The Man who stood on the mount to preach His sermon was none other than the God who had stood on Mount Sinai to give the law through Moses. Now He had come to fulfill it. This was done not only through His matchless life which accomplished all of the law's demands, but also through the full flowering of its meaning. Nine times there is the great statement, "I say unto you" (Matthew 5). This is the God of the Heavens who speaks from the mountain. He was fulfilling the law; that is, He was bringing it to its full development.
Some have drawn the absurd conclusion that the believer of our day is obligated to keep the law in order to be saved. We must not forget that the law is not merely the code which we know as the Ten Commandments, but that it includes all the ordinances for life and living which were given by God through Moses and which constitute the whole of the priestly code. Christ came to fulfill it all. No one who lived before that moment had ever fulfilled the law. Therefore, everyone who lived under the law was under the curse which was necessarily attached to the breaking of the law.
Men of our day have much to say concerning Christ and the Old Testament. It is quite common to hear, or to read, that men of this enlightened twentieth century wish to follow the religion of Jesus. They, because of their superior intellect and greater insight into spiritual matters, so they say, do not wish to have anything to do with the Old Testament. There are those who claim even to see a difference between the Jehovah of the Old Testament and the God of the New. They look at Christ’s statements in the Sermon on the Mount and then begin to talk about the horrid conception of God that they claim is found in the Old Testament, they call Him a tribal God and proceed to thank their god that they have been removed from a thought of God that is so unrefined and barbarous as to desire a blood sacrifice. They flee from a God who would punish a people by death for such minor offenses as complaining against Moses or hiding away their loot in a tent. Yet they are incapable of comprehending the fact that Jesus Christ associated Himself with the God of the Old Testament and with the Old Testament itself in such a way as to render the Book and the person of God and Christ absolutely inseparable.
When Satan said, "If Thou be the Son of God," there was certainly no doubt expressed. The temptation of our Lord might be paraphrased as follows: "You have the very nature of God, which you received from Your Father. Use this nature and its power to help out the poor hungering body of Your human nature. You have the power to turn these stones into bread because You are the Son of God. Use that power to live a comfortable life." With His very first word the Lord Jesus answered the tempter. "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God" (Matthew 4:4). If we were to paraphrase this answer it would be as follows: "No. I will not use the divine nature to come to the aid of the human nature. It is as a man that I am going to meet these temptations and overcome them." Christ had spent forty days in the wilderness, fasting, and He was hungry. Satan came and tempted Him to use His divine nature to help out His human nature. "If Thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread" (Matthew 4:3).
The truths taught in the Sermon on the Mount are the righteous foundation of all God’s dealings with men. He demands absolute perfection. …This statement concerning the Sermon on the Mount naturally raises certain problems that must be considered….what the attitude of the Bible Christian must be toward this great ethical statement of our Lord Jesus.
