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Our Gospel reading this morning is from Matthew chapter 5 verses 17 through 20 as we continue our series on the Sermon on the Mount and this is God's Word. 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. For truly I say to you until heaven and earth pass away not an iota, not a dot, will pass away from the law until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called the least in the kingdom of heaven. Whoever does teach them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Excuse me. Let's pray. Father in heaven as we come to your word, open our hearts, teach us, change us in Jesus' name. Amen. When our second son David was in high school, grade 10 I think, he was given an assignment to come up with his own philosophy of life, morality and everything. But there was a caveat. He wasn't allowed to use the Bible, probably not allowed to use any religious book but he specifically remembers the Bible. He wasn't allowed to use any philosophy that had been written previously. He had to come up with it all on his own. Now I can't think of anything that's much more foolish than that. The idea was supposed to teach them that morality is subjective, I guess. That each person has to live according to the moral code that has its genesis within them. Each 15 year old was being taught that they alone were the arbiter of their own morality. This idea that the answers lie within you is a very prominent point of view in Western culture. But it has its origins in Eastern philosophy. One Buddhist writer puts it like this, it sounds daunting, it feels like a mountain that is insurmountable. Many of us complain of being unable to make the changes we recognize in our lives or require in our lives because we aren't sure where to start. The answer always lies within. Another author that I would describe as new age, which is really just either Buddhism or Hinduism done over, said it like this, one day I asked myself what do I want? What is my passion and my talent? What is that fits me best? What for have I come to this earth? What is my own flavor or fragrance, like rose fragrance is different from that of a Mary Gold? After all, we are all different in our own signature, our own DNA, our own identity. After these questions came, I dropped doing things to please others. I searched my heart. I wanted to know my first love. I wanted to hear my inner voice. I found that this was a journey to know myself, to meet myself, to be acquainted with myself. My inner journey began and connected me to my core. When I got connected to my core, I got connected to everyone. My riddle was solved and I found the answer lies inside. You might ask, what's the problem with that? Sounds reasonable to me. Well, see, that's the problem, is that it sounds reasonable to you. But there's really nothing reasonable about it, according to God's Word. Remember, David was told that you can't use the Bible. He was probably told you can't use the Quran or any other religious book, but he was also told you couldn't use any pre-existing philosophy. So now a 15-year-old is told to eliminate all the wisdom of the ages, religious or not, and come up with your own morality to live by. I had a cousin named Jamie, and I remember he and I were sort of ran around together when we were younger. And then we happened to be visiting my grandmother and sitting on her sofa in her home, and my cousin Jamie was there as well, and we were in our 30s, both married, both with kids. And I said, Jamie, do you remember the things we did when we were 18? He said, oh, yeah. I said, when we were 18, we didn't know anything, and we didn't even know that. So much less at 15. Why is a 15-year-old, and this is now 21 years ago, why was a 15-year-old being told to come up with your own morality? Because that is the lie of the devil. Dr. John Lennox said that in Genesis we learned that morality is not primarily horizontal between persons, but it's vertical between God and persons. Our young people today are being taught to look inside themselves for the answers to moral questions, but they should be taught to look outside because morality comes from God, it's transcendent. I remember a very famous movie, Chariots of Fire, and the protagonist wouldn't run on Sunday, but he preached on Sunday, and he read from Isaiah, but then his concluding remark is, the answer lies within you, which was to fly in the face of all of Scripture. When you tell somebody to look within, you are telling them to be their own gods. The temptation for Adam and Eve was to be like God, knowing good and evil. Psychologist Jordan Peterson said it's the offering of defining good and evil as subjective creatures. The fundamental moral propositions are transcendent. They are not in the proper domain of human maneuvering. What are the three, or there are three, sources of moral knowledge apart from God? The first is what we've been talking about. It's subjective that you or me, or a 15-year-old, is the final moral arbiter of right and wrong. See, if a 15-year-old is the moral arbiter of right and wrong, and somebody insults him, somebody accuses him, somebody makes him feel bad about himself, he could decide that it's moral for him to go to a school and shoot everybody. And who's to say he's wrong if everyone is the final moral arbiter? Well, we can see right away that doesn't work. So what's the other, or another, option? It's consensus. We have general agreement of what is right and wrong. We can see that working here in Canada. Things that we would have considered immoral or illegal 30 or 40 years ago are now considered fine. I won't fill in the blanks for you. I think you know what some of them are. One of them, though, is, I forget the acronym, but it's assistance in dying so that it's okay to help somebody commit suicide. Well, the problem with general agreement of what is right and wrong doesn't take much to remember that Nazi Germany thought the general agreement of what is right and wrong was to eliminate Jews from the face of the earth. So there was a Nazi Germany problem with consensus. And today it's the Hamas problem. Doesn't answer the question of why ought you. Autness has to come from above. Well, the third, apart from God, way of coming to moral knowledge is power. If I can compel you, the thinking is that I'm better than you. Might makes right. And basically all pre-Christian societies were based on this. And even some Christian societies operated this way. I remember reading about World War I in Europe, for example, the aristocracy were given all the positions of authority in the armed services. Under the theory that their blood made them better than others. In many areas of life, this is the way of the world. But it's contradicted by God and his word. God's word from the beginning says that human beings are made in his image. Genesis chapter 1, 26. Let us make man in our image after our likeness, said God. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the heavens, over this livestock, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man in his own image. In the image of God he created them, male and female he created them. And we have spoken about the temptation and the fall of Adam and Eve into sin, the sin of wanting to be like God, which was Satan's sin as well. But God gave us his own son as a substitute for us, to take upon himself the punishment for our sins. He lived a perfect sinless life in our place and he died the death we deserved to die in our place so that we can be forgiven and redeemed and live with him forever. Talking to Dan this week, I tried and Tracy has and so is his brother impressive upon him the importance of believing in Christ. Because whether Dan lives through this or not, whether any of us live till next week or not, life is short. Whether you live 35 years or 105 years. Life is short, but eternity is forever. But if you are a Christian, you are according to God's word, one in Christ. Galatians 3, 27 says, For as many as you were baptized into Christ, have put on Christ, there is neither Jew or Greek nor slave or free, there is no male or female, for you are all one in Christ. If you are Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring according to the promise. Now that's a long preamble to the verses we're looking at. It brings us to verse 17, Do not think that I came to abolish the law and the prophets, I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. Now why would anyone think that Jesus would abolish the law and the prophets? Because he had been so critical of the Pharisees, who were viewed as experts in the law and of law keeping. Dr. Ligon Duncan, Chancellor of RTS, writes this, he says, Notice in verse 17, two things that he teaches us. He teaches us first that he has not come to abolish the law. Jesus is saying, I'm not anti-Old Testament, I'm not anti-Old Testament scripture, I'm not anti-moral law, I'm not anti-obedience. Don't understand me to be saying that obedience to God's moral law doesn't matter anymore. The law, Jesus says, continues to be valid. It continues to reveal God and his character and his will for us, it continues to reveal the true nature of man when we measure ourselves by it. It continues to show us the nature of salvation because it teaches us that we cannot be saved by the law. The law continues to do all the things, all these things, and it continues to do more. The law continues to be the perfect rule of righteousness for Christian living. Once one has understood the principle that you cannot be saved yourself by the law, once you understand that salvation is by grace, salvation is through faith, then you can come to understand that only by the grace of God and the residence of the Holy Spirit in your heart can you begin to obey the law. God created you to keep it in the first place. It's only through the grace of God that we can begin to be who God intended us to be and to do all the things God intended us to do. So Jesus makes it clear that when the law is rightly understood, it's not opposed to the gospel, it goes hand in hand with the gospel. The gospel purpose is that we will be conformed to God's image. What is God like? What is his character like? It's revealed in the law. And so when the gospel takes hold of our lives, we begin to delight in the law and with the psalmist we can say, how I love the law, O Lord. No longer is the law our enemy, it becomes our friend as if it were the tracks of the train on which Christian life proceeds. So Jesus does not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it, which is a way of saying that all of the Old Testament is about him. This means everything written is ultimately about Jesus. And maybe you remember that famous passage in Luke 24 where Jesus is walking along the road with two disciples and they begin talking about the things that have been happening in Jerusalem. And Jesus says, what things? And they tell him that Jesus of Nazareth, who they thought was the Messiah, had been captured and crucified. And then some of the women in their company amazed them and said that they went to the tomb and it was empty but they hadn't actually seen him. And Jesus said to them, O foolish ones, in slow of hearts to believe all the prophets have spoken. Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into glory and beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them and all the scriptures the things concerning himself? So Jesus isn't anti-law. He is not against the moral law of the Old Testament and neither should we be. Jesus goes on to say until heaven and earth passes away, not a nyota, not a dot, will pass from the law until it is all accomplished. Therefore, whoever relaxes one of these commandments and teaches others do the same will be called the least of the kingdom of heaven. Whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. What does this mean for us? We should care about and seek to follow God's laws because Jesus does. Not an iota or a dot will pass away until it's all accomplished. That's a fairly comprehensive statement. Now this is primarily parents' responsibility when the kids are young, especially the mothers at his Mother's Day. In our Old Testament reading, we saw that these things, these words I commanded you shall be on your heart, you shall teach them diligently to your children, you shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down and when you rise you shall bind them as the side on your hand and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes, you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. Now who are with young children most often? Its mothers, until they are at least school aged and often until they're nearly teenagers. Its mothers who are primarily responsible for teaching and nurturing and raising the kids. The fathers most often, I know that sometimes there's two income families, but the fathers most often are at work. And whether the mothers work or not, they tend to be the ones who are responsible for the young children. So mothers have a great calling to teach their children the Word of God. The statement that says, if you relax the commandments, even the least of these commandments, listen to each other so you do the same, you'll be called least in the kingdom of heaven. Now some people will respond, well wait that sounds like legalism. If keeping God's law is not legalism, what is legalism? Well there are three things at least, but three that I'll mention. One is keeping God's law in order to obtain salvation. Salvation is by grace alone through faith alone, and grace always comes first in the Scriptures. If you'll notice before the law was given, God rescued Israel from Egypt. And then in Exodus 20, He says, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt out of the house of slavery. So the relationship is already established. I am the Lord your God. I saved you. I brought you out of slavery. Now I'm going to give you the commands and tell you how to live like you should, how to live like free people. If you read the epistles in the New Testament, the writer almost always spends the first half of the letter on who Christ is and what He's done for us. The first half is almost always doctrine, almost always theological in nature. It's not that it doesn't have any commands, but it's primarily theological, primarily doctrinal. Then the second half of the letter is in light of that, this is what God wants you to do. So we obey because we have the grace to obey, not to earn salvation. The second form of legalism is when we add to God's word. When we have manmade rules which elevate, which we elevate to equal with or nearly equal with God's word. The Pharisees practiced this regularly in order to be seen as righteous. They had their own words that they wanted to add to the scripture. They made them seem more learned, more righteous. They would build what they called a fence around the command. I'll give you an example. Let's say you read the scripture and it says, do not be drunk with wine. So if we're going to build a fence around that, we're going to say, okay, I'm not supposed to be drunk, so I'm never going to have more than one drink. Another fence is I'm never going to drink anything alcoholic. Another fence is I'm never even going to go in a store that sells it, which is easier to do here than most places because there's a separate store that sells it. And some people go even further and say, I'm not even going to go down a street that has a store that sells it. See the further you get away from the law, the less powerful and potent it becomes. You become a Pharisee, a legalist, because what you start doing is commanding that people do what's on your outer fence as if it were God's word. There are all kinds of things like that. I don't have to give you more examples. I'm sure you can think of some. Another form of legalism is grudging obedience. We don't relate to God as our heavenly Father, but we relate to Him almost like a vending machine. If I obey, then God will give me what I want. The name it, claim it version of the Gospel, which isn't the Gospel, is very popular. There's all sorts of charlatans that will tell you if you send money to this ministry, God will bless you fourfold. Then you end up with a minister who I won't name, Joel Osteen, that lives in an $80 million house. Some people will say about morality that they think they should do the loving thing. After all, God is love, and that sounds good to most people. But remember, we are all sinful, and we need somebody to tell us what love is, because by ourselves we don't know what love is. But Jesus told us in the Gospel, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. It's pretty straightforward. John 14, verse 15, he goes on, says, whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me, and he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him. If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words, and the word that you hear is not mine, but they are from the Father who sent me. First John, chapter 5, everyone who believes that Jesus Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him. By this we know the love of the children of God, whom we love God and obey his commandments. So the two are connected. If you love God, you will obey his commandments. For this is the love of God that we keep his commandments, and his commandments are not burdensome. For everyone who is born of God overcomes the world, and this is the victory that has overcome the world, our faith. Whatever is that overcomes the world, except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God. So what does that mean? That means that the moral law is still in effect for us. If you go back home after church and read the Ten Commandments, one through ten, they're all still valid. They're all still to be kept. Now most of us wouldn't argue with most of those, but there's one that people have a problem with. Remember the Sabbath to keep it holy. I know I'm stepping on toes when I say you don't play basketball games on Saturday or Sunday, instead of coming to church. That is a violation of God's law. Now there are people who say that that law no longer applies. It's been abrogated, but Jesus never said that. Jesus goes on to say, for I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. The Pharisees thought they were righteous, and they had most people convinced that they were righteous, but the reality was far different. As we can see from all the times Jesus confronted them about their self-righteousness, I'll just mention one. Matthew 23 verse 27, Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people's bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. Righteousness in and of yourself, righteousness apart from God, righteousness that is not given to you, but righteousness that you think you've earned will keep you out of heaven and send you to hell. The only righteousness that will save you and me is the righteousness of Christ, which is given to you by faith in Him. And we'll close with this. Matthew chapter 3 verse 21 says, Now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law. Although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ, for all who believe, for there is no distinction, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by His grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Let us pray. Our Father, we know that Your law is still valid. We also know that we keep it poorly. And we are so thankful that You have given us the gospel of Your Son Jesus Christ, that He has entered into the world and kept the law for us. He has kept every single law perfectly. And then despite His perfect holiness, You sent Him to the cross to die in our place, to pay for our sin, to make us righteous in Your sight through His precious blood. We pray that You would make us people who desire to do Your will, to follow Your law, and to tell others about Your gospel. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Please stand.