Lord, we pray that you would
open to us what you're saying here in the Sermon on the Mount
and teach us the greatness and the dearness of what you've said
here so that we might embrace you with our whole heart and
we might find ourselves to be comforted and satisfied with
the Lord Jesus Christ. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.
Matthew chapter 5, starting at verse 17. Jesus says, 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 jot or one tittle 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 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, you shall in no case enter into the kingdom of
heaven. First notice in verse 17, Jesus
says, think not that I am come to destroy the law and the prophets,
I am not come to destroy but to fulfill. The Lord Jesus Christ
is the one who fulfills the law and the prophets. And if you
see these plain truths of scripture, they help guide you as you go
deeper into the truth of what is said here. Jesus Christ, the
Lord, came to fulfill the law and the prophets. Then in verse
18, he says, Until heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle
shall in no wise pass from the law till all be fulfilled. Heaven
and earth will pass away. But until they do, Not one little,
not the smallest part of God's Word will fail. God's Word cannot
fail. And who is going to make sure
that it doesn't fail? The Lord Jesus Christ. He is
going to fulfill it. And then look at verse 19. Whoever
therefore shall break one of the least of these commandments,
and teach men so, he shall be called least in the kingdom of
heaven. Because God's Word cannot fail,
because it's that important to God to send His Son to fulfill
it. Therefore, if any man teach or
break one of the least commandments and teaches men so, that person
will be called the least in the kingdom of heaven. But then he
says, but whoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be
called great in the kingdom of heaven. And then in verse 20,
he tells us our great need. He says, for I say unto you that
except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the
scribes and Pharisees, you shall in no case enter into the kingdom
of heaven. Therefore, we see in this verse,
in order for us to enter heaven, We must have a righteousness
that God accepts. And that righteousness has to
be greater than the best of men on earth. So with that, just
as the overview of this text of scripture, I want to go into
each of these verses with you. And look at them more carefully.
I've entitled this message, The Fulfillment of the Law and Our
Entrance into Heaven. And there's much that could be
said, but I can't fit it all into the title. The first thing
is that in the first verse, in verse 17, think not that I am
come to destroy the law or the prophets. Why would the Lord
Jesus say that? Who thought, who accused Him
of saying that? Well, he said it here in his
Sermon on the Mount at the outset of his ministry because later
he would be accused of setting aside the Law and the Prophets. How would that be? How would
that accusation come? Well, it would come because he
would say things like, whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood
has everlasting life. Whoever believes on the sun has
everlasting life. And suddenly, the Pharisees and
the scribes would have to say, well, what about the entire law?
How can you set aside all of that? And he would say here in
advance, before they brought the accusation, don't think that
I came to set aside or bypass to go around the law in order
to achieve some other way to God. When God spoke His law,
when He spoke by the prophets throughout from the beginning
of time until the Lord Jesus came, those words were immutable. They couldn't change and they
couldn't fail. They were like God Himself. His
word, God, and His word are inseparable. God's Word cannot fail or God
Himself will fail. So when the Lord Jesus says this,
don't think I'm come to destroy the Law or the Prophets. He's
underscoring the fact that God's Word cannot fail and He Himself
will ensure that that Word doesn't fail because He says, I am come
to fulfill them. I'm come to fulfill them. But
in saying this, he's actually, he's doing another thing. He's
correcting us as we naturally are. And specifically, God has
given a title to these men who lived in Jesus' day called scribes
and Pharisees because they exemplified, they illustrated what we are
in our hearts by nature. Scribes copied the Old Testament
scriptures so that when the pages would wear out, they would have
the fresh copy to make sure that nothing was lost in the copy.
And then also, they were the experts in the law. Their job
was to make sure that the law was accurately and objectively
communicated to the people. And the Pharisees were experts
in how to keep the law. They knew it, and they were the
ones who outwardly would do it so that other people could look
at them and say, ah, that's what it means to keep the law. Both
of these were in league together. They were both complementary
to each other. The scribes thought a lot of
the Pharisees, and the Pharisees thought a lot of the scribes.
They were like friends. helping each other in their common
cause. But their cause was a sinful
cause. Because the scribes and the Pharisees
had a fault. And it wasn't just a little fault.
It was a great sin. And what was that sin? It was
the sin of self-righteousness. And what does self-righteousness
mean? It means righteousness that I establish by my own obedience. Scribes and Pharisees understood
the law, at least as far as they were willing to admit what the
law truly was. They understood the law. And
the law by itself laid aside their life, laid beside them,
would condemn them as guilty, and expose them as corrupt, and
leave them without hope before God. And this was unacceptable
to them because they only had one solution to the problem of
how to be right with God. That solution was their own personal
obedience. And by nature, that is the only
way that we imagine coming to God. Is by something that we
are, something that we do, something that we can become. And this
is the thought of the scribes and Pharisees. The same people
brought the woman in John 8 to Jesus, taken in adultery, and
accused her, and then laid the two options before the Lord Jesus
Christ. Either condemn her without mercy,
or clear her at the expense of justice. Neither one of those
was the solution, but because they were limited in their understanding. They didn't know the truth of
God's heart. They didn't know the heart of
God, and they themselves didn't understand Him in truth and in
grace. They only took the law as something
that they could keep, and they imagined that they could actually
do what they needed to do in order to make God accept them.
And they especially thought that whatever they did, their knowledge
or their deeds, something that they could do would give them
a difference, a distinction between them and others. And that's exactly
what we all do by nature. We find it in our daily experience,
don't we? Have you ever found an inclination,
a propensity to criticize others? I do it all the time and it reveals
to me what I'm actually thinking. I'm always thinking that I myself
have acquired some level of understanding or obedience or rightness or
something that gives me the right to compare myself to others and
find them lacking in that area where I think I've arrived to
some extent or improved myself. And this is what I would identify
as probably the most, and I'm going to use a big word here
on purpose, to explain it, the most insidious of sins. Now, what does the word insidious
mean? I didn't just pull it out of the air. I was laying there
the other night thinking about this sermon and this text of
scripture, and it kept going over and over in my mind. I thought,
as I'm laying there, I'm too tired to get up and look up the
word. But I got to remember this until morning because I need
to understand what that word means. I had a sense. But the
word insidious, so that you understand it and you carry the picture
of it in your mind. It's like, think of a snake in
the grass. You're walking through tall grass.
You can't see the ground. But there's a snake in the grass.
And the snake is a deadly snake. It's going to bite you. And what
happens when you discover the snake, either because he's bitten
you or there he is and you happen to find him, he slithers away
or something. You think, oh, that could have
been harmful, that could have been hurtful and deadly even
if it was a poisonous snake. But he was in the grass and I
couldn't see him. There was an evil there. That wasn't apparent. I couldn't see the evil until
it was revealed to me. That's what insidious means.
It's a snake in the grass. Something that's harmful and
hurtful and dangerous, but it's not apparent until it's revealed.
And so our pride, our spiritual pride, is like a snake in the
grass. We don't know it's there until
God's law comes to us. But because we're so stubborn
in our pride, what we do is when the law of God comes to us, we
only see in our narrow-minded, myopic vision that one solution
possible is that we can get ourselves out of the mess we're in. No,
we can somehow please God by doing what He commands us to
do. The law says if you perfectly, continually, unfailingly keep
every commandment, you have life. But if you fail even one, at
one point in time, then you're cursed. And so we naturally think,
well, then I gotta do it all. But since we can't do it all,
we're honest enough with our conscience that we know we can't
do it all. What we do is we modify the law in order to fit what
we can do. We do that all the time. When
I was in school, when I was a young person in school, I ran track
and field. And I liked to do that. I'd high
jump and triple jump and long jump and run the 50-yard dash
or whatever and got all these blue ribbons. But they had these
different categories of performance. There was the A class, the B
class, and the C class. And I was in the C class. So
getting a blue ribbon in the C class really didn't mean very
much because I was a small little guy. And there were people who
could jump a lot higher and run a lot faster. But I still got
a blue ribbon because they said, well, you're younger, you're
smaller, so we're going to give you a ribbon to kind of boost
your ego or whatever the reason behind that was. That's the same
thing we do in the law. We say, well, this is as much
as I can do. I'm doing my best. Or I wanted
to do my best, but I didn't always. I did what I could do. We know
better than that. And so we, more subtly than that,
what we do as Christians, we think, well, I need to be right. I want to be right. I want to
do what's right. I want to know what's right. And we're constantly
trying to do what's right and know what's right. And then we
discover ourselves in the middle of a conflict, and we find that
our biggest priority is ourselves. And we know that because we begin
to have strife and conflict with others over what's right. And
we forget that the biggest concern God has is that we love God and
love one another. And we make our own correctness
be a higher standard than just seeking the salvation and the
edification of someone else. And we reveal our legal heart.
We reveal that we're trying to change the law to show ourselves
to be right instead of doing what the law says, which is to
love God and love His people above all things. And then we'll
be right. But we miss that. And so the
Pharisees were that way. And so Jesus says, The least
of the commandments will not be unfulfilled. And whoever breaks
one of the least and teaches men so, he shall be called least
in the kingdom of heaven. That's what the scribes and the
Pharisees did. They broke what they called the
least. And they taught men it was okay
to do that because they were seeking a higher good, where
they were keeping the better commandments. And so Jesus so
many times throughout the Gospels accused the Pharisees and exposed
their hypocrisy. All that you do, you do to be
seen of men. Their understanding or their
teaching of the law was that it was only outward. But the
law has to be inward. It has to be an inward. It's
a spiritual thing. And so it affects who we are
at the core of who we are. If we don't obey it at the core
of who we are, if we don't obey it all the time, if we don't
obey every part of it perfectly, then the law curses us. It's
black and white with the law. It's not like a gray. Well, I
see you tried, so you get the 80% award like they did in school.
I remember so many math tests I took where they would give
me partial credit. I ended up with A's in all my
math classes because of partial credit. I never, I mean, maybe
10% of the time actually got the final and correct answer.
That's the way the world is. We know we can't keep it, so
they dumbed down the standard. And they try to encourage you
by that. And we encourage ourselves by that. But that's not the way
the law works. Do this and live. Fail and die. That's the law, and that's as
That's God's Word. So is there something wrong with
the Word? Is there something wrong with God's Law? Because
no one can keep it. Why would God give us something
that we can't keep? Is God too harsh? If He gives
us something we can't do, then doesn't that make something wrong
with God's Law? No, the problem is not with God's
Word, not with the law, not with His requirements. The problem
is with us, and that's where we have trouble. We want to judge
others, but we never realize that the law is meant to reveal
our true nature, our sinfulness. And so, read this with me in
a few verses in the Bible. Look at Romans 3.19. I'm just
going to refer these to you. Hopefully these are things that
you could turn to and find, but I want you to see them. Romans
3.19, it says, Now we know that whatsoever things the law saith,
it saith to them who are under the law, that every mouth may
be stopped That means to be shut. And all the world may become
guilty before God. The law, whatever it says, says
it so that men might be made guilty before the law. And then
look at Romans 5 in verse 20. Moreover, the law entered that
the offense might abound, might overflow. But where sin abounded,
grace did much more abound. God gave his word, his law, in
order that our sin, what we were, would overflow and it would be
exposed so that we would not, we would undeniably have to admit,
I'm a sinner, I'm guilty, and not only am I guilty of committing
sins, but sin that I do is because sin is what I am. And then look
at Mark chapter 7 and verse 31. or rather 21, Mark chapter 7
verse 21, he says, Where the sin comes from? You
know, you think, well, the devil made me do it. No, he didn't.
Look at Mark 7, verse 21. Jesus says, Where does sin come from? It
comes from our heart. And then one more in Romans chapter
7 and verse 13. Look at this. Paul discovered
that whatever the law said to do, it only uncovered more sin
in himself. And so he says in Romans chapter
17, I'm sorry, chapter 7. I'm looking
at the verses and trying to think and talk at the same time. He
says, look at verse 7 of Romans 7. He says, what shall we say?
Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known
sin, but by the law. That's what I read in Romans
3 19. How do we know what sin is? By the law. For I had not
known lust, except the law had said thou shalt not covet. He
expertly goes right to the heart. Lust is a sin of the heart. Because
covetousness is a desire. It's not an outward commission.
It's something in the inside. But sin, taking occasion by the
commandment... Think about sin as this villain,
as an enemy, as a robber or something. Sin, taking occasion by the commandment... wrought in me all manner of concupiscence
all manner of of lustful desire for from within I'm sorry for
without the law sin was dead sorry for without the law sin
was dead for I was alive without the law once but when the commandment
came sin revived and I died and the commandment which was ordained
to life I found to be to death For sin, taking occasion by the
commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me. Wherefore the
law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good. Was
then that which is good made death to me? God forbid. But
sin, that it might appear sin, working death in me by that which
is good, that sin by the commandment might become exceeding sinful. How sinful is sin? It's this
sinful. Sin has taken what is good and
killed me and murdered me with it. That's how sinful sin is.
And that's me, that's what's in me. So it has left me guilty,
has exposed me, God's law has shown me to be guilty, has exposed
me as corrupt, and has revealed that I in myself can do nothing
but disobey God. That's my nature. In myself,
all I do is sin. I cannot and you cannot, according
to scripture, keep one of God's law one time in all of your life. That's the way we are. And to
think like the Pharisees, to think that I could be right,
that I could somehow, somehow, there's a potential in me. If
I was given the law and it just required this subset of things
of me, then I could keep it and please God. And then I would
show, compared to others, that I'd actually kept it. God would
have to award me with life. To think that way, reveals that
we're under the complete dominion and bondage of sin. And every
time I find in myself this attitude and this propensity to be critical
and to judge and to think of myself in comparison to others,
especially in spiritual things, I realize then that this is the
most insidious, this is the most harmful and hateful kind of sin
in God's sight, this sin of self-righteousness and hypocrisy, not owning the
holiness of God's law and also thinking of myself as capable
of doing it. This is wrong. That God would
accept me, a sinner, nothing but a vile ungodly, sinful man
because of something he could find in me, something I could
bring to him. This is the very heart of pride. It says in Proverbs 6, 16, these
six things doth the Lord hate, and the first one in the list
is a proud look. A proud look. The last one is,
he that sows discord among brethren. That's exactly what pride leads
to. A proud thought of itself, a
proud attitude toward God's law so that we make God's law our
servant instead of honoring God by keeping it. and then thinking
of others in an ill way and sowing discord among the brethren. Because
in doing that, in sowing discord, we're actually saying things
good about ourselves and evil about others, as if we ourselves
are something. And all this is revealing to
us the heart of our scribe and Pharisee heart. And Jesus said,
"...whoever breaks the least of the commandments, and teaches
men either by word or their action, he shall be called 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 to you that except your righteousness exceed the
righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall in no
case enter into the kingdom of heaven. If you could keep the
law, every law, and keep it perfectly, and do it continually without
fail, God would award you with life. This is what the scripture
says. He says in Leviticus 18.5, "...the man that doeth them shall
live in them." that's also restated in Romans 10 5 and then he also
says this in the negative whosoever shall not continue in all things
which are written in the book of the law to do them he's under
the curse so there you have it do this and live do not or fail
to do it and die under the curse there's no middle ground and
so Jesus says if To enter heaven, your righteousness must exceed
the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees. What was their
righteousness? Their righteousness took some
of the law and made it an outward application. But the true spirit
of the law is always an inward application, and it covers the
whole law, and it has to be done perfectly. So many times in the
Old Testament it says, to that effect, the Lord tells Israel,
He says, Be thou perfect. In Deuteronomy 18.13 it says
that. And so throughout Scripture there's
this constant emphasis on the requirement of God on us. The demand of God on us. God's
authority demands that we obey Him. God is good. For Him to
demand something of us is a good thing. To break it is an evil
thing. And by breaking God's law, we're
showing ourselves to be opposed to His authority. In opposition
to His goodness, denying the light that we're given, we sin.
When we sin, we sin against God's revealed truth, against His light.
And so, these things only condemn us further. And all the Pharisees
could see, their solution was always them in the center of
the bullseye. It had to be part, I had to be
part of that solution, or there is no solution. And so, the Lord
Jesus says, no, no. Here's the answer. Don't think
I am come to destroy the law and the prophets. I am not come
to destroy but to fulfill. You see, I'm not going to circumvent,
not going to get around, not going to try to find another
way. God's law is an everlasting law. It must be fulfilled. And no one can fulfill it in
human flesh unless that one is the Lord Jesus Christ. Only one
man could fulfill the law and the prophets. And he's the one
in verse 19 where it says, whoever shall do and teach them shall
be called great in the kingdom of heaven. The Lord Jesus Christ
only. Him alone. can please God. He only has a righteousness God
will recognize, and He only is the one who has a righteousness
that is greater than the scribes and Pharisees. And the question
is, well then how can I, how can I ever have a hope of entering
heaven? If I can't enter heaven by my
own personal law-keeping, And how can I enter it if the Lord
Jesus Christ is the only one who can keep that law? First
of all, we need to prove from Scripture that this is the case.
And I say this to prove it from Scripture because I want your
faith and hope to be on what God says. All of Scripture, all
of Scripture is to convince us that we in ourselves are utterly
sinful and that Christ alone is the one God accepts for His
obedience. And then the other part of this
is to teach us that our righteousness has to be the righteousness of
the Lord Jesus Christ. and how we have that. So what
I want to do in these next points here is I want you to see that
Scripture teaches that there's no other righteousness but the
righteousness of the Lord, the obedience unto death of the Lord
Jesus Christ. Here's how it does it, and I'm
not going to take you through all this because it would take
too much time, but let me give you these things. First of all,
God shows that man has failed to produce righteousness, the
best of men. Adam, the first man God created,
failed in keeping God's one law. Don't eat of the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil. Adam broke that law. Adam failed. And then God spoke and showed
how Abraham was made righteous independently of what he did. It says that Abraham believed
God and it was counted to him for righteousness. He was not
circumcised, so he couldn't look at his ceremonial keeping of
the law. He didn't obey God in order to be righteous. God imputed,
credited him with righteousness only because he believed what
God said. concerning the Lord Jesus Christ.
He believed God's promise concerning Christ. And God said, Christ
is your righteousness. And then David also, the scripture
says, David himself says, blessed is the man to whom the Lord will
not impute sin. And the man, Since all men are
sinners, that meant that God's righteousness has to be given
to that man, even though he was a sinner. And then Paul, the
apostle, he said in the eyes of the law, he was absolutely
blameless. He had outwardly, he had kept
everything that the law said to do. But this is what Paul
said. You would think if there was another way to be righteous,
that a man could find to be righteous, Paul would have found it. But
in himself he said, I was blameless before the law. But this is the
one thing that I seek. The one thing I desire is to
be found in the Lord Jesus Christ. Not having my own righteousness,
which is of the law. So Paul confesses this, and he
says that everything that he had done, everything he had done
to establish his own righteousness before God, he said, was dung. It was the most repugnant, revolting,
repulsive thing before God, and then God had made it so to him.
It was refuse, it was garbage, it was worthless, it was ugly
and stank before God because it was what man could do. And
he says there's only one thing that'll do, and that's the obedience
and the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. Not only did
Adam and Abraham and David and Paul fail, but the entire nation
of Israel failed. They tried to attain righteousness
by law-keeping. And they failed. It says in Romans
9 that they failed. But then, in addition to all
these failures and the clear declaration Paul gave, there
are other plain statements in Scripture that the just, the
righteous, there are some who are counted just before God,
they live by faith. They don't live by their personal
obedience. They don't live by their works.
They live by what Jesus has done. They come to God looking upon
the Lord Jesus Christ, trusting Him only. And they trust Him
because God said He is the righteousness of God. Plain statements in scripture
that Christ is the righteousness of God. Let me read just a couple
to you here. In Jeremiah 23.6 I want you to have some scriptures
memorized. And these ones that are so plain,
you should have memorized or at least know where they are
in the chapter if you don't remember the verse. But Jeremiah 23, he
says this in verse 5. Well, I'll just read verse 6.
In his days, in Christ's days, Judah shall be saved, Israel
shall dwell safely, and this is his name whereby he shall
be called the Lord our God. righteousness. What is our righteousness? It's the Lord, the Lord Jesus
Christ. And then in Isaiah chapter 45,
if you don't remember many other chapters in Isaiah, remember
chapter 45 and 53. Look at Isaiah 45. In verse, we read this one or
quote it all the time. Look unto me, God says, and be
ye saved, all the ends of the earth. There's the command to
look. Sometimes we think, how do I know I'm one of God's elect? How do I know that Christ died
for me? How do I know that God has given me his spirit? He doesn't
tell you to know that. He tells you to look, to look
at Christ. Jesus said, I came to fulfill
the Law and the Prophets. And God says, look to me. Look,
look at what I've done. Don't look at what you can do.
Don't look at your failures. Look at what I've done. He says,
I am God and there is none else. I have sworn by myself the word
has gone out of my mouth in righteousness and shall not return that unto
me every knee shall bow and every tongue shall swear. Listen to
this next verse. Surely shall one say in the Lord
have I righteousness and strength even to him shall men come and
all that are incensed against him shall be ashamed in the Lord
shall all the seed of Israel be justified and shall glory
see that that last verse where will all of those who are saved
be justified in the Lord and where will they be where will
they glory what will their boast be it will be in the Lord And
it can't be anywhere else, because that's their only righteousness.
In themselves, they're nothing. So, the plain statements of scripture
make it clear that believers are righteous because of the
Lord Jesus Christ alone. And then, I would say this too.
that another reason why it's essential that Christ is the
only one who is the righteousness of God is because God's law is
so holy and so high that we could never do what God has required
of us. We're sinners. And to think that
we can is to reduce God's holiness to something that we can do as
sinners, which is ridiculous. But another reason why only Christ's
righteousness could be the righteousness God accepts is because think
about the absurdity of Christ's death if his death was not required
for every man. Think about the possibility that
there's one person in the whole universe in all time and eternity
who could somehow continually keep God's law themselves so
that God could look at what they did and accept them because of
who they were or because of what they've done. What would that
mean? Listen to the absurdity of that. It would mean that that
person would enter heaven And here is the Lord Jesus Christ
worshipped for himself being the only one worthy to open the
books and to fulfill all God's will for his people, to please
God in the sacrifice of himself and to establish everlasting
righteousness for his people. But there's this one person.
over here who has by his own law keeping entered heaven and
everyone is giving glory to the Lord Jesus Christ except this
one and God has to honor him for his own personal obedience
and yet Christ is supposed to inherit everything and yet this
man inherits something of his own How could this be? This is
absolutely stupid, absurd, that God would kill his son and offer
him up for his people if in any other way they could be made
righteous. And so it says in Galatians 2.21,
If righteousness come by the law, then Christ died in vain. And if there is a way for life
to be given, by the law, then truly righteousness would have
come by the law. All the promises of God state
that righteousness only comes by grace because of the Lord
Jesus Christ. Promises. God doesn't make any
promises unless it's a promise of grace. He says that the promises
of God are opposed to our works. If it's of promise, then it has
to be by grace. And so, think about it, because
God would never commit himself to do something that didn't depend
upon us unless it were entirely by grace. All these things teach
us the absolute certainty that the righteousness that Jesus
is speaking of in Matthew chapter 5 and verse 20, which has to
exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, has to
be, can only be, the obedience of the Lord Jesus Christ. And
so he says to us, you must have this righteousness, and if you
don't have it, you cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven. What
righteousness is this? This is the obedience of the
Lord Jesus Christ unto death. This is what fulfills the law
and the prophets, what the Lord Jesus Christ did. Only he kept
God's commandments. Only he could. Only He was worthy
to unfold the prophecies of Scripture and fulfill them. He's the one
who fulfilled the seed of the woman that God promised to Eve,
that her seed would bruise the head of the serpent. He's the
one who fulfilled the seed to Abraham. He's the one who sits
on David's throne. He's the one who is the promised
land. He's the one who's the tabernacle
and the high priest in the Old Testament. He's the one who's
offering pleas to God. He's everything in the Old Testament.
Every promise of God. It says a little later on in
Matthew, it says, all the law and the prophets were until John,
until John the Baptist. And so all the law and the prophets
were until John. And what did John say? John the
Baptist, he said, behold, the Lamb of God, which takes away
the sin of the world. Everything that God spoke, he
has spoken concerning his son, what he would do and what he
would fulfill. And all of our hope, all of our
hope of coming to God and be accepted by God is one thing
and one thing only, that we're found in the Lord Jesus Christ. Now I don't know about you, but
that is a huge, huge relief to me. Because if I, if anything
that God requires to enter heaven depends upon me in any way, I
will mess it up. I will fail to do it. If it even
required some kind of a sincerity, at one point in my life where
I had to be absolutely sincere, if you could just muster up sincerity
to make this decision and do it right one time, I would fail
in that. And how much more to maintain
a right standing before God in myself? It can't be done. And
so, when we come to God, we have no basis for spiritual pride. We have no basis for anything
except thankfulness for what God has done for us in Christ.
This admiration and love to the Lord Jesus Christ for what He's
done for us, this causes us to humble ourselves in the dust
and to think high thoughts of God, that His justice would be
so high that He would require the death of His Son to satisfy
justice for His people, and His grace so great that He would
give His Son. And that His love so immense
and so free that He would not look for anything in us, but
He would have us for Himself through the death of His Son.
All these things put us in absolute awe of God's greatness and His
mercy. So that we're humbled and we
lay low in the dust and we say, Amazing grace, amazing grace.
How could God save a sinner, a wretch like me? And this is
what the gospel does to us. When God gives us faith, He convinces
us of our sin, because in ourselves, we can't believe Christ. In ourselves,
we've called God a liar. In ourselves, we've lived our
lives for ourselves, to please ourselves, to promote ourselves,
and to satisfy ourselves. But Christ lived all His life
to satisfy God and to save His people. He lived to please His
Father. He lived to save His people,
and He did all that, and God rewarded Him with eternal life.
Look at one more scripture. He came to fulfill the Law and
the Prophets. Look at Daniel chapter 9. Daniel
chapter 9. There's many verses that clearly
establish Christ as our righteousness, such as 1 Corinthians 1.30, where
God says, of him are you in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto
us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. And many, many
other verses, like Romans 10.4, where he says, Christ is the
end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believeth. But
look at this in Daniel chapter 9, verse 24. 70 weeks are determined
upon thy people, this is a prophecy, and upon thy holy city, to finish
the transgression, to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation
for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and
to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most holy."
Everything listed in this verse, it says, they were determined
upon thy people and upon thy holy city, All of this was done
by the Lord Jesus Christ. He fulfilled it. He finished
transgression. He made an end of sins. He made
reconciliation for iniquity. He brought in everlasting righteousness. He sealed up the vision in the
prophecy. And God anointed Him and raised
Him from the dead and set Him at His own right hand. He is
the most holy. You see how He fulfilled it all?
He put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. He answered God for
us at the cross, and He answers Him now in our conscience by
faith. We receive all that Christ has
done in our own experience. God applies it to us in our experience
when He gives us faith in Him. Look unto Me, He says. Just look! I want to take you to two more
verses. I said that would be the last one. Well, I lied. 2 Chronicles. Look at this. 2 Chronicles, chapter
20. He says, the setting is that there was
this battle to be fought. The people of Judah under King
Jehoshaphat had no strength in the battle. And he says in verse
15, He said, Tomorrow, go ye down against
them. Behold, they come up by the cliff
of Ziz, and you shall find them at the end of the brook before
the wilderness of Jeruel. You shall not need to fight in
this battle. Set yourselves, stand still, and see the salvation
of the Lord with you. O Judah and Jerusalem, fear not,
nor be dismayed. Tomorrow, go out against them,
for the Lord will be with you. Now in Hebrews 1.3, you know
what it says? When he had by himself purged our sins, he sat
down. This is what God says to us.
Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord. You failed. You are corrupt. In yourself,
you're hopeless. Look to Christ. When you feel your own evil in your heart,
and you see that the very thing God requires the most of you
to do, to love Him and to love His people, to love your neighbor
as yourself, and you realize you're so far from that, it's
as if you can't even start, then look. The battle is God's. The Lord Jesus Christ has finished
this. He himself is our righteousness. Let's pray. Lord, we pray that
we would know ourselves to be absolutely helpless in this thing
of making ourselves righteous or being righteous and that every
attempt is only a failure because of our pride of thinking that
we can do God's holy law. We who are sinners who have already
broken it at every moment in our lives in thought, in word,
and deed. But help us, dear Lord, to see
that You anticipated and provided and accomplished full fulfillment,
complete and perfect, of Your Law in the Lord Jesus Christ
when He obeyed, even unto the death of the cross, He was answering
every requirement, and He did this not for Himself, but as
the surety to make Your people sure to You and give an answer
for them perfectly in all things that You required of them. Thank
You, Lord, that He is our righteousness. and we have no other, and help
us not to desire another or look for another, but to trust only
in Him. Help us to be like those who
enter in at that straight, that compressed, that narrow gate,
stripped of all that we are, like little infants, helpless
except to cry and to make a mess, of no potential in ourselves
and no ability but to look to Christ, He who saved us from
our sins and washed us with His own blood, Lord, He loved us
and helped us to find in ourselves this fruit of faith and love
to Him and to His people. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.