A Matter of Authority

SERMON: 2008-08-16--sm0859--a-matter-of-authority SOURCE DURATION: 00:32:11.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 2 CONFIDENCE: 0.95 APPROVED: false REASON: The sermon begins with segment [1], which transitions into the main theological exposition by referencing scripture. The sermon concludes at segment [234] (God's light and God's healing), immediately before a sustained acoustic music interval that marks a shift to devotional/musical material. Acoustic segmentation found sustained music at the end edge and moved the boundary to the adjacent transcript segment. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: 00:27:35.900-00:32:10.820 ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: yes ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: end Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:00:00.000; remove through 00:00:05.120] [CUT] Well, as we prepare this morning for the celebration of [CUT] Communion, it just so happens that we come [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:00:05.120; resume after this marked segment] to my last message on the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew chapter 7, the verses 28 and 29, where Matthew sums up his audience's response to the teachings of Jesus with these words, "When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching because he taught as one who had authority and not as their teachers of the law." Well question for you this morning, how many of you remember teachers from elementary and high school? I've often thought if you want to make an impact on somebody's life, you want to be a school teacher. Because as I look back over my years of schooling, I think I remember just about every teacher. Some I remember fondly, and others I don't remember quite so fondly. And if you're anything like me, the chances are there are teachers that you've had over the years that you have respected, perhaps even really liked. And it's probably equally true to say that there are probably some teachers that you've had that you didn't like and that you certainly didn't respect very much. And if you look carefully at what it is that makes you respect one teacher and not another, then I think you will find two qualities that every teacher you respect has demonstrated one way or the other. And the first is one that I have chosen to call gravitas. A Latin word, we get the word gravity from it, it means weightiness. There are some people, and there are some teachers that just have personality. They step into the room, they occupy space, they only have to look at your crossways and you're already shivering in your seat because there is presence there. The people don't have that. And you can't fake it, you either have got it or you haven't. And the second, of course, is competence and ability to know your material and the ability to communicate it. Miss one or both of those and respect goes down the tube real fast. One of my memories of high school is my high school teacher, Mrs. McDougall in grade nine. Now Mrs. McDougall, I have to tell you, was a fine lady. But Mrs. McDougall had the misfortune of having been chosen to teach grade nine chemistry and frankly, to be charitable to the lady, a chemist, she was not. And so when she marked as incorrect in one of my test papers a chemical equation that I was pretty sure was right, she and I had an issue. And so in conversation with her, I tried to get her to see it my way, all to no avail. She would not be moved until next morning when she had a chance to ponder it during the night she had come to see. Bless her the error of her ways. I got my points back on my exam and to her credit, she told me and I believe all the rest of the class that if we were convinced that we were right and thought that she was wrong to not be afraid to take her on and to challenge her. Gravitas, competence, roll them together and you've got what scripture calls authority, occupying your space and making an influence. And it's authority, it's the authority of Jesus that Matthew now turns toward as he summarizes everything that Jesus has been saying so far in the Sermon on the Mount. Listen again to how he puts it in verses 28 and 29 of Matthew 7. When Jesus had finished saying these things, that is to say all the teaching of the preceding three chapters, the Sermon on the Mount, when Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching because he taught as one who had authority and not as their teachers of the law. Very quickly notice three things in those two verses. The first is that people were amazed at the teaching of Jesus. They had never encountered anything like this in their life. And the reason is because Jesus speaks with authority. Now think this through with me. Here is Jesus. He is an ordinary layman as far as anybody knows. He has no theological credentials. He hasn't gone to Rabbi school. He's the son of a carpenter. And not only is he extremely well spoken, but he is such an incredible teacher that people sit there and lap it up. They leave their daily work. I've often thought about the chaos economically that Jesus must have caused. People just sitting around having picnics in the middle of the day. And they're listening to his teaching. And not only that, but he takes on the established religious authority of his day. And he says repeatedly, "You have heard that it was said, but I tell you." And so people were astonished at his unapologetic approach. This is the way that it is. And then Matthew goes on to say, "This stood in sharp contrast to the teachers of the law that they were accustomed to listening to." Because you see the teachers of the law had been educated in rabbinical schools. You need to understand how in the New Testament the learned people learned. You found a rabbi, or actually a rabbi found you, like Jesus found his disciples. You surround yourself with people that you think are keen learners, and then you impart your knowledge, your insight to these disciples of yours, and they become your followers. And in studying the law, they weren't so much concerned about studying the law as following the interpretation of their rabbi or their teacher. In New Testament language by the way, this is called the yoke. And so two disciples would meet each other on the road, and they would say, "What yoke are you under?" And they would say, "I'm under the yoke of rabbi so-and-so." That's what Jesus means in Matthew's Gospel later on when he says, "Come to me who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you." That is to say, "My body of teaching, and you will find rest for your soul." So this yoke that is the teaching of the rabbi was the preoccupation of all these religious teachers. And so they were always talking about what somebody else said about the law. Well rabbi so-and-so said, "This is what it means." And rabbi so-and-so says, "This is how I ought to be living." And so they were filled with uncertainty and filled oftentimes with a tentativeness, and they spend much of their time arguing and debating the finer points of the law. And you see that in how they encounter Jesus in the New Testament. Moses says this, "What do you say?" And what is so refreshingly different about the Lord Jesus here, he has none of those hang-ups, and he has none of those issues. He speaks the word, and he speaks it with authority. They were astonished because the Lord Jesus says he spoke with authority and not as one of their teachers. Now listen carefully, because here's the issue. The issue therefore is how do you gain authority? That is to say, "How do you stand out from the crowd? How do you develop gravitas? How do you make a place in life? How do you get heard? How do you get listened to? How do you get respected?" Well, the world says you get respected by getting credentialing. You go to a rabbi school. You get a degree. You get training. You get letters behind your name. And when you graduated and you could hang out your shingle, that is the proof of your gravitas and your competence. Now listen to me carefully. I'm not dissing education, and I'm not dissing learning how to be competent. But you know just as well as I do that a person's influence, authority and power, whether or not you are respected or whether or not you can listen to, has precious little to do with the letters that you have behind your name or the education that you have experienced. And I can demonstrate it this way. Go back to your teachers. You can have two teachers who both have followed the same course of education. They both graduated with the same degree. They both learned the same subject matter. One steps into a classroom. They listen. Clearly a teacher who knows how to manage his or her class and almost instantly has respect. The other doesn't matter how he or she strives to be heard or to be recognized. It's like the kids have an intuitive knowledge that here is somebody you can run over and nothing you do or say is going to get, you know what I'm, you've had teachers both ways and it's so hard to put your finger on? Why one and not the other? Well it's because in the kingdom of God authority, gravitas and competence are not simply a function of credentialing. It is a function of who you are before God and authority that God has entrusted to you that lives inside you. It's who you are that flows out of relationship with the Lord God. And that of course is where Jesus really shines. Why does Jesus have authority? Why is everybody astonished though he is unlearned, uneducated, the son of a carpenter? Because he knew his father who is in heaven. And whereas all these other teachers of the law were looking at the tidbits of the law and analyzing it to death and arguing about it and debating it, Jesus knew the father who made the law. And he understood exactly what the father was trying to say when he put the law into practice. That's why repeatedly he says you have heard that it was said but I say to you, he always goes back to the spirit of the law and he has an authority to do that because the law comes from heaven and guess where Jesus comes from? He comes from heaven. And so he knows what he's talking about and he can talk about it with authority. And so while everybody else is arguing and shadow boxing, Jesus cuts through all the mustard and he says well you may think this or you may think that but let me tell you how it really is. This is what God says it really means. John puts it this way, these words you hear are not my own. They belong to the father who sent me repeatedly Jesus says I've come from heaven and so I speak the words of heaven. Jesus knows what he's talking about because he has experienced the reality. You with me? It's like you can think of it this way, let's say that you've got two people who are both travel guides and they're experts about country X, Y, Z and the first travel guide has gone to school and has got a degree in travel guide or whatever you call it. Studied everything about the country, watched videos about the country and is an expert on the country. And there's the other person who may or may not have studied all the same books but who's been to the country and he's had the food or she's had the food and spoke the language and rubbed shoulders with the people. Now let me ask you a question, who's more competent to be your guide? The person who's got the book learning not to minimize book learning or the person who's been there? You know years back a lot of you know this story, this congregation for Michelle and my 25th wedding anniversary sent us to Israel on a trip and I probably know the Bible as well as most people do and perhaps better than a lot and know the history of Israel but I'll tell you until you step foot on the soil and watch an Arab and an Israeli go at it and eat the food and smell the smells and hear the language and see the history, it's all up in your head, it's not in your heart. Jesus comes from heaven, he has authority because he knows what God's really after. Now if you're with me to this point and I hope that you are then you'll know that that has some pretty profound implications in the time that remains, I want to talk just briefly about two of them. The first is this, we better listen to Jesus. Don't you think that makes good sense? If he's the authority and he speaks God's word and God's truth then it might be wise for us to listen to him because as he said previously, everyone who hears these words of mine and does a lot, analyzes them, debates them, discuss them, write their Facebook friends about, no no, puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock and scripture teaches the same Jesus who sits by the Sea of Galilee and Michelle and I have been at the place that is the traditional site of the Beatitudes on the west bank of the Sea of Galilee, not very far from Capernaum, don't know if that's the real place but that's the tradition. Jesus who sat with his disciples and he said this is how God calls you to live, blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness and all these other things that we've been talking about for a long long time, the same Jesus is gonna come again says the Bible, he's gonna sit on his throne of judgment before him are going to be gathered all the nations and he's going to separate them as wheat is separated from chaff and as sheep are separated from goats and guess what standard he's gonna use to make that decision? Heaven's standard, not human interpretation, not human interpretation human opinion, not what my father thinks, not what my mother thinks, not what my brother thinks, not what my sister thinks, in that day it's God in you and me and he's gonna ask us the question what have you done with a person of Jesus Christ? So I can think in no better way than ending our stay in this building by giving you once again that kind of challenge, what have you done with Jesus? Are you a hearer of the word or are you a doer of the word? Never mind that none of us can do it perfectly, has he driven us to our knees? Has he brought us to a place of repentance? Has he pointed us to himself so that we understand that only in Christ can we be righteous and only in Christ can we live the life in the kingdom that God is inviting us to? He cannot be ignored and we cannot call him Lord and then merely go on our way as if he has no authority, the buck stops at the day of judgment so we need to listen to Jesus because he knows what he's talking about and not a word that he speaks is going to return void and then interestingly enough we find our own authority in relationship with him. One of the universal longings of the human heart is to be somebody, it's to have our space, it's to have respect, it's to know that people look up to us, our opinions matter. One of the most painful things that any of us can experience is when we're overlooked, ignored, not heard, not appreciated isn't that true? Well that longing for a place, that longing for recognition is part of what it means to have been created in the image of God because remember God created us so that we might have dominion over the work of his hands and that longing to be heard, that longing to be respected, that longing to be somebody isn't evil as sometimes we think it is. Now it's part of having been created in the image of God and God's intention was that we would find it in relationship with him along comes sin. The devil says you can have it without God and from that day to this we live in a world full of lost people who are looking everywhere they know to find significance and how to be somebody. Terry was talking earlier about young people with eating disorders for example, where does eating disorder come from? Well it's a very complex thing but in a society where everybody is longing to be somebody we get a distorted image of who we are and we sell out and the teaching of scripture is that that hunger does not get satisfied by filling it with the way the world says we ought to feel that because the universal human response apart from God's grace to this long standing hunger for significance is to say well let me try to manufacture it myself. Let me try to draw on something that I have inside me that will make me feel good about myself and that will make other people take note of me. And so what do we do? We capitalize on whatever gifts or strengths that we think we have and if we are smart then we will pride ourselves in our intelligence. If we have been around longer than anybody else we think we ought to be listened to because we know more. If we are rich we maybe flaunt our riches because that gives me power, that gives me respect. Or if we have a big mouth then we use our big mouth and try to carve out our space to make sure that everybody pays attention to who I am. And the world is filled with people who are constantly fighting for significance and fighting to own a piece of turf. And the radicality of the cross of Jesus is that you don't get your piece of turf by fighting for it or by appealing to all of your natural gifts or your natural abilities. You get it because of our relationship with God the Father. If he is pleased with you he will give you gravitas, he will give you competence and those whose eyes are opened will recognize the authority of Jesus in your life. Am I making sense here? You don't get authority by pretending you've got authority or by dressing up and pretending that you're something that you're not. You've either got it or you haven't got it. And the biblical remedy is you get it by walking with God. And so throughout scripture you've got a lot of people who are the rejects of society who can make it in the world because they haven't got what the world is looking for. But you know they get to their knees and they meet Jesus. And Jesus says let me lift you up and make somebody out of you because not from the east and not from the west says the book of Psalms comes lifting up. It comes from the Lord God of Israel. So how do you find significance? How do you get authority? How do you get heard? You bend the knee before Jesus. He brings you to life. He gives you the Holy Spirit. He brings out in you the gifting that he has placed in you from the creation of the world and you follow him and he strengthens you and you learn to listen to the spirit of God and before you know it there's a place in life that he's carved out for you that's got your name on it and all hell may oppose it. Nobody may want it. Everybody may hate you for it. But if God be for you nobody can be against you. And if you've been around this church for any length of time you know that that's part of our passion here. What's our vision statement? To be a biblically functioning community through which the redemptive purposes of God for the world can be realized. What's our mission statement? To reach the lost. To see the broken restored. To see the restored equipped. And to see the equipped set free to fly in the strength and in the power of God's Holy Spirit. As Saint Irenaeus said many years ago the glory of God is a human being fully alive. And I look out over an audience like this and I know a lot of you and I know your history. And I know where God has met you. And I've watched him bring you to your knees and then raise you up and then empower you and then to make you fly. Do you see how Lisa is flying when she's singing up here? That's the power of Jesus. And even as Jesus has been meeting us in this place he's promised to continue to meet us in the next place if we will but walk with him and find our life in him instead of all the idolatrous places where we try to find life. And so it's very fitting this morning that we end our stay here with the celebration of Communion. I want to suggest to you that as we turn to that in a few moments that we ask the Lord to shine in all our hearts afresh. Show me the places Lord where I try to find life outside of you. In my car, in my girlfriend, in my boyfriend, in my money, in my job, in my position those things are not insignificant and we ought not to diss them and say well they don't matter but that's not where my life comes from. I can save my whole world and still lose my soul. Show me the places of my brokenness where I surround myself with idols that somehow are intended to prop me up and to keep me doing life. And then Lord show me afresh. Show me afresh how much I need you. Show me what you've done for me. You know the Psalmist often does that when he's down he begins to reflect on where God has been and where God has taken him and back in June when we had that weekend where we really had our farewell here we looked back and we celebrated the mighty acts of God. Reflect on what God has done in you and then ask him to refresh your commitment to him so that your life comes from him and from him alone. Because you see whatever the future holds and whatever the challenges hold for us whether individually or corporately life is not going to get easier. Get used to it. I used to think you know someday life will get easier. It won't. Not in the here and now so get over yourself. Be realistic. But remember the bigger the waves get the more opportunity God has to demonstrate his amazing grace and his amazing love. So that resonates with your heart and when in a few moments we celebrate communion let's just ask him to unite us afresh to himself to unite us afresh to each other and make God's grace flow like a mighty river so that there is enough not only for you and me but enough that the river the water of life flowing from you and me into the community can bring God's life and God's light and God's healing. [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 2 START at 00:27:35.900; remove through 00:32:11.000] To the river I am going, bringing sins I cannot bear. Come and cleanse me, come forgive me. Lord I need to meet you there. In these waters, healing mercy flows with freedom from despair. I am going to that river. Lord I need to meet you there. The pressure's Jesus, I am ready to surrender every hand. Take my hand now, lead me closer. Lord I need to meet you there. To the river I am going, bringing sins I cannot bear. Come and cleanse me, come forgive me. Lord I need to meet you there. In these waters, healing mercy flows with freedom from despair. I am going to that river. Lord I need to meet you there. The pressure's Jesus, I am ready to surrender every hand. Take my hand now, lead me closer. Lord I need to meet you there. Come and join us in the river. Come find life beyond compare. He is calling, He is waiting. Jesus' thoughts meet you there. I am ready to surrender every hand. Take my hand now, lead me closer. Lord I need to meet you there. [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 2 END at 00:32:11.000; resume after this marked segment]