cheat too bad on my taxes. I haven't committed adultery, at least not recently. We have all these ways of thinking that we've just relaxed the commandment and then fulfilled that understanding of it. But in fulfilling the law, Jesus was pointing out that it's a lot more than not merely avoiding certain actions, a negative ethic. It was being and acting a certain way positively. of showing what it meant to obey those laws in all their fullness. But what is good news for us? What is the light of the gospel that Jesus came not merely to point this out, Jesus came to actually do it, to actually fulfill all that it required in his life, to not merely give us a few pointers and say, okay, now you're on your own, but to show us what true truthfulness looked like, true love for neighbor that went beyond merely not murdering him and loving him to the point of giving up one's own life, of total, utter covenant commitment to one's partner, in this case, his body, the church. Far from coveting that which others had, he divested himself of his outer trappings of glory to be made humble. Jesus showed us by his teaching, but also showed us by his life what he meant by, I have come to fulfill the law and the prophets. In commenting on this passage, theologian John Stott showed several ways in which Jesus fulfilled the law and the prophets. One part is what's called doctrinal teaching. When the Old Testament teaches something about salvation, about mercy, about the sacrificial system, this was to be fulfilled in Christ. You can think of how Leviticus tells us it is the blood of the creature that makes atonement. Jesus fulfilled that by shedding his blood for our atonement. Also, the Old Testament made predictive prophecies. This makes sense to us. We understand this, I think, pretty intuitively. When the Old Testament says, out of Bethlehem will come one who will shepherd the people of God, well, we see how Jesus fulfilled that. How Zacharias saw one humble riding into Jerusalem on a colt full of a donkey, we see Jesus fulfilling that. It's intuitive to us. The third kind of law that Christ fulfills is what Stott calls ethical precepts. And we've already seen all these examples throughout the Sermon on the Mount. You can think of how Jesus came, as he told John the Baptist by the River Jordan, to fulfill all righteousness. All that the word of God and the covenant of God required of his people, of Israel, of the true Israel of God, he fulfilled in his obedience to that law. So we see that far from abrogating these laws by his teaching or by his disobedience, Jesus fulfills them by his teaching and by his obedience. Now, if you're a good New Testament scholar, perhaps you're thinking of what Paul says in the epistle to the Romans, how Christ is the end of the law. You may think, well, is Jesus being contradicted by his apostle Paul? Is Paul saying, no, Jesus says he's done with the law or it's over, no more. In fact, Paul is actually echoing Jesus in this text. For when Paul says that, that Jesus is the end of the law, that word end doesn't mean termination, it means a goal, purpose, result, that for which the law was given. It's not like when you go into a movie theater and the movie is over and it says the end, you know, the lights go out, people exit, grab their coats and they're out the door, no more movie. That's not what it means when Jesus is the end of the law. Ed Clowney in his last book before passing into glory put it this way, God's law is given in the course of Jesus' saving work, and the whole of that work is leading us back to Jesus. Christ not only obeyed the law, he displayed its true meaning and depth. See, Jesus wasn't setting out to start a new religion. How many times have you heard people try to play off the God of the Old Testament as if He's different from the God of the New Testament? They claim that the God of the Old Testament is evil, vindictive, judgmental, hatredful, while the God of the New Testament is kind and gracious and merciful. But if you want to describe the New Testament God as one of grace and love, you've got to accept that that's how He's described in the Old Testament as well, and vice versa. It's the Old Testament law that Christ fulfills. It's the Old Testament prophets that Christ fulfills. It's the Old Testament promises that find their yes, amen, in Christ. Many of us think, though, that since Christ came to fulfill the law, we're free from it. But what does Jesus go on to say in verse 18? For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot will pass away till all is accomplished. Until all is accomplished. You notice a different word here than fulfilled. And he describes it as being when heaven and earth pass away. In other words, the law can't be abrogated. The law can't be canceled because heaven and earth haven't passed away yet. This is a clue for us that Jesus is not saying we're done with the Old Testament, we're starting a new religion. It means the law is in some sense still in effect. We'll see how in a minute. You may be wondering about the dot or the iota. These are the little corners, little edges, kind of like what we have in English as serifs on some fonts or the dotting of an I or the crossing of a T. Not even that little tiniest part of the law will pass away till all is accomplished. Notice. until all is accomplished. Jesus fulfilled the law in his life and in his death. So if we're still waiting for something to be accomplished, it must be one, as he continues to fulfill those prophecies, especially those regarding his return. But two, I would argue they're accomplished in us. Because now he has come to us and empowered us to fulfill the law with the new hearts. And this is where the last two verses of our text are getting at. Because Jesus turns to his disciples and describes, because this is true, because I have fulfilled the law, but earth and heaven will not pass away until all is accomplished, this has implications for you brothers. This has implication for you, sisters and children, all of us here, as disciples of our Lord, must understand how we live in light of this fact. We see in verse 19 what I would call the requirement of the law. Verse 20, extent, extent. Verse 19, Jesus says, therefore whoever relaxes one of these, at least of these commandments, It teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. Notice right away that either category are those in the kingdom of heaven. So it won't do to say, well, this is talking about just the Old Testament Jewish understanding, or this is just talking about those who are legalistic and not truly saved. No, we're talking about believers. We're talking about those who are part of the kingdom of heaven. We will either relax them and allow others to do and be the least in that kingdom, or we will what? We will do them and teach them to others. So therefore, friends, we see right there the requirement that Jesus lays upon us. The requirement is plain, not merely to do the law, but to teach it to others. Perhaps you're here this evening and you think, yes, I can check off that box. I have kept the law well. I have manufactured my own righteousness. And there are believers who think they have done well as Christians because they have done better than perhaps their neighbor. But I know that many of us are on the other end of the spectrum. We despair when we hear words like this. We understand that the indwelling sin, we understand that our old man is dead, has been crucified with Christ, but yet like a zombie, it still seems to have effect and power over us and a sway that is sometimes difficult to fight. But actually friends, that requirement is explained by verse 20, the extent of the requirement. Why do I say this? Let us first understand what verse 20 says and then see how it applies to those who are proud of the law-keeping or those who are despairing by their lack of law-keeping. Verse 20, Jesus says, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. The Pharisees were known for their law-keeping. Not merely they're keeping the law of God, but they're adding more as if that weren't enough. They had 248 commands and 365 negative prohibitions that they discerned in the law. Their lives were dedicated to law keeping. Jesus says our righteousness is supposed to exceed that. Perhaps now those who thought they were doing well are thinking, uh-oh, How could God expect such a thing? Perhaps those of you who are in despair are saying, see, I told you so. It is hopeless. How can my righteousness exceed the scribes and the Pharisees, those who are in the Jewish understanding to be supreme at law keeping? Well, think about what Jesus says. Your righteousness must exceed theirs. So I ask you, how much righteousness did they have? Answer carefully. Think deliberately. How much righteousness did they have? None. They had no righteousness. They had plenty of self-righteousness. They thought that they were the cream of the crop when it came to law-keeping. But how much righteousness did they have that they could come before the Lord on the last day at the great judgment seat of God and say, look at my righteousness. Look, consider what I have done. They had none. They had no right to stand before him because apart from Christ, none of us has any right to stand before the judge of all the earth. And to say that we have done well, because we are all sinners down to the last man, woman, and child. But there is good news here. It is no coincidence that Jesus makes this demand just two or three verses after saying that he came to fulfill the law. Do you see now how the math adds up, how the equation works? Jesus comes to his disciples, his newly collected and named and sanctified as his chosen people disciples, says to them, friends, I have come to fulfill the law and the prophets. And now I expect you to have perfect righteousness. The only answer to verse 20 is to cast your eyes back up at what Jesus just said. Say that I have fulfilled it. And if you are going to have righteousness that exceeds the high and the mighty, the Pharisees and the scribes, you better look to me. This gets right to the good news of Jesus that we preach. At the cross, we do well to reiterate how the guilt and punishment of our sin was atoned for. But let us never forget that also at that cross a perfect sacrifice was being offered. Someone who had to be without sin so that he becomes sin for us. But also someone who had to have perfect righteousness so that he could grant it to us. So that when we stand before the great king on the last day, we can say, don't look to my righteousness. I have none of my own, but I have perfect and complete righteousness because you are looking upon Christ when you look upon me and all that he has done for me. That is what Jesus says in this verse. We obey by keeping our eyes fixed on him. Because the Pharisees, kept the law because they thought they had to earn Jesus' favor? Friends, we get to keep the law because we have God's favor. Do you understand the difference? We don't have to keep the law to earn God's favor, that's an impossible errand anyway. But knowing that a God who loves us so much in Christ that he gave himself up for us, knowing that that God who is recreating us in the image of Christ after the image of God that he created all of us to be, whose law is displayed perfectly, the perfect display of his character, how could we not want to obey that law? How could we not want to look at that perfect law, the law of liberty that gives life, as James says, and desire to obey its every dot and iota? It's a reflection of our good and gracious God. It shows us what it means to be like him, as he has called us to be, as he has now empowered us to be in Christ through his spirit. We have God working in us, not merely to want to, but now to be able to, in a way the Pharisees and the scribes never had it. The illustration I use is of a speed trap. Stay with me here. Imagine you're on a road and you know, you disagree with what the speed limit should be. Let's say you think it should be higher. But you also know, nine times out of 10, you come around that curve, there's going to be a cop there waiting for speeders. So you know you're pushing the curve, so you slow down and you kind of grit your teeth and get around it and he's gone behind you and you speed back up. The law means nothing to you. You merely try to keep it so he doesn't get you. But now imagine, instead of in your two-door coupe, you're now in your minivan, and you have your children in your backseat. And you notice, hey, there's actually a school on that curve, and the children often play out in front of the school. And now that your heart has been transformed by your love for your own children in your backseat and your desire to love your neighbor well as they are there playing by the road, you gladly Slow down. You want to obey the law. You're glad for the law keeper that put that speed limit there because they love your children and they want your children to be safe and to live well. This is what it means to obey the law now as believers. We love the law giver. We recognize his love for us and we are pleased to love him and our neighbor by our obedience of the law. But again, it's all rooted in what God and Christ has done for us. And I would add, it is rooted in the promises of the Old Testament. It's been there all along. When Jeremiah spoke of the covenant the Lord would make in the latter days, what does he say? Quoting God, I will put my law within them. I will write it on their hearts. It's not that they'll say, you know, sayonara to the law. It's that they will have it even more deeply etched upon their souls. I will be their God, he says, and they shall be my people. Or in Ezekiel, something very similar in chapter 36 of that book, he says, I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statues and be careful to obey my rules. Notice what he says, I will give you my spirit. This is life in the Holy Spirit. This is regeneration life. This is new life in Christ. He has come to us. He's explained the law to us in its fullness. He has demonstrated it in its fullness. Again, even there, not merely as a demonstration, but as an achievement, as a securing of righteousness for us. He's granted that to us freely as we come to him in repentance and faith, trading our sin for his righteousness at the cross, that he sets us free to obey that law. To love him, the giver of the law, Think of the first four commandments of the Ten Commandments. To love our neighbors, those he has given us, to love and to glorify God through our good works, as he says in verse 12 and 16, as the last six commandments. So friends, this is in some sense the heart of the Christian life. Forgive it in Christ, grant it all his righteousness. the new spirit, God writing the law in our hearts. And now we go forth to willingly, to freely, to lovingly obey him because beloved Christ fulfilled the law for us so that we can look upon him in faith and lovingly obey him. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for those new hearts without which we could do nothing to please you. We thank you that you didn't merely relax your standards, you didn't grade us on the curve, but you required perfection and achieved it in your son. Thank you for granting that to us and may we now emulate him in all of our lives by his power, seeking those good works that he's prepared in advance that we should walk in them. I pray in his name, Jesus our Lord and Savior and King, amen.