The Law and the Prophets
Sermon on the Mount # 3

a sermon on Matthew 5.17-20
by David C. Mauldin
Westminster Presbyterian Church, Mobile, Alabama


Have you ever known someone who constantly reinvents himself or herself? I’m not talking about the way we naturally grow as people or broaden our interests. I’m talking about that rare person who dives obsessively into a lifestyle, but within a year or two has moved on to something different—over and over in a pattern. One guy used to be into health—working out at the gym every day, special diet, the works. Now he doesn’t do that anymore. Now he’s all about volunteering at community service organizations. Before long he’s going to go back to school, but it is unlikely he will stick with it long enough to finish a degree. Some people are this way in their love life. Sticking to a relationship takes work. And some people think love is the giddy feeling that attends the beginning of a new relationship. It is not, but some people get trapped in a cycle of failed relationships. You may think I am exaggerating, but I’m not. All of us change over time. Some people go to extremes.

Now here is a scary thought: What if God were like that? Imagine that God’s character was changing constantly, or that God’s plan for creation was written in pencil. That’s not a happy thought. We could never trust God completely, because he might change. Sure God promised one thing, but what happens if he changes his mind? Today he is into grace and mercy; but maybe tomorrow he will be all about wrath and smiting.

Now here is an even scarier thought: How can we be sure God is not like that? … One answer is: We are incapable of comprehending God, so basically we just have to trust him. What choice do we have? Another answer—and a much more satisfying one—comes to us from Jesus in today’s scripture reading. “I have not come to abolish the law and the prophets, but to fulfill them. Not even the smallest letter or stroke of a letter will be abolished. All will be completed.”

When Jesus was born, God did something new and amazing. Jesus’ ministry, his death on the cross, and his resurrection were like the dawn of a whole new day. Jesus is the hinge on which history turns. But … if what God did through Jesus had nothing to do with what God had already done through Israel, we might have a big problem. If God suddenly said, “Well, plan A didn’t work, let’s go to plan B”—if God took the law and the prophets and just threw them out; who needs them anymore?—then we would have good reason to fear God is fickle. What guarantee would we have that he might not do the same thing again with us? God might say, “Wow, today’s Christians have lost their saltiness. They hide their light. I’ll just throw the New Testament out and try something entirely new.”

God won’t do that. We know without even the faintest whiff of a doubt that God could never do that. Why? Because it is not in his character. God is faithful. He has never done something like that before. He is not going to start now.

When Jesus affirms his loyalty to the law and the prophets, nothing less than the faithfulness and dependability of God is at stake. God is faithful. The law and the prophets—and, by the way, the phrase “the law and the prophets” was shorthand among first-century Jews for “the scriptures,” so we are talking about what we call the Old Testament—the Old Testament has not become irrelevant because of what Jesus has done for us. Instead it has been fulfilled. What does that mean, exactly? And what does it mean for us? These are the questions I hope to answer for you.

I am doing something dangerous today. A good sermon is like a circle. It has one central point around which everything else orbits. This sermon is more of an ellipse. It has two focal points. I’m not suggesting it isn’t good, but honestly that remains to be seen. One focal point is the faithfulness of God. The kingdom of God that Jesus kept taking about is new, but it is not a total break from what God has already been doing. Why? Because God is dependable, not fickle. He keeps his word. The other focal point is about us. Because our life is rooted in God, our lives must honor God. We cannot be libertines, who set aside God’s law and say, “Now that we have grace, we can do whatever we want.” Nor can we be legalists, who think our standing with God depends on keeping a list of arbitrary rules. Both these focal points come from what Jesus says in our scripture reading. He claims that he is accomplishing what God had in mind all along. Then he adds that righteousness matters. This passage is about relationship: God’s relationship with us … and what God is doing … and what we ought to do.

Jesus said he did not come to abolish the law. This needed to be said, because he was obviously doing something revolutionary. With his preaching, teaching, and healing, he was basically leading a renewal movement within first century Judaism. What he was doing was bigger than that, of course. His ultimate goal was the whole world. Yet the people he met would have wondered, and his disciples would have wondered, how does the old fit in with the new? At times, he seemed to relax the requirements of the Law of Moses. When he was criticized for healing on the Sabbath or because his disciples were plucking grain to eat, he answered: “The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.” He also went back to God’s intention when he established the Sabbath. Jesus said God meant the Sabbath to be a blessing. See how the old and new fit together? He goes back to God’s command in order to ground what might look like a departure from customary practice. Then again, at other times, Jesus seems stricter than the law. We are about to reach the part of the Sermon on the Mount where he says, “You have heard it said—for example, do not murder—but I say to you, hating someone is the same as murder.”

The Sermon on the Mount contains Jesus’ teaching for the church, and the early church faced the same scrutiny as Jesus had. Christians did not necessarily practice circumcision. They did not necessarily follow kosher food laws. The Sabbath meant literally “the seventh day,” Saturday. But Christians gathered for worship on Sunday, because Jesus rose again on a Sunday and began God’s new creation. So given these changes, and others, what did the law and the prophets mean to Christians? That needed to be clarified. Jesus said: “We are not getting rid of them, setting them aside, or ignoring them. Instead, I have come to fulfill them.”

So what did he mean? I think two things. First, Jesus confirmed the law and conformed it to God’s intentions. Second, Jesus is the substance of the law. The beginning of our answer can be easily seen in the next part of the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus picks up some of the Old Testament laws about murder, adultery, swearing oaths, and retaliating; and he puts a new spin on them. So you do not kill anyone; if your heart is full of hate, you are the same as a murderer. So you do not sleep with anyone but your spouse; if your heart is full of lust, you are an adulterer. And on he goes. Keeping God’s law is not a matter of actions only. It is also a matter of the heart. What is in our hearts and minds turns into our actions, but even if in some cases the fear of consequences keeps us from acting on the evil within, we are still guilty before God. I’m not going to say more about this now because we will be covering these sayings in upcoming sermons.

Jesus is not going to set the law aside? Why not? Because the law concerns our relationship to God. The law was not a mistake or a failed experiment. Even though all of us are sinful and cannot keep the law, and because of this the law cannot put us right with God, the law is still a good thing. The law still means something now that we have received grace through Jesus. Jesus forgives us, not so that we can go on behaving in ways that harm others and ourselves, but so that we can finally enjoy the blessings God wants to give us—and among those blessings is a lack of murder, adultery, and retaliation.

The end of our answer can be found at the end of Luke’s gospel when the risen Jesus meets two disciples on the road to Emmaus. They do not recognize him at first, and he asks them what they were talking about. They tell him about the horrible tragedy of Jesus’ death and the strange report of some women that his tomb was empty. He gently chides them for missing the point of scripture. “Then,” Luke tells us, “beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures” [Lk 24.27].

The law and the prophets point to Jesus. Take for example the sacrificial system in the Temple—or the Temple itself. I preached not long ago on how everything the Temple meant to ancient Israel, Jesus means to us. John Calvin, the father of Presbyterian theology, called the Old Testament sacrificial system the shadow and Christ the substance. In other words, those sacrifices were a hazy preview of what was to come. Now that Christ has come, we do not need to offer such sacrifices anymore. Nevertheless, when we read those parts of the Old Testament about sacrifices, we find Christ there. They speak to us of God’s holiness, the seriousness of sin, the costliness of grace, and so on.

OK, now we have some idea what Jesus meant when he said that he came not to abolish but to fulfill the law and the prophets. What does it mean for us?

That’s a more challenging question than you might realize. A simple answer could be: “If Jesus did not set aside the law, it is still in effect, so we have to do what it says.” That works well enough for the 10 Commandments, if we allow the Sabbath to be Sunday. But we have already seen how the sacrifices are no longer needed. And what about all those odd little rules we find littered throughout the Law of Moses? Leviticus 19.19: “Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material.” Anyone wearing a cotton/polyester blend this morning? And why would God cares? You see the problem? The law is still in effect; but we cannot follow Jesus simply by obeying every little command.

Jesus, and the New Testament church under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, made decisions about how the law applies to Christians. They held onto what we could call the moral law. Other rules, like the one about two kinds of material and the kosher food laws, which were designed to mark God’s people as different from the rest of the world, were deemed unnecessary. Does this mean Jesus was wrong about not one letter or stroke of the law being set aside? Well, since he started the process with his attitude toward the Temple and the Sabbath, I can hardly believe Jesus would think so. The law has been fulfilled in Christ. This means the parts we must obey are those that make us faithful as his disciples. And how do we know which ones they are? How do we know murder is still wrong but eating pork is OK? It’s easy. The New Testament tells us!

The New Testament does not replace the Old or make it irrelevant, but it does teach us how to appropriate the law and the prophets. We read them and we live them in light of what Jesus has done for us. And what he has done is given us grace. His grace sets us free. More than that, his grace for us turns the law into a beautiful gift. Without grace, the law would be nothing but a curse to us, because we are unable to keep it. It tells us how to love God and neighbor, then we go off and love no one but ourselves. Grace destroys not the law but its curse. When we are in Christ, we are no longer under condemnation. Once we are set free in this way, the law becomes a friendly guide to how we can love God and neighbor.

What does it mean for us that Jesus fulfills the law and the prophets? It means we cannot be libertines who think we can do whatever we want. We still need the law, because we have an amazing ability to rationalize our behavior. People basically do whatever they want, then they invent reasons why it was OK to do that. Some of the stupidest people in the world become geniuses when they need to rationalize something they did. We all do. Maybe if we all loved God and neighbor perfectly, we wouldn’t need to be told not to lie, steal, covet, or take revenge. But we are a work in progress, and the law is a big help. Jesus fulfilled the law. He did not abolish it. So we cannot set it aside.

At the same time, Jesus does not want his disciples to be a bunch of legalists obsessed with rules and prone to forget compassion. This is another trap into which we so easily fall. Some people love rules and delight in seeing rule-breakers punished. The purpose of the law is to guide right relationships—with God and with our fellow human beings. Legalism does not serve that purpose. We depend on grace. The law has been fulfilled by Jesus, who gives us grace. So do not make the mistake of thinking the Christian life is all about keeping rules. It is about love. The rules point the way.

One last thing I want to say … Jesus lays down some scary stuff in the Sermon on the Mount. He started hinting last week with that line about the worthless salt being thrown out and trampled. He is going to dish fire and brimstone before we reach then end. Today he gives me my first real jolt of fear with that line at the end: “Unless your righteousness greatly exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.”

If that doesn’t scare you, then you probably do not realize how righteous the scribes and Pharisees were. They were extremely religious people. Motivated by a love for God and faith and hope, they tried very hard to do everything just right. The Pharisees took the Old Testament rules that originally applied only to priests serving in the Temple, and they followed them in their everyday lives. Jesus disciples must have wondered how they could be as righteous as these people, much less how they could greatly exceed them in righteousness.

I waffle between two ways of understanding what Jesus said, and I hang on to both. One is to make sense of this statement in light of what comes next. Jesus is about to demonstrate how keeping the law is a matter of what is in your heart as much as in your actions. He may be saying something like, “The scribes and Pharisees may keep most of the rules, but what is in their hearts? Kingdom righteousness means a pure heart doing good things. If you want to be my disciple, here’s how you do it.” In this case, a disciples’ righteousness would greatly exceed a Pharisee’s because it goes bone deep.

The other reading I get from my Presbyterian heritage, and it requires me to set this verse in the context of the whole New Testament. In this one, Jesus points out the hopelessness of entering the kingdom on our own merits. He essentially means, “The scribes and Pharisees are about as holy as any human being can get, and they fall a long way short of the mark. If you want to enter the kingdom of heaven, your righteousness would have to greatly exceed theirs. You are not capable of that kind of righteousness. However, I can give it to you—by grace.”

I find this interpretation helpful too. If the law does anything, it shows us our need for grace.

I apologize if this sermon was a bit heavy. It is hard, when I get to wrestling with the Sermon on the Mount, to make things fun and easy. These are life and death issues. If I had to sum this entire sermon up in a nutshell, I would say: Christians today seem prone to ignore the law and the prophets. Don’t! Why? Because God is the same. The same God of holiness and grace is found in the Old Testament, the New Testament, and in your life today. Come to him by the grace of Jesus, and accept his law as a gift that will help you know him and be good disciple of Jesus. Amen.

rev_mauldin@yahoo.com
September 24, 2006