Show Don't Tell: Matthew 5:17-20

Instead of saying "Jesus came to fulfill the Law," feel the stakes rise. After those radical beatitudes, someone might think Jesus is abolishing everything Moses taught. He cuts that off immediately: "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets." Picture a Torah scroll—heavy, ancient, every letter sacred. "I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them." Not one smallest letter, not one stroke of a pen, will disappear until everything is accomplished. Then the shocker: "Unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven." The Pharisees—the most scrupulously religious people in Israel. How can anyone out-righteous them? The bar just went impossibly high. Jesus isn't lowering standards; he's about to show what the Law really demands.