Last week we started Matthew chapter 5 and started into Jesus’ sermon on the mount. We looked at this like progression of growth and the characteristics of someone who is a believer or a citizen of God’s Kingdom. We talked about what it means to be the salt and light of the world. That we as Kingdom Citizens would be the flavor and the light of Christ in a bland and dark world. These were really important elements that Jesus started out with in this teaching. This took us all the way to verse 16 of Matthew 5 last week, so today we’ll be picking up starting in verse 17. And Jesus gets a little more technical in some of the things that He is dealing with in this passage, but we’re going to try to break it down a bit and see what practical elements that we can gain today. Let’s read our passage.
Read Matthew 5:17-20
Verse 17 is a very strong statement, especially considering who Jesus was likely talking to at this moment. To the Jewish people the law and the writings of the prophets was everything. And just to note, when the word “law” is used, it sometimes refers to a number of different things. Sometimes the law referred to the Ten Commandments, other times it referred to the first five books of the Bible, when it says the law and the prophets it often times means all of the scripture that they had up to that point, and then at the time when Jesus was saying this a lot of people would refer to the law as the law of the scribes. Like the scribes that Jesus talks about in verse 20 when He says, “the scribes and the Pharisees”.
Jesus is most likely talking about the third option there, which was all of the scripture that they had up to that point. From Genesis to the book of Malachi. But what we should understand is that a lot of people hearing this probably were big supporters of and followed the law of the scribes. And that’s where things get kind of crazy. These scribes had taken the basic words of the law and developed these extremely detailed do’s and don’ts for basically every meaningful or meaningless element of life. For instance, in the ten commandments it says not to work on the Sabbath, you can see that in Exodus 20. Now the scribes would then ask every imaginable question, and for one such example they asked: is it considered work to write something on the Sabbath? To which they actually answered, yes, it was considered work to write something on the Sabbath. But then they would tackle a follow-up question of, well, how do we define writing? And how much writing until it is considered work which would be a sin? Let me read you a small part from their rules, it’s kind of crazy:
- “He who writes two letters of the alphabet with his right or with his left hand, whether of one kind or of two kinds, if they are written with different inks or in different languages, is guilty. Even if he should write two letters from forgetfulness, he is guilty, whether he has written them with ink or with paint, red chalk, vitriol, or anything which makes a permanent mark. Also, he that writes on two walls that form an angle, or on two tablets of his account book so that they can be read together is guilty … But, if anyone writes with dark fluid, with fruit juice, or in the dust of the road, or in sand, or in anything which does not make a permanent mark, he is not guilty…. If he writes one letter on the ground, and one on the wall of the house, or on two pages of a book, so that they cannot be read together, he is not guilty.”
I just wanted to get a little taste of that, because we need to understand the difference. There were people in that day and still today that try to add all of these do’s and don’ts, all of these rules and regulations, but they miss the purpose, the heart, and the very essence of God’s word. These people are making all of these extra, crazy laws, and I think there is the potential that some meant well, that they were just trying to do as good as possible for the Lord, but it really ended up as just people doing these things to puff up their own self-righteousness. This is something that becomes really apparent at various times in the Bible with the Pharisees. But, for the Jewish people living today, for some of the real orthodox or traditional Jews, this is still the stuff that they live by. I read a story from the 90s where there was an apartment on fire in an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood, but it was forbidden to use a phone on the Sabbath which stopped them from calling the fire department. Instead, they consulted with their Rabbi and while he was deciding if they should in fact call the fire department, two more apartments burned down as well.
The point is that these things are just over the top, they’re way too much, and people adding all of these extra things wasn’t what was written or intended. God’s law wasn’t made so that people could keep adding to it and so they could feel more and more self-righteous through their works.
The core purpose of the law that God gave to man was show us that we could never live up to His standards of holiness, that we’re sinners, and so He helped us through the law to understand that and be ready to be saved from our sin by Jesus Christ. That’s the big picture of it all.
So, when Jesus says there in verse 17 that He didn’t come to destroy it, well of course not, because He is the very fulfillment of it, as He points out for us there. All of it was pointing forward and preparing us for Jesus. I want to go together to a passage in Galatians 3.
Read Galatians 3:19-25
What this passage says is that God gave us the law because of our sin. It says that the “Seed” would be coming to fulfill a promise. Most Bibles put a capital S there on Seed, because it’s talking about Jesus, and looks all the way back to a promise made in Genesis 3. That the Seed or Jesus would be coming to defeat Satan. It says that the law ultimately couldn’t bring the life and the righteousness that we needed and so Jesus as promised stepped on the scene. It says that the law helped guard and tutor people, it protected people by making us aware of God’s standards until Christ got here.
And there is a lot of technical things that we could look at, but the simple truth is that yes, the weight of the law helped keep people in check before Jesus, but in Jesus that weight is lifted. We’re no longer just trying to live up to the law as best as we can, because the grace of God has now been poured out through Jesus’ death and He fulfilled all of the requirements of the law for us. Which is awesome, which is exactly what we needed, because we could never do it.
So, like Galatians says the law was like a tutor to help our understanding and bring us to Christ, but then through faith in Him, we aren’t under that tutor or under the law anymore. The call for us isn’t to try to follow all of these laws, or even make up more like some have done and try to be as righteous as possible, the call for us now is to believe and follow Jesus, because He has taken care of all these technicalities for us.
So back in Matthew 5, Jesus is saying that He is not doing away with all of those things, because they serve a purpose, and they are God’s word and it points to Him. But He moves on and let me read verse 18 again.
Read Matthew 5:18
Jesus tells those listening, that not one part, even the smallest of parts, will pass away until all of God’s words are fulfilled. The word “jot” and “tittle” there, strange words, but they carry that meaning of the smallest parts, they would be comparable for us to like an apostrophe and like one of the lines that forms a letter. Jesus is just talking about His high view of God’s word, that even to the smallest parts, it’s still important, and that’s a view that we should all have, and this understanding would have been very important to the people listening to Him when He said this, because they did hold the Word in really high regard, even if they were taking it way too far with all of their own additions. And so as we move forward into verse 19, Jesus expands the high view of His Word to also how we should talk about it to others.
Read Matthew 5:19
In the last verse, Jesus said this is all important. But verse 19, adds us into the view, and how it’s a serious thing to teach the Word and I would say that we all have some level of responsibility in doing that. And no matter if you are teaching your grandchild on the couch at home or you lead a church service or bible study, we need to take care that we are not leading people the wrong way.
But realize that the point of this verse isn’t like, God scrutinizing every little detail waiting for you to mess up. If you break this down to it’s simplest form, Jesus is saying, don’t live wrong and teach people to live like you, breaking the commandments, instead you need to live correctly, following God’s commands and then you can teach them to others. That should be common sense in light of Who He is and us taking His Word seriously like we have talked about. But a lot of people still don’t. The crazy thing is that there are entire religeous movements and churches that are built on people not following the Word and teaching people to do the same. And you know as I said we should take the teaching of the word seriously at any level to however many people, even if it’s just one. But the Bible does say in passages like James 3 that church leaders and teachers will face a stricter judgement then others because of their role. And that shouldn’t scare us away from doing something like that, it should just remind us to take it seriously and that’s what Jesus is talking about here.
And we might be like … but there is just so much in the Bible, how could I possibly know every single one of these commands, or laws, or instructions, or guidance. There’s just so much here. And then for these people listening to Jesus teaching this on that mountain they had those scribe guys adding like thousands of more tiny commands to every element of life. And we can be like, how in the world do I keep up with all of this? But remember from Galatians, that we now aren’t actually under the scope of all of the law that these people had at that time. If we believe in Jesus, we are now within His grace, not under His law, but that doesn’t invalidate the heart of the law and the need for a standard for God’s people. But thankfully for us and for me especially with a bad memory, Jesus gives us like a cliff notes version of the law, He just boils it all down to a really simple understanding and we need to go see this together.
Read Matthew 22:34-40
These guys had the nerve to try to challenge Jesus with the law and Jesus in His authority as God takes the entire heart and essence of the law and boils it down to two commands.
- You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.
- You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
That I can remember, and I am so thankful that Jesus did this. Jesus said here that all of the Law and the Prophets hangs on just these two commands. That if we were to actually live in line with these two commands fully and teach the heart of these two commands then we’re going to be doing things right. And again, that’s not to say we disregard everything else, of course not, we need all of the rest of this, because there is a lot of context in all of scripture that helps us understand exactly what these two commands mean and we always have to be growing in that.
So all of that to say that the heart of the law wasn’t ever just this petty rule following mindset that people got into. The heart of the law was a blueprint that showed us that our plans didn’t match up to God’s plans, that our sin didn’t live up to His holiness, and left us in a place where we needed Him to fix it. And Jesus fixed it, and now we don’t live under the weight of law anymore, we now live to follow Jesus, because of His grace towards us, and I am so thankful for that.
But then Jesus makes the last statement of our passage this morning in verse 20 and what does He mean by this?
Read Matthew 5:20
Unless you are more righteous than these guys, you won’t enter the Kingdom of Heaven. These people that Jesus is talking about are the very guys that were adding more and even stricter rules to the law, these were the guys that dedicated their entire lives to following every bit of it. How in the world are we supposed to be more righteous than these guys? These guys, by all accounts and by the observation of the public around them were seen as the most righteous in society, but the real question is: are they really righteous in the way that they are living? Let me read another passage, this one is in Matthew 23. The entire chapter of Matthew 23 is just Jesus expressing some choice words to these individuals.
Read Matthew 23:27-28
Read Matthew 23:15
For these guys it was all a show, and Jesus of course saw right through it. But notice that Jesus said that they appeared beautiful on the outside. They looked really good and that’s what most people saw of them. Most people probably were fully convinced that these were the most righteous guys on Earth, based on their outward appearances. But Jesus said you appear as righteous, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.
And even worst and it’s why I read verse 15 there, it talks about them making converts or teaching others and it says in Jesus’ words that they made them “twice as much a son of hell as themselves”. They were teaching and leading other people in the wrong way as well. All of this is what Jesus was talking about in our passage in Matthew 5, just unfortunately made an example of in these guys. They were doing wrong and teaching people wrong, because they were working for a show and not because they actually loved God and loved people. But the fact of the matter though is that if it was their works that equaled actual righteousness then I doubt any of us would be anywhere near the level of works that these guys were doing. But that leads us to our final point for today.
Read 2 Corinthians 5:21
This is an incredible truth. This passage tells us that Jesus Christ Who had no sin Himself, took on our sin, which He did so on the cross, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. And what that means, is that when we believe in what Jesus Christ did for us, His death, burial, and resurrection for our sin, then the Bible tells us over and over again, that when we are saved, that we are spiritually placed IN CHRIST. And so, Jesus said we needed to have righteousness greater than the scribes and pharisees if we’re ever going to make it into the Kingdom and if our righteousness was based on our works then we would all fail on this one. But, because we that believe are now IN CHRIST JESUS spiritually, when God the Father looks at us, He now sees Christ’s righteousness in place of ours, because we are in Him.
And these guys will all of their rules, regulations, and works don’t have anything at all on Christ’s righteousness which we are now covered in. So, if we have that faith in Jesus, then we are most definitely citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven and that can’t ever be taken away from us.
So, after all of that, let me give you the short version recap.
Jesus didn’t come to do away with the heart and the purpose of the Law. The law teaches us that we messed up and that’s a problem, Jesus came to fix that problem and save us. Jesus takes us out from under the weight of the law and tells us now to follow Him, but again that doesn’t remove the heart and purpose of the law and so Jesus gives us the simplified version that encompasses all of the rest. He tells us to love God with everything we are, and He tells us to love people. He tells us simply to do the right things and teach the right things and obviously not the wrong things. And then He says that we need righteousness greater than these outwardly super spiritual guys to get into the Kingdom of Heaven, but thankfully for us He actually covers us with His righteousness when we place our faith in Him, so we’ve got that covered.
And I’m sure thankful that we do. So, let’s be careful that we aren’t just putting on a show of things like these guys. Let’s make sure that we are doing the right things and teaching the right things. And let us never think too highly of ourselves, because at the end of the day through this passage we can clearly see that Jesus did all of the heavy lifting to work all of this out for us. He saved us, He took away the weight of the law off of our shoulders, and by His righteousness, not ours, we will enter the Kingdom of Heaven.