By: Curtis Baker
Having finished Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, I want to write one more article on the last two verses of Matthew chapter seven. If you have a Bible where the words of Jesus are written in red, you will notice the words of Jesus stop in verse 28. The last two verses are Matthew’s editorial comment on what Jesus has just done and how the people reacted to it.
It is useful at this point to remember who Jesus is addressing. Primarily, Jesus is talking to his own disciples, but he is also speaking to a large crowd that has gathered from the local country side. These, most likely, were poor farmers and shepherds who were of no special account to anyone. They attended the synagogue, and learned the scriptures from the Rabbis and Pharisees who taught it there. But what Matthew draws our attention to in these last two verses is how the people react to Jesus. They are amazed! In contrast to the teaching they normally heard, Jesus seemed to speak with “authority.”
It is worth pausing over this statement to consider what they mean by speaking with “authority.” Whatever it means, it is certainly in contrast to what they normally heard at the weekly synagogue service from the Pharisees and the Rabbis. Those men were the recognized religious “authority” of the day, and yet, they discerned in Jesus a greater authority.
A knee jerk reaction would be to say that Jesus had more authority because he was God. That is certainly true, but remember, the people had no concept of that at this particular point in Jesus’ life. They don’t even have notions yet of him being the Messiah, much less of him carrying within himself the divine nature. So the recognition is based on something else.
If I might make a suggestion, I believe it has to do with something Jesus said a few verses earlier when he said a good tree can’t bear bad fruit and a bad tree can’t bear good fruit. Jesus told us then that the only way to judge whether someone speaks for him is based on the quality of their life. If that is true in regard to us, it is only greater in the one who lived the principles of this sermon day in and day out. The reason the people thought Jesus had “authority” was not because of his manner of speech, or because of some officially acknowledged position, it was simply the fact that he seemed to know what he was talking about because he actually lived what he taught. This is what we might call in the modern world, “authenticity.”
In contrast to that, you had with the Pharisees and the Rabbis of the day a tendency to teach one thing but to live another. This is not to say, of course, that there were not good men who were serving the Lord in those positions. I would be willing to bet that there were. After all, the book of Acts tells us that many Pharisees and priests put their faith in Jesus. They recognized the truth in him and followed. But as was often the case then, and still is the case today, many who claim to speak for God do not actually live what he taught.
As we look toward the future of the faith in the modern world, there is something about Matthew’s last words that needs our careful attention. The world is begging for people who can speak with “authority.” This does not mean we need more preachers; it does mean we need more people in every facet of life who know what they speak about because they have heard the words of Jesus in this sermon and put them into practice. There are many distractions from this in today’s Christian environment. Many are convinced Christianity is a way of getting rich. Others are trying to find ways to make Christianity “entertaining” so that people will be drawn in. Still others are constantly looking to the stars or the events in the Middle East to try to discern when the end of time will come. None of this actually bears the fruit of what Christ taught in his sermon. What the world needs today is the same thing it needed when Jesus came. It needs people who can speak with “authority.” The only way we can do that, is if we give ourselves to be Jesus’ student, learning from him the way to live our life now. The Sermon on the Mount shows us the WAY. He stands at our door knocking. Have you let him in?
(Don’t forget to join me for A Message from the Heart radio program Sunday evening at 8:00pm on KJAK 92.7FM, or streaming live at www.kjak.com)
(curtisbaker@hotmail.com)
Write to: P.O. Box 157, Slaton, TX 79364
