The Warning of the Kingdom!

The speaker is reflecting on their experience at a conference and how it has impacted them. They talk about feeling overwhelmed with information and the need to process it. They also mention how their plans for the year did not include studying the Sermon on the Mount, but God led them to it. They then describe the context of Jesus' ministry, the state of the people and their need for salvation. Jesus came to bring grace and mercy and fulfill the law. The speaker acknowledges the struggle to balance law, justice, grace, and mercy, and questions the ease of living out the Beatitudes and being salt and light. They express a desire to understand and live according to God's perspective. Turn with me to Matthew chapter 5. Matthew chapter 5, and I'm just going to warn you this morning, I hope you packed your lunch or whatever. No, hopefully not, but man, this conference this week was amazing. It was kind of like spiritually drinking from a fire hose all week. And there has been so much information that I am anxious to get quiet this week, to get alone with God and kind of sort through all of the information and all of the things that God has laid upon my heart and burdened me this week. I thank you for allowing me and my wife to attend the conference, and it was definitely a blessing. But I couldn't even sleep last night because I am so full that I'm just about to explode. And so you pray for me this morning, and hopefully I won't explode too awful much. But it's amazing how some things, as we're going through this, we have our plans, and then God has His plans. And my plans for this year, the Sermon on the Mount was nowhere in them plans. And then God kind of kept pulling me away from what I wanted to do and kind of went here. And then I kind of said, you know, I'm just going to highlight the Sermon on the Mount. And the more I begin to highlight, the deeper God is taking me into this deal and opening up worlds. And so we come to this next passage of Scripture this morning, and it was kind of like, man, the more I got to study and the more I got to study, and I said, you know what, we're going to have to maybe look at this over two or three weeks, because what he's talking about in this message today is foundational to our understanding of the Christian life and this new kingdom life that we have. And there's so many questions and there's so many arguments and discussion and disagreements and everything over the topic that we're going to deal with this morning and hopefully over the next couple of years. But how many of you this morning brought your imagination? Did any of you bring your imagination this morning? Well, I want you to just take a minute and I just want you to relax and I want you to imagine. I want you to imagine a world that has not had a fresh message from God for over 400 years. Now to put that in perspective, our church just celebrated a little over 200 years and one year old. And so twice as long as we've been in existence, there has been not a fresh message from God. Imagine a nation that forsook God and hence God had brought them into captivity. Imagine a priesthood that has taken the covenantal relationship between God and His people and added to it, took things away and twisted it in order to benefit their perspective. Imagine a world focused on the outer man when God was wanting to focus on the inward man. Imagine a God as He looks down and views a people that knew the Scripture but didn't know the God of Scripture. So God became flesh in order to redeem this world and restore them to a relationship, not with His words, but with Himself. And Jesus comes onto the scene appearing to Israel and His chosen people. And we know that Jesus appeared in a rather startling, exciting, dramatic way as the star brightened the skies and the shepherds heard from the angels. And Jesus Christ has now been living on this earth that has not received a fresh message from God for 30 years. He's been there, but no one has really knew about it. He was in obscurity in Nazareth. But all of a sudden, after the baptism of Jesus Christ, Jesus has now hit the scene. They now know who Jesus Christ is. They now have heard of Him. But as soon as He appeared to the public, as soon as He was baptized, the eyes of everyone had now in that region become fixed upon Him. Even the leaders of Israel had to focus in on Him. And they looked at Him and they would listen to Him and they would watch Him. Of course, Jesus was meek. He possessed a very beautiful humility that made Him easily distinguishable from the rest of the leaders in Israel. Who were very proud. Who was very boastful. Who was very hypocritical. Always looking for some way to lift themselves up. Some way to boost or to increase themselves. And Jesus, on the other hand, came with humility and meekness in order that He might come to them and He called them to repentance. And He made a proclamation of the gospel. And His announcement of a kingdom made people sit up and listen. Because what they were doing was not working. What they were doing was not creating blessings. It was creating frustration. It was creating exasperation. And it made the people wonder, what kind of ruler is this? When they looked at Jesus Christ, they asked the question, what kind of prophet is this? Is this guy revolutionary? Is he so different? What was his attitude toward the Mosaic law? And Jesus is going about Galilee. And in chapter 4, verse 23, it says, He went about Galilee teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people. And His fame went throughout all Syria. And notice, they brought unto Him all sick people, and they were taken with divers' disease and torments, those which were possessed with devils, those which were lunatic, those that had the palsy, and He healed them. And there followed Him great multitudes of people from Galilee, from Decapolis, from Jerusalem, and from Judea, and from beyond Jordan. And seeing the multitudes, He went up into a mountain, and when He was set, His disciples came unto Him. And He opens His mouth in His very first recorded sermon that we have of Jesus Christ, His first word after He sat down was blessed. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. And basically what He is telling them and what He is presenting to them, and hopefully that I have made this clear over the last several weeks, is He is coming to them and He is saying, if you are tired of earth, on earth, and you would rather experience heaven on earth, then we need to seek God in the inner man that He might change the outer man from our perspective to His perspective. And so man, what He's coming to them and He's asking them, He was sent for salvation. He came to save the world. His name means Jesus is Savior. His name means He will save the world by His own name and His life. He came to give salvation. But we also understand He was given for salvation, but we also need to understand that His Word was given for sanctification. To change our lives, just like this Word of God. This Bible cannot save you. This Bible can only point you to Jesus Christ. He is the One that saves you. You have to believe that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. However, when we are saved by Jesus Christ, we come to His Word and His Word sanctifies us. It begins to change us. It sets us apart from everybody else. And remember, when He did this, what began to happen? As they began to be sanctified, as we began to set ourselves apart, and we go through these blessings, we go through these rewards of getting into the Kingdom, then what begins to happen? Then we begin to permeate as salt and we begin to radiate as light. But it can only happen as we conform our perspective to His perspective. We become salt and light. And we draw people away from earthly perspective. And we give them a heavenly perspective. Jesus was proclaiming grace. And He was dispensing mercy. And their natural reaction was, is this a revolutionary new thing? Because see, according to the law, there is no mercy. Something had to die for their sins. And so it was all based upon judgment. It was all based upon that. And there was no grace. There was no mercy. And so these people, the scribes and the Pharisees were wondering, and it sounds a lot like the rest of the people that we hear, is Jesus Christ tearing down the Old Testament? Is He destroying all the absolutes of the Mosaic law? Is He removing the foundations of some new thing? After all, it is the way of most revolutionary leaders to sever all of the ties with the past and do everything they can to completely renounce their traditions that have gone before. And so He was doing like every new leader has done before Him. As a matter of fact, where all the scribes and Pharisees were always expounding the law, Jesus would not do that. When you study the life of Jesus, you found that He was always busy talking about grace and mercy. Grace and mercy. When the Pharisees and scribes were binding the law on the people, Jesus Christ was busy forgiving people. When the scribes and the Pharisees would bring somebody caught in the act of sin, Jesus Christ would give them mercy and forgiveness. Is Jesus Christ with this new kingdom teaching a new theology? Right here, right now, Jesus Christ, we come to verse 17, and Jesus Christ stops what He is doing about this kingdom, and He addresses them, and He puts it all into perspective of what they need to understand. How many of you here this morning are struggling to balance law and justice and grace and mercy? It's a struggle in my ministry, and I don't see things with gray areas. I see things black or white. I see the law. I see the sacrifices. But yet, Jesus Christ said, I didn't come to destroy the law. I came to fulfill it. And so He fulfilled it through grace and mercy. And we struggle with these things. When we look at the Beatitudes, are the Beatitudes really easy to live? Is it real easy to admit that we are poor in spirit? Is it really easy for us to mourn over the condition of sin in our life and in the world? Is it really easy for us to yield ourselves to Jesus Christ? I stand before you this morning, and I say it is not very easy, or we'd be doing a better job of doing it, right? And then He comes to the witness. He said, if you do all of these things, then you will be salt and light. How easy is being salt and light? Salt and light doesn't have to think about what they do. They just are, right? They just exist. But how hard is it for you and I to be salt and to be light? How can we live that way? And the answer comes immediately in verse 17. In verse 17, Jesus Christ says, we have to uphold the Word of God. Look at what He says. He immediately says, think not. Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets. I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. And that's all we're going to get to this morning, but I want you to see the rest of it so that we have context because we're going to make reference to make sure that what we are looking at and what we understand is to be the truth the way that Jesus Christ is presenting it to us. He goes on and says, 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 what? Fulfilled. Now, let me ask you a question this morning and we'll get into this next week. But has earth passed away? No. Has heaven passed away? No. And so not everything of the law has been fulfilled because they're still here. And so look at what He goes on to say. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven. But whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. And then He gives us an example. For I say unto you, that except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees, you shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven. The very first thing Jesus Christ says is think not. Think not. I think this is one of the greatest problems that we as Christians have today. We do too much thinking. Amen? We think too much. And that's what the problem was with the scribes and the Pharisees. And that's why Jesus Christ... You remember, the Pharisees was all about righteousness. They were all about living the law. But He said, guess what? Your righteousness has to exceed their righteousness if you're going to get into heaven. In other words, as wonderful at obeying the law as they was, the scribes and the Pharisees were not going to make it to heaven. They're not going to be there. And neither will we if we go by the same righteousness. So the first thing Jesus Christ says is think not. We have a problem today with standards. Amen? We have a problem with standards. If we have a standard that is too high to achieve, what do we do? We lower the standard, right? So that everybody can enjoy. We now have sports that are beginning way too early for young people, in my opinion. And what do we do? There is no... Why play a game? What is the purpose of a game? The purpose of a game is to have a winner, right? It's to have a winner and a loser. It's not just to have fun. If we want to have fun, we'll have fellowship, right? That's fun. But playing a game is for the purpose of winning and losing. If you look at any game, you look at the instructions. It gives you what? The weight of the rules to play the game. And how do we declare a winner? After we have played Monopoly for five hours, how do we declare who is the winner? Because that's what the purpose of the game is for, is to have a winner. But what have we done? We've lowered the standards. Because not everybody can win, right? So somebody's left out. So what happens? We're just playing for fun. And we don't keep up with our money. And we spend five hours playing Monopoly. And when we get through, we just close it up. We don't count the money or anything. And we walk away. And wow, that was fun, right? How many of you ever taken a basketball goal, especially you guys, and lowered it down so that you could duck on the basketball goal? It's impressive, isn't it? Man, we used to do that. So then what we did, instead of lowering it down, we got real good when I was athletic and able to move and jump and stuff. And we would put a chair down there. We'd run and jump off of the chair in order to slam it. And we were really impressed. But is that the standard? No, the standard is to do what? The goal has to be at 10 feet tall. And you have to leave from the ground. But we make things easier. We lower the standard. And so what Jesus is talking about here is this standard that is there. How many of you have moved the pitch in a ball? Moved the mound closer so your ball would be more accurate and faster? See, we always move the standards to make ourselves better. I can remember going to the ballpark as kids and we would play home run derby a lot. And what we finally realized was, you know what? We couldn't hit too many home runs from hitting that home plate. So you know what we did? When we did that for a few weeks and there wasn't many home runs hit, we moved out to the pitcher's mound. And they pitched from second base and we hit from the pitcher's mound. Guess what? Man, we were selling them out now. Now this is fun. But guess what? When we got into a game, it didn't help us any. Because why? We had changed the standard. And when the standard went back, we were not as good as what we thought we was. And so we have a problem with standards because not everyone can achieve the standard. And one of the standards that I want to point out that we are really changing and hurting today is the standard that we call in our society today relative morality. Relative morality. And what we mean by relative morality is, morality, there is not necessarily a right and a wrong. But morality is based on me and my situation. In other words, it is relative to me. Morality is determined by what is close or pertinent or dealing with me. And the problem is we are trying to radiate as the light of God. We're trying to permeate like the salt of the world. And we are making morality about us and from us. And we have to remember that the Bible has declared us what? Sinners. For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. You back up in front of that and he begins to quote from Psalms 14. And Paul said, as it is written, there is none righteous, no, not one. There is none that understandeth. There is none that seeketh after God. There is none that doeth good. Their throat is an open sepulcher. With their tongues they have used deceit. The poison of the aspen is under their lips. Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and misery are in their ways. And the way of peace have they not known. And then look at what it says in verse 18. There is no fear of God before their eyes. Jeremiah put it this way in Jeremiah 17.9. He said, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it? You see, if there is an absolute truth, if there's no absolute truth, and there is no absolute Word where it's written down, where it is there, then there's no God that sets the standard. Then there can be absolutely no real truth. Then there can be absolutely no real law. The simple fact that we have morality. The simple fact that we have a sense of right and wrong declares that there must be a God. There has to be a God. We will never get people to keep laws that are only judicial guesses to be ultimately decided on by a higher court in a particular time frame that can be changed as the wind of reasoning blows. That's where we are in America today, right? We have something, well, I don't like what you're doing. I don't agree with what you're doing, so what do we do? We take them to court. And when we get to court, what happens? We hope and pray that we get a judge that agrees with us. And if we get a judge that agrees with us, then that judge will make their opinion and they will make their declaration. And guess what? We would have won. But what happens? Then we take it and we begin to go up to courts until we get to the Supreme Court. And the difference between the lower courts and the Supreme Court is, is the Supreme Court cannot rule based upon their opinion. They have to rule based on their law. And where did we get this law in America? We got it from principles of the Bible. That's why our Constitution is so very important. And whether you like it or whether you don't like it, and what category you fill in, we have a Constitution. We have a law that is written down. And if we start bending and we start twisting that Constitution, then guess what? We start coming up with stuff that can be changed and we can vote enough Supreme Court justices in that guess what? They will go not by the law of the land, but by the majority opinion. And that's what was happening in Jesus' day. They were going by opinion and not by law. Listen to me very carefully. You cannot have law or rules for behavior without religion. Did you know that? Did you know you cannot have a law or rules for behavior without religion? Because it is religion that provides the absolute base for morality and law. Why do we know it's wrong to kill? Because God said, thou shalt not kill. Why is it wrong to steal? What if my family is starving? What if my kids are hungry and I have no food in my house? Isn't it ok that I need to feed my kids? And so if this guy over here, this farmer has this field and he's growing way too much, isn't it ok for me to go? And I'm not taking a surplus. I'm just taking what my family needs in order to provide for my kids, right? But God said, thou shalt not steal. That's the problem with abortion. Abortion, it doesn't matter on what level or what's the reasoning behind it. God says, thou shalt not kill. And so that's where the battle is at. Because even the ones on the far other side of abortion, they know that what? Murder is wrong. If I can get rid of a child and kill a child because they're unwanted, then guess what? What keeps me from getting rid of you when you're unwanted or not needed, right? And so what are they fighting over? They're not fighting over is it murder or not. They're fighting on when does this child actually become a human being, right? Because we can kill a fetus, right? Because that's not a human yet. We could take and mutilate a fetus. But it's wrong to take a life. See, there has to be a standard. Otherwise, we just come up with all of this chaos that we have. Law and religion will stand together or law and religion will fall together. Here's an example. Religionless law could never command authority. There must be a transcendent value or a supernatural absolute. So we begin to ask ourselves questions. What is the absolute source of truth? Where do we go to find truth? I mean, we've got all of these sources at the fingertips of our hand here. We have got Google. We have got Siri. We've got Facebook. We've got Twitter. We've got all of these things. We've got Wikipedia. We've got all of these sources. What is the absolute source of truth? What is the absolute standard of morality? What is the absolute rule of justice? Where does this evil society floating on a sea of relativism find an anchor? Where do we find so that we know what we're doing and what we believe is right? And if it is right, how can we enforce it? And that's the question. And that's where we begin to get into the Christian atmosphere. What we want to know is, is there really a standard to live by? Is there an absolute authority? Is there an unchanging authority? A divine law? And the more Christian we get and the more closer we get to God, the questions begin to narrow in, but they're all the same question. See, we begin to start asking ourselves, is the Old Testament binding on the Christian? Preacher, do I have to obey the old covenant? Because Jesus said, I will make a new covenant. How much of it is binding for the Christian? If I have to obey the Old Testament, what parts? Is there any parts I cannot obey? Is there any parts I can get away from? Is the Old Testament totally commanded of us? Do we have to fulfill all of the things in the Old Testament? How important are these things? And many of the Jews of Jesus' day thought the Messiah would actually come onto the scene and He would literally destroy the old covenant. But they misinterpreted a passage of Scripture in Jeremiah 31.31 when Jeremiah said, Behold, the days will come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. And they totally misinterpreted this. And Jesus comes along and says, I am introducing you a new kingdom. I am giving you a new covenant. Not a kingdom of Israel. Not an earthly kingdom. But I am giving you a heavenly kingdom. See, Israel is an earthly kingdom. But God said, I am not dealing with an earthly kingdom no more. Because why? They have rejected Me. I have given them opportunity and opportunity. He finally allowed them to go into bondage. He allowed them to go into captivity. Israel and their sacrifices have gone away. Everything has calmed down. Everything is back down. And now Jesus walks onto the scene after 400 years of quiet and says, I am giving you a new covenant. A new covenant. And so they're wrestling with this idea. And He told them even to disregard the Sabbath, right? I mean, when the Pharisees looked at Him and said, How can you heal on the Sabbath, right? How many times did Jesus and His disciples get in trouble for doing what? Not washing their hands before they eat. You see, the scribes and the Pharisees had come along, and yet Jesus was changing everything. And so when Jesus was talking of disregarding the Sabbath, when He was violating many of their traditions, it was natural for them to think this must be the Messiah giving us a new covenant. And rather ruthlessly swept away their traditions, their tithings of ministrial things. Jesus Christ mocked their constant washings. He disregarded their oral and scribal law. And what I mean by the oral and scribal law is the scribes and the Pharisees had taken the law out of the Old Testament. And they had so got to every situation. What about this? What about if I'll use for like abortion, for instance? What about in the instance of rape? If you cannot look at that child without seeing you're rapist, then we have a thing called adoption. We have parents out there that would love to care for that child if it's too much of a problem, but we can't kill it. But they had watered it down. Well, okay, in this situation, then here's what needs to happen. In this situation, and so they had taken and what they had done is through their interpretation of the law, just like we in America today in less than 200 and something years, what have we done? We have taken the law and we have so watered it down to what? The law has no power or relevance in our society today. All you've got to do is find the right lawyer and the right judge and anything goes. They interpreted the written law in a totally different way than they did. Matter of fact, Jesus Christ spoke as one having authority. But in no way, shape, form, or fashion was He revolting from the Old Testament. In no way was His gospel a gospel of indulgence. See, Jesus understood the importance of the Old Testament. The Word of God is the standard of righteousness. When we want to know how to act and behave, when we want to make a decision, this is our standard. This is our authority. Remember, that word blessed has to do not with just mere happiness, right? What did we say? Blessed means being approved by God. Blessed are those that see their self spiritually bankrupt, for they shall inherit the kingdom of God. And so it's not about being happy. Can I just be frank with you for just a minute? Jesus Christ nowhere in the gospels cares about people's happiness. He cared about righteousness. He cared about repentance. And so we need to understand that God is not interested in you to be happy. God wants you to be blessed. And whether you are in prison, whether you are being beheaded, whether you are being stoned, no matter what is going on in your life, you need to be blessed, not happy, knowing that what I am doing, I'm pleasing God. While Stephen was being stoned, after he had been attacked and people biting him and clawing at him and literally taking parts of his flesh, it said Stephen looked up to heaven. And oh boy, his king, his authority was no longer seated in heaven, but he now stood up. He took notice. He took notice. When Jesus Christ died on the cross of Calvary, God Himself, this is My Son in whom I am well pleased. Stephen, I'm pleased with you. And man, when Stephen looked up there, what did he say? He said, Father, if you're pleased with me, then kill all of these people that are stoning me. Now what did he say? He said, knowing that you're pleased with my sermon and the way that I'm living my life, he said, forgive them. Forgive them. Wow, that's a different attitude there. That's a whole different ball game than what we see in Christianity today. See, the goal is to please God because only when we are in the will of God, performing the duty of God, will we be happy. And that's why we have a lot of Christians that don't have happiness because they don't have joy. They don't have Jesus Christ in their life. And it's become focused upon them and their relative morality and what they think and their opinion. And we have forgot to leave God and put God back into our opinion. And Jesus, the first thing He says to them is think not. Think not. Quit thinking. So if we're not supposed to think when it comes to the Word of God, what are we supposed to do? Look, He says, think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets. I am not come to destroy. Notice that phrase. I am not come to destroy. He says, think not, but rather what He is saying is testify, affirm, make known. See, don't you think that I'm coming to destroy. I'm not coming to do away with the old covenant in order to replace it with a new covenant. No, here's the testimony and you get it right. I have come to what? Not destroy. I'm not doing away with the Old Testament. I'm not getting rid of the Old Testament. And so He testifies in John 14.9. Jesus says unto him, Have I been so long time with you and hast thou not known me, Philip? He that hath seen me, Jesus Christ, has seen who? The Father. How sayest then thou? Show us the Father. He tells us in John 10.30, I and my Father are one. Listen, the Bible. Jesus said He did not come to destroy the law. Jesus cannot do anything outside of who He is. The Bible says that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. And if what Jesus Christ wrote down 2,000 years ago before His coming, if it was good then, then guess what? It's still good when He came. Because God is holy. And God cannot make a mistake. It wasn't that He was rethinking. It wasn't that He was redoing. And so God is unchangeable. He is holy. And He would never destroy what He Himself created. God is not destroying you in this world. We are destroying us in this world. So we need to understand that God is good. And God wants to bless us. He wants us to be happy. But only can we be happy as we are approved of Him. And so the law was authored by God. The law was authored by God. As a matter of fact, if you go to Exodus chapter 20, where we have the Ten Commandments, verse 1 says, And God spoke all these words, saying, I am the Lord thy God, which hath brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. The law, listen to me, the law is an uncompromising standard of God. The law was the school mechanism to which the holiness of God was to be understood when living in a sinful environment. How do we know if we're being holy as God is holy? Are we acting like the world? We go to the law. We look at the law. We measure ourselves against God's standard, not toward man's standard. The law as seen in Exodus and Leviticus is actually divided up into three parts. And this is what confuses us and messes us up. There was actually the moral law. The moral law, the Ten Commandments was given for everyone. Everyone is under the moral law. There was a second part to that law that was the judicial or the civil law. And this law only pertained to Israel as a nation. This is where all of the... and basically it was the laws that determined how they would dress, how they would eat, their agriculture, their dietary laws. Laws that with their relationship would show that the other nations, that they were different, that they were special, that they were chosen by God. So God gave Israel certain laws to be different from everybody else. In other words, it was only for Israel. We're not under the laws because I'm not a citizen of Israel, right? When Jesus Christ came, He said, I'm giving you a new kingdom. Do you realize in Acts chapter 2, when Jews turned to Jesus Christ and joined the church, they were no longer held accountable to Israel's covenant and laws? Because now they fell under Jesus' covenant and law. It didn't mean that they did away with them, but they're no longer relevant to me. The American laws are, guess what? Only good when you're on American soil. I go to Mexico, they don't care about what the law is in America. They care about what the law is in Mexico. And so I have to learn them laws and obey them laws. They're not interested in my laws. And so then you have God's people are no longer located in a race of people. We're no longer under the umbrella of God's authority and sovereign rule of a nation. Now what has happened? Now we are under the authority of Jesus Christ. He came to be our King. He came to establish a kingdom. And so now we are under the law in what? As a church, who is the head of the church? Jesus Christ. Who is Jesus Christ? The Son of the Father who said, if you have seen me, you've seen the Father. And so our authority goes straight from here to where you and I directly to God. That's the umbrella. And that's the authority of the kingdom. The third part is the ceremonial law. The ceremonial law was designed as a means of Israel's worship of God. And the ceremonial law, all of these feasts and all of these sacrifices and all of these deals, the purpose of that was to restore relationships and interact with God through sacrifices. And so you had sacrifices because of sin. You had sacrifices because of praise. And all the sacrifice and ceremonies dealt with their relationship with God. And God said what? At least three times a year, you need to send your men to come see Me. You need to have your men come to where I am. I'll take care of the women and the children, right? But you come to Jerusalem. You come to where I am. See, all of that was to do what? To make sure at least three times a year they're focusing and relating on God. Understanding that God is taking care of them. God is providing them. And so it is about restoration and relationship. When they get to Jerusalem, what happens? They realize, hey, as you get closer to God, hey, I've sinned. So you do what? You bring your sacrifice. You bring your sacrifice because guess what? The authority is regulated through the priesthood. Now the law of God is not something you can just adjust and adapt to whatever sin is going on in our society today. You can't pick and choose which laws you like and which ones you don't like. And that's what Jesus Christ is saying. And so here comes the question that I have to do. We understand that God's law is the standard. The law is broken down into three parts, but then notice what Jesus goes on to say. He says it is also affirmed by the prophets. The prophets reiterated or reinforced the law. Go read all of the prophets. What are the prophets about? The prophets would say to the people of Israel, for example, you had better keep God's law, right? You better keep God's law. You better not break His law. You better not keep falling away from His law. You better not keep disobeying God. Sometimes they would talk about Israel's failure to keep the moral law. Sometimes the prophets would talk about their judicial or civil law. And sometimes He would refer to Israel and talk about their unjust judges and the priesthood, the ceremonial laws. Sometimes, He said, they had not done their sacrifices, but rather their sacrifices were going to false gods instead of the one true God. So the prophets were constantly proclaiming the same exact thing that Moses declared to them. Keep the moral law. Keep the judicial law. Keep the ceremonial law. The judicial law keeps you separated as a nation. The civil law, the ceremonial law, is God's definition and pattern and standard for how we are to worship Him and approach Him. The best definition of a prophet I know of is in Exodus 4, verse 16. And it's a very excellent way that God, by the analogy of Moses and Aaron, gives us this definition of a prophet. That's why sometimes I tell you I have the gift of prophecy, because look at what he says a prophet is. A prophet is not about predicting the future. Look at what he says. He said, and this is what he told Moses and Aaron, He shall be thy spokesman unto the people, and even he shall be to thee instead of a mouth, and thou shalt be to him instead of a god. That's what a prophet is. A prophet is a mouth of God. In other words, I am not predicting future things. What I am doing is declaring to you the Word of God. And the Word of God has blessings. And the Word of God has consequences. And my job is to make sure that when you die and you leave this world as your pastor, my responsibility is for you when you walk into heaven, Jesus Christ say, well done, thy good and faithful servant. It's not to make you happy. It's not to rub your back. It's not to even be caught up in a lot of the things the pastor does on this physical earth and physical stuff. I'm going to be there because the physical always leads to the spiritual. But my concern is your spiritual. It's not what happens to your life here on earth. My concern is what's going to happen to your life when you get to heaven. That's the goal. And so that's what a prophet is. Jeremiah really says the same exact thing. In Jeremiah 1-7, the Lord said unto me, Jeremiah, the prophet, what did he do? He was known as the weeping prophet. Why? Because he never was allowed by God to preach a good message. Amen? Every one of his messages was bad. Every one of his messages directly was a result because of the sins of the people of the priesthood. And Jeremiah spent a lot of time, at least every once in a while, God will let me speak about grace and mercy. Amen? But it's not my message. It's God's message. And so with that affirmation of the prophets, this helps us to determine, and this is the important part, and I know I'm running out of time, so I'm going to try to be very quick and very brief, but this helps us determine what part of the law Jesus is referring to. You see, sometimes when they use the term law, it's strictly held to the Ten Commandments. They would say, obey the law, and when they said that, immediately it was referring to the Ten Commandments. Right? The law. So we understand that. Sometimes when they use the word law, it would actually speak of the Pentateuch, the first five books that Moses wrote. And so not only did it include the moral law, but it also included the judicial or civil and the ceremonial law. Because it referred to all that Moses wrote. He was the writer of the law. But sometimes they use the word law to speak of the entire Old Testament. And neither one of these was really the common way that they used law. As a matter of fact, in Jesus' day, when Jesus comes onto the scene, when they said the law, most of them thought of the law as being that oral tradition that the priests, the scribes, and the Pharisees came up with. And so they had taken the law, and I forget how many, but it's a ton of different laws that they came up with outside from the Ten Commandments and everything else. Do you realize that they even went down, they had laws to tell women they would actually, because you weren't supposed to carry any, you weren't supposed to work on the Sabbath day. And they had laws. I was reading some of their ridiculous laws. They had determined, the scribes and the Pharisees, that in order to be considered work, there had to be an exertion. And they weighed it down to women was not even allowed to pick up a thimble on the Sabbath day because they had to exert themselves to lift the thimble. Therefore, it was classified as work. You see how ridiculous, when man gets involved, how ridiculous the law gets? And so usually it went to this, but I want you to understand, and write this down somewhere on your notes, Matthew 15, because I want to encourage you to go read Matthew 15 this week, because I don't have time to address it this morning. But the Pharisees said to Him, Why do the disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? That's the law of the elders. Why are Your disciples not obeying our law? But Jesus answered and said unto them, Why do you also transgress the commandment of your God by tradition? And you read all of chapter 15, and what you find out is Jesus basically tells them, You have substituted your traditions for the law. And He condemned that. He said, Absolutely no way. Our traditions are not law. And that's where we kind of mess up as Christians today. If a tradition takes on long enough, and we do it long enough, it becomes a habit. And if it becomes a habit, then what happens? It becomes a law, right? But that doesn't mean that it was intended to be a law. It started as tradition, just something that somebody did that everybody else got into, and now it has become a law. So let me help you see what Jesus is talking about by the law. Out of the first three, the fourth is totally rejected. They're traditions and stuff. Out of the first three, Jesus either meant the Ten Commandments. He either means the entire Pentateuch, all of Moses' writings, or He could actually mean the Old Testament. These are our three choices that we get to take. When Jesus Christ said, Think not that I am come to destroy the law and the prophets, I came not to destroy, but to fulfill. And so what part of the law is He talking about? How do we know? Well, watch. Notice He uses to destroy the law or the prophets. The prophets added on to the law solidifies what Jesus Christ is talking about. You say, how does it solidify? When you see the term the law and the prophets together, it is a reference to the entire Old Testament. See, remember, the job of the prophet was what? To reiterate and to reinforce the law. They didn't change the law. They didn't add to the law or take away from the law. They were to reinstate or reinforce the law. And so when He says He takes the law, all of the Ten Commandments, expanded it out to Moses, then He says the prophets confirmed all of it. And I told you all ago, we saw where the prophets condemned all three parts of the law. As a matter of fact, when you look in the New Testament, twelve times the New Testament refers to the Old Testament as the law and the prophets. And so He's referring to the entire Old Testament. Whenever in the New Testament you see the term law, law of God, law and prophets, Scriptures, the Word of God, they are all synonyms for the Old Testament. And Jesus Christ is saying, I did not come to destroy the Old Testament. I came to fulfill it. And so that is the difference. I've not come to destroy, I've come to fulfill it. And so the law was accomplished by Jesus Christ. He came to fulfill it, to make it full, to make it complete, to make it revealed into our lives. It's a great statement. If those Jews had been tuned in that day, they would have known that they were staring face to face with the theme of the entire Old Testament. When Jesus answered, but to fulfill, at the end of verse 17, He was saying, the whole law I will fulfill. Every single bit of it. The moral law, the judicial law, and also the ceremonial law. Now, this is where you need to listen to me very, very carefully. Scripture finds its fulfillment in Jesus Christ. He fulfilled all of these. But here's what I want you to understand. All God wanted to be an absolutely wondrous, perfect, complete picture of the coming King of the Kingdom. The King came to fulfill it all. In the very beginning of the Bible, it says, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And yet the Bible says that all things were made by Jesus Christ. John 1.3. And you see, it's all about the Lord Jesus Christ. You see, in Genesis, Jesus Christ is the seed of the woman. In Exodus, He's the Passover Lamb. In Leviticus, He's our atoning sacrifice. In Numbers, He's the smitten rock. In Deuteronomy, He's the prophet who is to come. In Joshua, He is the captain of the Lord of hosts. In Judges, He is the deliverer of God's people. In Ruth, He's our kinsman redeemer. In 1 Samuel, He's the anointed one. 2 Samuel, He's the king and throne. In 1 Kings, He is the glory of the Lord filling the temple. In 2 Kings, He is the royal seed. In 1 Chronicles, He's the glorious king. 2 Chronicles, He is the Lord who appears in Solomon. In Ezra, He is the Lord God of our fathers. In Nehemiah, He is the restorer of Israel. In Esther, He is the advocate who pleads for His people. In Job, He's my redeemer that I know lives and shall stand upon the earth. In the book of Psalms, He's the shepherd. He's the king of glory. In Ecclesiastes, He's the significance of life. In the song of Solomon, the Lord Jesus Christ is the heavenly bridegroom. In Isaiah, He is Immanuel, God with us. He is wonderful, counselor, mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace, the virgin-born Son of God. In Jeremiah, He's the divine potter who is molding and making our lives. In Lamentations, He is the broken-hearted Jehovah who weeps over us. In Ezekiel, He's the glory of God. In Daniel, He is the stone cut out of the mountain without ends that will smite the image of the ungodly world upon its feet and then become a kingdom that will fill this earth. In Hosea, the Lord Jesus is the child called out of Egypt. In Joel, He's the Lord that roars out of Zion. In Amos, He's the judge of all nations. In Obadiah, He is the Lord of the coming kingdom. In Jonah, He's God's messenger to the Gentiles. In Micah, He's Bethlehem's baby, the one who is going to be the ruler of Israel. In Nahum, He is the stronghold in the day of trouble. In Habakkuk, He is the Lord in His holy temple. In Zephaniah, He is the king of Israel. In Haggai, He is the Lord of hosts. In Zechariah, He is the Lord coming into Jerusalem, riding upon a colt. In Malachi, He's the coming messenger, the Son of Righteousness with healing in His wings. Let me show you a couple of Scriptures right quick. Luke 16, 16 says, The law and the prophets were until John. Since that time, the time of John, which John? John the Baptist. God has preached and every man presseth into it. Luke 24, 27, And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, He expounded unto them and all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself. I would have loved to have been those two guys after the resurrection walking. And they not recognize Jesus Christ and all of a sudden, as He begins to tell them about how that He was in all of the Old Testament, and all of a sudden, they finally get to their house. They sit down to a meal and Jesus Christ reveals Himself to them. Boy, talk about a sermon with an invitation built right in. Wow! Luke 24, 44, He said unto them, These are the words which I spake unto you while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses and in the prophets and in the Psalms concerning Me. Let me give it to you very, very simple this morning. Jesus Christ fulfilled the whole entire Old Testament law. It is fulfilled. Not by what He said, but by what He did. Not by what He did so much, but by what He was. You say, what does that mean? What I mean is that He didn't come just to rescue the law from the rabbis' perversion and just to be a model of righteousness. He came to bring everlasting righteousness by being the Messiah the law predicted. In other words, it was what He was as much as what He did and what He said. You cannot understand God's Word until you understand God. See, that's what He said. Blessed are the poor in spirit. It starts on the inside. You cannot be salt and light until you change the inside. And then the salt and the light just happen. And that's our problem. As we go around and we take the Word of God and we try to figure out how can I be salt today? How can I be light today? And what we're doing is we are getting a relationship with the Word of God without having a relationship with the God of the Word. 2 Corinthians and we're going to close. Therefore, sin we have this ministry. This is our ministry. Here's this new kingdom of being salt and light. We have received mercy. He's given us a ministry. We're not capable because we're all sinners. None righteous. No, not one. But He has put us into this ministry. And guess what? The first way that He did was gave us mercy when we got there. So I don't faint. I don't get caught up in that. But have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness, not handling the Word of God deceitfully, but by manifestation of the truth, committing ourselves to every man's conscious in the sight of God. See, when I give you something and I tell you something, and it's not my words, the Holy Spirit is appealing to your conscience because it comes out of the Word of God. And I don't have to bring conviction. The Holy Spirit does the convicting. But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost, in whom the God of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious Gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them. For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves, your servants, for Jesus' sake. See what's happening? It's not about me. It's about Jesus Christ. And I'm going to serve. Salt serves. Light serves. Right? There's a purpose. A light is no good if it's not serving a purpose. You don't turn the lights on during the daytime. You know, Parker, the other day, finally, at three years old, it hit him. Why am I running around with a flashlight when all the lights are on? It's no good. And so what he would do is go to a room where he could turn the lights out, and guess what? Now the light served its purpose. If it wasn't dark, there's no reason for the light. And so he says, look, he says, we ourselves, servants for Jesus' sake, for God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, has shined in where? Our hearts. To give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. And so listen, Jesus Christ came to fulfill. And He's got three different comings. There is His first coming where He fulfilled the moral law. He cried, It is finished. The wages of sin is death. Every one of us has broken the moral law. Every one of us deserves to die. But then guess what? Jesus Christ said, I must go, but if I go, I'll send another. I'll send the Holy Spirit to do what? To guide you into all truth. So guess what? In the coming of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit fulfilled all of the judicial law. See, it's not the dietary stuff of Israel. That was their law. That was to separate them from the world. But now He has given us the Holy Spirit to write His laws upon our heart to make us different from all of the other world. And Paul tells us that these are the works of the flesh. This is the fruit of the Spirit, right? And so the Holy Spirit gives us that. It bears the fruit that is there. And then when He comes back in His second coming, guess what? He's going to fulfill all of the ceremonial laws. That's why they need another temple and the sacrifices. But it's not going to be about the temple and the sacrifices because Jesus Christ is going to reveal to them that He is the sacrifice. He fulfilled that. And so see, the fulfillment is happening in stages. And everything has not been fulfilled because why? Earth and heaven have not passed away. And so it's still in the process of being fulfilled. But the law refers to the whole Old Testament. Who are you relying on this morning for your acceptance into this kingdom? Who are you crediting this morning for the glory of your salvation? If it's not Jesus Christ, then guess what? You shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven. Because see, it's all about Jesus Christ. And folks, we've got to get back to focusing on Jesus Christ. And we've got to understand that He has given us a standard to live by. And He's given us a duty to do. We are to be salt and light. And if we're not doing what we're supposed to be doing, then guess what? To Him that knoweth to do good and does it not, to Him it is sin. It is sin. And folks, if we're not salt and we're not light, then we need to repent. And we need to go back to step one and recognize that we are absolutely nothing with God. And start letting Jesus Christ fill us and flow out of us to the lost and dying world. That's what this world needs. We don't need any more religion. We don't need our interpretation of traditions and everything else. We need churches. Like I believe Kentucky Missionary Baptist Church on that has a foundation and a standard. And we cannot be ashamed of that standard. We've got to hold that Bible up. And we can't just say, well, the Old Testament's no longer needed. It's no longer there. We would not understand grace and mercy if it wasn't for the Old Testament. Because God allowed them over and over and over to sin. But what would happen? The minute they realized their wickedness, the minute they were discipled, the minute they were disciplined, what would they do? They would repent. And when they repent, what did God do? He would immediately forgive them and put them right back where? To the standard that they were at before. See, we try to move God's standard to make us look better. And Jesus Christ stepped on the scene and He said, uh-uh, I'm not lowering the standard to traditions and your oral ideas. No, I'm here to re-establish the standard. We are to be holy as God is holy. As we stand, what verse of invitation?