The Authority of the Word

Exegesis

• v28 – And when Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, 29 for he was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes.
  • [these sayings – lógos – the word of God]
    In the sight of all the Jews in Galilee, the Rabbi just gave His formal address.
    • Now, you must consider the heritage of the people witnessing this sermon. When God’s presence guarded them day and night as they journeyed the wilderness from Egypt, they would not keep His word.
      Over the centuries, no matter how many wars they won by the powerful hand of the Lord, they still ended up rejecting His ways.
      God gave them Kings and prophets, acclaim and prosperity, safety and security, and signs and wonders, and they still were stiff-necked people. Jesus laments over Jerusalem in Matthew 23:37-38 – “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! 38 See, your house is left to you desolate.”Here were people who were serial law-breakers. That is their hypocrisy, they would break the law in the name of the law.
      When they refused to listen to God’s word spoken by the mouth of prophets or the words written on the scrolls of Scripture, God sent His Son to make known to us His divine oracles.
      John 1:17-18 – 17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.
      • Haven’t you wondered why we refer to Jesus as the incarnate ‘Word of God‘? Do you know that this phrase is used of Jesus only by John, the Apostle? In John 1:1, John 1:14, and Revelation 19:13 – He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is The Word of God. Although Scripture does not explicitly give us the reason for calling Jesus the word, it is made plain to us throughout the NT. Jesus is considered the very personification of God’s word. In a sinful world that is disloyal to God’s word, what can be more righteous and blameless than the word itself? Certainly, none are able to perfectly meet the standards of the law, that the only perfect keeper of the law is the law itself. But the Son of God came to be like us and yet entirely unlike us in that He was perfectly righteous and blameless – it was as though the very word of God had come alive. Just as the Bible could never contradict itself, so Christ never contradicted the word. So, we read in this very same sermon on the Mount, out of the mouth of Jesus Himself. Matthew 5:16-18 – 17  “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. 18 For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.”
      • Now, at the same time, to me, this speaks volumes about the nature of this book we call the Bible. The words of truth captured in these pages, every part of it, is held together not by logic and rationality, but by its unity or belonging to the triune God. Logic and rationality are not the substance that unites this book to God’s purpose, but rather it is God’s divine decree that makes this book logical and rational. What does that mean? That we must never evaluate the Bible based on any standard, philosophical or experiential, natural or supernatural, foreign or domestic; that nothing under the sun, or beyond the darkness where its light does not reach, is able to be a standard unto the Bible. For, God alone is the standard of all righteousness and His book meets the qualification. Instead, we are to evaluate all of life, and base all of life on the standard of this word. And just as John uses this phrase ‘the word of God’ to explicitly unite Jesus to the written word, so does the author of Hebrews talk about the power of the word in such a way as to unite it to God’s divine function. Hebrews 4:12 – “12 For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”Listen to God’s own description of His word,
        Isaiah 55:11 – so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but sit shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.