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“If you’re able, please stand.” Reading Matt. 5:1–20. “Thanks be to God.”
A famous British author of fiction late in life and just a few years before his death, assembled a collection of his thoughts on a whole variety of topics. There was humor in it, reflections on literature. Each set of thoughts was attached to a month of the year, the month that he felt appropriate for the thought. In his chapter, “March,” he turned his attention to the Old Testament.
This is an unexpected turn in the book. He had been reflecting on sundials and says he should have ordered five of them. But then he says, “One cannot think of the sun without thinking of Joshua,” and quotes from the Old Testament passage about the sun standing still for Joshua (Joshua 10:12–13). His says of course this cannot be true. After turning to other stories from the Old Testament, he offers his conclusion on the Old Testament:
The Old Testament is responsible for more atheism, agnosticism, disbelief—call it what ̨you will—̨than any book ever written; it has emptied more churches than all the counter-attractions of cinema, motor-bicycle and golf course. There is much in the Gospels which needs to be explained, but nothing which needs to be explained away; much which is difficult to believe, but nothing which one would be sorry to believe.[1]
Then he spends a couple pages comparing the ministry of Jesus to certain Old Testament passages, very selectively choosing endearing words from Jesus and hard words from the Old Testament.
Then he writes, “Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time...but I say unto you—To which voice shall we listen?” (54).
In other words, the Old and New Testaments are giving us a different message, a different sentiment, and we should choose the New Testament instead of the Old.
It’s certainly true that the Old Testament can feel a little more distant than the New. At times it describes events hard to stomach.
But Jesus would reject any idea or attitude that leads to minimizing or throwing out the Old Testament. We want to have the same attitude toward the Old Testament as Jesus himself has.
We’re in the Gospel of Matthew, chapters 5–7. The Sermon on the Mount. The most famous ever preached. The series is called Living in the Kingdom.
Today we’ll hear Jesus teach about how we should think about our Old Testament as we live in the kingdom of God.
Jesus in this sermon is speaking as “the new Moses,” the new Lawgiver. His commandments don’t replace Old Testament commandments. God’s moral guide for us is found in both testaments.
Remember Paul’s words to Timothy: “All Scripture is breathed out by God” (2 Tim 3:16) and a guide for life. This includes the Old and New Testaments.
This morning is something of a guide to our Old Testament.
Sermon: A Christian and the Old Testament: The Old Testament (1) Points to Jesus; (2) Gives us a Rule of Life; (3) Leads Us to True Righteousness
Prayer
Read Matt. 5:17–18.
In thinking about the Old Testament for the Christian, these verses are always a big part of the conversation. Jesus says he didn’t come to “abolish” it but to “fulfill” it. And not the smallest part of it will “pass away” until “all is accomplished.”
What does he mean?
“Abolish” is often used to describe “destroying the temple” in Jerusalem (Matt 24:2; 26:61; 27:40; Mark 14:58; 15:29; Luke 21:6; Acts 6:14). One of the charges against Jesus is that he spoke of “destroying the temple.”
“Abolish” in this context has to do with destroying something or tearing it down.[2]
He will not “abolish” the Word of God. This isn’t a surprise. Jesus couldn’t have a higher view of God’s Word.
When he was tempted by the devil in the wilderness, he quoted God’s Word to overcome the temptations.
He obeyed God’s Word fully, without any slippups.
In talking about divorce he says something really important:
4 He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5 and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? (Matt 19:4-5)
Do you see that, “HE WHO CREATED THEM” is the one who “SAID” Gen 2:24. But I thought Moses wrote Genesis 2:24? He did. But more importantly, what Moses said is what GOD SAID!
Jesus says he came to “FULFILL” the Old Testament (Matt 5:17). “The Law and the Prophets” was a familiar way to say “the entire Old Testament.”[3] Jesus says he came to fulfill ALL OF IT!
His statement is a BOMBSHELL!
Let’s think about this idea of “FULFILL” (Grk. plēroō) a good bit. Typically it refers to prophecies Jesus “fulfills.”
In the opening chapters of Matthew an Isaiah prophecy (Isa 7:14):
22 All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: 23 “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” (which means, God with us). (Matt 1:22-23)
The child is Immanuel! And then another Isaiah (Isa 9:1–2) prophecy:
14 so that what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled: 15 “The land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, the way of the sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles— 16 the people dwelling in darkness have seen a great light, and for those dwelling in the region and shadow of death, on them a light has dawned.” (Matt 4:14-16)
Jesus is saying that he will fulfill every Old Testament prophecy.
Sometimes “fulfill” means his obedience. When Jesus is baptized:
But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he consented. (Matt 3:15)
“Fulfill” can refer to when we obey:
For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. (Rom 8:3–4)
But we fulfill his commandments only because he did it first, and we are united with him and filled with his Spirit.
“Not an iota, not a dot”: “Iota” is a small Greek letter and here means “the smallest letter” (BDAG). “Dot” is the smallest mark used when you’re writing. Think of the “dot” in an “i” or a “j.”
Amazing! Not one single letter or mark in God’s Word will be changed until “all is accomplished.”
Every generation has people who attack God’s Word, who undermine it. For thousands of years this has been the case. And yet Jesus is telling us that not one single mark or letter will be lost until God accomplishes all of it.
What are some of things included in “all is accomplished”?
These promises are clearer in the New Testament, but they are right there in the Old Testament. They are part of the “ALL” things that will be accomplished.
There’s a permanence to God’s Word. It remains until ALL is accomplished.
We’ll never understand the Old Testament until we see that it points to Jesus. The prophecies point to him. The salvation it promises points to him.
I recently heard the story of a couple from New York City. He worked in the restaurant business, and during COVID he was stuck home. They were literary people, and they decided they should read the Bible. It’s an important book in literature, so they should read it. So they started at the beginning. Well, it captivated them. They were enthralled. And somewhere around 2 Samuel they found someone they weren’t expecting: Jesus. They were converted reading their Old Testaments and asking a lot of questions.
They discovered what Jesus is teaching us: The Old Testament points to Jesus!
Jesus is giving us a high view of the Old Testament. His life was not a picture of being casual or flippant with God’s law but very careful with it. Now he teaches us that we are to have that same attitude. Read Matt 5:19.
What is our attitude toward “the least of these commandments”?
“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s.” (Exod 20:17)
Are these commandments ones that we take seriously, or are we like the one Jesus describes: “relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same.”
It’s a double-sin. You aren’t following the commandment and you’re teaching others to disobey along with you.
Such a person Jesus says is “least in the kingdom of heaven” (Matt 5:19). Note that: You might be “in the kingdom of heaven,” but you’re not one of the great ones in the kingdom.
What’s the attitude Jesus wants us to have? He wants us to be a doer and teacher of God’s commandments: “whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.”
That sounds familiar to the Great Commission, doesn’t it? In Matthew 28:19–20 we’re told to “make disciples of all nations...teaching them to observe all that I have commanded.” “Observe” and “teach” is just like “does them and teaches them.”
What does Jesus see in the Old Testament? Commandments that Christians are to obey. His teaching in the Sermon on the Mount will make that clear.
But interpreting Old Testament commandments takes some work. We can easily get confused by them.
Jesus is the key to understanding them rightly. Remember 5:17: He came to fulfill the Law and the Prophets. He’s the Messiah they point to. His coming affects how we interpret them.
John the Baptist called Jesus “the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world” (John 1:19). He came as a sin sacrifice. And when he offered his body and blood for sinners, no other sacrifice for sins is necessary. It’s the sin sacrifice to end all sin sacrifices.
That means every commandment in the Old Testament that has to do with offering sacrifices for sin is “fulfilled” forever. Those commandments don’t need to be obeyed because they’re “fulfilled” once and for all by Jesus. These laws are sometimes called the ceremonial laws.
And many commandments relate to Israel as a nation in the land of Canaan. But with the coming of Christ, we “worship in spirit and truth” (John 4:24) wherever we happen to be and in whatever nation we happen to be. The people of God are no longer a nation, no longer connected to a single land with a single temple.
That changed with the coming of Jesus.
We’re not a single people, the physical descendants of Jacob, the twelve tribes. With the coming of Jesus, the promised Messiah, we’re now a people of both Jews and Gentiles. One people!
So, laws that have to do with the land of Canaan or being one of the tribes of Israel have been “fulfilled” by Jesus the promised Davidic king. These laws are sometimes called civil or judicial laws. With these laws, we see the moral part of them as continuing, but the civil/judicial part as not binding. They can provide volumes of wisdom in how a society should function, but they’re not automatically and completely binding like the next category.
But then there’s what are called “the moral laws” of the Old Testament. These are laws that are about loving God and loving our neighbor. Jesus “fulfilled” these by obeying them, but we are called to “fulfill” them also!
Listen to Paul in Romans 13:
Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. 9 For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 10 Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law. (Rom 13:8-10)
Paul is quoting from the Ten Commandments and also the command to “love your neighbor” from Leviticus 19:18.
Jesus’s coming doesn’t fulfill the moral laws of the Old Testament in the same way as the other types of law. Jesus’s coming enables us to fulfill the moral laws!
The way that these laws provide us with a moral guide is why we talk about God’s rule being a “rule of life.” It is a “rule of life” for us, not a way of salvation.
Here is our Confession, and here we follow the Westminster Confession of Faith (19.6) almost word-for-word:
Although true believers are not under the law as a covenant of works to be justified or condemned, yet it is of great use to believers as well as to others as a rule of life, informing them of the will of God and their duty.
Trinity Confession of Faith 21.6
All of God’s laws have something to teach us: (1) They teach about sin and Christ’s atonement. (2) Or about how we should live together in a society. (3) Or what God asks of us morally in how we relate to him and to other people.
So we can say with the Psalmist:
Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day. (Ps 119:97)
We’ve said that the Sermon on the Mount is about Living in the Kingdom and not entering the kingdom. This verse is an exception to that. Read Matt. 5:20.
“The scribes and Pharisees” thought they had the Old Testament figured out. They were confident they were in “the kingdom of God.”
But Jesus teaches that their version of Old Testament religion just isn’t enough. What does it take to “enter the kingdom of heaven”? Jesus says that our “righteousness” must “exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees.”
That’s unexpected. “The scribes and Pharisees” were famous for their attention to God’s Law. It was their specialty. Their whole life.
The Scribes were scholars trained in God’s law.
The Pharisees were diligent in God’s law but also famous for their careful lifestyle. They took the teaching of the scribes and put it into practice. To encounter them was to encounter rules and regulations and the right and wrong way of doing just about everything. Their name meant “the separated ones, separatists” (BDAG), separated from the culture around them.
Jesus is talking to his disciples, many of whom were simple fishermen, there’s Matthew the tax collector, a lot of very normal people. Jesus is telling them that their righteousness must actually “exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees.” These words would have pierced them: How could they live up to that?
How should we understand Jesus?
First, we’re talking about “entering the kingdom of heaven.” Not just being perceived to be a good person—but attaining eternal life. Not being “religious” in some respected way, but entering God’s kingdom. Being a little bit better than another person won’t get you there. The standard is not “above average” but “perfection.”
In certain ways, the scribes and Pharisees were above average. But they were very far from perfect. So, Jesus is saying something true at a basic level. The standard of righteousness to enter the kingdom of heaven is a high and lofty righteousness.
The Old Testament makes this clear.
We can hear God’s standard in Psalm 15:
O LORD, who shall sojourn in your tent?
Who shall dwell on your holy hill?
2 He who walks blamelessly and does what is right
and speaks truth in his heart (Ps 15:1–2)
With that standard, we’re all doomed. We can’t get there. Even the scribes and Pharisees are lost.
The perfection required is meant to drive us to God to appeal for mercy.
So the Old Testament leads us to a different kind of righteousness, righteousness as a gift.
We see it with Abraham:
And he believed the LORD, and he counted it to him as righteousness. (Gen 15:6)
And in the Minor Prophet Habakkuk:
“The righteous shall live by his faith. (Hab 2:4)
Those are verses we came across in our study of Romans 1–5. They tell us that we can be righteous by faith—by believing God’s promises, by taking him at his word, by putting all of our trust and confidence in him.
This righteousness by faith is approved by God—because it’s a righteousness that connects us to Christ and receives his righteousness.
The key to the righteousness that exceeds the scribes and Pharisees is knowing that we receive it as a GIFT. We don’t earn it as a WAGE, we believe in God who then “justifies the ungodly” (Rom 4:5).
Our righteousness exceeds the scribes and Pharisees when it is received by faith.
But there’s a second side to this righteousness. They were living lives they thought were righteous. But at many points, they just weren’t.
To give an example, in Matthew 15 the “Pharisees and scribes” confront Jesus. They ask him why his disciples don’t wash before their hands before they eat in the ceremonial way that the “Pharisees and scribes” have taught.
In other words, to these Pharisees and scribes, the disciples are breaking a tradition of the religious teachers. Which is equivalent to breaking a law of God.
But Jesus pushes back. He rebukes them for their so-called righteousness.
Matthew 15:3–8:
He answered them, “And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? 4 For God commanded, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’ 5 But you say, ‘If anyone tells his father or his mother, “What you would have gained from me is given to God,” 6 he need not honor his father.’ So for the sake of your tradition you have made void the word of God. 7 You hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, when he said: 8 ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.’” (Matt 15:3–8)
The picture is a son having financial resources to help his parents. But instead of helping them, he tells them that these finances have been set aside for God. They are “given to God.” The son still has them in his possession, but they are dedicated to God. Eventually he’ll give them to the temple, but...not...quite...yet.[4]
So, instead of honoring his parents, like the Bible commands, he’s disobeying the Bible and following his man-made tradition.
The righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees looked impressive from a distance. But when you got up close you realized it was a fake. It was disobedience to God’s Word disguised as obedience.
In a real, tangible way, our righteousness needs to be better than that. We need a righteousness that doesn’t just look impressive. It needs to be based in a humble obedience to God’s Word.
Obedience isn’t something we can produce on our own. Just like we achieve a righteous standing by faith, we also walk in righteousness by faith. Faith depends on Christ for grace in our salvation. And faith depends on Christ for our walk of obedience.
What the scribes and Pharisees missed from their Old Testament is the idea that we need to be born again to walk in holiness. On our own we can’t do it.
And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. (Ezek 36:26–27)
God must give us new hearts to walk in his statutes and obey his rules. On our own we can’t do it. We don’t do it. We don’t want to do it. But with “a new heart” and given “a new spirit” we have new ability, new power, new desire to walk in his statutes.
The scribes and Pharisees didn’t know this. They were living lives they thought were righteous and would get them to the kingdom of heaven. But they lacked the righteousness they thought they had! They were outside the kingdom and accusing Jesus of being a sinner. Eventually they would accuse him of being a sinner worthy of death, all the while thinking they were living in God’s kingdom.
What about you? Where is your righteousness?
The British author I quoted at the beginning said the Old Testament was a source of unbelief and something contradictory to the teaching of Jesus.
God’s own Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, would totally reject that.
Yes, the New Testament is essential to understand the Old Testament. But so is the Old Testament essential to understand the New Testament.
If you’ve never read it, start with the book of Exodus.
If you’ve never a prophet, start with the book of Jonah or Joel.
For a slightly deeper dive, my A User’s Guide to the Old Testament.
Prayer and closing song (“Rock of Ages”)
[1] A.A. Milne, Year In, Year Out (London: Methuen & Col, 1952), 53.
[2] In the Septuagint (LXX), 2 Maccabees 2:22 has a verse about “re-establishing the laws that were about to be abolished,” obviously a similar idea to Matt 5:17.
[3] See Matt 7:12; 11:13; 22:40; Acts 28:23; Rom 3:21.
[4] For this tradition of korbān, see Carson, “Matthew,” Expositor’s Bible Commentary, on Matt. 15:3–6.
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