Dr. Joseph Boot defines Christianity as imitating Christ's total submission to God's law, rejecting Western academic approaches in favor of ancient Eastern discipleship. He critiques the "ripped out" law mentality, arguing Jesus recapitulated Israel's history by defeating Satan with Scripture and condemning Pharisaic hypocrisy that prioritized human traditions over justice and mercy. While salvation rests on Christ's sacrifice, Boot asserts the law remains the path of life, now written on hearts under the new covenant, making the teaching of its full content, including prohibitions against homosexuality and bestiality, an integral obligation for believers today. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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Praying for Youth Leadership00:01:52
Well, it's great to have an opportunity to do a second session today.
And it's been a real privilege to be part of the conference and wonderful interacting with so many of you.
I always enjoy being here in the United States and feel always encouraged and built up by the feedback that we receive.
So thank you very much.
If you haven't visited our table before the end of the conference, do visit our table.
And remember the announcement that Nathan made, our Canadian director, about our Worldview Youth Academy and our Cultural Leadership Academy, which is for 19s through any age.
All adults are welcome to do our Cultural Leadership Academy.
The Youth Academy is 14 to 18.
Why don't we pray before we begin this session?
Our Lord and our God, we give you thanks for.
This blessed day that we have enjoyed together, thank you for all we've heard already.
Lord, we are weak, but you are strong.
Make room in our hearts and minds for more of your word, for it's a lamp to our feet and a light to our path.
In Christ's name we pray.
Amen.
Okay, so in this session, I'm dealing with the topic of theonomy, which just means God's law.
Now, for those of you who were at this conference last year, I spoke on theonomy last year, and I've spoken many times on theonomy.
And so, as I was preparing for this conference, I thought, Lord, how shall I tackle this this year in a way that is maybe a little bit fresh?
Jesus and the Law00:10:28
I've dealt with the Christian philosophy of law, I've come at it from a historical point of view.
And so, I thought that actually for this session, I would talk about Jesus and the law, following Jesus.
Following the Master.
If we ask, actually, at the most basic level, what is Christianity?
If we're going to be scriptural, we must answer that it actually consists in knowing and following Christ Jesus.
If somebody asks you, what is a Christian?
Somebody who knows and follows Christ Jesus.
Doctrines or recites certain confessions or knows historical theology or can engage in learned dispute on dogmatics, but actually in the here and now to worship and follow Christ the Lord.
He's the master, and the disciple is not greater than the master.
Now, growing up in the Western tradition, as we have in Western civilization, we're less familiar actually with the ancient Eastern style of learning.
By literally attaching yourself to a teacher and learning their way of life and their thought by imitation.
So I don't want you leaving the conference, sort of trying to get yourself into Doug Wilson's suitcase, saying, I'm attaching myself to the rabbi.
This is the Eastern style of learning.
We speak of tutors and professors and mentors, but that actually falls short of the Jewish tradition of following a rabbi and committing to heart their teaching.
Jesus actually called the first disciples, and when he did, it was not to an academy for a lofty exchange of ideas in Socratic dialogue, nothing wrong with that.
Still less was it to actually write papers or submit essays to be marked by the Lord, to be reviewed by a tutor.
When Christ called the disciples, it was to follow him, to devote their lives to him.
To live with and learn from him, to memorize his sayings, to witness his actions, to hear his prayers, to question him about his parables, to tread the dust that he trod.
To be a disciple of Christ then meant to imitate him in everything.
Take up your cross, Jesus said, and follow me.
And so the Apostle Paul actually says, imitate me.
As I also imitate Christ.
Of course, Paul, before being a disciple of Christ, was a disciple of Gamaliel, a famous Jewish rabbi.
Imitation, then, is actually the basic meaning of Christian discipleship.
And that's actually easily overlooked, I think, when we come to consider the question of God's law and faithful Christian witness as a whole in a repaganizing culture.
More often than not, the question of God's law, the question of theonomy, is approached by Christians in a very theoretical way, as though they are personally uninvolved with the question.
It's just a matter of dogmatic dispute.
Not uncommonly, the derisive language of its more vehement opponents reflects a posture of treating God's revealed law lightly, at best, and at times with a kind of haughty disdain.
But it's impossible to actually find that kind of an attitude in the Master.
You don't find that in the life of our Rabbi, the Lord Jesus.
Some Christians actually see God's law as some sort of a threat, an aberration.
Some say something parenthetical.
It's been and gone, it's a sort of un Christian blemish on the pages of Scripture.
And so the law is, for some, to all intents and purposes, ripped out.
It's a bit like the Thomas Jefferson Bible where he sort of cut the bits out he didn't like.
You know, this is what's happened for many believers.
Instead, we think about living as we personally see fit or as we feel led, as though law and gospel are as incompatible as oil and water.
But Jesus' relationship to the law as its author, As exegete, as master teacher and Lord, is of tremendous significance for all true disciples.
Jesus modeled taking the totality of the law seriously, and what matters to Jesus should matter to us.
What he taught, we must believe, remember, and teach.
What he did, we need to emulate and copy.
If we want to call ourselves Christian, we must be truly yoked to the one true rabbi.
Now, that's not an easy task.
And it actually comes at a cost because that attachment has to take place in a rebellious age that is looking to vanquish God, trumpet nihilism, and champion a grand leveling of all things, and through fear and intimidation, cow the faithful individual into a mouse's hole.
Our time actually embraces and effectively deifies.
An unofficially established order in both state and liberalizing church.
I talked a bit about that in our first session.
Whilst fear and trembling before a holy God and his righteousness is abolished, truth and justice are now thought to be the province of human beings.
They're going to define it.
If I can quote the Danish prophet again in this session, Kierkegaard, he prophetically saw this.
He put it this way If you are a student, Then you can be sure that the professor is the measure and the truth.
If you are a parson, then the bishop is the way and the life.
If you are a scrivener, that's a clerk or a notary, the judge is the standard.
The deification of the established order is the secularization of everything.
The established order desires to be totalitarian, recognizing nothing over it, but having under it every individual and judging every individual who is integrated in it.
And that individual.
Who expounds the most humble but at the same time the most humane doctrine about what it means to be a man, the established order desires to terrify by imputing to him the guilt of blasphemy.
And such it is that Christians face today, accused of blasphemy against state orthodoxy, just as Jesus was accused of blasphemy by the Pharisees, who neither knew the scriptures, he said, nor the power of God.
Ours is a time when human beings have made themselves the gauge, the measuring reed, the cannon in the place of God's law word.
And the impact on the church has been significant.
Because in place of God's law, new Pharisees parroting the culture elevate human preferences and customs and positivistic laws and desires and wants into articles of faith.
Following Jesus is not seen as the measure anymore.
The established order of the world, infecting the institutional church like a virus, takes the place of Christ.
So holy, in fact, had the Pharisees and scribes become, and so holy do men always become when they deify the established order, that their divine worship is a way of making a fool of God.
Under the pretense of serving and worshipping, they serve and worship their own device.
Either in self complacent joy at being themselves the inventors or through fear of men.
And we can't be ruled by the fear of man, can we?
But by the word of God.
A servant is not greater than his master.
So we have to be attentive to what our Savior, who shows us how to regard the law of God in a lawless world, exemplified faithfulness.
Remember, the Lord Jesus said, You call me teacher and Lord.
This is well said, for I am.
A messenger is not greater than the one who sent him.
So let's think about the Master's relationship to the law.
First, Jesus and creation.
Of first importance, I think, is recognizing Jesus' relationship to creation itself as lawgiver from the very beginning.
As creator in his fleshly tabernacle, which is what the Apostle John calls it, he tabernacled amongst us.
The Master spoke to the storm and he calmed the waves.
He cursed the fig tree.
He raised the dead by the power of his word.
Moral Obligations in Creation00:05:16
And yet, Christians often begin the question of Jesus' relation to law by assuming a dualism between creation or nature and revelation, a separation and a division which the Bible does not accept.
There is an unbreakable Cosmological relationship between the physical and the moral orders of creation that's manifest in Jesus' life and work and teaching, just as it's expressed in the Old Testament.
Let me give you an example.
In some cases, when Jesus healed physically, this is what he declared Your sins are forgiven you.
Your sins are forgiven you.
The connection between moral law and created physical reality is there seen as absolutely fundamental.
Which is easier to say?
Which is easier?
To say to the paralytic, Your sins are forgiven?
Or to say, Get up, pick up your mat, and walk?
But so you may know the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.
He told the paralytic, I tell you, Get up, pick up your mat, and go home.
You see, the moral law does not hover in some abstract realm of reason above earthly reality, it's embedded in it.
Unlike the rationalism of men like Immanuel Kant, who thought that moral norms are in a separate world to cause and effect creation around us, in Scripture, the Word of God speaks to every aspect of an integrated cosmos.
It speaks to an integral existence.
When the triune God creates human beings from physical dust, there are moral obligations intrinsic to that reality, and that's why the Bible.
In Scripture, disobedience to God's word had physical effects immediately in the fall of human beings thorns and thistles, pain, disease, and death.
It's why the homosexuality and perversions of Sodom and Gomorrah ended with fire and brimstone raining down from heaven.
It's why St. Paul warns of receiving in the body the due penalty of doing that which is contrary to God's creation order.
It's why the land of the Canaanites spewed them out.
It's why Israel is finally dispossessed and taken into exile.
Lawlessness brings social, biological, environmental, and cultural ruin.
To act in a manner contrary to what God has established in creation brings a curse.
Professor Jonathan Burnside, he's a fellow of the Ezra Institute, has written a brilliant book called God, Justice, and Society, Oxford University Press.
He says this Biblical law operates beyond the confines of a historical past or single culture.
Instead, it is established in the bone and flesh of created humanity.
All this points to the fact that biblical law does not just mystically appear on the scene with Moses, which Jesus then comes along to set aside in favor of an elastic principle of love.
Rather, moral laws are embedded into creation and they are republished in the written word of God.
When God created all things in the beginning with the ten utterances, and when he created Israel at Sinai with the ten words, law was central.
And it was intended as a blessing to all the nations and to all peoples.
Creation itself exists, remember, by the Word who was with God and was God and became flesh, the one through whom all things were made.
And by whom all things hold together.
So when Jesus taught about God's law for marriage, he didn't say, let's do a sociological study of the Greco Roman world and see what we should say about marriage today.
He went back to creation itself, to the book of Genesis.
It's no surprise then to find in Genesis 6 and 7 that Noah and his family, as well as the animals, with two of each kind, enter the ark as married couples.
No trace or sign of a trans man or a trans elephant, because both the norm of sexual distinction and marriage are basic to God's law order, as is the distinction actually between the clean and the unclean animals in Genesis 7.
That anticipates, of course, the dietary laws of Leviticus 11.
As God's image bearers, knowledge of these creation norms is available even to those who are without the revealed law.
Satan Misusing God's Word00:08:03
And it forms the basis of divine judgment.
Remember, God judged the Canaanites who were without revealed law.
Amos prophesied to the pagan nations around who were without the revealed law.
We can only follow the Master if we recognize that his law is abiding from the beginning of creation and recognize him as creator, lawgiver, and redeemer whom we obey and serve with total fealty.
Jesus and creation.
But what about Jesus' appearance in the flesh in the incarnation?
Jesus versus Satan.
Let's look at that for a minute.
At the beginning of Jesus' ministry after his baptism in the Jordan, he's led out by the Spirit of God into the wilderness for 40 days.
And scholars have noticed that the life of Jesus, in many respects, recapitulates to a great extent, actually, the life and journey of Israel.
Remember, Israel is called out of captivity in Egypt.
Just as the Lord Jesus is called out of Egypt with his parents.
Hosea 11, 1, out of Egypt I have called my son.
He passes through the waters of baptism, just like Israel went through the waters, and he goes out into the wilderness to be tested, not for 40 years, but for 40 days.
And then, like Moses, later on he goes up onto the mountain, not to receive the law, but to teach, expound, and interpret the very law that he gave to his servant Moses.
He begins with a series of blessings.
They're called beatitudes that correspond to the curses and warnings at Mount Sinai in Deuteronomy 28.
And while in the wilderness, he is confronted by Satan and he is tested.
How our Lord responds is telling if we are to imitate Christ as disciples.
And we have to learn to deal with testing and temptation as the Lord Jesus confronts it with the Word of God.
Jesus responds to temptation.
With three citations from the law of God in a context where Israel was being tested as to whether she would obey God's commands.
In the first, just as Israel was hungry in the wilderness and received manna from heaven, Jesus is hungry.
And he's tempted to speak to the stones and turn them to bread to prove his identity and address his hunger.
And he responds, It is written.
And he cites Deuteronomy 8.
Well, as far as the Lord's concerned, this law hasn't passed away into irrelevance, has it?
In the second instance, Jesus is taken to Jerusalem on the pinnacle of the temple, the dwelling place of God, and he's tempted to prove his identity as God's son dramatically, violating God's purpose of concealment in the form of a servant by throwing himself down only to be picked up by angels.
And this time, Satan has gotten wise.
Knowing Christ's trust in the authority of the word, he quotes Psalm 91, 11, and 12 regarding angelic protection so that you won't dash your foot against the stone.
Just shows you that God's word can be misused.
Satan was expert at misusing the word of God.
And Jesus' response is again from God's law, Deuteronomy 6 16.
It is also written, Do not test the Lord your God.
In the third instance, our master is taken to a high mountain.
And he's shown all the splendors of the kingdoms of the world.
And in exchange for idolatry, Satan offers Jesus all those kingdoms as a gift.
In Luke's account, Satan correctly points out that he could give their splendor and authority because it had been given over to me, he says.
If you then worship me, all will be yours.
Luke 4 6 through 7.
And this enticement to false worship is an incredibly powerful temptation.
For the precise reason that Christ had come for all the kingdoms of the world to take back possession as the heir of all things and to assert his authority as the ruler of the kings of the earth.
But our Lord knew that this could only happen the Father's way, and he again responds with the law of God.
Not a quote from the philosophers, not a citation from Cicero.
Go away, Satan, for it is written, worship the Lord your God and serve only him.
Now, because the Master wielded God's law, he was the authentic Israelite.
He was the truly obedient son.
He was the greater Moses, the last Joshua who would come into the full inheritance promised in Revelation 11 15.
The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah, and he will reign forever and ever.
So, the Lord Jesus obviously regarded the law of God as the only suitable tool to defeat Satan, to stay on mission, and to set an example for us to follow.
He recognized the power and authority of the law.
It is written, and he overcame in terms of it.
Now, do you think it would be strange if the very word which vanquished the devil is now thrown aside in favor of human custom, reason, and imagination?
Since the disciples were not present to witness the temptation, it's clear that these events must have been related to them by the Lord Himself for their instruction and ours.
And we should also remember that the tempter Satan is referred to in Scripture as the lawless one.
2 Thessalonians 2 8.
And sin itself is defined as lawlessness.
And Jesus has come to destroy the works of the devil and restore His people to righteousness and obedience to the law.
Look at the logic of the Apostle John.
It's unshakable.
Everyone who commits sin also breaks the law.
Sin is the breaking of law.
You know that he was revealed so that he might take away sins, and there is no sin in him.
As such, the believer does not make a lifestyle, John says, a practice of sinning, because to do so is to place oneself on the side of lawlessness and with the devil.
The one who practices sin is of the devil.
For the devil has been sinning from the beginning.
The Son of God appeared for this purpose to destroy the works of the devil.
So that's how Jesus dealt with Satan.
In the ministry of Jesus, he had to deal with the interpreters of the law, Jesus and the Pharisees.
It's vitally important to notice in relation to the law, Jesus' own ministry in debates with the religious authorities.
He was often in dialogue and dispute with the teachers of the law who challenged him in order to disclose that he was not a violator of God's law, either in his life or teaching, but rather its fullness, its confirmation, its completion, its fulfillment.
Pharisees' Hypocrisy on Sabbath00:11:06
He puts it into practice completely, he accomplishes its requirements flawlessly.
So the sin of the Pharisee was not that they longed to obey God's law out of love to God.
But they were seeking a way around God's law through their own customs, their own reasonings, their own traditions.
The Jewish Talmud carries on the tradition of the Pharisees and has done for centuries, and it forms a very telling illustration of the kind of arguments that the master was up against.
Gary North notes he says, The Talmud is a giant exercise in finding ways to escape the Old Testament texts.
The Pharisees were in rebellion against God's law, all in the name of God's law.
He goes on to cite David Weiss, who is a master of the Talmud, formerly an Orthodox Jew, but a professor now at a conservative Jewish theological seminary, devoted his academic career to a detailed study of various versions of the Talmud, and he actually describes its effective use.
This is what he says With one hand, you acknowledge God's existence.
At the same time, you want to have some maneuverability.
Studying critically is contending with God's writ, acknowledging it, but using criticism to alter it.
Man is powerless vis a vis God, but powerful vis a vis his Torah.
There, he can assert his independence by offering an interpretation different from the one God intended.
And it was this approach to the law that Jesus is addressing in his encounters in the Gospels.
In essence, like many modern Christians, they didn't believe Moses.
And so Jesus' question echoes down the centuries if you don't believe Moses' writings, how will you believe my words?
If you don't believe him, how will you believe me?
Some telling examples at the heart of the dispute are found in John chapter 7 through 10, where during the Feast of Tabernacles, Jesus is in an extended discussion with the Pharisees over his authority and identity.
John chapter 7 through 10.
Not only does Jesus show that he is the fulfillment of the meaning of the older covenant feasts, but he clearly points to the authority of the law itself.
In the course of his teaching in the temple precinct, Jesus says, Didn't Moses give you the law?
Yet none of you keeps the law.
Why are you trying to kill me?
This statement invokes the authority of the Decalogue, the prohibition against murder.
Why are they trying to murder Jesus?
Well, he's healed somebody on the Sabbath.
For this work of restoration and wholeness, the meaning of the Sabbath, some of the Pharisees want to kill him, but they can't agree over their interpretation of the Sabbath.
And all the while, they're seeking to murder Jesus.
Jesus in violation of God's law.
That betrays, of course, the very life giving purpose of the commandments, a purpose the Master had come to fulfill.
When he defeats at the cross the one who was a murderer from the beginning, who does not stand in the truth of God's law, but is a liar and the father of all lies.
John 8 44.
Then in John 8 13, the Pharisees are challenging Jesus' testimony about himself.
They're saying it's invalid.
Christ turns tables and he accuses them of judging by human standards and not in accordance with God's law.
And he invokes the law of God, saying, Even in your law it is written that the witness of two men is valid.
I am the one who testifies about myself, and the Father who sent me testifies about me.
Here, Jesus proves that his witness is in accordance with God's law par excellence.
He's not in violation, he fully upholds it.
But the ultimate purpose of Jesus is more than dealing with Jewish coarsestry here that is, whether one witness is enough.
Rather, it is to show the commandment to honor father and mother is exemplified in his relationship to his father.
George.
Brooke says, the reader is to perceive, this is the reader of John, that the light of life available in Torah is available in knowing the one who keeps the law of Exodus 20 16 and Deuteronomy 5 20 in association with the Father himself.
And this gets expressed explicitly in John 8 49.
Jesus now responds to the charge that he has a demon.
Aren't you amazed that these people are not struck dead on the spot?
But that's the forbearance of God, isn't it?
He's charged with having a demon.
And with remarkable reference to the fifth commandment about honoring parents, this is what Jesus says.
The Pharisees insult Jesus and by extension his father, but our Lord declares, I do not have a demon.
On the contrary, I honor my father and you dishonor me.
And this sets up the theme of glorifying the father and the father glorifying the son later on in Jesus' dialogue.
So ultimately, by honoring Christ Jesus the Son, a person honors the Father and so hallows God's name, which fulfills the law positively of prohibiting taking the Lord's name in vain.
In John 10 30, where Jesus declares his unity with the Father, he says, I and the Father are one.
The prohibition of the Decalogue, you shall have no other gods before me, is evidently being stated positively.
So, I encourage you to bathe yourself in John 7 through 10 and look at Jesus' interaction with regard to the law.
Pivot quickly now to the Synoptic Gospels.
There are several clear statements in dialogue with the Pharisees that are very instructive as we try and imitate the Lord and learn and apply what Rabbi Jesus has to say.
Jesus says in Matthew 23 Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!
You pay a tenth of mint, dill, and cumin, yet you have neglected the more important matters of the law justice, mercy, and faith.
These things should have been done without neglecting the others.
Blind guides, you strain out a gnat, yet gulp down a camel.
So, what is everywhere implied in John's gospel is explicit in Matthew.
Remember, look at it here.
Jesus takes issue not with the law of God, cut by the very finger of God and placed in the ark of the covenant.
One copy for God, one copy for the people in accordance with the Caesarean Treaty format.
But his issue is with the Pharisees' hypocrisy in regard to the law.
The Lord doesn't even criticize being faithful in tithing, but he distinguishes the weightier matters of God's law that come first.
And this was the Master's constant complaint against the teachers of his day.
They lacked consistency.
They kept parts of the law that looked good on the outside when they could be performed by people, but they were not interested in the substance and the meaning of the law.
They neglected its meaning.
And this contradiction is also what makes Jesus' remark so humorous.
Seeing a person straining a gnat out of their drink because a little flying insect has gotten in there, whilst being happy to gulp down a camel, perfectly expressed.
The sin of the Pharisees, their rejection of God's law word.
Jesus gives a similar image in the following verses.
The image of a person concerned to wash the outside of the cup and bowl to look pristine externally, whilst the inside is filthy.
So it was not that the law of God was loved and obeyed from the heart by the religious teachers of the law, which is what God's law requires in Deuteronomy 6 6.
It was quite the opposite.
Their outward conformity was.
Was a pretense.
It was a sham.
It was a piece of theater.
It lacked authenticity.
It lacked the true passion of inwardness.
And so Jesus is explicit on the outside, you seem righteous to people, but inside, you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.
Inside, they are full of greed and self indulgence.
Blind Pharisee, first clean the inside of the cup.
At the center of the Lord's woe, then, pronounced against these religious authorities, is that you are clean on the outside, but dead and dirty on the inside.
The Master makes the same point.
In Matthew 15, 18 through 20, with a direct reference to the Decalogue, he says, But what comes out of the mouth comes from the heart, and this defiles a man.
From the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, sexual immoralities, thefts, false testimonies, blasphemies.
These are the things that defile a man, but eating with unwashed hands does not defile a man.
Filling Out the Law's Meaning00:16:00
Because of sin, salvation was never possible by obeying the law.
Never.
Only Christ Jesus has ever truly obeyed it.
In fact, giving salvation was never the law's intended function.
The law, the Torah, the wisdom of God, was given as the path of life and blessing, not the source of life and blessing.
Only faith in the promise and blood of the covenant meant salvation and redemption, which is why the instructions for the tabernacle were given to Moses by God Himself, just as the tablets were given to Moses.
Obedience to God's commands was to be the expression of gratitude for grace.
Jesus Christ was and is the full realization of both promise and atoning sacrifice.
Just as the true temple, we're told in Hebrews, is in heaven, where Christ makes intercession and Moses gets the copy for the earth, so the law inscribed in stone by the Lord is now written on the tables of the heart.
That's the meaning of the newer covenant.
That's what the new covenant is.
The priestly administration and the location of the covenant law have changed.
It's no longer an Aaronic priesthood.
It's a priesthood after the order of Melchizedek.
We are a kingdom of priests.
The location of the law is no longer on tablets of stone in the Ark of the Covenant.
It's now written on the heart, but the substance is unchanged.
Let me give you one final encounter with the Pharisees recorded in Matthew 15 and Mark 7, which is relevant for understanding Jesus'.
Attitude to the law.
The master is challenged as to why his disciples are not following the tradition of the elders by ceremonial hand washing.
And Jesus' response again directly quotes the Decalogue, Exodus 20 12, but combines it with a case law from Exodus 21 17 that carries a sanction.
He said this He answered them, and why do you break God's commandment because of your tradition?
For God said, Honor your father and your mother, and the one who speaks evil of father or mother must be put to death.
But you say, Whoever tells his father or mother, whatever benefit you might have received from me as a gift committed to the temple, he does not have to honor his father.
In this way, you have revoked God's word because of your tradition.
And many other things like this, he says, you do.
Note especially that Jesus does not say, Why do you break Moses' command?
Or, Moses said, Honor your father and mother.
You've revoked Moses.
No, Jesus says, This is what God has said, these are God's commandments.
They are revoking God's word.
Now, I haven't got time to exegete the incorrigible child.
This is not to do with executing disobedient children in the house.
This is something completely different.
And I haven't got time to discuss all the details of that.
But this is critically important what Jesus has to say here.
You revoke God's commandment by your traditions.
At issue is the hypocrisy of the Pharisee who has scruples about.
Ceremonially unwashed hands, but excuses a man for financially supporting his parents in their old age if he's made a good gift to the temple.
Human teachings and traditions have been put in the place of God's law.
Now, isn't this the attitude that's commonplace in the church?
Right across the West, where we neither know God's law nor teach God's law as our Lord and Master taught it, but we place instead our preferences.
Our customs, our scruples, our proclivities, our political ideas instead.
Don't dance, drink, smoke, or chew, and don't go with girls that do is not in the Bible.
But many speak of such things as though they are, as though that is the law word of God.
So at the heart of Christ's rebuke is not just an affirmation of the righteousness and authority of God's law, but it's a warning.
It's a warning against replacing God's law with our own ideas, even if they sound rational.
Dare I say, even if we say they're taught by nature.
Because the problem with that, without digressing into a.
What did I do with my water?
There it is.
A lengthy critique.
This may not be mine.
If it was Doug's, it's communion.
Is.
Which school of the natural law theorists are we talking about?
Where is the codification of natural law that I can turn to as an authority?
The various rationalistic philosophers who taught a pagan version of natural law couldn't agree on what the natural law is or was.
It was the Stoics who originated the idea.
Now, of course, I understand that what the Reformers talked about as the law of nations, the natural law, was the law of the Bible.
Thomas Aquinas himself said.
God's law is necessary to correct the natural law because of sin.
But let's make sure we don't use the natural law paradigm as an excuse for ignoring what Jesus taught.
Of ignoring the explicit commands of God.
Because, oh, we've got a kind of a natural law adjustment to that.
I'm following the Master.
They worship me in vain, Jesus said, teaching as doctrines the commands of men.
Matthew 15 9.
In all these interactions, we see Jesus and his followers had neither broken nor abrogated the law.
Those Jews who remained unconvinced were caricatured as blind Pharisees descended from the devil.
For those who desire wisdom, they can now find her in the person of Christ, who is both the law giving prophet promised by Moses and the very meaning and purpose of the law itself, as he gives eternal life to those who believe in him and keep faith.
His commandments.
Well, let's say something about Jesus and the mountains then, because we can't complete a discussion about Jesus and the law without reference to the Master's great sermon on the mountain.
Coming in from the wilderness, the Lord went up onto the mountain as the greater Moses to explain, to teach, and to confirm the law.
We've already seen that the law did not begin to have relevance at Sinai or with the Sermon on the Mount.
Vern Poitras is helpful here.
He says, The law of the Old Testament is not a mere datum or a mere code book, but the personal word of the great king of the universe.
And who is this king?
From eternity to eternity, the word was with God and the word was God.
The king is the Trinitarian God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
God the Son was always at work from the beginning.
The law of Moses is a reflection and foreshadowing of the absolute perfection and righteousness of Christ.
So the greater Moses goes up onto the mountain.
All people in all ages have been obligated to love their Creator and their neighbor from the very beginning.
As the prophet says, they have violated the everlasting covenant.
When Jonah went to preach in Nineveh, what do you think he was preaching about?
The code book of the Ninevites, of the Assyrians?
Some generalized conception of the laws of reason?
Oh, he preached like Amos, the law of God.
Difficult to understand, Jonah, isn't it?
He's one of the most successful theologian evangelists ever.
And yet, he's pretty miserable about the fact that God spared the Ninevites and that they repented from the king down.
Let's not be caught in that kind of a trap that what we enjoy is pronouncing woe and judgment, but not knowing what spirit we are of when people turn to faith in Christ.
Even the disciples had to be warned about that.
The sons of thunder, James and John, Lord, should we call down fire from heaven upon them?
Jesus says, You don't know what spirit you are of.
Well, since the words of Christ, love God, love your neighbor, these were summaries of the law that was established with creation, since the law of God had relevance and power prior to Moses, we should likewise expect that it would have no less force after the passing of Moses.
And that's exactly what we see.
The kings of Israel after Moses were required to read the law every day.
And to make their own copy of the law for themselves, Deuteronomy 17 18 through 20.
They had to write out a copy.
You know how sometimes when you're making notes, you remember things better?
Well, Moses in Deuteronomy, the kings are commanded, Make a copy of the law for yourself.
Remember that the law got lost.
Ezra helps recover it so the rebuilding can take place.
Notably, then, the kings of Israel are to make a copy of the law, and so we would expect.
That the greatest son of David, the Messiah king, would endorse and apply the law of God in its fullness as the author and the Lord of the law.
And that's what we see in the Sermon on the Mountain in Matthew 5 through 7 that Jesus presupposes the validity of the law and its binding authority.
He presupposes it.
Don't assume that I came to destroy the law or the prophets.
I did not come to destroy, but to fulfill.
For I assure you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or one stroke of a letter will pass from the law until all things are accomplished.
Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commands and teaches people to do so will be called least.
Where?
In the kingdom of heaven.
But whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great.
In the kingdom of heaven.
So notice that Jesus is referring to the totality of his law till the end of history as we know it.
Rightly interpreted.
And that to teach and practice God's commands will mean being called great, not in some past dispensation, but great in the kingdom of God, in the kingdom of heaven.
To break God's law and teach others to do the same will mean being least.
That is, there will be believers who will tell people, you don't need to worry about God's law.
There'll be antinomians.
The meaning of the word fulfill, the Greek word pleru, which has been much discussed, you will discover by referring to any commentary, is surely settled by the context of the abiding validity and presence of the kingdom of heaven.
So, at the very least, the law's abiding validity is being confirmed.
It cannot mean an ending or setting aside of the law if it meant that the whole Sermon on the Mount is a self contradiction.
On the contrary, it means that the law and the prophets.
Why the law and the prophets?
Well, what did the prophets do?
What was the message of the prophets?
Return to God, return to his law, return to his word, come back to the word, come back to the law, return to God.
The law and the prophets, which are not yet filled out, Jesus is going to make full.
Rabbi Jesus was not setting aside God's law, he says so himself, nor adding something quantitatively to the law as a supplement, but he's giving the rightful measure God had always intended.
Here's what Herman Ritterbos says Fulfillment means the effectual assertion of the demands of the law.
The word suggests a vessel that is being filled.
The vessel of the law is given its rightful measure.
For this purpose, Jesus has come.
When the master in his sermon uses the expression, You have heard that it was said, but I tell you, he's not refuting the law, he's not correcting God's own word, but he's filling out its meaning.
By addressing the misunderstandings and abuses that have arisen, and he does so with authority and also, I should add, originality as the author of the law.
In fact, the grammar of the phrase allows the meaning in agreement with this, I say to you.
In agreement with this, I say to you.
So, the meaning of murder, adultery, divorce, oath taking, just retribution, generosity, love of neighbor, they're all taken up and they're filled out.
In the greater Moses' sermon on the mountain, the practices of then true worship, facing worldly cares, distinguishing between good and evil, following Jesus, accepting his authority, they're all dealt with in the sermon in reference to God's wisdom, getting to the root of things, our heart motives, the inside, not just the outside, the inside.
Our Lord's climactic statement be perfect, therefore.
As your heavenly Father is perfect, isn't that reminiscent of what was said to Abraham?
Imitating Christ's Teaching00:04:53
Walk before me, Abraham, and be thou perfect.
Leviticus 19, 2.
Be holy, because I, the Lord your God, am holy.
The way in which each aspect of the law is confirmed and filled out.
Through Jesus' life and his redemptive work and teaching involves the task of rightly dividing the word of truth.
That's where the hard work is done.
And it's all under the yoke of Christ the Master.
But there can be no question of abolishing or setting aside God's law.
I think the comments of Richard Barcelos in his critique of New Covenant theology is instructive.
He says this The law Christ expounded in the Sermon on the Mount and revealed in the epistles through his apostles includes portions of the very things Moses wrote.
And sometimes without qualification.
Paul quotes the Decalogue in Romans 13 9 without any new covenant contrastive qualifications.
In Matthew 5, Jesus is indeed introducing a contrast, but not between the law of Moses and the law of Christ.
Rather, the contrast is between a true understanding of the law of Moses and the false understanding evidenced in the hypocrisy of the scribes and Pharisees.
Well, let me end with this.
Those of you who have beards will appreciate that picture.
It's just from a Jesus movie.
It's not idolatry.
A disciple is nothing without a master to follow and obey.
And in what we call the Great Commission, the master clearly taught that the commandments have an ongoing role in evangelism.
In disciple making and the advance of God's kingdom.
Shattering all the restrictions of national Israel, which we see in Matthew 21 43, the international people of God, Jew and Gentile, now disciple all nations, which includes teaching the full content of God's law.
Everything I have commanded you, says Poitras, Naturally, it includes the Sermon on the Mount, and within the sermon, it includes Jesus' statement about the continuing force of the law.
This is why when people say, You know, Jesus said nothing about homosexuality or bestiality.
Really?
He said a great deal about it because he upheld the totality of his law.
In addition, we are given the personal assurance of our divine rabbi.
That his everlasting presence will empower and accompany us on our mission.
And so we are therefore to imitate Christ by teaching the law and understanding it through his life and work.
As the late Greg Barneson explains, he says, The Christian being condemned by the law, saved by Christ's obedience to the law, and sanctified by the Spirit in accordance with the law, is to propagate the Christian gospel in conjunction with pressing home the demands of God's holy law.
Teaching the nations to observe the commandments of God is a definite obligation laid upon Christians by Christ.
The Christian life and God's kingdom are theonomic through and through, as evidenced by both the Lord's Prayer, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, and the Great Commission.
To walk with the Master, To be his disciple, we have to tread the same sod by honoring the same Father, loving the same law, teaching the same commandments, and imitating his life of faithful obedience.
Rita Boss exhorts us the theonomy, I've loved this statement, the theonomy of the gospel.
Is subjection to the law.
And any attempt to eliminate the category of law from the gospel is frustrated by the continuous and undeniable maintenance of the law by and in the gospel.
The Heavenly Throne's Verdict00:00:57
This is confirmed by the words of the Master from his heavenly throne.
The same Lord who engraved his law into the stone tablets at Sinai and expounded the law.
Upon the mountain.
Here's what he says from his heavenly throne, and with this I close.
But the cowards, unbelievers, vile, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their share will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.
Outside are the dogs, the sorcerers, the sexually immoral, the murderers, the idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices lying.