Mat 5:17-20, Don’t You Feel Complete?

Wednesday June 12, 2024

Open: The difference in a life between hoping something will be completed and one in which the great task is finished.

Introduction:

Idea:

How does Christ fulfill the law and the prophets?

1. He was born under the law, Gal 4:4-5.

1. The One who gave to the law to Moses 1400 years earlier, by His incarnation was made under the law as one who had to carry it out.

1. 1. The law was Jesus’ judge as a sinless Man.

1. 1. He presents Himself to the cross as the only spotless lamb.

1. 1. *At no time has God shown more clearly the inviolable and absolute character of His own holy law than when He placed His own Son under it. He observed every jot and tittle. When He seems free with law, it is the laws that the religious have added to it, as when He healed on the Sabbath or refused to wash in the manner they concocted.

Greek of Mat 5:18 [two slides] use of double negative with an aorist subjunctive is the strongest way in Greek that you can say, “not ever” (keraia = little horn, stroke).

1. 1. So when He, the Son of God, says that He came to fulfill the whole law, and the Pharisees may respond, “But He healed on the Sabbath! He ate with sinners! He has female disciples!” What in essence is Jesus saying to them?

1. When we talk or reveal to others about the cross (our commissions) we are in essence to proclaim the true doctrine of the cross

More than a moral influence or manifestation of love. The law condemns sin with death and the cross is the result of that penalty of death being borne by the King of glory.

When Christ says that He came to fulfill the law, He is embracing His cross for us.

1. The law pronounces that death must pass upon all who have sinned against God and broken His holy law, and He is going to take the punishment of all sin upon Himself, Mat 27:50-51; Heb 10:19-25.

1. The punishment cannot be put aside, for God is holy (At the end of Exodus Moses cannot enter the Tabernacle, and in the opening of Leviticus, the burnt offering which is for atonement of sin).

Matthew is often called moral and sometimes, liberal Bible scholars like to think that he is at odds with Paul. I have a hard time discovering how they miss it. If you carefully read Paul’s words about our not being under the law, he is always speaking of our justification and our being made righteous. No one is justified by the law, true. But that does not mean that we don’t obey its commandments. Sinners have to love and not be angry or even call any people “fools” or “jerks”. Some tend to think that the law is opposed to grace, but it is not. The covenant of law has been fulfilled and now the covenant of grace is God’s promise to us. The covenant of law means that it was over man like a judge. That has been removed and now, by grace, we come to love and obey the commandments, not because they are our judge.

To understand the cross, you have to understand the law.

1. Sin carries the penalty of death and Christ took that penalty upon Himself.

1. 1. This is the truth that needs to be conveyed to the world. Don’t say no for them before they do, and remember, you have the Holy Spirit convicting every time the gospel is spoken.

By the extraordinary manner He died on the cross, He fulfilled all of the OT types. All of the burnt offerings, sin offerings, peace and meal offerings, all the sacrifices, and the temple ceremonial, all about the altar and the laver of washing, the showbread, the incense, the golden lampstand, the high priest even and the vessels - were all shadows and types that Christ absolutely fulfilled.

We no longer have to wonder when and how (1Pe 1:10-11) or in what manner the Messiah King would accomplish His mission, we know. The hoping and wondering about fulfillment are past.

We now claim, “It is finished,” and that has, or should have, a wonderful impact upon our hearts - the joy of the most important job completed. And as a bonus blessing, we no longer have to participate in ritual shadows, but rather are called to walk in the reality of them fulfilled.

There is a different kind of mind that practices a ritual that represents something important to come than the mind that knows that the important thing is finished and rituals about it are things of the past. In conformation of this, the temple was destroyed. The veil had already been rent at the moment Christ died.

The only thing in the law that is left to us is the moral law. Christ is going to develop that in the rest of the sermon, and we should always know, that whatever He asks of us and has commanded us, He has given us the Holy Spirit to love His law and have the power to follow through in obedience to their highest points. Imagine the difference between someone who doubts they can do a thing because they do not know if the ability is within them and someone who by faith knows that God Himself, the Holy Spirit, indwells them for the very purpose of understanding, loving, and doing all that the Lord commanded. The Spirit is the winning lottery ticket in your pocket as you drive to the lottery commission to cash it in. The Spirit is the ultimate back stage pass to the greatest show ever made. He is the full tank of energy, at the ready to release when triggered.

1. He also fulfills the law in us, Rom 8:2-4.

1. Paul links together Christ’s fulfillment of the Law to His fulfilling the Law in us, Col 2:8-15.

1. There is the position of completeness, and there is the life of completeness, or maturity.

The Lord, by His death, gives us new birth, and by His gift of the Holy Spirit, He gives us a love of God’s law and the power to live by it. The gift is to live by the manner and way of the heavenly kingdom while in the old bodies in the old world, and thus become the most unique of His witnesses. In the past and in the future, the witnesses from God often had the power of miracles or the ordination from God directly and publicly. Moses wrought miracles, David had anointed kingship and spectacular military victory. The prophets had foresight and miracles and ordination (somewhat public). But the church age believer is equipped with words of truth and manner of life.