This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Sermon on the Mount” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, December 14, 1986.
About this sermon
Christ chooses his words in Matthew 5:17 with care, ‘destroy’ and ‘fulfill,’ and the prophets bind as much as the law does. Christ’s own righteousness fulfills both. The Golden Rule and the greatest commandment show the same fulfillment from two more angles.
Sermon transcript
Matthew seven one birth, I think you know it well enough for twelve. Therefore. All things whatsoever he would that men should do to you. Do ye even so to them for this is the law and the profit. In Matthew twenty two. Verse thirty-five, reading through verse forty.
Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him and saying, Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind. And this is the first and great commandment, and the second is like unto it. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
Then from Matthew five, once more, Verses seventeen through twenty. Think not that I am. To destroy the law or the profit, I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. Barely, I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass one job or one title shall in no wise pass from the law till all be fulfilled. Whosoever, therefore, shall break one of these least commandments and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven. But whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I say unto you that except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.
Let’s pray briefly. Father, as you have taught us concerning our confidence, you have also taught us concerning your word. Father, that is why we are to be in your word and about your word. Father, here, there is that testimony to the confidence exhibited by Jesus, a confidence which was true, a confidence which never had to apologize. O Lord, may we be found in Him, not with a confidence of our own, but with His. We ask this through Him. Amen. Jesus has said, I came not to destroy the law or the prophets. I did not come to destroy, but to fulfill. But what did he mean? Fine words, I’m sure. But what did he mean?
The force of these words is determined by two basic insights. The first is an insight into the significance of the one who speaks. And the second is an insight into the identity of his audience. those to whom he speaks. About the former, we have already spoken.
Let me remind you, the one who speaks is no less than the Messiah, the Promised One, the Anointed One of God. The one who speaks is the Son of God, the One who is heir to all things of God. That’s the meaning of that title. But even more, the One who speaks is Emmanuel, God with us. Never before has there been one like this in the earth. God in flesh, come, and because of his coming, the transformation of all things.
Now, about the latter, that is, the identity of his audience, those to whom he speaks, let me say this. Jesus here is not speaking to his opponents. Jesus isn’t even speaking to the multitudes, even though the multitudes are present, as we find at the end of the Sermon on the Mount. Specifically, Jesus is speaking to his disciples.
This latter insight, then, is all-important because it helps us to focus our questions about the text before us. For a starter, and we’ve asked this question before, last week we asked it, why would Jesus feel especially compelled to say these words about himself and the law and the prophets to his disciples? Why would he feel especially compelled to speak in this way?
Do not think that I have come to destroy you. But the answer to this question is found in what we read in verses 3 through 16, the beginning verses of the Sermon on the Mount, those verses that begin with the Beatitudes. Now, rather than review the verses again for you this morning, something that I have done with you regularly, let me instead give you their impact. The total effect of these previous verses, verses three through sixteen, is that Jesus clearly indicates that the disciples are going to live, apparently, indefinitely, in the world a bit longer.
And in all honesty, their circumstances in the world will not be all that pleasant. Poor of spirit, mourning tears, meek, that is humiliated hungry and thirsty, persecuted for the sake of righteousness, reviled, all manner of evil spoken against them, falsehood. The total effect, therefore, of these verses is that Jesus clearly indicates that the disciples are going to live, apparently, indefinitely in the world for a time yet. And in all honesty, the circumstances of their lives will not be all that pleasant.
And you call this good news? They had expected, put yourself put yourself in their place. They had expected the end of everything. They had expected the separation of the righteous from the wicked. They had expected their vindication. They had expected all of the glory promised in the law and the prophets to be there when the Messiah came.
And now, obviously, from what Jesus is saying, they can make it out this isn’t going to take place. At least, not as they have imagined. Therefore, the disciples’ unasked question, the one that lies beneath the surface of the text, their unasked question is this. If what you say is true, Jesus, then what has become of the law and the prophets? Do they count for nothing? Is there to be no fulfillment of them as we had expected? Jesus says, reading their hearts, for they don’t even have to speak a word.
Jesus said. Assuring. I did come to destroy the law or the problem. Now think about his words. They’re a fact on the site. Even his choice of words. This word destroy has as its background architecture it means to destroy by dismantling disassembling demolishing along the lines of what your kids do with their lego sets regularly the visual image is along the lines of what we may have seen on the evening news when Pittsburgh decides to tear down a building. The image is one of clearing a site of a structure. And later, this very same word used here by Jesus is ascribed to him when he described the coming judgment of God upon Jerusalem and the temple, when not one stone will be left upon another. Well, Jesus didn’t come to do that, to the law or the prophets. He did not come to take apart, to disassemble, to demolish the law or the prophets. and leave their former place and empty for.
But his disciple. Might well have thought. What the impact of his coming to be some sort of rewriting of revelation. That made the law and the profit obsolete. simply because now all their expectations were shattered as so many blocks, so many stones upon the ground. It seems that Jesus, this Jesus to which they have to whom they have attached themselves, this Jesus has a different program from that of Moses and David and Isaiah and Jeremiah and Daniel. But Jesus did not come to demolish. He came, he said, to fulfill. And what about this word, fulfill? The image evoked by this specific word could not be more appropriate.
You see, this word, in an inversion, a reverse, by root of contrast, assumes that the structure thought demolished by the first part of the statement is actually still standing. It remains. The structure which the law and the prophets is remains standing. No. That structure, that edifice, that building of the law and prophets is not to be torn down. Rather, as Jesus said, it is to be fulfilled, or better, filled for the structure. the building yet is to be filled.
For. That this suggests you see. A certain liability. A certain defect with regard to the law and the price. In what sense do the law and the profit need to be fulfilled? Well. This is a difficult question to answer from this text. Chapter five verse seventeen in Matthew. Because by looking at things quite directly. It would appear that the law. could not be fulfilled in the same way in which the profits are. The law. If there is defect there. If it is in need of a fulfillment.
The law would need to be fulfilled in a prescriptive sense in terms of a fully satisfying Therefore, the law is fulfilled in a righteousness and in obedience. But when we move on to the prophets, ordinarily we speak of the fulfilling of prophecy in a different vein altogether. The prophets are fulfilled in a predictive sense. That is, there have been promises made. There have been predictions of the future, and now those promises and those predictions are to be kept.
In fact, throughout Matthew’s gospel, this is the sense in which Matthew ordinarily uses the word fulfilled. Because, as you may recall, Matthew is the one who punctuates his gospel with those phrases, such and such took place in order that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the proper.
He uses this device no less than twelve times. But noting the different senses for the fulfillment of the law and the profits Are we to conclude that Jesus intend some sort of distributive meaning for the word fulfilled that is does he intend his disciples to distribute the meaning to both the law and the prophets in a sense appropriate for each so that you have one word fulfilled being applied to the law in its distinctive sense and that same word fulfilled being applied to the prophets and its distinctive sense? Or does he mean Does he mean this word fulfilled? Does he mean for this word fulfilled to have the exact same meaning with regard to both the law and the process? It would seem that he intended to have the same meaning for both, and this is apparent from what follows.
You see, Jesus. Jesus goes on in his message. versus eighteen through twenty. And the emphasis falls upon the law. And upon these commandments in which his disciples are to be found at work doing and teaching. And what he calls your righteousness in verse twenty.
All of these descriptions reflect upon the sense in which Jesus means the fulfillment of the law and prophets in verse seventeen Jesus intent here is clearly prescriptive not predicted it clearly has in view obedient. Righteousness. But in what sense. We don’t have any problem with thinking of the law In this way, but in what sense do we call the prophet prescriptive pertaining to obedience. Even seeing in them, the man obligations, duties, responsibility in what do we understand the profit in this way. Well, here’s the glory in precisely the same way in which Jesus.
And that’s why we’ve read from Matthew seven and Matthew twenty two where Jesus joins together the law and the promise and speaks of them not in a predictive sense as if we have in view the fulfillment of an unfulfilled prophecy but rather in terms of the fulfillment of righteousness and doing what is right and good. Prescription ordinance. Command duty So what do we find when we look at Matthew seven verse twelve, and what do we find when we look at Matthew twenty to thirty five through forty? We find, first of all, in Matthew twelve, Matthew seven verse twelve, the so-called golden rule of which Jesus said, For this is the law and the And in Matthew twenty-two, we have the two great commandments of which Jesus says, upon these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. Yes, there is that sense in which the prophets are as prescriptive as the law. But how are we to understand that prescription?
What stands at the center of it? what is at its heart. Take a look at the so-called Golden Rule, verse twelve of chapter seven. Grab hold of what Jesus is saying here. Do you understand that Jesus here is not preaching some sort of their liberalism? It was the habit of men in the last century and into this century to look at this verse in terms of some sort of doctrine of the universal fatherhood of God and brotherhood of man, and that all that Jesus here is encouraging a new approach to behavior, a new way of living that has at its center ethics and the way in which we treat one another. Completely absent from this verse is any notion of redemption. Well, that is not true.
If you take stock of that twelve for familiar to you as it is there for whatever you want others to do for you do so for them. The position that are in view in this are those of one who has within his power. The ability to grant to someone else in need that which is needed. And what Jesus is saying, when you have it within your grasp to play the part of God, how are you going to play the role? How are you going to play the role? When it was in your power to do to someone else what you, in fact, would wish to be done to you, how are you going to play the role? And, you see, the message of Jesus is, you become the servant, even though you have the advantage, you become the servant of the person in need.
Why? Because of the constraints of God upon you. The law and the prophets. For God has done nothing less himself. He had the advantage. You were in need. And he made himself a servant for you. The verse is replete with gossip. And nothing else is in view in Matthew 22 and Jesus discourse on the two great commandments. For he ends up You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Now, that’s not just a phrase falling off the lips of Jesus. But he hoped it would be repeated until the end of the age. That verse, those words are gone. Because you see, that verse describes the very thing that you find at work in God himself. Who loves his own. As he loves himself. And so great is God’s love. That he will give himself. For those he loves.
At the center of both of these passages Matthew seven and twenty two. is the message of selflessness, the message of giving up the advantage for the sake of the other, of the first becoming last, the Lord becoming the servant, of others being exalted, even if it means my own humiliation. It is the message, you see, of the cross of Jesus Christ. That is what is at the heart of these verses.
The law and the prophet, therefore, are a building, a structure with an empty interior, because no one has been found to fill it up, all having fallen short. But now, looking carefully, we see that this building has a Jesus-shaped interior, and he has come to fill it full with himself.
And here is the power of the Matthew five seventeen the disciples feel cheated that the Messiah has appeared, but they have been denied the end. And the glory. Instead, life continues and they must live in this world, even under severe strain. Where then might they find the advantage of the Messiah’s coming? the blessing of his presence. In the fulfillment of the law and the prophets, which he himself is. A fulfillment into which they and we have now entered. And that is why we preach grace. even from Matthew five seventeen. Matthew seven twelve. Matthew twenty two. Verses thirty five.
Our Father, there is a building which the Law and the Prophets are. But Lord, though we find it empty, we know that you have filled it. And you have filled it full with your Son. Oh, Lord. May we then in him. Enter that building. And see. The fulfillment of the law and the prophets in us. As they have been fulfilled in him. And maybe not shy away from it. Even though it takes the form of a cross. And we are found in the form of a servant. For this is precisely the way in which Jesus himself fulfilled or filled for the law and the prophets. Here then, Lord, we will be at the center of your will for your glory. and the praise of your great.
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