Matthew 5:17-20
What does the Old Testament mean for us today?
On the screen there’s a picture of a man named AJ Jacobs. He’s the author of a new York times bestselling book, titled, The Year of Living Biblically. Basically its about a quest he went on to obey all the laws in the Old Testament.
For one year, he tried to obey all the OT commands.
Not only the famous ones like the 10 commandments and love your neighbour, but also the less famous ones, like don’t shave the corners of your beard and don’t wear clothing made of two types of material. He tried to obey them all.
And of course, he couldn’t do it. In his words, he failed miserably.
This was his conclusion at the end.
‘Thou shalt pick and choose.’
According to him this is the law that should override all the laws of the Bible.
‘Thou shalt pick and choose.’
In other words, if you want to take the Bible seriously today, you can’t literally obey all of it. You have to pick and choose.
The key is to pick and choose the right parts.
So choose the parts about compassion, and tolerance and loving your neighbour. But reject the parts about homosexuality being a sin or about intolerance of other religions or about stoning the adulterer.
That’s the conclusion AJ Jacobs reached.
It raises the question: What relevance does the Old Testament have for us today?
Are we called to obey the Old Testament literally just as it’s been written?
Or are we called to pick and choose whatever parts we like and whatever fits in best with contemporary society?
What relationship are we called to have with the Old Testament? All of us sitting here this morning know that the Bible is divided into two main sections: the Old Testament which is longer and the New Testament which is shorter. But what’s the relationship between the two?[1]
It’s a massive question and we are not going to have all the answers this morning. We might actually return to this theme in a few weeks time. But this is the question that’s raised by that passage that Twaambo read for us.
If you don’t have it open, please open it now. You must never trust what a preacher tells you. Always check for yourself and it’ll also help you to follow along.
If it’s your first time with us or if you’ve just come back from the holidays, we have started a new series on the Sermon on the Mount and we’ve called it Radical Living because of the radical standards Jesus lays down, and if you look in verses 1-12, you’ll see there’s a long list of blessings. In verse 3 it says; “Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
And in verse 10; “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
That’s one way of summarizing all these blessings. They are the blessings of the kingdom of heaven. This is what Jesus has been announcing since He started His ministry in Matthew chapter 4. Jesus is the promised King. This is His main message, “The kingdom of heaven has arrived.”
But this raises the question about the relationship between this kingdom that Jesus is inaugurating and the Old Testament that came before Him.
That’s the question Jesus addresses in Matthew 5 verse 17-20.
He makes three simple points in these verses:
1. Jesus hasn’t come to abolish the OT.
2. Jesus has come to fulfil the OT.
3. Jesus calls us to practice the OT.
So Firstly,
1)Jesus hasn’t come to abolish the Old Testament.
Look at verse 17.
“Do not think I have come to abolish the law or the prophets;”
Now when Jesus refers to the Law and the Prophets, it’s a shorthand way of referring to the whole OT.
So this is a very clear statement: Jesus hasn’t come to abolish the Old Testament.
This doesn’t mean that there’s no sense in which the Old Testament law has been abolished.
In one sense we do have a new covenant relationship with God. It’s not on the basis of the old covenant that God gave to Moses at Mount Sinai. It’s on the basis of the new covenant - the new covenant in Jesus’ blood. In that sense the old covenant has been abolished.
Ephesians 2 verse 15 says that Jesus has abolished in His flesh the law with its commands and regulations.
It’s talking about the law as the covenant God made with the nation of Israel.
But in our passage this morning, Jesus is talking about the Old Testament as revelation from God. It might not be the basis of our covenant relationship. But The Old Testament is still the word of God for our lives today. It still reveals to us the mind and the character and the will of God.
Look at chapter 5 verse 18. Jesus unpacks what He means.
“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.”
That’s a massive statement that Jesus is making. When Jesus speaks about the smallest letter and the least stroke of a pen, He’s talking about the tiniest detail in the Old Testament.
When He says none of it will disappear, He’s not just saying that it won’t get lost or that it’ll always be preserved.
(It is an amazing miracle, that for thousands of years, all these words have been preserved so that even today we can still read them in full. That’s an amazing work of God to preserve these words.)
But that’s not the main point of verse 18. When Jesus speaks about nothing disappearing from the law, He’s saying until heaven and earth disappear, until this world falls apart, every detail of the OT, every genealogy, every law, every stroke of a pen will continue to be the powerful and relevant and authoritative Word of God for our lives today.
That’s what Jesus means when He says nothing will disappear from the law. It won’t lose its status as the Word of God.
Paul says the same thing in 2 Timothy 3 verse 16. “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.”
On the screen Is a picture of a man named Jim Collins. He’s considered to be an influential Christian leader in America. He was a spiritual advisor to President Barak Obama. And so he’s considered to be a leader in the Christian world.
But in fact, he’s not someone we should be following.
He founded a Christian group called the Red Letter Christians who ignore those parts of the Bible that they don’t like (especially from the OT) and they focus all their attention on the words of Jesus while he was on earth. That’s why they are called Red Letter Christians. In some Bibles, Jesus’ words are printed in red.
So I hope you can see, verse 19 poses a problem for Red Letter Christians. You see, if you really want to follow the red letter words of Jesus, then you also need to follow these words in Matthew chapter 5 verse 19. These are Jesus own words. Not the smallest letter. Not the least stroke of a pen will disappear from the law. You’ve got no right to pick and choose from the OT, if you are following Jesus. According to Jesus, the Old Testament remains the Word of God.
That doesn’t just mean that it’s all true. Look at verse 18 again. Jesus doesn’t just say that every part of the Old Testament is true. He goes even further than that. At the end of verse 18, He says its all going to be accomplished.
In the words of Tim Keller:
“It’s one thing to say the Bible’s true… even a phone book could be true. A phone book can be without error… But Jesus goes beyond that. Its not just that this is true. It’s that this is God’s way of running the universe.”
Just think about that... God is accomplishing His purposes in the universe on the basis of these words.
It’s these prophecies that are being fulfilled. It’s these predictions that are coming true. It’s these promises that are being kept. It’s these warnings and these threats that are being carried out. It’s these commands that are being obeyed. It’s on the basis of these words that God is accomplishing His purposes. Nothing that is written in this book will fail to be accomplished.
As God declares in Isaiah 55 verse 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.”
You see there’s a big difference between man’s word and God’s Word.
Martin Luther puts it like this: “A man’s word is a little sound. It flies into the air and it is gone in a second. But the Word of God is greater than heaven and earth, … …, for it forms part of the power of God and it endures for ever.”
Please don’t underestimate God’s written word. This isn’t just something dead and academic. It’s something living and active. It’s powerfully at work in the world.
And so let me just give you a moment to examine your own heart and your own practice.
What’s your view of the Old Testament? Maybe you agree with these words in theory. But is this your attitude when you read the Old Testament…
Every law, every genealogy, every promise, every story…
do you read it as the voice of God for your life today?
In Isaiah 66 verse 2 God declares: “This is the one I esteem: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.”
Is that your attitude when you read the Old Testament?
What a massive statement: “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.”
But now secondly, maybe your problem isn’t so much your attitude to the Old Testament as much as your understanding of the Old Testament.
In other words, your question isn’t whether or not this is God’s Word for your life today? You accept that.
Your question is: What does this mean for my life today? What’s the meaning of the genealogies and the promises and the stories and the laws?
What does it all mean?
Once again Martin Luther has a helpful quote. He says, “Although we read the Bible forwards from the Old Testament to the New, we can only understand it backwards, from the New Testament to the Old.”
And that leads us to our second point this morning. Jesus didn’t come to abolish the Old Testament. But in verse 17, He says: “I have not come to abolish the Law and the Prophets but to… fulfil them.”
That’s the key to understanding the Old Testament today. You need to understand how it points to Jesus.
You see AJ Jacobs got it completely wrong. If you want to live Biblically today, it doesn’t mean taking the OT commands and applying them straight into our world. No, the first step to Biblical living today is to understand how the Old Testament points to Jesus.
Look at John chapter 5 verse 39 on the screen. Jesus is speaking to Jews who know the Scriptures. They study the Scriptures diligently. But look at what He says to them in verse 39.
“You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.”
That’s a scary thought. Especially for those of us who love our Bibles.
You can love your bible. You can read it every day. You can study it diligently. And maybe it inspires you to be a better person.
But you might still be an unsaved person, because you are missing the main point. The main point of the Bible is Jesus. Its meant to lead you to Him. If you don’t come to Him, you cannot have life.
To put it negatively, if you are reading a passage in the Old Testament and you don’t understand how it points forward to Jesus, then you haven’t really understood the main point.
This is a massive topic. There are whole books about how Jesus fulfils the Old Testament. But maybe we can summarize it under 3 headings.
Firstly Jesus fulfils specific predictions that are made in the Old Testament.
There are many predictions in the Old Testament about details of Jesus’ life: that He’ll be born of a virgin, that He’ll be born in Bethlehem, that He’ll be betrayed by one of his friends, that He’ll be betrayed for 30 pieces of silver, that He’ll be crucified between two criminals, that He’ll die on a cross, that He’ll rise again from the dead.
Hundreds of detailed predictions.
In the words of Josh Mcdowell:
“The Old Testament, written over a one thousand year period, contains nearly three hundred references to the coming Messiah. All of these were fulfilled in Jesus… and they establish a solid confirmation of His credentials as the Messiah.”
That’s one way Jesus fulfils the OT: specific predictions!
But secondly, Jesus also fulfils the main themes of the story of the OT. You see, the OT isn’t just this long list of psychic predictions about the future. No, the OT is really a story. And the main theme of the story is Jesus.
Kevin Halloran is a Christian author. He puts it like this: “The Bible is one book telling one story that culminates in One Person: Jesus Christ”
And he uses a helpful illustration of a road map to explain how this works. There should be a road map on the screen. And the main highway is pointing to Jesus.
In the OT there are a number of these highways or main themes that lead directly to Jesus.
For example, the sacrificial system points to Jesus as the great sacrifice for sin.
The priests point forward to Jesus as the great high priest.
The prophets point forward to Jesus as the true prophet.
The kings point forward to Jesus as the great promised King.
The nation of Israel looks forward to Jesus, the true remnant of Israel, the true seed of Abraham.
All these highways are leading to Jesus. But connected to these highways are sidestreets and alleys and avenues and these represent those passages where its not immediately clear how they point forward to Jesus. But the important question to ask is how this passage get me to the main highway? Or, how does this passage connect with a main theme that points me to Christ?”
So we mustn’t read the OT like a Where’s Wally book. Do you know the series of books called Where’s Wally? In them you need to find Wally on each page. That’s not how we read the Old Testament. You don’t have to find Jesus in every single verse. But we need to see how the main themes and the main highways are pointing to Him. And how each passage connects with those main themes.
That’s the 2nd way Jesus fulfils the OT. The main themes of the Old Testament story all point to Him.
And then thirdly, Jesus fulfils the Old Testament by teaching us it’s true moral intentions.
We’ll look at some of these in the next few weeks. But in verse 21 Jesus deals with the OT command: Do not murder.
In verse 27, do not commit adultery.
In verse 33, do not break your oaths. Do not lie.
For each of them, He shows us the true meaning behind these laws. You see they weren’t just talking about outward acts of murder or physical adultery. No, they were pointing forward to something greater. They were pointing forward to the kingdom of heaven where God’s law is written on people’s hearts.
That’s the great promise of the New Covenant in Jeremiah 31, that God will write His law on people’s hearts so that people aren’t just concerned about physical murder, they are concerned about anger and hatred and murder in their hearts;
they are not just concerned about physical adultery, they are concerned about lust and adultery in their hearts.
That’s the true intention of these OT commands. That’s a 3rd way Jesus fulfils the OT: by teaching us its true moral intentions.
Jesus doesn’t abolish the Old Testament. Jesus fulfils it. If you want to understand the true meaning of the Old Testament, you need to see how it points us to Jesus.
Finally, maybe your problem isn’t your attitude to the Old Testament. You accept it as God’s Word. Maybe it isn’t your understanding of the Old Testament. You generally understand it. Maybe your problem is the application of the Old Testament. You fail to practice it.
And that’s what he urges us to do in verses 19-20. If you want to be called great in the kingdom of heaven, you need to practice and teach these commands.
There are some Christians who argue that there won’t be any ranking or grades in the kingdom of heaven. We’ll all be on the same level.
And it’s true there won’t be unhealthy rivalries and comparisons with others. We’ll all be so grateful for this salvation that we’ve received that we’ll just overflow with thankfulness. There won’t be any complaining in heaven.