The Mount No.4 Jesus & The Old Testament

Psalm 119 verse 97, Oh how I love your law, I meditate on it all day long. Your commands make me wiser than my enemies, for they are ever with me. I have more insight than all my teachers, for I meditate on your statutes.

I have more understanding than the elders, for I obey your precepts. I have kept my feet from every evil path, so that I might obey your word. I have not departed from your laws, for you yourself have taught me.

How sweet are your promises to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth. I gain understanding from your precepts, therefore I hate every wrong path. This is God's word to us and we thank him for it.

Please be seated and have your Bibles open at the Gospel of Matthew and chapter 5. The Gospel of Matthew and chapter 5. Here is our Lord authoritatively teaching a congregation which began with a dozen or so and has now increased to thousands, possibly as many as 10,000. The Jewish basis of not calculating the women folk or the children in the crowd, 5,000 men at least being there. And here is our Lord and he's speaking and because he's divine, his words have authority not only in the immediate context, but they reverberate down the centuries and they come with their own passion to us today.

Wise is the man who humbles his mind and his will before Holy Scripture. Do not think, says Jesus, verse 17, 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.

I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen will by any means disappear from the law until everything is accomplished. Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven. Well, this is part of the greatest sermon that was ever proclaimed. I am grateful for the Jesus film for giving me further understanding of the scenario, the context in which this great discourse was heard.

We folk here forget that our Lord and indeed the early church didn't have great auditoria, didn't have great cathedrals and chapels in which to preach. He was out in the open air. And as the film so graphically indicated, there would be people moving around and children shuffling and crying.

And yet this magisterial teacher was able to cope with all the disturbances. And in that natural amphitheater that there is just at the north end of the Sea of Galilee with the people in front of him and with that placid sea stretched out in the distance, Jesus starts to put down kingdom principles. And He proclaims this distillation of wisdom.

Sometimes we sing, and rightly so, a song that was written by a colleague of mine in Los Angeles, Majesty, worship His Majesty, unto Jesus be glory and praise. And it goes on, kingdom authority, kingdom authority. And this is the King and He's speaking and He's setting down His dictates for those who are in the kingdom.

This is how people are to live. This is the attitude that is to be in the lives of those who have trusted King Jesus. Blessed are the poor in spirit.

Blessed are the meek. Those lovely attitudes which are defined in the opening verses. And then our Lord Jesus tells the crowd, and they're a mixed company.

There are people there who don't usually go to the synagogue, referred to unkindly by the clergy as sinners, publicans and sinners. And then there are the Pharisees and the scribes who are really spying out the land, who've come from Jerusalem to see what this unofficial rabbi who sways such great audiences, what he has to say. They're all present too.

And so Jesus is addressing this mixed crowd, some who are sympathetic towards Him, others who are suspicious of Him. And as He speaks of those who really want to follow Him, He tells them that they are to be a salt in the world, bringing savour. There has to be light, bringing illumination.

These are people who are to live differently, because they are those who are following the Lord Jesus. And then, then He goes on, and I'm grateful for my brothers who've helped in this exposition of addresses thus far on a Sunday morning, who've cleared and made very plain those opening verses. But then He goes on to deal with an objection.

And this basically is the objection. You see, Jesus has been under suspicion by the scribes and the Pharisees, because it seems that what He has to say is actually a violation of what Jewish people have come to believe. Now, you know that the Bible is in two sections, but of course in those days, there was only one section of the Bible.

And one of the great leaders of the Jewish community of all time had the name of Moses. There was no one who was more authoritative than Moses in decreeing the laws of God, and here is Jesus, and occasionally He seems at variance with Moses. On a Sabbath day, the disciples take grains of corn and they eat them, a violation.

Here is Jesus, and He sees a man who's paralyzed, and it's a Sabbath day, but He dares to pronounce Him whole in the name of the Father. He works on the Sabbath. So it looks as though Jesus is actually putting on one side what has been regarded as sacrosanct by the Jewish people for centuries.

He's on a collision course, you see. So here are these men in this mixed audience, and they're listening to what He has to say, and this is their charge. It's not a written charge, but Jesus feels what their attitude is.

And so I think He probably turned to them in the crowd, and He says, you scribes and Pharisees, do not think that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets. If that's your conclusion, it's a heady conclusion. It has absolutely no, no concrete validity whatsoever.

Now I say by the law and the prophets, our Lord Jesus is referring to the Old Testament. Time and time again in Matthew's Gospel, you'll find that little couplet, law and prophets, put together. You'll find it in the rest of the Gospels.

The law was given by Moses, and the prophets, well they are a people basically who lived after Moses. They expounded the law in degree. They particularly enlarged upon the moral law.

And our Lord Jesus is saying, as far as this law is concerned, as far as the teaching of Moses and the prophets, as far as all the patriarchs stood for is concerned, I've not come to set it at naught. I have not come to pronounce it invalid. An interesting comment from Martin Lloyd-Jones says this, you can only come to one conclusion as far as Jesus's attitude to the Old Testament is concerned.

He believed it all, and not only certain parts of it. He quoted almost every part of it. To the Lord Jesus Christ, the Old Testament was the Word of God.

It was Scripture. It was something absolutely unique and apart. It had authority which nothing else ever possessed nor can possess.

So here is Jesus, and he leaves off this section with a negative. Do not think I have come to abolish the law, that I have come to set on one side this great revelation of God, this depository that we now call the Old Testament Scriptures. You see, Jesus was a man of the Scripture.

He loved the Word of God, and I break off here before taking this explanation further to ask you at this juncture, what is your attitude to Scripture? Did you hear me? Here I was on the 13th of my flights in the last 18 days, in Karachi airport, flying on an Islamic line back to the Gulf, and ultimately to England. And what had happened on my last two or three flights reoccurred. I couldn't understand it.

It was in the Arabic tongue. There was a prayer from Scripture, from the Koran, for the safety of the passengers and the airplane. You ever see a Muslim with his Bible? He'll not treat his Koran, he'll not treat it like you treat the Scriptures.

I'm not criticizing the way that we mark our Bibles, or some of us do. I think perhaps this can be helpful. But the Muslim, he will wrap his Koran up, you ask Mrs. Bocking, Muriel Bocking worked for many, many years, and so did the Browns amongst the Islamic community.

And they will show you, they will tell you of the reverence, an almost superstitious, magical approach that the people of Islam have to the Koran. It's almost deified. Now I'm not suggesting that we go to that extreme, but what I'm asking is this, is what Scripture stands for recognized by you? Do you treasure this book? Do you honor this book? Are you into this book? Can you say with the Psalmist, in the 119th Psalm, from which Tim was reading a little extract from, can you say how I love your law? It's as honey to my taste.

It's as gold in my estimate. How do you value Holy Scripture? Our Lord Jesus' ministry is studded with the Old Testament. He quotes it in almost every book, and there is that in the Old Testament which speaks to us of our Lord Jesus Christ.

But more of that in a moment. Our Lord puts up this corrective to this mixed congregation. Think not, think not that he says, don't draw your conclusions hastily, that I have come in some way to abolish the law and the prophets.

No, you see, our Lord Jesus was in the same trail as the prophets in many ways. He inherited their authority, only he brought it up into an absolute degree. The Psalmist says, your word, O Lord, is eternal.

Isaiah 48 says, the grass withers and the flowers fail, but the word of our God shall stand forever. Isaiah 55 11, so is my word that goes out from my mouth. It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.

Now, it's true that we do have two testaments, the Old and the New Testament, but it is all part of God's sacred work. In one sense, I'm not very happy about the production of the second half of the Bible as an entity on its own. The New Testament, as though we don't need the Old Testament.

One of the verses of Scripture which is least understood is that in John's Gospel 1, where John says that the law was given by Moses, that grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. And those who draw lazy conclusions think that that means, therefore, the law that was given by Moses is really superseded by what our Lord Jesus Christ had to say. And therefore, you can dismiss the Old Testament, and some people do.

It's a great tragedy, I say, that a great deal of preaching is only from the New Testament. That's why here in the Tub, we try to give the balance and go to the Old Testament and to the New Testament. It's all part of God's revelation.

In the Old Testament, you read of Jesus. In the New Testament, all that the Old Testament anticipates, it's set forth in color and clarity. As the aged Augustine said, the old is in the new revealed.

The new is in the old concealed. We have been given two books, two parts of the sacred revelation of God. And Jesus gives authority to the Old Testament.

Think not, I've come to abolish it. I've not come to abolish it. Well then, Lord Jesus, is it the case that the Old Testament ceremonials, or the Old Testament ritual, the Old Testament sacrifices, are those to be re-enacted? Well, you see, you have to hear our Lord Jesus carefully.

And you have to balance the statements that he makes with the whole of the truth that he proclaims. Now, in the Old Testament, when you come across the law, there are three aspects to the law. There is the ceremonial law that deals with how the old Israelites would behave as they went into the tabernacle, or into the temple.

How would they prepare their sacrifices? What dress the high priest would wear? How they would pour blood on the altar, and so forth. Now, all that, for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear, is an indication of the sinfulness of sin, and the holiness of God. And in Old Testament days, there had not been one final sacrifice for sin.

And every sacrifice that was made, so our Lord Jesus teaches, and the epistles of the Hebrews make so clear, is an anticipation of that final sacrifice that he shall offer for sin on the day when he's done to death on the cross. And in that sense, our Lord does not abolish those laws. He fulfills them.

And every time you take bread and wine, and regularly you should be doing this, you are to, in your mind, because you're enlightened as a Christian, think back to those centuries before they had the understanding that you and I have of God's final remedy for sin. All that the Old Testament ceremonial law is taken up by our Lord Jesus, and fulfilled in Him. It's not passed away.

It's brought to its consummation. Don't speak about cancellation. Speak rather of the consummation.

In the Old Testament Scripture, there is the theocratic law for the nation of Israel, how she should have lived. For Israel should have been conditioned and controlled not by kings, but by the Word of God speaking through the mouths of prophets. And in the Old Testament, our legislation for the people of God in those days.

For the time was when those Old Testament people failed to recognize the King that came, that God sent. And the Lord Jesus said that His kingdom would be taken from the Jews, and it would be passed on to another people who would be more deserving. And it's the Jew Peter who says in the epistle that bears his name, of Christian folk, Jew and Gentile, who confessed Jesus, you are a royal priesthood, a holy nation.

The judicial law is transferred to the kingdom of our Lord Jesus, and here the King fulfills out the law of the Old Testament. And therein there is a great moral law, the Ten Commandments, which are binding on the Old Testament Jews, and binding upon the Church of Jesus Christ. Now it's in that sense you see that you're to understand this statement, do not think that I've come to abolish the law or the prophets.

I've not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. The Greek word there is one that you come across on several occasions, and it's used very meaningfully. It's like a pivot in the argument of the Apostle Paul, as he talks about all the fullness of the Godhead being in Christ.

He is the completion of God's revelation to you and to me. In Jesus we are complete. Those of you who were present when we had the Billy Graham Thanksgiving service here at the town, that is for people who were converted as a result of that great man's ministry in the Live Link series that we had in the town.

You may recall that I again made reference to the man who wrote the Song of Majesty, this brother from Los Angeles. He'd been preaching in Manila, where there had been a gathering of 4,000 Christian people, leaders from across the world, and he'd suggested that no longer should we call people by the name evangelicals or charismatics. He thought that these terms were too divisive.

He rightly referred to the fact that in Christ we are the pleroma, and therefore he said that we should all be pleromatics. Now whether that helps you or not, I don't know. But there is a sense in which our Lord Jesus makes complete, not only us, but he makes complete the revelation of God in the Old Testament.

I have not come to abolish, but I have come to fulfill. Fulfill those ceremonial rights, so that they no longer need to be literally entered into, but what they were being pointed to will always, what they pointed out will always be in your mind. Those great moral laws, far from putting them on one side, as I shall go on to teach you.

I will underline them and enforce the fact that thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not bear false witness. Here is a greater than Moses underscoring what Moses had to say. So Jesus says to this critical part of his audience, think not that I've come to abolish the law or the prophets.

I've not come to abolish, I have come to fulfill. Now notice the teaching of our Lord is most important. In fact in one sense there is nothing more vital than you and I should understand what he's saying at this stage.

Look at verse 18 will you. I tell you the truth. I'm rather sorry that the NIV use that somewhat anemic way of expressing a very profound sentence or introduction to a sentence which our Lord uses more than 30 times in Matthew's Gospel and almost as many times in John's Gospel.

Verily, verily I say unto you, those of you who are reared not only in your mother's milk, but also on the unauthorized version of the Bible, doesn't that really ring true in your mind? Verily, verily I say unto you. Well here is this formula that our Lord uses uniquely. You don't find any other rabbi.

There's no other instance in the whole of literature in this period of someone using this particular introduction. It's just unique to the Son of God, to the carpenter from Nazareth. And whenever he uses it, it's because of the important nature of his argument.

Verily, verily I say unto you that heaven and earth will disappear, but until that occurs not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen will by any means disappear from the law. You know when I was with the Hansons, I was so sympathetic to them these last two or three days. Have you ever seen the Urdu language? That man could ever contrive such a script to me is remarkable.

I mean it's just a mess of dashes and curves and so on. To make sense of that. But of course it's a very beautiful language.

It's a very old language and if you were brought up to speak it then it's not so bad, but come to it as a 30 year old and it's very difficult. And one of the greatest obstacles that confronts any missionary to the Islamic world is getting to grips with their language, whether it's Urdu or Arabic or one of the other Semitic varieties. And you and I ought to be constantly praying that the Hansons might be given by the Lord the ability to be able to absorb that language, because unless you've got the language, obviously you can't communicate the Gospel.

At least you can only illustrate the Gospel by your actions, but they want to be able to speak and to speak clearly. Now that language is meticulous, like the Hebrew language. And the Hebrew language which I sweated over and forgot more quickly than I learned it in the early years when I was training at theological college.

That Hebrew language has very small inflections, the jot and the tittle. It doesn't really mean a lot, it just looks like a little dot on a page, a little dash on a page. It's the smallest part of the Hebrew script.

Now here says our Lord Jesus, using hyperbole, not one dot, not one tittle, not one cross, not one full stop, to put it in the English idiom, will pass away from this law that God has given. So inspired, so inerrant is it. So you see, if this is our Lord's evaluation of Scripture, and if he is a man of the book, how much more ought we ourselves to cleave to God's revelation and to blow away the cobwebs from the Old Testament pages and to absorb the ethical and moral teaching that's there, and see in the liturgy and the ceremony all that that predicts and anticipates the glories and the purity of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The 17th century, they used to say in Holland, a country to which I go on Tuesday or Wednesday, where 21 of our men from the TAB have gone today actually. We ought to be remembering them in prayer to help re-kick the logos, logos too. But they used to say of Holland in the 17th century, referring to Britain, that Britain is the land of one book and that book is the Bible.

Don't you wish that that could be said today? As we enter into the common market, or at least we're in the common market, become Europeans, as we're baptized into Europe in the early years of next decade. England, Britain is a land of one book and that book is the Bible. It's when a land is built on the Bible that a land becomes a very strong, a land, a country becomes a very influential country.

Well, here is our Lord and he tells us that the Old Testament, not one jot, not one tittle, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of the pen will by any means disappear from the law until everything is accomplished. And here is our Lord as he puts down his own estimate of his own teaching and our Lord is not a boastful person, but he speaks truth. When something needs to be declared clearly and simply and boldly, he does so.

So in the 24th chapter of Matthew's Gospel, he makes reference to his own words, heaven and earth may pass away. Verse 35 of Matthew 24, heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away. Now do you hear what he's saying for the Old Testament as he directs the people who've gathered to listen to him, as he preaches the Sermon on the Mount, what he says of the law and the prophets.

He now runs on to his own teaching. He gets towards the end of his physical life and he says it's exactly the same. The words that have fallen from my mouth, which ultimately shall be the basic part of the New Testament, they shall not pass away, they will never pass away.

So here, if you like, is the signature of Jesus. If you have a passport, the opening page of the British passport has this little letter. It's rather nice.

The Queen has written a letter for me. Her Britannic Majesty Secretary, actually she didn't write it, it was a secretary, her equivalent to Joyce Dyer, writes a note and says, may the bearer of this passport be granted all the facilities that he needs, or she needs, as they pass through your land. And in one sense it has the seal of the Queen on it.

Now when you get the words, verily, verily, I say unto you in Scripture, that is the signature of the Lord Jesus. And he's saying of the Old Testament and of the New Testament, that what is encapsulated in this book will never pass away. It will never lose its impact.

It will never have its authority diluted. Now those of you who read newspapers, whatever your paper happens to be, I won't quote mine because I'm told that I'm giving a bias to one particular paper from the pulpit, so any paper, I'll settle for any apart from the Goethe Press. Do you give as much time to the reading of Scripture as you do to your newspaper? I mean that's a fair enough test isn't it? Because it's no use, my dear brothers and sisters, you leaving the tab this morning and say, well that was a very fine sermon, or if you're in a complimentary mood that he brought.

It's no use agreeing with me unless you take that agreement into practice, unless you can make this word as honey to your taste, unless you can be into Scripture day by day, reading a little passage, working your way through a book, working your way through a whole of the Old and the New Testament in some regular fashion. We're going to have a display before the end of the year on Scripture notes, and we're going to be pushing a Bible that's written on the calendar fashion, so that if you got a copy of this Bible, and you just read the allocated passage for that day, and kept on for 360 plus days, then you'll get through the Bible in one year. Why are we bothered about that? Because of what our Lord has to teach here.

Heaven and earth shall pass away, my word will never pass away. As He speaks to the critics that are present on the occasion, when He delivers the Sermon on the Mount, He says, you've got it wrong fellows, I haven't come to abolish, I've come to fulfill this inerrant word of God, it's something that you always ought to be into. And indeed, He goes so far as to say that anyone who breaks one of these commandments, anyone who in any way detracts from the force of Scripture, that man will be the least in the kingdom.

And then He goes on to make that almost preposterous remark, as far as the scribes and Pharisees are concerned, unless your righteousness is better than the righteousness of those guys, you'll never make the kingdom yourself. Now that comment needs to be looked at and enlarged, and checked with other references that our Lord makes to the scribes and Pharisees, so I won't try and cover it this morning, but leave it for next week. But here is the burden, you see, of this great man, this Son of God.

He's a man of the Scripture. And it's an interesting thing, isn't it, that when two of His disciples have the privilege of His company in a resurrection appearance, they're not too sure of His identity for a moment. Do you remember the story on the Emmaus Road, found in Luke's Gospel towards the end? Jesus starts to speak to them, and He opens the Scriptures, and on every page of the Old Testament, if you've got a mind to perceive it, there is reference to our Lord Jesus.

He's the Lord of the Scriptures. And you see, this is why this church here has, for nigh on one hundred years, stood for the proclamation of Scripture, Sunday by Sunday, day by day. Things may change in our services, and in some degree that's not a bad thing, but there's one thing that never changes.

Our anchorage on the Word of God. This pulpit humbles itself before the authority of Scripture. We have no other word.

We have no other message. And the greatest delight of any pulpiteer is to discover that the congregation have become so excited with the Book that they get into it themselves. They absorb it.

They're learning it. They're living by it. So I ask you, as I conclude, this little comment from our Lord, the Sermon on the Mount.

Are you living by it? He hasn't come to abolish. He's come to underline. Because God gave the Jewish people the greatest blessing of all, says the Apostle, when he writes to the Romans.

He gave them the oracles of God that differentiated them from any other nation in the ancient world. Did you know that? And do you know something of the miracle of Scripture? The way that in the early centuries, Diocletian and some of those barbaric emperors with the venom of hell directed their attention against the Christian church. How they tried to make bonfires of those ancient manuscripts.

How they tried to rid the name of Jesus from the Roman world. Do you know about the dark ages? When the only Scriptures were chained to some lectern in a monastery and written in Latin so ordinary people could not have any access to Scripture at all. Do you know anything about the great reformers and the great covenanters? Does the name John Huss or John Wycliffe mean anything to you at all? Do you know anything about Tyndale and Coverdale and these people who gave their lives so that the common plow boy could read Scripture and have it for himself? Do you know that men and women spilt their blood so that you and I could have the copies of Scriptures that we now have today? Do you know that there were times when there was a famine of the Word of God in this land because the church so-called had bound Scripture and caused it to be taken from the ordinary person? But all that was dispensed with in the great reformation when Martin Luther and John Calvin and all those wonderful men vowed before God to make Scripture plain and available.

We have a great heritage and we should know the cost that it has been on the part of many people for Scripture to be available to us today. Treasure your book, treasure your Bible, read your Bible, grow by your Bible and fulfil the dictates implicit in the directions of our Lord Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. As he said, I've not come to abolish but to fulfill.

See him as the Lord of Scripture. Let's pray. Almighty God, we thank you for the gift of your Holy Word.

May it be a lantern to our feet, a light to our paths, and a strength to our lives. Take us and use us to love and serve all men in the power of the Holy Spirit and in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Amen.