There is something funny about handing the law section of the Sermon on the Mount to Rick Closius. He's a ruling elder here — and he has also been a deputy sheriff for thirty years. He has spent his whole career enforcing law.
He opened with a book he read a few years ago about the Puritan settlements at Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay in the 1600s. Those were godly people. They left everything they knew, crossed a cruel ocean, and endured starvation, frostbite, sickness, and death after death after death — all so they could worship God freely, according to conscience. Much the way we do on a Sunday morning without thinking about it.
Sounds good so far.
Within months they were appointing judges, building holding cells, and hiring sheriffs.
Why? Disorderly drunkenness. Theft. Adultery. Even murder.
There is nothing new under the sun. The best of men are men at best. They were sinners, and so are we, and everyone falls short of the glory of God.
So what's the remedy? Here is the whole idea of this passage in one line: righteousness is received in Christ, not achieved by us.
What Jesus does
"Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets. I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them."
That word abolish carries the sense of tearing something down, wrecking it past repair. Jesus rejects the idea outright. He came to fill it up — to complete what God had already ordained.
Then he says something startling about how durable it is. "Until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished." An iota is the smallest letter. A dot is smaller than a period. Not one of them is going anywhere.
You may have heard the objection that the Bible is a bronze-age book that no longer fits the modern world. The truth runs the other way. Scripture fits every age because it doesn't move. The world has always resisted it, not because the world outgrew it, but because Scripture keeps exposing the world's rebellion in every generation. Our customs advance. Our orientation toward sin has not budged an inch.
The commandments God spoke at Sinai are ten commandments. Not ten suggestions. And definitely not ten tips for a more fulfilled life.
Jesus obeyed that law perfectly, in word and deed and thought, where every other human being has failed. He is the true Passover lamb. He embodies the heart of the whole thing — perfect love for God and neighbor, without the slightest deviation.
And here is the part that matters for you. The law was never given as a ladder to climb toward your own salvation. You can work at that your whole life and never arrive. The law is a mirror that shows you where the dirt is.
Last time anybody checked, the mirror doesn't wash your face.
What we do
Verse 19 turns to us. "Whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven."
Relaxes means to loosen, to annul, to quietly set aside.
Have you ever picked and chosen the verses you like? Be careful about approaching the Bible like a vending machine for the soul, where you insert a problem and extract a soothing verse.
We run instinctively to Jeremiah 29:11 — I know the plans I have for you, to prosper you. Did you know those plans were spoken into the middle of a catastrophic judgment falling on Israel? Or Philippians 4:13, I can do all things through him who strengthens me, which does not mean you're going to swim the English Channel. It means you can be content in any circumstance, because you have Christ, and Christ is all you need.
Those verses are precious and true. But the same book says your heart is deceitful above all things, that none is righteous, no, not one, and that unless you repent you will likewise perish. It says: if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily.
Scripture is meant to comfort you. It is not a manual for a better life. It's a wrecking ball for a comfortable one. It rebukes before it trains. It convicts before it consoles. The parts that make you squirm are usually the parts you most need to hear.
If your Bible reading rarely convicts you, if you have never once looked up from a page and thought Jesus said what? — consider the gentle possibility that you're browsing rather than submitting.
Start this week with one uncomfortable chapter.
What God gives
Then comes the verse that lands hardest. "Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven."
Never. Pastor Kent's one-word summary of that verse the week before was: oops.
Understand what the Pharisees were like. Scripture says they tithed their mint and cumin. Picture yourself at a restaurant putting condiments on your fries and stopping to set aside a couple of grains of salt and pepper for God. That is box-checking taken to its logical end. And Jesus says it isn't enough.
If the model religious man falls short, who gets in?
Only someone wearing a righteousness he did not produce. That is the point of the whole passage. The law reveals your helplessness, not your goodness, so that you stop bargaining and cling to Christ's flawless obedience, credited to you by faith alone. Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness. Not earned. Counted.
Today
Rick has about a year left on the job. He said you don't need his war stories; you can watch the news for that. But in the many deaths he has investigated, most of the time the victims did not see it coming. They were going about their business until eternity came calling.
At that moment you want to be ready.
So renounce any claim of merit. Humble yourself the way the tax collector did, beating his chest and asking for mercy. Receive Christ's perfect obedience as your only plea. Then walk in grateful obedience — not to earn anything, but because it has already been given.
You have often heard around here that you can belong before you believe. Come as you are, and hear the gospel.
But for the love of heaven, do not remain as you are.
