The Law
Foundation of the Law
Matthew 12:37 And He said to him: “Love Yahweh your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 The second is thusly: You shall love him near to you as yourself. 40 By these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
Matthew 7:12 Therefore all things whatever you may desire that men should do for you, thusly also you do for them: for this is the law and the prophets.
Obedience to the Law Manifests the Kingdom
Most of the things which Christ taught in this Sermon on the Mount can also be found in the Old Testament. In reality, He was teaching nothing new, even if He was explaining much of it it differently, for there is nothing new under the sun. Today with Matthew chapters 6 and 7, we shall continue to see that these things which Christ taught His students are timeless, and existed in the Old Testament as well. If our race obeyed His Word, we would have heaven indeed.
Isaiah 49 contains many similar statements to those found in the Sermon on the Mount
Establishing the Law
Matthew 5:20 For I say to you that unless your righteousness abounds beyond that of the scribes and Pharisees, by no means shall you enter into the kingdom of the heavens!
It may not really be all that hard to exceed the righteousness of the pharisees and scribes. According to Yahshua Himself at Matthew chapter 23, they were absolute hypocrites! While it is possible that Yahshua may be referring instead to their perceived righteousness, in the eyes of the people, however that seems unlikely.
As Christians and Israelites – which are actually racial terms which should be synonymous - we should know that while we are not going to be judged by the law, we should all the more have a desire to establish the law! For that reason Paul, explaining this very thing, wrote in Romans chapter 3: “Do we then nullify the law by faith? Certainly not! Rather we establish the law.”
Struggle of the Flesh and Mercy on our Brethren
Matthew 5:29 Now if your right eye entraps you, take it out and cast it from you, for it is better for you that one of your members would be lost and your whole body not be cast into Gehenna!
Gehenna is not what the romish church later described as hell, but rather, he who sins in this life is punished in the body. It is the body, not the spirit, which Christ says will be thrown into the fire of Gehenna. While Yahweh can indeed destroy the spirit of men also, His promise to us is that our spirits shall be preserved. Therefore Paul says of unrepentant sinners, for example in 1 Corinthians 5:5: “To deliver such an one unto Satan [the adversary in this world] for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.”
Paul also discusses that eternal struggle between the desires of the flesh, and the necessity for obedience to God, at length in Romans chapter 7 and elsewhere. Men must know that even if we fail, that the law is good and that we must strive to live up to it. However with the law, all men are condemned, so we must have mercy upon our brethren who fall short even beyond where we have fallen.
Dangers of Compromise
Matthew 7:24 Therefore each who hears these My words and does them, he shall be compared to a sensible man, who has built his house upon bedrock, 25 and the rain descends and the river comes and the winds blow, and they fall against that house, yet it does not fall, for it was founded upon the bedrock. 26 And each who hears these My words and not doing them, he shall be compared to a foolish man, who has built his house upon the sand, 27 and the rain descends and the river comes and the winds blow and they fall against that house and it falls, and great was its fall!”
Once we have the truth of the Word, and we follow it, we are unshakable in our convictions. Those who compromise in the Word of God, they stand upon foundations of shifting sand, and are easily rebuked for their lies.