I've read of ministers in the past who often expressed how it was not uncommon for a newly converted Christian to move from law to gospel. Much like the wording of the song we just sang where the hymn writer penned the words, enwrapped in thick Egyptian night and fond of darkness more than light, madly I ran the sinful race secure without a hiding place, but thus the eternal counsel ran, almighty love, arrest that man. I felt the arrows of distress and found I had no hiding place. Indignant, justice stood in view. To Sinai's fiery mount I flew, but justice cried with frowning face, This mountain is no hiding place. Ere long a heavenly voice I heard, and mercy's angel soon appeared. He led me on with gentle pace to Jesus Christ, my hiding place. From law, he runs to Sinai, and then he makes his way to the gospel of Jesus Christ, the hiding place. Now, whether that's true of us as Christians, many of us have had discussions over law in gospel, right? What's the connection with the two? In particular, is the law binding on us today now that we're under the gospel of grace? What is our obligation to the law? Does not grace make us free from the law? What should our relationship be to the law? Well, this morning we're going to look at Matthew chapter 5 again and Jesus is going to tell us His relationship to the law. He's going to tell us what He thinks about the law and the prophets. And he's going to unpack for us what the law should mean to us today. I take my text from Matthew chapter 5 beginning in verse 16. Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets. I am come not to destroy but to fulfill. 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. whosoever therefore shall break one of the least of these commandments, and teach men so, shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever shall do and teach them shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I say unto you, except your righteousness exceed the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees, you shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven. At this point in our study, the Lord is making a transition. He's transitioning out of the Beatitudes from salt to light, and now He's making an introduction with four verses into the main section of the Sermon on the Mount. Years ago, a man told me, he said, you spend too much time on introductions. He was probably right. Sometimes I can get bogged down in those things. But this introduction, you can't spend too much time in. This introduction is going to shape what you think about the rest of the Sermon on the Mount. What is the relationship Jesus has to the Law? Now the structure he gives us is first he gives a proposition in verse 17. Two negatives and a positive. Don't think I've come to destroy. I haven't come to destroy. There's the negatives, here's the positive. I've come to fulfill. The next three verses are support for the proposition. Because I say unto you, or because verily I say unto you. So verse 18 is the reason for verse 17. Then verse 19, whosoever therefore, the conclusion that he gives to the reason for verse 18 that's found in verse 17. Then in verse 20, because I say to you, another reason for the conclusion for the purpose all built on the statement or proposition, a strong assertion he makes in verse 17. And what is his assertion? don't think I've come to abolish, to abrogate, to annul, or to subvert the law or the prophets. Now it was a surprise to me that the word think not only means to deem, to think, or to suppose, it means to follow custom or usage. to hold to a custom or a usage. It's the word namidzo, and the reason I say that is because the root word is namas, which is law. It's as if Jesus is using a play on words here. Don't think, based on your customs, your usage of the law, that I've come to destroy it. So Jesus confronts the way they had been using His law because of the oral traditions of the elders. They destroyed the law by weakening it and covering it with their supplements and their additions. They own it in Matthew 15 too. Why do your disciples transgress the traditions of the elders? That's the oral traditions, transmitted orally, by interpretation, by the thoughts of men. Jesus counters and says, why is it that you transgress the commandments of God, namely the namas, the law, with your traditions? Verse 9, but in vain they do worship me, teaching for commandments, there's your oral tradition, teaching for commandments, the doctrines of men. The doctrines, I should say, are the oral traditions that they were passing off as the commandments of God. Now, think about the implications of that. When we begin to teach the ideas, the thoughts, the teachings of men in place of scripture, our worship becomes vanity and we cease to worship as a corporate body. So the scribes and Pharisees, the teachers of the law in verse 20, were using oral tradition to supplement the law and thereby they destroyed it. So Jesus, as he was accused so often in the Gospels, in fact, many of the questions designed to tempt him were based on what? What do you think about the law? What's your relationship with Moses? Did you come to destroy the law? They brought a woman taken into adultery that they had so planned out. And it says, Moses says, we ought to stone her. What do you say? What's your relationship with Moses? What do you think about the law? Because we think you came to destroy it. Jesus says, your custom, your usage of the law, which is your oral tradition, has caused the people to think this way. Jesus is addressing an audience who has primarily had a diet of oral tradition, which is why he says in verse 21, you have heard that it was said, because this audience, the Jews, had heard consistently and often what the oral traditions of the elders were saying. So Jesus has to tear down the oral traditions, not by adding to the law, Not by redoing the Law, but reestablishing the Law and the Prophets, what God had already given. And so he makes it very clear emphatically, think not that I've come to destroy. Now what does he mean? We're defining our terms first of all by Law or the Prophets. He means the entirety of the Old Testament Scriptures. Where do you find the law? Where do you find the prophet? You find it in the Old Testament scriptures. This is the twofold division often used in the New Testament to express the entirety of the Old Testament. He didn't come to destroy that. He came to fulfill it. Matthew 7, 12, in this very sermon, he says, therefore, whatsoever you would have that men should do unto you, do unto them also. For such is the law and the prophets. So, love your neighbor, which is seen, it's the outflow of loving God. And we know Matthew 22, Jesus says, this is what the whole Law and Prophets is hanging on. So he's not saying there's a text in the book of Leviticus that says, love God and love your neighbor. When he says, this is the Law and Prophets, he says, this is the whole Old Testament. This is what it's about. The entirety of the Old Testament. Luke 24, 27. when Jesus is walking on the road to Emmaus. He begins at Moses and the prophets and expounds unto them all the scriptures. Now, he just defined to us what he means by Moses and the prophets. All the scriptures. The entirety of the Old Testament. Now, I don't know how much he got through, but all the scriptures concerning himself. And how much concerns Jesus? all the scriptures for they are they which testify of me, John 5, 39. So Jesus means the whole Old Testament, all of it. And then in verse 44, the same chapter, Luke 24, this is what I told you. when I was with you, that all things must be fulfilled which are written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning me." Now he adds a third division which is expressing the same idea. Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms. That's the entirety of the Old Testament. So when Jesus says here, think not I've come to destroy the Law or the Prophets, he means all that the Old Testament Scriptures are saying about him. will find its fulfillment in him." Luke 16, 16. The law and the prophets were until John. Since that time, John, the kingdom of God is preached and every man presseth into it. What was until John? Talking about the Mosaic Age. The entire Old Testament, period. The entire Old Testament. All the Scriptures were until John. Now he's not saying there they cease with John. John pointed to Christ and said, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. The fulfillment of the entire Old Testament is found in Christ. Do not think that I've come to destroy or set it aside. I've come to fulfill. Now what we're going to see, I hope, is that Jesus now is saying the entirety of the Old Testament, but he'll do a shift in verse 19. And he'll focus on an element of the law that's still binding on us today. Some elements have been fulfilled to be abolished, to be set aside. They find their fulfillment in Christ, but there's an element that goes on. We need to know what that is, don't we? All these discussions about law and gospel, Jesus is going to help us a little bit. And so we want to remember what he's saying to us this morning. So we look at four things this morning. Rather than nullifying the law, destroying it, four ways that Jesus is going to express his relationship or his commitment to the law. Young people, I'm going to let you title this sermon this morning. I really couldn't come up with anything. You know, sometimes it's easy. It's just whatever's in the text. So you've got to listen. So at the end of the sermon, say, well, I'd put this title on it. And then you come tell me what that is, all right? You young ones, listen. All right? How would you title this? All right, the first thing we find his commitment to its permanence. The permanence of the law and the prophets. Permanence in that it's enduring and lasting and permanent in that it's infallible and unalterable to the jot and the tittle. Now verse 18 now is going to be support text for verse 17. Four, verily I say unto you, two strong emphatic statements in this text. One, the word verily is amen, which we get our English word. You heard it, amen. At the end of a discourse, it means to let it be. At the beginning of a discourse, it is strong assertion, emphatic, in fact, truly. Verily, just go ahead and put the amen on this. I say to you, second emphatic statement, in no wise, double negative, ume. It can be read like this. No, no. No, not at all. No way. No possibility that a jot, a yod, or a tittle will pass till all be fulfilled. That's pretty strong, isn't it? It's permanent. Now look how he expresses the permanence of the law. He gives a time signature here. Now you know in music, you saw Brother Peyton waving his hands. He did a good job with that. He's doing that based on the time signature in the music. 2, 4, 3, 4. Tells him how many beats a measure. Helps us follow along. Notice the time signature here. Until heaven and earth pass. One jot, one tittle shall in no wise pass the law until all be fulfilled." Which means what? Until heaven and earth passes. You see the connection? Nothing will fall or pass from the law until all is fulfilled or until heaven and earth pass. When will heaven and earth pass? That's a statement of endurance. I think it's helpful here to look at the ages the Bible speaks about in terms of stages. Now this may be an imperfect illustration and you can tell me after it's over. But there are time periods in the Bible, particularly two major ones, that we need to talk about. for which the scriptures, the Old and New Testament, or the Old Testament rather, the prophetical warnings and scriptures of the Old Testament keep getting their fulfillment even after Christ came. There are things in the Old Testament that tell us they're still yet to come. So it endures. But it's good to think of the Old Testament period versus the New Testament period in terms of stages. And here's my illustration. The Saturn V rocket had three stages. The ones they used in the Apollo mission. Each stage had engines with fuel, and once a stage burned its fuel, it separated. It was over. The next stage went on. Luke 16, 16 makes it clear that there was a stage called the Law and the Prophets or the Mosaic Age. The Law and the Prophets are until now, or until John. When John came and Jesus came, the fuel in the Mosaic Age started to run dry. It lost its steam. Hebrews 8, 13, we just read that. In that he saith, the new covenant, the old of the first is old. The first is old. It is decaying and waxing old and ready to vanish or disappear. Now if it's ready, it hasn't vanished. When did it vanish? 70 A.D. The temple is destroyed. The sacrificial system is destroyed. And much of the judicial system of the Jewish nation is gone forever. The substance has arrived, it's been fulfilled, and the shadows are good no more. First stage burned out, separated, it's over. Now the Old Testament scripture is enduring, but that's one stage. The next stage is John the Baptist, through Christ, the foundation, the eternal purpose in him, and now we're in the church age. You live in the church age. What is the activity of the church age that replaces the nation of Israel? 1 Peter 2.9 tells us that. He uses the language of Israel and applies it to the church. Luke 16.16 tells us. Since that time, the time of John, the kingdom of God is preached and every man is pressing into it. It's the time of pressing. That word means to hold by force. See? Through the preaching of the gospel, men are pressing into the kingdom. Not into the nation of Israel. That period is over. It's done. Into the church, the gospel church and the church age. We are to be about the preaching of the kingdom of God. And witnessing about the kingdom. We are the salt and the light of the New Testament age. gathering in people out of the nations. Now when does that age burn all its fuel up? When the Lord returns bodily, sets up His reign, and we reign with kings and priests with Him forever. So first stage gone, we're in the second stage, and when the second stage is over, the Lord returns. Now through all of those times, The Lord says, until heaven and earth pass, which I'm taking that to mean the literal heaven and earth that's going to pass, the second stage, it's going to endure to that time. Until that time, not a jot nor a tittle will pass from the law. He's speaking of the law's permanence. The Old Testament scripture is permanent. Yes, things have already been fulfilled, things are yet to be fulfilled, but the scripture is permanent until the end, until heaven and earth pass, which means the Lord is still fulfilling things because of his death all the way to the end of the heaven and the earth and the establishment of the new heavens and the new earth. It's permanent. He emphatically states, this in relation to the fulfillment of the law. Find its fulfillment in him, but then there are other things coming after. Now secondly, that means that down to the jot and the tittle, it's unalterable and it's infallible. Now if it's going to be fulfilled to that degree of minutia, then it's got to be preserved, right? The jot or the yod, 10th letter of the Hebrew alphabet. In the Greek it's the iota, which is used here since this is translated from the Greek. But if you look in Psalm 119, you will find all 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet starting with number 1. Each section is marked out with a Hebrew letter, which you'll see probably in your Bible, the word, and then right beside it you'll see the letter. The yod, at verse 73 in my Bible, is the smallest. It looks like a dot with a curve this way and a curve that way. What's Jesus saying? To the smallest letter. It will not be corrupted. It will not fail. That's in the original language of Hebrew and Aramaic in the Old Testament. It cannot be corrupted. What about the tittle? The tittle is a diacritical point or a mark. For all you English buffs, that's the mark you put under a letter or over a letter that tells you how to pronounce it and what its meaning is. For example, R-E-S-U-M-E. Resume means to begin again, but drop a diacritical mark over the eve. Now it's resume, a work history. To the diacritical point or the mark in the Old Testament, it'll not be corrupted, it won't fail, it will endure until every single jot, yode, diacritical point is fulfilled. God is preserving His Word, the Old Testament and the New Testament. Listen to how Jesus expresses this in John 10, verse 35. When He's accused of blasphemy and they tried to stone Him, He said, Have you not read in your law that God said, Ye are gods? Psalm 82, verse 6, referring to the magistrates, the judges, God says, You're gods. Little g. Now if that's true, and it is, because Scripture cannot be broken, Why are you saying I'm blaspheming, whom God has sanctified and sent, if I say I'm the Son of God? Now Jesus bases his whole argument on what? The Word of God. He says, to whom the Word of God came to you, Scripture cannot be loosed, broken, perverted, corrupted, destroyed. What Scripture? The verse? No. The Word. God's. What's Jesus' relationship to the law? What does He think about the law? Down to the word. It will not fail. How confident are you in the Old Testament and its fulfillment? How confident are you in the New Testament? Have critics been the cause of making you to doubt? Yes, I know all the discussions about the variants and all that. We're talking first about the original, for which we get our translations. And yes, there's things to work through, but substantially we have the Word of God in our translations when they follow the original text. Matthew 22, the Sadducees, which do not believe in the resurrection, they come to Jesus Christ. They want to tempt Him, related to the law. They think He came to destroy it, but they don't even believe in the resurrection. They said, Moses said, if a man has no children and he dies, his brother is to raise up children with his wife. Deuteronomy 25, that's exactly what it said. Okay, there's seven brothers. Now you know where this is going. There's seven brothers, and the first one, he died, had no children, wife married the brother, then he died, had no children, all the way to the seventh. Now, the wife died. Who does she get to be the wife to in the resurrection? Because they don't believe in the resurrection. They thought they've got him stuck. He said, you do err not knowing the scriptures or the power of God. For we're neither Mary or given in Mary in the resurrection. We are as the angels. Now concerning the resurrection, what did God say to you in Exodus 3, 6? He said, I am the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob. Therefore God is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living. Now I want you to see where Jesus hangs his argument. He's hanging his entire argument on a verb tense. Not a word necessarily, but the tense of the word. Because if God were the God of the dead, what would he have said? I was the God of Abraham. So Jesus draws from Exodus 3.6 that God is the God of the living based on what? The verb tense. I am, present tense. That's remarkable, beloved. Now, if Jesus is committed to the permanence of the Law and the Prophets, the Old Testament Scriptures, till all is fulfilled in Him, all points to Him, they all testify in Him, and then in the Prophets, He's after Him. which some of the Old Testament speak of. If he is so committed to the jot, to the tittle, to the word, and to the verb tense, I ask you, how committed are you? How committed are you first to the Old Testament? Now, you're the kind of person who says, why do we have to read the Old Testament? It's archaic, and it's old, and it's just all this death, and Jesus valued it, and said there's not a text there. that will pass away, that will perish, that will be destroyed, till all is fulfilled, ultimately at the very end of time. That's permanent. Now let's draw some application as to our view of the entire Bible. We'll just include the New Testament here. What is our view? How is this shaping what we think? First, we should receive all the counsel of God, not just our favorite text in the New Testament, but in the Old Testament. That's what Paul said in Acts 20. I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God, at that point he's talking primarily the Law and the Prophets and the Psalms, all of the Old Testament concerning Christ. See, your attitude towards the Law of God reflects your attitude toward God. Your attitude toward the Word of God is undoubtedly, without question, a reflection. Deny it if you want. It's a reflection of your heart attitude toward God. It cannot be denied. This is an expression of His character. This is what He's about. as if you wrote a letter to your spouse and they never read it. No, I love you, I'm just not going to read your letters. Work through that one, husbands, right? So he said to the elders and bishops at Ephesus, take heed therefore unto yourselves and to all the flock of God to feed the church of God. So if he's tasked with feeding with all the counsel of God, which means the Old Testament, you're tasked with being fed by it. By receiving all the counsel of God. Not just ignoring, well that's not the text I want to hear preached on, so I don't know why I didn't preach on that text. And why does he go through the Bible anyway? Why is he going through the Sermon on the Mount? Is it the text? Is it what God gave? All the counsel, not just your favorite text. All of it. we should receive all that. We should study the Word of God. Study, Paul would tell Timothy, study to show thyself approved of a God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. We study it, we read it, we meditate on it, because it's a book about Christ. If all of it finds its crescendo in Christ, if all of the law and prophets are prophesying and speaking of Christ, all of it, from the types and shadows and feasts, the temple, the judicial law, the dietary laws, all of it, then to read in the Old Testament is to read the prefiguring of Christ. And to read the New is to read about the Christ that came. We study the truth of God because we want to learn about God. We're just not trying to find propositions and positions to prop up our arguments. We're trying to see God in it. Next, we should value the Word of God. In the Old Testament, David said in Psalm 19, verse 10, More to be desired are they, Scripture, than gold, yea, than much fine gold. You don't believe that, do you? Somebody offered you a pot of gold, of infinite value, so that you can have the Bible forever. Now I know you know the right answer, and I do too. The Bible. But is that real? It was for David. The sinner David, the sinner that maybe on one day would have taken the gold, as you and I would, more to be desired. Gold is desirable. It's beautiful. It's valuable. More to be desired. Sweeter also than honey, than the honeycomb, the sweetest part. David just looked around at the sweetest thing in that day. Maybe it's cotton candy today. Sweeter than honey. Than the honeycomb. More to be desired. That's how we should view the Old Testament. I recognize some of it's kind of difficult reading. All that's there is a drama of redemption. It's about the Redeemer. Even the minutiae and the details that are hard to work through, all of it's the story about the Christ, the God. We see it that way, it'll help us to look and pray that way. We should defend the Word of God. Jude 1.3, Jude said, earnestly contend for the faith once delivered to the saints. Why did you say that? So you could hear the word agonizomai or agony. Struggle. We should struggle for the Word of God. Now there's a lot of struggle today. And if you're like me, you probably thought time to time what you might do in the struggle. And it wasn't necessarily in harmony with what God says to do in the struggle. You say, I think I'd do this, then I'd say that. That's not the struggle here. We're struggling to contend for the faith. Once delivered in the Old Testament, progressively to the New Testament. The totality of the Word that Jesus speaks about. The Old Testament Scripture with the New, which go hand in hand. Paul told Titus, when you ordain elders in every city, this is what they're to do. Holding fast. Sound doctrine. Hold it. hang on to it, treasure it, that they may be able, as they have been taught, that they may be able to both exhort and convince the gainsayer, the contradictor. So how do we struggle? We hold the Word, we know the Word, we study the Word, we value the Word, we treat it like honey and gold. And then we exhort and convict the contradictors, and there are many. In Christianity, beloved, there are many. Because it's a reflection of God. We're not just defending a book of ideas, we're contending and struggling for that which feeds our very souls, tells us about our Savior. And then finally, we should partake of the afflictions of the Word of God, the Gospel. Right? Paul told Timothy, Be thou a partaker of the afflictions of the Gospel according to the power of God. Don't be ashamed of the Lord, the testimony of the Lord, or of me as prisoner. Paul, you're in prison. I don't know if I want to come see you. That's kind of shameful. Don't be ashamed of the Lord, His testimony, or of me, His prisoner. Be thou a sharer in the afflictions of the gospel according to the power of God, who hath saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace, given us before the foundation of the world that eternal purpose in Christ Jesus, unpacked in types and shadows in the Old Testament, and now given to us the full canon of Scripture in the new. Jesus says to the jot, to the yod, to the tittle, to the diacritical mark, to the word, to the verb tense, I am committed to the fulfillment of Scripture. We should be committed to what He says about it. Next, His commitment to its fulfillment. Now he says in verse 17, which we looked at verse 18 first, I came not to destroy but to fulfill. What does that mean? And then he says to all be fulfilled in verse 17. So verse 18 is a support to verse 17. How does he fulfill the Old Testament, the law and the prophets? Let me suggest a few ways. First of all, he fulfilled it in his life and what he did, didn't he? The external religion of the scribes and Pharisees, theirs was a joyless religion. They were not the embodiment of the Law and the Prophets. They would burden the people with grievous burdens to be born. And they would lay them on men's shoulders and they would not lift one with their fingers. Why? Because they did all that they did their works to be seen of men. So, for example, on the Sabbath, you couldn't work. Say, wait a minute, wait a minute. What if you carry a burden? What if you carry weight? That could be work. He came up with all these supplemental ideas on what weight you could carry on the Sabbath. How much wine in a goblet? How much oil in a womb? And then the debate, because you can't come up with every contingency for everything that could possibly happen on the Sabbath, say, well, what if a tailor takes a needle in his hand and walks out of his house? Is that sin? Is He carrying a burden? Is He trying to work? The absurdity. Jesus comes and He reflects the joy of the law. That seems like a contradiction, doesn't it? The Messianic Psalm that the early church recognized reflected Him. It says, Lo, I come in the volume of the book it is written of Me. I delight to do thy will, yea, thy law is within my heart. He delighted in what the Old Testament said. Now that's prefiguring when he came and he expressed that, didn't he? In John 4, 34, when he's with the woman at the well in Samaria and the disciples go get him some food, they come back and Jesus says, I have meat to eat that you don't know about. I said, did anybody give him some food? My food, my meat is to do the will of Him that sent me." And where did he find the will of God? In the law and the prophets. In the Old Testament scripture. It was his delight. It was his joy and he expressed that in a life of service. He fulfilled it in the spirit of the law, not just what he did on the outside, but the spirit of the law he expressed in his love and delight for God. And therefore he fulfilled it in what he did. He fulfilled it in His teaching. In this very sermon, He's going to teach purely the law of God and the prophets. He's going to unpack what it says. He's not going to cover it and weaken it. That's what the scribes and Pharisees did. They weakened the law by distracting from the law with all these supplemental ideas that riveted the attention of the people and burdened them. Jesus blows away the covers. and lifts up and magnifies the law of God and the prophets. No wonder at the end of the sermon, what do they say? They are astonished at his doctrine. They are struck with amazement. For he spake as one having authority, not as the scribes and Pharisees." What does that mean? He stuck to the text. He gave them the pure law of God. He didn't dilute it. He didn't adulterate it. He didn't corrupt it to the jot, to the tittle, to the word, and the verb tense. He uncovered it to let the Law do its work in the heart of men. Hebrews 4.12, For the Word of God is quick and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, living, powerful, sharper, piercing, piercing. What the scribes and Pharisees did was like a butter knife, couldn't pierce butter. Blunt. The Law of God, the Word of God, the Old Testament Scripture is piercing, penetrating like a sword. Dividing asunder even to the soul and the spirit of the joints and the marrow, just expressing. It's so sharp, so penetrating, it can separate something that we don't even know how it's separated. the soul and the spirit. It's a discerner of the thoughts and the intents of the heart. Why you do what you do, the motives you do for what you do. And what happened with the scribes and Pharisees, they just covered all that up. didn't let the law have its penetration because they didn't love the law, they didn't care about the law, they loved their own self-righteousness. They built a system to justify themselves because they were covetous. But Jesus lived a life without covetousness. He didn't cover anything that was his neighbor's. His neighbor's wife, his neighbor's donkey, his neighbor's car, his neighbor's house, his neighbor's money. If he had, he would have been unrighteous, and he would be a lawbreaker. But they were covetous, so they covered the law, and the people were in darkness. So he gave the law of God its power, and he taught it accurately with authority. And of course, he fulfilled it in his death, didn't he? in His death. This is what the Messianic Psalms were pointing to primarily. Psalm 22, you see some of the details of what He said when He was on the cross. With precision, none of it passed away. All fulfilled in Christ. All the Law and Prophets, all the Old Testament finds its fulfillment in the person of Christ. We often think going to Sinai is in Exodus 20 and we see the thundering and the lightning and the quaking and the fire and the smoke and we hear the trumpet. And there we see the jealousy of God, the holiness of God, and the wrath of God. Yes, but where do you really want to see it, beloved? Where do we see the jealousy of God over His name and His holiness and His glory? We see it in the words of Psalm 22 when he says, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And then Jesus answers the question, doesn't he, in the very next verse. Because you are holy! You're holy! Your jealousy over your own name. Visiting the iniquity unto the fathers and the children to the third and fourth generation that hate me. Jesus became your hatred for God. and showing thousands of mercy to thousands of them that love me. And keep my commandments. They keep His commandments. Because Jesus brought us into the love of God. He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace was upon Him. And by His strife we are healed. He was pierced. He was crushed. He was disciplined. and he was beaten and of course he died. Isaiah 53 is all about the fulfillment of those prophecies in Christ. The Lord bruised him, the Lord pierced him, the Lord crushed him, the Lord beat him, the Lord chastised him by means of wicked men so that he may save you. He fulfilled all the demands of the law, the righteous demands. His life his teaching, his death. Now here's a good place momentarily to think about the law in three categories. The ceremonial law, the civil law, and the judicial law, or the moral law. Now that wasn't necessary for the Old Testament Jewish believer because it was just three ways looking at the same thing. It was just law. Everything political, social, civil, moral. It's just law. But in our day, that can be helpful. The Bible doesn't demand it. But it can be helpful because there are certain elements His death brought to a close. And there's an element that it didn't. When I say didn't, I mean it's still ongoing even though He fulfilled it. So two elements he fulfilled to be abolished. One element he fulfilled to continue. And that's important for us to understand. The ceremonial law. He fulfilled it to be abolished. It was abolished finally in 70 AD. It's gone. No more sacrifice. I tell you if there's a sacrifice that's done again by Jews in the temple, it will not be of God. The substance has arrived. Shadows are gone forever. The devil may erect a temple. but not God. Why would He erect a reflection and a shadow of something that's here? I wouldn't do that. Now God could do that, but He destroyed it. So the ceremonial law is over. That's not binding for us. We don't sacrifice. We don't build temples. We don't do the rituals. You can eat pork, friend. You can eat a lot of it if you want. You don't have to, but you can do it. They couldn't. Hebrews chapter 10 is the argument there. When He said above, Sacrifice and burnt offering and sacrifices for sin, thou wouldest not, thou hast had no pleasure. And then He said, Lo, I come in the volume of the book, it is written to do thy will. He taketh away the first, so that He may establish the second. What's the first? Sacrifice and offering. Taken away. All sacrifices. He has taken away. What's the second? Second that He came to establish. To fulfill those shadows? Lo, I come. Who's that talking about? Jesus Christ. I come to do Your will. What was His will? To be the sacrificial offering. To be the altar. To be the burnt sacrifice. To be the temple. To be the blood. To be the fulfillment. And so, He is, by His sacrifice, One offering He has sanctified us once for all, never to be repeated. We don't need sacrifices. We don't need symbols. We don't need shadows. The Christ is here, civil law done. Even the priests, they daily standing, oftentimes ministering and offering the same sacrifices day after day. But this man, He offered one sacrifice. sat down at the right hand of God. What's the writer saying? The priesthood is over. It's over. We don't need it. It was pointer to Christ. Ceremonial, ritual, gone. Civil, judicial. Parts of the judicial law that was unique to the nation of Israel are done with. Parts of it. Some parts we still adhere to. For example, we do not stone adulterers. Church doesn't do it. We discipline them. We discipline for offenses, unrepentant. We don't stone rebellious children when they won't submit to their parents again and again. Take them to the elders and then stone them. Deuteronomy. We don't do that. We spank them, right? That's what God's Word requires. So much of the civil law is gone, fulfilled. Ceremonial. Gone. So it's helpful to think that way or we're thinking we need to sacrifice and we need to start stoning children. Don't be concerned young people. No. Fulfilled. But moral law. Fulfilled. Accomplished. The word fulfilled doesn't mean fill up. It means accomplished. so that it might be accomplished. And this is the last way He fulfills it in you. The moral law is still binding. You're obligated to it. And that's why Jesus makes the shift in verse 19 to commandments, right? Now He's not talking about there in the rest of the Sermon on the Mount about ceremonial, the whole Old Testament, civil ceremonial. He's talking about moral law obedience. And that's how he fulfills the law in his disciples. That's what we read this morning in Hebrews 8. He puts the law in our hearts. Why? Have I got a legal code in my heart? That's kind of sketchy, scary, isn't it? God says, I'm making a new covenant. It won't be like the covenant I made with the house of Israel and the house of Judah when I took them by the hand and led them out of Egypt and they continue not and I regarded them not. This covenant I will make, I will put my laws in their mind and write them in their hearts. See, they did not want to walk with God. They wouldn't hold God's hand. And I'm just going to guess, usually when you see a husband and wife holding hands, or maybe a young couple, that simply means they kind of like each other. With spouses, I think it means they love each other. God says here, you take my hand, I'm going to lead you to the promised land. Now they wanted to go to the promised land, they said, well we'll do it our way. You ever like that? They didn't want to hold God's hand. So God is going to overcome their rebellion by putting the law in their hearts and in their minds. What does that mean? Romans 8, 7. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God. So first he overcomes your enmity, your absolute enmity against him. For they are not subject to the law of God, neither deed can be. So the enmity against God is that we are not subject to His law and we can't be subject to the law. What does that mean? I can't be subject to a sacrifice? No, that's done. I can't obey stoning the adulterer? No, that's fulfilled. You can't be subject to the very sum and substance of all the Law and Prophets, which Jesus tells us in Matthew 22. You can't love God. You can't love Him. That's a strong term. It's impossible for you as a human being to simply love God. So He overcomes that enmity against Him by sending the Son to fulfill all the Law. He puts His Law in your hearts and minds, which means He causes you to love Him. And then when Jesus looks at you, as you're drowning in the water of sin and conviction, He says, Oh Son, take my hand. You grab it! Because now, He's overcome your enmity. He pulls you out of the water, and He says, you see these Ten Commandments? You see the commandments of the Old Testament? Now hold My hand. I've already fulfilled them. We're going to walk together, and I want you to obey whatsoever I command you, even to the end of the age. Is Christ fulfilling the law of God in your life? Because that's the aim of redemption. Not in order that you might be saved when he writes the law in your heart and in your mind. He saved you. Why? That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in you. Romans 8.4, For what the law could not do, and that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son, and forced sin, condemned sin in the flesh, so that... Why did He do that? The righteousness of the law, which is love, would find its fulfillment in your life with God and in your life with your husband and your wife and your children and your parents and your church members and in everywhere you are. Because the love of God has been shed abroad in your heart. Is Jesus fulfilling the law of righteousness in us? That's the question that I leave you with this morning. Let's pray. Father, thank you that Jesus is the