Lord of the Law

Dr. Larry Thorson
September 23, 2007

Scripture: Matthew 5:17-20

17 "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. 18 Truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. 19 Anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20 For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.

“For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven”. What kind of good news is that?

When you come to church you want to be uplifted. You want to hear that life isn’t so bad, that God loves you and will see you through your next challenge. You want to know that when this life is over you have reservations in a five star resort. You don’t want any of this “iffy” business. “If you do this or if you do that you’ll enter the kingdom of heaven”. Besides, Jesus was holding the Pharisees up as examples of who we need to be like.

The Pharisees were the quintessential bad guys of the gospels. No single group proved more difficult for Jesus to deal with; no single group appeared to be less moved by Jesus. Next to the Pharisees, even the demon possessed come off looking pretty good. At least Jesus was able to cast the demons out and so turn these once-possessed folks into friends. But not so the Pharisees--they just keep digging in their heels against Jesus' ministry, getting progressively angrier until they finally get him executed. And he’s holding them up as an example? What gives?

This was Jesus, the same guy who always broke the Pharisee version of the Sabbath, who didn’t avoid houses of known sinners, who actually spoke openly with women on the streets. On the other hand the Pharisees wanted to avoid any kind of breach in the commandment against adultery so they wouldn’t even glance at a woman. Of course this became a bit difficult when they were out on the streets. So some Pharisees would consistently walk with their heads down. These folks eventually became known as "bleeding Pharisees" because they regularly walked right into buildings! You could always spy them walking around with hankies on some fresh wound on their foreheads!

But not Jesus, he was the one who in general kept telling stories that made it sound like the Law was not the ticket to heaven after all. He was the one who seemed to be so quick to forgive those who had broken God's law that after a while the Pharisees suspected he was not only not the Christ or Messiah, he was the Antichrist! The formula was simple: they believed that if you kept God’s law that would one day bring the promised Messiah or savior. Therefore, anyone who broke the Law could not himself be the Messiah but could only be a hindrance to the coming of the Christ!

So here is this same Jesus saying in his Sermon on the Mount: "Don't think for a minute that I came to get rid of the Law: I came to fulfill the Law in every detail. In fact, if you want to be in my kingdom, then you've got to live better than even the Pharisees do!"

This would be like saying to a beginning piano student struggling to plink out the notes to "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" "I tell you the truth: unless your abilities to play the Chopin etudes exceed that of Vladimir Horowitz, you can no longer be in my class!" It would be enough to make that student quit! How could he ever get that good unless his teacher stuck with him?! He'd never make it to the level of Horowitz on his own! Few people in the world could! So of what use is a piano teacher who sets the bar so impossibly high?

But God is moral and just and he can’t just change the rules to fit us. Breaking laws is breaking laws. If the speed limit is 35 mph and you’re doing 65 mph the judge can’t change the speed limit to fit you. That lower speed limit was put in place for your own good. In the same way God’s laws were put in place for our own good. Those laws have to be fulfilled.

What Jesus is saying is that you can’t just do your own thing. You can’t make up your own rules that you think you can do just so that you can say you fulfilled them. God’s law has to be fulfilled.

I don’t find too many people in America who believe that. We’re smart. There must be a way around any problem. The closest example I can come up with for being stuck is melanoma. When Dave Demeaux was diagnosed in July with melanoma the doctors told him there was nothing they could do for him. The cancer had spread too aggressively. That hits us really hard. We always think there is something we can do and when there isn’t we feel helpless.

Last spring I foolishly tried to jump a deep mud hole with my truck in Tijuana. It didn’t make it and I stalled out blocking a highway. At first I thought about calling AAA to tow me out but my phone wouldn’t work there. Then I thought about walking back to the worksite and getting help from our team but that was too far to walk. I thought about pushing the truck out of the way but that was up a fairly steep incline and I couldn’t do it. Then coming at me down the muddy road was a semi. All I could pray for was mercy because I was out of options for helping myself.

The semi came to a stop in front of me. The driver got out, found some chains in his truck, whistled over the driver of a small truck, told him something in Spanish, hooked his chain to my truck and the small truck and in a few minutes I was pulled up the hill out of harm’s way.

Last Monday Ruby Johnson was in a car accident on Elk St in Sierra Dawn. She was hit so hard by another car that she couldn’t get out of her car herself. It took rescue folks 45 minutes to cut her out using the Jars of Life. Now she has a broken hip and as of Friday was awaiting surgery once her blood plates go up. Ruby knows what it feels like to be stuck and to be rescued and do many of you.

That’s why Jesus stepped in and fulfilled God’s law on our behalf. We were stuck and didn’t know it. The Pharisees thought they could fulfill it on their own but they couldn’t do it. The disciples who followed Jesus thought maybe fulfilling the law wasn’t that important. But it is.

As his sermon goes on he goes on to explain how difficult and impossible it is fulfill God’s law and enter into heaven apart from Jesus Christ. So turn to Jesus, receive him into your heart. Live for him.

This is the good news that I take from this: whenever you fall or you feel trapped, helpless on your own either physically or economically, use it as an illustration, a tiny illustration of how spiritually stuck we were before Jesus came into the picture. The same way that we’re going to go to heaven by trusting in Jesus not our works is the same way that we’re going to get rescued from whatever is trapping us now. Amen.