Matthew chapter 5, we had an introduction to the Sermon on the Mount. We covered the Beatitudes up to verse 12. We dealt with the section on salt and light in verses 13 through 16. So now we're gonna pick up at verse 17. Matthew 5, starting at verse 17, do not think that I came to destroy the law or the prophets. I did not come to destroy, but to fulfill. For assuredly, 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. For I say to you that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. I'm gonna appeal for your attention this morning just to consider the message closely. Weigh what is said against the revealed truth of scripture. Do not believe what I say just because I said it. but only believe it if what it is drawn faithfully from the text, because what we are about to consider this morning is without question one of the most important areas of biblical truth. The goal this morning is to dig into this section of the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5, 17 through 20, and consider what it has to say about Jesus, the Bible, and you. Let's pray. Lord, we do thank you for this day. We thank you for those who are here. We ask that you would give your attention to those who are not here, that you would oversee them if they're traveling, if they're sick, if they just need encouragement to be here. Lord, we ask that you would be with us this morning in our assembly, order and in order to glorify you through your son Jesus. Please help us to consider this text in a meaningful way, putting aside any preconceived notions and just opening our hearts to the Holy Spirit to give us clarity and to glorify your son Jesus who has fulfilled all your word. Please forgive us of our sins. For it's in Christ's name we pray. Amen. The final verse in the text this morning, you know, I've already told you, Matthew 5 verse 20 is really sort of the central point of the Sermon on the Mount. Unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. I have said before, it is virtually impossible to overestimate the shockwaves that that statement would have caused to ripple through the original audience. Had Jesus pulled the pin on a hand grenade and tossed it into the crowd, it hardly would have been more shocking than saying these words. The scribes and Pharisees were the well-respected, well-liked, highly esteemed for their commitment to the seemingly smallest details of the Word of God. You'll note, Jesus did not include in this statement the Sadducees, although it would have been true still if He had included them. But the Sadducees were not known for taking the entirety of God's Word seriously, and so he does not include them here. He's listing those who are most respected, most thought of for considering God's Word, and he makes it clear here that he's not taking unnecessary pot shots of the religious establishment as a whole. Specifically, what he's saying is that the people you most respect, the people you most admire, those individuals whose righteousness seems to be so good, they are not good enough. The most sincere scribe is not good enough. The most faithful Pharisee is not good enough. And every moment that you spend wishing you were as good as them is a wasted moment because if their righteousness is not good enough, then your righteousness has to be even better. Otherwise, you're not good enough. But look at verse 20. The Lord doesn't begin his argument there. Verse 20 begins with the word for, or as a result, or because of that. So this shocking statement in verse 20 is the end of a logical deduction. It is the reasonable conclusion that any person should reach when confronted with the facts that the Lord has presented in the previous verses. In verses 17-20, the Lord explains His view of the Bible, He explains His relationship to the Bible, and what both He and the Bible mean for you. The ultimate conclusion of Jesus, the Bible, and you is that neither your righteousness, nor that of the very best people you know, is acceptable to God. Your righteousness isn't righteous enough. Your goodness is not good enough. you can pick the very best day of your life and only consider the very best deeds of that very best day, and you would still be found entirely unacceptable for citizenship in the kingdom of heaven. The only righteousness that is satisfying to God is that surpassing righteousness of the Son of God, Jesus himself. So let's start working through this text and see what it has to teach about Jesus, the Bible, and you. First off, the Bible points you to Jesus. Look at verse 17. Do not think that I came to destroy the law or the prophets. I did not come to destroy, but to fulfill. Now let's be clear here, when Jesus says the law and the prophets, It is not his intention to parse the Old Testament text into pieces to say that I came to fulfill certain bits of it. The Law and the Prophets is a common way for first century Jews to refer to all of the Old Testament, the totality of God's revelation to that point. To see an example of this still in this Sermon on the Mount, look over at chapter seven, verse 12. In chapter seven, verse 12, Jesus says, therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them. That's the golden rule, by the way, we'll get to it. For this is the law and the prophets. Essentially, he's saying this is what the Bible teaches us. In Matthew chapter 22, he is going to answer a question that is asked him about what is the greatest command. And he answers it by saying, love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind. This is the first and great command. And the second is like it, love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. Right? This is what the Bible teaches us. This is the revelation of God. That's how this term law and prophets gets used. Jesus is not merely making a statement about the first five books that we call the law and those later books that are named after prophets and somehow ignoring the Psalms and the wisdom books and the historical books. That term, the law and the prophets, is a simple way of saying the totality of God's revelation. So he tells the crowd, do not think that I've come to destroy the revelation of God. I have not come to do away with the commands of the law. I've not come to ignore or bypass the predictions of the prophets. I'm not changing any of that. I've come to fulfill it. This is a warning that Jesus needed to issue to the people in front of him. It would have been tempting for a Jew in Jesus's day to ignore or dismiss his ministry because it conflicted with what they had been taught about the word of God. But Jesus here is challenging them to take a moment to consider whether his message and his ministry conflicts what the Bible has to say or whether it just conflicts with what they've been taught about what the Bible has to say. Doubtless, the Lord Jesus was in conflict. He is in direct opposition to much of what these folks had been taught about God's word. If you've been reading through the Sermon on the Mount, you know that this is a repeated theme throughout this sermon. You have heard that it was said, but I am telling you, right, this is in conflict to what you've been taught. I don't know what these folks should have made of such a statement except to hear Jesus say, I know what you've been taught and I know I'm telling you something else. Now go and see which one of us is right. The audience before the Lord Jesus, the folks sitting here in these pews today, we need to have a clear understanding of what Jesus thinks of Scripture. Already early on in his ministry, prior to this message, the Lord Jesus had run the money changers out of the temple and direct challenge to the religious establishment. He has healed on the Sabbath day, even though the Pharisees insisted that is a violation of the law. He has taught and continues to teach that the kingdom of God is not what they expect. The kingdom of God is going to be filled with the poor in spirit and the meek and the merciful and the peace loving and the... persecuted for righteousness sake, right? Not having adequate righteousness, but those people who hunger and thirst, they have a desire for righteousness, and only those people will be filled. This is in contrast to the thinking of the day. But the people standing before Jesus thought wrong because they had been taught wrong. So what the Lord Jesus thinks about the Bible is that within it is the authority of God to determine what is right or what is wrong. If Jesus, listen to me, if Jesus is gonna stand in front of a group of folks and challenge them to reconcile what they've been taught with what scripture actually says, then I think I'm in good enough company to do the same. No Christian doctrine should ever be believed just because pastor good guy told us that's what truth was. Even if I happen to be pastor good guy who told you. The Bible is never wrong. I can be wrong. You can be wrong. You can been taught wrong. But the Bible is never wrong. Jesus' challenge here is to tell them, do not think for a second that I have come to destroy or to erase or to change or ignore or nullify anything in the revealed Word of God. He has not come to do that. He would not do that. Jesus is not interested in changing or deleting or ignoring any part of Scripture, because all Scripture points you to Him. And so He says, do not think I came to destroy the law of the prophets. I did not come to destroy, but to fulfill. And listening to Jesus preach and watching His life and ministry, some of these people are going to be tempted because of what they've been taught. They're gonna be tempted to think Jesus has come in order to oppose God's word, when in reality, he has come to expose the word of God. All that God spoke through the law and the prophets and in the entirety of his revelation is pointing to Jesus. It tells us why we need a savior like Jesus. It tells us what the saving Messiah of God will be like. It tells us who Jesus is and what Jesus has come to do. All of the Bible points to him, and this is true in multiple ways. When you read the commandments in the law of God, you are not only reading what God requires of you, you are reading a description of what Jesus has come and done. When you read about the sacrifices, like on the Day of Atonement, when the high priest would bring in the blood of a spotless lamb and apply it to the mercy seat as an atonement for sin. You are reading each part of that sacrifice is a picture of our Lord Jesus, who is our high priest. He is the spotless lamb. It is His blood that is offered as the true sacrifice to atone for sin. When you read the Psalms, your heart will sing in the praises of the salvation that God has brought through his son Jesus. When you read the prophets, you are reading the promises of where Jesus will be born, when Jesus will be born, to whom Jesus must be born. You'll read the details of his righteous life, the agony of his sacrificial death, and the promise of the triumph of his glorious resurrection. The revelation of God in the Old Testament scripture is what prepares you and points you to Jesus. During his ministry, Jesus said in John chapter 5 verse 39, search the scriptures for in them you think that you have eternal life and these are they which testify of me. After his resurrection, he says essentially the same thing. In Luke 24, verses 25 through 27, he spoke to them and said, oh, foolish ones and slow of heart to believe all the prophets have spoken. Ought not the Christ, the Messiah, to have suffered these things and enter into his glory? And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded to them in all the scripture the things concerning him. Listen, do you know why Jesus in this sermon would shout from the mountaintop, I have not come to destroy the law and the prophets. He's got no problem challenging, even insisting that the people evaluate his ministry and his message according to God's revelation in scripture. Because when they do that, they will find every word of that revelation points them back to him. The written word of God and the living word of God are never in opposition to each other. The Bible points you to Jesus. Second, Jesus fulfills the biblical standard. Verse 18. For assuredly, 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. First off. Jesus is speaking here with full authority, right? I say to you, assuredly, I say to you, and he assures us that until heaven and earth pass away, and so let's just pause there for a second. We shouldn't focus on this like it is the main point of what he's teaching here, but I don't want to ignore it either. There is coming a day And the apostle Peter describes this. He says the elements will melt with fervent heat in both the earth and the works and it will be burned up. This is a day in God's plan of history when heaven and earth are replaced with a new heaven and new earth. What Jesus is saying here though, he's not really making a dissertation about that day. He confirms its existence. It's not his goal to teach all about that here. It is simply to say that before that day of the consummation of God's plan of history comes, everything that has been declared in His Word will be fulfilled. Nothing, not even the smallest detail, will remain unfulfilled. There's so many ways that preachers have tried to explain what Jesus means by every jot and every tittle, so let's try to get this as straight as we possibly can. Since Matthew's book, has been translated to us from Greek. The words we have are Greek words meaning the smallest letter or a serif, the tiniest pen stroke. But it is highly unlikely, I think you know, it is highly unlikely that on the mountaintop Jesus is speaking in Greek. Right? He's talking to first century Jews. And so it's more likely he's speaking Aramaic or Hebrew. So let's have some fun looking at Hebrew letters. Turn to Psalm 119. There's a handful of you who might be wondering why I asked to see your Bible before the message this morning. I've been debating whether or not to do this based on whether or not your Bibles have this. My guess is probably 80% of you will be able to see this in print and some of you will be like, this doesn't make sense to me. Come ask later, okay? Psalm 119 is written in a way that every section of the psalm represents a specific Hebrew letter. And so when Jesus speaks about the smallest letter, The smallest Hebrew letter is a yod, and you can see this in Psalm 119 above verse 73. It looks a little bit like an apostrophe in English, but that little apostrophe looking thing is actually a yod, and that's what Jesus means by jot. He's talking about the smallest letter. If it's not in your Bible, Maybe look at your neighbors and see if they have the Hebrew letters there, and you'll see what I mean. As for what he means by tittle, It's even smaller. It is the tiniest stroke of a pen when it makes a letter. And so to get the idea visually, if you're there in Psalm 119, I want you to compare a couple of Hebrew letters. Above verse 33 is the Hebrew letter he, and above verse 57 is the Hebrew letter ket. Now, if you look above verse 33 and above verse 57 and compare hay and cats. you're gonna see they are not remarkably different, right? They are very similar. All that's missing is one tiniest little line that separates these two. It doesn't make much of a difference in looking at them, but it makes a big difference in the original language. That is a tittle. That is the tiniest little stroke of a letter. So what Jesus is saying here, is that everything from the smallest letter to the tiniest touch of a pen is going to be fulfilled. Now, there is a well-meaning but misguided section of Christianity that presumes a meaning to this particular verse that's not actually in view. So I want to address it just quickly. In almost every book you might read about Bible translations or preservation of the scriptures, the author will almost invariably quote verse 18 as a promise of the preservation of scripture. The point is often used, and they will say something like, You know, you can't trust any of those modern Bible translations because they're changing the word. And Jesus said that in all the law and the prophets, they can't be destroyed and not one jot or tittle can be removed. It's all gonna be preserved. First off, that is a strange idea to assert from a verse when you're using the English language and which doesn't even have jots and tittles the way Jesus would have been describing. More importantly, there are plenty of texts in scripture that teach and can be used to support the doctrine of the preservation of scripture. But this should not be one of them. And let me explain why. If, if we try to make this verse about the contrast between destroying or preserving God's word, then in doing it and making it about that, then it is no longer about the actual contrast that Jesus is making about destroying or fulfilling God's word. In other words, we can have a wholehearted belief in revelation and inspiration and preservation of Scripture. The Bible teaches that, but let's not lose sight of what Jesus is actually teaching here. He is not making an argument that Scripture will be preserved. He is asserting that Scripture will be fulfilled. And this is important, how is it going to be fulfilled? What did he say in the verse before? Don't think that I've come to destroy the law and the prophets. I've not come to destroy, but to fulfill. He will fulfill it. The most minute promises of God's word will be fulfilled from the tiniest letter to the tiniest stroke of the tiniest letter. And it will all be fulfilled perfectly by Messiah King Jesus. not by you, not by the scribes, not by the Pharisees, not by the most righteous people that you know, not by anybody in the audience listening that day, it will be fulfilled in every detail by Jesus alone. The living word of God is the fulfillment of the written word of God. This is incredibly good news. If you don't think this is good news, you need to go back and read what the word of God demands in regard to righteousness from your life. You don't even have to go into all the fine details of all 365 commands and 248 prohibitions found in the law of Moses. You can just take a simple look at the 10 commandments and know what great news the Lord Jesus has given here. The Ten Commandments teaches us that God deserves and demands our worship and Him alone, that you must speak about God truthfully and respectfully, that all of your work and worship is on His timetable, that you must respect the authority of the father and mother that the Lord has placed you under, that you have to respect the life the sexuality, the property of others, living in obedience to God's righteous definitions, and you have to live your entire life in a display of complete honesty in all matters. How y'all doing with that? Have any of us fulfilled that? Furthermore, in order to display true righteousness, We also learned that God not only demands our righteous actions, but he judges more than our external actions. The Lord judges our hearts. Listen, the 10 commandments is what teaches us this above all else. I mean, I don't know what to think about the fact that one of the commandments says, thou shalt not steal. And then the 10th commandment says, thou shalt not covet. Right? Stealing is the act of taking something that's not yours. That's the external action. Coveting is just the desire in your heart to want what is not yours. And so God doesn't just judge your external action. God judges your heart in regard to all of those commands, which by the way, you know, is exactly where the Lord Jesus is going in this sermon. You know, he's about to say, right back to the 10 commandments. You've been told about what murder is, but I'm telling you, if you have unrighteous anger in your heart, you're guilty of murder. You've been told about adultery, but I'm telling you, if you have lust in your heart, you're guilty of adultery. The Bible, the revelation of God's word reveals God's righteous standard that he demands from all people. And you and I and every person born into fallen humanity come short of God's righteous standards. So, how is anyone gonna meet it? Is the standard going to change? No, not the smallest letter, not the tiniest speck of God's righteous standard is gonna be destroyed. what the word of God demands for righteousness, and what it says about your obedience. It is unrelentingly bad news because you and I can't do it. But we don't need the standard to change. Even though we cannot meet God's righteous standard, you do not need it to change. What you need is something that will change that heart that God judges. You need something outside of you that will change what's inside of you. So if your hope has somehow been that God is going to adjust his standard, that God's going to lower his expectations, that he's gonna grade you on a curve and look at your life and go, eh, eh, good enough. If that's your hope, you have no hope. Your good is never gonna be good enough. But listen to what Jesus says. Don't think I came to destroy the law and the prophets. I did not come to destroy it. Till heaven and earth pass away, not one jot or one tittle is gonna pass from the law. Even though he asserts that the word is unchanging and unrelenting in its requirements, the word of hope which resounds from this text is that word fulfilled. I, Jesus said, I did not come to destroy, I came to fulfill. And before the end of the consummation of all things, there is not going to be the tiniest part of God's Word that has not been fulfilled by me. What we are unable to do ourselves, Messiah King Jesus has come to do for us. Jesus alone fulfills the biblical standard. Verses 17 and 18 teach us about Jesus and the Bible. The Lord Jesus sees the Bible as perfect and unchanging. He insists. All the Word of God points to Him. He is the fulfillment of every promise and every picture and every plan of God revealed in the Word. And every demand of righteousness which God requires of you, Jesus has come to stand in for His people as the righteous fulfillment of all that God requires. Verses 19 and 20 then open the discussion beyond Jesus and the Bible to Jesus, the Bible, and you. Verses 19 and 20 are warnings about avoiding two dangerous extremes. Avoiding two dangerous extremes. If we are honest with ourselves, which we seldom are, Two extreme views of righteousness compete within the hearts of even the most sincere disciple of Jesus. On one extreme is lawlessness. Lawlessness says, look, if Jesus is my righteousness, then I can just go ahead and do whatever it is I wanna do. There's no great concern about obeying God. Jesus has done all the obeying in my place. Listen as this gets addressed in verse 19. Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so, shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. There's a lot in that verse we're not gonna plumb the depths of today, but note how Jesus describes the word of God is to be obeyed, and it is to be taught to others to be obeyed. Even what might be considered the least commandment in the eyes of men, it is all important. Yes, there might be, as Jesus says in another place, quote, weightier matters of the law, But all of the word of God should be read and obeyed and taught. It is not the intention of Jesus here to say that some matters of scripture are unimportant, but to confidently assert that even what you think is unimportant is in fact very important. Even the least commandments must be obeyed and taught. And so anyone who embraces or teaches a sense of lawlessness is in danger of judgment. In fact, the word breaks in verse 19 there, where he says, whoever breaks is a word in the original language that means to loosen or lessen or relax. It's actually closely related to the same root word for destroying the law and the prophets in verse 17 and 18. If you try to relax God's standards, if you teach that the requirements of God aren't really what they seem, if you approach the clear commandments of scripture with the attitude of, yeah, it says that, but I don't really have to do that. then you have relaxed God's standard in a way which attempts to destroy it. Oh, I would never do that. It's just a little white lie. It's not really stealing. There's not that much value in what I took. Oh, a little lust is okay. After all, everybody does it. All such unrighteous rationalization among believers is actually saying Jesus has set me free from sin so that as a result I am now free to sin. Listen, Jesus will have none of that nonsense. If you refuse to obey the written word of God, it betrays a lack of love for Jesus, the living word of God. John 14 verse 15, if you love me, keep my commandments. In John 15 verse 10, if you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love just as I have kept my father's commandments and abide in his love. In 1 John 2 verse 3, now by this we know that we know him if we keep his commandments. Or maybe I can say it more simply like this. Put away the ridiculous idea that being a disciple of Jesus makes you free to sin all you want. True disciples of Jesus are people who know they already sin more than they want. We seek to obey him because we love him. Seeing Jesus as our righteousness does not lead to lawlessness. That sense of lawlessness is on one extreme, and it needs to be avoided. On the other extreme of lawlessness is legalism, and Jesus addresses legalism by tossing that holy hand grenade in verse 20. For I say unto you, unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. The Pharisees and scribes lived according to a sense of external righteousness. In Luke chapter 18, the Lord Jesus describes a Pharisee entering the temple and praying, quote, with himself, saying, I thank you that I am not like other men. They're extortioners, they're unjust, they're adulterers. There's even this tax collector. I fast twice a week. I pay tithes of everything that I have. And as a result, I am a law keeper who doesn't do any of those sinful things that the law prohibits. I do all of those things that the law commands. And as a result of what I do, I am righteous. That is legalism at its finest. It is to think that somehow by my actions, I'm gonna satisfy God's standard. And I can't. And you can't. The Pharisees can't. The scribes can't. No one can. Nobody but Jesus. And I will note here among those two dangerous extremes of lawlessness and legalism, Jesus does seem to describe legalism as the most dangerous. At least in verse 19 with lawlessness, as bad as it is, there are some genuine believers who are still least in the kingdom of heaven. But with legalism, if your righteousness doesn't exceed the scribes and the Pharisees, you're not even going to enter the kingdom of heaven, he says. Now if you take this and say, Pastor Jason said to err on the side of lawlessness. Then you have misconstrued what I'm saying and you're ignoring what Jesus is saying. Don't err on either of these sides. Listen, certain damnation awaits all those who think that their own righteousness, their own obedience is enough to merit entrance into the kingdom of heaven. But on the other hand, your love for the Lord Jesus is going to be displayed by obedience to him. Don't fail in either of these directions. You cannot live so perfectly, so righteously, that you are gonna earn any kind of good standing before God. But the Lord Jesus has earned it. Through faith in him, his righteousness is placed on you and as a result, he is perfectly right then to expect you to live in holiness and the righteousness that he's given you. This passage from the Word of God points us to true righteousness. And now I would love if you were thinking in your mind, wait a minute, what do you mean this part of the Bible points us to true righteousness? Earlier you said the whole Bible points us to Jesus. Yeah, that's right, I said what I said. Jesus is the only source of true righteousness. The Word of God demands perfect obedience and that righteous standard is unrelenting, it is unchanging. The Lord Jesus has come, the living Word of God fulfilling every requirement to the smallest letter of the written Word of God. He is the only one who satisfies the demands of the law. He's the only one who fulfills the promises of the prophets. When the day comes that heaven and earth pass away, we will find that every requirement, every promise, every command down to the smallest detail has been fulfilled in Jesus alone. And that's the only place we have hope. You cannot earn God's favor by your rule keeping. You cannot deserve the mercy of God. You cannot earn your citizenship in His kingdom. But this is what you need to know about Jesus, the Bible, and you. Through faith in Him, We know he's not come to destroy the law or lower its standards or loosen it or do away with it. He has come to fulfill every requirement for his people. In your own righteousness, you stand as nothing more than a condemned criminal through faith in the righteousness of Jesus Christ, you stand as a kingdom citizen. You must stop trusting yourself and place all your trust, all your hope, all your confidence in the surpassing righteousness of Jesus alone.