Fulfilling the Law - What the Law's Purposes are for us

Deuteronomy 30:15-20; Psalm 119:1-8; 1 Corinthians 3:1-9; Matthew 5:21-37

The story is told - It is probably not true (since I made it up) – of an island in the Western Pacific ocean. It was a peaceful island for centuries. Then one day, a group of men from Japan came and took over the island for a couple of years. Then other men from a place called America drove away the men from Japan and took over the land.

One day, soon after they arrived, the American men brought huge metal beasts and cut down a straight path through the trees. Then they used those metal beasts to make the surface of the ground very flat.

The next day, the men brought some other round metal beasts and began to throw sand and water and another type of sand they brought with them into the round metal beasts. The metal beasts spun around and around. Then, the men tipped over the metal beasts and out came a type of bread dough, grey, that the put in large metal coconut shells with wheels and handles on them.

They took the bread dough and went to the flat place. There, they poured out the bread dough and made the top of it very flat. They covered all the long, flat stretch of land where they had knocked down the trees. For three days, they did this, night and day.

On the fourth day, the American men walked on top of the bread dough, which had baked in the hot sun. The American men walked down to the end of the baked bread dough and then walked back to the other end several times.

The local men wondered what was the purpose of this huge piece of bread that the men from America had baked? Why did they do this? And so, they also walked down on top of the bread dough to the end and back again. Yet on their bare feet, the baked bread was terribly hot and so they hopped off the grey bread onto the cool sand time and again as they walked the length of the bread. Sometimes, though, they needed their friends' help to get out of the weeds and back onto the bread.

Who was going to eat this grey bread? But the bread was surely not something they could eat – it was too hard and did not taste good. Perhaps the bread dough had been made for the American’s god? And so some of the local men began to discuss among themselves how they might also make a piece of flat bread for the American’s god.

And on the fifth day a flock of giant birds landed on the bread. They did not eat the bread, but they walked on the bread, and vomited men onto the bread. For the purpose of the grey bread, it seems, was fulfilled that day as those B-17’s landed on that island, ready to begin the bombing of Japan.

Sometimes, when we live in this world, God does things which we just don’t understand. Once in a while, we learn more about what God was doing, but sometimes God’s purposes are just far beyond us, as the baking of a huge piece of bread appeared to the men of Guam. It was only later that they learned about cement and how it becomes concrete, and that the purpose of the pouring of all that cement mixture was to make a runway for airplanes.

In the same way, our understanding of the ways of God and what God does can take a long while to develop. Sometimes, we never understand until we reach Heaven. But sometimes, God is doing an act of preparation, God is getting things ready, God is pouring a runway for something that is still to come.

The giving of the Law was one of those preparations.

Let’s go back in time, let’s think about life before Moses, let’s think about life before Abraham. Let’s think about the way people lived a long, long time ago in the Middle East.

There was a simple rule in those days – you did what you wanted to do if you could get away with it. Imagine that! If you wanted to butcher my cow, you could butcher her and eat her unless I could stop you. If you wanted my sack of wheat, you could take it unless I could stop you. If you wanted my wife or daughters – they were yours unless I could stop you. And I could take anything of yours unless you could stop me!

Naturally, living like this gave a certain advantage to the big guys and the big families, for the only thing that was “right” was to survive. Have you ever seen the Mad Max movies? This must have been the feel of the place, everyone taking. The only people who didn’t take from each other were families and clans – and those families and clans that were smart enough and wise enough to join forces against outsiders.

The Egyptians were the first to work together, we think, because when a river floods, people have to work together, or the river just creeps around the end of my land to flood me because you didn’t build your section of floodwall. And the Nile river flooded every year. So eventually, some four or five thousand years ago, some Egyptian strong man forced everybody along a stretch of river to work together and he became the Pharoah, the king of Egypt.

Outside of Egypt, things were still wild. Some kings established a few laws, some declared more laws, and some got very strict about everything. But outside of Egypt, a king was in charge of every place of a few hundred or a few thousand people. A different king might have ruled the town next door, and still another ruled the next village. Every village had a king and every king had his rules. In exchange for following the rules, each man and woman received the protection of the local king.

We know a bit about the rules of some places. In the town of Babylon, you had to pay a tax to the king. A king named Hammurabi, who ruled near Babylon had a more extensive code.

#127: "If any one "point the finger" at a sister of a god or the wife of any one, and can not prove it, this man shall be taken before the judges and his brow shall be marked. (by cutting the skin, or perhaps hair.)"

Law #15: "If any one take a male or female slave of the court, or a male or female slave of a freed man, outside the city gates, he shall be put to death."[23]

Law #22: "If any one is committing a robbery and is caught, then he shall be put to death."

Law #53: "If any one be too lazy to keep his dam in proper condition, and does not so keep it; if then the dam break and all the fields be flooded, then shall he in whose dam the break occurred be sold for money, and the money shall replace the corn which he has caused to be ruined."

(The above laws from Wikipedia article on Code of Hammurabi.)

In the town of Sodom, the rules were different it was the rule that all of the men would greet any visitor to the place and force themselves upon him. We see this in action in Genesis 18-19.

And yet, in the midst of all this hodgepodge crazy quilt of rules that men were making up in each of the little towns and villages, those little tiny kingdoms, a man named Abraham roamed with his sheep, his cattle, his wife, and his servants. Abraham had no king. Abraham did not live in a kingdom. Abraham followed no king’s laws – he was free and independent, doing what Abraham pleased.

But Abraham desperately wanted a son. One night, God talked to Abraham and gave Abraham a promise:

“Your descendants will be more numerous as the stars you can count.”

Abraham questioned this a bit, because Abraham was already an old man in his 80’s, and his wife was almost as old, but Abraham believed God. Abraham believe in God’s promise. And because Abraham believed in God’s promise, God declared Abraham to be “righteous”, not guilty of the crime of rebellion that almost everyone since Adam, the first man, had been guilty of. Now, Abraham was not a rebel, but a loyal citizen of God’s kingdom, and Abraham received God’s protection. Abraham wasn’t particularly good – But he trusted God. And that was what made him righteous.

Years later, after Abraham had a couple of sons and those sons had sons, Abraham’s grandson Jacob – also known as Israel – and his twelve sons and their families moved to Egypt to escape a famine. There, they eventually became slaves. And over 400 years later, at God’s bidding, Moses and his brother Aaron led the Israelites to escape from Egypt. Abraham’s descendants – all 600,000 of them, were still under God’s protection. God had fulfilled that promise of descendants.

Shortly after the escape, God called Moses to come to the top of a mountain to receive the Law from God. This was not just any Law, it was a very detailed Law, 613 commandments given by God. And our first reading from Deuteronomy 30 describes Moses speaking to the descendants of Israel about that Law:

See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. For I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to him, and to keep his commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess.

But if your heart turns away and you are not obedient, and if you are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed. 

The choice was clear – love God, obey him and follow the Law meant life and blessings. Rebellion meant destruction. Unlike following man-made laws, following this set of laws led to life and blessings, while rebelling led to destruction.

And so, throughout the history of Israel, there was a group of people who tried to follow the Law and a group of people who followed other gods. The God-followers and the rebels. Whenever the kings of Israel and Judah tried to obey, they prospered. Whenever they worshiped other gods, they suffered and came to bad ends.

And God gave them second and third chances, which saved several of those kings and the people of Judah and Israel from destruction, for sometimes it just took the words of an individual, a prophet, to turn around the king, the king went to his knees and apologized to God and things turned around. For God gives everyone second and third chances.

The history of Israel and Judah is the history of a people coming to God and rebelling against God. Eventually, both nations were destroyed, the people carried away to slavery because they had strayed so far from God. But even then, after 70 years in Babylon, the people were allowed to return to rebuild the Temple and restore the worship of God.

For you see, that was what the Law was all about. It wasn’t about following a particular set of moral and ethical and legal guidelines. It wasn’t about the walk down the runway and back, seeing who could walk on the runway the best or the most. It never was about that. Something more important was coming. The Law was just a preparation for something much more important.

It was about believing that God was so good, so powerful, so trustworthy that people would do what God asked them to do because they believed IN God. Just as Abraham had believed God’s promises and been declared righteous by God – did these people believe God’s promises? Were they rebels from God – or were they loyal citizens of God’s kingdom?

Jesus arrived and began to preach about 560 years after the return from Babylon.

Jesus had a strong message for everyone. Through the series of examples in today’s Gospel reading from Matthew 5, Jesus pointed out to everyone that the Law was not about our actions – it wasn’t about walking down the runway and back - the Law was much more than that, for the Law was a set of standards that pointed us toward becoming the type of citizens that God wants in God’s kingdom. It was about us becoming virtuous, holy people. The Law was necessary to teach us how to fly spiritually, just as the runway was necessary for men to fly in those B-17’s. Let me take one example. Jesus said:

²¹ “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.' But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. 

What is murder and what is anger? Murder is killing someone purposely, usually because of anger. But anger is also the intent to harm someone. The only reason anger doesn’t proceed in every case to murder is either self-control of the angry person, or an inability to murder because of the defenses of the intended victim or the intervention of someone else.

Jesus is saying that there is no difference to God,. God isn’t concerned with your actions – God is concerned with the state of your heart. The very fact that you get angry at someone is enough to show you are defying God’s will. We say to each other, “I wanted to kill that man but I didn’t.” 

God says, “You are not doing what I want when you want to harm another. You aren’t trusting me to take care of evil, you don’t trust me to deal of injustice, you ultimately don’t believe that I will be with you eternally, because if you had an eternal perspective, you would let these little things slide by without any anger. You still want to be a little god, controlling other people, and so you aren’t letting me be your God.”

You see, God has exceedingly high standards if you are going to try to be good enough for God.

Jesus went on:

“Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.”

"Raca" was an insult. Merely insulting another person puts us in danger of the fire of hell. Why? Because a mature follower of God, a person who truly believed that every person is a unique portrait of God would never insult another image of God, another person, for if they were mature, they would have placed deep in their hearts the knowledge that when they look at another person they are seeing a portrait of God! And when they insult another person, they are insulting God.

Have you ever heard someone say, “I can say anything I want about my child, but don’t you dare say something negative about her?” This is how God feels about each of us, God’s children. But since God can read our minds, it goes even deeper – Don’t even THINK evil thoughts about someone else if you are trying to truly follow God! That’s how GOOD God wants us to become!

I could go on and on through our reading, hitting each of these point, and I suggest you re-read it again this afternoon.

(I will take one point and explain it, since it has been the subject of much anguish for people.

Jesus said: “It has been said, ‘Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, makes her the victim of adultery, and anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

In those days, it was accepted that a man could divorce a woman for almost any reason and the interpretation of the Law was that it was only fair to give her a certificate of divorce so she could remarry. But Jesus said, “No!” If a man divorces his wife except for serious cause, he is doing something terrible, for in those days a woman really had tremendous difficulty surviving on her own, for the farm work was terribly hard work, with most people working with wood and stone tools, not even able to afford steel blades for their plows or hoes. A divorced woman who did not remarry probably starved or found work as a prostitute.

And so Jesus said, “What are you doing? The man who divorces a woman without the greatest of causes is forcing this woman to become the victim of adultery when he remarries. Furthermore, since she needs to eat, she will be forced to commit adultery and so will the man who marries her later. Or she will become adulterous through prostitution! Look at the chain of sin you are causing because you decided you didn’t like your wife!”  And we would do well to remember this also. The marriage vow is a promise made before God and should be taken seriously. It affects many, many people.

But what do you do if you are the second husband to a woman and have been happily married for years and just now found this out this view of Jesus? Should you divorce or separate from your wife? No!

Do like you would do with anything you have done wrong. Explain to God that you didn’t know the situation, and ask God for God’s forgiveness. This too can be forgiven.

Notice that Jesus only deals with the man divorcing the woman. This passage doesn’t say anything about the woman who divorces a man for cause or not for cause. That is beyond the scope of this passage and Jesus doesn’t address it here.)

Now, back to the main point. Jesus said, “I have not come to destroy the Law, but I have come to fulfill the Law.”

These words have been difficult for many people. Do we follow the Law or not? Do we follow a portion of the Law? What do we do with the Law now that Jesus has arrived, been sacrificed, and resurrected?

The purpose of the Law is not to provide a set of moral or ethical rules. The Law had three major purposes:

First, it was established to provide a legal framework for the people of Israel to live together, to worship God, and to identify themselves as a kingdom. In many ways, Jews became defined as both the descendents of Jacob AND the people who followed the Law of Moses. The Law brought Israel together in relative harmony. Any law is better than anarchy, and this was a particularly good set of laws. In fact, the Law of Moses still provides a legal framework today and is actually the basis for much of the common law of England and America today.

Second, it was designed to point people toward the God who gave the Law, as a set of useful ways for living that would improve our lives. Even the laws that are commonly put forth as crazy, such as “you shalt not make a garment from two types of cloth” were intensely practical at a time when wool or linen were really the only two cloths available, for they shrink at different rates and if the garment became wet, it would tear itself in two. Other laws prevented other problems. For example, brothers and sisters having children together is a great way to end up with genetic handicaps, which were a great burden before modern medicine, and there were laws against incest. Rebellious children cause problems for the entire community, not just the parents, hence the commandment to obey your father and mother. So the Law simply pointed to a practical way to live which would make your life better, and because following the law led to a better sort of life, people began to wonder more about the God who had sent this Law. What sort of God was he? What is God’s character? How can I be a better worshipper of this God who seems to care for me?

The third purpose of the Law was to help us to understand the sort of virtuous person God is looking to develop, and to learn to move toward that sort of virtue, that holiness. Perhaps you still get angry, but at least the Law has kept you from killing your next door neighbor. Perhaps your ancestors considered eating pork, but the Law said not to do it and they avoided trichinosis, which is a disease commonly contracted by eating infected raw pork. Or they avoided swine flu because they didn’t raise pigs. Perhaps they did raise pigs. Perhaps our talk today about the Law leads you to consider why God would establish a Law against eating pork or shellfish or horsemeat or shrimp? The Law points us toward holy living, both spiritually and physically. But the Law cannot make us holy because we still have our natural, rebellious spirit dragging us off course. Holiness is too hot for our feet to handle with help.

When Jesus arrived, and we believed and were baptized, the Holy Spirit came into us. Now, with the Holy Spirit in you, you can love that neighbor you’ve been angry at and avoided killing because of the Law.  Perhaps you have insulted a friend, but now with the Spirit you can love that neighbor. Perhaps that question of eating pork, shrimp, lizards - or not - leads you to work on the physical virtues which lead to a longer life which is more productive for God. For the Holy Spirit is concerned with our physical health as well as our spiritual health.

And now are you beginning to get it? For God established the Law in preparation, a hot runway we didn’t understand that had been put in the midst of our wild jungle trees, a path to get people looking at God, to get people to wonder about God, to worry about what God thought, and through that, to begin thinking about why it might not be so good to always do anything we want to do. Instead, following the Law made by a wise, good, powerful Creator of the Universe might lead us to a point out of the jungle of wild beasts, to a place where we could look up and begin to wonder about this God and what this God wanted.

But there was a danger that gradually developed with the Law as time went by, for as people kept their eyes focused upon that grey runway that is the Law, people had begun to believe that the Law was the be all/end all of life, our goodness measured by how well we followed the Law, our worth by how well we followed the Law, our goal in life was to follow the Law like those men who walked the length of the runway and thought that walking the runway was the purpose of the runway. We began to worship the Law. And many, many people throughout history - even today - are bound in slavery to walk back and forth on the runway of the Law, trying time and time again to walk the entire distance on that hot pavement - and failing time and time again, dying inside each time they fail, becoming more and more depressed, certain that great things will never happen until they walk perfectly the entire distance of the Law, falling again and again into the jungle of despair. You may be one of those people. 

But the arrival of Jesus was the fulfillment of the Law, our chance to look up, the same way the arrival of that first B-17 was the fulfillment of that runway carved out of the trees on Guam and lifted all heads – Jesus was the reason, the purpose, the end-all/be-all of the Law. Jesus gives us all the chance to escape from that dead-end runway of grey despair.

For Jesus was the only person in history who had ever walked with the Law in perfect harmony. Jesus was the only person who ever followed the Law completely and wholly. Jesus was the one Person who could point to the Law and say, in effect, “What’s the big deal?” For He had the spiritual sandals which allowed Him to walk on that burning hot road, that road that leads to the jungle of destruction if you don’t follow it perfectly. And, like a B-17 flies, Jesus could spiritually fly, taking us with Him!

There are two possible responses to Jesus being the only Man to walk the Law perfectly.

You can say, “Jesus was special because Jesus was divine.” And that is correct. Jesus is God Himself walking on this planet. And surely that means that whatever Jesus said is of tremendous importance, for He is God Himself, just in a different form from God the Father.

Or you can say, “Jesus was a man, but a particularly good man.” Then why, my friend, can’t you walk the Law just as well? Is it because you are not particularly good? Is this why you need Jesus’ help?

So Jesus has us right where He and the Father intended before the creation of the Universe – ready to bow the knee, admitting our weakness in the face of perfect divinity, ready to worship God as we should, the Law’s purpose now fulfilled.

Will you worship God? Have you heard God’s Word? Have you heard the Holy Spirit speak to you today? Will you tell others what you have heard?

Will you bow down your head in humbleness, knowing that Jesus could do something you cannot do, knowing that Jesus is the divine Son of God? Will you look up to Jesus Christ and recognize Him as your God, worthy of being followed?