We're going to do two things now. We're going to listen to the Scripture reading. First, from the prophet Micah, sort of a preparatory reading, and then a reading from the Gospel of Matthew chapter 5. Our reader is Joe Kelly. And then as a prayer, if you will, to rightly receive God's Word, we're going to have a song and a friend of mine. Any quick, she's been here before, but the group, Stickman Jones, I'm going to ask Annie if she would lead us in a song that really is a prayer. For God to breathe on us and enable us to truly hear and understand what he says. From the book of Micah chapter 6, listen to what the Lord says. Stand up, plead your case before the mountains. Let the hills hear what you have to say. Hear, O mountains, the Lord's accusation. Listen, you everlasting fountains of the earth, for the Lord has a case against his people. He is lodging a charge against Israel. My people, what have I done to you? How have I burdened you? Answer me. I brought you up out of Egypt and redeemed you from the land of slavery. I sent Moses to lead you, also Aaron and Miriam. My people remember what valet king of Moab counseled and what valet son of Bayor answered. Remember your journey from Shateen to Gilgal that you may know the righteous acts of the Lord. With what shall I come before the Lord and bow down before the exalted God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He has showed you, O man, what is good and what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God? From the gospel of Matthew, chapter 5, 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. 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. 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. 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 word of the Lord. Thank you. It's really what I want to talk to you about this morning. How it is that God does breathe on us specifically, how God breathes the scriptures. And the hard saying we're reflecting on is from Matthew, chapter 5, we read it, verses 17 to 20, and particularly we're going to focus on this phrase that you get. Where Jesus says in verse 18, I'll 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. Now, some of you may be familiar with the King James Version of the Bible. I had that one sort of burned into my brain as a child, and I still think that way, but there's a very memorable turn of phrase in that one, which is used for that phrase. The least little letter, the smallest stroke of a pen, which is every jot and title. And that's sort of entered almost into the English language now. You may not know where that came from. You've heard that. Basically, that's the not I want to try to untie today. What does Jesus mean when he says, every jot and title, uncommitted to, of the scriptures, every jot and title? Now, you know, I like hard sayings of Jesus, are the things Jesus says that are just hard. It takes a while to unpack what he means. And if I liken it to a nut, particularly my second oldest son Benjamin has already gone to children's worship. So I can say this, but my son Benjamin is particularly adept at this kind of a nut. He comes to you and he says, daddy, untie this nut. And there's like a line of nuts this long. It's a nut. And I actually, as I got into this text, I realized that this isn't just a nut. There's several nuts in this text. So much so that about midweek, I decided that this was two sermons. I want to have a little mercy on you. And so we're going to, actually, that's been two weeks on this because on the one hand, there's the every jot and title part. But then there's what he really is trying to say beyond that, which is your righteousness has to exceed that of the Pharisees. Or you won't be in my kingdom. That's a lot. That's a lot to untie. So let's start here every jot and title. Jesus has begun his ministry. And as he teaches, people are struck by what he so knew about him. In fact, Matthew has him in a significant role here at the foot of a mountain re-giving the law because see, that's what's happening in Matthew 5. This is the setting the text for the sermon on the mount. Jesus, in the words of Martin Luther, republishing the law, like Moses at the foot of the mountain saying, you have heard it said, I said this. You have heard it said, I said this. Now here's this guy coming along teaching and he talks about a new kingdom. He talks about a kingdom. He says things like you've heard it said, but I say to you. And he upsets the apple cart. There's a certain way you're supposed to eat. And he reinterprets the way you're supposed to eat as a Jew. There are certain ways you keep the Sabbath. And yet he keeps bothering people because he won't do what they think he ought to do. And he proclaims that if someone was an agenda, saying, you've got to follow me. Apacolutébe, he keeps saying, follow me in these things. So the common thing people begin to say is, hey, you have come to abolish the law. And the phrase actually used there in verse 17 is the law and the prophets. Now that's a syncharchy. And I said, a syncharchy is when you use a partial phrase, right, to describe the whole. That was commonly done in this period of time. And when you say the law and the prophets, you're not just talking about the Torah. You're really talking about the whole of what we was considered now to be the first testament or the Old Testament. What they call the law, the prophets and the writings. Everything you would have in your Old Testament would, by the time of Jesus, be acknowledged. And the syncharchy would certainly be the law and the prophets, but it's really referring to all of it. The psalms, the wisdom, literature, all that seen as an organic whole. And Jesus looks on the Old Testament as a whole and says, now you think I've come to abolish this. And the first thing he wants to set clear to them as he begins this new work is to say, I haven't come to abolish it. In fact, he introduces it in a pretty radical way. Jesus had a special code word that he would use in his teaching, which was the word we translate amen. Now, you know, you can, in churches today, you can kind of throw the amen out. Amen, amen. And it's almost, you know, it's almost like a little chance you can get into. Or it's the way you injure prayer. You know, we just kind of do it. But in its original context, amen, it's a very dramatic word. I mean, it's a word that is often translated in the Old King James again, verily, verily, I say it to you. Or as the New International version has truly I say to you. In other words, it's almost like Jesus sounds a little air horn to say, pay attention. Not that everything I say is important, but hey, pay attention. I'm about to say something important. Amen, amen. I have not come to abolish the law. But I have come, and you hear what he says? I tell you the truth, nothing will disappear. Speaking of the law in the prophets, again, he says nothing will disappear. Not the smallest letter, not the least little stroke of a pen. And by smallest letter, if you ever see any Hebrew writing, you'll notice something that looks like just a little, I don't know what you call that little thing, but it's just a little, a little pointy hat, sort of sideways hat, you know? And that's the Hebrew letter, yo, it almost looks like a comma when you see it written. It's the tiniest little letter of the alphabet. It's where you get the yeah sound in words like Yahweh or Yerushalayim for Jerusalem. Tiniest little letter. He's saying not the tiniest little letter. And then he really pushes the analogy, and he says not the least little stroke of a pen. And this is, Hebrew is like English in that sense, that you often use little Kareya, or little strokes, all right, little serifs, they're also called, to distinguish a letter. So that, you know, this isn't a C, it's a G, because there's that little tiny line, or this isn't, this isn't an O, it's a Q, because there's that little tiny line. And Jesus looks at the whole testament and says abolish? Let me tell you something. He says to these Pharisees, these people who have become obsessive-compulsive and their desire to know the tiny details. And he says you've got nothing on me. I am committed to every tiny letter, every stroke of the pen, everything got into it is going to be accomplished. And the question, this raises in my mind, is who is this Jesus? Who's you see, I think Jesus is kind of on a bit of a roll. I mean, even since the 60s, the Beatles could say, you know, we want to be more popular than Jesus. There's a sense in which Jesus is big, his ratings ever really gone down. I mean, people want to be, you know, you don't want to say anything bad about Jesus, generally speaking. In most circles, Jesus is hailed as a teacher of wisdom. Hailed is an exemplar of the moral life of a loving person, of a spiritual person. Jesus, I think, is more or less in, but let's face it, biblical teachings, biblical teaching about morality, biblical teaching about marriage or family. I mean, it's not exactly in, right? And there's the problem, is where do you get Jesus from? Is he, and to use another phrase from Martin Luther, is he like a nose of wax? That you can just kind of lift out of history and sort of make him who he want you to be? Or is he a historical figure? Now, one of the interesting things has happened in the last 150 years, 200 years, is something called the quest for the historical Jesus. There have been about three significant periods of time where groups of scholars have said, you know what? The Bible is full of Christian, you know, all these Christian layers on Jesus. And the real, the real historical Jesus doesn't emerge. So we're going to rip up all the, you know, all the faux paneling and all the linoleum of Paul and, you know, bigots like that. Let's rip all that up and let's get down there to the real Jesus. So men like Anne Strannan and Hermann Reimarras did these, these great sophisticated works trying to get down to the historical Jesus. And after many, many years of this research, it was summarized by a great New Testament scholar named Albert Schweitzer, a great humanitarian and musician, but also a biblical scholar. And Schweitzer looked at all their work and he basically said this, the quest tells us nothing about the historical Jesus, but it tells us a lot about the questers. Because, you know, wow, golly, surprise the Jesus they dug up, the Jesus that the 19th century German Romantics and liberals dug up. Guess what do you look like? I know a good German liberal. And then the new quest kind of pops up in the 20th century. There's a new quest, a great, and guess what the real Jesus looks like. A 20th century liberal. And the great works of the 60s, wow, he's a hippie mystic, wow, who knew? In other words, every single quest. You know, look at the work of the Jesus seminar. You know, the people who do the votes, even though hardly any of them are tenured faculty at any significant university. Nonetheless, they get all the press. You know, the Jesus seminar, you know, we're going to incorporate the gospel to you. And what does Jesus look like then? And my challenge is not, it's not one that says to you, hey, you have no right to be that or want that. But it is a challenge of integrity to say, you cannot take Jesus and rip it out of his context and shape it into the God you want. If he's a God, if he's divine, then it has to go the other way around. And the only Jesus you'll find is the Jesus of Scripture. And I think you've got to decide, can I accept them or do I reject them? Who is this Jesus, the Jesus of the Torah, the Jesus of the writings and the prophets? Rudolf Fultmann was a 20th century New Testament scholar. He did not believe that any of the history of the Bible, particularly in the New Testament, that it was really historical, or that any of the miracles happened. But in his book, Jesus and the Word, published in 1936, he said this, though, of course, we cannot, Jesus Christ was committed to the full history and inerrancy of the Bible. So you see, even the critics who would reject this Jesus, the honest ones at least, acknowledge this is who Jesus was. And I want to say two fundamental things that you get out of this hard saying every jot in title. I want to try to draw two things out of it. First of all, this, Jesus is telling us, Jesus is telling us by what he was saying on that day, on that mountain, that Scripture is completely true. Scripture is completely true. Now, notice the analogy he uses. If you have it there, if you're following in your bulletin, notice what he says, in verse 18, barely, barely, I mean, I mean, I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter or the least stroke of the pen, until heaven and earth disappear. Now, what's the point of that analogy? Heaven and earth are, that's the stuff you see around you, that's the natural order, that's the natural world. And Jesus is saying that even though, yes, is this a human book? Yes. Is it literature? Sure. Is it written on parchment, made on decaying animal hide? Yeah. Are there various personalities expressed on the text? Absolutely. The fundamental nature of it is not nature. It's supernatural. So that he actually looks at the stroke of the pen, the letter, and says, this is eternal because it expresses the voice of eternal God. Heaven and earth will pass away, but the word of God will not. It will last forever. Again, this is Jesus speaking. Now, in theology, we have different ways to try to describe this phenomenon that Jesus lays out for us. For example, we talk about the fact that the Bible is inspired. Well, we say that Bible is inspired. That's a very direct quote from the New Testament, which means God breathed. To say that it's God breathed is to say that Scripture, though, yes, we're not given a theory of the process of how God gave Scripture. There are no theories of how someone received and penned these things. The Bible simply doesn't explain that. Individuality doesn't seem to be compromised among the writers, but it's clear that Scripture originates in God. It originates in God's mind, and it is an expression of God's will, and God's word, and it's communicated by God's spirit. That's what we mean when we say it's inspired, not that the writers went, oh, I've got to get this down. I'm so inspired by your music. No, inspiration is actually more respiration. That is that God is the source of breathing what you receive in the Holy Scriptures. We also use the word infallible, and by infallible, that, again, is a technical word that means that the Bible is trustworthy. There is nothing in it that can lead you astray. You can be led astray by misusing it, but the Bible itself will not mislead you. Then we also use the word here in errant. That is a very misunderstood word. People often make, you know, to say that that means you don't believe that any manuscript can have a copying error and all sorts of absurd things. But very strictly, what we say, what we mean when we say the Bible is an errant, is simply this, when properly interpreted, what the Bible teaches is true. In errancy is a code word for what a gustum claimed. When he said this, what scripture says? God says. It's a simple mindset. I heard a theologian in New York City teaches at Union Seminary say that, you know, the modern church, the best way to approach the Bible, he said is the way I approach it. That's novel. He said, which is this? Scripture is my dialogue partner. Historically, that's not how, that's not how, Jesus did not regard the law as his dialogue partner in his growth after truth. He recognized it as infallible, as inspired and as an errant. Now, this has to raise questions for any thinking person. How can Jesus say this? And can we be expected to follow him? And let me just, you know, there's no way to exhaust this. We do have a number of resources for those of you who struggle with these questions. There are a lot of great resources to work through some of the challenges of holding this view. But let me just say a few things. One of the first objections to Jesus' way of thinking might be someone saying, yeah, it isn't the Bible full of errors. I mean, aren't there just multiple versions running around saying all sorts of nutty things? Actually, the text of Scripture is remarkably authentic. In fact, compared to any, and I do mean any work of antiquity, there is nothing as well documented as the 66 books of Scripture. Now, that is, by the way, I didn't just make a religious statement, okay? They go on television and get you to give money, all right? That was pure. I just made a historical, I just made a statement of fact. In terms of what you actually have, there is not great doubt about what the actual texts of Scripture say. And if you sit down with contemporary Bible versions, the NIV, the RSV, the New American Standard, which any of these versions that are sort of out there that have been there, and you read them in a parallel way, you begin to realize that while they may come at it in slightly different ways, there is no great mystery, generally speaking, about what the text says. It is incredibly well documented. And the kind of discrepancies we find, I don't know of a one of a single discrepancies that is substantial in any way. Another claim people will make is that the Bible was written a long time ago with a bunch of different authors. How could you possibly believe that a document that has that kind of span could be coherent? Well, again, the premise there is if you were to say, could human beings do that? Produce something coherent over a 4,000 year writing time. I mean, I know we all struggled with deadlines, but 4,000 years to bring it together, can that be coherent? Well, it can be if God's its author. And actually, the fact that it's written in different languages, and I mean, even the same languages, in stretches of time where the language changes so much, I mean if you were to take Abraham and introduce him to one of the prophets like Malachi, they probably couldn't have had a conversation. Because in the same sense that you and Chaucer were probably have to be a very long lunch to communicate with one another. Well, the Hebrew Bible is the same way. I mean, it's a long stretch of time. And yet, I think this is a very positive thing because what comes out so clearly is the central truth that teaches that there is a person loving God that made you. And that that God is committed to showing love and truth throughout the ages. And so, through all kinds of genre of literature, it's a mistake to simply say, I believe the Bible is historical. Well, it is historical, but it's also poetic. And it does all sorts of other things. You know, it's multiple genres. You know, it's almost any way you can think of putting words together. They're helped those periods of time. The Bible does it. It's in multiple genres, multiple languages, and it is chock full of stories that show the full range of human thought and human emotion. And yet, through it all, there is an emerging picture. That is very consistent. Another person may say, yeah, but you know, you can make the Bible say whatever you want. You can make it say whatever you want. Well, I mean, if you really believe that, I think you've got a very difficult future ahead of you as a person because you can look at the debates we have over the Constitution. All right. And are there fringe groups who want to tear it apart? Are there people who want to twist it from its meaning and do terrible things with it? Absolutely. On the left and on the right. But have you decided not to be an American because of the fringe groups? Have you given up on language? You know, if you say, I just believe language can be, you know, the great deconstructionist, you know, assault on language that's happened in the last 20 years or so. You know, if you say that you just, you know, you can never know what a word and its true referent is, then I challenge you. Give up. Don't you ever order a pepperoni pizza by leaving a message on your answering machine for your wife to tell what you want on it? Okay. Language is not as facile as the culture would have you believe. And if you look through actually look through the church, you say, I think there's a lot of sin that explains divisions among Christians. But if you even take Roman Catholicism and historical Protestantism, I heard one great reformed scholar, one great Presbyterian scholar say about a hundred years ago, we're in agreement on about 95% of what it says. If you want to truly get at the issue, who is God? Who is Jesus Christ? What kind of life are you expected to lead in this world? There's actually an amazing consensus on what it says. I think that's a smokescreen for not wanting to deal with it. And then one final thing you often hear is that I believe that God is too transcendent to speak in merely human language. I mean, how could you really take the great God, the great spirit and reduce the words? Let me just say this. The Christian account of who we are says that it is possible for God to speak. The Bible tells us that God spoke the universe into existence. That we are created in the image of a God who speaks and that part of what it means to be human is to have that innate ability to think thoughts, patterned after God's thoughts, because we are uniquely created in this image and to understand God's concepts that can be spoken. He creates us by saying, let there be. We are created and we're given linguisticality. And by the way, the anthropologist, this is one of the great mysteries, is how is it that you and I are able to speak? Because linguisticality is innate. That is, you can't just start speaking. This is one of the great challenges for evolution. When do you start speaking? Because if you look at the way you're constructed, it's not like a simple, additional process. It's a complex, you know, it's like a mouse trap that you know, it's not like it was built one piece of the time. It's very complex how it all comes together. And linguisticality is one of these things. You have to be able to speak to even begin to speak. And you can't speak unless all the equipment's there. It all has to be there, you see. Now I'm Chomsky. Actually says that linguisticality is the essence of the human. So it's significant that in Christianity, we significantly, or we are, most importantly, we talk about the Bible showing us how we are to understand God. And how we understand Jesus Christ because it is a God who speaks. We're saying it is possible for that God because of who we are because the universe is ultimately personal. It is a God who speaks, who created us. We speak. And therefore we communicate with him through speech. It's possible. Now that doesn't mean it's exhaustive. Again, one of the great smokescreens comes from people misusing the Bible, people trying to make the Bible answer every question. To help you, you know, cut through all the conundrums of medicine and cut through all the conundrums of history and the age of the earth and all these sorts of things that you want the Bible to answer the questions. And the fact is, nowhere does the Bible claim to answer all of our questions to tell you everything there is to know about yourself. Or frankly, everything there is to know about God. You know, St. John put it very clearly when he said, you know, if I were to just try to tell you everything about Jesus, it'd be a bigger book. Okay. You know, you would not be able to work in the read time. All right, the Bible doesn't claim to tell you everything there is to know about the earth. That's a claim. It doesn't claim to tell you everything there is to know about yourself. You misuse it in ignorance when you try to do that. But what the Bible tells you, it does speak truthfully. It's not exhaustive, but it's true. You know, if you have a record, you remember what records are. It's a vinyl thing, the older ones have us used to use to play music. And on the grooves of that record, all right, there's a recording of the performance. Now, a record doesn't give you a perfect replacement of what it's like to sit in the presence of Stakowski and, you know, in here, the great orchestra in the hall. It doesn't give you the, you know, if you're at the opera, like I was once at Covent Garden, and I saw an opera, the Italian girl in how she years. And Marilyn Horne was singing. And when they came out at the end of the great festival, they had spaghetti. And I was listening to Marilyn Horne and I could smell the spaghetti sauce. It was incredible. Now, okay, the record doesn't, I can't smell the spaghetti out of the record, but it is an accurate analog of the music. It's true truth. Scripture, what it tells us, it tells us truthfully about God. It's possible, and it's true. Now, my second point, briefly, is this, okay? Jesus is telling us that Scripture is completely true. The Jesus is also telling us that you cannot separate Him from the Scriptures. You cannot separate Jesus from the Scriptures. You see, Jesus says to those who are His enemies, you think I came to abolish the law? I didn't come to abolish it. And then He gives you the opposite of that, which is He says, I came to fulfill the law. That is quite literally to fill it up. You see, the Pharisees actually had no trouble with anything Jesus said in verse 18. Every jot and dittle, man, they were hired, they were hired as jot and dittle people. They were completely committed to that. The rob was in verse 17. Where Jesus says, apparently I said to you, I have come to fulfill every jot and dittle. Everything that is in there is about me. It finds its meaning and its purpose all of it in me. And if you don't know me, you don't get it. That really cuts both ways. You'll never really know me unless you understand the Scriptures, all of them. But at the same time, you'll never understand those Scriptures, memorize them, chant them, knock yourself out. You will never understand what they are fundamentally about until you get to know me. I filled them up. You got the water? All right. When you experience a glass of water, you have to have the cup and you have to have the water. Without the cup, the water is, you know, it's just everywhere. But a cup without the water is empty. And Jesus is making a very, he's basically saying, without me, it's empty. I'm the one who came to fill it up. I'm what it's all about. Jesus is really saying, you cannot separate me from anything that God has been saying or doing. I fill it up. I may hit come alive. I actually, in a sense, it's just a school master. It's just a preparation to get you to me. This is why I am why it was given. Come to me. Learn from me. A couple of points that I'm done. By the way, I know there are those of you here who you've already told me who count the times I say, finally. So notice I didn't say, finally, I said, I'm almost done. Number one, the few things really quickly. Jesus here is very clearly, what you very see, see very clearly here, is that scripture is the essence of who Jesus Christ is. It is the essence of who Jesus Christ is. Listen, Jesus, take the end of his life. He's on his way to the cross, or take the beginning of his ministry when he's tempted. When he's absolutely being assaulted with what life can do to you, Jesus overcomes the devil by saying it is written. It is written. Scripture is, it's everything about him. He thinks God's thoughts actor. And yet, at the end of his life, on the cross, he's carrying the cross and there are these women wailing. And he quotes Hosea and executes them about saying, you know, the days are coming, you know, you'll want the rocks to cover you because of the judgment coming. And on the cross, when he's dying, and he cries out, my God, my God, why if you're saying to me, he's quoting scripture in his darkest moment. When he says father, into your hands, I can then just say, he's quoting the Psalms again. In other words, you cut Jesus and he bleeds scripture. That's who he is. You know, you ever watch the cop shows and you know, the murder happens at the beginning, and then they have to go tell the family. And that's always the actors challenge. They've got to be happy and then they get the news and they fall apart and they've got to somehow convincingly fall apart, you know, if that worst news imaginable. And so they've got to convey the true existence. And that's what you see on the cross. Jesus is having the greatest love of eternity ripped out of his soul. His eternal relationship with the father and as your sin is laid on him and as God turns his back in love for us. Jesus screams scripture. The Bible is his essence, which is my second point. If you want to know Jesus, you have you have got to begin to welcome all the scriptures to your life. You've got to begin to welcome them as your essence. And I know that it is hard for some of you. I know that is very painful for some of you, but don't you see? You could never really know the real Jesus without welcoming all the word of God says in your life. It's the only way you'll ever really know him because it was in his essence. See, some people want Christ, but they don't want things the Bible says about you or requires of you or ask you to turn away from. And at some level, I've had conversations with people and they say, look, it's just a minor point. Did you survive? Why two K? Okay, one little digit. Don't you see why you're talking about Johnson Tittles? All that was one little digit. Nobody thought about it. And there's some of you who are still eating on the Y2K rice, aren't you? You don't want anybody to know about it, but you know you still got it, right? Just a digit. How much more? Don't you see? When you turn your heart away from something the word of God says to you, you're cutting off his ability to speak to you and to love you. Finally, don't you see? When we come to the Bible, we're ultimately not coming to know a book. We're coming to know a person. See, the word of God is of Jesus' essence. If you're going to know him, you've got to welcome him into your essence because you've come to know a person. People will sometimes say to me, how do I know him in the right church? How do I know your teachings are accurate? Don't you see? Ultimately, what you're searching is not for a church. Ultimately, what you're searching for actually is not doctors as important as those are. What you're looking for is what does the cup hold? And so look to him. He says, listen, seek. You will find not. You'll receive the answer. Ask. It will be given to you what? I will be given to you. Let's pray. Father, this is my prayer that we would become people who know what it is. To see the word of God as the way we welcome your love into our life, the way we come to know your son, Jesus, our Savior. I pray for those who have been wounded by this handling of Scripture, by people who've used the Bible to beat them over the head, by people who've used it to manipulate them, who have wrongly used it. I'm so thankful that you tell us, Lord, that ultimately everything in Scripture will be accomplished. You will express yourself. You will be heard. And I would pray for those who've been wounded that today would be a day to begin to hear really who you are. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.