A Matter Of Authority

Well, as we prepare this morning for the celebration of communion, it just so happens that we
come 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,
and 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, a 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 hear 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 in 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.
And people don't have that, and you can't fake it, you either got it or you haven't.
And the second, of course, is competence and ability to know your material and 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
at one of my test papers at 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 of 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 of the Mount,
and 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
noticed 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. I 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's 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 out.
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. 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 key learners. And then you impart
your knowledge, your insight to these disciples of yours and they become your followers. And
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. And 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 attentiveness and they spend much
other 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 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 rabbi school, you get a degree, you get training, you get letters behind your name.
And when you're graduated and you can 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 could listen
to has precious little to do with the letters that you have behind your name or the education
that you have experienced that 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 learn the same subject matter. One steps into a classroom,
everybody listens. 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. He 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.
He 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 their experts about country XYZ. And the first travel guide
has gone to school and has got a degree in travel guide or whatever you call it. Study
everything about the country. Watch 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 rub 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, he sent us to Israel and a trip.
And I probably know the Bible as well as most people do and perhaps better than law
and know the history of Israel. But I'll tell you until you step foot on the soil and watch
in Arab and in 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 hope to char, then you'll know that that has some pretty profound implications
and the time that remains. I want to talk just briefly about two of them. The first is this.
We better listen to Jesus. Then you think it makes a 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 always 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 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
or the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are those who hunger and there's
to have to write Jesus. And all these other things that we've been talking about for a long long time,
the same Jesus is going to come again, says the Bible. He's going to sit on his throne of judgment
before him are going to be gathered all the nations and he's going to separate them as we
disseparated from chaff and a sheep are separated from goats and guess what standard he's going to use to make that decision. Heaven's
standard, not human interpretation, not 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 going to ask
us the question, what have you done with the person of Jesus Christ? So I can think of 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 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? While 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 wide so that we might have dominion over the work
of his hands. So 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 it 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 and 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's 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 as 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 knee on it. And all hell may oppose it. Nobody may want it. Everybody may hate
you for it. But if God before 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 the fly in the strength
and in the power of God's Holy Spirit. As St. RNA 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 fight life. And so it's very fitting this morning that we end our stay here with
the celebration of Covenia. 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 of fresh. 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 a fresh. Show me a
fresh. 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 look 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 challenge is 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 life. So that resonates with your heart and one in a few moments, we celebrate communion.
Let's just ask him to unite us, a fresh to himself, to unite us a fresh 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.
Come and bless me. Come forgive me. Lord, I need to meet you there.
In these waters, healing mercy, those with freedom from despair. I am going to the river.
Lord, I need to meet you there. Freshers Jesus, I am ready to surrender every hand.
Take my hand and lead me closer. Lord, I need to meet you there.
To the river, I am going. Bring it since I cannot bear. Come and bless me. Come forgive me.
Lord, I need to meet you there. In these waters, healing mercy, those with freedom from despair.
I am going to the river. Lord, I need to meet you there. Freshers Jesus, I am ready to surrender every hand.
Take my hand and lead me closer. Lord, I need to meet you there.
Come and join us in the river. Come find life beyond compare. He is coming.
He is waiting. Jesus loves to meet you there. He is calling. He is waiting.
Jesus loves to meet you there. Freshers Jesus, I am ready to surrender every hand.
Take my hand and lead me closer. Lord, I need to meet you there. Take my hand and lead me closer.