PT-3 "Intro to Matthew 5:17"

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 7/4/2020 9:34 AM

 

My Worship Time                                                                Focus:  PT-3 “Intro to Matthew 5:17”

 

My Worship Time                                                                              Focus:  Matthew 5:17

 

            Message of the verse:  “17 "Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill.”

 

            We continue with the quotation of John MacArthur’s introduction to Matthew 5:17:  “Jesus’ meekness, humility, gentleness, and love marked Him out in great contrast to the proud, selfish, and arrogant scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees, and priests.  His call to repentance and His proclamation of the gospel of the kingdom make people listen, even if they did not understand or agree.  They wondered if He was just another prophet, a special prophet, or a false prophet.  They wondered if He was a political or military revolutionary who might be the Messiah they anxiously awaited, who would break the yoke of Rome.  He did not talk or act like anyone else they had ever heard or seen.  He did not identify Himself with any of the scribal schools, or with any of the sects or movements of the time.  Nor did He identify Himself with Herod or with Rome.  Instead, Jesus openly and lovingly identified Himself with the outcast, the sick, the sinful, and the needy of every sort He proclaimed grace and dispensed mercy.  Whereas all the other rabbis and religious leaders talked only about the religious externals, He taught about the heart.  They focused on ceremonies, rituals, and outward acts of every kind, whereas He focused on the heart.  They set themselves above other men and demanded their service, while He set Himself below other men and became their Servant.

 

            “Of primary concern to every faithful Jew seeking to evaluate Jesus was, ‘What does He think of the law; what does He think of Moses and the prophets?’  The leaders often confronted Jesus on matters of the law.  Many Jews believed that the Messiah would radically revise or completely overturn the Mosaic Law and establish His own new standards.  The interpreted Jeremiah 31:31 as teaching that God’s new promised covenant would annul the old covenant and start over on a completely new moral basis.  Sickened of the demanding, hypocritical legalism of the Pharisees, many people hoped the Messiah would bring in a new day of freedom from the burdensome, mechanical, and meaningless demands of the traditional system.

 

            “Even the scribes and Pharisees realized God’s revealed standards of righteousness were impossible to keep—which is one reason they invented traditions that were easier to keep than the law.  The traditions were more involved, complicated, and detailed than God’s law, but for the most art, they stayed within the bounds of human accomplishment, within what man could do in his own power and resources.  Because of that, the traditions invariably and inevitably lowered the standards of God’s scriptural teaching.  The whole system of self-righteousness is built on reducing God’s standards and elevating one’s own imagined goodness.

 

            “It soon became obvious that Jesus fit none of the common molds of the religious leaders.  He obviously had a high regard for the law, but at the same time He taught things completely contrary to the traditions.  His teachings did not lower scriptural standards but upheld them in every way.  He not only put God’s standard at the height where it belonged but lived at the humanly impossible level.

 

            “The Law and the Prophets represent what we now call the Old Testament, the only written Scripture at the time Jesus preached (see Matt. 7:12; 11:13; 22:40; Luke 16:16; John 1:45; Acts 13:15; 28:23).  It is therefore about the Old Testament that Jesus speaks in Matthew 5:17-20.  Everything He taught directly in His own ministry, as well as everything He taught through the apostles, is based on the Old Testament.  It is therefore impossible to understand or accept the New Testament apart from the Old.

 

            “As has been pointed out sever times, each teaching in the Sermon on the Mount flows out of the teachings that have preceded it.  Each beatitude logically follows the ones before it, and every subsequent teaching is related to previous teachings.  What Jesus teaches in 5:17-20 also follows directly from what He has just said.  Verses 3-12 depict the character of believers, who are kingdom citizens and children of God.  Verses 13-16 teach the function of believers as God’s spiritual salt and light in the corrupt and darkened world.  Verses 17-20 teach the foundation for the inner qualities of the Beatitudes and for functioning as God’s salt and light.  That foundation is God’s Word, the only standard of righteousness and of truth.”

 

            Lord willing we will finish the quotation from John MacArthur on his intro to Matthew 5:17 in our next SD.

 

7/4/2020 10:03 AM