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, January 11, 1987.
About this sermon
The Jews’ own dilemma, that the Messiah has come yet the end of the age plainly has not, frames what Christ actually expects of his disciples as ordinary history keeps going. Romans 3 supplies Paul’s own account of a righteousness already accomplished but not yet fully unveiled. Already and not-yet, threaded throughout this whole series, governs 5:17-18 as much as anywhere else.
Sermon transcript
Romans 3 verse 19. Now we know that what things so ever the law sayeth, it sayeth to them who are under the law that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore, by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets, even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe. For there is no difference for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God has set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past through the forbearance of God.” To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness, that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.
Where, then, is boasting? It is excluded. By what law? Of works? Nay, but by the law of faith. Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law. Is he the God of the Jews only? Is he not also of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also, seeing it is one God which shall justify the circumcision by faith and uncircumcision through faith. Do we then make void the law through faith?
God forbid, yea, we establish the law. And then from Matthew chapter five, verses seventeen and eighteen. Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets. I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. For verily I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass, One job or one title shall in no wise pass from the law till all be fulfilled.
Our Father, what power might there be found for us, we who have been found powerless in ourselves before the world, certainly in our moral capacity. But truly, Father, you manifest your perfect power in our weakness, and therefore, Lord, in our weakness We have given to us the very power of God by which we live, by which we are saved. O Lord, save us for Yourself, that we might manifest the power of God, though it be in our weakness. We ask this for Jesus’ sake. Amen.
You may recall that earlier I preached in this series a sermon in which I spoke to you about waiting. Waiting. Sometimes the waiting in our life can be nothing less than excruciating. Our whole life overlaid by that state of mind that waiting brings with it. We wait and are consumed by our waiting. I was speaking to a couple this last week, a couple expecting their second child. They were speaking about the advantages of the advent of the second child as opposed to the first, and how they had become somewhat nonchalant about the whole thing. But they were recalling how the waiting and anticipation had completely consumed them when the first child was on the way. waiting then, overtaking us completely, so that we are poised, almost poised to pounce upon that person, that thing, that event for which we have or for whom we have waited. But sometimes, sometimes the waiting proves hardly worth it. And when the desired thing or that anticipated person arrives, it seems as if our wait was foolish. What we waited for wasn’t half of our hope when its fullness arrived.
There was much of this, you see, surrounding Jesus, his ministry and his message. Not that people weren’t excited when he first came. He appeared with remarkable words and words. You may recall, backing up to the fourth chapter of Matthew, the seventeenth verse, how he seems to erupt upon the scene, declaring the proximity, the nearness of the kingdom of heaven. He both preaches that kingdom and teaches about it in the Galilean towns, villages, cities, in the Galilean countryside and regularly in the synagogue. Note verse twenty-three in that fourth chapter. And as already indicated, matching his words were his extraordinary works. Not only did he speak about the kingdom of heaven, he demonstrated that kingdom and its power.
Those who were ill, he healed. every form of disease, every form of ailment, the possessed, the insane, the many cripples in mind and body. We might be taken back by Matthew’s description of this magnificent ministry by Jesus. because Matthew’s description in that twenty-fourth verse of the fourth chapter seems so restrained. That is, we find in it nothing sentimental, nothing bodiline, and there’s nothing melodramatic about it.
The words, as Matthew pens them, conspire to convey an almost rabid excitement, such excitement that Jesus caused. Great multitudes, underline the word great, great multitudes followed him like as if they were disciples. They followed him from everywhere, even from territories beyond Israel proper. They came from Gentile territories as well. All of this, you see, making it plain that from Matthew’s point of view, he’s speaking by the Holy Spirit, the wait for God’s promised Messiah is over.
It is over. But in the mind of the disciples, is that wait over? Or do questions remain? On the one hand, you have a certainty at work. For those who he has called specifically Peter and Andrew, James and John, they think highest of him. They see him as that promised deliverer, the Lord Christ, come into the world. At least they are certain. Until shaken by his sermon on the mount. You see, the sermon on the mount was intended to shake even confident disciples concerning their expectations. They had expected, these closest to Christ, they had expected in keeping with their understanding of the Old Testament scriptures, a rather abrupt, even cataclysmal ending of the world drama Think of it in terms of that prophecy with which the Old Testament ends.
A prophecy made famous, of course, in Handel’s Messiah. The Lord will suddenly come to his temple, and like a refiner’s fire, like fuller’s soap, he will purify the worship of God. Who can endure the day of his coming? Who shall stand when he appears? And not unlike that man who certainly had an impact upon them, these disciples, reflecting upon John the Baptist and his message, looked for fire when Jesus came. They looked for fire. But now Jesus recedes from the excited crowds, and he climbs a mountain, and he takes aside his special followers, those he has chosen, and he instructs them privately.
As he teaches them, his message does not boil over from the flames that heat the words. His message does not boil over with words about an imminent end of all things, apocalyptic in character. Instead, the disciples hear words that make it sound as if this present world order is going to continue indefinitely. And that, you see, becomes the problem par excellence for the church and the gospel to the present day. The Messiah comes, but the end does not. The Messiah comes, but the end does not. So it is then that the disciples hear words that sound as if this present world order, out of keeping with what they had this present world order is going to continue indefinitely.
So they hear things about burying up in the face of opposition persecution. They hear things about suffering and in the midst of it all showing mercy. They hear about doing good work And as the sermon continues, Jesus, this one they had hoped was the Christ, tells them about anger as serious in his estimation as murder. He tells them about loss. as serious in his estimation as adultery. He tells them about vanity. He tells them about revenge and how evil and despicable it is in the sight of God.
And he tells them about the persistent nature of that fight against sin and evil in this present world order. the present world order continually. And Jesus warns them of the dangers of ostentatiousness, showing us in piety, showing us in prayer, showing us in fasting, if you can imagine such a thing. And he will expose the deception of earthly treasures and the sure and certain dividends that those treasures pay in anxiety, stress, and tragic unhappiness.
Don’t lay up for yourselves treasures upon earth. This present world order demands of the disciples of Jesus, he having come, the Messiah’s work evident and his power manifest. This present world order demands of the disciples of Jesus that they be alert to the cancer of malicious and self-righteous judgment.
Judge not, lest you be judged with the very judgment with which you have judged others.” And at the same time he warns them against the deadly perils of a blind and naive tolerance. Don’t give that which is holy to God, and don’t cast your pearls before swine.”
The world order continues, you see. And as this world turns, it is necessary for the disciples, says Jesus, to continue to ask, seek and not to do for others as they would have others do for them. And these disciples are viewed by Jesus as pilgrims on the narrow way that ends at the little gate leading to life. And few there be that find it. The disciples As the world continues are threatened by false prophets who make incredible claims. But who, despite those claims, says Jesus practice lawlessness.
And over against such false prophets and those who would follow those false prophets The true disciples of Jesus must build their lives in this present world order upon the words of Jesus, and thus upon the rock and not upon the sand. Such lives, says the Lord, stand up to the torrents and floods that this present evil world experiences. Such lives, says Jesus. in the end, when in fact the end comes, shall not fall. There is the whole, then, of the sermon on the mount And in it, Jesus has portrayed things as if this world order, this present world order, is going to continue indefinitely until an appointed time, yet future. And the disciples, being representatives of the faithful in Israel, They had expected this present world order to end when the Messiah arrived. But obviously now, according to Jesus, that world order will not end.
But, quarries the disciples silently in their hearts. them of the law and. So we have built our hope and expectation on nothing less than what we understood the Old Testament to be saying. And it is precisely this question, then, that lies at the base of the verses that we have been considering now for some time. Matthew five, seventeen through twenty. Jesus says, in response to the unspoken question from the disciples. I have not come to destroy the law or the prophets. Rather, the law and the prophets stand. However. Once more, the disciples speak, however. comes their response.
If the law and the prophet stand and your arrival has not brought the end as we expected, what then is the value of your coming? Have you read any Dostoevsky? Have you read Brothers Karamazov and Chapter the Grand Inquisitor? where the Inquisitor puts Christ on trial, for he hardly lives up to expectations. What is the value of your coming anyway? Aren’t all things the same?
Now, Jesus No, they are not the same, because I have come to fulfill the law and the prophets, and therein is the difference. And only I can do that. And what he means by this is that he has come to fill full the law and the prophets. I said that right?
To fill full the law and the prophets, with his message and more with himself, and that which stands at the heart of the one who has come, at the heart of his life, namely his mission, his death upon the cross, and his resurrection to glory. At the center of the law and the prophets, so says Jesus. is the message in fulfillment about himself and about his cross and about that empty tomb. And if you don’t understand that, you don’t understand the law or the prophets. How magnificent, then, that message about fulfillment for taking center stage now is that glorious statement, you well should memorize it, Matthew 20, 28, I did not come to be served, but to serve and to give my life a ransom for many. That’s the meaning of the law and the prophets. Their intent, their goal, their end. That’s where they were directed all along.
Indeed, all things are not the same. Nor will a disciple or any follower of Jesus, you, cannot be the same. Since Jesus and his cross and his resurrection are the air that you breathe, as servants of His, the air through which you are compelled to move in order to breathe the will of God.”
Even though Jesus’ words here introduce how all things cannot be the same since He came, It remains true that Jesus is not here pushing down or pushing away the law or the prophets in any respect. One of the primary intentions of his words is to comfort his disciples in the knowledge that the law and the prophets are intact. What, then, of the law and prophets they have asked? Jesus replies, Because I came to fulfill, not to destroy, the law or the prophets, I say to you emphatically, and now we move on to verse eighteen, the universe will vanish before one of the smallest letters or the slightest strokes of the law will vanish. Jesus, therefore, is unwilling to let the law and the prophets go. His kingdom is making its appearance in the world that seems to go on indefinitely, and until the world ends, the law and the prophets will continue to play out their role. comes the response of the disciples.
But then, if the law and the prophets continue to play out their role until the end, how can you claim that they are fulfilled by you? And once more, underscoring this whole idea, is what appears at the conclusion of that because, replies Jesus, of what he has accomplished in me. While there is on the one hand then that holding on to the law and the prophets, that point of continuity that Jesus is determined to maintain, Yet simultaneously, mysteriously, even oddly, there is that principle of discontinuity which must be grasped, made plain in his words concerning fulfillment and what appears in that slight phrase at the end of verse 18, until all is accomplished. Until all is accomplished.
You see, verses 17 and 18 must be read as parallel statements. The one statement, verse 17, equals the other, verse 18. And as we take stock of those two verses, we can say that each verse is composed of two thoughts. The first thought is the inviolable nature of the law. This is expressed by the words, Do not think that I came to destroy the law of the prophets. I didn’t come to destroy. And by the words in verse eighteen, Until heaven and earth pass, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the law. That’s on one side. However, there is a second thought at work.
And this second thought concerns the revolutionary significance of the Messiah’s presence, and the revolutionary significance of his kingdom. And this is expressed by the words, but to fulfill, in verse seventeen, and until all is accomplished, in verse eighteen. The prior statement in each verse is unto the latter statement. so that the latter statement becomes the lens through which you are to see the former. We are to see the law and the prophets in terms of their fulfillment, in terms of the accomplishment of all things.
What then is that fulfillment? What then is that accomplishment with which each verse ends? It is nothing less, nothing less than the completion The completion of the Messiah’s mission. Here, in these words about fulfillment in verse 17 and accomplishment in 18, we have a veiled reference by Jesus to his own death and resurrection. As we have made clear in verse 17, so it is in verse 18, the death and resurrection of Christ.
This is the fulfillment. This is. the accomplished. Yes, indeed, the law and the prophets continued to maintain their status, that which they were intended to maintain. But in the administration of Christ only insofar as they are seen through the spectacles of Christ’s death and resurrection. The wage is over. That is the significance of the coming of Christ. The wage is over. But the world goes on. And the issue now is how will you live in light of the coming of the one who was expected and anticipated? The Sermon on the Mount becomes your charger. It becomes that description of your life in the world now, short of the end.
How am I to behave? What am I to do? How am I to think? What is expected of me? I find my life here, but in no sense can I disassociate what I find in these words spoken by Jesus on this mount from what has been accomplished in him at Calvary and in the garden and the empty tomb. For me, what does that mean? A radical righteousness, does it not, in him, found in him nowhere else? fulfillment of the law and prophets in him to be sure, but no less than me. How so?
As I now become servant for others. As I write unto him, forsake privilege, standing, position, for the sake of those who are in making myself expendable for their sake, not counting my life here, but giving it up. That is the Law and Prophets. That is the message of Jesus Christ. Now you may be thinking, I haven’t been doing all too well. along those lines. But you see, as Jesus speaks here in these verses, the concentration is upon Him. The concentration is upon Him first of all. He is the One who fulfills. He is the One in whom all things are accomplished.
And therefore, your power, your strength is not found in yourself. You cannot find it. within yourself. It is found only in him who is now alive to do nothing less than give you the power to endure faithfully until the heaven and the earth pass away.
Our Father, we take stock of ourselves, even in light of what the Apostle Paul has said, for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. But where might we find righteousness? Where might we find power and strength to live before you and in this present world order? We find it in that one who is the very righteousness of God, we find it in that one who is the fulfillment of the law and prophets, that one through whom all things are accomplished, Jesus Christ.
Indeed, he has made this supreme difference. In light of your word, in light of all that you have promised and even prescribed, the Lord Jesus has come center stage and he is the source of our power he is our hope we are to find our strength in him please Lord now by your spirit grant us that strength from above and encourage us that we might walk as we should disciples of the Christ until the heavens are rolled back like a scroll and the elements of this creation are melted away and your children appear as the righteous in the heavens forever.
The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.