The Law Fulfilled-Doug Crum

See it.

I want to suggest that maybe that sign is also for other people.

While they are for the driver to see, they actually benefit the people who are around you.

Because I know you guys are certain that you are excellent drivers, and your weeks of experience in driving has helped make you.

And I know I remember being young and thinking I'm young, I'm agile, I have faster reflexes, like I'm just a better driver than all the people around me.

And I can go faster than what that says because I am a better driver and I can control it.

But what if that sign is not just for you?

What if that sign was put up for the people who are going to be around you?

Are the signs that I showed, are they meant to control your behavior?

Are they meant to protect your life?

Or are they to protect the lives of others?

Certainly these signs can benefit the operators who are maning the vehicles that they are in, but they benefit more than just that.

The driver, the passenger, and the kids in the backseat benefit when you choose to follow the laws.

The elderly man who is two cars ahead of you, and the 15-year-old who just got their permit, they benefit when you choose to follow the law.

The woman who is pregnant with her first child, and the firefighter who is on his way to work, they benefit when you choose to follow the law.

It is for Maddox when she is riding her bike down the sidewalk.

It's for Beckett when he's kicking the ball in the front yard.

It's for Ava as she's chasing her dog, and for Carter when he is walking across the street.

That sign is not just for you.

It's not just a suggestion.

It is a reminder that we live in community and there are people around whose lives depend on what you decide to do with yours.

That speed limit is not just a number on a sign.

It is a name and a person and a life.

That sign is for the benefit of your teenage daughter who is on her way home from the football game.

That sign is there so that she makes it home, even when she's not the one driving.

Or she might not even be in the car where that stop sign is for.

It's for your grandchild playing in the yard and for your aging parent whose driving skills might have diminished over the last 50 or 60 years.

I want us to imagine just for a second what life would be like if people followed all of the road signs and all the traffic laws.

I want us to think for just a second what that would be like.

Most of us find ourselves complaining about fuel costs.

Fuel costs have gone up and up and up.

But I want you to know this.

We already know erratic driving is wildly inefficient.

The hitting the gas, the slamming on the brakes causes our fuel economy to drop.

It causes us to hit the gas station more often.

If everybody just saved a few ounces of gas each day, that would result in millions of gallons of gas being saved every single day.

And that means when you go to the pump, the demand is now lower and the supply becomes higher and gas prices would drop.

But that's not the biggest one.

Your cars would last longer because you wouldn't have accidents.

Your tires would last longer.

Your brakes would last longer, which means the prices of all those things would drop because demand has dropped.

I don't know where you're sitting right now.

I'm not meaning to pick on you, but folks, insurance would drop exponentially if people, for some crazy reason, if we went a whole year and all Americans started following the law.

It is estimated that 94% of all accidents that occur are a result of driver error because they did not follow the law.

Imagine that's about 14 out of 15 accidents would not occur.

Imagine how much lower your premiums would be.

Not just your auto premiums, but your health premiums and your life premiums.

All of that would change as well if you would just slow down a bit.

Traffic would be significantly decreased, which we probably don't have here, but I grew up in Arlington, and I can't tell you how many hours I spent in traffic because somebody didn't follow the law.

There was an accident, and there was a pile up on I-20 or A-20 or somewhere around that area.

Property damage from accidents this year alone will cost the U.S.

$250 billion.

That's a quarter of a trillion dollars that the U.S.

would instantly have if people started following the laws.

But here's the ones that matter.

Almost two and a half million people last year were sent to the hospital as a result of an injury sustained in an accident.

And in 2020 in 2025, 36,640 people were killed in accidents.

That number would shrink drastically if people had just fallen out of the law.

I can't tell you how much I would get if that number could have been 36,639.

Because one of my friends and a member at my church was one of them.

It was evening time.

They were on their way home from spending the day out of town.

He was in the his vehicle along with his wife in the front seat and his two girls in the backseat.

That night on that road, Melissa lost her husband.

And the two girls in the backseat lost their dad.

Their parents, who I also know lost their son.

And their brother, I also know, he lost his big brother.

There were players that lost their coach.

And students who lost their teacher.

Our whole church lost a church member that we loved.

So many people lost a friend.

Because somebody was in a hurry.

Lee wasn't driving too fast.

He was in his lane doing what he was supposed to, and a car coming from the other direction was in a hurry.

And they decided that they were going to pass the car in front of them on this two-lane road.

If they had been successful in passing that car, they would have gotten to their destination a few minutes faster.

That was 932,000 minutes ago.

They might have saved two minutes.

But instead, those girls and their mother will grow up and never get to see their dad and their husband again.

This is not a public service announcement about what fast driving will do.

What I want us to see is that laws are created to honor and to protect and to love the people around you in your neighborhoods and on the streets.

That's the purpose of the law.

It is not just about a number.

Jesus says in Matthew chapter 5, verse 17, he says, Do not think that I've come to abolish the law and the prophets.

Matthew 5:17

I have not come to abolish them.

I have come to fulfill them.

And when he says fulfill, that is not just to say he obeyed the laws.

Jesus wasn't just bragging, saying, look, I've never broken a law.

What he's really trying to say is, I have come to show you the heart of the law and why we have it in the first place.

And this is really important as we move forward through the Sermon on the Mount.

Over the next couple of months, we're going to be looking at these six antithetical laws in which Jesus says, it has been written, or you have heard that it was said, and it'll say things like, do not murder and do not lie and do not commit adultery.

But it wasn't just about the law.

What he's trying to tell them is that there has to be some motivation as to why we do it.

He was listing laws that some stringently had followed and others had blatantly ignored.

And he said to those who followed it, he was telling them, obeying the law doesn't make you righteous.

And breaking the law doesn't mean it comes without consequences.

But we find ourselves wanting to justify ourselves.

When we start asking how much of the law we can get away with ignoring, we've already shifted the reason why that law was created in the first place.

We've all heard this argument, and many have made it ourselves.

Why do I have to stop at an intersection when no one else is there?

Just because you think you can drive safely while looking at your phone does not mean that you can do it.

What it really means is that you believe that what you're doing and that text you're sending is more important than the lives of the people around you.

Because the heart of the law says, I will follow these laws because I love God and because I love people.

You can't imagine that speeding actually puts other lives in danger.

That says more about your lack of imagination than it does about the reality that when we drive fast, we hurt people.

When we have anger, we hurt people.

When we discard people, we hurt them.

When we lie to people, we hurt them.

This is not about am I doing what I'm supposed to do?

The law says, do I love the people around me and do I love them enough that I will put them ahead of the things that I want.

God's law was never merely about regulating behavior, it was about shaping the hearts that reflect his character.

Jesus is teaching that there is a reason and a purpose for the law, and that is fulfilled in love.

If we go back to the illustration of driving, the speed limit will tell us how fast you may drive.

But love tells you why you should care in the first place.

Many of the Pharisees during Jesus' time were law-abiding citizens.

They kept the commands, but they missed the heart of it all.

Like us with the speed limit sign or the stop sign, we sometimes can find ourselves being more concerned about technically following the law than we are about learning why it's there in the first place.

When Jesus came, he wasn't trying to get rid of the law at all.

But it wasn't just to follow the law either.

It was to show who God was.

That loving and following God means more than not just throwing a rock at your brother and killing him.

He calls us to drop the rock completely.

Maybe you can go through life and never kill someone.

But imagine all the things that you miss out on because you're clutching the rock that you want to use on the person who hurt you.

It is with angry hands that we hold those rocks, and then when those rocks are in our hands, we can't open them up to healing and love and forgiveness.

Jesus not only came to fulfill the law to be a model, but he also did it to confirm his role as the spotless Lamb, the one who kept the law for us, the one who kept the law for love, and the one that could be that sacrifice for us.

Revealing what God intended from the very beginning.

And so I don't know what this parking lot is going to look like in 20 minutes when we go to leave.

I don't know if you're gonna speed through the school zone, blow through the stop sign, uh, or ignore uh any of the other laws that have been posted.

But I want to suggest this.

I want to suggest that if we love God, then we must love the people around us.

It means that we love our neighbor, the one next door to us.

It means that we love our boss who's not always kind to us.

It means that the red, blue, conservative, liberal who is ranting on Facebook needs our love.

And loving them changes away.

But they are our enemy.

Satan is our enemy.

Satan has fooled them and duped them and allowed them to believe things that God has never told them.

And rather than making them the enemy, we need to love them just as God loves us.

It should change the way that we live.

And so for each of you this morning, I suspect that you are gonna be confronted with somebody this week who will frustrate you.

It might be somebody on the road.

It might be somebody that you live with, or someone that you work with.

But we don't obey the law because we have to.

And we don't obey the law only when they choose to obey it as well.

We love God, and that compels us to live differently.

And that's what Jesus is talking about as the fulfillment of it.

And so my prayer for us this morning is that we re-examine the love that we have for God and how it changes the way we live our lives.

Let us be people who show love and mercy and forgiveness when it is not merited or deserved.

Let us show people Jesus.

Maybe maybe right now.

Maybe you're the one sitting there and you're thinking, I just don't know about this love that Jesus has for me.

And if you are I just want you to know that everybody in here has felt that way.

And I don't want you to continue believing a lie that the sacrifice of Jesus wasn't enough to forgive you.

And I want to invite you to accept that.

And if you have that love in your heart, I want to invite you to share it with the people around you this week.

Let us show love to the world and so let's show Jesus to Brown County in a way that people can't help but notice and want to know more about this savior of the world.

I want to invite you to do that this morning as we stand in the