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“Until Heaven and Earth Pass Away”
May 21, 2006
Texts: Matt. 5:17-20
Do you know the difference between revelation and mystical insight? Many people mistakenly believe that they are equal pathways to the truth? They are not. If you believe that there is such a thing as truth, you are in an increasing minority in today‘s world. We are going to reflect on these concerns as we explore a significant passage of Jesus’ teaching.
The passage before us comes to us by way of conveyance, an act of transmission. The apostles heard Jesus teach and they convey, or pass on what they heard. That is not mystical insight, that is revelation. Really? Really. Jesus is teaching, revealing the truth of God related to a specific topic. Here He is teaching on the Scriptures. That’s what the phrase “the Law or the Prophets” means. So Jesus says, I did not come to destroy but to fulfill (the Scriptures). We need to know “fulfill”[1] means. The word playrow, from G4134; to make full, to complete and completion is the sense intended here. Jesus was sent to explain the Scripture, so that we would both hear and understand what it means in order to obey God’s commands as written in Scripture. The idea of fulfillment is echoed in v. 18 with the word ginomai[2]which though similar to playrow is distinguished by the sense of occurring in time, that is, perfected in historical time. That sense is not surprising, giving the context, where Jesus makes it very plain that Scripture is in force until heaven and earth pass away. By this we may rightfully infer both a beginning and an end to life as we currently experience it. So, the standard of righteousness revealed in Scripture is, according to this further revelation, upheld to the end of this age. Consequently, those who break the least of these commandments and teaches others to rebel shall be called least in God’s kingdom--this expression means “exclusion.”. But if someone in rich contrast teaches entire obedience to God, in the letter and spirit of the Law, he shall be called great. He will be included. The principle is this: no part, not even the least part of God’s commandments shall change in the course of human history--and God expects us to attain to a high standard of performance as well. And, the consequence for teaching others to disregard God’s law, or divine authority, shall be exclusion from the kingdom. He “will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.” It is not particularly important that you remember the words playrow and ginomai but it is very important that you know that we are still under obligation to obey God’s commandments for righteousness in the right spirit and to the very letter.
Now the Scribes and the Pharisees were renowned for keeping, or observing the Law. They were “good, moral” people. They were most meticulous, precise law-keepers as contrasted with law-breakers. Just keeping the law is not enough, Jesus explains. Being moral can make you self-righteous instead of just plain righteous. The Scribes and Pharisees were justified in themselves rather than holding up God’s righteousness to a watching world. God’s righteousness is pure, holy and loving. It is merciful as well as just. So if we keep the letter of the law but fail to do so in the proper spirit, our actions are futile, worthless--indeed, they bring us into condemnation for as every Jew was taught the Shema from infancy: Deu 6:4-7 "Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one! "And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. "And these words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart; and you shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up. The central need was for love of God--God made us for loving Him above all else and, secondarily, God wanted a warm hearted love of neighbor such as is prescribed in Lev 19:16-18 'You shall not go about as a slanderer among your people, and you are not to act against the life of your neighbor; I am the LORD. 'You shall not hate your fellow countryman in your heart; you may surely reprove your neighbor, but shall not incur sin because of him. 'You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the sons of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself; I am the LORD. These two citations of Old Testament Scripture prove the truth of Jesus’ assertions.
Both tablets of the Law, love to God and love to neighbor were to be kept. And, this love was to be ardent, heartfelt, and not some cold religious observance, or empty ritualism. A love for God requires all you are, all you’ve got. Indeed, you cannot really be yourself apart from the worship suggested in these commandments. And that love to God is to be constant, faithful, life-long--and this is the pattern for the love God planned for His institution, marriage. All this may be very interesting. But, is it true? Because only if it is true will we be motivated to move out of our heads (of understanding) and into our hearts (of sincere obedience). Well, if it has been revealed to you that this is true, that this is an accurate conveyance of apostolic record and of the Master’s teaching, you will say, “Yes, Lord, this is true.” And you will act accordingly. But, what you don’t need is a mystical experience. You don’t need a drug induced state, to perform strenuous rituals, or dance yourself into a frenzy state of sensory and emotional overload so that you attain an altered state of consciousness. You don’t need a mystical experience to encounter the truth. But you do need revelation.
To illustrate my point, let’s take another biblical incident:
Mat 16:13 Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, He began asking His disciples, saying, "Who do people say that the Son of Man is?"
Mat 16:14 And they said, "Some say John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; but still others, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets."
Mat 16:15 He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?"
Mat 16:16 And Simon Peter answered and said, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God."
Mat 16:17 And Jesus answered and said to him, "Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.
Mat 16:18 "And I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades shall not overpower it.
Mat 16:19 "I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever you shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven."
Mat 16:20 Then He warned the disciples that they should tell no one that He was the Christ.
Please note how ordinary this exchange is, flat-footed, down to earth. Jesus came into Caesarea Philippi and, in the course of conversation, asks, “So what are people saying about who I am?” When they reply with all manner of weird-ness--meaning that people are saying that He is a dead man come back to life--Jesus dismisses all that with "But who do you say that I am?" He rejects the wild suggestions out of hand. But when Peter says, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." Jesus confirms and affirms his “revelation.” Once again, no drugs, no rites, no strenuous activity inducing a euphoric state of “mystical” insight. Not so many years ago, when hallucinogenic mushrooms were in vogue amongst hippies, one writer suggested that the disciples were doing mushrooms--they were “shrooming”! to believe that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God. But that is because the carnal mind is blocked; it cannot perceive, or understand the things of God. But when God opens that mind, when God supplies revelation, everything changes. True spirituality cannot be induced chemically, artificially. Oh, yes, one can induce visions, heightened sensitivity and hallucinations even through drugs, meditative practices and, yes, sexual feelings can flood the body with a sense of well-being and euphoria--but all these things are earth-bound, fleshly and they do not translate into anything but a psychodynamic experience. You are just as earth-bound during your high as you were before even if nobody else knows anybody’s home.
The neo-pagan seductions recently commended to us by various voices, including Dan Brown and Shirley MacLaine, Mary Daley and Elaine Pagels as well as eco-feminists, are all enamored of the “goddess” religion. They reject Christian revelation in favor of induced states of consciousness. They want “Christ-consciousness” of their very own making, with their very own selves as “god.” The priestesses of this movement are no different from their pre-Christian and anti-Christian predecessors. They are earthly, natural and demonic. Sin in a shiny new wrapper is still sin. These New Age promoters are hawking sex and sensuality as worship, orgies and ecstasy as a “new gospel.” This is not something new, and it’s no gospel. The gospel is good news of escape from human depravity! Indeed, I say very soberly, these practices and beliefs are the very death and destruction that Jesus came to deliver us out of! Because as Scripture shows in James 3:14-17 Who among you is wise and understanding? Let him show by his good behavior his deeds in the gentleness of wisdom. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your heart, do not be arrogant and so lie against the truth. This wisdom (bitter jealousy, selfish ambition, arrogance and lying) is not that which comes down from above, but is earthly, natural, demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there is disorder and every evil thing. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, without hypocrisy. Pure, peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, constant and without hypocrisy, these are not the chief characteristics of the New Age “apostles.”
We must be kind, but discerning these days. We must know both who we are listening to and why. Are these New Age apostles without the hypocrisy they shrilly condemn in others that we should see the superiority of their “enlightened” mystical religion? The church has a struggle with hypocrisy, yes, but I think that hypocrisy is a common human affliction. Are these “authorities” less arrogant than the power brokers they imagine the early leaders of the church to be? Do they lie against the truth? Indeed, are they quick to say that others, who disagree with them, are liars, deceivers and workers of evil? That the church has demonized its opponents doesn’t justify the practice in reverse! If we are to believe Dan Brown, all men are liars except himself--especially, those lying, murderous oppressive Christian conspirators whose motives he understands, whose anti-feminine agenda he has the “privilege” of exposing in his work of paranoid and fantastical fiction! The huge problem I have with Brown’s fiction is that his “facts” are based on forgeries and he vilifies with anachronistic allegations. There’s a major discrepancy: if your supposedly early sources (1st century) quote later sources (the Vulgate didn’t exist before the 4th century), the one thing that is not possible is for the actual apostles, or their immediate successors to have suppressed them as a patriarchal plot! It is possible that Jerome used some earlier Latin manuscripts that the Gnostic gospels cited, but it is very doubtful that these manuscripts were in existence while any of those who approved the New Testament documents were still alive. My problem with his “heroes” is even worse; those who would enlighten us are murderous villains.
In some reactions to The Da Vinci Code, I’ve heard that women want to hear that they are “good,” that they are valuable in their femininity. So they are attracted to “goddess” worship because they desire the affirmation and empowerment implied. Goodness and value, however, are two very, very different things. As for goodness, even Jesus said, Mark 10:18 And Jesus said to him, "Why do you call Me good? No one is good except God alone.” We have no business demanding that we be affirmed as “good” if Jesus, in His humanity, rejected “goodness” as an inherent quality. On the other hand, women are valuable in their femininity. That is biblical. Gen 1:27 And God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them is followed by Gen 1:31 And God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. Women are valuable by virtue of creation and divine estimation just as men are valuable. But as much as we, female or male, want to hear we are inherently “good,” what we need to hear is that we are not. Our original goodness was lost, compromised, diminished for man and woman alike. We know ourselves exiles from Eden--yet we know, dimly recollect, that we were made perfect, good and pure. We believe in the possibility of our perfection. Our universal tragedy is that we appear to have fallen from a high and noble, original estate. Scripturally, we fell from that grace in Adam and Eve, sin entered the world and there’s been trouble ever since. Psychologically, all men everywhere sense the deep out of joint-ness of human existence. Things ain’t the way they ought to be! And we are all we’re cracked up to be. Scripturally, since we disobeyed and distrusted God, we have been unable to live right, think right, or love right. We long with all we’ve got to be righteous, to know the truth and to love selflessly--and we fail repeatedly and magnificently. But God, in His great mercy, would not abandon us to the plight of immorality, error and lovelessness--as many humans appear to do--He would not leave us to our helplessness, to our hopelessness and to our self-destruction.
What did God do in respond to our predicament? What He did comes in two parts. Part One: He sent help in the person of His Son. Jesus, our Savior and God‘s Son, came into our reality on a rescue mission. We were going down spiritually and He pulled us to safety! He came from outside our mess to help us back to the place where we could both please God and be pleasing to each other. He tore down the dividing wall of hostility which stood between us and our God--rebellion was our natural condition. He did so by laying down His sinless life as payment for our sins. We do not dare impugn either His righteousness, or His divinity. But while Christ did not do these things because we were good, or valuable in ourselves, He did accomplish these things because God is good and God has placed a value on us. What God created He called good, thus He ascribed value to all that He made. And He did so both to men and to women--the ultimate offense in murder is the effacing of the image of God which exists in man and woman. Part Two: at the end of His time of earth, Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to witness to the truth and to convict the world of sin. He chooses to dwell in all who will believe. And so, according to His free and sovereign will, He does. Jesus saves and Jesus indwells. He is both our advocate in heaven with the Father and He is a life-sustaining presence in our here and now. If we turn to Him, we may be sure He will turn to us.
We know that many, sadly, will not turn to Him. They will be persuaded to deny Christ, and to deny their need for His salvation and/or indwelling presence. But we, the redeemed of the Lord, are not among them. Why? Because He has been fulfilled in us through faith. We are recovering sinners, forgiven saints; we are now repentant liars, thieves and blasphemers because although grief of our betrayals was real, grace prevailed. He did not count our trespasses against us.[3] The murky world of childhood memories, the difficult pathways of hurt, loss, betrayal and fear were held at bay by grace just long enough for us to see a way through. In that interlude, old suspicions died. In that gift of clarity and light, we raced past the obstacles--that in the mists and dark seemed too huge, ominous and immovable--to saving faith. I mean, we found our way home spiritually, we found His arms. Subsequently, we have re-learned who we truly are in Him. We are born again--not as in re-entering the womb, but as in picking up and moving on from wherever we were stuck. Mistrust dissolved and in its place, a clear, clean new hope was established. Faith and hope. Having experienced His love through these things, having known His truth, we dare to move out, to take new ground, to risk higher and better, to love more purely and deeply. Love the Lord Your God. Yes, we say. With all you are, with all you’ve got. Yes. And your neighbor as yourself. That is why we are learning to tell the truth, to earn our way. We are learning to honor and to wholeheartedly obey God and Jesus! We do believe that His goodness is now in me, in you. . .all because of Him. Heaven and earth will pass away. But we shall not. And by His grace we shall never turn from Him again.