is clarifying something regarding his own teaching. Verses 17 to 19, he takes the time to correct the thinking of his listeners on that day when he gave the Sermon on the Mount. Verse 17 says, do not think that I came to destroy the law or the prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. For surely I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled. Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. Why does the Lord take the time towards the beginning of his sermon to give this kind of clarification? We've been following his teaching for some time, so we know that in the first 12 verses, the Lord uses broad strokes to describe the citizens of his kingdom. We refer to those verses as the Beatitudes. If you want to summarize them with just one word, you would have to say that since it is describing a great revolutionary change in people, a good descriptive word I think is the word alteration. We're gonna be a member of heaven's kingdom, we have to be a changed people. In fact, this is really one of the ways in which we can assess the reality of our relationship with God. Just ask yourself the question, are you a changed person? You profess to know Christ, okay, well what kind of alteration has it made in your life? What's different about you? I mentioned before the missionary Henry Martin. Martin was a brilliant student, went to Cambridge in the late 1700s and he was converted there at the age of 19 and began to attend the church at Cambridge which was postured by Charles Simeon. Well, in one of his sermons, Simeon spoke of the missionary work done by William Carey in India, and Martin was so convicted by Carey's example that he himself became a missionary, and he went to both India and Persia. But several years after his conversion, he looked back at his life, and he wrote that the work is real. I can no more doubt it than I can my own existence. The whole current of my desires is altered. I'm walking quite another way, though I am incessantly stumbling in that way. Well, that's the same testimony, really, that any true believer should be able to give. I don't know why it's not showing up on the PowerPoint. There you go, thank you. I think I've got my numbers backwards there. He says, my whole way, and direction in life is different from what it was before I met Jesus. Now, we all stumble, of course, in following that way. We stumble sometimes a great deal to our great regret. But that's just the nature of true salvation. And I wanna challenge anybody here who claims to know Christ, or perhaps you've not yet made that commitment, But I want to challenge you with the truth that God will bring a great change into your life. If you'll simply open your heart to Him by faith, just express yourself to Him in prayer with a heartfelt faith, and He will change you. God is in the business of changing lives, and He describes kingdom people in terms of this great alteration in verses 1 to 13. Well, in verses 14 to 16, he then goes on to illustrate the influence that these changed people will have all over the world. He says that they are like salt and light. They preserve the society around them. They actually even slow the corruption, and then they shed light wherever they go. That's their influence, and that's the word that we use to describe those verses. If you're in the same position as one of the people on that hillside on that day, with their same background and culture, it might have occurred to you that something was missing in the Lord's preaching so far. because this rabbi has not said anything about that part of the Bible that you've been reading and memorizing and focusing on for your whole life to this point. He hasn't said anything about the Old Testament. In fact, it's conspicuously absent in his teaching. There's been no quotes. He said nothing from the law or the prophets. He hasn't mentioned any of the patriarchs. And you have to understand that this is highly unusual for any rabbi in the first century, to be the same as if one of our elders got up to preach, and we never asked you to open your Bible, and we never referred to any verse in the Bible, and 15 minutes of the sermon go by, and you'd be wondering what's going on. At least I hope that would raise some questions in your mind. Well, the question that was hanging in the air of the first century would have been this, what does Jesus of Nazareth think about the 39 books of the Old Testament and its relationship to the people? In the ears of those who knew and heard the Old Testament on a regular basis, which was true for any devoted Jew, that would be their immediate question. For example, what about all of those commands? The rabbis had counted every command in the law and they came up with 613 specific commandments. They classified them. Out of 613, 248 were classified as positive commands. They command people to do certain things. 365 were classified negatives, which forbid people from doing certain things. Well, these rabbis memorized them and quoted them and put them in their little phylacteries on their foreheads, those little black boxes you sometimes see on an Orthodox Jew's forehead, and they drilled it into the people. And then you have the prophets. And when you read Isaiah or Jeremiah or Ezekiel or the minor prophets, what they do is tell those people to keep following those 613 laws. They condemn them for failing to obey those commandments. All right, well, here's this Rabbi Jesus in this long line of those who preach and teach God's word, and he's not saying anything about the law. In fact, when he describes the citizens of heaven's kingdom and he talks about their influence, it isn't in any Old Testament terms, which really opens up the possibility for him to be greatly misunderstood. And that's why he gives us verses 17 to 19, and really why we have the rest of this chapter in Matthew. So this morning, I wanna begin a short series on the question of Jesus, and that part of our Bibles that we call the Old Testament. Now this has been frequently addressed in church history, and yet it's still a great matter of debate and discussion to this day. There are denominations, there are cults that have formed out of a misunderstanding of this, and it's easy to see why when you think about what appears to be a great distinction between your Old and your New Testaments, right? I mean, if you are a true believer, then you strongly believe that the entire Bible is the Word of God, right? Can I get an amen out of somebody? All right. But at the same time, the Old Testament appears to be inflexible and demanding and so condemning of all of our transgressions. But then when you turn to the ministry of Jesus Christ, it just appears that he is so much more relaxed in his approach to people who are sinning. And he keeps on assuring them of being forgiven. So how do we explain the difference between the Old and the New Testaments? This is something I think that we need to explore, and this passage is the passage in the Lord's teaching where he clarifies his own relationship to the Old Testament. Now, the first thing he does in verses 17 and 18 is to correct this misconception by confirming his mission. Look at how he puts it. Do not think. In other words, I want to correct the way that you perceive things. I want to correct your misconception. What is the misconception? Well, it has to do with his mission. He says, do not think that I came to destroy the law or the prophets. That's not why I came. Now notice that our tendency is exactly the same as those early hearers of Jesus' teaching. It's the tendency to conclude that somehow, at the very least, he's disregarding or minimizing the Old Testament and possibly even setting it aside. The word that he uses here is the word destroy. It's a very strong term. It refers to overthrowing something or abolishing it. It's the same term used several times in this gospel for destroying the temple. So think about that. massive structure that was built over many, many decades until finally the whole thing's torn down and destroyed by the Romans. Well, Jesus corrects our first impression of him, which comes when we listen to his teaching, when we observe how he reacts to sinners. It's the impression that somehow he's overthrowing the Old Testament law, that vast, legal structure that was put together many centuries earlier. He's dismantling it. A moment ago, I mentioned that many people today don't understand the difference between the Old and New Testaments, and it's led to a number of cults and denominations that will overemphasize the laws in the Old Testament. Seventh-day Adventist would be one of those people. Jehovah's Witnesses, to some extent, would do the same thing. But there's also a section of professing Christians that almost entirely throw out the Old Testament in the name of Jesus. And that's exactly what they teach. Some of you may remember the church leader, Robert Shuler. and his famous Crystal Cathedral, for the older folks. Schuller's best known for televising his Sunday service in what was called the Hour of Power. First aired in 1969, it continues to this day. His grandson is now teaching it. At its height in the 1990s, over 20 million people tuned in to the Hour of Power on Sunday mornings. Well, Schuller constructed a church from which he broadcast his sermons, and the church was made entirely out of glass, which is why they call it the Crystal Cathedral. Although today it's called the Christ Cathedral because the Catholics bought it about 10 years ago. Well, on the property of the cathedral, they have a large display of several statues that communicates the philosophy of Robert Shuler. It's still there today, and I got a picture for you. So if Aidan's doing that, you wanna pull that one up, buddy? Click through. There it is, all right, thank you. This is the scene in John 8 where some of the Jewish teachers of the law bring a poor woman to the Lord, and she's caught in the very act of adultery. And they say to him, Moses in the law commanded that women like this should be stoned. That's what the law says. All right, now what do you say? In other words, they also misunderstood Jesus' mission. And now they want to trap him in his speaking against the law. Let's get a direct statement. One of them is recording it on his iPhone, I'm sure. Well, the Lord does a strange thing. He stoops down without answering, and he simply begins writing in the dust with a finger. But they persist in demanding an answer, and so the scripture says that he then straightened up, and he said to them, well, whoever is without sin among you guys, all right, you cast the first stone. And then he squats down again, and one by one, they all begin to drift away, so they're all gone. He stands up again and he looks at the woman and he says, where are your accusers? Does no one condemn you? And she says, no one, Lord. And he replies, neither do I. Go and sin no more. So you can see there the statue of the Lord stooping down. You got the poor woman who's cowering on the right there, and these Jewish accusers. And if you look at their faces, they're obviously very angry, very hostile men. Well, Robert Shuler constructed an entire theology of salvation based on incidents like that in the ministry of the Lord. and he's passed away now, but he presented a gospel that has been taken up by many denominations today and it entirely dismisses the law and really any righteous requirements from God. In fact, Shuler attacked the very notion that you should preach the law to anyone or cause anyone to feel guilty in a worship service like this. He was educated under Norman Vincent Peale, who had a whole approach to society about thinking positive. You've heard this in various forms, but think positively. Don't defeat yourself by demeaning your self-esteem. Don't accuse yourself. Don't feel guilty for any reason, right? And this became the philosophy behind the entire liberal modernist approach to Christianity that has infected a large portion of the church for the last couple of centuries. Another good example that you'd be more familiar with is the megachurch run by Joel Osteen. It was once approached by a missionary from one of the churches in our denomination who left the AFBC because they were taken in by this very approach. And he called me one day and we met for coffee and I thought he was coming back to the fold, but he was actually trying to convert me. He told me that I should persuade all the other churches to join with him and take on this whole positive approach to Christianity. I'll never forget his words, it's amazing. He said, you never have to ask God for forgiveness anymore as a Christian. You never have to confess, it's all love, it's all acceptance. It's all positive messages. I've never been happier. That's what men like Schuller and Osteen are teaching, and it's filtered down into many denominations that you would be familiar with today. Now, if Schuller had been in the crowd that was listening to Jesus on that day, he would have had to digest these words. Don't think that I came to destroy the law or the prophets. That wasn't my purpose for coming at all. Instead, he reveals the purpose for his mission when he goes on in verse 17 to say, I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. Now it's important to understand that when he says I came to fulfill, he didn't simply mean I came to keep the law. He really meant I came to bring it to its fulfillment by keeping it. In other words, he did come to keep every aspect of the law in how he lived, and he certainly lived a perfect life of obedience. But more than that, he came to keep it in order to bring it to its intended goal. Now, I tried to come up with an illustration to make this make more sense. Think of it this way, there's many of us in this room, we're not really musicians, right? But we know musicians. And some of us are really semi-professional with skills and understanding of music. And you've come to appreciate a great deal about the world's most beautiful and complex music, which is not Taylor Swift. It's classical music. Now please correct me if I'm wrong. Pastor Brian, but it's my understanding that there are some classical pieces that are almost impossible for anyone to play perfectly. The composer simply included so many notes in such complex structures that are meant to be played so quickly that hardly anyone can play them at the correct tempo. So composers like Beethoven or Liszt or Ravel or Stravinsky, they've written pieces like that and surely their intention was that the music be as difficult to play as they made it to be. In other words, they knew what they were doing. And yet I'm equally sure that they were hopeful that some world-class musician would finally be able to take that piece and not diminish one note, nor slow the tempo at all, but they were hoping that someone could take it as it's written with everything that it calls for and finally fulfill it. Finally, bring it to the goal that the composer had in mind when he wrote that complex piece of music. Well, that's exactly what lies behind our Lord's words. I didn't come to strike out any of the notes. I didn't come to slow the tempo by one beat. I came to bring this thing called the law to its goal, to its fulfillment. In other words, he didn't simply practice righteous living according to the law and model it for everybody else, but he came as righteousness. He was the fulfillment of the law. I mean, he himself, by virtue of who he is and what he did, he brought it to fulfillment. Now I want to come back to the way in which he does that, but before I do, notice that in verse 18, as he corrects this misconception, he moves from confirming his mission of fulfilling the law to actually affirming the Old Testament itself. You might say that he doubles down on the importance of his mission by affirming the validity of the Old Testament. Look at verse 18, for surely I say to you, Till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled. Now, this verse contains at least five elements that affirm the Old Testament. And when you understand the five and combine them, you will see the Lord's viewpoint of the Old Testament. You will never again question his full acceptance and affirmation of these 39 books that he came to fulfill. So let me show you the five elements that affirm the entire Old Testament, which is often referred to in scripture as the law. or the law and the prophets. They're talking about the Old Testament. All right, now, I want you to notice, first of all, that he refers to what is called the jot and the tittle. What is that referring to? Well, the Hebrew alphabet has 23 letters. I got a picture of them. 23 letters, there they are. If you look at them, they might look like gibberish to you, but you actually read them backwards, and you'll notice that the 10th letter is like a little stroke. See that? Almost like an English apostrophe kind of hanging in midair. Now, if you have a Bible, turn to Psalm 119, and I want you to see it in text. If you have a study Bible, you'll see this. It's the heading for verses 73 to 80. Psalm 119 is broken up into 22 stanzas of eight verses each. Each line in a stanza begins with a different letter of the Hebrew alphabet. We call that an acrostic. So the first eight verses all start with the first letter of the alphabet, that's the Aleph. The next eight verses all start with the next letter of the alphabet, that's Beth. That goes on for 22 stanzas, even though there's 23 letters in the Hebrew alphabet, because one of them is exactly the same except the way you place the dot at the top of the letter. So 23, 22 different symbols. Now, if you look at verses 73 to 80, if you have a Bible that does this, those eight verses are under the title of yod. And all the verses begin with that letter. That is the smallest Hebrew letter in the alphabet. Transliterated into English, it's the jot. Okay? I mean, it's such a small letter, if you can see it in your text, that you can almost overlook the thing. And then the Lord uses the word tittle. What's a tittle? Well, we all know that when you write letters, you do so in strokes. For example, you write the letter E, you got three horizontal strokes joined by one vertical stroke. The difference between an E and an F is one missing horizontal stroke. You follow me? In other words, the stroke, also called the tittle in Old English, is the distinguishing part of a letter. So take an N, and add a tittle or a stroke and you get an M. Take an O, add that little curly Q, that's a tittle, you get a Q. All right, Jesus is referring to the smallest letter or the tittle, the distinguishing strokes in Hebrew letters, And here is the first element of affirmation. He's affirming what part of the Old Testament? He's affirming the most minute portion of it. In other words, he's not just affirming every command or prohibition. He's affirming every letter. And even the smallest letter. Someone went through and counted all of the yod's in the Old Testament. There's 66,420. Poor guy. But beyond that, he then affirmed all of the strokes on all of the letters. Jesus affirms the validity of the most minute portion of the Old Testament. Think about that. Now, second element of affirmation. He says that a jot or a tittle will by no means pass from the law until, and the word I want to look at now is the word all. Because when he affirms the smallest letter and all of those tittles, he's applying it to the entire Old Testament, the whole thing, all 39 books, 929 chapters. So I wanna pause for a moment to combine those two elements. If you've ever taken a class that teaches the doctrine of the inspiration of the Bible, Any good teacher will qualify the word inspiration with two important terms I want to give you. They might say that the correct way to refer to inspiration is that we believe in the verbal and plenary inspiration of the Bible. Now those two words, verbal and plenary, they're not just technical terms, right? Those terms are necessary because throughout church history, unbelieving teachers have presented views on inspiration that are wrong because they don't capture the fullness of the truth of the inspiration of God's word. So it's been necessary. to qualify the word inspiration with these terms, verbal and plenary. In other words, when God says in 2 Timothy 3.16, all scripture is given by inspiration of God, we know this verse, a lot of people will agree with that, but yet they don't always understand what inspiration means, because someone has told them that the Bible is inspired like a work of poetry is inspiring. Or maybe they were told to think of inspiration in terms that man wrote it, so there's a lot of factual and historical inaccuracies, but God inspired the doctrinal parts, and that's true. But you see, they don't understand that the whole concept of inspiration has to include these two terms, verbal and plenary. What does verbal mean? It's a Latin term that means every word, every word. Plenary, on the other hand, means all or the whole. So a proper understanding of inspiration says that the Bible teaches that every word of the whole thing is breathed out by God. It's verbal, plenary, inspiration. Now what I find to be so supportive of that is the fact that our Lord's statement actually goes beyond that. when he says, you know, it's actually the smallest letter. I'm not talking about just the words, even the smallest letter in those words, even every stroke of every letter of the whole thing, all of it is valid. He's emphatically affirming the most minute portion of the Old Testament. Secondly, he's emphatically affirming the entirety of it. The third affirmation is in the phrase, till heaven and earth pass away. It's possible to believe in the verbal and plenary inspiration of Scripture while at the same time concluding that maybe the day is gonna come when God will say, okay, I don't require you to regard those Old Testament books anymore. I'm getting rid of some of those chapters as irrelevant. I'm issuing an updated version. 2.0, doesn't apply to us. Now God could do that because he's God and he wrote his word. And yet Jesus is affirming here the timeless permanency of what? Of the smallest letter and every stroke of the whole thing. He's affirming the timeless permanency of the 39 books of the Old Testament till heaven and earth pass away. Now look at the fourth element of affirmation. This is when he uses the little word expressed by the phrase in the New King James Version, by no means. Now, why is that important? Well, we have that one word no in our text. If you look in the Greek text, there's actually two nos, not N-O-S-E. It's two nos, negatives, two negatives side by side. Now, if an English speaker uses two negatives, he makes a positive. Teachers know this. If I say, I don't get no satisfaction, a teacher automatically thinks that means you get satisfaction. All right, because they cancel each other out. That's what they do in English, all right? The ancient Greeks weren't like that. They liked to pile up their nose, make them more emphatic. So literally, you'd read this as shall not, not pass from the law. or as the New King James translators put it, they said, will by no means. This is the most emphatic way of issuing a negative in scripture and it's often done. So let's review. Our Lord is affirming the most minute portion, number one, of all of its, in its entirety, number two, he's affirming its timeless permanency till heaven and earth pass away, number three, and he's affirming it emphatically, number four. That's what the two Greek negatives, pronounced oo-may, which I put up on the screen, oo-may, that's what it's talking about. It will by no means, Come to pass. Now, fifthly, we gotta add this as well. Look at the word assuredly in verse 18. Or your version may say truly. That is the Greek word amen. Amen I say to you. Now, sometimes in our services somebody responds to a piece of music, a line in a sermon, something is prayed and we all say, Amen. What do they mean by that? Well, it's actually a Hebrew word that refers to something that is firm and fixed. It can't be moved. It's like a huge foundational stone that nobody can budge. It's amen. So when you use that for something that was sung or preached, what you really mean is, so be it. In my mind, that, what you just said, is unchangeable, fixed truth. That's gonna be amen. Now, I think it's remarkable that Jesus begins many of his teachings with amen. We end things by saying amen, but you'll find over 30 times in Matthew's gospel alone when Jesus says, all right, get ready, amen, I say to you. And then what comes next is gonna be fixed, immovable, certain, impossible to displace, truth. It'll happen as sure as God is God. Well, those are the five emphatic elements with which Jesus affirms the Old Testament and clarifies his mission related to it. He's affirming it in the strongest language possible. You cannot make it any stronger. He's affirming every stroke, every letter of the entire thing. It's timeless permanency with an emphasis that's doubled up. And then he amens the whole thing in one sentence. Now clearly that communicates to us that when we open our Old Testament, God meant what he said there. And he hasn't changed his mind in any way. So what does that mean by way of practical application? Well, I can't answer every question you may have this morning. Let's think about this for a moment. This means that all of those laws, all 613, including the 10 commandments and all of those applications that are found in those hundreds of laws, every one of them stands. And Jesus never in his life and ministry retracted a single one. Don't think that he did. I mean, he wasn't minimizing the sin of adultery in the woman in John 8. No. All of those applications of the Ten Commandments that refer to our life and behavior, to our worship, to our relationships with other people, to our parents, to our spouses, to our children, to our employees, to our employer, to our society, to our neighbors, they all stand. Everything in that the Old Testament includes that has to do with the spirit with which we keep the law, the demand that we love the Lord God with all of our heart, that stands. All of the Old Testament's directions about reading the Bible and memorizing the Bible and meditating on what we memorize and believing with all our hearts, that stands. All of God's pleas for us to pray and seek His face and turn from our wicked ways and come to Him, it stands. And then all of the penalties stand. And all of the predictions as to what God is gonna do with all of the nations who have forgotten Him, that stands. The whole thing is affirmed by Jesus in that outstanding statement. Even the whole sacrificial system stands. Every word of it. My first tour to Israel, we stopped in the middle of a desert to look at a full-scale reconstruction of the tabernacle built by the Jewish kibbutz in the area. Very impressive. It's made exactly according to the stipulations found in the book of Exodus as closely as they could get it. I mean, it's obviously not gold. but as close as they could do it size-wise and everything else, it looks just like the tabernacle. So you enter the courtyard, and inside you've got this big tent that contains the holy place, and then the Holy of Holies, and you can look into the Holy of Holies. You're not allowed to go in. You can see the Ark of the Covenant. They're trying to make it as close to the real thing as they can. You go out, you can see the great bronze altar, the tabernacle instruments, they've even got mannequins there wearing the priest's uniform and so on, and they set it up on a plane right below Jericho, just like it would have been for the people of God in the Sinai Desert. And it really highlights the complexity of the whole sacrificial system, and yet it was not, as some people think, the invention of the Jews who were trying to somehow complicate their religion, that comes from the mind of God. And the sacrificial system, the smallest letter of it, every stroke of every letter, that stands. That's what Jesus was teaching by these unbelievable affirmations. Now that brings me to this, if it all stands, But in his presentation of what is required to be one of these kingdom citizens, he doesn't even refer to it. All right, what's going on? Well, what's going on is that while Jesus didn't come to destroy it, his mission, the purpose for which he came, was to fulfill the whole thing, to bring it to fruition. to its intended goal. He says, I'll fulfill the entire monolithic thing, not just by keeping the moral law, which I'll do perfectly, and he must, by the way, but by fulfilling all of that scripture predicted about him, and fulfilling all of those ceremonial and sacrificial laws through becoming the great sacrifice for our sin, by taking the penalty that we deserve for our sin. In all these ways, Jesus brought the law to the goal that God had intended. He played that piece of music exactly as the composer designed it to be played. Now if you know scripture, then you know that he actually began this process of fulfilling it in what theologians call the days of his humiliation. Let's turn to that for a moment. I wanna show you in Matthew's gospel. We're gonna go through a very quick succession of passages. I'll cover it very quickly. We're in chapter five, look back at chapter one. I want you to see this for yourself. In Matthew one, we're told about Jesus' birth. We're told that it was miraculous. We're told that it was unique in the sense that he had no earthly father. He was born to a virgin. Look at verse 22. All this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet. In other words, his birth was meant to fulfill an Old Testament prophecy. Chapter two, verse five, when the scribes respond to Herod's question about where the Messiah is born, they said to him, in Bethlehem of Judea, for thus it is written by the prophet, by Micah, and then they quote the passage in verse six. Look at verse 15. Herod attempts to murder the child. His parents take him to Egypt. After Herod's death, they return, verse 15, that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying, out of Egypt I call my son, verse 17. You remember that many babies were killed by Herod's men. The mothers wept, verse 17, then was fulfilled, what was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet. Look at verse 23, they come out of Egypt, they settle in Nazareth. It says they came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth, that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken by the prophets. He shall be called a Nazarene. Look at chapter three, verse two. His forerunner, John the Baptist, comes preaching. He says, repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. For this is he who was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah, saying the voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make his path straight. Verse 15, Jesus is baptized by John. John protests. He says, I should be baptized by you. You're coming to me? Jesus answered and said, Permit it to me so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness. Chapter four, verse 12, he comes, settles in Capernaum. In verse 13, in leaving Nazareth, he came and dwelt in Capernaum, which is by the sea, in the regions of Zebulun and Naphtali, that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet. So do you understand why we have these references in the New Testament? Well, all of that precedes what we're looking at this morning, right? You open the New Testament, God immediately directs you to those events in the life of Jesus And he keeps saying to us, don't you know there's scripture for this? Don't you realize that those statements are being fulfilled by these events? And then Jesus says, you know, it's a misconception for you to think that I came to destroy the law. No, every letter of the whole thing stands. In fact, I came to fulfill it. And he did in who he was and what he did. Now turn to John 19, let's look at the end of the Lord's earthly life. When they crucified him, verse 24 says that the soldiers were debating over what to do with his clothing. Now those of us who live in wealthy Australia, well we just throw it away, right? In the ancient world, clothing was expensive, especially a tunic that was woven of one piece, like his was. So they gambled to decide who's gonna get it. Verse 24, they said, therefore, among themselves, let us not tear it, but cast lots for it, whose it shall be. Random action? No, that the scripture might be fulfilled. And then Psalm 22, 18 is quoted. Verse 28, after this, Jesus, knowing that all things were now accomplished when it as far as his bearing the guilt of our sin. But there was still this that the scripture might be fulfilled in Psalm 69, 21, which says in my thirst, they gave me vinegar to drink to fulfill that specific passage. He said, I thirst. In other words, he didn't say that simply because he wanted something to drink. I mean, what they gave him to drink wasn't thirst-quenching by any means for a dying man. But to fulfill Scripture, he said, I thirst. And they gave him sour wine vinegar to drink. Verse 36, they broke the bones of the others. They wanted to hasten his death. They didn't break his bones, for these things were done that the Scripture should be fulfilled. Not one of his bones was broken. Now they did pierce his already dead body with a spear, but that was also predicted, verse 37. Again, another scripture says, they shall look on him whom they pierced. So from the beginning to the end, you can see that Jesus came to take the whole composition of the Old Testament and bring the whole thing to the glory of the goal that its author intended. Every note, Every stroke of it. He was fulfilling the law. He was fulfilling the prophets. He did it all. Started in the days of his humiliation, he will complete it in the days that scripture refers to as the days of his exaltation, which begins with his resurrection. And the apostles quote that in the book of Acts. We won't look at it for the sake of time, but look at what Paul says about the gospel in 1 Corinthians 15. It goes like this, he says, moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, in which you stand, verse three, for I delivered to you, first of all, that which I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the what? The scriptures. that he was buried, that he rose again the third day, according to the what? The scriptures, so there you got the fulfillment in the days of his humiliation, followed by fulfillment in the days of his exaltation, and many, many Old Testament passages will still be fulfilled when he comes in that final day to gather his people, restore that nation, and deal with all the pagan nations who have forgotten God. And then the Bible says he will bring in a kingdom of righteousness where the Old Testament says that the knowledge of the Lord will cover the earth like the waters cover the sea. He will fulfill it all. He did not come to abolish it. Now that brings me to make one last point of application. In verse 19, of Matthew 5, he warns those who are teachers of the law and he says that it's possible to teach God's word and actually relax some of its requirements. Look at how he puts it. Whoever therefore breaks, and the Greek word here is lua. Lua is the first Greek word you learn in Greek class. Lua means to loose or relax. Whoever relaxes or looses One of the least of these commandments, and teaches men so, all right, that teacher may be in the kingdom. He may be one of God's children, but he'll be classified in this way. He shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven because the whole thing stands, and what is true in your Old Testament is true for your New Testament. Some of you teach children's church. Some of you lead a Bible study. Some of you mentor someone with scripture. Some of you teach and preach from this pulpit. Well, you must come to a conviction before God as to whether or not you are going to relax one of the least of God's requirements. Now, I want to assure you that if you do insist on the permanent validity of the least of his commandments, you will face discouraging opposition from others who are in the kingdom because there are many believers in many churches who are prepared to relax the Bible's requirements. Maybe because of society or culture, acceptability, maybe just a personal preference. In fact, I think you'll find this is happening in most churches. I was reflecting on this over the week, and in my experience, I cannot recall one sermon I've heard about the law in many churches I've visited. They've gone the way of Robert Shuler in many cases. They want to stick to the positive passages. Let's avoid the negative ones. It might turn people off. Now it won't cost them their salvation to do that, but the Bible says that God holds those in lowest regard who hold his word in the lowest regard. On the other hand, if you'll be faithful to the least, to the letter of what God requires of us. Look at verse 19. Whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. I think Christian leaders, including myself sometimes, need to remember that greatness is not determined by giftedness or success or popularity or reputation or the size of a ministry. but by a believer's high view of Scripture as demonstrated by their life and their teaching. Now, there are many personal applications you can draw from that, but I want to close this morning by asking all of you to examine yourselves before the Lord. And in the quietness of your heart, ask God where and how you may be breaking one of his laws, one of his commandments. Are you skirting around obedience because it's inconvenient to your lifestyle? Are you deliberately avoiding parts of the Bible because you know that it speaks to your disobedient heart? Well, this passage that warns me as a preacher to be faithful in how I present the Word of God to you is a passage that warns you as well. May God help all of us to aspire to be like our Lord and maintain emphatically the validity of the whole by how we live in obedience to what it says. Let's bow for prayer. Our Father, we again acknowledge that your word strikes to the core of our being. It touches our heart and our conscience. Lord, where those areas have been stirred, may you bring a sense of confession and repentance. May we cling to the cross and run to your everlasting grace and mercy. May we not diminish the gift of grace by turning away. Father, as your people, may we be known as those who long to obey and follow your word, for it is our guide and our light. And we thank you for giving it to us, in Jesus' name, amen.