Jesus was here to fulfill the law vol 2

JESUS WAS HERE TO FULFILL THE LAW VOL 2
EDITED BY GLENN PEASE
Matthew 5:17-2017"Do not think that I have come to
abolishthe Law or the Prophets;I have not come to
abolishthem but to fulfill them.
Dr. S. Lewis Johnsonpresents Jesus'view of the Scriptures.
We’re turning, for the Scripture reading, to Matthew chapter 5 and reading
verses 17 through 20. Matthew chapter 5 and verse 17 through verse 20.
“Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not
come to destroy, but to fulfill. Forverily I sayunto you, Till heaven and
earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no waypass from the law, till all
be fulfilled. Whosoevertherefore shallbreak one of these least
commandments, and shall teachmen so, he shall be called the leastin the

kingdom of heaven: but whosoevershalldo and teachthem, the same
shall be called greatin the kingdom of heaven. ForI say unto you, That
exceptyour righteousnessshallexceedthe righteousness ofthe scribes
and Pharisees,ye shall in no case enterinto the kingdom of heaven.”
May God’s blessing rest upon the reading of his word.
What did the Lord Jesus Christ teach about the Bible? This text, that we are
looking at this morning in our continuation of the study of the Gospel of
Matthew enables us to go a long way toward answering that question. And it’s
a ringing affirmation of the complete authority and the total reliability of the
Scriptures.
One of the leading preachers of the east has written something in one of his
books on the Gospel of Matthew which is so true to life in our theological
seminaries today that I want to repeat it. He has stated the fact that it is not at
all uncommon in our seminaries today for a young man to be taught that if he
stands firm on the high view of Scripture, as the church in previous ages has
always done, he runs the danger of “bibliolatry,” or Bible-worship. That is, he
runs the danger of actually worshipping the Bible instead of the Lord Jesus
Christ and placing it on a pedestal which even the Lord Jesus himself did not
assignto it.

This argument against the traditional view of the Christian church on
Scripture sounds valid to some persons, and even seems pious. But it is
misleading. It surely is. Christians do not worship the Bible. Christians
reference the Bible only because Jesus Christ referenced it, and only because
it is through the Bible that we come to the true and authoritative and reliable
information concerning the Lord Jesus. We do not worship the Scriptures; we
worship the Christ of the Scriptures. And this is a very misleading comment,
though it is a true comment to our theological seminaries, in that there are
many men who are saying in our theological schools, we must not hold to the
traditional view of the Scriptures that the church has held down through the
centuries, because that view does trend to bibliolatry.
We want to say right now, we do not worship the Bible. I do not know of any
Christian who worships the Bible. I do not know of any Christian in the past
who has ever worshipped the Bible, but I do know that the great mass of
Christians down through the centuries, the great body of genuine believers in
Jesus Christ, have reverenced the Scriptures. And they have reverenced the
Scriptures in that they have held them to be the only reliable guide to the
information that we have concerning the Lord Jesus Christ, and therefore
they are of the utmost importance for us. We believe that the Scriptures are
important because Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, believed that the
Scriptures were important.
And in fact, we can say on the authority of our Lord Jesus himself, that if we
do not believe the Scriptures and believe that they are an accurate
representation of the ministry which he has had, we cannot possibly believe in
our Lord Jesus Christ himself. He said in his day, when the Old Testament
had been completed, “For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me,
for he wrote of me. But if ye believed not his writings, how shall ye believe my
words?” So we cannot possibly believe in the words of our Lord Jesus if we do
not at the same time believe the words of holy Scripture. It is impossible for us

to say, “I do not think the Bible is reliable, but I do believe in Jesus Christ.”
Our Lord Jesus is the authority for rejecting that view.
There is a second thing that we learn about this passage, and that is that it is
one of the most important of the whole of the Bible concerning the doctrine of
inspiration which has to do with the manner by which God gave the revelation
to us. And the memorable words of verse 18 compel us to believe that the
Lord Jesus Christ held a doctrine of biblical inerrancy. That is, that the Bible
does not contain error. He said, “Verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth
pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no way pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.”
And incidentally, in the Greek text, at this point, the statement “shall in no
way pass from the law” is one of the strongest ways of expressing a negative
prohibition. So that the Lord Jesus is saying in the strongest language that he
can possibly use that nothing from the word of God shall pass away until it
has all been fulfilled, even down to the meaning and sense of the jots and
tittles of Scripture, which we shall talk about later on.
And finally, in verse 20, the Lord Jesus stresses the utter inadequacy of
human righteousness. “I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall
exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees (the highest level of
human righteousness), ye shall in no case (again, he uses that same, strong
expression in the Greek text) enter into the kingdom of heaven.” There is no
way for us to inherit the blessings of the eternal relationship with the Lord
Jesus, which we speak of as heaven and the possession of the presence of God,
other than through the imputed righteousness which comes to us as a gift
from God when we acknowledge that we do not have the righteousness that
avails before God of ourselves.
Only in that way shall we ever be acceptable before the divine tribunal, for it
requires a perfect righteousness to find acceptance before God. The Lord
Jesus anticipates in this remark the statement that the Apostle Paul will make

in Romans chapter 3 and verse 24 when he says that we are justified freely
through his grace through the redemption that is in Jesus Christ.
With verse 20, we are beginning the second part of the Sermon on the Mount.
And this one deals with instruction. The Lord Jesus is, from verse 20 of
chapter 5 through the 6th verse of chapter 7, giving the body of teaching
which he desired to give his disciples who have come to faith in him and who
are to live on the earth while he engaged in presenting the kingdom to the
Nation Israel.
Now this instruction which he is to give is in two parts. These verses form one
part, and then at verse 21 through chapter 7 and verse 6 we have the second
part. The first part of his instruction deals with the Scriptural tradition. He
talks about the Scriptures, as we’ve been saying. And then in verse 21 of
chapter 5 and throughout the remainder of the instruction section, he will deal
with the Pharasaic tradition, and he will criticize it in the light of holy
Scripture.
Now as we look at the 17th verse, we learn immediately that the Lord Jesus is
speaking, first of all, about the purpose of his coming. And we want to notice
that he says in this verse what he did not come to do, and then what he did
come to do. Let’s look first at what he did not come to do: “Think not that I
am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy.” So
before he enters into the content of his royal ethic, he prefaces it with a word
to prevent anyone from thinking that he was an enemy of Moses and the
prophets.
He will come down so strong in criticism of the scribal traditions concerning a
number of Old Testament passages that someone might gain the impression
that the Lord Jesus was rejecting the Mosaic law and the teachings of the

prophets. He is not doing that. He says that I did not come to destroy the law
or the prophets; I am not come to destroy. So he stresses right at the
beginning that he is doing away with Moses and the prophets. He will attack
the scribes and he will attack the Pharisees, but he will do it from the true
intent and teaching of the Old Testament Scriptures. He will, as we will see
from our next studies, he will take the Old Testament and will give it its
deepestform of meaning.
In fact, he will really tell us, in the most penetrating and perceptive way what
the Old Testament intended to teach all along. And he will point out that the
teaching of the Old Testament was personal. It was not simply teaching that
was for the collective body of the believers, but it was intended to be very
personal. It was intended to touch the inmost part of a man’s life. It was not to
be outward. It was not to be ceremonial or liturgical. It was intended to be
personal and internal and therefore vital, and not the dead kind of religion
that the true religion of the Old Testament had degenerated into at the time
the Lord Jesus Christwas here.
So he did not come to do away with the law and the prophets. He came to
establish them in the true sense in which they had all along, but which had
become buried under the layers of the traditions that the scribes and the
Pharisees hadpoured out upon the Scriptural teaching.
What did he come to do, then? His word for it, is, I have come to fulfill. Now
let’s think for a moment about this word, “come,” because this word is a most
important word. I think I have already said – I did not go back over my notes
on the messages preceding, but somehow or other it seems that I have already
said something in this series about the word “come.” It has a very important
relationship to the ministry of the Lord Jesus.

If you’ll read through the New Testament and look at the statements he makes
concerning his mission, you’ll discover that he never says what you and I
would ordinarily say if we were to describe our lives. We would usually begin
by saying, “I was born.” And we would say, “I was born in the State of
Texas,” or “I was born in the State of Alabama,” or “I was born north of the
Mason-Dixon line,” or something like that. We would describe our beginning
by our birth.
Did you know that the Lord Jesus only once – only once, out of all of his
references to his coming – only once did he refer to his beginning as a birth.
And strange to say—not strange when you think about it—but strange to say
the only time when he said that he was born was when he was speaking with
Pontius Pilate, the pagan Roman prefect. In John chapter 18 and verse 37, in
speaking with Pilate before his crucifixion, the Lord Jesus makes reference to
the fact that he was born. There we read, after Pilate has asked him the
question, art thou a king?, Jesus answered, “Thou sayest that I am a king; to
this end was I born.”
Now Pilate can’t understand that. He does not have any spiritual
understanding at all. He’s just like the average American who has nil
understanding of spiritual things. So the Lord Jesus accommodates his
language to him and says, “to this end was I born,” but then realizing to say
he was born creates a false impression if that alone is said, he adds, “And for
this cause came I into the world,” as if to suggest what is fitting for you, Pilate,
is “I was born.” I was born for this purpose. But what is fitting for those with
spiritual understanding is that I came into the world.
So he uses of his coming the word “come,” or “I was sent.” Now this word
“come,” or the word “I was sent,” is a word that expresses the voluntary
character of his coming. He came. Not, simply was sent; he came. And
furthermore, it expresses the fact that he was a preexistentbeing. He came.

If I were to say to you, “I came to Believers Chapel,” you would understand
me to mean that I existed before I came here, and I existed in a breathing
form of life. But if I were to say, “I was born in Believers Chapel,” of course
you would understand what that meant.
When the Lord Jesus said, he came or was sent into this world, he implies by
that that he existed before he came, and he existed before he was sent. And
that, of course, is the teaching of holy Scripture: he did exist as the preexistent
and eternalsecondperson of the Trinity, the eternal Son.
Now only a divine being can arrange his birth and death, and the Lord Jesus
has arranged both his birth and his death. He came at a specific moment in
time which the Trinity worked out in the councils of eternity, so that Paul can
write in Galatians chapter 4, “In the fullness of time, God sent forth his Son,
born of a woman, born under law, that he might redeem those under law.” So
he came at the express will of the Trinity, Father, Son and Spirit. And then
when he died, he died at the precise time and in the precise way in which he
intended to die. Only a divine being can arrange his birth and arrange his
death. And this all testifies to the majesty of the Son of God.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we could arrange our birth and arrange our death? I
would like to have been born in the land of Palestine about the time that some
of the apostles were born, and have had an occasion to be acquainted with
them and our Lord Jesus. But I did not arrange my birth, and I do not
arrange my death. I do not know where, exactly, I am going to die. I feel like
the uneducated country fella who said, “If I knew where’s goin’ to die, I’d
never go near the place.” [Laughter] I cannot arrange my death, I cannot
arrange my birth, because I am a human being and a fallible human being. I
do not have control of my destiny, but the Lord Jesus is a person who has
control of his destiny.

And when you think for a moment about the majesty of this statement that
the Lord Jesus has uttered, “Think not that I am come to destroy the law or
the prophets; I am not come to destroy but to fulfill.” Now, of course, this is a
very authoritative kind of saying. We notice that immediately, that the Lord
Jesus speaks with authority. But I notice another thing about him which, it’s
strange to me that the critics of our Lord have never been able to take
advantage of. Never has there been a religious teacher who spoke so much and
so perpetually about himself as did the meek Lord Jesus Christ. If I were
looking for something to criticize our Lord and to throw back upon their heels
(the proponents of the Christian faith), I might want to throw up to them,
“Why, how can the Lord Jesus be what you say he is when all he does is talk
about himself?”
Isn’t it strange that no other religious teacher ever spoke so perpetually about
himself as the Lord Jesus Christ? About any other person we would say,
“He’s vain; he’s egotistical; he’s arrogant; he’s conceited or overweening.” If
I only spoke about myself when I preached, I wouldn’t have an audience too
long, of course, but if I did have an audience, you would be going out saying,
“Dr. Johnson is really a conceited, overweening”—and you would probably
add another noun or two after those adjectives.
Because for a person to always talk about himself, that is an arrogant way of
addressing people. But the Lord Jesus did precisely that, and the striking
thing is—
I’ve never really gotten over this—but the striking thing is that the world at
large that does not know him does not criticize him for doing that. In fact,
deep down in the human consciousness, implanted by God, is the conviction
that he’s right to do it, even when they don’t acceptthe things he says.

Now this statement says a couple of other things, too. There are two assertions
here that don’t lie on the surface, and you have to think about it for a moment
to get it. You’ll notice that when he says, I have not come to destroy the law or
the prophets, I have come to fulfill them, is a claim for sinlessness. No one
could possibly fulfill the law of Moses who is not a sinless individual. The law
of Moses is the most beautiful expression of the character of God that we find
through the whole of the Old Testament. That’s why it is important that
people learn the Ten Commandments, because they are an expression of the
characterof God. And the Lord Jesus claims here that he has come to fulfill it.
Now, a man who fulfills the law must be a sinless man, because Paul tells us
that the law was given to point out that we are sinners. It was intended to
bring conviction so that we would return to Christ. But the Lord Jesus is the
only person, incidentally, who ever lived up to the law, but he claims that he
has come to fulfill it. That’s an implicit claim for sinlessness onhis part.
And not only that, he says that he has come to fulfill the law and the prophets.
In other words, he has come to advance the revelation of God. He has come to
show us the true meaning of the Old Testament, and how it all found its
ultimate fulfillment in him. In other words, he claims to be in advance of the
teaching of Moses and the prophets. An amazing claim on the part of the Lord
Jesus. It’s amazing that we’re not repelled by the tone of the teaching of the
Lord Jesus.
And furthermore, he will go on to say, as he speaks to them, I want to say to
you that the words I say to you, you must yield allegiance to them. And he
adds words in order to stress it. “And verily I say unto you,” he says, as if to
suggest that my unsupported word is given as the surest light regarding the
dark future that you can possibly have, and my simple, unsupported utterance
has the most imperative authority of any utterance at all. Those are amazing

claims that the Lord Jesus makes in this magnificent statement. The majesty
and yet humility of our Lord Jesus; it was humble, of course, for him who was
the Son of God to take his place in the line of Moses and the prophets. But it
was majesty to claim to fulfill them.
Now what does this word “fulfill” mean? I’ve alluded to this, but I need to say
something specifically about it. It has been given two senses by interpreters. It
has been said that it means “to accomplish” – I’ve come to accomplish the law
and prophets. And by that is meant he has come to perfectly satisfy the
demands of the law by dying under the judgment of the law. His obedience to
the law is the expression of that which is necessary for our forgiveness of sins.
And so, many have felt that when he says he is come to fulfill the law, that that
simply means he has come to substitute, he has come to die under the
judgment of God. He has come to bear all of the sins of the broken law which
you and I have committed. And by his own obedience, he has come to make it
possible for believers to have everlasting life. The Apostle Paul does say that
the Lord Jesus came and he was obedient unto death, even death on the cross.
Now that meaning may be well-included in the statement that our Lord
makes, but I don’t think that it really satisfies all of it. There is another
meaning of the word, pleroo which is the Greek word that is used here. Not
only to accomplish, but it also means “to fill with content” or “to fill with
meaning.” And we have some instances of this sense in the Gospel of Matthew.
In chapter 13 and verse 48, it simply means they’re “to fill” – reference being
to the filling of a net with fish – and then in the 23rd chapter and the 32nd
verse, it is used of “filling up the judgment of those that have gone on.” So the
idea is to fill with content, to fill with meaning. It means to complete the guilt
of, for example, in that last passage. And I’m inclined to think that is the
primary meaning that the Lord Jesus gives the word here, because he says,
he’s not come to destroy the law or the prophets, but to fulfill them.

Now, the prophets are not known for their moral utterances, so much as they
are for their predictions of the Messianic glory that is to come, that touches
the first and second coming of the Lord Jesus. And since the 18th verse does
refer to the prophecies, because it does refer to things that are going to be
fulfilled in the present time on into the future and the eternal state, it would
seemthat we must have here, then, a reference to the prophecies.
And then, finally, in the rest of this chapter, he will take the Old Testament
law, and he will give it its deeper meaning. So, I think that it is far truer to the
text to say, I have not come to destroy the law or the prophets, I’ve not come
to destroy, but to fulfill as meaning to fill with content, to show us the ultimate
meaning of all of those statements in the Old Testament.
One of the earliest Christians, Theophilect, said many centuries ago that “the
Lord Jesus filled up Moses and the prophets as a painter fills the sketch of a
picture that he has made.” So the Lord Jesus came in order to fill in the
portrait that Moses and the prophets had painted. They had, from the
beginning, in Genesis chapter 3 and verse 15, and the first promise of the
Redeemer to come, the seed of the woman that should crush the serpent’s
head – they had begun a long line of teaching which went through the Old
Testament, and the Lord Jesus has come as the fulfillment of it.
He’s the fulfiller of Genesis chapter 3 verse 15. He’s the fulfiller of Genesis
chapter 22, when Abraham offers up Isaac, looking forward to Christ. He’s
the fulfiller of the prophecies of Genesis 49. He’s the fulfiller of the prophecies
that are implicit in the sacrifice of the lamb at Passover time. He’s the
fulfillment of all of those Messianic promises of the Old Testament, which
reach their climax in the 53rd chapter of the Book of Isaiah – magnificent
unfolding of anticipation of the Redeemer to come. That is what our Lord is
thinking about when he says, “I have not come to destroy, but to fulfill”—to
fill out the meaning of all that has been written. And it reaches its climax in

the penal satisfaction, atonement which he accomplished when he died under
the punishment of a holy God for the sins of sinners. He hath been made sin
for us, he who knew no sin, that we might become the righteousness of God in
him.
It is an amazing thing to me – it still is amazing to me – that men who seek to
interpret holy Scripture can still find interpretation of the word of God that
omits that very important doctrine. It’s not very important in the modern
mind to say that the Lord Jesus came as an innocent substitute and died
under the punishment of a holy God, for the world about us loves to think
about “God is love,” and Christians fall into that trap. They are constantly
singing about the love of God, and they never sing, hardly ever, about his
holiness and about his justice. And so we gain a one-sided impression of God.
God is a holy and just God. And not only have we sung about it, but we’ve
convinced the world that God loves and loves and loves, and holiness is
entirely omitted. And now, even, in the secular songs, God-is-love appears,
because that’s a great deal of comfort who realizes deep down in his heart that
he’s out of relationship with God.
Professor William Barkley, a very gifted commentator, whose books contain a
great deal of help for Bible students – unfortunately, however, a liberal
commentator – has written concerning these words of the Lord Jesus, “That
is, to say, he came to bring out the real of meaning of the law”—it would be
wonderful if he would go on from that and explain in Scriptural terms what
was the real meaning of the law. But he asks the question, “What was the real
meaning of the law? Even behind the scribal and oral law there was one great
principle which the scribes and Pharisees had imperfectly and mistakenly
grasped. The one great principle was that in all things, a man must seek God’s
will, and when he knows it, he must dedicate his whole life to the obeying of
it.”

He goes on to say that “Jesus came to fulfill reverence and respect for the
law.” All that Professor Barkley is saying is that the Lord Jesus came to give
us reverence and respect for the law, and to tell us that man’s responsibility is
to seek God’s will, and that when he knows it, he must dedicate his whole life
to the obeying of it. Now that is rank Pelegianism—salvation by good works—
and the gifted commentator has missed the whole point of the ministry of the
Lord Jesus. But unfortunately, that is all too common. I am trying, I am
trying, with my prayers and with my exhortations and expositions to bring
you to the place where you can read something like that and say, “Ah, that’s
heresy! That is not true to the word of God and it does not do the saints good
to hear it.”
Now having said that, the Lord Jesus speaks of the abiding authority and
inviolability of the Scriptures. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth
pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no way pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.
Notice the verse begins with a little “for.” This explains why he did not come
to destroy the Old Testament. He did not come to destroy the Old Testament
because the Old Testament is authoritative and enduring. And he begins by
saying, “Verily I say unto you.”
Did you know that no teacher at the time of our Lord Jesus ever began his
statements by saying, “Verily I say unto you.” We have no record in ancient
Judaism of any teacher who prefaced his remarks by saying, “For verily I say
unto you.” And as John says, he said, “Verily, verily I say unto you.” He
claimed the utmost authority for the utterances he was giving. He speaks in a
unique way.
Now he speaks here of the abiding authority first. Till heaven and earth pass,
not one jot or tittle shall in no way pass from the law until all shall be fulfilled,
even up to the time of the eternal kingdom. In other words, this statement of

our Lord is still applicable today. Not one jot or tittle shall pass from that Old
Testament till everything in it be fulfilled. But in the Old Testament, we are
told about the eternal state. We are told about the future, from our time. So,
our Lord’s statement is still a valid statement. It is, in effect, him saying that
the Old Testamenthas force for us today.
Now what does he mean when he says, “Not one jot or one tittle shall in any
way pass from the law”? These are references by our Lord to the Hebrew
letters of the Hebrew alphabet. The little word, “jot,” is the Greek translation
of a word that refers to the Hebrew, yodh. It was the smallest letter of the
Hebrew alphabet. It looks, in the Hebrew script, like our comma except that
in a line of Hebrew letters, it stands at the top of the line rather than on the
bottom line as our commas in English are placed.
It was a small letter, and not only that, it was known for its dispensability,
only indispensable if we wanted to spell accurately, but not really
indispensable. It could be omitted, and the sense of the words would be much
the same. So it is an insignificant letter of the alphabet to which he refers.
And then he refers to the tittle, which was a little projection that goes beyond
the line, which was the only means of distinguishing some letters from
another. Now, in case there is someone in the audience who has an Authorized
Version – a King James Version – I’m going to ask you to turn to Psalm 119,
and we’re going to look at something here in the authorized version which is
not found in some of the modern versions because, well, I won’t say why; I
don’t want to offend you. You may have one of those modern versions,
probably [laughter]. But, it’s evident they did not think it was worthwhile. I
think it was worthwhile to put these things in.

Now if you’ll look at Psalm 119, and you have an Authorized Version, you’ll
notice that Psalm 119 is an acrostic Psalm. That is, it’s a Psalm arranged in a
certain way designed to make it easy for those who read it and studied it to
remember. The first word of each of the eight verses begins with the first
letter of the Hebrew alphabet, the aleph. And then the next eight verses begin
with the beth, or the b.
Now when you look at Psalm 119 and verse 73, if you have an Authorized
Version, you’ll notice that at the heading of this is the word, yodh. And then in
the Authorized version that I have, the Hebrew yodh is put to the left of it,
and you can actually see it. It looks like a comma. If you have a New
American Standard Bible, I’m sorry; you are underprivileged. [Laughter]
They did not put those Hebrew letters in. Not, presuming that anyone who
read English would ever have occasion to look at them, but you see, we do
have occasionto look at them. They form a kind of visual aide for us.
Now notice that little yodh that looks like the comma. That’s the jot. Now will
you look back at verse 9 of Psalm 119, and you will notice the heading is beth
and then to the left of it is the Hebrew beth. It looks like this. If you can look
at something backwards, you make a beth this way [gestures]. But the line, the
bottom line, extends a little bit beyond the vertical line. Now that little
extensiondown at the bottom on the right hand corner of the beth is the tittle.
Now the reason it’s called a tittle – we call it, in English, incidentally, a serif –
the reason it’s called the tittle is because it’s that which distinguishes it from
other letters. Now will you turn with me over to verse 81 of Psalm 119? In
verse 81, we have the section in which all the verses begin with a kaph. Now
look at the kaph, and compare it with the beth. The kaph is made like this.
[Gestures] This way, this way, a vertical line, and then to the left. But there is
no slight extension beyond the vertical line. The only difference between the

beth and the kaph is that little extension beyond the bottom line. That is the
tittle.
When the Lord Jesus said not one jot or one tittle, he was saying that all of the
letters of the alphabet are important for the sense contained in them. Now,
those of you who don’t have anything in your hands, if you can just think
about a printed “i” [laughter]. A printed “i” in our newspapers, for example,
looks like this. There is a dot, and then there is a vertical line, but at the
bottom, there is usually a horizontal line that extends beyond the vertical line,
both this direction and that direction. We call that a serif in English. (That is,
I call it that; I hope its right.) A serif. Now this serif – spelled, s-e-r-i-f – that
serif is the equivalent of the Hebrew tittle.
Now, then, what is our Lord meaning by this statement, then? There shall not
pass from the law one jot or one tittle until all be fulfilled. I have in my hands
here an article written by a very fine Christian man. He is a Christian man.
He teaches in a Christian institution on the mission field. He is a member of a
very respected denomination in this country that, generally speaking, is still
sound in its doctrines of salvation.
Now this man has written an article called “The Infallibility of the Bible and
Higher Criticism.” It is the position of this man, Professor Harry Bohr, that
the Bible is infallible, but it is not inerrant. He states, “The Bible is infallible.
It is not inerrant in the accepted sense of the word.” Now what does he mean
by that? Well, he means that the Bible is a reliable guide in matters of faith
and doctrine, in matters that touch divine revelation. But in matters that
touch history and science and archaeology and various things like that, the
Bible is not necessarily reliable. The Bible does contain errors. It is infallible,
and yet, it is not inerrant.

He states on another page that “we should not be afraid to speak of the literal
fallibility of the Bible. The Bible is fallible. It does contain errors.” He speaks
also about disparities, and we should not be ashamed to acknowledge
disparities where they are evident. We should not be ashamed of seeing time-
conditioned contexts as the bearer of truth. This is the position of a number of
our evangelicalmentoday regarding holy Scripture.
I wonder if the Lord Jesus would have accepted that. We read here, “Til
heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no way pass from the law
til all be fulfilled.” Now many of our evangelical friends, I think, err at this
point. They tend to say, “Jesus said, ‘Not one jot or one tittle shall pass from
the law.’ Therefore, he believed in a verbal, plenary inspiration with
inerrancy.” But what they mean by that is not too clear in their own minds.
Because, you see, the jots and tittles have already passed away, in the literal
sense. In the Lord Jesus Christ’s day, he did not have the jots and tittles. He
had copies of copies of copies, just as today we have copies of copies of copies
of copies of the original manuscripts. We do not have any of the original
manuscripts.
We have, of course, the best attested document of ancient history. We have no
original manuscripts of any ancient document, in any field of study, and we
have more of the New Testament and the Old Testament than we have of any
ancient writing. We have so many that the science of textual criticism is
difficult, not because we have few manuscripts, but because we have so many
manuscripts. But it’s still true that we don’t have the literal jots and tittles.
What, then, did our Lord mean?
Why, of course he was referring to the sense of that Old Testament passage.
And when he said, not one jot or tittle shall pass until all be fulfilled, he meant
that this Old Testament was going to be fulfilled down to its minutest
statement. Now its minutest statement demands, of course, a verbal, plenary

inspiration of Scripture. And so the text does teach what we think it teaches,
although not in the way that many of my good evangelical friends explain it.
What he is really claiming here is a comprehensive and minute fulfillment of
the written word.
Now someone might say, “You mean, only the sense of the Old Testament?”
Yes, the sense of the Old Testament written, because jot and tittles don’t move
around in our minds. They are on the pages. And so he is talking about the
comprehensive and minute fulfillment of the written word of the Old
Testament. Everything in it, down to its minutest point, is going to be fulfilled
perfectly. That’s what our Lord is claiming here. Now that implies that
inerrant, verbal, plenary inspiration that we were talking about. But,
nevertheless, he states it slightly different.
I don’t know why anyone would ever think that the Bible was written by
anyone but God to start with. John Flavell, to start with, many years ago said,
“Both bad men or demons wouldn’t have written the Bible, because it
condemns them and their work. And good men or angels could not have
written it, because if good men and angels had written it, the Bible says God
wrote it, and the good men or angels who said at the same time that God
wrote it would be lying, and therefore they wouldn’t be good men. [Laughter]
And so consequently, only God could have written the Bible.
Well now, it is true that the Bible is the product of God through men, and that
is why it is going to be fulfilled in its most minute particulars. That’s what he
means; not one jot or tittle shall pass from the law until all of it has been
fulfilled. I’m not at all sure that you believe the Bible. Do you really believe
the Bible? I’m not sure of that. I’m not even sure that I believe it. I hope I do.
I pray, O God, often, O God, help me to believe all that is written in holy
Scripture. But I’m not really sure I do, because I know that there are many
Christians who say, “I do accept an atonement by the Lord Jesus, but I cannot

believe that his shed blood has anything to do with the forgiveness of sins.” He
doesn’t really acceptthe Bible.
Or I’ve heard people say, “I accept the ethics of the word of God, and I accept
the ethics of Jesus, and I do believe in Jesus, but I do not accept an atonement
by an innocent man who died under the judgment of God as a penal
satisfaction. I cannotacceptthat.” You do not believe the Bible, then.
Or, I know Christians who say, “I believe salvation is of the Lord, and I do
believe that in some way he knew that I was going to be saved. But
unconditional election; election not based upon what he saw I would do, not
based upon my good works, not based upon anything other than the
determinate will of a sovereign God—I cannot accept that.” You do not
believe the Bible. You do not really believe the Bible. You are subjecting the
Bible to your own criticism.
There are people who read the Apostle Paul in this way: Paul was a great
man, the greatest interpreter of Jesus; I accept what Paul says, but when it
comes to those statements about marriage and divorce, I cannot accept them.
Then you do not believe the Bible. Or if you’ll say, I do believe what Paul says,
I believe it when he says, “Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the
church.” But when he says wives should obey their husbands, I cannot accept
that. You do not believe the Bible. That is just as much in the Bible as the
other statement. All of these statements are in holy Scripture. They all stand
upon the same foundation of the authority of God, and if we truly believe,
then we are standing upon the authority of God. If we pick and choose, our
authority is not God, our authority is ourselves.
There are individuals who believe that it is possible for a local church to be
organized correctly and have as its head, a pastor. If there is anything in

Scripture that is plain, it is that the early church did never have as its
organizational head one man who was called “the pastor” as a kind of
president of the corporation. If there is one thing that is not taught in
Scripture, it is that.
But there are individuals who say, I can accept the Bible, but I can’t accept
that. I don’t know if you really believe the Bible. That is so plain and so clear.
And when we read in the very next verse about the inviolability of Scripture,
“Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments,”—I
grant that that’s not as important as the atonement. I grant that’s not nearly
so important as the doctrine of unconditional election. But nevertheless, it is
one of the least commandments of the word of God at least, and he said,
“Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall
teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven.” Salvation
may not be at stake, but your place in the kingdom of heaven, the rewards
that Christians have, is at stake.
O that God would give us a mind to obey his word, to listen to his word, to
accept it as the authoritative, totally reliable, holy Scripture. I pray for myself
constantly that that may be so, and I pray for you, that you may respond to
the word of God as the word of God, and attempt to follow it completely.
Exhortation takes time. I should not exhort. [Laughter]
The 20th verse is the concluding verse. I must stop. Here, the Lord Jesus
speaks about the righteousness that men must have. And the “for,” again,
looks back to the preceding context, verse 17, and gives the kind of
righteousness that saves, “For I say unto you, That except your righteousness
shall exceedthe righteousness ofthe scribes

and Pharisees,”—you know what that means, my dear, common citizen of the
United States? That means except your righteousness exceeds the
righteousness of the ordained preachers of the land, you shall not enter into
the kingdom of heaven.
What was the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees? Why, it was the
righteousness of punctilious observance of the outward commands of the
Mosaic law. Furthermore, they had loaded the law down with numberless
human traditions, and they obeyed them, too. They were the religious leaders
of their day. They were the people who were looked up to by the people of
God as the reverends of their day. Except your righteousness shall exceed the
righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall by no means, the Lord
Jesus says, using again that strong way of expressing a prohibition, you shall
by no means enter into the kingdom of heaven.
How, then, shall we get into heaven? Why we get into heaven the same way
that the vilest sinner gets into heaven: by pure grace, that’s how. We get into
heaven by imputed righteousness that is given us when we acknowledge that
we cannot have any righteousness of ourselves that exceeds the righteousness
of the scribes and Pharisees. It’s then that God, revealing the righteousness
that comes through Christ, brings us to the knowledge ofhimself.
So when we get to heaven and knock on – they’re not pearly gates,
incidentally [laughter], this is a figure of speech – when we knock on the
pearly gates, and St. Peter opens them we say, “Stand aside, Peter, this is my
place.” Why? I have the righteousness of Jesus Christ. Well, enter Lewis. You
have it, truly.
That is what you need. The righteousness of God through Christ, only that
righteousness shall attain for us entrance into heaven. Human righteousness

cannot save. How may we attain it? The Lord Jesus doesn’t say definitely
here, but he implies it when he says, “I have come to fulfill the law.” That’s
what he did. He died, and made it possible for a righteousness to be available
for those who would believe.
Well, the application’s obvious. If our righteousness must exceed the
righteousness of the Scribes and the Pharisees, it’s quite obvious that the
righteousness we obtain from good works will not help us. The righteousness
that we obtain from joining the church will not help us. Even being a member
of Believers Chapel will not help you, will not get you to heaven. The
righteousness that comes from being baptized will not get us to heaven. The
righteousness that you think you are earning as you are sitting at the Lord’s
table, even every Sunday, will not gain you entrance into heaven. The
righteousness that you may think comes from education or from culture or
from any other type of benefaction to humanity—any type of good work at all
shall not getyou to heaven.
And the greatest testimony to this outside of our Lord is the Apostle Paul, a
man who was blameless with respect to the law, but who said when the truth
came home to me, I counted it but refuse. And then wrote about, “Not by
works of righteousness, which we have done, but according to his mercy he
has savedus.” And he has saved us that we might glorify his grace.
So I conclude, that the only hope of any individual is the hope of which the
hymn-writer spoke, “My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and
righteousness / I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean on Jesus’
name. On Christ the solid rock I stand / all other ground is sinking sand, all
other ground is sinking sand.”

Upon what are you standing? Upon your own righteousness? Does it exceed
that of the scribes and the Pharisees? No. You are helpless and hopeless and
headed to a Christless eternity. May God bring you to conviction and to
reception of the righteousness offered through Jesus Christ and his
atonement. Let’s stand for the benediction.
[Prayer] We are so grateful, Lord, for holy Scripture, for by grace through
faith are ye saved, and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of
works, lest any man should boast. For we are God’s workmanship created in
Christ Jesus for good works, that he hath before ordained that we should
walk in them.
O Father, we do pray again that through the Holy Spirit, Thou wilt bring
enlightenment and understanding to any in this audience who may think that
through their own efforts they shall attain to everlasting life. Enlighten them.
Bring them to the place of speechlessness before the great requirements of the
justice and holiness of God, and then, O God, lead them to the foot of the cross
to receive what they cannotearn.
May grace, mercyand peace go with us as we part.
For Jesus’sake. Amen.
JOHN LIGHFOOT
Verse 17
17. Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not
come to destroy, but to fulfil.

[Think not that I am come to destroy the law, &c.] I. It was the opinion of the
nation concerning the Messias, that he would bring in a new law, but not at all
to the prejudice or damage of Moses and the prophets: but that he would
advance the Mosaic law to the very highest pitch, and would fulfil those things
that were foretold by the prophets, and that according to the letter, even to
the greatestpomp.
II. The scribes and Pharisees, therefore, snatch an occasion of cavilling
against Christ; and readily objected that he was not the true Messias, because
he abolished the doctrines of the traditions which they obtruded upon the
people for Moses andthe prophets.
III. He meets with this prejudice here and so onwards by many arguments, as
namely, 1. That he abolished not the law when he abolished traditions; for
therefore he came that he might fulfil the law. 2. That he asserts, that "not one
iota shall perish from the law." 3. That he brought in an observation of the
law much more pure and excellent than the Pharisaical observation of it was:
which he confirms even to the end of the chapter, explaining the law
according to its genuine and spiritual sense.
Verse 18
18. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle
shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.
[Verily, I say unto you.] I. Such an asseveration was usual to the nation,
though the syllables were something changed, "A certain matron said to R.
Judah Bar Allai, Thy face is like to a swineherd or a usurer. To whom he

answered, In truth, both are forbidden me." The Gloss there, "In truth is a
manner of speechused in swearing."
II. But our Saviour useth this phrase by the highest divine right. 1. Because he
is "Amen, the faithful witness," Revelation 3:14, 2 Corinthians 1:20: see also
Isaiah 65:16; and Kimchi there. 2. Because he published the gospel, the
highest truth, John 18:37, &c. 3. By this asseveration he doth well oppose his
divine oracles against the insolent madness of the traditional doctors, who did
often vent their blasphemous and frivolous tales under this seal, They speak in
truth: and "wheresoever this is said (say they), it is a tradition of Moses from
Sinai."
[One jot.] The Jerusalem Gemarists speak almost to the same sense: "The
Book of Deuteronomy came and prostrated itself before God, and said, 'O
Lord of the universe, thou hast written in me thy law, but now a testament
defective in some part is defective in all. Behold, Solomon endeavours to root
the letter Jod out of me' [to wit, in this text, He shall not multiply wives,
Deuteronomy 17:17]. The holy blessed God answered, 'Solomon and a
thousand such as he shall perish, but the least word shall not perish out of
thee.' R. Honna said in the name of R. Acha, The letter Jod which God took
out of the name of Sarai our mother, was given half to Sara and half to
Abraham. A tradition of R. Hoshaia: The letter Jod came and prostrated itself
before God, and said, 'O eternal Lord, thou hast rooted me out of the name of
that holy woman.' The blessed God answered, 'Hitherto thou hast been in the
name of a woman, and that in the end [viz. in Sarai]; but henceforward thou
shalt be in the name of a man, and that in the beginning.' Hence is that which
is written, 'And Moses called the name of Hoshea, Jehoshua.'" The
Babylonians also do relate this translation of the letter Jod out of the name of
Sarai to the name of Joshua, after this manner: "The letter Jod, saith God,
which I took out of the name of Sarai, stood and cried to me for very many
years, How long will it be ere Joshua arise? to whose name I have added it"...

There is a certain little city mentioned by name Derokreth, which, by reason
of the smallness of it, was called Jod in the Gloss. And there was a rabbin
named Rabh Jod. Of the letter Jod, see Midrash Tillin upon the hundred and
fourteenth Psalm.
[One tittle.] It seems to denote the little heads or dashes of letters, whereby the
difference is made between letters of a form almost alike. The matter may be
illustrated by these examples, If it were Daleth, and a man should have
formed it into Resh [on the sabbath], or should have formed Resh into Daleth,
he is guilty.
"It is written [Lev 22:32] Ye shall not profane my holy name: whosoever shall
change Cheth into He, destroys the world...It is written [Psa 150:6], Let every
spirit praise the Lord: whosoever changeth He into Cheth, destroys the world.
It is written [Jer 5:12], They lied against the Lord: whosoever changeth Beth
into Caph, destroys the world. It is written [1 Sam 2:2] There is none holy as
the Lord: whosoever changeth Caph into Beth, destroys the world. It is
written [Deut 6:4], The Lord our God is one Lord: he that changeth Daleth
into Resh, destroys the world."
But that our Saviour, by jot and tittle, did not only understand the bare
letters, or the little marks that distinguished them, appears sufficiently from
verse 19, where he renders it, one of "these least commands": in which sense
is that also in the Jerusalem Gemara of Solomon's rooting out Jod, that is,
evacuating that precept He shall not multiply wives. And yet it appears
enough hence, that our Saviour also so far asserts the uncorrupt immortality
and purity of the holy text, that no particle of the sacred sense should perish,
from the beginning of the law to the end of it.

To him that diligently considers these words of our Saviour, their opinion
offers itself, who suppose that the whole alphabet of the law, or rather the
original character of it is perished; namely, the Samaritan, in which they
think the law was first given and written; and that that Hebrew wherein we
now read the Bible was substituted in its stead. We shall not expatiate in the
question; but let me, with the reader's good leave, produce and consider some
passages of the Talmud, whence, if I be not mistaken, Christians seem first to
have takenup this opinion.
The Jerusalem Talmud treats of this matter in these words: "R. Jochanan de
Beth Gubrin saith, There are four noble tongues which the world useth: the
mother-tongue, for singing; the Roman, for war; the Syriac, for mourning;
the Hebrew, for elocution: and there are some which add the Assyrian, for
writing. The Assyrian hath writing [that is, letters or characters], but a
language it hath not. The Hebrew hath a language, but writing it hath not.
They chose to themselves the Hebrew language in the Assyrian character. But
why is it called the Assyrian? Because it is blessed (or direct) in its writing. R.
Levi saith, Becauseit came up into their hands out of Assyria."
"A tradition. R. Josi saith, Ezra was fit, by whose hands the law might have
been given, but that the age of Moses prevented. But although the law was not
given by his hand, yet writing [that is, the forms of the letters] and the
language were given by his hand. 'And the writing of the epistle was writ in
Syriac, and rendered in Syriac,' Ezra 4:7. 'And they could not read the
writing,' Daniel 5:8. From whence is shown that the writing [that is, the form
of the characters and letters] was given that very same day. R. Nathan saith:
The law was given in breaking [that is, in letters more rude and more
disjoined]: and the matter is as R. Josi saith. Rabbi [Judah Haccodesh] saith,
The law was given in the Assyrian language; and when they sinned it was
turned into breaking. And when they were worthy in the days of Ezra, it was
turned for them again into the Assyrian. I show to-day, that I will render to
you Mishneh, the doubled, or, as if he should say the seconded (Zech 9:12).

And he shall write for himself the Mishneh (the doubled) of this law in a book
(Deut 17:18), namely, in a writing that was to be changed. R. Simeon Ben
Eleazar saith, in the name of R. Eleazar Ben Parta, and he in the name of R.
Lazar the Hammodean, The law was given in Assyrian writing..." So the
JerusalemTalmudists.
Discourse is had of the same business in the Babylonian Talmud, and almost
in the same words, these being added over: The law was given to Israel in
Hebrew writing, and in the holy language. And it was given to them again in
the days of Ezra, in Assyrian writing, and the Syriac language. The Israelites
chose to themselves the Assyrian writing, and the holy language; and left the
Hebrew writing and the Syriac language to ignorant persons. But who are
those idiots (or ignorant persons)? R. Chasda saith, The Samaritans. And
what is the Hebrew writing? R. Chasda saith...according to the Gloss, "Great
letters, such as those are which are writ in charms and upon doorposts."
That we may a little apprehend the meaning of the Rabbins, let it be observed,
I. That by 'the mother-tongue' (the Hebrew, Syriac, Roman, being named
particularly) no other certainly can be understood than the Greek, we have
shown at the three-and-twentieth verse of the first chapter...
Many nations were united into one language, that is, the old Syriac,--namely,
the Chaldeans, the Mesopotamians, the Assyrians, the Syrians. Of these some
were the sons of Sem and some of Ham. Though all had the same language, it
is no wonder if all had not the same letters. The Assyrians and Israelites refer
their original to Sem; these had the Assyrian writing: the sons of Ham that
inhabited beyond Euphrates had another; perhaps that which is now called by
us the Samaritan, which it may be the sons of Ham the Canaanites used.

III. That the law was given by Moses in Assyrian letters, is the opinion (as you
see) of some Talmudists; and that, indeed, the sounder by much. For to think
that the divine law was writ in characters proper to the cursed seed of Ham, is
agreeable neither to the dignity of the law, nor indeed to reason itself. They
that assert the mother-writing was Assyrian, do indeed confess that the
characters of the law were changed; but this was done by reason of the sin of
the people, and through negligence. For when under the first Temple the
Israelites degenerated into Canaanitish manners, perhaps they used the letters
of the Canaanites, which were the same with those of the inhabitants beyond
Euphrates. These words of theirs put the matter out of doubt: "The law was
given to Israel in the Assyrian writing in the days of Moses: but when they
sinned under the first Temple and contemned the law, it was changed into
breaking to them."
Therefore, according to these men's opinion, the Assyrian writing was the
original of the law, and endured and obtained unto the degenerate age under
the first Temple. Then they think it was changed into the writing used beyond
Euphrates or the Samaritan; or, if you will, the Canaanitish (if so be these
were not one and the same); but by Ezra it was at last restored into the
original Assyrian.
Truly, I wonder that learned men should attribute so much to this tradition
(for whence else they have received their opinion, I do not understand), that
they should think that the primitive writing of the law was in Samaritan:
seeing that which the Gemarists assert concerning the changing of the
characters rests upon so brittle and tottering a foundation, that it is much
more probable that there was no change at all (but that the law was first writ
in Assyrian by Moses, and in the Assyrian also by Ezra), because the change
cannot be built and establishedupon strongerarguments.

A second question might follow concerning Keri and Kethib: and a suspicion
might also arise, that the test of the law was not preserved perfect to one jot
and one tittle, when so many various readings do so frequently occur.
Concerning this business we will offer these few things only, that so we may
return to our task:--
I. These things are delivered by tradition; "They found three books in the
court, the book Meoni, the book Zaatuti, and the book Hi. In one they found
written, 'The eternal God is thy refuge': but in the two other they found it
written, (Deut 33:27); They approved [or confirmed] those two, but rejected
that one"...
I do much suspect that these three books laid up in the court answered to the
threefold congregation of the Jews, namely, in Judea, Babylon, and Egypt,
whence these copies might be particularly taken. For, however that nation was
scattered abroad almost throughout the whole world, yet, by number and
companies scarcely to be numbered, it more plentifully increased in these
three countries than any where else: in Judea, by those that returned from
Babylon; in Babylon, by those that returned not; and in Egypt, by the temple
of Onias. The two copies that agreed, I judge to be out of Judea and Babylon;
that that differed to be out of Egypt: and this last I suspect by this, that the
word Zaatuti smells of the Seventy interpreters, whom the Jews of Egypt
might be judged, for the very sake of the place, to favour more than any
elsewhere. For it is asserted by the Jewish writers that Zaatuti was one of
those changes which the Septuagint brought into the sacredtext.
II. It is therefore very probable, that the Keri and Kethib were compacted
from the comparing of the two copies of the greatest authority, that is, the
Jewish and the Babylonian: which when they differed from one another in so
many places in certain little dashes of writing, but little or nothing at all as to
the sense, by very sound counsel they provided that both should be reserved,

so that both copies might have their worth preserved, and the sacred text its
purity and fulness, whilst not one jot nor one title of it perished.
JOHN MACARTHUR
Christ and the Law, Part 1
Sermons Matthew 5:17 2209 Feb18, 1979
A + A - RESET
Turn in your Bible, if you will, to Matthew chapter 5, and tonight I want us to
share just an opening message on one of the most marvelous passages of
Scripture we could ever study: Matthew 5:17 through 20. Let me read it to
you so that your thoughts will be set, and then we’ll discuss, tonight at least,
the first verse.
Verse 17, our Lord says, “Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the
prophets. I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. For verily I say unto you,
‘Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no way pass from the
law, till all is fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least
commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the
kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be
called great in the kingdom of heaven.’ For I say unto you, ‘That except your
righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye
shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.’” Let’s pray together before
we study.
Father, help us tonight to be able to comprehend this deep, profound message
from the Lord Jesus Christ. Open up the eyes of our understanding, enlighten

our minds and our hearts, that we might truly rejoice in the truth of this great
word. We give You the praise, in Christ’s name, Amen.
In a recent book titled The Interaction of Law and Religion, Harold J.
Berman, who is a professor of law at Harvard University, and one of the most
outstanding professors there, has developed a very significant thesis. His
thesis in the book is that Western culture has had a massive loss of confidence
in law and a massive loss of confidence in religion. He sees that one of the
causes is the radical separation of one from the other; and his conclusion is
that you cannot have law, you cannot have rules for behavior without religion,
because it is religion that provides the absolute base for morality and for law.
Now the man is not a Christian, but certainly, we would have to agree with his
thesis. He fears that Western culture is doomed to relativism in law because of
the loss of an absolute. We have broken away from religion, we have broken
away from the concept of God, we have broken away from absolute truth;
and, therefore, we are stuck with existential relativism when it comes to
making laws. He says law and religion will stand together, or law and religion
will fall together. Religionless law could never command authority. There
must be a transcendent value. There must be a super-rationalabsolute.
And in his book, he quotes Professor Thomas Franck of NYU. Franck says
that, “Law has become undisguisedly a pragmatic human process. It is made
by men, and it lays no claim to divine origin or eternal validity.” And this
leads professor Franck to the view that a judge in a court reaching a decision
is not propounding a truth, but is rather experimenting in the solution of a
problem. And if his decision is reversed by a higher court, or if it is
subsequently overruled, that doesn’t mean it was wrong, only that it was, or
became in the course oftime, unsatisfactory.

“Having broken away from religion,” – Franck states – “law is now
characterized by existential relativism. Indeed, it is now generally recognized”
– and listen to this – “that no judicial decision is ever final, that the law
follows the event, is not eternal or certain, is made by man, and is not divine
or true.” End quote.
Berman goes on to say, “If law is merely an experiment, and if judicial
decisions are merely hunches, why should individuals or groups of people
observe those legal rules or commands if they do not conform to their own
interests?” And he’s right.
Why am I quoting all of that? To tell you this: we are endeavoring in our
society to have rules without an absolute; and court, after court, after court
overturns some other ruling. When you abandon God and when you abandon
theology, you abandon truth. And trying to make laws without truth and
without an ultimate value is impossible. You cannot build a consistent legal
system on philosophical humanism, on a fluctuating, changing principle of
what is right and what is wrong.
In the latest issue of Esquire magazine, there is an article by a man named
Peter Steinfels. The article is entitled “The Reasonable Right.” He says this,
and I quote, “How can moral principles be grounded and social institutions
ultimately legitimated in the absence of a religiously-based culture?” End
quote. The answer is they cannot. So, you see, some people are hinting at the
issue: secular people like Steinfels and Berman and others. The are hinting at
this issue, that if there is no absolute truth, and there is no absolute word, and
there is no God who sets the standard, then there can be no real law. You’ll
never get people to keeplaws that are only judicial guesses.

And so we ask ourselves, “What is the absolute source of truth? What is the
absolute standard of morality? What is the absolute rule of justice? Where
does this evil society, floating on a sea of relativism, find its anchor?” That’s
the question. Is there a standard to live by? Is there an absolute authority? Is
there an unchanging authority, and inviolable law?
Well, from the words that I just read to you in Matthew 5:17 to 20, we find
that, indeed, there is. And that law is none other than the law of God. And
Jesus said, “Not one jot or tittle will pass from that law, till everything is
fulfilled.” He did not come in any whit to set it aside, but to fulfill it. And
anybody who teaches somebody to break the least of those commandments is
the least in the kingdom. In other words, God has laid down an absolute,
eternal, abiding law. In fact, in John 17:17, Jesus said to the Father, “Thy
word is truth.”
And recently, people have been questioning this in terms of Christianity, and
more particularly, in my own case. A lady called me the other day from a
magazine – which will be printing another article on whether the Bible ought
to be believed in terms of the home – and she said to me, “It seems to me that
you don’t realize times have changed. The Bible doesn’t fit today anymore.”
And I said, “No.” I said, “That isn’t the way it is. The way it is, is that today
doesn’t fit the Bible anymore. It’s today that’s wrong, not the Bible.”
Somebody else said to me on a radio program, “That’s your interpretation.
Everybody’s got his own interpretation; that’s the way you interpret it.” The
point is this: if the Bible confronts you where you don’t want to be confronted,
then say the Bible’s out-of-date or the Bible needs to be reinterpreted. Don’t
face the reality that maybe you are out-of-date, and you need to be
reinterpreted. That’s the perspective.

People today want to reinterpret the Bible. They want to deny its authority.
Chapters we once believed to be written by God are now said to be written by
some rabbi who added it in. Portions of the Scripture that we don’t agree with
or don’t want to abide by, we just shuffle off out of the picture. We reinterpret
the verses to say what we want them to say. We say, “Well, that’s cultural and
it doesn’t relate to today,” anything at all to evade allowing the Bible to
confront us at our time and place in the history of the world.
Well, Jesus is saying not one jot or tittle shall pass from it; every bit of it will
be fulfilled. I am not abrogating or annulling one whit of it, and anyone who
teaches anyone else to disobey the smallest command in the Bible will be the
leastin the kingdom of heaven. Nothing ever changes in the Bible, nothing.
We will see in our study that this is Jesus’ view of God’s law. And by the way,
whatever Jesus thinks of the Bible is what I want to think of it. And I frankly
get weary of the fact that people are constantly overturning historical
interpretations, things that the church has believed for centuries, throwing
them out if they conflict with the evil of today. They want to deny that the
Bible is inerrant. They want to say, “Well, you see, there are errors in the
Bible, and that’s one of them,” or, “The Bible isn’t really all inspired,” or, “It
certainly isn’t authoritative,” or, “It’s just a cultural thing,” or, “Well, you
can’t take everything it says.” And so we redefine Scripture to fit our sin.
And that’s what’s happening in our society today. And the sad thing is, if you
think it’s tough on a society like ours, a secular society, to find an anchor; it’s
even tough on so-called Christianity, because so-called Christianity is busy
about denying the Bible. And without an absolute base, there will be no
standard of behavior; and we will drift along like the world, without an
anchor.

And so this Scripture is so very important, because here, our Lord tells us that
we have an absolute. We have an inviolable authority. “Let it speak,” He’s
saying. Let it speak. Let us shatter us. Let it crush your evil ways. Let it
overturn your disobedient lives. Let it make us face God nose-to-nose, and
either acceptor rejectHis will, and take the consequence.”
Jesus said, “The Bible is an absolute.” That was His view; and it has to be our
view. To remove the absolute character of the Bible, to say it has errors in it,
to say it isn’t authoritative, to say it needs to be reinterpreted is simply to drift
with the world awayfrom any standard of righteousness.
Now in this passage, Jesus presents what He thinks of God’s Word. Of course,
for Him at this time, God’s Word really was comprised of the Old Testament,
and so this is Jesus’ perspective on the Old Testament. And we want to ask
some interesting questions. Jesus said, “Not one jot or tittle shall pass away; I
am come to fulfill it.”
And so immediately we say this: “Is the Old Testament binding on the
Christian? How much of the Old Testament is binding on the Christian? Is
the Old Testament totally commanded of us? Do we have to fulfill all those
things? How important are all those things?” These are vital questions, and
Bible students and scholars have wrestled with these questions for years and
years. And I think that here, Jesus gives us a wonderful answer; and you can
understand it, and you’ll see it as we move along.
Now let me set the scene for you a little bit. Christ had appeared in Israel. He
appeared rather suddenly, rather startlingly, in a dramatic way. For thirty
years, He had been there, but nobody really knew about Him. He was an
obscurity in Nazareth. But all of a sudden, at His baptism, He hit the scene.
The first thirty years of His life on earth had been lived in privacy outside his

own immediate circle. He had done little traveling and attracted very little
attention. But as soon as He appeared in public and was baptized, the eyes of
everyone were fixed on Him. Even the leaders of Israel had to focus in on
Him, and look, at Him and hear Him, and watch Him.
Of course, His meekness and His beautiful humility made Him easily
distinguishable from the rest of the leaders in Israel who were proud, boastful,
hypocritical; always looking for some way to lift themselves up, some way to
aggrandize themselves. His call to repentance, and His proclamation of the
gospel, and His announcement of a kingdom made people listen, and made
them wonder, “What kind of a ruler is this? What kind of a prophet is this?
Was He a revolutionary? He is so different. What was His attitude toward the
Mosaic Law?”
You see, the issue is Jesus didn’t sound like the Pharisees, and Jesus didn’t
sound like the scribes. He didn’t sound like anybody they were hearing in
their day. And their natural reaction was to wonder whether He was really an
Old Testament prophet or not. He didn’t echo the prevailing theology of His
day. He refused to identify Himself with any of the sects of His time. His
preaching was so different from the Pharisees and scribes, that people were
inclined to think He intended to subvert the authority of the Word of God,
and substitute His own. He threw over all the traditions of men; all the
extraneous, legalistic rules, He disregarded. He kept putting an emphasis on
inward morality.
He was a friend of publicans, and a friend of sinners, and a friend of all the
worst riffraff in the society. He proclaimed grace, and He dispensed mercy,
and their natural reaction was, “Is this a revolutionary new thing? I mean He
doesn’t sound like the rest of the people we hear. He doesn’t sound like the
scribes and Pharisees.” And so they were wondering, “Is He tearing down the
Old Testament? Is He destroying all the absolutes of the Mosaic Law? Is He

removing the foundations for some new thing?” After all, you know, it is the
way of most revolutionary leaders to sever all ties with the past and do
everything they can to completely repudiate the traditions that have gone
before.
And by the way, for a long time in Israel, there were certain people who
believed that the Messiah would do just that. There were some who believed
the Messiah would radically overturn the Old Testament. These were sort of
the anti-Pharisees. They were somewhat sickened by the Pharisees, and they
were looking for a time when Messiah came and threw out all that law stuff,
and they were thinking, “Maybe this is the one. Maybe He’d come in with
radical changes, overthrow the ancientorder of legalistic religion.”
So they were wondering, and rightly so; we can understand that. “Does this
teacher believe in the Holy Writings? Does He believe in Moses? Does He
believe in the prophets? Does He believe in the law in all of its fullness?”
After all, where all the scribes and Pharisees were always expounding the law,
Jesus wouldn’t do that. He was busy talking about grace, and busy talking
about mercy. And where the Pharisees and Scribes were binding the law on
people, He was busy forgiving people. And where they were always talking
about the outside, He was always talking about the inside. And He even
blasted away at some of the most sacred of their traditions. Is this a new
theology?
Well, right here, Jesus puts it all in perspective, and what He says, in effect, is
this: “This is nothing new, nothing new at all. I’m going to reiterate to you,
and I’m going to fulfill the whole Old Testament law. I will not set aside one
jot, I will not set aside one tittle of that law till all of it is fulfilled.” And so the

amazing manifesto of the king is in direct confrontation to their thinking. He
wouldn’t lower the standard, He would raise it where it belonged.
You see, what had happened was this – now get this. And you’re going to have
to listen tonight to get all what they were going to say. Their thinking was that
the standard was so high, somebody’d have to lower it. His thinking was,
“You’ve dragged it down so low, somebody’s got to raise it again.” Why?
They had turned an internal law into an external thing, and He was going to
drive it back inside where it belonged. In fact, He had a greater commitment
to the law of God than the most scrupulous scribe or Pharisee. So He proceeds
in this passage – and this is all I want you to get in general. He proceeds in this
passageto support the authority of the whole Old Testament.
Now it bothers that people don’t read the Old Testament, study the Old
Testament, know the Old Testament. It is the foundation to the New
Testament. It is very important, and Jesus is supporting that Old Testament.
In fact, He says, in effect that, “I’m not the one denying the Old Testament,
the Jewishleaders are.”
Now that’s the historical scene. First of all, I gave you a little, kind of a theme
to look for in this: the establishing of an absolute law. Then I gave you a little
historical setting. Now let me put you into the context of Matthew 5. Look at
Matthew 5.
In a sense, these verses flow right out of what has gone before. In verses 3 to
12, we have the Beatitudes; and you’ll remember that that is a list of the
characteristics of a son of God, characteristics of one who lives in the
kingdom, characteristics of a believer. So in verses 3 to 12, we have what we
are as kingdom sons. This is what we are. In verses 13 to 16, we are told how
we are to live: this is who we are, this is how we live. In other words, in one

sense, we have a very doctrinal definition; in another one, a very practical
issue of how we live.
So Jesus comes on the scene. In His first sermon, He says, “If you’re in My
kingdom, this is who you are, this is how you act.” And immediately, the
question comes up in my mind, “Well, I’ve read the Beatitudes, and isn’t easy
to be like that. And I’ve read verses 13 to 16, being salt and light, and it isn’t
easy to live like that. How can we be that, and how can we live that way?” And
the answer comes immediately in verse 17: “You must uphold the Word of
God.”
The Word of God becomes then the standard of righteousness. The Word of
God give the guidelines, the principles, the requirements. How can we really
live out a righteous life? How can we live out the Beatitudes? How can we be
salt and light? Certainly not by lowering the standard, right? Certainly not by
dropping the law of God, and saying, “It isn’t binding anymore. We’ll just
love each other and waltzing along, doing our thing.” No, the standard stays
where it was.
How can we live as salt and light? How can we be all we have to be? By
keeping God’s principles of absolute obedience to an absolutely authoritative
Word of God, in contrast, by the way, to the theology of the day, which only
obeyed what it wanted to obey.
So the Lord introduces that thought here then, and it is a powerful thought,
that the key to a righteous life is keeping the Word of God. And that’s why He
says in verse 20 that the kind of righteousness the Pharisees have will never
cut it, unless your righteousness exceeds theirs. Why? Theirs was external,
and based on the traditions of men. “Mine” – He says – “is internal, based on
the eternallaw of God,” you see. That’s the difference.

So if we’re to be salt and light, we must be righteous, truly righteous. And the
only way to have a true righteousness is to go beyond the phony externalism of
the Pharisees and the scribes, and go to an inward righteousness that is only
wrought in you by the power and the authority of the Word of God. So the
Word of God is the basis of a righteous standard, and God never changed it.
And when Jesus came, He didn’t abrogate the Old Testament, He just
restatedits absolute, binding character.
And, you know, people say, “Well, what about later on in the chapter when
He says, ‘You have heard it said, “But I say.” You have heard it said, “But I
say.”’ Isn’t He adding to the Old Testament? Isn’t He changing the Old
Testament?” No. What He is doing is simply restating God’s original
intention, because the rabbis had so perverted the Old Testament, that He has
to raise the standard back up to where God put it in the first place.
Now listen; look at the text. I want you to see here Jesus laying down the law,
Jesus saying, “Here is the absolute. Here is the standard for righteousness.”
And there are four points. We’re only going to look at the first one tonight,
but I want to give them to you. Jesus says these four things about the law: the
preeminence of the law, the permanence of the law, the pertinence of the law,
and the purpose of the law.
And as I said this morning, people, theses verses are so loaded that it’s like
trying to drink out of a fire hose. They are just absolutely loaded with truth.
They’re absolutely filled with truth. There is no way conceivable that our
minds can even handle the hundredth or the thousandth of what is in these
words. But I want to us to take sort of a leap in the dark and see if we can’t
land on something exciting.

This is Jesus’ view of Scripture; and, folks, that settles it for me. Whatever
Jesus thought of the Bible, that’s what I think. Point one – and that’ll be all
for tonight. I’ll give you some subpoints though. Point one, the preeminence of
the law, verse 17: “Think not that I have come to destroy the law, or the
prophets. I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill.” To Jesus, God’s law, God’s
Scripture, the Word of God was absolutely preeminent, first-place, unequaled.
Notice He begins by saying, “Think not.” And that’s exactly what they were
doing. They were thinking, “Oh, well, He’s here. He’ll set the laws aside. He’ll
set all of those things aside.” And He says, “On the contrary; I will not lower
the standard one whit.”
We know from some Jewish writings that are available to us, that many of the
Jews expected the Messiah to annul the law. They misinterpreted Jeremiah
31:31, where it says, “Behold, I will make a new covenant.” And they thought
the new covenant would nullify everything that God had established in the
old; but they were wrong.
And Jesus came along, and said, “I am introducing a new order.” He told
them even to disregard the Sabbath. He violated many of their traditions; and
it was natural for them to think of that. He rather ruthlessly swept away their
traditions, their tithings of minuscule things. He mocked their constant
washings; He ignored. He disregarded their oral and scribal law. He
interpreted the written law in a way totally different than they did. He spoke
as one having authority. But, listen: in no way was He revolting from the Old
Testament;in no waywas His gospela gospelof indulgence.
And let me tell you something. If you’re a Christian today, God has not set
aside His principles; they are still the same. In fact, you know, Jesus lifted up

the law so high, and lifted up the Old Testament so high that He wound up
exposing all the Pharisees andthe scribes as hypocrites, didn’t He?
In verse 20, He goes right after them: “Unless your righteousness exceeds that
of the scribes and Pharisees, you’ll not enter into My Kingdom” In chapter 6,
He says essentially the same thing in verse 1: “Take heed that you don’t do
your alms before men to be seen by them.” Verse 5: “When you pray, you
shouldn’t pray as the hypocrites. They love to pray standing in the synagogues
and in the corner of the street, that they may be seen of men.” Verse 16:
“When you fast, don’t be like the hypocrites, of a sad countenance.” In other
words, “Whatever your righteousness is, it ought to be on the inside, not on
the outside. Not the phony hypocrisy of an external religion.”
Chapter 15, verse 1 essentially says the very same thing. In fact, He goes
through the whole book of Matthew saying it. “Then came to Jesus scribes
and Pharisees.” And down in verse 7, He talks to them, and He says, “You
hypocrites, well did Isaiah prophesied of you, saying, ‘This people draweth
near to Me with their mouth, honoreth Me with their lips, but their heart is
far from Me.’You hypocrites,” He said.
Chapter 16, “The Pharisees,” – verse 1 – “the Sadducees came, testing Him;
desired He would show them a sign.” Verse 3, in the middle, “You
hypocrites,” He says again. Chapter 22, verse 18, just filling out Matthew’s
thought: “But Jesus perceived their wickedness, and said, ‘Why test ye Me,
you hypocrites?’” Finally, in chapter 23, He goes through the entire chapter –
and I can’t read the whole chapter to you – calling them hypocrites, verses 13;
hypocrites, 14; hypocrites, verse 15; hypocrites, verse 25; hypocrites, 27;
hypocrites, 29; hypocrites. I mean, He was really after them.

And every once in awhile, someone would come along and say, “You know,
Brother MacArthur, sometimes you come across negative.” Yeah, you’d
better believe I come across negative; and I’m in good company. Sometimes
you’ve got to come across negative. If you’re going to lift the standard of God
high, then you’re going to expose everything that is phony, right? And that’s
what Jesus did.
And so He arrives, and opens up His sermon by saying, “Here’s My standard
of righteousness, and here’s how you live in the world; and the base of it all is
to be obedient to God’s inviolable, unchanging law.” And anybody who
doesn’t live by God’s standards, anybody who substitutes a manmade system
is no more than a spiritual phony.
Well, let’s go back to verse 17. “Think not that I am come to destroy the law.
No,” – He says – “I didn’t come to destroy it.” The word is kataluō. Means to
abrogate, nullify, destroy. In a physical sense, the word is used of pulling
down a wall, or smashing a house to the ground. He didn’t come to smash
down the Old Testament. He didn’t come to pull it to pieces. By the way, that
word is applied to the temple; and it is applied, in 2 Corinthians 5, to the
body. So it’s used in a physical sense of the breaking down, or the destruction
of a building or a body. And here, in the spiritual sense, He didn’t come to
destroy the law.
Figuratively, the word kataluó is used in Romans 14:20, and again in Acts
5:38 to mean “come to naught, to render useless, to nullify, to annul, to
disallow.” Jesus said, “I didn’t come to do that.” Now watch this one. But He
said, “I came rather to fulfill the law.” Now, people, if you can just get a little
bit of what I’m going to say now, I think it’s going to crack open a whole
comprehension of the Old Testament that you may never have had in your
life.

Listen to this. To our Lord Jesus Christ, the new covenant did not just throw
away the old covenant; it did not just annul everything. The law was not set
aside – now listen to me – it was fulfilled, that’s different. “I didn’t come to
tear it down, I came to fulfill it.” That’s very different. And what our Lord is
saying is that the law is preeminent. Nothing surpasses it; nothing takes its
place. And He gives three reasons in this verse.
Reason number one: It is authored by God. It is authored by God. Watch this:
“Think not that I am come to destroy” – definite article – “the law.” And they
knew which law He meant. He meant the law of God. It goes without saying.
They knew what He was talking about. He was talking about the law of God.
The law, beloved, was authored by God.
In Exodus, where God first laid down the Decalogue, The Ten
Commandments, listen to how it begins. “And God spoke all these words,
saying, ‘I am the Lord thy God, who have brought thee out of the land of
Egypt, out of the house of bondage.’” That’s the way He begins: “I am the
author of law, and I am the Lord your God.” The law is inviolable, the law is
binding, because Godis the author of that law.
In fact, in verse 3, He says, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” In
other words, “This law will be the only law, because I am the only God.”
Listen, beloved, He said of Himself, “I am the Lord, I change not.” And so the
law of God is not some kind of a changing mode of human opinion designed to
fit the whims of every society.
The law of God isn’t something you just adjust and adapt to whatever sin is
going on in your day. The law of God never changes. They are God’s
standards; and the first commandment is this: “I am the Lord your God, and
thou shalt have no other gods before me.” This is an uncompromising

standard based on the fact that He is the absolute sovereign and only God.
This is not an obscure idol. This isn’t some remote deity. This is the holy God,
the only God of the universe. He has created all things and all laws to govern
them, and so they are binding. And by the way, God is still alive – right? – and
His rules are still the same. His nature is unchanged; His laws remain.
Now let’s be specific about the law. To what does Jesus refer? Lots of people
have discussed this. Well, Jesus uses the term “law” in a rather
comprehensive way. When the Jews used it in Jesus’ time – and this is helpful
– they had four things in mind, four possibilities.
First of all, sometimes they used the word “law” to speak of the Ten
Commandments. Secondly, sometimes they used the word “law” to speak of
the Pentateuch, or the five books of Moses. Thirdly, sometimes they used the
word “law” to speak of the whole Old Testament. But, most usually, when
they used the word “law,” they weren’t speaking of the Ten Commandments,
the Pentateuch, or the whole Old Testament; but they were talking about the
oral, scribal traditions that they had been receiving from these various rabbis.
In other words, Jesus put it right in Matthew 15: “You have substituted the
traditions of men for the law of God.”
You say, “How could they do that?” The most common use of law among the
Jews of Jesus’ time was that it referred to these thousands of minuscule
principles, external stuff that had replaced the internal law of God. And see,
here’s the reason. Let’s say you believe you’re only going to be in heaven
because you keep the law. But the law is inward, and the law demands
righteousness, and the law demands a certain kind of character; and you’re a
rotten person, and you really don’t want to give it up. Then what you do is
invent a whole bunch of laws you can keep – see? – and you just invent a
bunch of little rules and figure, “Well, if I just keep all these little rules, then
I’ll be all right.” And if you can just get a bunch of rabbis to make a bunch of

rules, and just keep piling up the rules, and keep all the little rules, you can
convince yourself you’re all right.
This is something of their reasoning. They said, “Well, we’ll just make up a lot
of rules. After all, the law covers every part of man’s life, so we should be able
to deduce from the law a rule for every possible person in every possible
situation.” So the scribes came along, and they dug around in the Old
Testament, and they picked out every possible little deal, and they made
thousands and thousands of funny little laws. And the people busied
themselves. The people, by the name of the Pharisees, busied themselves
trying to keep them, and then patting themselves on the back as if they were
godly because they endeavored to keep all these little rules. Let me give you an
illustration.
For example, the Old Testament law had said you couldn’t work on the
Sabbath, right? “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Rest from your
labors,” and so forth. Don’t work on the Sabbath, okay. But they said, “All
right. Well, if we can’t work on the Sabbath, what is work? You’ve got to
determine what work is. So they decided, “We’ll have a study on ‘What is
work?’”
They decided, first of all, work was to carry a burden. So you couldn’t carry a
burden on the Sabbath day.
Then they said, “What is a burden? Let’s decide what a burden is.” Well, the
scribal law put down: “A burden is food equal to the weight of a dried fig,
enough wine for mixing in a goblet, milk enough for one swallow, honey
enough to put on a wound, oil enough to anoint a small member, water
enough to moisten an eye salve, paper enough to write a customs house notice,
ink enough to write two letters of the alphabet, reed enough to make the pen,”

and so on, and so on, and so on. Now all that stuff was the limit; anything
beyond that is a burden.
Now can you imagine trying to handle all that stuff? They spent endless hours
arguing whether a man could or couldn’t lift a lamp from one place to
another on the Sabbath. They spent time arguing whether a tailor committed
a sin if he went out with a needle stuck in his robe. They had a big discussion
about whether a woman could wear a brooch; if it was too heavy, it was a
burden. Or whether she could put false hair on. It was too heavy, it was a
burden, if it weighed more than a fig. They also had a big argument about
whether a man could go out on the Sabbath with artificial teeth, or – get this –
an artificial limb, because that constituted a weight. And they also discussed if
a man could lift his child on the Sabbath day. Now these things were the
essenceofreligion to them.
Now they decided also that to write was work on the Sabbath; but writing had
to be defined. So they decided, “He who writes two letters of the alphabet with
his right or with his left hand, whether of one kind or of two kinds, if they are
written with different inks or in different languages, is guilty. Even if he
should write two letters from forgetfulness, he is guilty, whether he’s written
them with ink or with paint, red chalk, vitriol, or anything that makes a
permanent mark. Also, he that writes on two walls that form an angle, or two
tablets of his account book so they can be read together, is guilty. But if
anyone writes with dark fluid, fruit juice, or the dust of the road, or in sand or
anything which doesn’t make a permanent mark, he’s not guilty. If he writes
one letter on the ground and one on the wall, or two on the pages of a book so
they cannot be read together, he’s not guilty, as long as they were separated.”
Now that is a passagefrom the scribal law, believe it or not.
They also said to heal was work, so obviously this had to be defined. Healing
was allowed when there was danger to life, and especially in the area of the

eye, and the nose – or rather the ear, the nose, and the throat. But even then,
you could only take steps to keep the patient from getting worse; no steps
could be taken to make him get any better. It’s a pretty hard balance. So you
could put a plain bandage on a wound, but no ointment. And you could put
plain wadding in a sore ear, but not medicated wadding.
The scribes, you see, were the people who wrote out all this stuff, and the
Pharisees were the ones who tried to keep it. So, you see, to the strict
Orthodox Jew of Jesus’ time, the law was a matter of thousands of legalistic
rules and regulations. Now when Jesus came along and said, “Think not that I
am come to destroy the law,” that’s not the law He was talking about. If
there’s one law He wanted to wipe out from the start, that was it – right? –
that was it. He was after that phony kind of stuff. He condemned it, and Paul
condemned it in his epistles. Jesus was not talking about the traditions of men,
He was talking about the law of God. He came to fulfill the law of God –
absolutely inviolable law, a law that never changed.
Now let me help you to see what Jesus means by “the law” here. It could be
that Jesus means the Ten Commandments. It could be that Jesus means more
than that, the Pentateuch. It could mean the whole Old Testament. How do we
know? Watch: “Think not that I have am to destroy the law, or the prophets.”
That settles it. When you see the term “the law and the prophets” together,
that is a reference to the whole Old Testament. It is used that way twelve
times in the New Testament. Twelve times the New Testament refers to the
Old Testamentas the law and the prophets.
Let me give you some synonyms. Whenever you see in the New Testament the
term “law,” “law of God,” “law and prophets,” “Scriptures,” or, “Word of
God,” they are synonyms for the Old Testament, in most cases. Unless the
context gives you a narrower definition, the term “law and the prophets,”

“Scriptures,” “law,” “Word of God” those terms refer to the whole Old
Testament, the whole Old Testament.
What is Jesus saying then? “I am not come to destroy the whole Old
Testament, I am come to” – what? – “fulfill it.” It’s a great statement. Man, if
those Jews had been tuned in that day, they would have known that they were
staring face-to-face with the theme of the whole Old Testament. They were
looking right into the eyes of the one who was the consummation of the entire
Old Testament, the one spoken of in the law, the one spoken of in the
prophets. This was He standing in front of them. He was the one who came to
fulfill the whole thing.
In Luke chapter 16, and verse 16, I’ll show you three passages in Luke: 16:16,
“The law and the prophets were until John,” He says. “Since that time the
kingdom of God is preached, and everyone presseth into it.” In other words,
He says, “The law and the prophets continued till John. But when John came,
he preached the kingdom.” And, of course, He himself was the one who
fulfilled that kingdom.
Further on, Luke even gives you more insight in a more direct statement in
chapter 24, verse 27. This is a great statement. “And beginning at Moses and
all the prophets,” – here we are with the law and the prophets again – “He
expounded unto them in all the Scriptures.”
Notice this, people. The law of Moses and the prophets equal the Scriptures.
Do you see it in that verse? The law of Moses and the prophets equal the
Scriptures. “Beginning at Moses and all the prophets, He expounded unto
them in all the Scriptures the things concerning” – whom? – “Himself.” Who
is the theme of the prophets? He is. Who is the theme of Moses? He is. Who is
the theme of the Scripture? He is.

And over later on in verse 44, “He said unto them,” – Luke 24:44 – ‘These are
the words which I spoke unto you while I was yet with you, that all things
must be fulfilled,” – listen, nothing set aside – “all things fulfilled, which were
written in the law of Moses and in the prophets, and in the writings
concerning” – whom? – “Me.” You see it? He is the fulfillment of it all. That’s
what He’s saying in Matthew 5:17.
Tremendous concept, people, if you can just grasp this. Every single thing in
the Old Testament points to Christ. And so Jesus is saying, “Look, I know
what you’re thinking. I know you’re thinking I’m going to set this law aside.
I’m not. I’m going to lift it up higher than it is today, and I’m going to reveal
the hypocrites. You’re thinking that I’m going to put it all away, and we’re
not going to have any of this hassle anymore, and we can just be free and easy,
and it’ll all be wonderful. I’m telling you, God’s standard hasn’t changed. No
part of the sacred Scripture will ever be destroyed or annulled. It will be
fulfilled, and I Myself will fulfill it.”
Tremendous statement. What a claim. What a shattering claim, that He alone
would fulfill the whole Old Testament. Shocking. Here was the one for whom
it was all written. Here is the object of the whole Old Testament. It all points
to Jesus Christ. In it’s God-ordained origin, it can’t be annulled; it has to be
fulfilled.
Now let me share this with you. You can divide the Old Testament law into
three parts; and let me give you that insight. Look at Deuteronomy chapter 4,
verse 13. Deuteronomy 4:13. “And He declared unto you His covenant” –
Moses talking to the people. Deuteronomy 4:13, just listen: “And He declared
unto you His covenant, which He commanded you to perform, even Ten
Commandments; and He wrote them upon two tablets of stone.” Now that’s
the first thing: God gave the Ten Commandments.

Then verse 14: “And the LORD commanded me” – says Moses – “at that time
to teach you statutes and ordinances, that you might do them in the land
which you go over to possess.” Now listen, and stop right there, and I’ll tell
you what that means. God laid down, first of all, the Ten Commandments.
And then He said to Moses and all the other prophets, to those basic Ten
Commandments, “You had the statutes and the ordinances.” And that’s what
He said to Moses. And so Moses went from the Ten Commandments, and
under God’s inspiration, developed the ceremonial, the judicial systems, the
whole outworking of the law in the life of the people.
And then the prophets came along. Now what was their job? Their job was to
remind the people that the law was still incumbent, the law was still binding.
It all goes back to the Ten Commandments. They were then basically God’s
law. They were expanded in the statutes and ordinances that Moses gave in
the Pentateuch; and then the rest of the Old Testament, the writings of the
prophets, was to call upon the people to be obedient to these standards.
Now we can take the law of God and divide it into three parts: the moral law,
the judicial law, and the ceremonial law. Now watch this. The moral law was
for all men; the judicial law, just for Israel; the ceremonial law, for Israel’s
worship of God. So the moral law encompasses all men, narrows it down to
Israel in the judicial law, and to the worship of Israel toward God in the
ceremoniallaw.
Now stay with me. The moral law is based in the Ten Commandments, the
great moral principles laid down once and forever; the rest of the moral law is
built upon that. The judicial law was the legislative law given for the
functioning of Israel as a nation – very important. In other words, God said to
Israel, “I want to set you apart from the rest of the world. I want you to be
different. I want you to be unique, so you’ll have judicial laws. That’ll mean

Jesus was here to fulfill the law vol 2

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