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A Friend in Court A message by Dr. Bruce W. Thielman Attention to the reading of God's word as it is recorded in the gospel according to St. Matthew, the fifth chapter, beginning at the thirteenth verse. "Ye are the salt

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of the earth, but if the salt hath lost its savor, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing but to be cast out and to be trodden under foot of men. Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick, and it giveth light

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unto all that are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven. 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, till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from

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the law till all be fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven. But whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I say unto you, that except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes

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and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven. And may God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from his holy word. Amen. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. During the course of my extended conversations with the pastor-seeking committee of this

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congregation I was repeatedly told by them of the excellence of the musical program here at the Glendale Presbyterian Church. Indeed, and I shall be honest and confess this, I was told of the excellence of this program so frequently that I came to doubt it, and adopted an "I'm from Missouri" kind of attitude. And when I came here on October 13 to join

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with you in seeking out God's will as to whether we should be pastor and people or not, I came into this sanctuary at the 930 service desperately anxious to hear this choir. I stepped here to the chancel, and Maestro Fontana proceeded to lead the choir in the choral introit, and I said to myself, "My cup runneth over." For it was truly more wonderful than even the

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pastor-seeking committee had said. And it's always true, isn't it? You can tell more when you hear from a person than when you hear about a person. When a scholar undertakes research, he is not content with learning what others have to say about the individual whose life he is exploring. He seeks out the individual

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himself, or, if that person has passed from this earthly scene, he seeks out the writings of that individual, and attempts to get as close to the original source as he possibly can. It's always better to hear from a person than to hear from another about that person. Now, the Holy Scriptures are the record of the coming of Christ and of his coming again.

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Prophetically, historically, and theologically, we are told that the Messiah will come, that the Messiah came, and that the Messiah will come again. And I say this without any irreverence. The advertising is magnificent. But I submit to you this morning that no word about the Messiah is as perfect as any word spoken by the Messiah. For the Prince was infinitely

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more wonderful than the promise. In this advanced season, then, I wish to explore with you some of the things which our Lord Jesus Christ himself had to say about the nature of his mission. Six times we shall ask, "Master, what is your mission?" And six times, I pray, under the guidance of the

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Holy Spirit, we will hear him answer. The first of his answers has been read in your hearing this morning. "Master, why did you come?" Jesus answers, "Do not for a moment suppose that I am come to abolish the law or the prophets. I am not come to do away with them, but to carry them out."

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Now, there are four distinct parts to this sentence of Jesus, and I want to look at each one for at least a moment. The sentence begins with a single Greek word, which is a word which implies surprise, or the reversal of attitude. Jesus doesn't just begin to answer the question. He says, "What I'm about to say is going to surprise you. It's going to

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come as somewhat of a shock. It's not exactly what you expect." Most literally, the word could be translated, "Do not for a moment suppose." Then he goes on to say, "That I have come to abolish the law or the prophets." Now, when the Jews spoke of the law, they could have one of four concepts in mind. They

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could be thinking of the first five books of the Old Testament, they could be thinking of the Ten Commandments, they could be thinking of the entire Old Testament, or they could be thinking about a scribal commentary upon the Old Testament. But in this instance, we can be absolutely sure that Jesus is speaking of the entire Old Testament, for he uses the

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phrase "the law and the prophets." And whenever the word "prophets" is used with the word "law," the entire Old Testament is being referred to. So what Jesus is saying is, "Do not for a moment suppose that I am come to abolish the Old Testament." And then he underscores this truth by saying, "I am not come to do away with them." Now,

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it's common for revolutionaries to want to do away with just about everything. Robespierre, the great leader of the French Revolution, wanted to change every week so that it had ten days, wanted to change the names of all the months, wanted to change just about every standard of measurement we use in our society. It is typical of revolutionaries to want to

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change things. But Jesus walks in an antithetic direction. He not only says that he does not want to change anything that is in the Old Testament, but he goes on to say that not a jot or a tittle of it is to pass away. Now the word "jot" refers to the Hebrew letter "yos," which is the smallest letter in the

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Hebrew alphabet. It's about the size of an apostrophe in our writing. And the word "tittle" refers to the smallest part of a letter. If you, for example, were to write a capital I, you know that the bottom of the I and the top of the I we would refer to as the "seres." They're the serif of the letter. Well, in the Hebrew tongue that would be described

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as the "tittle," the smallest part of a letter. So what Jesus is saying is, not only that he is not going to abolish the Old Testament, but not even the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter is to be eliminated. And then he goes to press the case even more on by making the law not only a matter of

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external observance but also of internal observance. "You have heard it said that you are not to murder. I say, don't even think unloving thoughts. You have heard it said that you are not to commit adultery. I say, if you look after another with a lustful thought in your mind, you have sinned against God."

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Shortly before I came west, an interesting case was recorded in the newspapers in Pittsburgh. The state government had launched legal proceedings against a certain industry on the charge that they had poured industrial poisons into a stream and so fouled the stream that no fish could live within it. The firm, in combating the government's claim, followed the stream

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to its source and discovered that the stream took its rise in an old abandoned mine and that recent mineral changes within that mine and other impurities flowing into the stream at its very source were in fact the cause of the impurity, nothing which the industry was pouring into the water was affecting the water in any significant way.

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Now Jesus says to us when he speaks of the law, "I want you not only to be pure in the matter of ritualistic, legalistic, external observance, but at the very source of your motivation, at the very core of your experience, down deep inside where all of your thoughts have their nativity, right there, you are to be completely subservient to the law of God."

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And then on top of all of this, Christ adds one last thought. He says, "I have come to fulfill the law." That does not mean to complete it, for it was altogether complete in the Old Testament. It means that he has come to illustrate it. He has come to demonstrate it. He has come to say, "If you want to see how the life God wants to be lived is

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lived, then look at me, for I am the way. Walk ye in this way." In total then, when we say to Jesus, "What is your mission?" he answers, "First of all, do not for a moment imagine that I have come to abolish the Old Testament. I am not come to do away with the smallest part of the smallest letter of it. I have come

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instead to live it, so that you can see what the law of God lived is really like." I think that's clear. I think that's understandable. I think that's rational, and it is therefore a great puzzlement to me that so many people insist on twisting and perverting this word of our Lord. Martin Luther said at the time of the Reformation that this text was the

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devil's masterpiece, that more misinterpretation jumped forth from this text of Scripture than any other verse in all the Bible. I do not know if what Martin Luther said was true, but I am at least sure of this, that no single text is as misappropriated and as misused in our time as this word. The illustrations are myriad. Let me select just one. The so-called

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proponents of the new morality argue that what Jesus is in fact saying in this verse is not that we are to be concerned with all of the different aspects of the law of God as it's revealed in the Old Testament at all. What he's really saying is we're to be concerned with the essence of the law, and the essence of the law is love, and therefore whatever

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is the loving thing to do in any circumstance, be it stealing or killing or committing adultery or what have you, whatever is the loving thing to do is the right thing to do. These persons say, "Love is more important than law." These persons affirm, "People are more important than principles." And that sounds very good. But you see, these individuals have failed

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to understand that love and law are not necessarily antithetic, that indeed a law can be a very loving thing. And since this law comes from the God who is love, is it not logical to assume that it is a pristine expression of love? About two years ago I was in a supermarket. I go there when it's absolutely unavoidable.

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And in the front of the store were several of these large toys into which you place a dime for the amusement of children while the parents are shopping. And as I came through the checkout counter, there was about a four-year-old cowboy riding a bucking bronco. And his mother was right in front of me. And she walked over just as the horse stopped its gyrations, and

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she reached out for his hand and said, "Come, we're going," and he informed her that he was not going, that he wanted another ride, and he began to kick and to scream, and to quiet him, she immediately placed another dime into the horse. Now she evidently thought that two rides would be satisfactory, but it was not so. Three, four, and five. And

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by this time, seven or eight of us had gathered and were watching this contest between a four-year-old child and its mother. Would he win or would she win or would it be a draw because she ran out of dimes? Finally, one of the men in our group walked over to the little boy and whispered something

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in his ear. Immediately he jumped on the horse, took his mother's hand, and they started to walk from the store. I was walking right behind them. She turned to him and she said, "What did that man say to you?" And he looked up at her with eyes as big as quarters and said, "He told me if I didn't get off that horse, he'd paddle my fanny."

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Now, I suggest to you this morning that what the man did in that case was far more loving than what the mother was doing, for that child needed to know that there was a law, needed to know that he was responsible before that law, and needed to know that he would be punished if he did not fulfill that law. And this was the expression of love. Law and love are not

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antithetic, and therefore when the proponents of the new morality say that surely Jesus could not be insisting upon all of the testimony of the Old Testament, for love is more important, I say the word of Christ is this. He has not come to abolish that law, and he does not abolish it, for that law is the expression of love. That law is something else. It not

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only expresses love, it leads you to an assertion of guilt. For if what Jesus is saying is true, and none of us I am confident believe that it is not true, then he is insisting that we live lives that are 100 percent in accordance with the will of his Father. I've often thought of this verse in terms of those to whom he first addressed it. These were Jews. No people

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on the face of the earth have ever been as assiduous in the fulfillment of their religious obligation as the Jews. These were individuals who poured themselves into the observance of their religion, had a multitude of observances which they fulfilled in a painstaking effort to be right before God. And then Jesus comes. And he doesn't talk of God as judge, he talks

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of God as Father. And he does not talk about regulations, he talks about the romance of being a child of God. And they're caught up with this. And then suddenly this one who has led them into a new understanding stands before them and says, "No part of the law must pass away, and unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and

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the Pharisees, you will not enter into the kingdom of heaven." And surely they must have thought to themselves, "We were better off with Moses. For Moses demanded of us only external observance, but this Christ says we may not even think impurely. No motive must be off-center. No imagination of our heart, none of the furious eagerness of our

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imagination must ever stand between ourselves and God." It's an awesome charge. And it's a charge, I suggest, which makes every one of us stand before God condemned. And when I read this, I say to myself, "If this is what is required, then in and of myself I cannot fulfill it, and which of us can?" I see no hands raised. Is the text, then, that

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which leaves us in despair? Well, it would be, if it were not for the fact that Jesus' insistence upon the fulfillment of the law is in itself an expression of his love for us. You see, we know that we're not murderers. We know that we're not thieves. We know that we're not adulterers. And so we tend to think of ourselves in somewhat pious and holy terms.

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But up against those terms, Jesus raises an unreachable standard, one hundred percent obedience to the law of God. And he says, "This is the standard by which you must measure your conduct." And in the face of that kind of standard, we can only fall to our knees. It's like a surgeon who cuts deep and then who puts down into the wound gauze in order

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that the wound might not heal too quickly. Wanting the wound to have time to become pure, wanting all that is inside that should be outside to be eliminated, he prevents the healing from occurring by inserting gauze into the wound, just so Christ takes the law and drives it down into the very heart of our consciousness to remind us always that

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we have not fulfilled the law of God. And when we fall upon our knees and confess that we failed to do this, we discover, wonder of wonders, that bending over us is the very Christ who establishes this standard. And he takes us by the hand and he bids us rise. And when we stand in the courtroom of God, we discover that we do not have to be upon

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our knees, but instead may stand with none other than the one who accuses us at our side. The one who was the prosecuting attorney now becomes the defense attorney. And when our conscience says to us, "You are accused," Christ says, "But I stand with you and I fulfilled the law." When death says, "I will destroy you," Christ says, "But I stand with you and

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I will fulfill the law." When suffering surrounds us, Christ says, "But I stand with you and I have fulfilled the law." You see, we discover that we have a friend in court, one who takes our hand in his and says, "You are mine, and because you are mine, you will be welcomed to my house." God, you see, does not wish to command our love, for a commanded love,

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a love under orders, means nothing. So instead, he reminds us through the law of our evil. And then, having reminded us of this, he sends his love in the person of Jesus Christ to stand beside us in the very midst of our sin. And in the moment that we discover Christ standing beside us and love him, we have fulfilled the law. For love is the essence of the law.

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Let me put it this way. One of the great stories to come out of ancient Russia concerns Shamal the Avar, a Cossack chieftain who discovered thievery in his tribe and who issued an edict to the effect that if anyone were caught stealing, he would receive one hundred lashes with the Russian mount. And two days later, the thief was caught, and it was Shamal's own mother.

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What then was to happen? Was the law to stand and the one he loved be beaten? Or was his love to stand and the law be cast aside? For two days he wrestled with the question. And then he announced that the law would stand. Then he stripped to the waist, and bearing his own back against the icy Russian winter wind, he took the hundred lashes for the sake

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of the one he loved. That's what it is to affirm the law and then to fulfill it in an act of magnificent love. I urge you then this day, if you have never so done before, to invite Christ the prosecuting attorney into your life. He'll knock all the scabs from the sores of your living, but at the very moment that they run most red, he'll throw

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his arms about you, and you'll be healed, and you'll cry out, "I am loved. Even I am loved. And the kingdom of heaven is mine now and forever. For I have a friend in court." Will gracious Lord Jesus Christ hold us so close to thee that when another looks at us, they will see the two of us as one? And the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make

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his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. The Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon you and give to you and to all those whom you love his peace. [BLANK_AUDIO]