Amazed!
- Aug 30, 2024
- 6 min read
We have come to the end of the Sermon on the Mount.
Thank you for journeying with us. What about going back to the beginning of chapter 5 and read through the sermon again. It’s approximately 2400 words (depending on which translation you read).
Commentators state that the sermon would have taken about 20 minutes to give out!
Notice the response of the people after those 20 minutes. Chapter 7:28 says they were “amazed.”
May I ask, what’s your overall reaction to the sermon over these last couple of months?
The teaching of Jesus throughout the sermon had such an impact upon the people they were ‘amazed.’ Then in verse 29 we have the reason: “teaching them as one having authority, not as their teachers of the law.”
How did their 'teachers of the law' speak? Well, we get a hint from Matthew 23, “The scribes and the Pharisees… preach, but do not practice. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger.”
Jesus was different; He spoke with Authority!
One definition of authority is, “to have the right and might to do anything; to possess permission and unimpeded power to act.”
Reflecting on these past few months, do you feel you’ve come under His authority and submitted totally to Him?
Os Guinness – "The follower of Jesus is therefore a person under authority, living before the transcendent majesty of God and unashamed to be so. What God tells us, we trust. And what God tells us to do, we obey."
Several times in chapter 5 Jesus would say, "'you have heard it said’ but ‘I say to you,’" or in chapter 7, "these words of mine." John 7:26 cannot be missed, “No one ever spoke like this man.”
Sinclair Ferguson said, “Jesus did not preach it in order to be admired for his homiletical skills. He preached it to produce obedience. He preached it so that the authority people recognised in his preaching might be realised in their lives.”
If we are finding it difficult to accept Jesus’ authority in this way, we will be finding it equally difficult to claim that He’s LORD. You see, He deserves nothing less than total obedience, failing to do so dilutes His authority in our lives. In everything we think, say and do, we should be asking, 'Is He Lord?' and 'Is the life I’m living glorifying God?'
N.T. Wright: “Authority… is the sovereign rule of God sweeping through creation to judge and to heal. It is the powerful love of God in Jesus Christ, putting sin to death and launching new creation. It is the fresh, bracing and energising wind of the Spirit.” Wow!
The ‘sovereign rule of God sweeping through’ me, through us? The ‘powerful love of God …putting sin to death’ . Amazing!
It’s been said that the Sermon on the Mount is Jesus’ manifesto of His Kingdom. It’s a message that is to be taken as a whole, with one central theme and purpose – calling people to a life of righteousness.
What Jesus said impacted people’s lives. I trust it’s done the same with you!
In writing the Gospel, Matthew stresses the authority of Jesus’ teaching in several places: here in chapter 7:29; a healing in chapter 8:1-13; in forgiving sins in chapter 9:6. The good news is, Jesus has ultimate authority.
What if we were to check out such authority over our lives!
Those who wrote the Psalms seemed to know. Notice how they started the day,“Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love, for I have put my trust in you. Show me the way I should go" (Ps 143:8).
Do we do the same? Are we faithfully seeking Him, reading His Word and opening up our hearts in prayer to Him? Will you be obedient to His will today and do what He says, no matter the cost?
Just imagine being part of the mountainside crowd and listening to such powerful insightful words from Jesus. Not only powerful and life changing words but “gracious words,” as it states in Luke 4:22.
As you reflect over these past few months, go back over the text (chs 5-7), not just to analyse, but to accept and embrace more fully the authority of Jesus and the difference His sermon should be making upon our lives.
If you are like me (I'm being honest with you), it’s so easy to, before anything else, filter what He says through our own thoughts and personal agendas. If we do this, we will not hear Him as we ought. We will be holding to our own authority and the irony will be, the very thing that needs to be transformed in our hearts and lives by Him and His word is still being held captive by us!
Bob Pierce founded World Vision. When asked the secret of his life, he said that when he first became a Christian he prayed this prayer - “O God, I give you the right to change my agenda any time you like—and you don’t have to inform me in advance. Amen.”
What would it be like today, that as children of God we said the same and put ourselves back under Jesus’ authority and begin to live the grace-life in the ways Jesus’ sermon describes?
Jerry Bridges:“Your worst days are never so bad that you are beyond the reach of God’s grace. And your best days are never so good that you are beyond the need of God’s grace.”
Jesus Christ has to be Lord over all our lives. It’s been recorded that the New Testament refers to Jesus as Lord over 600 times, so, why is it we continue to organise our lives around our own authority and agenda and not around His Lordship and His authority?
Pause and ponder
Now, I guess like me, you believe Jesus’ sovereign authority can transform lives? He has told us to seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and promises that all these things will be added to us. Amazing!
John Piper – “The risen, reigning, King of kings and Lord of Lords reigns. Nothing is outside his sovereign will. If he meets with resistance, he either allows it for his purposes, or he overcomes it for his purposes. His sovereign purposes are never thwarted.”
Take a look back over your life, and just realise how God’s powerful life-giving words have redirected you, liberated and empowered you! This is the very reason why He came.
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour” (Luke 4:18-19).
So, not only did Jesus teach as ‘one having authority’ over 2000 years ago, but what about His authority today? Following His death and resurrection, Jesus declared that all authority had been given to Him (Matt 28:28). This authority began in heaven and extends to earth today, actually to you and I right now where we are!
As Jesus gave the great commission to His disciples, it’s in that same authority that we have the privilege and responsibility to declare Jesus to be the Saviour of the world.
The most glorious news today is that there is now no power or authority that can ever overthrow the Kingdom of God, because Jesus has won the victory and He reigns supreme! Hallelujah!!
As I close, do you know the greatest tragedy is for us to meet Jesus and hear His words, “You have heard it was said,” followed by, “but I say to you,” recorded in Matthew’s gospel, and yet walk away amazed at His authority, but still unchanged by that same authority!
Dallas Willard wrote, “It is one of the major transitions of life to recognise who has taught us, mastered us, and then to evaluate the results in us of their teaching.”
Please humbly come before Him, do precisely that, and declare Him Lord.
Each time I have read Jesus Sermom on the Mount, I have felt I hear the words but they do not stick. I have been so frustrated and very uncomfortable about what I am missing. But, reading a devotional following Jesus through Matthew is like reading this with fresh eyes. Jesus speaks as God himself, and like the people didn’t understand at the time, that was something evading me. How wonderful Jesus tells us how to live a life that pleases God, and one that is not burdensome. That God chooses us to be his messengers to share the gospel when he could have sent his angels, trusting us to do this and under his authority, because this is…