Yes! There is Good News! May 26, 2018

Last week we considered how it is not God who has abandoned His creation; but it is we, the people of His creation, who have abandoned Him. There are many gifts that God has given to man and one that has been extremely overlooked is His law. So let me give you a quote here, “Be sure to keep the commands of the LORD your God and the stipulations and decrees He has given you. Do what is right and good in the Lord’s sight, so that it may go well with you …” (Deut. 6:17-18). I, for one, want it to go well with me and so perhaps I should read the word of God and see what these laws are.

The whole concept of law is very deep and quite vast. You tell someone that you keep the law of God and they may try to label you as a legalist. I have even heard people say that “we have been freed from the law.” One of the problems here is that perhaps we have not settled upon a real understanding of just what the law really is!

Someone may say, “You have quoted from the book of Deuteronomy, Bill, and that is a part of the Old Testament.” So let us set that part of God’s word aside for a second and see what the New Testament has to say about the law of God. Let us begin at the very beginning. Jesus, in the first recorded message He gave, (usually called the Sermon on the Mount) tells us this, “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.” (Matt. 5:17) Twice in this verse, Jesus warns us who read it, that He is not going to abolish the Law!! In other words, “Let’s get this straight, right off the bat!” In the next verse He says this, “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.” It is of interest here that Jesus tells us that it is the written law He is talking about. He mentions a pen stroke and a letter. This is because, at that time, the Jews also had what they called the oral law. The oral law was not codified in the scripture but consisted of the traditions and rules that the Scribes and Pharisees had made up. These Scribes and Pharisees were soundly rebuked by Jesus for their traditions when in Matt. 15:3 He said, “Why do you break the commands of God for the sake of your traditions?”

When Jesus tells us He has come to “fulfill” the law, He uses a specific Greek word that means “to cram full; to make full.” He then goes on in the rest of chapter 5 telling us that “You have heard it said … But I tell you ...”  In these statements, concerning murder, adultery, divorce, oaths, etc., He is making the law more complete than the Jews of His day taught; in other words, He was cramming it full. Jesus railed at the Scribes and Pharisees of His day for their treatment of God’s law.

Which of God’s laws would you want to do away with? Or better, wouldn’t it feel good to live in a community where all of God’s laws were fully kept. Think for a moment what it would be like to know unequivocally, that everyone kept the command to not steal. I see that as true freedom and indeed good news. But as I said above, this topic is very deep and so we shall talk more about it in the future.