Freedom is Good News Part 111

Several articles ago we began looking at the Ten Commandments and we’ve come through the first five with five more to go.  We have seen that God placed many details within the first five and have considered just how we should look at them.  But as we come to the last half of the Ten, they come at us rapid fire and quite straight forward.  “You shall not murder.  You shall not commit adultery.  You shall not steal.  You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.  You shall not covet: your neighbor’s house; your neighbor’s wife; his manservant or maidservant; his ox or donkey; or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”

In Matthew 4 we read about Jesus baptism, His 40 days of fasting in the wilderness and, immediately following, the temptation by Satan in the wilderness.  Then in verse 17, we see that: “From thence forth Jesus began to preach.”  We read in chapter 5 that His message to the crowds began with what we call the beatitudes.  And then in chapter 5:17 we find Jesus laying down the “ground rules” for His ministry; He did not want anyone (including you or me) to misunderstand just how He approached His ministry.  “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fill them to the full.  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 has come to pass.”

We will (God willing) take a closer look at these final 5 commandments but for now I suggest that we take a short sidetrack and see just how our Savior saw this “Law” that was codified in the part of our bibles called “The Old Testament”.  I use the word “codify” here because this is what Jesus is talking about when He used the terms, “smallest letter” and “least stroke of the pen”.  To codify something means to write it down.

The Jews of His day, the Pharisees and Sadducees, etc., had developed something called the “oral law”.  This was not a part of the law that God gave to Moses to write down.  The Jews had their traditions and passed them on down through the generations by word of mouth – thus the “oral law”.  We find, later on in Matthew, that Jesus upbraided the Pharisees for this, calling them hypocrites and so in Matthew 15:3 we read, “Why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? … Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your traditions.”

This is a very important concept to understand.  Jesus specifically used the terms “smallest letter” and “least stroke of the pen” (in Matthew 5:18) in order to differentiate the written word of God from this so called “oral law”.  God’s word is truth – the Rabbi’s words, not so much!

As Jesus continues His preaching to the crowds in Matthew 5, He begins to teach about God’s law and to “fill it to the full”.  And we will look some more at this in our next article.  But remember this:  The Apostle Paul tells us in Rom. 7:12 that the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good.”  And that my friend is Good News!!