Culmination Matthew 5:17-20

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When you hear a sermon preached or take part in a
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Bible study or read the Bible on your own time, typically the content only comes from one portion of Scripture.
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That part of the Bible is the New Testament. When you think about it, there is an imbalance here since 76 % of the
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Bible is the Old Testament. You are more likely to spend time reading
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John, Romans, and 1 Peter rather than Leviticus, Ezekiel, and Habakkuk.
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Early on in my ministry here, I made a point to get us familiar with the Old Testament and I did that by taking us through the first book of the
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Bible, Genesis. If you have a decent understanding of Genesis, you set yourself up well to understand the rest of the
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Bible. If you spend most of your time reading the New Testament without understanding much of the
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Old Testament, you put yourself in danger of not understanding it properly or even being confused in lots of places.
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A good portion of the New Testament is explaining the Old Testament. The New Testament is about Jesus and the work that God accomplished and is going to accomplish in the future through him.
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And what Jesus and his apostles do is continually point back to the
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Old Testament. In our text today, in Matthew, as we continue our sermon series through Matthew, we are going to see that Jesus is not some rogue prophet starting a new movement, but rather he is the primary figure of the
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Old Testament since he is foretold in the Old Testament. So this morning, we are going to see how
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Jesus brings fulfillment to the Old Testament Scriptures. So at this time,
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I encourage you to turn with me to Matthew chapter 5. We will be looking at verses 17 through 20, so just four verses today.
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And if you are using the Red Bible in the pews, it is on page 963.
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I meant to make a note on that and I never did, but thank you Mark. This sermon is titled Consummation.
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And our big idea is this. Jesus' ministry does not replace the
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Old Testament, but continues it. And we are going to see two explanations why this is so.
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The first one is this. The ancient prophets of God point ahead to him.
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And we will see this in verses 17 and 18. But before we jump into our text this morning, let me give you a little recap of where we have been.
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Over the last month, we have been looking at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount. We took three Sundays to look at the
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Beatitudes. And what we learned during the Beatitudes is that Jesus showed us the road to full and lasting happiness.
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Those who follow him experience this forever bliss. If the Beatitudes were the introduction, then the next text, as we saw last week, was the beginning of the body of the
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Sermon on the Mount. This is where Jesus tells his followers that they will stand out to a watching world.
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When Jesus told the crowd listening to him on the mountain, the crowd that included his disciples was that they are the salt of the earth and the light of the world.
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As believers, you are the salt of the earth in the sense that through your moral purity, you stand out from the corrupt world around you.
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Through your reflection of Christ, you prevent the world from becoming worse than it is. And you also carry flavor with you, just as salt does.
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To some people in the world, your Christlike character is attractive. And some of these people even come to faith in Christ.
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Jesus also told the disciples in the crowd, and every disciple in this room, that you are the light of the world.
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To be salt of the earth mostly focused on your character, where light focuses more on your witness for Christ.
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It comes from Jesus Christ. Your character does, and people see it, and they see the gospel through you.
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And those people may even come to know Christ through your witness. Your influence makes a difference in this world.
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And as you shine your light for Christ, God is glorified as people praise his name. People praise his works being produced in you.
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Now this leads us to our text this morning. So what we're going to do is we're going to read these verses together. When the text is fairly small, this is what we do.
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If you remember in Genesis, the texts were often a lot larger, so we didn't do this. But now we do this, so it's a good exercise.
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So Matthew 5, verses 17 -20. This is what Jesus says as he's on this mountain talking to the crowds, and he's telling this to us as well today.
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He says, 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.
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For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.
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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.
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But whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
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For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
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So as we look at these four verses, it is very important to remember Jesus' audience here.
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Your audience often determines the way you carry the conversation, the way you carry the sermon.
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The people that Jesus was preaching to were Jewish. At this point, the
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New Testament had not yet been written, of course. This would have happened after Jesus' resurrection and ascension, and it would be written down by His disciples years down the road.
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What this means is that all Jesus' listeners had at this point was the first 39 books of the
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Bible known as the Old Testament. From Genesis to Malachi, we already saw that when
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John the Baptist immersed Jesus into the waters, the Father and the Holy Spirit endorsed
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Jesus as the Son of God and the Messiah. John the Baptist knew he was the
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Messiah, but his disciples at this point probably did not. I say this because it was not until Matthew 16 -18 where Peter publicly confesses
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Jesus that He is indeed the Messiah, this Messiah foretold in the
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Old Testament. At this point, everyone listening to Jesus probably just thinks He is a prophet from God, but as a new prophet who recently started his ministry, what he tells everyone is that he has not come to abolish the
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Old Testament. He has not come to abolish the Law and the Prophets, but to fulfill them. In other words,
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Jesus was not starting some new movement. Rather, He was continuing what the
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Old Testament foretold, and He Himself is at the center of the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy.
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What Jesus tells us specifically is that He came to fulfill the Law and the Prophets. When Jesus says this,
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He is referring to these 39 books. Let me first explain how Jesus fulfills the
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Law, and then we'll talk about how He fulfills the Prophets, and you will understand what Jesus means by the
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Law and the Prophets. The first five books of the Old Testament are known as the
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Law. In those books, there are 613 commandments.
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This is a good Bible trivia question. How many commandments in the Old Testament? 613. Theologians from church history have broken up the
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Law into three categories, moral, ceremonial, and civil.
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By the way, in the Old Testament, they would not have broken them up this way because if they failed to fulfill any of these, they sinned.
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But of course, we live in a different time, so it's helpful for us to distinguish between the ones because we need to figure out which ones still apply to us and which ones don't.
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Every one of these would have applied to an Old Testament saint, Old Testament Israel.
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So the moral laws would be the Ten Commandments. These laws are focused on obeying
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God's holy will. The ceremonial laws were also laws the nation of Israel had to keep, and these laws brought their attention upon God.
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These included one maintaining his standing with God through sacrifices at the temple, feasts that remembered
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God's great works for Israel, works that distinguish Israel from their pagan neighbors like dietary and clothing restrictions, and finally, ceremonial laws pointed to symbols of the coming
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Messiah, like the Sabbath and the Passover. And I'll explain a little bit later how
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Jesus fulfills these specific things that I just mentioned. The third category of the law that is designated by those from church history is the civil law.
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These are similar to the moral law, but the details of these laws applied only to ancient
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Israel. For example, if a man dug a pit and his neighbor's donkey fell in it, the man who dug the pit was responsible to get the donkey out, and that would be one law.
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So we have the Constitution. We have to obey that. They have their own laws.
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So the Old Testament is like a constitution. The first five books are. They lay out, this is the kind of citizen you're going to be living in Israel.
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These were God's people. These were the laws that he gave them. Now, so here's a quick overview that I just gave you of the
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Old Testament law. But how does Jesus fulfill this? First, he fulfills the moral law by keeping it completely.
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When we think of the moral law, we think of the Ten Commandments. Do not murder. Do not commit adultery. Leviticus says love your neighbor as yourself.
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Love the Lord your God with all your heart comes from Deuteronomy. This is the moral law. Jesus kept it completely.
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First Peter 2 .22 says that Jesus committed no sin. He is the only person in history to keep the moral law to perfection.
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Now, how does Jesus fulfill the ceremonial law? One of the ways he fulfills this law is by sacrificing himself on the cross.
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These laws were types or symbols of what he would do when he came to earth.
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Every Old Testament sacrifice pointed ahead to his once -for -all sacrifice at the cross.
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Hebrews 9 .28 says that Jesus was offered once to bear the sins of many.
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Other symbols would be the Sabbath, as Jesus is our Sabbath rest. We'll see that later on in Matthew.
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He says, Come, everyone, all to me who are weary and heavy laden, for I will give you rest, and you will find rest for your souls.
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For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. So, Jesus is the
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Sabbath rest. The reason they recognize that day once a week, it was pointing ahead to Christ, who is our
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Sabbath rest. He's also the Passover lamb. John calls him the lamb who takes away the sins of the world.
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The Apostle Paul calls Jesus, our Passover lamb has been sacrificed. So, Jesus fulfills these.
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Thirdly, Jesus fulfills the civil law by personifying what true justice looks like in this fallen world as he helped the weak.
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And the despised of the world were the ones who often came to faith in Christ. And so God shows his mercy through Christ by being so benevolent to those who were despised and looked down upon by others.
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And he fulfilled this without any blemish, and he fulfilled the law perfectly. Now, how is
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Jesus a fulfillment of the prophets? The prophets are the books from Joshua to Malachi.
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If we're being very general. You could technically break it up even more specific than that. But when Jesus says this, he's saying,
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Joshua to Malachi. And he fulfills these. So how does he do that?
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In our journey through Matthew to this point, we have already seen numerous prophecies in the book of Matthew that Jesus has fulfilled.
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He fulfilled the prophecy that said that he would be born of a virgin. He fulfilled the prophecy that said he would be born in Bethlehem.
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He also fulfills the Old Testament prophecy from Zechariah that says that he would be the king who would ride into Jerusalem on a donkey.
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And Mark and I were talking about yesterday. He's the one who's going to return to the
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Mount of Olives during his second coming. He's going to return to the same place he went up.
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And he went up in Acts 1 from the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. He's going to return in the future to the
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Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. He's the suffering servant of Isaiah 53.
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The Holy One who would be raised from the dead in Psalm 1610. And the victorious
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Messiah of Psalm 2 and Psalm 110. The prophets predicted that he would come.
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And Jesus tells this Jewish crowd who's before him. These people would have known and longed for the
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Messiah and waited for the Messiah. And he's telling them, I am the fulfillment.
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All of these prophecies, everything in the Old Testament points ahead to me. I am the central figure.
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And when Jesus says this, he's not just saying that it's fulfilled in him alone.
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What he's saying is that he's the center of the fulfillment. There are so many details that the
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Old Testament says that are still going to be fulfilled. That still haven't yet been fulfilled in the end times.
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But he's saying, I'm the focal point. Jesus comes the first time and all these events happen.
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He's going to come a second time and all these events surrounding him happen. So let's look now at verse 18 as Jesus talks about the certainty of the law coming to pass.
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Now Jesus in verse 18, he mentions the law. And now when he mentions the law, he's not referring to the first five books of the
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Bible. He's referring to the whole Old Testament. So we have to understand from the context what exactly he has in mind.
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We know this because he already mentioned the law and the prophets. And now he's going to say the certainty of the law.
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So here's what he says. So what we see here is the certainty of the
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Old Testament being fulfilled. And what the text says is that it will all come to pass before heaven and earth pass away.
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The Bible teaches that this world will come to an end. And as we look at the world we live in, we say, well, it seems pretty obvious by how bad things are.
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This can't go on forever. And the Bible says it will come to an end. But before this takes place, everything in Scripture must take place in both
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Old and New Testaments. But Jesus has specifically in mind here the
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Old Testament in this verse when he says the law. What Jesus is doing to his
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Jewish audience on that mountain, and what he's telling everyone in this room, is that he is not some rogue, isolated prophet who is disconnected from the
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Old Testament. There's a famous pastor today who has said that we need to unhinge the
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Old Testament from the New Testament. And that's preposterous because Jesus is saying the opposite here.
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He's saying that everything in the Old Testament must be understood to understand his ministry and understand the
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New Testament. So they're intricately connected together. We could possibly unhinge the
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Old Testament from the New Testament. And why would someone say this, by the way?
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Why would someone want to unhinge the Old Testament from the New Testament? One would say this because he wants to address a secular audience who has a hard time believing the
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Old Testament stories. The Red Sea crossing, Jonah and the whale,
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Daniel in the lion's den. Our world laughs at those. In fact, there was a comment by someone who said that there's some people in our country who believe that Noah's Ark is real.
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And I'm thinking, I do. And I'm unashamed to say that because it is real.
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So this guy who's trying to address this, he's trying to address a secular audience and he's saying if we can just somehow avoid these
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Old Testament stories and pretend like they're not there, and then we can just go to the New Testament which we can handle more, it's more at our level, then maybe we can get these people to believe.
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But we need to believe the whole Bible from Genesis to Revelation. Everything that is written in it.
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The Old Testament is fulfilled in New Testament times and there are predictions in the
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Old Testament that have still yet to be fulfilled. To understand God's work in the world, we always need to look back to His work in the
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Old Testament. History starts with perfection with Adam and Eve in the garden.
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Then sin came into the world. Then God sent Jesus to die for sinners. And now world history is moving forward to perfection again when one day believers will dwell with God in the new earth as Revelation 21 and 22 describes.
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But before we get there, this present earth will be destroyed. That's what the Bible teaches us.
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The Apostle Peter wrote this in 2 Peter 3, verse 10. He said, The day of the
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Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar. The elements will be destroyed by fire.
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And the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare. According to Revelation 20, the judgment of God will happen and then this present earth will be destroyed and then
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God will make a new earth. But before then, everything the Bible says will be fulfilled down to the smallest detail.
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As Jesus says, He stresses the certainty of all the Old Testament and by extension, the
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New Testament. If all the Old Testament is going to be fulfilled, then it follows that all the New Testament is going to be fulfilled as well.
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And when he says in verse 18 that not an iota, Brianne and I were talking about this yesterday.
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How do you pronounce that? Because you hear people in our culture say not one iota. I took
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Greek and the correct pronunciation is iota. So not the smallest iota will pass away until all has been accomplished.
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The iota in the Greek language was the smallest letter. But what we have to remember here once again is that Jesus is talking to Jews.
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And what we have is the Greek translation of what Jesus said. So the letter that Jesus would have mentioned here to his
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Jewish audience was not a Greek letter but a Hebrew letter, which was their native language. And the smallest letter in the
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Hebrew alphabet is the letter yod. It looks like an apostrophe. It's this tiny little letter, the smallest letter.
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And Jesus says the smallest letter of the Old Testament will not pass away until all has been accomplished.
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Then he says not a dot will pass away. What Jesus probably has in mind here is one small stroke that differentiates between letters in an alphabet.
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For example, in the English language, two letters that are very close together are an R and a
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P. And that little stroke is a big deal because a different letter means a different word.
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So like an R, right? If you draw a line and you curl it, but if you curl it just a little more, it's a
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P. So that's how important it is. So when Jesus says the stroke, that's what he's talking about.
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Every little detail matters because every little detail will come to pass.
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So we get the point of what he's saying here. All the Old Testament prophecy, and not just some of it, is going to be fulfilled.
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Some of it was fulfilled long ago, and some of it's still going to be fulfilled. God's detail and design in this world is remarkable.
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Do you remember studying DNA in school? The reason all of us look different is because all of us have different genetic letters, a different code.
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DNA is a language that communicates with the cell, and the cell builds the body that gives us the appearance that we have.
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All the little details of God's design matter. Every little detail.
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It's interesting, DNA is in every cell. If you were to take all of that DNA out in one person, it would stretch all the way to the moon and back several times.
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That's how complex our bodies are. And God designed it that way. You can see how intricate he is, how detailed he is.
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And we also see his intricate design throughout the Bible. God is a God of details with what he does in his creation, and this includes the story that he is writing.
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Every good story has lots of detail. If the plot is predictable, then it's probably not a good story.
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But if there are many twists and turns throughout, then that's a good story.
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The Bible is the best story ever written, and it tells the story of life. And what Jesus tells us is the smallest detail will come to pass before this world is brought to a conclusion.
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And what we see is that Jesus is the center of all that happens in the world. In that way, he is the fulfillment.
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And we see that from the mission he accomplished 2 ,000 years ago and what's going to be accomplished when he comes again in the future.
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So Jesus' ministry does not replace the Old Testament, but it continues it. And the first explanation why is that the ancient prophets of God point ahead to him.
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And our second explanation this morning is this.
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True righteousness is achieved the same way as the saints of old. So Jesus' ministry does not replace the
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Old Testament, but continues it. And the second explanation is true righteousness is achieved the same way as the saints of old.
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And we'll see this in verses 19 through 20. Now in verse 19, Jesus commands entire obedience to all the commandments of the
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Old Testament. This is what he says in verse 19. 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.
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But whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
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What we must understand as we read this is that we are not under the
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Mosaic law. We are the church. The Mosaic law was for Israel.
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Israel was under the covenant, not us. And as the church, we live under the New Covenant. Whether you are under the
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Old Covenant or the New Covenant, God's character is the same and therefore his morality is the same.
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What I mentioned earlier is that Jesus fulfills the symbols of the ceremonial law and we are not under the government of ancient
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Israel, so the civil laws do not apply to us. But we are under the moral law.
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We are under the universal moral law of God and every one of those commandments we must keep.
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There were Jewish traditions between Old Testament times and New Testament times.
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So from about 400 B .C. to the first century A .D., there was this tradition known as the
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Mishnah. And what they did is these Jewish rabbis, this
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Jewish tradition was they tried to understand what the Old Testament said and they also wrote their own laws.
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So they added to what the Old Testament taught. And what the rabbis taught was that there were light commandments and weighty commandments.
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A light commandment would be like tithing and a weighty commandment would be like not committing murder.
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And putting their tradition aside where they had extra biblical stuff, they were supposed to keep the small things, right?
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And they were supposed to keep the big things because all of it mattered. And this is what
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Jesus said in Matthew 23, verses 23 and 24 to the Jewish leaders of his day who, by the way, followed in this tradition from these rabbis between the
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Old Testament and the New Testament. He says to them, Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you tithe mint and dill and cumin and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faithfulness.
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These you ought to have done without neglecting the others. You blind guides straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel.
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These are supposed to be the teachers. And the example they're setting and what they're teaching is they're emphasizing the small details, the small obedience, and they're not emphasizing the big obedience.
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They neglected this. And what Jesus is saying, you should have done both. Both matter. And you only care about the small.
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And in our day, this would be like being a faithful tither, but neglecting your responsibilities at home or not loving your neighbor.
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Right? It's important to be generous with your money to give to the local church, but it's more important to be a good dad, to be a good husband or a good wife or a good mother or a good neighbor.
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Those are weightier commandments or to love God with all of your heart and to spend time with him in prayer and to read his word.
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And I mean, those are more important things than just writing a check every week. Right? So we need to understand
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God wants us to do both, but let's not neglect the weightier thing and just do the smaller things.
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And let me give you an example of this in my own life that I wrestle with. The Lord has called me to study, to teach, and to preach the
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Bible. To do this takes time. And when I get up here every
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Sunday, I'm not just winging it. Okay? Like, all right, let's figure this out as we go. Right? That wouldn't be helpful to you.
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I want to give my best effort to get the meaning of the text and figure out the application for your life.
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The scriptures tell me in 2 Timothy 2 .15 to do your best, to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth.
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Right? So I try to live that out every week. Now to neglect diligence and study would be sinful.
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However, you can overthink the Christian life and think too much rather than doing.
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What James 1 .22 tells us is that we should be hearers of the law and not forget to be doers.
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You can read too much of the Bible. Now that's usually not the problem.
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Okay? Usually it is if we don't read enough of it. But if you spend all your time reading the
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Bible but you never are out there doing anything, well, the point of reading the Bible is to be a doer, right?
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Not just a hearer of the word but to be a doer of the word as James 1 .22 tells us. So if as a pastor
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I spend excess time studying to an unhealthy level, then
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I neglect doing. I will neglect meeting with you, spending time with family, making connections with people in our community, and being used by God for evangelism.
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The Lord calls me to do all of this without neglecting any of it. So this is where balance comes in, right?
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We need to balance our life. And this is something I wrestle with. And if I am trying to figure out
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Scripture when I should be spending time living out Scripture, I'm sinning. So that might help you think through this with me as we try not to be a
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Pharisee in our life. Because none of us want to be a Pharisee. God really gets angry at Pharisees as you see how
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Jesus responds to them. Now what Jesus tells us in verse 19 is that if we neglect any of the commandments and also influence others to relax those commandments, then we will be called least in the kingdom of heaven.
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Jesus is talking about the works of believers, not unbelievers. We know this because even those who neglect some commandments will still be in the kingdom of heaven.
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You notice how he says that in verse 19. Even if they will be least there, and those who are consistent in keeping all the commandments of Scripture will be called greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
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So he's saying don't be those who have an imbalance of keeping the small things but not keeping the big things and are least in the kingdom of heaven.
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Be those who keep it all, who are consistent in living this out in their life.
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Because if you do that, you will be called greatest in the kingdom of heaven. So what we see here is that heaven will not be the same for everyone.
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Heaven will be wonderful for everyone, yes, and much better than hell, and that's an understatement.
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But for some, it will be better. At the end of the world, there are two different judgments.
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One judgment is for unbelievers. Revelation 20 .11 describes this as the great white throne judgment.
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These are people who have not been saved by Christ, and it will be clear the Spirit is not in them because their works will not show his presence in them, and these people will be thrown into the lake of fire.
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2 Corinthians 5 .10 describes a different judgment known as the judgment seat of Christ.
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And this is where their sins are forgiven, Christ's righteousness is their righteousness, but they did works in their life which showed that they were saved, and these works determine your rewards in heaven.
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I've heard it described as like a file. Okay, you're saved, and these are the works of your life.
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Let's see what the file says. And when Jesus looks at the file and determines how you did, then he will give you whatever rewards you deserve based on your faithfulness.
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So we can see here that works do matter, and I want to be careful here not to be misunderstood.
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We're saved 100 % through the work of Jesus Christ. We don't believe in work salvation where you earn your way to heaven based on your works.
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The Bible does not teach that. The Bible teaches that we're saved by grace through faith alone in Christ alone, so 100 % of what he did.
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However, the evidence that we are saved is that we will have spirit -produced works.
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Because when you're saved by Christ, the spirit is given to you, and then you live a holy life for him.
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And that's where those works show up, and he rewards you based on your faithfulness.
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So when Paul is writing to the church in 2 Corinthians 5 .10, he says we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.
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So, there we have it here. Everything we've ever done has been written down, and if that doesn't unnerve you,
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I don't know what will. It certainly is a fearful thing to realize that, and so we should be those, as Jesus tells us later on in the
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Sermon on the Mount, we will see this down the road, he says, store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, where robbers do not break in and steal.
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So we are encouraged to live and commanded to live faithful lives, and if we do that, our rewards will be greater in the age to come.
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Now, in verse 19, Jesus indirectly took a stab at the
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Jewish leaders of his day. The Jewish leaders of his day were predominantly unbelievers who thought they were okay.
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They were righteous on their own. Their righteousness did not come from God. They weren't credited with God's righteousness, but the righteousness was their own.
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They thought they could earn their way to heaven based on their works, and Jesus was not...
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Was Minnesota or Wisconsin nice, as we call it? My brother just went to California, and he said, the people are a lot nicer in Minnesota, in this area.
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Jesus was not that way to them at all when he's talking to the Pharisees, as these people were righteous by their own standard and not
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God's. This is what Jesus says in verse 20. I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
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He does not think highly of them, as you can tell. He tells the crowd plainly that these are not heaven -bound people.
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They were hypocrites. This is what Jesus said in Matthew 23 -27.
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He says, Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people's bones and all uncleanness.
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He wasn't afraid of ruffling feathers, was he, when he was talking to these people. And what we know clearly from Scripture is that God is not impressed with outward obedience, where it's all just a show for others to see.
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The only obedience He cares about is inward obedience that comes from a changed heart.
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This only happens if you realize that apart from God, your works are filthy rags, as Isaiah 64 -6 says.
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We need to understand that we need the righteousness of another, and that is Christ. And what we already saw in verse 17 is that Jesus says that He fulfills the law.
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Jesus lived a perfect life, a life that we cannot live. And when we come to faith in Christ, this perfect righteous life that He lived is counted as ours.
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So when God looks at us, He does not see our filthy rags, but He sees the pure righteousness of His Son, Jesus Christ.
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As Romans 4 -5 says, the one who does not work but trusts God who justifies the ungodly, their faith is credited as righteousness.
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Jesus is alluding to this righteousness as He talks to the Jewish crowd on this mountain. And when
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Jesus' Jewish audience heard that God's righteousness in a person came differently than the way the
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Pharisees achieved it, certain verses from the Old Testament would have come to mind for them.
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One of them would have been Genesis 15 -6, where it says, Abraham believed in God and it was counted to him as righteousness.
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Another one would have been Ezekiel 36 -26, where the Lord told Israel, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you.
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I will remove from you a heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh, a soft heart.
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What Jesus is telling the crowd of Old Testament believers here and anyone who would follow
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Him in the future, what He's telling them is that if they follow Him, they're following in the steps of the
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Old Testament saints. He's just continuing what God had already done through the
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Old Testament people and the prophets and everyone. And what happens when you come to faith in Christ is not only are you counted as righteous in God's eyes, but you are also given the
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Spirit. And your motivation for doing good things is not to impress others or to feel good about yourself, but to please
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God. Your works come from a sincere, pure heart, not selfish motivation.
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As we saw last week in 5 .16, the works of a believer give praise to your
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Father in Heaven. God gives you this desire and you desire to experience the joy of pleasing
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Him and reflecting Him. And in this way, the Spirit produces works of righteousness that exceed the righteousness of the
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Pharisees. These are true, genuine works. They're works that you do not to be saved, but because you are saved.
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And the Spirit works through you. So, as we've seen here, the second explanation of why
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Jesus' ministry does not replace the Old Testament but continues it is that true righteousness is achieved the same way as the saints of old.
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He's just continuing. The righteousness of the Old Testament is the same as the righteousness of the
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New Testament. You get it the same way. It comes from God alone, not your own efforts.
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So, to summarize our sermon this morning, Jesus' ministry does not replace the
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Old Testament but continues it. And we've seen two explanations that Jesus has offered. The first explanation is that the ancient prophets point ahead to Him.
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And the second is that true righteousness is achieved the same way as the saints of old.
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Reading the Old Testament helps clarify the New Testament. And we've seen that this morning.
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The main human character of this life and the main human character of Scripture is the
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God -Man, Jesus Christ. He is the linchpin that holds the whole Bible together.
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And as we follow Him, we travel down the path of life that ends in forever glory with God.
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And so we need to see that Jesus is that figure. And we need to praise God for His mighty work in history.
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And to see the work that still is yet to come in the future. That all is accomplished through His Son, Jesus Christ.
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Now, next Sunday, Jesus starts to talk about specific sins. We're going to start having some topical sermons here based on what
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Matthew, the Sermon on the Mount, teaches. Because next week, we're going to talk about anger.
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Two weeks from now, we're going to talk about lust. And then there's divorce. And then
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He talks about making oaths, retaliation, loving your enemies. And so these are going to be very relevant topics to each of us in our lives as we look at each of these sins.
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So I encourage you to read ahead, even, and to look at this yourself.
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And then we will unfold it together in the weeks ahead. Let's bow our heads together in prayer.
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Father in Heaven, I thank You for Your Word. Indeed, the Old Testament points ahead to Christ, and it's fulfilled in Christ.
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Every detail, every iota, every yod, the smallest letter we can think of,
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Lord. Every tiny letter is fulfilled. And this goes to show,
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Lord, Your glory. You are glorified through the fulfillment of all this and with Your Son being the centerpiece of it all.
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And so, Lord, help us to be amazed at this. Help us to praise You for it. Help us to be motivated to live our lives for You, to be a part of this great plan, that we are continuing this legacy of Old Testament saints to New Testament saints as we live at this point in history.