Jesus Speaking With Authority Above a CityBible World
7:29Matthew 7:29
For he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.
Closing the Sermon on the Mount, the saying records that the great multitude who heard Christ in the open air were astonished and convicted by the power of His teaching. He spoke as one sent from God in oneness with God, the very Word and Author of Scripture, with certain personal knowledge of truth and no hesitancy or doubt. This stood opposite the scribes, who taught in a cold, formal, rote way, repeating human traditions, fables and uncertain opinions that left hearers in darkness and gave no spiritual life. His authority was heard in teaching that was clear, plain, simple and direct so even the poor and unlearned could understand, yet deep enough for the highest minds, presenting Scripture as unquestionable truth and restoring the law to its original clarity and power. So received, His word demands faith, humility and obedience, working in the soul by the Holy Spirit to produce penitence, love, prayer and joy, and it remains the pattern and power for all who teach in His name.
Setting and Hearers
Matthew 7:28-29 closes the open-air discourse to a very large congregation, coming after His first work as the great Healer experienced by the disciples and after the wonderful discourse of Matthew 5. The Sermon on the Mount was given especially to His disciples but spoken within hearing of a great multitude. People from many regions had gathered to hear Him and be healed, and the crowd followed Him to a level place on the mountainside where He taught.
The people were astonished at His teaching because He taught with authority unlike the scribes, and that authority marked the Sermon on the Mount including the call to hear and obey His words. His teaching carried the force of the commands He gave, and His hearers were astonished by it. The multitudes were amazed because His doctrine was opposite to the precepts and example of the scribes and Pharisees. The scribes had taught that happiness consists in possessing the things of this world and in fame and human honor, with being called Rabbi and being praised as wise and religious with virtues paraded before the public as the crown of happiness, while He declared before the vast throng that earthly gain and honor is all the reward such persons will ever receive. He spoke with certainty and a convincing power that silenced the people and brought a feeling of fear over them, so they looked at one another doubtfully and asked who of them would be saved if His teachings were true, and many were deeply convinced He was moved by the Spirit of God and the sentiments He uttered were divine.
His words of wisdom held thousands spellbound, even though His teaching could not reach hearts blinded by prejudice and hatred. Its truth moved the people, spoke to their hearts, and challenged their former ideas. Following it required changing their thoughts and actions and could bring them into conflict with the rabbis, so although many were moved, few accepted His teaching as their guide for life.
The verse closes His warning in Matthew 7 that must be read and heeded as earth's history closes in confusion. Joined to the warnings about false prophets, testing by fruits, doing the will of the Father, and building on the rock, it presses a call to repent and be converted from divided living that professes to serve the Lord while scheming personal plans that retard the work He gave His life to accomplish. Otherwise stealthy misleading sentiments confuse the mind and the enemy of souls deceives those who know the truth.
Nature of His Authority
He taught with an authority the scribes did not have, as a Teacher sent from God and in perfect oneness with God, placed on a level with the eternal God. Though He stood forth in distinct human personality and appealed to humanity in striking but simple language, heavenly illumination fell directly upon Him in His humanity, and His voice came as the voice of God from the center of glory. His words were inspired by the Spirit of God and reached people with divine power, in contrast to teaching that was cold, formal, and based on custom and rote explanation of the law. In the synagogue at Capernaum He taught plainly about God's kingdom and His power to overthrow Satan's rule and free those held captive.
His authority was exclusively His own because every sentence He uttered came from God, for He was the Word and the Wisdom of God and ever presented truth with the authority of God. He Himself is the Author of Scripture, and His teaching rests on It is written. That authority bears no comparison with human tradition. The Sermon on the Mount which the verse closes is a wonderful production yet so simple that a child can study it without being misled, and the mount of beatitudes is an emblem of the high elevation on which Christ ever stood. His words are spirit and they are life.
His authority came from certain knowledge, for He spoke truth about the past, present, and future from personal knowledge, not human opinions, inherited maxims, fanciful ideas, or speculation. He proclaimed essential truths and focused on the unchanging principles of God's word and simple, practical truths that ordinary people could understand and apply. No age or popular acceptance could make error true or truth false.
He spoke with certainty, calmness, power, and complete understanding, with no hesitancy in His manner and no shadow of doubt or uncertainty in His utterances, as one who knew the truth and understood every part of His subject as the living interpreter of God's laws. Unlike the hesitant and uncertain manner of the scribes, His authority made the living principles of truth more forceful. His teaching opened the Scriptures like a new revelation, while false teaching had confused people and obscured divine truth, and He understood how Satan used superstition and tradition to obscure truth. He rescued truth from these distortions, superstition, and human tradition and restored it to the world with greater and renewed glory.
He took truths that had been lost sight of, misplaced, misinterpreted and disconnected from their pure position and serving the enemy through connection with error, separated them from error as precious jewels in their own bright luster, reset them in their proper framework and commanded them to stand fast forever, a work no finite man could comprehend or do, placing truth where it would glorify God and save humanity. He could have opened mysteries hid from mortal eyes that patriarchs and prophets desired to look into, but He withheld them because men could not discern the most simple plainly stated truths. He did not disdain to repeat old familiar truths because He was the author of those truths and the glory of the temple. His work was to give the truth again in its original freshness and beauty, representing the spiritual and heavenly by things of nature and experience, giving fresh manna to the hungry soul and presenting a new kingdom to be set up among men.
He taught under the inspiration and power of the Spirit because He was sanctified through the truth, and His words carried the power of the Spirit and reached the heart with divine power. Unlike teaching that was cold and formal, grounded in custom rather than God's authority or holy inspiration, and that explained the law as custom by rote, He spoke plainly yet with truths deep enough to engage the highest minds. He proclaimed God's kingdom and His power to free captives from Satan and from Satan's dominion. It is not having a theory of truth or giving sermons in special order, but having special fellowship with Christ and being baptized by the Holy Spirit, putting on the robes of Christ's righteousness and learning at His feet, that enables men to speak with the same authority and not as unsanctified teachers.
The same authoritative power continued in the apostles after His ascension. Their teaching imparted light, truth, and the way of salvation through Jesus Christ. His authoritative teaching addresses itself to humanity and demands faith and credence. It enjoins humility, obedience, and implicit faith in strong terms, calling hearers to be rooted and grounded and stablished in the faith. That authoritative word, the living oracles, a Thus saith the Lord, brought to mind and heart by the Holy Spirit's working and reached by earnest careful research of the words of inspiration, is the foundation of faith that leads to faith and obedience, while sitting at His feet and learning from Him calls for faith that believes His Word without seeing. Received in the human soul, His authoritative teaching works as the motive power of the gospel to produce penitence, love, faith, prayer, obedience, hope, and the joy of Christ.
Contrast with Scribes
The scribes taught in a cold, formal, rote way, explaining the law as mere custom without God's authority or holy inspiration, while He taught with authority from God, His words inspired by the Spirit and reaching the heart with divine power. In the synagogue at Capernaum He taught plainly about God's kingdom and His power to overthrow Satan's rule and free those held captive from Satan's dominion. He spoke plainly yet with truths deep enough to engage the highest minds.
Where the scribes repeated fables and childish traditions grounded in frivolous and worthless human sayings, ancient maxims, rabbinical sayings, traditions, ceremonies and trivial matters that came from no authority of God and could not rightly shape mind or character, He spoke with higher authority about momentous subjects and weighty ideas. His words were fresh, clear, vigorous and compelling, bringing light and knowledge, and His appeals and earnest teaching convinced hearers, carried conviction to their hearts and awakened hope. He addressed hearts and consciences and turned attention from trivial matters to immortality, so that hearers recognized the truth, while those who clung to their traditions and practices instead were condemned by that refusal. The scribes labored to establish their own theories and had to labor to sustain them and keep influence over minds by endless repetition, with even the loftiest public instruction consisting largely of heartless rounds of unmeaning ceremonies and repetition of frivolous opinions, while He inculcated the weightiest ideas and most sublime truths in the most comprehensible and simple manner.
While the rabbis spoke with doubt, hesitancy and uncertainty, as if Scripture could mean one thing or its opposite, and left hearers in daily uncertainty with monotonous, spiritless preaching, He taught the Scriptures as certain, unquestionable, authoritative truth that could not be controverted. His authority was heard in a voice like music to those used to such preaching, speaking slowly and impressively with distinct, clear utterance, emphasizing words He wanted hearers to heed and pausing between sentences instead of rushing, so that old and young, ignorant and learned could catch the full meaning and were very attentive to Him. He taught with calmness, power, certainty and calm assurance, making the living principles of truth more forceful, understanding how Satan used superstition and tradition to obscure truth, rescuing truth from these distortions, upholding the Old Testament Scriptures above human traditions, and restoring it to the world with greater glory.
The scribes and Pharisees offered formal, obscure explanations of the law as a rigid code burdened by human traditions, hard to understand and giving no spiritual nourishment, while He spoke with certainty and understanding and restored divine truth in its original clarity and power. In the Sermon on the Mount He explained the law's full reach and claims, presenting familiar truths with the force of revelation because He restored them to their proper meaning, rejected human traditions, and opened hearers' understanding to the law's dignity and its standard of righteousness. The scribes and Pharisees had taught that happiness consists in possessing the things of this world and in fame and human honor, with being called Rabbi and being praised as wise and religious with virtues paraded before the public as the crown of happiness, but His doctrine was opposite to their precepts and example and declared before the vast throng that earthly gain and honor is all the reward such persons will ever receive. He spoke with certainty and a convincing power that silenced the people and brought fear over them, so they looked at one another doubtfully and asked who of them would be saved if His teachings were true, and many were deeply convinced He was moved by the Spirit of God and the sentiments He uttered were divine. His message opposed the doctrines and practices of the scribes and Pharisees by correcting their false picture of God as a stern, compassionless judge and revealing God's character as loving and merciful, teaching people to address God as Father and showing God's true relationship to them, and leading them to God through a new and living way.
Manner and Content of Teaching
His teaching was clear, emphatic, solemn, convincing, simple, plain and direct, with no word that could not be understood, making truth plain and easy to understand rather than vague or difficult, and giving it vital force and impressiveness. It was simple enough for the poor, the unlearned, children, and those without rabbinical schooling or knowledge of Greek philosophy to understand, yet it carried assurance and power that drew hearts, so that even noblemen and some chief priests and rulers believed, while its depths could still engage the highest minds. His natural key of voice preserved the pathos and melody of human speech instead of losing force through unnatural loudness.
His authority was heard in simplicity itself, in plain direct speech presenting truth one clear distinct point at a time without crowding many things together to confuse minds. He freely repeated old familiar prophetic truths to fix ideas, breaking up accustomed trains of thought as little as possible while weaving a new and transforming economy of truth into experience. He aroused minds through their most familiar associations and hallowed recollections and sympathies to reach the inner temple of the soul.
He met people on their own ground as one acquainted with their perplexities, reaching beyond His disciples to the ignorant and erring where they could understand truth. He made truth beautiful in pure, refined, clear language, with a voice like music in contrast to monotonous tones. He identified Himself with human interests by drawing illustrations from the great book of nature and experience with familiar objects such as the lily of the field, the seed sown by the sower, the springing up of the seed and the harvesting of the grain, and the birds of the air, so that seeing them afterward would remind hearers of His lessons.
He presented Scripture as unquestionably authoritative and powerful and certain truth that could not be controverted, bringing new depth and light to it, not as uncertain interpretations open to opposing meanings. This stood against cold, rote instruction that substituted human ideas and traditions for God's word. As He explained the Old Testament Scriptures and God's law, His clear and powerful teaching arrested the people's attention and proclaimed the gospel, differing greatly from that of the scribes and Pharisees.
He who had spoken the law at Sinai explained its full reach and claims, presenting familiar truths with the force of revelation because He restored them to their proper meaning, rejected human traditions, and opened understanding to the law's dignity and its standard of righteousness. The scribes offered formal, obscure explanations of the law as a rigid code burdened by human traditions, hard to understand and giving no spiritual nourishment, but He spoke with certainty and understanding, restoring divine truth in its original clarity and power. He took truths that had been lost sight of, misplaced, misinterpreted, disconnected from their pure position and joined to error, separated them from error as precious jewels in their own bright luster, reset them in their proper framework and commanded them to stand fast forever, a work no finite man could comprehend or do, revealing the law as holy, just, good, and the enduring standard of righteousness.
He could have opened mysteries hidden from mortal eyes that patriarchs and prophets desired to look into, but He withheld them because men could not discern even the most simple plainly stated truths. He did not disdain to repeat old familiar truths because He was their author, and His work was to give the truth again in its original freshness and beauty, representing the spiritual and heavenly by things of nature and experience, giving fresh manna to the hungry soul and presenting a new kingdom to be set up among men. In the Sermon on the Mount He set out the principles governing His kingdom of divine grace, beginning with the Beatitudes and telling the conditions of entrance therein, rather than promising the earthly glory and national restoration many listeners expected.
He disappointed hopes of worldly greatness and sought to undo false education by giving a right conception of His kingdom and of His own character. He did not make a direct attack on the errors of the people, and though He saw the misery of the world on account of sin He did not present a vivid delineation of their wretchedness, but taught something infinitely better than they had known, and without combating their ideas of the kingdom of God left hearers to draw their own conclusions as to its nature. He taught truth in parables, using them to expose the hypocrisy and evil of leaders in a way that made the truth clear to honest hearers while avoiding the direct denunciation that would have ended His ministry, for the scribes and other leaders had replaced prophetic teaching with interpretations that distorted Scripture and served error.
The sermon exposed that the Jewish people were separated from God because they failed to live by the light they had received through patriarchs and prophets, and as they allowed that light to shine their failure to walk in it brought darkness in the same measure. It called for obedience to God's plainly revealed will, which would have prepared them to show the world a higher character and way of life. Its pure gospel explains God's holy law and sets the standard for right and holy conduct, speaking with freshness and truth to hearts and consciences and turning attention to immortality rather than trivial matters, so that those who clung to traditions and practices instead of recognized truth were condemned by that refusal.
His authoritative way of speaking carried a heaven-born dignity and sense of propriety that softens whatever is harsh and subdues all that is coarse and unkind. It never used one unkind or discourteous expression, even in dealing with rude and violent men.
Example for Today
His clear, emphatic, solemn and convincing teaching that makes truth plain and easy to understand is the example for how all who teach should teach. Those who teach are to follow that example by connecting with the source of strength so that Christ abides in them and His Spirit and power are revealed through them, though they cannot have His own consciousness of power. Speaking with that same authority comes not from having a theory of truth or from giving sermons in special order, but from special fellowship with Christ, learning at His feet, being baptized by the Holy Spirit, and putting on the robes of Christ's righteousness. He exercised this authority not by taking the highest place among the highest Jewish teachers, which He could have occupied, but by going from place to place to take the gospel of truth to the poor in the highways and byways, with His voice heard by the sea, on the mountainside, and in the streets of the city. His workers are to labor today in that same traveling, plain, powerful way of proclamation, working in different lines of teaching rather than preaching many sermons, and camp meetings are to labor to teach in these different lines as He did.
The lessons of the sermon are to be shown in the lives of those who teach and help others, and living them can make a deeper and more lasting impression than preaching from a pulpit. Even when a person cannot speak eloquently, speaking modestly and hiding self in Christ allows the Holy Spirit to guide the words, while Christ works with the speaker to impress hearts. Sabbath-school teachers must copy His authority through simplicity, sympathy and love, leaving hard high-sounding words aside and using only the simplest words readily comprehended by the young, assuring them of His love and reflecting heaven's light to illumine young souls with the divine glory of His character and thus lead children in beautiful simplicity to the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Fathers and mothers are to follow His pattern, for His authoritative way carried a heaven-born dignity and propriety that softens harshness and subdues coarseness and never used one unkind or discourteous expression even with rude and violent men, which means treating children as intelligent beings as they themselves would like to be treated. All who have placed themselves on His side are to learn from Him the art of conversation, so that when in company with those whose flood of foolish talk bears all before it they change the conversation if possible, quietly dropping words or introducing a subject by the help of God's grace that will direct talk into a profitable channel.
The principles of the chapter are to be read and obeyed and studied critically again and again for one's own enlightenment and not to prove supposed faults discerned in other church members. That study calls for learning humbly from Christ, asking Him to cleanse the heart and remove defects of character, and living in a way that leads others to Him. Those whose thoughts are absorbed with the faults of others and who think they are lights will, unless there are decided conversions, prove to be stumbling blocks. As earth's history closes in confusion the chapter must be read and heeded as a call to repent and be converted from divided living that professes to serve the Lord while scheming personal plans that retard the work He gave His life to accomplish, lest stealthy misleading sentiments confuse the mind and the enemy of souls deceive those who know the truth.
His example calls for instructing people with authority as a Teacher sent from God rather than hesitating or merely sermonizing. That means presenting fresh truths and principles simply and forcefully. His method of labor did not fail and was not discouraged, and His method must be the method of labor for all who witness, even when determined opposition is aroused against the spread of the message. Speaking with authority, He invites people to follow Him away from the pursuit of earthly riches and onto the path of self-denial and sacrifice, which leads to enduring riches and eternal glory. His teaching in the sermon, including the call to hear and obey His words, carried the force of the commands He gave and astonished His hearers, and offers a sure foundation for faith and practice.
Closing the Sermon on the Mount, the saying records that the great multitude who heard Christ in the open air were astonished and convicted by the power of His teaching. He spoke as one sent from God in oneness with God, the very Word and Author of Scripture, with certain personal knowledge of truth and no hesitancy or doubt. This stood opposite the scribes, who taught in a cold, formal, rote way, repeating human traditions, fables and uncertain opinions that left hearers in darkness and gave no spiritual life. His authority was heard in teaching that was clear, plain, simple and direct so even the poor and unlearned could understand, yet deep enough for the highest minds, presenting Scripture as unquestionable truth and restoring the law to its original clarity and power. So received, His word demands faith, humility and obedience, working in the soul by the Holy Spirit to produce penitence, love, prayer and joy, and it remains the pattern and power for all who teach in His name.
Setting and Hearers
Matthew 7:28-29 closes the open-air discourse to a very large congregation, coming after His first work as the great Healer experienced by the disciples and after the wonderful discourse of Matthew 5. The Sermon on the Mount was given especially to His disciples but spoken within hearing of a great multitude. People from many regions had gathered to hear Him and be healed, and the crowd followed Him to a level place on the mountainside where He taught.
The people were astonished at His teaching because He taught with authority unlike the scribes, and that authority marked the Sermon on the Mount including the call to hear and obey His words. His teaching carried the force of the commands He gave, and His hearers were astonished by it. The multitudes were amazed because His doctrine was opposite to the precepts and example of the scribes and Pharisees. The scribes had taught that happiness consists in possessing the things of this world and in fame and human honor, with being called Rabbi and being praised as wise and religious with virtues paraded before the public as the crown of happiness, while He declared before the vast throng that earthly gain and honor is all the reward such persons will ever receive. He spoke with certainty and a convincing power that silenced the people and brought a feeling of fear over them, so they looked at one another doubtfully and asked who of them would be saved if His teachings were true, and many were deeply convinced He was moved by the Spirit of God and the sentiments He uttered were divine.
His words of wisdom held thousands spellbound, even though His teaching could not reach hearts blinded by prejudice and hatred. Its truth moved the people, spoke to their hearts, and challenged their former ideas. Following it required changing their thoughts and actions and could bring them into conflict with the rabbis, so although many were moved, few accepted His teaching as their guide for life.
The verse closes His warning in Matthew 7 that must be read and heeded as earth's history closes in confusion. Joined to the warnings about false prophets, testing by fruits, doing the will of the Father, and building on the rock, it presses a call to repent and be converted from divided living that professes to serve the Lord while scheming personal plans that retard the work He gave His life to accomplish. Otherwise stealthy misleading sentiments confuse the mind and the enemy of souls deceives those who know the truth.
Nature of His Authority
He taught with an authority the scribes did not have, as a Teacher sent from God and in perfect oneness with God, placed on a level with the eternal God. Though He stood forth in distinct human personality and appealed to humanity in striking but simple language, heavenly illumination fell directly upon Him in His humanity, and His voice came as the voice of God from the center of glory. His words were inspired by the Spirit of God and reached people with divine power, in contrast to teaching that was cold, formal, and based on custom and rote explanation of the law. In the synagogue at Capernaum He taught plainly about God's kingdom and His power to overthrow Satan's rule and free those held captive.
His authority was exclusively His own because every sentence He uttered came from God, for He was the Word and the Wisdom of God and ever presented truth with the authority of God. He Himself is the Author of Scripture, and His teaching rests on It is written. That authority bears no comparison with human tradition. The Sermon on the Mount which the verse closes is a wonderful production yet so simple that a child can study it without being misled, and the mount of beatitudes is an emblem of the high elevation on which Christ ever stood. His words are spirit and they are life.
His authority came from certain knowledge, for He spoke truth about the past, present, and future from personal knowledge, not human opinions, inherited maxims, fanciful ideas, or speculation. He proclaimed essential truths and focused on the unchanging principles of God's word and simple, practical truths that ordinary people could understand and apply. No age or popular acceptance could make error true or truth false.
He spoke with certainty, calmness, power, and complete understanding, with no hesitancy in His manner and no shadow of doubt or uncertainty in His utterances, as one who knew the truth and understood every part of His subject as the living interpreter of God's laws. Unlike the hesitant and uncertain manner of the scribes, His authority made the living principles of truth more forceful. His teaching opened the Scriptures like a new revelation, while false teaching had confused people and obscured divine truth, and He understood how Satan used superstition and tradition to obscure truth. He rescued truth from these distortions, superstition, and human tradition and restored it to the world with greater and renewed glory.
He took truths that had been lost sight of, misplaced, misinterpreted and disconnected from their pure position and serving the enemy through connection with error, separated them from error as precious jewels in their own bright luster, reset them in their proper framework and commanded them to stand fast forever, a work no finite man could comprehend or do, placing truth where it would glorify God and save humanity. He could have opened mysteries hid from mortal eyes that patriarchs and prophets desired to look into, but He withheld them because men could not discern the most simple plainly stated truths. He did not disdain to repeat old familiar truths because He was the author of those truths and the glory of the temple. His work was to give the truth again in its original freshness and beauty, representing the spiritual and heavenly by things of nature and experience, giving fresh manna to the hungry soul and presenting a new kingdom to be set up among men.
He taught under the inspiration and power of the Spirit because He was sanctified through the truth, and His words carried the power of the Spirit and reached the heart with divine power. Unlike teaching that was cold and formal, grounded in custom rather than God's authority or holy inspiration, and that explained the law as custom by rote, He spoke plainly yet with truths deep enough to engage the highest minds. He proclaimed God's kingdom and His power to free captives from Satan and from Satan's dominion. It is not having a theory of truth or giving sermons in special order, but having special fellowship with Christ and being baptized by the Holy Spirit, putting on the robes of Christ's righteousness and learning at His feet, that enables men to speak with the same authority and not as unsanctified teachers.
The same authoritative power continued in the apostles after His ascension. Their teaching imparted light, truth, and the way of salvation through Jesus Christ. His authoritative teaching addresses itself to humanity and demands faith and credence. It enjoins humility, obedience, and implicit faith in strong terms, calling hearers to be rooted and grounded and stablished in the faith. That authoritative word, the living oracles, a Thus saith the Lord, brought to mind and heart by the Holy Spirit's working and reached by earnest careful research of the words of inspiration, is the foundation of faith that leads to faith and obedience, while sitting at His feet and learning from Him calls for faith that believes His Word without seeing. Received in the human soul, His authoritative teaching works as the motive power of the gospel to produce penitence, love, faith, prayer, obedience, hope, and the joy of Christ.
Contrast with Scribes
The scribes taught in a cold, formal, rote way, explaining the law as mere custom without God's authority or holy inspiration, while He taught with authority from God, His words inspired by the Spirit and reaching the heart with divine power. In the synagogue at Capernaum He taught plainly about God's kingdom and His power to overthrow Satan's rule and free those held captive from Satan's dominion. He spoke plainly yet with truths deep enough to engage the highest minds.
Where the scribes repeated fables and childish traditions grounded in frivolous and worthless human sayings, ancient maxims, rabbinical sayings, traditions, ceremonies and trivial matters that came from no authority of God and could not rightly shape mind or character, He spoke with higher authority about momentous subjects and weighty ideas. His words were fresh, clear, vigorous and compelling, bringing light and knowledge, and His appeals and earnest teaching convinced hearers, carried conviction to their hearts and awakened hope. He addressed hearts and consciences and turned attention from trivial matters to immortality, so that hearers recognized the truth, while those who clung to their traditions and practices instead were condemned by that refusal. The scribes labored to establish their own theories and had to labor to sustain them and keep influence over minds by endless repetition, with even the loftiest public instruction consisting largely of heartless rounds of unmeaning ceremonies and repetition of frivolous opinions, while He inculcated the weightiest ideas and most sublime truths in the most comprehensible and simple manner.
While the rabbis spoke with doubt, hesitancy and uncertainty, as if Scripture could mean one thing or its opposite, and left hearers in daily uncertainty with monotonous, spiritless preaching, He taught the Scriptures as certain, unquestionable, authoritative truth that could not be controverted. His authority was heard in a voice like music to those used to such preaching, speaking slowly and impressively with distinct, clear utterance, emphasizing words He wanted hearers to heed and pausing between sentences instead of rushing, so that old and young, ignorant and learned could catch the full meaning and were very attentive to Him. He taught with calmness, power, certainty and calm assurance, making the living principles of truth more forceful, understanding how Satan used superstition and tradition to obscure truth, rescuing truth from these distortions, upholding the Old Testament Scriptures above human traditions, and restoring it to the world with greater glory.
The scribes and Pharisees offered formal, obscure explanations of the law as a rigid code burdened by human traditions, hard to understand and giving no spiritual nourishment, while He spoke with certainty and understanding and restored divine truth in its original clarity and power. In the Sermon on the Mount He explained the law's full reach and claims, presenting familiar truths with the force of revelation because He restored them to their proper meaning, rejected human traditions, and opened hearers' understanding to the law's dignity and its standard of righteousness. The scribes and Pharisees had taught that happiness consists in possessing the things of this world and in fame and human honor, with being called Rabbi and being praised as wise and religious with virtues paraded before the public as the crown of happiness, but His doctrine was opposite to their precepts and example and declared before the vast throng that earthly gain and honor is all the reward such persons will ever receive. He spoke with certainty and a convincing power that silenced the people and brought fear over them, so they looked at one another doubtfully and asked who of them would be saved if His teachings were true, and many were deeply convinced He was moved by the Spirit of God and the sentiments He uttered were divine. His message opposed the doctrines and practices of the scribes and Pharisees by correcting their false picture of God as a stern, compassionless judge and revealing God's character as loving and merciful, teaching people to address God as Father and showing God's true relationship to them, and leading them to God through a new and living way.
Manner and Content of Teaching
His teaching was clear, emphatic, solemn, convincing, simple, plain and direct, with no word that could not be understood, making truth plain and easy to understand rather than vague or difficult, and giving it vital force and impressiveness. It was simple enough for the poor, the unlearned, children, and those without rabbinical schooling or knowledge of Greek philosophy to understand, yet it carried assurance and power that drew hearts, so that even noblemen and some chief priests and rulers believed, while its depths could still engage the highest minds. His natural key of voice preserved the pathos and melody of human speech instead of losing force through unnatural loudness.
His authority was heard in simplicity itself, in plain direct speech presenting truth one clear distinct point at a time without crowding many things together to confuse minds. He freely repeated old familiar prophetic truths to fix ideas, breaking up accustomed trains of thought as little as possible while weaving a new and transforming economy of truth into experience. He aroused minds through their most familiar associations and hallowed recollections and sympathies to reach the inner temple of the soul.
He met people on their own ground as one acquainted with their perplexities, reaching beyond His disciples to the ignorant and erring where they could understand truth. He made truth beautiful in pure, refined, clear language, with a voice like music in contrast to monotonous tones. He identified Himself with human interests by drawing illustrations from the great book of nature and experience with familiar objects such as the lily of the field, the seed sown by the sower, the springing up of the seed and the harvesting of the grain, and the birds of the air, so that seeing them afterward would remind hearers of His lessons.
He presented Scripture as unquestionably authoritative and powerful and certain truth that could not be controverted, bringing new depth and light to it, not as uncertain interpretations open to opposing meanings. This stood against cold, rote instruction that substituted human ideas and traditions for God's word. As He explained the Old Testament Scriptures and God's law, His clear and powerful teaching arrested the people's attention and proclaimed the gospel, differing greatly from that of the scribes and Pharisees.
He who had spoken the law at Sinai explained its full reach and claims, presenting familiar truths with the force of revelation because He restored them to their proper meaning, rejected human traditions, and opened understanding to the law's dignity and its standard of righteousness. The scribes offered formal, obscure explanations of the law as a rigid code burdened by human traditions, hard to understand and giving no spiritual nourishment, but He spoke with certainty and understanding, restoring divine truth in its original clarity and power. He took truths that had been lost sight of, misplaced, misinterpreted, disconnected from their pure position and joined to error, separated them from error as precious jewels in their own bright luster, reset them in their proper framework and commanded them to stand fast forever, a work no finite man could comprehend or do, revealing the law as holy, just, good, and the enduring standard of righteousness.
He could have opened mysteries hidden from mortal eyes that patriarchs and prophets desired to look into, but He withheld them because men could not discern even the most simple plainly stated truths. He did not disdain to repeat old familiar truths because He was their author, and His work was to give the truth again in its original freshness and beauty, representing the spiritual and heavenly by things of nature and experience, giving fresh manna to the hungry soul and presenting a new kingdom to be set up among men. In the Sermon on the Mount He set out the principles governing His kingdom of divine grace, beginning with the Beatitudes and telling the conditions of entrance therein, rather than promising the earthly glory and national restoration many listeners expected.
He disappointed hopes of worldly greatness and sought to undo false education by giving a right conception of His kingdom and of His own character. He did not make a direct attack on the errors of the people, and though He saw the misery of the world on account of sin He did not present a vivid delineation of their wretchedness, but taught something infinitely better than they had known, and without combating their ideas of the kingdom of God left hearers to draw their own conclusions as to its nature. He taught truth in parables, using them to expose the hypocrisy and evil of leaders in a way that made the truth clear to honest hearers while avoiding the direct denunciation that would have ended His ministry, for the scribes and other leaders had replaced prophetic teaching with interpretations that distorted Scripture and served error.
The sermon exposed that the Jewish people were separated from God because they failed to live by the light they had received through patriarchs and prophets, and as they allowed that light to shine their failure to walk in it brought darkness in the same measure. It called for obedience to God's plainly revealed will, which would have prepared them to show the world a higher character and way of life. Its pure gospel explains God's holy law and sets the standard for right and holy conduct, speaking with freshness and truth to hearts and consciences and turning attention to immortality rather than trivial matters, so that those who clung to traditions and practices instead of recognized truth were condemned by that refusal.
His authoritative way of speaking carried a heaven-born dignity and sense of propriety that softens whatever is harsh and subdues all that is coarse and unkind. It never used one unkind or discourteous expression, even in dealing with rude and violent men.
Example for Today
His clear, emphatic, solemn and convincing teaching that makes truth plain and easy to understand is the example for how all who teach should teach. Those who teach are to follow that example by connecting with the source of strength so that Christ abides in them and His Spirit and power are revealed through them, though they cannot have His own consciousness of power. Speaking with that same authority comes not from having a theory of truth or from giving sermons in special order, but from special fellowship with Christ, learning at His feet, being baptized by the Holy Spirit, and putting on the robes of Christ's righteousness. He exercised this authority not by taking the highest place among the highest Jewish teachers, which He could have occupied, but by going from place to place to take the gospel of truth to the poor in the highways and byways, with His voice heard by the sea, on the mountainside, and in the streets of the city. His workers are to labor today in that same traveling, plain, powerful way of proclamation, working in different lines of teaching rather than preaching many sermons, and camp meetings are to labor to teach in these different lines as He did.
The lessons of the sermon are to be shown in the lives of those who teach and help others, and living them can make a deeper and more lasting impression than preaching from a pulpit. Even when a person cannot speak eloquently, speaking modestly and hiding self in Christ allows the Holy Spirit to guide the words, while Christ works with the speaker to impress hearts. Sabbath-school teachers must copy His authority through simplicity, sympathy and love, leaving hard high-sounding words aside and using only the simplest words readily comprehended by the young, assuring them of His love and reflecting heaven's light to illumine young souls with the divine glory of His character and thus lead children in beautiful simplicity to the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Fathers and mothers are to follow His pattern, for His authoritative way carried a heaven-born dignity and propriety that softens harshness and subdues coarseness and never used one unkind or discourteous expression even with rude and violent men, which means treating children as intelligent beings as they themselves would like to be treated. All who have placed themselves on His side are to learn from Him the art of conversation, so that when in company with those whose flood of foolish talk bears all before it they change the conversation if possible, quietly dropping words or introducing a subject by the help of God's grace that will direct talk into a profitable channel.
The principles of the chapter are to be read and obeyed and studied critically again and again for one's own enlightenment and not to prove supposed faults discerned in other church members. That study calls for learning humbly from Christ, asking Him to cleanse the heart and remove defects of character, and living in a way that leads others to Him. Those whose thoughts are absorbed with the faults of others and who think they are lights will, unless there are decided conversions, prove to be stumbling blocks. As earth's history closes in confusion the chapter must be read and heeded as a call to repent and be converted from divided living that professes to serve the Lord while scheming personal plans that retard the work He gave His life to accomplish, lest stealthy misleading sentiments confuse the mind and the enemy of souls deceive those who know the truth.
His example calls for instructing people with authority as a Teacher sent from God rather than hesitating or merely sermonizing. That means presenting fresh truths and principles simply and forcefully. His method of labor did not fail and was not discouraged, and His method must be the method of labor for all who witness, even when determined opposition is aroused against the spread of the message. Speaking with authority, He invites people to follow Him away from the pursuit of earthly riches and onto the path of self-denial and sacrifice, which leads to enduring riches and eternal glory. His teaching in the sermon, including the call to hear and obey His words, carried the force of the commands He gave and astonished His hearers, and offers a sure foundation for faith and practice.