Red Letters 17
"... To Fulfill the Law"
Welcome to all those joining us, whether you are from our congregation at First Presbyterian Church in Penetanguishene or not! Though these days have been feeling like the longest weekend ever…
I hope some of you are taking the time to enjoy the warmer sunnier weather.
With many businesses beginning to open up, it seems like many people are getting excited about the prospect of getting back to “normal”. Whatever it is that you decide to do, please continue to exercise care and wisdom for the sake of your own health and others. As members of the global church we have a particular responsibility to pay close attention to how our actions can impact those around us. Let us not be a stumbling block to one another, but in love continue to lift one another up prayer, edify one another in words, and care for one another in deeds.
Speaking of deeds, I want to thank everyone that prepared food for Hospice Huronia this past Monday. Mary shared with me that there was a plethora of food donated from soups of all kind, Mac & cheese, shepherd’s pie, brisket, chicken, tea biscuits, apple crisp, world famous butter tarts… just to name a few. The staff at Hospice Huronia were very appreciative, and Mary and Karen are hoping to do this again on the second Monday of next month (June 8) and the following month, depending on how things continue to unfold with COVID-19.
Karen, in fact, has been honoured by Hospice Huronia with the June Callwood award. She has been a volunteer there for several years and has been a kind companion to many palliative patients. She has even helped co-facilitate Hospice sponsored bereavement support groups since 2018. So congratulations Karen!
And thank all of you who have given so generously to this cause. I think cooking and preparing food is certainly one of the ways our congregation is particularly gifted, and one of the great ways we can be salt & light in our communities.
As always, we gather together, though apart, to come and worship our Lord who knows no time or space. So whether you are joining us this Sunday morning, or some other time in the week… May you be blessed, and may the Lord be glorified!
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Isaiah 55:6-1
6 “Seek the Lord while he may be found;
call upon him while he is near;
7 let the wicked forsake his way,
and the unrighteous man his thoughts;
let him return to the Lord, that he may have compassion on him,
and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.
8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.
9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
10 “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven
and do not return there but water the earth,
making it bring forth and sprout,
giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,
11 so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,
and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.
Romans 10:1-4 English Standard Version (ESV)
10 Brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved. 2 For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. 3 For, being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God's righteousness. 4 For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.
Matthew 5:17-20 English Standard Version (ESV)
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. 18 For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. 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, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20 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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As we’ve examined the red lettered words of Christ, one of the things we recognize we quickly realize is that even though we are still in the very beginnings of Jesus’ ministry, the cost of being His follower seems to be quite high! Already Jesus tells us that there is suffering, persecution, a need for great humility and meekness. And the bar only gets higher and higher as we read on. If you were to go through the NT to look at all the Jesus said, one thing you will realize is that he was very direct. He offended many people. He rebuked others. He upset and, both literally and metaphorically, flipped many tables. He was not, and is not, the buddy-buddy kind of Jesus we often make him to be.
This however, makes much sense when we remember that Jesus, as a member of the Triune God of grace, is holy! And in a world filled with so much suffering, evil, wickedness and sin, holiness is the most offensive thing. And way back in the OT, several times in fact, God says “Be holy for I am holy”. So to follow Jesus, is to be holy, and Jesus is in the process of unpacking what it means to be holy in His Sermon on the Mount.
This call to be Holy was put forth to the people of God, the Israelites, who were chosen to represent God on Earth. They were to be a blessing to all nations. They were to be separate to all other people. And this was revealed in how they lives, how they ate, and how they did everything. Which is why God had given them food laws and other rituals, all of which were meant to show the world, that God was holy… Through their holiness! But the problem was that people… Could not be holy! People were born into sin and death on this earth because of the original sin of disobedience by Adam & Eve and so, while the Israelites had their good days, for the most part… they failed miserably at being holy. (As ANY of us would)
Now, when we read to the Israelites in the Old Testament, we are meant to see ourselves. We are meant to see humanity there and how, while people (while we), may try to reach heaven by building tall towers, by magic, by wealth, by worshiping other idols, or following other spiritualities and religions… Lest on our own humanity could never reach God, and be holy in the way that God is and in the way He requires in His people.
“Be holy for I am holy!"
This may give us a bleak outlook on life, but if you continue to read, you can see the hope of an uninterrupted thread throughout the ages. It is the whispers and promises of one who is to come who is saviour, redeemer, and Messiah. One who is to come and save the children of God from their failures, from their shame, from their brokeness, from their sin and from their death. And so Christ is born, and comes to the people as the promised one saying “I Am He.”
However we must recognize that what Jesus was preaching and saying on this mount, was kind of crazy to the Jewish people, the religious leaders and the crowds who were listening to Him for we see that their response was of amazement and awe because he spoke with authority. As He speaks of Himself…
He says:
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.
In other words, it is in Him that the whispered thread of hope pointing to the Saviour is fulfilled!
As we read:
11 so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,
and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.
God has done this and accomplished this in Christ and in Him all the promises of God in the Old Testament are fulfilled in Christ. This is a BIG BIG deal. But this is also the illogical, confusing, and outrageous reality of the Gospel: that Christ has come to redeem and call home, the very people who have time and time and time again betrayed, forgotten, disdained, and cursed, Him! That for those who put their faith in Him, have received the immensity of His grace and mercy, and have found salvation. And so we thank the Lord for the gift of His Son who bore the weight of our shame so that we could be guaranteed a life with Him in eternity.
But in light of this there may even be the temptation to think that because in Jesus I am saved, then I in fact have no further responsibility to pursue holiness. And we allow ourselves to be lax with the commandments of God because we believe that Jesus loves me anyway. And while this is true! We must also recognize that Jesus warns that whoever replaces one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever does them and teaches them will be called great.
In other words, Jesus’ fulfilling of the law, does not… as He says… abolish or get rid of it! Though the path to righteousness was to be fully obedience to every law, humanity proved they were incapable of this. And it is only in Christ, He who did not fail as Adam or Moses did, He who kept the law perfectly, and who bore all the penalties that the sinful people of God incurred… In His death and resurrection… that the ultimate goal of the law is transformed to point us to Christ for our righteousness, not law-keeping. So obedience to the laws of God written in Scriptures, though not a path to righteousness, becomes a mark of one who is faithful and obedient to the one who is our righteousness. Christ is our righteousness. And we are obedient to the laws of God for in our gratitude, and love for God.
So Jesus does not make the Old Testament defunct. Though in Christ the requirement for blood sacrifices cease (because Christ was and is the final unrepeatable sacrifice for sins), the priesthood that stood between worshiper and God ceased (when the veil was torn from top to bottom and welcomed us all to have access to God through Him), though the physical temple has ceased to be an actual physical centre of worship (And rather we find our sanctuary, our place, our temple in Christ Himself.), though the food laws that set the Israelites apart from other nations were fulfilled in Christ and now no longer apply, though when once the people of God belonged to a specific ethnically rooted people, (now all people, Jew, Greek, Gentile and even Korean, are welcomed into the people of God), Jesus actually takes other laws of the Old Testament and heightens the standard of holiness! (Which we will begin to explore in the coming weeks as we examine what He will say about anger, lust, divorce, oaths, fasting, amongst others.) This would make sense, because Jesus, who is called the Word Incarnate in John 1:14 represents the sum and whole of Scripture, from beginning to end.
And while we may be tempted to look at the Old Testament and think that it is old fashioned and does not apply to us today, we must truly take care that we do not dismiss the OT simply because they do not fit with our worldview. I have a hard time believing that God, who inspired every word of Scripture and who says: “18 For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.” would want us to look at the OT and think we could dismiss them because they are “dated”. In my mind, this logic does not make sense. However at the same time we do need to be careful, that we do not simply take the OT and use that as a means to justify a works-righteousness, holier-than-though kind of faith.
Jesus is calling us to look at ALL of Scripture, from beginning to end, in LIGHT of HIS fulfillment.
We cannot look to the OT without regard for Jesus and we cannot look to the NT without regard to the laws of the OT. To do either of those would be imbalanced and unwise. And so I am so greatly encouraged by those who are continuing in their Bible reading so that we can all discover how Scripture can and does function in this way.
Of course, our acceptance into the family of God is not determined by our track record. But we know well enough that the laws of the road are beneficial for us so that we can have a safe ride home. We know well enough that the directions on our medication and cleaning products are there to keep us safe. We know that guidelines surrounding diet and exercise are there to keep us as healthy as we can be. We know that children are not to play with your gas stoves. And there may be many times when we allow ourselves to bend the rules here and there (except maybe the gas stove one!)… We must remember that the precepts of God in the Scriptures are holy. And that the laws and commands found in Scriptures are there to guide, teach and lead us so that we may know how to live faithfully and be counted great in the kingdom of heaven. And as difficult as it may seem, and as offensive to the world (and even to ourselves) as they may be… This is the life revealed to us and unlocked for us in the death and resurrection of Christ.
Paul writes in Romans:
10 Brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved. 2 For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. 3 For, being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God's righteousness. 4 For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.
I am convinced that before we can pray for the salvation of others, we ourselves must repent of taking the laws of God and using them improperly. We must repent of how it is so easy for us to use them and justify our self-righteousness, or how we let them trip us into self-loathing. Paul is saying that being a Christian, is not a religion. Whereas a religion may put you on a scale puts you through an exam where you either fail or you pass, being a child of God is something else. It is not about obeying the laws of God to get in to heaven. It is about knowing Christ brings an end to works-righteousness and puts His righteousness upon our shoulders. For you who believe in Christ: “You are Righteous.”
So as it says in Isaiah let us be the ones who
6 “Seek the Lord while he may be found;
call upon him while he is near;
7 let the wicked forsake our way,
and the unrighteous person our thoughts;
let us return to the Lord, that he may have compassion on us
and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.
Let us repent of anyway in which we may have made our faith about do’s & don’ts rather than about the abundant grace of God. And pray for our friends, family, neighbours and enemies.
That they may come to know that grace and be saved in Him.
Amen.