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What Did Jesus Say About The Bible? (Matthew 5:17-18)
I. The Fulfillment Of Scriptures
II. The Authority Of Scriptures
Our text for tonight's message is taken from Matthew 5:17-18. Allow me to read for you.
Matthew 5:17-18. “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For 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 fulfilled.
The Lord bless the reading of His holy and sacred Word.
Have you ever heard anyone say to you, “Times have changed. The Bible is outdated. The Bible does not fit today anymore.” Well, we know that the Bible is the Word of God and it is still relevant for us as much as it was 2,000 years ago. But how do we answer those critics? I think our answer should be: it is not that the Bible does not fit today anymore. But today does not fit the Bible anymore. The problem is with today, not the Bible.
Today people want to reinterpret the Bible. They want to deny the authority of scriptures, deny the inspiration and preservation of scriptures. There was a time when people held onto a high view of the Bible, but sadly it is no longer the case.
When someone stands firmly on a high view of the Bible, he could be accused of so many things. He could be accused of worshiping the Bible instead of worshiping God, or being pharisaical, or having a holier than thou attitude, or placing the Bible on a pedestal that even Jesus Christ Himself did not assign to it.
But what was Christ's view of the Bible? What did Jesus teach about the Bible? Jesus taught so many things about the Bible on so many occasions. Perhaps one of the most comprehensive statements He ever made about the holy scriptures is found in this passage.
What Jesus thinks of the Bible should also be what we think of the Bible, right? So for today's message, we want to consider this title: “What Did Jesus Say About The Bible?”
Firstly, Jesus spoke about the fulfilment of scriptures. Matthew 5:17, Jesus said, “Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets. I am not come to destroy but to fulfill.” Allow me to give you some background on this passage.
Jesus had appeared in Israel rather suddenly and in a dramatic way. He was already there after He was born of a virgin in a manger. But not much was spoken about His early days, His first 30 years or so. Then all of a sudden, at the baptism of John the Baptist, He appeared on the scene and the eyes of everyone were focused on Him.
He created such a sensation that even the leaders of Israel had to pay attention. Everyone seemed to be listening to Him. His teachings were so different from the scribes and Pharisees. While the scribes and Pharisees were speaking about the outward observation of the law and adding extra unbiblical burdens on the people, Jesus was speaking about love, grace, and mercy and God's forgiveness offered to them.
While the scribes and Pharisees were emphasising on the outside—the external—Jesus was speaking about the inside—the inner man, the soul of a man.
So naturally, the question would be, who is this man? What kind of a prophet is He? Is He trying to destroy the Old Testament? Is He trying to destroy all the absolutes of the Mosaic law? Is He teaching some new theology?
It was at this point that Jesus said, “Think not that I'm come to destroy the law or the prophets.” Whenever the word law was used, it could be a reference to the ten commandments. Sometimes it could refer to the Pentateuch or the first five book of Moses, or it could also refer to the entire Old Testament, depending on the context. Here, the phrase “the law or the prophets” tells us that it was a reference to the entire Old Testament.
On many occasions, the New Testament will refer to the Old Testament as the law and the prophets. The word “destroy” means to abrogate, to tear down or to nullify. Sometimes this word was used to describe the pulling down of a wall or the smashing of a house to pieces.
In other words, Jesus did not come to tear down the Old Testament to pieces. He did not come to pull it down. Jesus said, “I am not come to destroy but to fulfill.” To “fulfill” means to complete, to bring to fruition. In what sense did Jesus come to fulfill? Some people say that Jesus fulfilled the law by his teachings, by adding a new dimension to the Old Testament. While it is true that what Jesus taught was contradictory to the teachings of the scribes and Pharisees, but he did not add or change anything. He simply brought out the original truth.
Others understand it as Jesus fulfilled the law's demands. He kept the laws of God perfectly. He did not violate the law, not once. He was sinless. In fact, Jesus even asked his enemies in John 8:46, “Which of you convincesth me of sin?” And they were all speechless.
There's no doubt that Jesus kept the law perfectly. But that is not the major point here. The best explanation is that Jesus Christ Himself was the fulfillment of the law. It is not so much about what He taught or what He did—but who He was. He was the Messiah that the law and the prophets predicted.
You see, the Old Testament law can be divided into three parts: the moral law, the judicial or civil law, and the ceremonial law.
The moral law was based on the Ten Commandments. It was for all men, and the principles were laid down once and for all.
The judicial or civil law was just for Israel, for them to function as a nation because God wanted them to be set apart from the rest of the world, to be different and unique. That was why they had special dietary laws, certain laws in regards to dressing or agriculture and so forth.
The ceremonial law was for Israel's worship of God with all the sacrificial systems.
Jesus Himself fulfilled the moral law by living a perfect life. No man on the face of this earth can ever keep the moral law of God perfectly. Only Jesus Christ, the perfect Lamb of God.
How did Jesus fulfill the judicial or civil law? When Jesus died on the cross, that was the final rejection by Israel of a Messiah. And that brought an end to God's dealing with Israel as a nation. The judicial law that God had given to Israel had passed away, and Jesus built the church. However, someday God will redeem that nation and deal with her as a nation again. But for the time being, with their rejection, they were no more a nation of God's people. God's people are now called the church. That was why Jesus said in Matthew 21:43, “Therefore I say unto you, the kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation that bringeth forth the fruits thereof.”
How did Jesus fulfill the ceremonial law when He died on the cross? The whole ceremonial sacrificial system had come to an end. The veil of the temple was torn into two from top to bottom. The Holy of Holies was revealed. He ended the ceremonial system by being the ultimate sacrifice on the cross of Calvary. So today we no longer worship God with the blood of goats or bulls, but we come through the blood of the ultimate Lamb, Jesus Christ.
So the judicial law was only good as long as Israel was God's people. When they disqualify themselves, it was done away. The ceremonial law was only good until the ultimate sacrifice came, and Jesus came and died shedding His precious blood. So it was done away. Only one element of God's law still abides, and that is the moral law. It continues to remain with us.
So Christ Himself was the fulfillment of the law. But how did the prophets play a part in this whole thing? Throughout the Old Testament, the prophets prophesied about the One who was to come to redeem mankind. They talk about who He was, where He would be born, what He would do, how He would suffer, and what would be the ultimate outcome of His suffering.
Every single thing in the Old Testament points to Christ. He was the object of the Old Testament. He was the theme of the Old Testament. Everything was about Him directly or indirectly.
Allow me to give you some examples:
In Genesis 3:15, Jesus was the seed of the woman who shall bruise the head of the serpent.
In the book of Exodus, He was the Passover Lamb. (clears throat)
In the book of Judges, He was the ultimate judge and lawgiver.
In the book of Ruth, He was the kinsman redeemer.
In the book of Isaiah, He was the Prince of Peace.
In the book of Daniel, He was the fourth person in the fiery furnace.
Everything was about Jesus Christ. He was the fulfillment of the Old Testament.
We must remember that Jesus Himself was the Author of the Old Testament Scriptures, and subsequently He was the One who came and lived on this earth to fulfill what was written about Himself. And then He was the One who inspired the New Testament writers to write accurately the things He had already done and the things He would do in the future.
If you are trained as a teacher, you will know that if you want to make your points clear, you first have to tell your students what you're going to say. And then you have to say it. And finally you have to tell them what you have said. That was what Jesus did. He foretold His own coming. Then He came, and then He told the people about it.
But what has all this got to do with us? Dear friend, it is not just some information we have written on paper. It is not just some intellectual knowledge we have in our minds. Not only Jesus was the fulfillment of the Scriptures, but He also sent the Holy Spirit to convict our hearts that you and I might believe that He was the fulfillment of the Scriptures, that we might turn to Him and embrace Him as our Lord and Saviour. That is just how much He loves us. He loves us so much that He will send Christians by the millions to testify His love for us.
Take a moment and consider this.
If that is not enough, He plants churches all around the world to remind us that He loves us.
If that is not enough, He calls preachers, preacher after preacher. Preachers will live and die, and God will call others to warn us about eternal hell. And He wants to save our souls.
If that is not enough, He raised up hymnwriters and songwriters to write songs to captivate our attention.
And then He brings us to a service like this to hear His Word, to be reminded of His love. And the Holy Spirit will convict our hearts of our sins to believe in the only Saviour who is able to save us.
Can we ever fathom that love? That is just how much Jesus Christ loves you and me.
Secondly, Jesus spoke about the authority of Scriptures.
Verse 18 says, “For 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 fulfilled.”
The original Greek word for verily is amen, which means so be it, truly or absolutely. In other words, Jesus was saying, “For truly or absolutely I say unto you.” And what is the absolutely truthful thing? Jesus was saying that the Word of God, the law, the Old Testament, including the subsequent New Testament with all the prophecies about Him shall be here until the universe passes out of its present existence.
This present universe has been tainted with sin, and one day it will come to an end. It will pass away. It will be destroyed by fire, and God will create the new heavens and the new earth where the believers will dwell for all eternity. The believers are the one who will enter the new heavens and the new earth. They will be living in righteousness. They will be in an eternal state. They will be with Christ forever and ever. And until that time, nothing will change in regards to the Bible.
“One jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law till all be fulfilled.” The original Greek word for jot is iota, the smallest letter of the Greek alphabet. The word tittle literally means little horn, and it refers to the small extension which helps to distinguish one Hebrew letter from another. Perhaps in our modern language the illustration would be the difference between an E and an F, that small little extension which differentiates the two letters. So what Jesus was saying is that not even the little tiny mark that differentiates one letter from another, whether Greek or Hebrew, will pass from the law till all be fulfilled.
So here it speaks about the preservation of God's Word. God gave us His Word. Every jot and every tittle was inspired by Him, and every jot and every tittle will also be preserved by Him because Jesus said so. “One jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law till all be fulfilled.”
Today there are so many debates about the Bible, about the inspiration of the Bible, about the preservation of the Bible. What is the correct view? Some people will say, “Well, my church takes this view and your church takes that view,” or “my friend takes this view and my parents take that view.” How should we ascertain the right view? It is what Jesus said about the Bible. And what Jesus said about the Bible is what you and I should also believe about the Bible because we want to stand with our Lord.
Here Jesus clearly said, “For verily I say unto you, do heaven and earth pass? One jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law till all be fulfilled.”
The truthfulness and abiding authority of the Bible is so critical to everything we know and believe. If we say that God has spoken to us through the Bible and the Bible is the Word of God, then it must be truthful because God is a God of truth. It cannot have mistakes. The Bible must be reliable because God is absolutely reliable. The Bible must be lasting because God is the only ultimate and abiding authority. If the Bible is not truthful even in the smallest part, then it is not from God. That should be our position.
Today there are people who say that God's Word is only preserved for us in the original autographs, which means the ones that the original writers wrote, the very ones that Moses wrote, the very ones that Solomon wrote, or Isaiah the prophet, or Zachariah the prophet and all the rest. What we have are only the copies, the epographs. We do not have the original autographs.
Now consider this: if the Bible is only perfect in the original autographs, which we do not have today, which means the Bible is only truthful in the past, then what sense does it make for Jesus Himself to say, “Do heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law till all be fulfilled”?
We rather believe in our Lord Jesus Christ than the people. Let God be true and every man a liar.
How can we apply this truth about the abiding authority of the Bible into our lives?
In Jesus’ time, the Pharisees, instead of looking to the Holy Scriptures, they look to the traditions of men. Unable to keep the law of God and unwilling to come to Jesus as their Saviour, they did what most people would do. They trimmed the law of God to fit their traditions.
By way of illustration, let’s say you believe you are only going to be in heaven because you keep the law. But you know that the law demands a certain kind of righteousness, a certain kind of character, and you are a rotten person, and you refuse to surrender yourself, you refuse to give up certain habits. What you will do next is to invent a whole bunch of laws that you think you can keep. And you think to yourself, “as long as I’m able to keep these rules, I will be all right.”
That was what the Pharisees did, and Jesus had to correct them even through the Sermon on the Mount. The Pharisees were not the only ones who distorted the Bible with man-made traditions. The Roman church did the same thing, and the reformers had to protest with the slogan “sola scriptura”, which means Scripture alone.
Scripture alone is the believer’s ultimate authority. The reformers knew that Christians would always have their traditions. Some of them are good and right while others are not. When the people hold on to Scripture, or sola scriptura, Scripture alone, it means that whenever our traditions and the Bible are contradictory, we must let the Bible take preeminence.
The same goes with your life and my life. We take all our practices, our order of worship, our services, the decisions we make, the responses that we react to the different situations of life, and even our speech. And if they be contradictory to the Bible, the Bible must take preeminence.
The Bible must always be the ultimate authority of our lives.
There are others who attack the authority of the Bible by elevating human reasoning above Scriptures. The liberals are very keen to do that. They will judge the Bible by their human reasoning, and if what the Bible says disagrees with what they reckon as right, then it is the Bible that has mistakes.
Indeed, God has given to us the ability to reason, and we should exercise it, and we must exercise it very carefully, especially when it comes to studying the Bible. But if our reason and the Bible are in conflict, then our reason must bow to the authority of the Bible. That is the most reasonable thing to do.
God knows everything. We do not know everything. But if God says something, we know that it can be trusted, even though we may not fully understand it. Remember Isaiah the prophet said, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither your ways My ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.” Isaiah 55:7–8.
Today there are people who agree with everything that Jesus taught in the Scriptures, or so they say. They may stand for the inerrancy of Scriptures, but at the same time they attack the sufficiency of Scriptures. How do they do that?
Take for example the charismatic mega churches. Do you think they really believe in the sufficiency of Scriptures, that the Word of God is powerful, sharper than any two edged sword? Look at their evangelistic efforts: how they turn to secular music, how they turn to entertainment, how they turn to those worldly methods to draw the people into the church, as if God’s Word alone is not sufficient, and they need to put in those humanistic ideas and worldly methods to draw the people into the church.
They may appear to be successful because of their large congregation, but dear friends, trying to do God's work with secular methods will only produce secular results. At the end of the day, everything would be meaningless. We must be very careful that in all our gospel endeavours, we must always let the Word of God be the ultimate authority, trusting in the sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures.
Is the Bible sufficient for our Christian growth in terms of building our character and godliness? Most certainly. Is the Bible sufficient for us to teach our children and nurture our own families? Most certainly. But many people do not believe it, so they turn to self-help programs, psychologists, and secular counselling for help instead of the Bible.
In conclusion, allow me to say this:
This is a timeless book. And yet people have the audacity to say, “What does this 2,000 years old book have to say to us today?” Everything. Everything in regards to our salvation, our life and practices, the way we live, our eternity, our heavenly destination—everything. It is the ultimate authority for us because the Bible is inspired and preserved by the eternal One, living and true God.
And Jesus Himself testified: “Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets. I am not come to destroy but to fulfill. For verily I say unto you, do heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law till all be fulfilled.”
May each and every one of us trust in the very words of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is what Jesus said about the Holy Scriptures and this is what we believe as well.
Let us pray.
Our Father in heaven, we give You thanks for this opportunity for us to focus on Thy precious Word and how Thou will remind us of the importance of having a very high view of the Holy Scriptures, lest we fall into the sin of denying the authority, the inspiration and preservation of Thy precious Word.
We believe every word that our Lord Jesus said and what He said is also what we believe in about Thy Word. And may we always abide in this truth. And may Thy Word not only be testified through our lips but to be lived out in our lives. Sola Scriptura—Scripture alone. Let it be true in all our practices, in our worship, in our services, in our decisions, our actions, and even our speech. If any of them were to contradict Thy Word, then Thy Word must take preeminence and let it be lived out through our lives truly.
We pray all this in Jesus’ name. Amen.