"The Crack in the Dam"--Sermon on the Mount Series

            Dams are impressive structures. They withstand incredible forces that press against them constantly. But from time to time, dams do fail, and with earthen dams in particular, the problem can often be traced back to one crack that compromised the strength of the whole structure and eventually led to its collapse.

            The reality behind a dam break is also a great metaphor for the way we think. A person’s way of thinking tends to be very resistant to change—its like that dam that withstands incredible pressure for years. But sometimes people do undergo a radical change in their thinking, and when they do, that change can often be traced back to one crack—one question or one thought that slowly erodes that person’s way of thinking until it all comes crashing down.

            As we study the Sermon on the Mount again today, we’re going to read about Jesus seeking to hammer that one crack into the religious mindset of his audience. The people of Israel needed a change of mind about sin and forgiveness—that’s why Jesus’ earliest message, according to Matthew 4:17, was, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” But the change of mind that comes in repentance does not often come easily, so at this stage of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus makes a shocking statement that would become that one crack for anyone who would believe his word.

            Let’s read today from Matthew 5:17-20, and then we’ll look at that section piece by piece [READ 5:17-20]. That final statement would have been absolutely shocking to Jesus’ audience. For the most part, I can picture the people agreeing with Jesus’ sermon up to this point. I envision it kind of like this:

“Hmm…blessed are the poor in spirit; yeah, amen to that! Blessed are the meek; yeah, amen, amen! Blessed are those who are persecuted; uh, I’m not so sure how I feel about that. Oh, you say there’s great reward? Yeah, amen! Oh, we’re the salt of the earth and the light of the world? Yeah, preach it brother! You say you’ve come to fulfill the Law and the Prophets? Hey—I’m a fan of the Law and the Prophets, too! I have to be more righteous than the Pharisees to enter heaven. Wait—what? What on earth is this guy talking about!?”

Let’s take a closer look at this passage to see exactly what Jesus was up to.

Setting the Stage

            In this passage, Jesus is setting the stage for the rest of the sermon. He is about to conduct a thorough expose of the Pharisees, who were the religious leaders of the Jewish people. Perhaps the best modern-day comparison to the Pharisees in terms of their role is the pope and the cardinals of the Catholic Church. The Pharisees were the keepers and interpreters of the Old Testament for the people of Israel.

            Because of the Pharisees’ role, Jesus begins this section by clarifying what He is about to do. When Jesus starts criticizing the Pharisees, it would have been easy for the people to think He was criticizing the Old Testament, because most of their knowledge about the Old Testament came from the Pharisees. What we will see in the rest of the sermon is that Jesus is criticizing the Pharisees interpretation of the Old Testament, not the Old Testament itself.

            Jesus wants the people to understand that He is not throwing the baby out with the bathwater, so He says, beginning in v. 17, “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.” This was quite a statement by itself. Jesus hadn’t come to abolish the Law and the Prophets, but He wasn’t going to merely uphold them, either. He had come to fulfill them—to bring the purpose of the Law to its completion and fulfill the prophecies that the Prophets made about the Messiah.

            Notice the certainty that Jesus gives the people in v. 18 about His intentions [READ v. 18]. Now there’s no need to read into the fact that Jesus mentions the Law again in v. 18 but does not mention the Prophets, as He had in v. 17. Both of those statements were just a short-hand way of referring to the entire Old Testament, and Jesus affirms that everything in the Old Testament would be fulfilled down to the tiniest detail.

            The “iota” is probably a reference to the Hebrew letter yod which is the smallest letter in the Hebrew alphabet; its looks similar to our apostrophe in English. The “dot” is what the King James Version referred as the “tittle.” The ESV translators probably chose the word “dot” because the dot over the letter “i” is basically the smallest stroke in our language. For the Hebrew language, the word probably refers to the tiny pen strokes that distinguish two letters which otherwise look very similar.

            On a side note, notice the confidence that this statement gives us about the Old Testament. If even the tiniest details were important, that must mean that God was involved in the writing of the Old Testament down to the tiniest details. The Lord guided the human authors of Scripture in every word that they chose, with each of that word’s letters and pen strokes. That reality should give us tremendous confidence in the Bible.

Lowering the Boom

            In v. 19, Jesus begins to lower the boom on the Pharisees and the religious mindset that they were propagating. He does so with a very subtle clues in v. 19, then He really drops the hammer in v. 20. Let’s read again v. 19 [READ v. 19]. You might remember that as we studied the Beatitudes, I said that they were in one sense a commentary on v. 19. In other words, they describe the character and the actions of the person who will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. Now we read about a clear dividing line between those who will be called least in the kingdom and those who will be called great. That line consists of how we keep and how we teach the commands of God.

            Because of the incredible importance of God’s commands, as Jesus expressed in vv. 17-18, it is a very serious thing to relax God’s commands and to teach others to do the same. As we will see in the rest of the sermon, that’s exactly what the Pharisees were doing by reducing the commands of God merely to measurements of external behavior.

            Here we find the subtle clue that would begin to undermine the people’s religious mindset—those who teach about God’s commands may not be teaching them correctly. They may in fact be distorting the commandments of God and teaching others to do the same. Jesus makes the same point toward the end of this sermon with much greater force and clarity. In Matthew 7:15 he says, “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.”

            The seed of that warning is planted right here in 5:19, and again, it is the beginning of that one small crack that could bring the people’s whole religious mindset crashing down. Jesus wants them to consider whether their religious leaders are actually leading them down the right path. This was a very important question for the people because they had to rely on their leaders for religious guidance even more so than we do today. Each family did not have their own copy of the Old Testament to read, so they had to rely on their religious leaders to point them down the right path. As we’re going to see at the end of this sermon, Jesus is going to challenge the people to accept His words as laying out the right path for them.

            We must ask ourselves as well if we’re following the right leaders today, and we have very little excuse for following false teachers because we have the ability to read the Bible for ourselves. It is no coincidence that the Protestant Reformation grew as the Bible was able to be read far and wide. We benefit from that heritage today with our personal copies of the Bible, but that also gives us no excuse if we become duped by the Jim Joneses of the world, or the Benny Hinns or the Joseph Smiths or the Muhammads.

            Jesus wanted His audience to question the path that had been laid out for them by the Pharisees, so He really drops the hammer on them in v. 20. In v. 19, He had mentioned people who would be called great in the kingdom of heaven, and if I can paraphrase v. 20, He says, “Let’s forget about being called great for a moment, because unless you live up to God’s standards better than the Pharisees, you won’t even get in to the kingdom of heaven.”

            This is the statement that would have just fried the people’s mental circuits. It would be like telling a modern-day farmer, “Unless you can maintain all your sections with nothing but a hoe, you’ll never make it as a farmer.” Or it would be like telling an athlete, “Unless you can jump from here to the moon, you’ll never make it as an athlete.” The people would have heard this statement and thought, “That’s impossible!” because the Pharisees appeared to be the most righteous people that they could possibly imagine.

            But “That’s impossible!” is exactly what Jesus wanted the people to think! He wasn’t actually encouraging them to try and out do the Pharisees at their own game; He wanted them to see the futility of the Pharisee’s game and thus abandon it for another path. The Pharisees thought they had lived up to God’s standards as laid out by the Old Testament Law, but in reality, they had relaxed the standards of the Law and created a system that they could successfully live out.

            But sadly, their system left them blind to their own sinful shortcomings, and that was the most tragic consequence of all. They could not receive forgiveness from God because they didn’t think they needed it, and they were offended by Jesus’ declaration that they did. The Pharisees had not lived up to God’s standards through their own effort, and the whole point of v. 20 is that no one can. That will become clear as Jesus explains God’s true standards in the next part of this sermon.

            My friends, if you think you have lived up to God’s standards, if you think you have perfectly kept His commands, I must tell you that the Bible declares you are wrong. No one, except Jesus, has ever lived up to God’s standards. Romans 3:23 says simply, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Each and every one of us has sinned; we have broken God’s law, and because of that we stand guilty as lawbreakers in God’s court of law. We deserve to receive the penalty of breaking His law, which is death—which primarily means separation from God; estrangement from Him both now and forever in Hell unless we somehow receive mercy from Him.

            But thankfully, mercy is exactly what God offers us through our Lord Jesus Christ. Colossians 2:14 says that He has canceled the record that stood against us with its legal demands by nailing it to the cross. His death on the cross paid the penalty of our sins, and His resurrection from death declares that his promises are true.

            So today, if you will acknowledge to God that you stand guilty before Him and deserve His punishment, and if you will rely upon the death and resurrection of God’s Son as your only hope of forgiveness, you will receive mercy. And much more than that—God will not only restore your relationship with Him, He will adopt you into His own family and give you His own Spirit so that you can live out His standards today, and live with Him forever in this life and the next.

            I urge you to understand that you have not lived up to God’s standards, and I urge you all the more to accept God’s gift of mercy through the Lord Jesus Christ.