As in the Days of Noah
June 26, 2009
Recently I was spending some time with one of my daughters and at her request, we ended up watching one of her videos. When it stopped, the television defaulted to a Christian channel and they were showing a movie of Noah and the ark. She begged to watch it, so we watched some of it. It was a great example of what I would call “Biblical film making.” The dialogue was a little humorous in that the language was so archaic that it made King James English almost seem conversational. At the same time Noah seemed to always be looking off into the distance making profound statements with an air of wisdom about him. Regardless of Noah’s depiction, their depiction of the ark was actually interesting. They had an interesting view of how the ark was laid out and what life was like inside the ark both for people and animals. However, after the initial ark scene, I was totally unprepared for what was about to happen.
After the ark was loaded, Noah and his family were secured in the ark and soon the rain began to fall. As the rains fell the ark slowly began to be lifted and drift on top of the waters. At the same time the people outside the ark were panicking and frantically climbing to the highest places they could find to escape the water that was slowly overtaking them as a steady and unstoppable force. In the midst of this, there is a scene inside the ark where you can hear the muted sounds of screaming and shrieks from from all those that are lost outside the ark and frantically trying to escape the ever encroaching waters. As you hear these sounds, Noah’s wife has a look on her face of horror. Up until now the family hasn’t fully considered their predicament, and suddenly the full realization of what is going on strikes them. Noah’s wife looks to Noah and their eyes meet. Her expression is begging the question, “am I really hearing what I think I’m hearing?” Here Noah’s family is saved in the midst of cataclysmic destruction and yet the realization is finally hitting them that everything is real. Everything Noah had been preaching had been words up until this point, but now those words were reality and the terror of the reality was more than any of them anticipated.
I was so struck with that scene that I trembled on the inside. My mind raced to the Scriptures and I considered more and more how every time I pick up the Scriptures I am seeing such a clear declaration of the coming Day of the Lord. Whether it is the historical books, the prophets, the gospels, the acts of the early church, or the apocalypse of Revelation, there is a consistent and persistent declaration of the Day of the Lord in the Scriptures. It is almost as if there is a veil causing us to miss the preeminence the Day of the Lord has in the Scriptures and when that veil begins to lift, one is astounded as just how much of the Scriptures is given over to declaring that God is coming to the planet and that coming is something so dramatic that words fail in the description of it.
The prophets saw and declared this coming day. The Jews so anticipated that day that when John Baptist declared that Messiah was coming, they were baptized in repentance to prepare themselves for the day. In fact, the primary stumbling block for the first century Jews was that they were expecting the ultimate day of the Lord and not a coming that, in kindness, made available a redemption prior to that cataclysmic day. In Paul’s writings, we find that he motivated both himself and the saints he wrote to by exhorting them that they would be found in Christ on that day.
The coming of that day and the ensuing events were the cornerstone of the apostolic proclamation and the motivation to declare the gospel to the earth that as many as possible might be saved in the great day of God that was coming. Remember that salvation Biblically is mostly presented as a future thing and what we have failed to perceive is that future salvation is not just salvation from hell, but salvation in the great Day of the Lord. This doesn’t negate the present need of an encounter with God or of being born again, but rather our present experience of redemption and the indwelling presence of the Spirit, among other things, gives us assurance of full salvation on that day.
Every temporal judgment is a warning of an ultimate day of reckoning for the earth and those who have walked upon it. While we often focus on whether current events are judgments or not we miss the fact that any present judgment event is merely an illustration that is meant to point us to that ultimate day and warn us of a judgment that far surpasses anything we have presently experienced. Even the flood, as cataclysmic as it was, was not an event in itself, but rather meant to be an prophetic picture to shock and awaken us to the nature of what’s coming when God comes to the planet.
The issue of God’s coming is not an issue merely of an angry deity, but rather the issue of what happens when the One who is truly perfect and good comes into full contact with all the evil on the earth and in man. The drama of that day is actually part of the love and kindness of God because the present evil that we tolerate is having horrific effects on creation that we don’t even recognize because we are so numb to it. Since we are part of the environment and over it we can’t even see the full effects on our environment of the evil dwelling within us. God is not content to see this destruction continue forever and so His coming brings a massive judgment that is rooted, not in anger, but in perfect love.
I have to believe that, like Noah’s family, this event may be a part of our creeds and theology, but that our hearts have not truly anticipated just how devastating and traumatic this day is going to be. The Scriptures clearly describe an event that man cannot endure and that even the earth can barely endure. Regardless of how literal your hermeneutic is, and the further I go the more convinced I am that the Scriptures are far more literal than we have imagined, as you read the prophetic scriptures concerning this day, anyone who seriously considers these events will come to the conclusion that this day is going to be beyond anything any of us have imagined.
Jesus said that the end would be “as in the days of Noah.” He chose the days of Noah as the example of the end. Just as in the days of Noah, men live totally ignorant of the impending judgment. Men scoff at the idea that God is going to judge all wickedness and restore the earth in purity and goodness just as He has promised. As in the days of Noah, God has made an ark of escape in Jesus that we might endure that terrible day when God comes to earth in holiness and in zeal to cleanse and redeem the earth. And the real terror of that day is that, as in the days of Noah, the horror of what is coming will not be fully evident until the event is fully in motion and there is nothing that can be done.
The real horror of the look on Noah’s wife’s face is that she only understood the magnitude of what was happening after it was too late to take any more action. By the time she fully understood what was going on it was too late to do anything about it. It was too late to prepare any more. It was too late to warn others, and it was too late to rescue any more souls. The door was closed and the deluge had come and there was nothing that could be done to stop it. So too the real terror of the Day of the Lord is going to be that we will only fully grasp it on that day and on that day it will be too late to prepare our hearts to face the fullness of God and too late to declare to others the need to repent that they may be saved in that day. What has been done will have been done. In that moment, the fog will lift and we will clearly see our lives and actions for what they were and the pain of regret, which for some will be an eternal terror, will be immense.
Just like Noah’s family in the movie, believers are living in intellectual assent to the idea that Jesus is coming but with virtually no understanding of just what that day is going to be like and no preparation for it. Our theology may be correct in our hearts, but in our hearts we live as though everything that day will destroy is actually permanent. That day will literally shake the earth. Men will seek the escape of death because of the appearance of a holy God on the planet. We must begin to read the Scriptures simply, taking them at face value, and see that throughout the entire book there is a consistent declaration that God is coming to physically dwell on the earth among His people, and that coming will demand a complete judgment of all that is wicked and a restoration of the earth. We must also begin to see that all other themes in Scripture are in the context of this coming day and God’s purpose for it.
The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; – Isaiah 61:1-2 (ESV)
We are presently living in the year of God’s favor. It is the time period when salvation is made available. God in His immense love and kindness has repeatedly, though His Word and through messengers each generation, warned us of the events to come and provided, at the cost of His own blood, an ark of escape in that great day. However, this salvation makes little sense without the context of the day of vengeance against all wickedness, no matter how minor or how subtle, that is coming. One thing is sure: Something is coming far beyond what we can imagine. We are presently blessed with a period of time to come under God’s mercy and allow Him to prepare us that we might stand on that day, but this blessing will be a curse in that day if we find, like Noah’s family, that it never was real to us.
If you are not right with God through Jesus Christ, I don’t have words that are strong enough to urge you to turn your heart to the cleansing in Jesus Christ that you might be prepared for that day. If you are already a believer, I would challenge you that you probably do not live in preparation for that day. Like Noah’s family, we have heard the message but we really haven’t anticipated exactly what that day will be. Most of us are expecting the inauguration of some sort of utopia and heavenly retirement age and this bears no resemblance to the way the Scripture describes this day. While the end result is a cleansing and a perfect dwelling with God, we have grossly estimated the trauma of that process and the full purity of our God.
The reality is that this coming day is so dramatic that none of us can fully anticipate what is coming. Even those who give their hearts to prepare will, in some measure, stand like Noah’s family trembling under the weight of it all when it actually unfolds. Saints, that day is clearly described in Scripture if we only open our eyes to read it. Let us prepare our hearts in accordance with what the Scriptures really say while allowing our hearts to take the message to all those who are unprepared for this day. Malachi perhaps has the best summary of our predicament:
But who can endure the day of His coming, and who can stand when He appears? – Malachi 3:2a (ESV)
The Law – Part Four – The New Testament Law
January 6, 2009
In the last post, we discussed how a proper understanding of God’s law affects our evangelism and saw that our evangelism is a strong indicator of our theology and also has serious implications for the future vitality of the church itself. As we have discussed the New Testament law in this series, we have made a few observations. One is that Jesus extended the reach of the law by pressing it past man’s outward behavior into the thoughts and intents of the heart. We have also noted that Jesus came to complete God’s law that it might accomplish the thing that He gave it to accomplish.
In addition, the point has been made repeatedly that it is critical that we live in light of the fact that we are still under a divine law and in light of that, we must acknowledge that God continues to have the right to place demands upon on. While we have examined these characteristics of the New Testament Law, we have not examined what the declarations of the New Testament law are. We have seen clearly that the scope of the law extends to all things, and we have seen that the depth of the law presses it deep in the heart of man, but is there a clear list of the directives of this law? Well, though it receives little attention, Jesus clearly details for us the requirements of the New Testament law.
The Definition of the Law
In a very real sense, the Sermon on the Mount could be seen as a law giving moment. Just as Moses ascended a hill and descended with the written requirements of God, so to Jesus ascended the hillside and clearly spoke forth the code and law He came to bring. In that sense, we should see the Sermon on the Mount, not just as a nostalgic ideal, but as the present requirement of God. God does not simply give us instructions and values that we might then live “under grace” in the commonly understood meaning of the term. We can never discount grace, and we will address it in the final post, but God desires that grace become something that empowers us to live within that which He demands. To understand the New Testament law, the Sermon on the Mount then is the proper starting place so long as we can begin to see it as Jesus’ parallel to Moses’ directives given from Sinai and not just as an idyllic sermon that is not actually binding on every day life.
While the Sermon on the Mount is perhaps the foundational passage for the New Testament law, there are a few other passages we should examine. These passages are all familiar, but we have not considered these passages to be as weighty as they truly are. Consider Jesus’ answer to one seeking salvation:
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: you shall love your neighbor as yourself. These two commandments sum up and upon them depend all the Law and the Prophets. – Matthew 22:37-40 (AMP)
Notice that just before the cross, Jesus affirms this requirement to His disciples:
If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love and live on in it, just as I have obeyed My Father’s commandments and live on in His love…This is my commandment: that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than to lay down his own life for his friends…You are My friends if you keep on doing the things which I command you to do…This is what I command you: that you love one another. – John 15:10, 12-14, 17 (AMP)
Again, we are familiar with these Scriptures, but we must ask ourselves if we see these passages as Jesus’ requirements for His people or do we see them as cute phrases and New Testament ideals? I fear that because of a misunderstanding of grace that we do not consider the full weight of these passages. In these passages, Jesus is putting a requirement on us and defining the way that He expects His people to live.
No one would deny that believers often fail to experience the full materialization of the promises recorded in Scripture, but could is be that we fail to obtain some of the benefits of the gospel because we have not esteemed the requirements of the gospel as such? Perhaps if we saw these commands as just as binding upon us as Moses’ Law was on the nation gathered around Sinai, we might become a radically different people.
The Weight of the Law
We began by pointing out that Jesus filled up the law and turned its requirements inward that He might deal with the very root of sin rather than merely prescribe good behavior. That consideration alone has the power to greatly alter our understanding of Jesus’ statements. After coming into that understanding, we have now considered some of the direct commands that Jesus gave to believers.
Now, we must ask an honest question which is who can fulfill such a law? While we are rightfully grateful that Jesus freed us from the outward bondage of Moses’ law, we fail to consider with much gravity the requirements of the law Jesus instituted. While Moses’ law was full of outward obligations that one might follow in some measure, Jesus law completely supersedes all outward observances and leaves men under greater condemnation than before.
If we honestly examine what He required, we must say, “who can fulfill such things?” for Jesus’ law is all encompassing. Can we not honestly say that every mode of life comes under the requirement to love God with all that we have and then extend love to others just the same as we would love ourselves? Beloved, this is a weighty requirement indeed. Moses’ law at least had specific requirements and limited scope, but Jesus’ law decrees that every thought, every desire, and every action are to be with regard to the supreme love of God and love of one another.
Can anyone among us have the audacity to declare that they could fulfill such a law? Can you see now that when the Spirit gives unction to preach such a law that there is no man who can stand in smug, self-righteousness? Saints we need to pray that God puts power on us again for the proclamation of this gospel. We have awkwardly proclaimed, at the same time, both the conviction of the Mosaic Law and the freedom from it, but we have not pressed men with the Law of Christ.
The reality is that God has not changed His demands upon man; He has only now intensified them in the revelation of Jesus. In the revelation of Jesus, He reveals what he created man for all along. You see, God does not intend to have a people that can merely follow a few moral axioms or fulfill religions ceremonies, He desires a people that are a physical display on earth of Himself. This is what it means that man is made in the image of God.
We are made in His image and so He presses upon us the same law that He Himself demonstrates in all that He does. He makes a requirement on us that no man can possibly fulfill, and yet He has every right to demand it because He made us in His own image that we might live as a physical demonstration of Himself and spread the knowledge of God by our very living. This requirement should crush all our righteousness and drive us to Christ both for forgiveness and for transformation to live in this manner, but tragically our gospel proclamation seems to have lost the weightiness of both of these values in its rush to declare us free from Moses’ prescribed diet and ceremonies!
Because we have lost these values, our evangelism is weak and anemic and our proclamation to the saints is hollow. We are content to gaze horizontally at our own righteousness and not gaze upwardly that we might demonstrate Him; the very thing to which we are called! We are content to demonstrate something a little better than other men rather than putting on display the glory of God and that is the fundamental issue. Continue Reading The Law – Part Four – The New Testament Law »
The Law – Part Three – Evangelism
December 24, 2008
In the last post in this series we discussed the issue of genuine repentance. At this point we must discuss a related topic which is the issue of evangelism, so let’s take a moment and examine evangelism in light of the New Testament law. Evangelism is always a critical indicator of what our practical theology is. I use the word practical because most of us would assent to correct doctrine if we were given a test on proper belief systems, however often there is a great gulf between our mental theology and our practical theology. Our practical theology is on display in the way that we live and interact with others. In our daily living we demonstrate what we truly believe rather than what we may simply assent to or think that we believe.
Beyond our theology, there are also three things that evangelism uniquely reveals. First, it reveals how we view man’s interaction with God. The way that we communicate the context and requirements of the gospel reveal how we practically believe that man and God relate. Secondly, it reveals how we view ourselves. In our interactions with others and the sharing of our “testimony,” we reveal in a great measure how we view ourselves in general, and in particular how we view ourselves before God. Thirdly, our evangelism reveals what we think about others. The way that we relate the gospel to others, or whether we relate it at all to others, shows how we view those who are presently dead in sin.
The Effects of the Law on our Gospel Presentation
As we have demonstrated, most believers have a decidedly Old Testament understanding to God’s law rather than the New Testament understanding that Jesus clearly laid out in the Sermon on the Mount. While many might dispute that point, the reality is that our methods of evangelism illustrate this disconnect perhaps better than any other place. Let’s examine a few characteristics of western evangelism that illustrate the great ignorance of the church with regard to the law.
To begin there is the issue that we have already covered which is that we know only how to apply the law to outward behavior, rather than to the inward motives of the heart. This brings several problems both to our gospel presentation and also to our own understanding of ourselves. For one, because we are so outwardly focused, we tend to be quite ignorant of our own inward depravity. The depravity, or wickedness, of man as it is inherited from Adam is one of those things that we might be able to check off on a theology quiz, but it is not a doctrine that we believe to the point that it affects the way we view ourselves and others.
Because we do not truly grasp our own inward depravity, we are at a loss to press the gospel upon another individual who appears to be relatively moral outwardly. We are at a loss for words when they fail to have an interest in a salvation that they do not see the need of. Why do they not see the need of salvation? Because we have largely presented them with an outward salvation over an inward one and this flows from the fact that we do not articulate the inner requirements of God’s law, only the outward requirements of a law that, once they are saved, we argue against lest we embrace “legalism” over grace.
Because we do not truly understand, or perhaps even believe, in the depravity of man, we are also tempted to justify wicked behavior in both ourselves and others. As we noted, the people we present the gospel to often have a level of moral conduct that is very similar to our own. When we try to present the need for Christ, we fail because we do not know how to properly convict the heart at the root of the issue. We struggle and stumble to present to an individual their great need of Christ because the reality is that we are not really convinced that the person is all that bad, mostly because we have not ever considered ourselves to be “that bad.”
In fact, from this lack of understanding of depravity has arisen various modes of comparison, such as “good person” compared with “bad person” and the idea that some sin is worse than others. True, some sin has more extensive effects in this age, but in the eternal age, all wickedness is evil. We fail to understand this because we fail to see unredeemed man, “good” or “bad” as essentially wicked. We fail to see them as essentially wicked, because we do not clearly see how the law of God cuts beyond behavior into the very essence of each thought and impulse of the heart. The proof of man’s wickedness lies not in what impulses he restrains and what impulses he allows, the proof of man’s wickedness is that fact that the evil impulse arises at all within his being. Continue Reading The Law – Part Three – Evangelism »
The Law – Part Two – Defining Repentance
December 22, 2008
In the first post in this series, we introduced the idea of the law in the New Testament by referring to Jesus’ statements in the Sermon on the Mount. Now that we are considering that the law was not discarded by Jesus but rather fulfilled so that God might accomplish through the law that which He desired to accomplish, we must address the issue of repentance. If you remember from the first post, the critical understanding that Jesus brought is that while the law given to Moses was primarily an external law, the law in the New Testament was to be an internal law. While this may appear to be a superficial point, it has deep implications for how we, as believers, live with regard to the law.
Defining Repentance
Repentance is a fundamental concept to the Christian faith. John Baptist and Jesus both began their ministries preaching repentance. With such a clear precedent, we can likewise expect that the church in our day should be preaching repentance as well. So, if the church has a requirement to preach repentance, and many churches do preach repentance, why is it that it seems to have so little effect? Well, a significant part of the problem could be whether or not we actually know how to define repentance.
When we define repentance in the church at large, what we generally have in mind is turning from sinful behavior to holy behavior. Different streams of theology would define exactly what that looks like in practice a little differently, but that is the essence of the understanding that commonly persists. The problem is that there is a fundamental error in this definition of repentance and that is that this is a distinctly Mosaic view of repentance and it is at odds with the New Testament directive regarding repentance.
New Testament Repentance
Remember now, that the critical issue is that the law in the New Testament goes right into the heart of man whereas the Old Testament law focused on external behavior. New Testament repentance then is not focused on external behavior, but on the inward life of the heart. If you do not understand this, you will never understand the ministry of Jesus. This understanding is crucial to seeing how Jesus could minister to tax collectors and prostitutues with greater success than He could minister to moral, religious individuals. When you can see outward evil in your life, it makes it easier to accept inward depravity. Conversely, when you believe your outward morals to be sound, it makes it harder to receive the message of inward depravity.
In light of this, a true New Testament repentance preacher will bypass externals and pierce men directly in their heart. This sort of preaching may well expose the life long church-goer as a man more in need of repentance than the town drunk because the root of iniquity can exist in a religious man just as strongly as it can in an irreligious man. In fact, at times it can persist even more strongly in a religious heart as it provides fertile ground for the sins of pride and self-righteousness.
The New Testament message properly sees external behavior as a secondary issue that is at best a symptom of sickness of the heart. The call to repentance is not primarily a call towards behavior modification, but rather the call to repentance is to dig deep within. It is a call like unto Abraham’s whereby each individual is called to take their own personal Isaac, which is their own inner morality, up the dark mountain of sacrifice. Once on that mountain, you must bind him to the altar, and allow God to replace your treasured Isaac with Himself. Once would think that this is elementary. Who would not want God’s rule over him? Who would not think that God is the most perfect one to rule and reign in a man’s heart?
Saints, if nothing else illuminates for you the depravity of man, let this one example illustrate for you the sickness of the human heart. There is no battle known to man, even to Christian men, that is akin to the battle one faces when God comes into take over. The very One we should welcome with open arms we resist with all our strength. This is the issue of heart repentance. This battle shows our inner animosity towards God no matter how moral our outward behavior. Praise God that He alone can conquer such a heart and fill it with His own Spirit.
Genuine repentance bypasses everything external and requires this sort of turning within a man. The call for repentance goes deep into the essence of the man, confronts him with the supremacy of God and the right of God to rule the individual and then calls for that man to turn whole heartedly from his own life, religious or not, to a life consumed by God.
This turning from a life where man is obsessed with himself, which may or may not be moral and religious, to a life where man is wholly given over to God is repentance in the Biblical sense. Many of the problems in our churches arise because we are dealing with individuals that have never truly repented and part of the reason they have never repented is because they have never heard a proper message of repentance that has the power to cut through their soul and their behavior to the essence of what God is after. If we are to see men genuinely repent, we must begin to proclaim a message of genuine repentance to them. Continue Reading The Law – Part Two – Defining Repentance »
The Law – Part One – Introduction
December 22, 2008
Do not think that I have come to do away with or undo the Law or the Prophets; I have come not to do away with or undo but to complete and fulfill them. – Matthew 5:17 (AMP)
I was reading through a message by John G. Lake on the question of Sunday or Saturday worship and found in it some startling insights into the relationship between the law and the believer. As I considered what John was saying the implications of what he was saying hit me, and what hit me was far beyond the question of whether or not our primary worship gathering should be on a Saturday or a Sunday. As I continued to ponder this issue, I began to realize that what I was seeing was so simple and so clearly the gospel and yet at the same time, I believe there is something here of the relationship of the believer to the law that has been lost. I believe it is vital that we understand with a new clarity the appropriate relationship between the believer and the law because it vitally impacts many different areas. With that in mind, I’ll break out these thoughts across several posts so that each can be digested separately. Each part of the series will build up to the conclusion, so you’ll want to read through each one to participate in the complete conversation.
The Mosaic Law
The first thing we must consider is that the Mosaic Law, as a means to the sanctification and redemption of God’s people, utterly failed. There are obviously many purposes for which God gave the Mosaic Law, but for one He gave it that men might demonstrate whether they had the ability to adhere to even an outward display of righteousness. God dealt with men on the basis of outward behavior during this time and men fell woefully short. When the Israelites were given over to judgment, it was not just the judgment of a nation, but the judgment of systems of external morality. It was not just the failure of the Jewish nation; it was the failure of mankind to keep covenant with God by virtue of man’s own will.
What we find then is that outward requirements were incapable of dealing with inward corruption. While this may sound like an elementary principle, we will find a little later that most of the church has not yet fully grasped this issue. Seeing as the law could not produce a righteous man then, we must see that the law is powerless to do anything but demonstrate that man has a corruption that cannot be cured by himself. As an aside, the astute reader might notice that to fully grasp this statement is also to bring a question around much of our present evangelism. Our evangelism primarily revolves around telling “lost” people, whom the Bible actually calls dead not lost, that they need to make a decision of their will to choose Jesus. Without exploring this topic here, if the wills of the ancient Israelites did not have the capacity to choose good even in the face of the demonstrations on Mt. Sinai, what makes us think modern man’s will has the capacity to make a choice that brings salvation?
The Sermon on the Mount
The Sermon on the Mount, the height of the gospel declaration, gives us insight into the operation and direction of the law in the New Testament. As quoted at the top, in Matthew 5:17, Jesus makes the bold claim that He has come to fulfill the law. Most of us read that merely in the sense that Jesus is ending the Mosaic law, but if you look at the Greek word for fulfill, which is “pleroo” you will notice the meaning includes the following: “to make something full, or fill it up, or render it full or complete.”
Jesus follows this in verse 18 to say that nothing will pass away until the law has been accomplished. In other words, the law was given for a purpose that has not yet been accomplished. What is that purpose? The purpose is to have a people set apart, or sanctified, unto God. The law was given towards that purpose, but it failed to accomplish it and thus God injected Himself into the process in the person of His Son in order that God’s law might be extended and come to its marvelous conclusion. Do we consider that God is looking for an accomplishment to His law, or are we so eager to loose ourselves from the Mosaic requirements that we fail to consider the great accomplishment of God’s law that Jesus desires? Saints, God has in mind something more grand and glorious than our liberation from a ceremonial law. His law is going to accomplish something of eternal significance.
Jesus continues from this statement to declare that the righteousness of the people must exceed that of the scribes and the Pharisees (vs. 20). In other words, God is about to require a righteousness greater than those that best understood, best kept, and publicly contended for the Mosaic law. Now this created a very real problem for the people of God listening to Jesus. Not only was there no one who could obtain righteousness under the law, but now they find that God is going to require an even greater righteousness of the people.
Jesus then explains that statement by giving examples of the righteousness that God requires (vs. 21-32). He begins each shocking new example with the phrase, “you have heard that it was said,” clearly referencing the law, in which He makes examples of what we would consider to be “major sins.” In order to be perfectly clear, Jesus does not use the example of “small sins,” (as if there were such a thing) but rather he uses the blatant sins like murder and adultery so that no one will misunderstand the gravity of His message.
Jesus then continues to destroy every man’s hope for righteousness by looking at the most holy among then and declaring, “You have looked at a woman and become sexually aroused and that is the same as the adultery for which you would convict a brother.” He looks then to a religious leader and declares, “Your anger with a fellow Jew is the same act before God as the one who murders another.” The audience is now spell bound. What will Jesus say next? Their very hope of standing with God, the law, now that it has been expounded by Jesus has been found to be their greatest enemy.
Furthermore, Jesus is filling up and completing this law that it might come to God’s glorious conclusion, but in that filling up the requirement of the law is enlarged. Who will be able to stand before this new law? Understand though that this was entirely within the expectation of the people because of John Baptists’s ministry. John’s ministry had been, “repent for the ruler of God’s kingdom (the Messiah) is coming.” People responded to John and repented precisely because they wanted to cleanse their hearts before His appearing so that they would be numbered among the righteous and not the wicked when Messiah executed judgment. Now the people, already having trembling hearts, are sitting before Messiah Himself and He is enlarging the concept of righteousness beyond what they had already failed to keep.
What we miss is that Jesus is introducing the basis here for the New Testament law. We sometimes are so pre-occupied with the desire to be free of modes of worship and kosher foods that we fail to see that while Jesus did liberate us from the Mosaic Law, He also brought it to fullness and brought into place a complete law which we fail to examine or consider.