Aug. 7, 2016 Afternoon Service Beatitudes Part 5 by Pastor Josh Sheldon

Matthew 5:17–20 and the Afternoon Portion of Worship

In the message, which will be taken from Matthew 5, 17 through 20, which Joseph just read to you, a brief excursus. I do appreciate the attendance that we're having here in the afternoon portion of our service.

And as I said before we started this, as I was announcing it during the morning services, I don't consider this, and I don't want you to consider this, the afternoon service, but part of our day's worship.

And I've been very careful not to call it the afternoon service, but the afternoon portion of our service. And I very much appreciate everybody coming in and worshiping and continuing in this way. It is my hope to be able to have in this afternoon portion a segment time of prayer.

I very much think we're all committed to the idea that Jesus meant it when he said, my house shall be called a house of prayer. And Jesus' house, as we know from Ephesians 2, the book of Colossians, 2 Corinthians 12 and forward, many places in the scripture, that house is this house where Jesus' spirit roams and dwells and binds us together.

And I just want to let you know that it is my intent to, as we proceed and as we get used to the afternoon service, I know there've been a few glitches that we've tried to smooth out, that we will actually have a formal time of prayer during this service.

So that's just to let you know where we're going. It would be something as I envision it now where we would have the prayer requests, the prayer needs already known, and men would then be assigned to actually stand probably from right where they're sitting and pray for these things.

And we would all pray together as a body like that. I think it's very important that prayer characterizes this place as much, if not more, than anything else that we do. So before I begin the message this morning or this afternoon, I will pray specifically for the Towns family.

I was very blessed to see Bob here. You know it's very difficult for Bob to get here for any time of service. He very much wants to be here every Sunday, but when he's here it's a great effort on his part, not meritorious to him, but because of Christ in him.

And it's a blessing to us to see him. We will pray for their current situation in terms of the logistics of Brian and getting the proper professional care in there to take care of the wound that he has on his lower right leg.

Excuse me. Continue to heal that. Pray for qualified help to come in there because he needs specialized care for a while. And so I do want to pray for the Towns family before we begin the preaching, and then we will have this message and, Lord willing, the Lord's table.

Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father, we do come to you as a family bound together and designated by the Lord Jesus Christ as brothers and sisters together. We are a family, Father. And on behalf of our family members, the Towns, excuse me, Bob and Mary, we do come to you, Father, beseeching that you would continue to shower your mercy upon them.

We thank you, Lord, for the help that you've shown them, for the clear and obvious work of God by his Spirit in that family, not just in Bob and Mary's spirits, but, Father, taking care of that entire household.

We do pray for salvation to come to their three sons. We pray, Father, that you will continue to uphold Bob and Mary in the inner man. And we thank you, Lord, for their constant cheerfulness and their faith and their confidence in your Son, Jesus Christ, that they show us here as they come.

We do pray for Brian and the special care that he needs, that you, Father, would arrange for that so that it would happen smoothly, that it would be affordable for them, that he would get the care that he needs.

And, Father, just take again, as you've done so many times for so many of us, this crooked path, this path where no one can see around the bends and we can't see any way to make it straight and easy and smooth and comfortable, Lord, but you can.

And, Father, you have done this so many times. So we pray your special work and blessing be upon the town's household, Lord, that you just give them a special measure of your mercy now in their time of need.

Protect Bob's health, continue to watch over him, Lord. We thank you that the tumors have not advanced in him. Protect Mary's health as she takes on so much responsibility for the physical care of her family.

Let's pray that you watch over them in all these things. And we come to you confidently and boldly in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ. Amen. Matthew 5, 17 through 20. Do not think I came to abolish the law or the prophets.

I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them and the rest of it, ending with, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Some very strong negations by our Lord Jesus Christ in these few verses.

In verse 8, when he says that a jot or a tittle will by no means pass from the law, it's in the strongest language of negation that is available in the Greek. And the other equally strong, exactly the same negation as a matter of fact, is there in the verse I just read to you.

Unless your righteousness exceeds the champions of righteousness, the, if you will, who's the Super Bowl champion right now, the Denver Broncos, the Denver Broncos of exhibiting righteousness, unless you can exceed them, you will by no means, that same strong negation, enter the kingdom of heaven.

D .A. Carson writes, Matthew 5, 17 to 20 are among those difficult verses in all the Bible. If a scholar of his note despairs of discovering the meaning, we have to ask what hope do the more pedestrian among us really have.

Our Lord's view of scripture is stratospherically high, far from abolishing the scriptures or setting them aside or destroying them or abrogating the whole corpus in favor of what some might say is the law of love.

Rather than any of that, he sets the law and the prophets as the very purpose of his coming. I didn't come to abolish them. I came to fulfill them. That is my purpose. That is what I'm here for, to fulfill that very thing that will not be set aside.

Heaven and earth could pass away, but this word from God shall never pass away. And Jesus states as clearly that the law will outlive heaven and earth. Does he mean until heaven and earth are remade as Peter says it is going to be remade by the way he pointed out to us?

Does the word until set some outer limit after which the law will finally pass away? And what must first be accomplished? Until all is accomplished, he says, what has to get done? Let's get on with it.

Could that mean the prophecies about him, in which case the resurrection is that final accomplishment and then the law can finally fade away? What does fulfill mean in the Greek? What does it mean to fulfill?

In verse 19, the Lord states that heaven and earth itself is what's in, excuse me, that heaven itself is what's in play here. The Lord's saying what is at stake here is heaven. We're talking about salvation.

It is lost or gained depending on our compliance with the law, capital L. Heaven, your eternal fate is what he's talking about here. And then Jesus tells us in matters of legal compliance, if we don't do better than the best, of course I'm talking about the scribes and pharisees again, if we don't outdo the champions, we can't even think about getting into heaven unless your righteousness exceeds them.

It's like asking a high school football team to go on the field against the Super Bowl champs, isn't it? These men knew the law. They could parse it out. They probably had memorized all 613 of them. They knew everything they had to do, everything they had to show, every word they had to speak to be righteous.

And Jesus says unless you do better than that, forget about heaven. So as I approach this text this afternoon, I feel a bit like David in Psalm 131. Oh Lord, my heart is not lifted up. My eyes are not raised too high.

I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. This is beyond me. But I do have to occupy myself with this thing that is too great for me. These are the words of our Lord. This is Jesus telling us who's in and who's out.

Here is the Son of God explaining this great purpose in his coming. And he's telling us his attitude towards the Bible. And that's really what the law and prophets means is those term that doesn't mean just the law and just the prophets and so forget the rest.

No, it's the whole scripture is what he has in view here. You read that in Luke 22 on the Emmaus Road and later when he goes to the apostles and opens their eyes and shows them all the comprehensive term, law and prophets.

It's all what he has in mind for the whole thing. And it's then the Old Testament, of course, when he spoke at that time. And so this is of the utmost importance. Heaven is at stake here. Unless we outdo the best, unless we're better than them.

And so we have to wrestle with this. Whether it's too great for me or not, I'm your pastor. You have every right to demand that I wrestle with this text, that I spare no effort in finding what the Lord meant by it and what this must mean to we who are his disciples.

He says the law and the prophets spoke of him. Jesus said it is the scriptures that bear witness of me in John chapter 5. They were prophetic about him each in their own way. Micah 5 .2 for example prophesied his birthplace in a strictly predictive sense.

So we can say the prophets prophesied of Christ and Micah 5 .2 would be a very good example of that. Isaiah spoke of his work on the cross in the same way, in this predictive way. A one-to-one correspondence between what the prophet foretold and what actually happened in history.

Psalm 22 speaks of his suffering on the cross, but it doesn't have quite that same one-to-one correspondence with actual events that Micah or Isaiah did. Though he did indeed go to the cross, that's a historical fact, but because it's a psalm and the language of psalms differs from the language of the prophets and it's wholly predictive, it's predictive in a different way.

And all I mean is all the scriptures, each in their own way, each according to the language, each according to the genre in which they were inspired, predict of Jesus Christ. All of it's about him. And so the law prophesies of Jesus Christ.

The law prophesied of him, not predictive like the prophets, not predictive like the psalms, yet predictive in that it demands someone to actually do what it says man is supposed to do, their responsibility to God.

And until that happens, it stands sort of like the 800-pound gorilla on the table that everyone has to ignore, yet they know it's there and it's always in the way. The so-called ceremonial law made men yearn for an end to the parade of animals to the slaughter, or so it should have done, because the ceremonial law prophesied of Christ.

The civil laws find the apex of judgment only when Jesus is the one who finally makes all things right. So the civil laws, which were for Israel then, they prophesied of Christ. They're all about him.

What we call the moral law has to make us despair of ever even coming close to what God demands of us, because it prophesies of him who didn't come close, but did all that was demanded. And then we have Jesus saying that with the law in force in its entirety, all 613 of them, if you should play fast and loose with one of them, an iota or a yud, which is the smallest Hebrew letter, a dot or a small stroke of the pen that connects the words, if you take this attitude towards any portion of it, you are least in the kingdom, and maybe not even in the kingdom at all.

Jesus says this law is the metric by which eternity is judged. So I'll leave behind some of the deep theological arguments this afternoon. The theonomist says that the law, quote, in exhaustive detail, end quote, remains binding upon all men at all times in all places, and standing behind geniuses like Greg Bonson, they can prove it.

Others say no, only what Jesus of the apostles repeated, that is, only those imperative commands in the New Testament still bind the church today. And there's many other opinions and constructs in between.

One man even says that there are no commands at all for the Christian, but only descriptions of what he is by imperative language. So what are we to do? What binds us today? What are we responsible for to God?

If our righteousness, of course, Jesus means a righteousness according to the law that he was speaking of in these verses. If your righteousness is not better than the best, heaven is out of the question.

So I'll press on to see what Jesus is saying here, and see if we can kind of get our arms around it this afternoon. One thing is that Jesus is the fulfillment of all scripture. He is the point of all scripture.

I alluded to Luke 22, the resurrected Lord walking with the Emmaus disciples and later going to the apostles. He is all of it, and all of it is him. That's what's meant by the law and the prophets, the whole revelation of the Old Testament.

It is his, Jesus' person and work. It was waiting for all of it, and he fulfilled them, all those scriptures. How? By being the person that they predicted, because only the person they predicted to could do the things that was predicted for him to do, such as be the Lamb of God, and that's Isaiah 53.

He fulfilled all the scripture by satisfying all the topology. So every procedure in the ceremonial laws, all the administration of the temple, from the priests interceding for the people, to the endless parade of the animals going for the slaughter after sins were confessed upon him, all of that has to yearn for his fulfillment of even as creation yearns and groans for final redemption.

Now if the ceremonial laws have ground to a halt, that's because he came as the end goal of all they ultimately said about God and how man can come to him. It all ended because he is that Lamb of God who took away the sin of the world.

If the secession of the high priesthood has ceased, it's because he, Jesus, is the one that all those laws prophesied. He is now our eternal high priest, which is what all those pointed towards. He fulfilled it all.

So he is the fulfillment of scripture. We know this from what he's saying here. We know this from other gospels. We know this from the epistles. He is the point of it all. The second thing we can notice is that there is a righteousness that will be demanded of us as our entrance into heaven.

A righteousness demanded as our entrance to heaven. That this righteousness is related to the law is clear by the reference to the scribes and the Pharisees whose identity was bound up in their knowledge of and compliance with that law.

So law, righteousness, Pharisees, they're all related and kind of bound together in what Jesus is saying here. Now righteousness, of course, is an entire study in and of itself. The Hebrew word is tzaddik, and it came from a root that meant straightness.

It led to the idea of action that conforms to a norm, and that's why David could say in Psalm 18 20 that God has dealt with him according to what? My righteousness, he says. And then in verse 24, he could say that he's been rewarded by God on that same basis.

He's rewarded me according to my righteousness. He had conformed to the standards to which he had committed. David in that psalm has in mind relations between men. And when we move to the relationship between God and men, there's still this idea of conformity to a standard or a norm.

And in this case, though, that standard is the covenant made between God and Israel. That is the law. Ezekiel brings out the relationship between law and righteousness like this. Listen to Ezekiel 18 5.

If a man is righteous and does what is just and right, notice the doing, does what is just and right, if he does not eat upon the mountain or lift up his eyelids to the idols of the house of Israel, does not defile his neighbor's wife or approach a woman in her time of menstrual impurity, does not oppress anyone, but restores to the debtor his pledge, commits no robbery, gives his bread to the hungry, and covers the naked with a garment, does not lend at interest or take any profit, withholds his hand from injustice, executes true justice between man and man, walks in my statutes and keeps my rules by acting faithfully, and the church should say, he is righteous.

Who of us can say just on that list, those couple of verses in the middle of a prophet, I made it. Heaven's mine. He is righteous. He shall surely live, declares the Lord God. And see this brings righteousness as law compliance together with salvation.

This is a man just declaring himself righteous as David did in Psalm 18. More accurately though, it's really God's assessment. It is God's declaration that he who does these things, that one is righteous and shall live.

In the Old Testament as well, we find righteousness tied to faith. I think this begins to help us even more here. Genesis 15 .6, Abraham believed the Lord and it was reckoned to him as righteousness. It seems that the Pharisees got stuck on Ezekiel 18, but they forgot Genesis 15 .6.

They had a righteousness that was meticulous like Paul in Philippians 3, 5, and 6. Pardon me. He wrote, as to the law of Pharisee, as to zeal, a persecutor of the church, as to righteousness, now you're hearing not from Saul the Pharisee, you're hearing from Paul the apostle looking back upon Saul the Pharisee, as to righteousness under the law, blameless.

He kept it, can we say perfectly? But he speaks of a righteousness not of the law and that comes soon. And so we circle back to the Lord's sermon, Jesus's sermon, where righteousness is at center stage.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. You see, kingdom citizens place God's righteousness as more important than life itself.

So consequently, they are willing to endure any hardships or trials for the sake of righteousness, God's righteousness. So what is it then? What is it that Jesus would have of us? What exactly is this righteousness?

Is it perfect compliance with 613 laws? Is it bowing down and worshiping the law every jot and tittle and holding it as holy? What exactly is this? Is it something new that awaited his own incarnation?

Jesus says in Matthew 13, 52,. Let's start with the old for just a second. What's old is that God's demands have not changed. Not a jot or a tittle, not an iota, not a speck. God's demands have not changed.

Righteousness is that outer behavior that conforms to his revealed will in the law. It is and always has been a matter of faith. So it's a matter of faith. As Paul says of the Israelites, why did the word of God do them no good?

Because they did not mix it with faith. They did not hear it with ears or hearts of faith. Abraham believed God's promise of universal blessing to come from his descendants and especially his descendant.

So righteousness is that faithful obedience that believes that God will bless those who adhere to his law. It's not just a doing, but it's a believing in the doing. It's faith that pleases God. Jesus follows what he says here in Matthew 5, 17 to 20 with six examples that Lord willing we get to next week.

There he speaks of anger, lust, divorce, oaths, retaliation, love for our enemies, all from the law. And will tell us exactly what it means to have a righteousness that is superior to that of the championship scribes and Pharisees.

But for now, just for this afternoon's short message, for now we must understand that if we try to achieve what Jesus demands, we will fail. We will fail for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

The righteousness needed is something different than something as mundane as just obeying the law. Now here's the something new out of his treasure. If the something old is the law and the law must be satisfied before you can go to heaven, what is the something new?

Read that in Romans 3, 21 and 22. But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law. Although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.

If the old thing is the law itself, if that's the treasure, the word of God that Jesus says cannot pass away, not a speck of it, none of it. Heaven and earth can pass away, but the word of God will never pass away.

That's old. What's new? The righteousness of God manifested apart from the law. It doesn't say there with the law gone away. It doesn't say now you can be righteous without it, but apart from the law.

Now the scribes and Pharisees here are going to object. They're going to cry, foul, you're changing the rules just to make it easier on yourself. I say no, we're following the old way, the way of Abraham, our father's faith.

Righteousness granted, not earned. Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him for righteousness. God imputed to him righteousness because he believed God. This is what we're saying, granted, not earned, conferred upon us by royal proclamation.

The new way is Christ's righteousness as not the standard by which we are judged, but the achievement that has been imputed to us by faith. Not the standard by which you will be judged, but the achievement of Jesus Christ imputed to you by faith in him.

Second Corinthians 521 encapsulates this beautifully. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. That is Christ's righteousness attributed to you as yours, as if you had fulfilled God's demands as he did, which we didn't, and only he did.

But if you're in him by faith in his sacrifice on the cross for your sins, for your non-fulfillment of the law on every point, then his success with the law attributed to you. That's a righteousness that exceeds the Pharisees because that's a righteousness that is perfect.

And it's perfect not because we did it, not because you accomplished it, not because you took any one of those laws and obeyed it ever, because Jesus Christ did and did them all. That's what it means to have something imputed.

If you believe he achieved everything the scriptures, all of them foretold, especially that he died for your sins, for all your breaking of God's law, for all your rotten motives that flow from a rotten heart, if this is your faith statement in Christ, then that righteousness that he achieved, that righteousness that blows away anything the scribes or Pharisees could have imagined is yours.

And might we add along with that heaven? Because if your righteousness does not exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. Does not the reverse also ring true?

If your righteousness does exceed that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you shall by all means, by means of one, by means of Jesus Christ and what he did, you shall enter the kingdom of heaven. See under the old covenant there was no hope.

Solomon said rightly there is no one who does not sin. Under the new covenant, the new treasure brought out from the scribe of the law in the parable, under the new covenant, the one that Jesus is inaugurating, we have that righteousness.

By faith in him who achieved it all on our behalf. The third and last point is just to remind us that heaven is what is at stake. Heaven is what is at stake. You shall by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.

Remember the beatitudes began, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is what? The kingdom of heaven. And then there were six beatitudes and the last beatitudes, blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Heaven, which is eternal destiny, is what is in play here. The beatitudes are about the kingdom of heaven. They're about who is saved and who is not saved. The end of the sermon on the mount is about the same thing with many souls being told depart from me you who practice lawlessness.

You whose righteousness stands before me on your own merits. Depart from me you who are claiming your own compliance with God's law. Because you're practicing lawlessness, I never knew you. Let us say again because those words are so strong and so dread and so many will hear them.

Speaking to those whose faith is in Jesus Christ. One of the propositional truths of your faith must be this. His righteousness imputed to me, I who was never righteousness. He made him who knew no sin to be sin for us because we were sin, we are sin.

That in him we have the righteousness of God and therefore a righteousness that infinitely exceeds what Jesus points out here. The scribes and the pharisees. Therefore a righteousness that opens the gates of heaven because it's Jesus' righteousness that brings us in.

Unless you exceed that of the scribes and the pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. That is what's at stake here. I want to close with three verses from the book of Hebrews chapter 2 beginning at verse 2.

For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution, how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? It was declared at first by the Lord and it was also attested to us by those who heard while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will.

That message received by the angels the law was reliable and every transgression was punished and this holds true in the new covenant because the inauguration of the new covenant says that every transgression was indeed in fact in history punished on Jesus Christ rather than me.

He the righteous one punished in my place therefore his righteousness attributed to me by faith given to us by God. Amen.