Christ, the Law, and the Gospel

put your sword back into its place for all who take the sword will perish by the sword. Do you think that I cannot appeal to my father and he will at once send me more than 12 legions of angels?

These Roman guards are no threat, guys. Put your sword away. I've got legions of angels at my command. But verse 54, he's saying we're not going to stop these guys with their power of the sword here on earth.

But how then should the scriptures be fulfilled that it must be so?

You see, the disciples had not yet truly understood Christ must come to suffer, to die for sinners, so that he might be raised again to give them new life. Verse 55,

at that hour Jesus said to the crowds, have you come out as against a robber with swords and clubs to capture me? Day after day I sat in the temple teaching, and you do not seize me. But all this has taken place, the scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled.

This is an important place. Jesus, again, is using the word fulfilled on his own lips. And again, the scriptures, the prophets, they must be fulfilled. Very important place because the disciples, they flee after this. They must be able to see and later be encouraged to know God had always said this must happen. It must happen for our salvation. In this moment of what would be despair, Christ is assuring them. Now, my father, he's in charge. We've declared this must happen. It is happening. He is the fulfillment in his own betrayal and death to fulfill all scripture. Back to Matthew 5.17, we must see that with Christ, He's declaring,

I have not come to abolish the law and the prophets. I've come not to abolish them, but to fulfill them.

The word law is used in different ways. Here, I believe, is the entirety of the Old Testament because law and prophets, those first 39 books, the books from Moses to Malachi. We do often think about law as just the commandments, the prescriptions, the prohibitions. Those are clearly in view because of verse 19 about commandments. But the law is normally a reference to the first five books of the Bible, Moses' books, the Pentateuch. In the Pentateuch, those first five books, the law, well, they have songs, they have laws, they have historical narrative, they have prayers, they have blessings, they have curses, they have promises. Christ has come to fulfill all that the law has taught and instructed. It's also the law and the prophets. The prophets are those later prophets who follow after Moses, who are applying the things of Moses, like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, all the way to Malachi. Now, he's not come to abolish the law and the prophets. He's not come to veto, just set aside, erase, He's not come to declare that these things are just no longer important or necessary. No, he's come to fulfill them. It is the Word of God. The Word of the Lord must stand forever. The fire fades, the grass withers, but the Word of the Lord stands forever. The Word cannot return void. It goes out in power and accomplishes what God sought to accomplish. He doesn't just set them aside. He fulfills the law by completing what its purpose was intended to be. Jesus ends the anticipation of what the law was pointing to. He's the substance that the sign was pointing to. He's the climactic moment that was foreshadowed. He is the promised one of God. Now again, the simple summary is the Old Testament is promise, the New Testament is fulfillment. More specifically, the Old Testament is promise and Christ has come to fulfill. There's a couple key ideas we need to understand in order to appreciate what this word fulfill means. First, Jesus is the promised seed and son of God. that God promised from the very beginning of our sin that he would send to overcome the curse and take sin away from us. We can see this at the very beginning in Genesis 3.15. A seed of the woman will be born and that son will crush the head of the serpent. A son will be born to Abraham and that is the promised son. That son then becomes more clear as he becomes known as the king And the prophet, a great high priest, those three offices are scarlet threads where we see Christ foreshadowed. Those identity markers are constantly building up a picture and a promise of what God is going to do to where when we get to Malachi, it seems impossible that this savior could all be one person because of all these different promises. Jesus came to be not just the seed of the woman, but the very son of God who takes on flesh. Jesus comes to be the king Israel needed, the forever king, but they rejected. He comes to be the prophet who declares light in the darkness, but the darkness hated him because of their deeds done in the darkness. He comes to be the great high priest that puts an end to the sacrificial system. This morning, we're celebrating the Lord's Supper. As I think about what the word fulfill means, it's a helpful picture of what the word fulfill means. This morning, I trust no one slaughtered a lamb for the service today. Good. But the law commanded lambs to be slaughtered. The great salvation moment for Israel was the Passover. God taking them out of slavery, God taking them out of punishment, God taking them out of Egypt so that they could worship him in the promised land. The way he delivered them was finally a lamb had to be slaughtered, a bloody worship service. The blood was put over the doorpost so God's judgment would pass over. And then he installed a regular routine yearly feast to remember the Passover where his judgment passed over all of Israel who believed in his promise and his judgment fell upon all of Egypt and their firstborn sons died. We don't worship this way anymore. Because the lamb that was slaughtered year after year after year was a sign, one, it wasn't efficient. It had to be sacrificed over and over again. Hebrews tells us the fact that it had to be slaughtered every year was already telling you this lamb wasn't sufficient for your forgiveness. But it pointed to the one who is sufficient. The lamb caused God's judgment to pass over all who believe in him. And then John the Baptist, the last Old Testament prophet declares,

behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

To get what it means to understand fulfillment, we have to understand to have God's judgment pass over is significantly different than taking away your sin. See, Jesus Christ, perfect, true Lamb of God, the final Lamb of God who puts an end to all those other, all other sacrifices, who fulfills all those sacrifices. He takes away our sins by taking them upon himself on the cross. He removes our sin from us as far as the East is from the West by not passing over those sins as if they didn't happen, but by taking those sins upon himself and satisfying the wrath of God that we deserve by faith in Jesus who died once for all for sin. That's what fulfill means. All those lambs were testimonies year after year after year. Our sins deserve death. But God has promised and now has sent someone so that you will not reserve judgment and death for your sin. Christ died for your sin. We no longer observe the Passover. We look up and see Jesus, who's seated at the right hand of the Father, who has satisfied the wrath of God, having died for us, and now he has instituted a new ordinance, a new way in which we remember what he has done, and we look forward to what he is still to do with the marriage supper of the Lamb. You see, the Lamb of God, on the cross, Jesus declares it is finished. And in that moment, the curtain temple is torn in two. The Old Testament is fulfilled. It comes to an end. It's not abolished. He doesn't just say, we're not going to do this anymore. No, he's saying, I've come to accomplish all that it was pointing to and promised. We are forgiven not because of our righteousness, but because of his. With Christ, we know there's a change. Hebrews 9 tells us in a will that The estate changes with death, and that's what happens in the death of Christ. The administration changes. There's now a king who has died as the lamb, and the great high priest. We know there's multiple changes in the covenant. We practice them regularly. We just had baptism, not circumcision. We're gonna celebrate the Lord's Supper, not Passover. Bacon-wrapped shrimp back on the menu. Most significantly, as we think about what it means that Christ has come to fulfill, very important for us, we get to go near to God. Worship is no longer distant and fearful as on Sinai. Worship is intimate, close, forgiving, and embraced in love. We no longer just know Yahweh, who is the promise-making and keeping God, Jesus is gonna teach us to pray our Father in heaven. That's a whole new way of relating to God that is a New Covenant difference. It's important to remember what is the same in the Old and the New Covenant. God speaks truth and grace to his people. His people respond in faith and obedience. He is steadfast in his commitment to save sinners and we respond by faith. But there's a different administration. It's important. The Old Testament believers were supposed to be looking for an earthly king. New Testament believers, you are not looking for an earthly king. You look up. Your king is seated at the right hand of God in heaven. You're looking for him to come back. We don't need a priest. You should not in any way expect me to do some kind of sacrifice that's going to make you more holy. Now, we're all priests seeking to help each other grow up into the great priesthood of Jesus Christ. He is the true prophet. He is the one who has come to shine light into our true and absolute darkness. If we're to think about this fulfillment, it's the sun and seed themes that all come true in Jesus Christ. There's a fulfillment of the promise. He's the prophet, the priest, and the king. Christian, we can see a summary of this from Romans 15, 8. Paul summarizes what he's declared to the Romans.

For I tell you that Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God's truthfulness in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs.

Christ is the fulfillment of those promises.

And in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy,

and then he declares as it is written. And there's four different fulfillments. Christ has come to fulfill what God has promised. There's another way in which we want to think about fulfillment. It's not just that he's the seed, the son, the prophet, the priest, the king. It's what we saw a few weeks back. He's the new Adam. He's come as the new Adam, and while that first and foremost points to him being the new head of a new humanity, well, that first begins because he's the true obedient man who obeys God's laws in every way we've refused to obey. Jesus fulfills the law by being the man we were all supposed to be. Humble, obedient. He fulfills the law by teaching what it is. He comes as the law giver to now state in his own words, as the word become flesh, what the law is and what it means. This is important. We saw this in Matthew 4, the temptation, when Satan continues to tempt Jesus. He continues to remain the true human by remaining faithful and obedient and not giving a temptation. I want to emphasize this because we too often believe it's true that to err is human. To sin is human. To follow your heart is human. To love yourself exclusively is the most human thing. Love yourself, be true to yourself. That's all subhuman. Those are all subhuman activities. We've come to accept sin because we've all been born in sin and we all practice sin. But the most human thing you can do is to know God and make him known. That's how you were created. That's what you were created for. That is the highest calling of man, to know God and make him known. The best version of whoever you are is one that's depending upon God, trusting God, obeying God, worshiping God. It's the only way you're gonna be salt and light is if you are truly depending upon God and listening to God and obeying God. Men and women, Jesus is the true human, the true image of God. Whatever our understanding of manliness or femininity is, it must begin with dependence, humility, and obedience, and it must end with purity, holiness, and courage. Jesus has come to model obedience, to be the obedience we refuse to do. And then as we will go through the Sermon on the Mount, he's going to tell you the law. He's going to give you the true end of the law. He's going to tell you what the law truly means, and even in the end of Matthew, he's gonna summarize the whole thing.

Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, your mind, your strength, with all of your being, and love your neighbor as yourself.

He has come to fulfill what we have failed to do so that we can now be reinstated into that calling. Our application this morning, Christian, we can only rejoice. We sing songs at Advent, and this is such a wonderful season to be thinking about how Christ fulfills, because these are the songs that really help point to how Christ is the new Adam. He's the one who comes with healing in his wings. We sing, come thou long-expected Jesus, and O come, O come, Emmanuel, songs of Advent, where we get to rejoice that he has come and he's coming again. Christian, the Old Testament belongs to us because Christ has fulfilled it. That doesn't mean we set it aside. No, it means we now long to look into the Old Covenant text to see how Christ has come to fulfill so much of what God has promised. We see God's holiness, mercy, grace, and love all fulfilled in Jesus Christ. If you, the Jewish people, they are unbeliever. If you read the Old Testament without the lenses of Christ, it's a fulfillment. You actually don't see what it means. You're still reading with a veil over your eyes. You might find some fascinating things in it, but you're missing the most fundamental and foundational point. Christ has come so that we can know God more clearly, more truly, more surely because he has fulfilled all that he said. Christian, one of the most significant applications is to rejoice. He keeps his promises, even when it hurts, to the point of death. God keeps his promises. We must trust him. If you're not a Christian this morning, I wanna give you a challenge. There's 39 books. We call that the Old Testament. That's everything before Matthew. Take that Bible home with you. And just go through Matthew and look at all the ways he uses for Phil. I listed those out. If you want them again, I'm happy to share them with you. Or go to Psalm 22 and consider all the different things that are declared in that one Psalm. Or go to Romans 15 and look at those four New Testament texts. Seek to understand how all these promises written by men over different centuries, even different languages from different cultures, but all the one truth of God all come to fulfillment in Jesus Christ. Consider how all these promises would be so impossible apart from the very promise of God for the very power of God to keep them. My desire for you is to win you, to see God is the one who has made great promises for you. He has kept those promises, and Jesus Christ has fulfilled those promises. Do not think that I've come to abolish the law. He has not set it aside. He has come to fulfill the law. Our second point. I told you the first point would be most of it. He has come to fill the whole law. The whole law must be fulfilled. Verse 18, there's one word repeated, and it's significant for how we're gonna understand this passage, the word until. There's a time stamp. Jesus emphasizes this passage, for truly, he's grounding verse 17,

for truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, Not an iota nor not a dot will pass away from the law until all is accomplished.

We wanna think through this. The law will not pass until heavens and earth have passed away and not one small part of that law is gonna pass away until the whole of the law passes away. It's one law and it will be all completed and perfected at the same time. Now, at some level, this is somewhat disobvious. We've got to wrestle with who these untils are and how the parts relate to the whole and what's happening, but the law is an earthly measure. When heaven and earth pass away, this is creation language. Genesis 1, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. When the heavens and the earth, the cosmos, the heavens, and the earth, this planet, they pass away. The law will pass away. None of its parts will pass away until then. The law was given on earth. It is given for a people of the earth, and it will remain instructive and important until the end. Now, when he says, not one dot or Yoda, these are the small little markers of their Hebrew alphabet. We have the same kind of saying cross your T's dot your eyes. It's the smallest details of the law. There is no least commandments, but the smallest parts, what he's declaring is not one part is going to go unfulfilled and unperfected. The whole of the Old Testament is one, and Christ has come to fulfill the entirety. I want to give us some categories to think about the complexity here. There's Old Testament promise, New Testament fulfillment. That was last point that took most of our time. There's another category. There's final perfection. See, you don't yet have it as good as it gets. There's Old Testament promise, New Testament fulfillment, perfection yet to come. As the new Adam, he forgives us fully, unlike the Old Testament sacrifices. but you still have a problem. You still have sin. You're forgiven from sin. You're free from the power of sin, but you still have the presence of sin. Well, the heavens and the earth, when they pass away, when Christ returns, the good news is there's still something to look forward to. Sin is completely removed. You're perfected. That's how the Heaven and earth passing away is the final stage of all the completion because Christ has gone to fulfill what the lambs were promising. He has brought a true forgiveness and freedom, but we're not absolutely perfected yet. We also see this in the Passover, more specifically. The Passover was a promise of Christ the lamb who forgives. We now have the Lord's Supper to remind ourselves Christ has come, he's provided that perfect sacrifice, but it also points to something, doesn't it? The marriage supper of the Lamb. This is a taste, a sampling of the joy we will have when sin is removed so that we know him personally in perfect love. It's important to see that Christ is making it clear the law as a whole, God's word as a whole, It helps us, and I want to address two errors, I think, that we make by not seeing it as one whole. First, it's too often that we make a hard distinction between law and gospel. If you were to go to Exodus 20, anytime you see the Ten Commandments, I want to urge you, first and foremost, see the first word of the Ten Commandments.

I am the Lord your God who delivered you out of Egypt. I delivered you from slavery.

That's a word of grace. The law begins with grace. The law itself is an act of grace because it tells you now how to live as God's redeemed, forgiven people. We too often think the law is God's different way of becoming saved by works. That's absolutely not what it was intended for. No, the law shows us our sin and the law shows us how to live as God's redeemed, delivered people. The law is grace. The second way in which we too often separate God's word or God's law is applying absolutely that there's three categories, moral, judicial, and ceremonial. These are helpful categories, but I'm not sure Moses had those three categories. It isn't clear Jesus has those three categories. It's too often clearly declared that Christ came to fulfill the ceremonial. He's the lamb, he's the sacrifice, he's the priest. But we want to make sure that the moral somehow has this absoluteness. It does, but we can't say the moral law is still directly binding until Christ repeats it as our law in the new covenant. The whole law is one law. When he came to fulfill it, he fulfilled all of it. The moral requirements, the sacrificial ceremony requirements and the judicial requirements. And now he set up a new kingdom with a new law and guess what? Same God. That moral law isn't different. If you're worried about losing the moral law, you don't. Same God declares the same moral absolutes for all God's people. He in fact intensifies them, or shows what their intended end was meant to be. Why is this so important? We must trust, as Christ declares, I say to you, he's speaking now to the disciples, He's drawing in, amen is the word, truly. I say to you, this law is going to have a place until the heavens or earth pass away. We're not obeying all those aspects of the law, but the law still has a place for us as believers. It is instructive. It is important for us to see how the law shows us who Christ is so that we can rejoice all the more at the right time. Jesus was born of the virgin, born under the law. Our creator came down to creation to save us. so that we know that at the right time, he will return in all his glory. We need to be careful of not separating the law or setting aside any part of the law. Christ has come to fulfill it, and we must seek instruction from him. Our third point, verses 19 to 20, I'm going to come back and reinstate when I begin looking through these commandments that follow. But notice verse 19,

therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do so will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. Whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

Verse 20, again he emphasizes

for I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

Kingdom of heaven is the key repeated idea here. And let's just hold out, and we'll get into this later. There's a way to be least in the kingdom of heaven, and there's a way to be great in the kingdom of heaven. And if we look at the qualifier, it's by obeying and teaching all that Christ has said. Part of the great commission that's too often left out is

go and make disciples, baptizing them in the father, the son, and the holy spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded.

If we want to be great in the kingdom of heaven, oh, just go back up to Matthew 5, beginning of verse 3, and look at the different blessings of who he expects us to be and calls us to be. Look at the commands that follow. Look at the great commands of God and consider how do we obey these and teach these, and really this passage is a warning. How dare you relax the word of God? How dare we ever relax the word of God? If we think we can relax the word of God, guess who we think we're greater than? God. And we come and we seek to sit under the word of God. We seek to understand what Christ has fulfilled and we do no longer practice, but we also want to make sure we're seeking to submit fully to the word of God to know him. Now does that turn to you in verse 20? Your righteousness must exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees." Now, here we are 2,000 years after the Gospels were written, and that doesn't sound like much to us. Because we understand Christ is pretty hard on the scribes and the Pharisees because they were hypocrites. But for the audience, this is weighty. They're the holiest people because they have the greatest traditions that apply the law in the greatest way, and they're the real righteous ones. And so he's declaring, your righteousness must exceed the scribes and the Pharisees. We have to wrestle with this, and I want us to wrestle with it in three ways as we conclude. First, the Pharisees' righteousness was only skin deep. We'll see this in chapter six in this sermon where he'll say, tithe, give, pray like the Pharisees. You only do so for the outward expression so people think much of them. They don't do it from their heart. They have a skin deep religion. They are not the ones who love the Lord their God with all their heart so that the love of God comes out in obedient action. They merely perform and they're dead inside. In fact, Matthew 15 will go further and say they insist upon their own traditions in a way that deny and reject the word of God. What comes out of their heart and out of their mouth is not godliness. So at some level, your righteousness must exceed that of the Pharisees in that it must be deeper than just your mere actions and performance. It must come from a transformed inner heart. that's been regenerated by the Holy Spirit and practiced. Second, this passage should let you see you're hopeless without Christ. Your religion must be greater than skin deep, it must exceed more than skin deep, but then when we start looking inside, oh man, are we in trouble. There's a reason religion practice skin deep is easy. The heart, the seed of desires of sin. When we truly seek to be more righteous than the Pharisees, when we truly seek to have a heart that's transformed, when we seek to discipline our own sinful heart that's deceptive, we realize we're in big trouble. That's why we go to Matthew 5, three.

Blessed are the poor in spirit. for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

When we see how little righteousness we have on our own, we turn to him who is righteousness, who came to fulfill righteousness, who came to declare us righteous. You cannot exceed the Pharisee's righteousness on your own. You must believe in Jesus, who declares you righteous and gives you his righteousness. The third way, this passage is meant to be scary, but it is nowhere near the scariest. And even some of them out, uh, turned me to five 48 notice between the declaration, your righteousness must exceed the Pharisees verse 20 and then five 48. There's six different. You have heard said, but I say to you, so after these six commandments, There's a book in, Your Righteousness Must Exceed the Pharisees, and then this one.

Be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect.

That righteousness will not do to enter the kingdom without Him. The righteousness expected of you is that of the Father. I believe these are informing the entirety of these six commandments. We could go on if you're not yet fully intimidated and terrified. Chapter six, verse 14 and 15, you'll be forgiven with the same measure that you forgive. Chapter seven, verse one, you'll be judged with the judgment you pronounce. There's regular markers Jesus giving in his sermon to help us cry out to him and to see what a high, wonderful calling we have in him. He has come to fulfill the law. so that by faith in him we can be forgiven, by faith in him we can be freed from sin, by faith in him we can now live a life new, walking in righteousness. What baptism has already shown us, what Charlotte has already received just this morning, the promise, you can be washed and then raised anew to walk in Christ, to walk in his ways. not defeated in sin, but victorious because of who he is, what he's doing in us, and what he's done for us. This morning, our faith in him blesses us to know him and what he's done for us, to walk in him so that we can fulfill his righteous calling to obey him. Will you pray with me? Father, we thank you, Lord, for your word. We thank you for how good you are to speak a word of promise to us after we have not only told lies and embraced lies and lied to ourselves and lied to one another, you're the God of truth who proclaims light in our personal darkness. We thank you that Christ has come to be light for us Lord, we pray we would be able to rejoice because you've provided all we need in Christ. You've given us your Holy Spirit so that in his name we can come to you and know you as Father. We can look back and see fully salvation has been accomplished. We can look forward to know that there is a perfected state we long for. where we see you no longer with eyes marred by sin and hearts distracted in every way. We long to see you face to face in all of your glory and holiness and love. Lord, may we long for your completion of this plan of salvation, and may we learn how to walk in the fulfillment of what Christ has given us today. In his name we pray. Amen.