Matthew 5.17-20

There’s a neighborhood in Brooklyn, NY called Williamsburg that is almost entirely populated with Hasidic Jews.  I’ve actually been there, and honestly, it’s like stepping into another world.  Almost every storefront sign was written in Hebrew.  The men walk on the street dressed in their 100%-cotton black overcoats and donned with tall black 100%-cotton top hats, even in the pounding East Coast humidity.  The women are equally formal, garbed in white 100%-cotton blouses and black 100%-cotton skirts.  Honestly, it’s almost as if someone dropped Amish country in the middle of New York City.

On my first visit, I had made the mistake of wearing a plain tee (60% cotton, 40% polyester), cargo shorts and a baseball cap.  Needless to say, I was out of place, and everyone around knew it.  As I turned street corners, I drew oppressive stares and the atmosphere around me grew tense.  I soon realized that I didn’t belong, and what’s worse, everyone there seemed to silently agree.  I’ll never forget the way that this community looked at me: not so much with hatred or disgust, but with arrogance.  With pride, actually.  They looked at me as if they were righteous, and that by just looking at me, they could tell that I was not.  To them, I was merely a Gentile.

Hasidic Jews, after all, pride themselves on “perfectly” keeping the Law of Moses.  Their entire way of life – their occupation, their marriage, their clothing, their food – all of it is based on keeping the 613 rules that make up the Law of Moses, that long and supremely boring stretch of Scriptural wilderness reaching from Exodus 20:1 to end of Deuteronomy.

Now, personally I don’t find it quite so boring.  Actually, I find that some of these commands are rather unique.

For instance, Exodus 34:26 is careful to instruct us against cooking a young goat in its mother’s milk.  Not entirely sure why.  If you want cook it in water, vinegar, a cow’s milk, Hawaiian Punch, then go wild!  But not in its mother’s milk.  Deuteronomy 22:11 teaches Israelites to avoid wearing clothing woven together from wool and linen, meaning that their clothing had to be purely woven from only one kind of fabric.[i]

Leviticus 19:26 forbids preparing rare or medium rare steak.  Leviticus 19:27 prohibits men from shaving their sideburns.  Leviticus 19:28 outlaws tattoo parlors.  And these don’t even cover the numerous laws regarding what Israelites could and couldn’t eat (Leviticus 11), about sexual ethics (Leviticus 18) and about proper sacrifices (Leviticus 1-7).

All of these rules seem silly and impractical to us, but to the ancient Israelites (as well as to Hasidic Jews today) these commands represented a way of life.

Often, I think we get confused about the Old Testament and especially the Law of Moses.  We think that the Israelites and Jews viewed the Law of Moses as burdensome and unreasonable.  But it’s just the opposite.  They treated these instructions like their own personal Constitution, using them as the laws of their land.  They were proud of their Law; it filled them with pride.

Sometimes I think we make the mistake of treating the ancient Israelites and the Jews of Jesus’ day with pity, wondering how they could have lived under such strict obligations.  But we ought to understand that life as a Christian is no easier than life as a Jew.  In fact, living as Christian is much harder.  But we’ll get to that in a moment.

Jesus’ words in Matthew 5:17-20 are like a caveat emptor (Let the buyer beware!).  Everything that they were about to hear Jesus teach in Matthew 5:21-48 would sound like this young rabbi was teaching them to ignore the Old Testament teachings that they were so proud of.  But Jesus to explain that this wasn’t his intention.

Jesus taught the crowd on that day, 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. 18 I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. 19 Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20 For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.

The Jews were serious about their Law to the point that they protected every letter within it.  Jesus acknowledged their concerns, explaining in vv. 18 that not even the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter would disappear from the Law on his watch.  The ancient rabbis taught that when Sarai’s name was changed to Sarah, the letter “y” that was taken out of her name protested its removal from Scripture (Sarai could actually be spelled Saray).  In fact, it cried out so loudly that Moses was forced to return the “y” by changing Oshea’s name to Joshua in Numbers 13:16 (another way to pronounce Joshua’s name in Hebrew is Yoshea).[ii]  This was how serious the Jews were about maintaining the integrity of their Law.

This integrity was of some concern to the Jews in attendance that day; so Jesus, quick to explain, assured the crowd that he wasn’t hatching some elaborate plot to overthrow the teachings that the Israelites had preserved and passed on for millennia.  Quite the opposite, he planned to fulfill those teachings.  Because as they stood, these teachings were not yet complete.

As Christians, we often get confused about how to treat the Old Testament.  On the one hand, we ignore it completely as a set of unreasonable demands.  But on the other hand, we see Jesus in this text demanding his followers to keep the commands of the Old Testament and to teach others to do the same lest they get kicked out of the Kingdom.  So are we supposed to start cutting pork chops and bacon out of our diets and quit working on Saturdays(Sabbaths)?

Well, no.  In Acts 15, the Church decided that the Christian Gentiles were not required to strictly obey the Law as the Christian Jews had been doing even after they had accepted Christ as Lord.  And to an extent, even Jesus didn’t strictly obey the Law of Moses.  He worked on the Sabbath.  He touched lepers.  And he hung on a cross (Gal. 3:13).

But Jesus didn’t come to obey the Law of Moses.  He came to fulfill it.  To perfect it.

As you’ll see in the next few verses, Jesus wasn’t necessarily interested in the details of Moses’ Laws.  He was interested in the heart of Moses’ Laws.  In the very next section of Matthew, he teaches that to merely obey the command ‘Do not murder’ is to not go far enough.  He goes down deep into the heart of that command and orders his followers to eliminate the hatred or resentment that they harbor toward their neighbors.  Likewise, he teaches that abstaining from adultery isn’t enough; we must eradicate the lust in our hearts as well if we want to perfectly keep the command ‘Do not commit adultery’.  And he does the same with four more laws to illustrate this lesson: that to be a citizen in the Kingdom of God requiresthat we live a righteous life that goes above and beyond the righteousness of even the elite religious Jewish teachers.  The call to follow Christ is the call to walk a much narrower path than Moses could have ever proscribed or the rabbis ofJesus’ day could have ever drawn.

So what do we do with the Old Testament?  We go above and beyond it.  The Pharisees and teachers of the law in Jesus’ day were far too focused on the details of Moses’ Law.  They couldn’t see the forest for the trees, locked into a spiritual tunnel-vision that obstructedthem from seeing the fullness of God’s truth.  But we are called to dig beneath the rocky surface and uncover the perfect riches of God’s wisdom.

To find the heart of God’s commands is to find a higher standard.  The religious leaders in Judea were proud of their diet, abstaining from pork and shellfish and other critters, but we are called to sustain ourselves on nothing less than the Word of God (Matt. 4:4). They prided themselves on wearing clothing from pure fabric, but we are called to wear nothing less than compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience (Col. 3:12).  They offered the best of their flocks and herds in order to worship their God.  We must offer nothing less than our entire lives (Rom. 12:1).

The Jews carried a heavy yoke, but we carry heavier crosses.  So as we approach this Christian life, understand that it demands nothing lessthan everything we’ve got.  But trust me when I say that the work is definitely worth the reward.

Kyle Welch