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The title that I have given to this morning's talk, The Gospel of Authority, is in the first place intended as a description of the gospel by Matthew. And it will deal with the question of our Lord's authority in general, and its application to our lives. The discussion this morning in the examining the question of tradition will, of course, relate to what our good friend has just said immediately, because it will investigate the question of tradition in relation to Holy Scripture.
But this morning now, I would like to lead you in a study of the central ses- sections of the Gospel by Matthew to consider the nature of our Lord's authority and its application to ourselves. For two things, it seems to me, become very clear if we read through the gospel of Matthew. One is that Matthew is concerned to present our Lord Jesus to us as the Christ, the Son of the living God, to whom all authority is given, both in heaven and on earth. But Matthew is also concerned, of course, not only that we should know the historical facts about what our Lord Jesus said and did, but that we should ourselves personally accept the lordship of the Messiah for ourselves.
And thus it is that Matthew characteristically preaches us the gospel in those verses that we have now read twice. No other gospel writer, uh, quotes those words of the Lord Jesus, only Matthew. John will preach you the gospel in the terms that whosoever believeth on him has everlasting life, and that is blessedly true. Matthew will preach the gospel to you in these terms of our Lord's invitation. Come unto me, all you that are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, and you shall find rest to your souls.
This is Matthew's great statement of the gospel. We are offered the yoke of the Lord Jesus. Just let me remind you, therefore, as we begin, what is meant by that term yoke. It is a metaphor for one or two things, primarily, perhaps in the first place, a metaphor for kingly rule. You will remember the vivid story in the first book of Kings and chapter twelve, how that when Solomon died and rehoboam, his son, came to face Israel, that the tribes gathered together, we are told, to make Rehoboam king. But they weren't prepared, even though he was Solomon's son, to have Rehoboam on just any old terms.
So they said to Rehoboam, led in their instigations by Jeroboam, they said, now come, your father made his yoke exceedingly heavy. Make your father's yoke lighter, and we will serve you. But if you don't make it lighter, goodbye, Rehoboam, for we shall just not serve you. And Rehoboam stroked his beard and took counsel with his elders. First of all, he took counsel with the gray and bald heads, and they said, yes, Rehoboam, your father began to be unreasonable in the demands he made upon the people and far exceeded the terms laid down in Deuteronomy, such as a king should observe. Why he multiplied gold to himself, which Deuteronomy said he shouldn't, and he multiplied wives to himself, and Deuteronomy had things to say about that too, and did all sorts of things.
When you have a vast harim to keep up and endless building projects to carry through, of course you have to force the people into forced labor. He made their yoke very heavy. Now they said, Ria Burn, old chap, if I were you, I would make the yoke lighter, and the people will serve you. And Ria Burn said, thank you very much, and awarded them all MBEs, and then had a word with the younger group. And they said, nonsense, Ria Burn, you take a tough line. So he took a tough line. He said, if my father's, uh, yoke was like, uh, my little finger, mine shall be like my loins. In other words, if my father's yoke was severe, I shall make it a hundred times more severe.
As a result, the kingdom split, and ten tribes went off and elected themselves Jeroboam to be their king, for the king's yoke was too heavy. What a sad business it all was. Actually, I have misinterpreted the text, haven't I, as you perceive? The one startling thing that, uh, is not mentioned in those chapters is that when the dispute arose, instead of their saying, well, now, gentlemen, look, what the king should do is laid down for us in the book of Deuteronomy. Let's look at it. And if we have strayed from scripture and its authority, let's get back to it. Or if perhaps we've not come up to the full strength of scriptural authority, let's adjust things to that end. Instead of that, they just argue. No mention at all of consulting the guidelines of Holy Spirit.
The nation split and never recovered before the exile. Yoke, therefore, is a term, a symbol, an emblem of kingly authority. When our blessed Lord offers us his yoke, he is offering us his kingly rule. He invites us to lift up the yoke voluntarily and put it on our shoulder. Come, take my yoke, lift it up and carry it. But it is not, as you perceive, it is not the promulgation so much of a law, it is the offer of a gospel. In taking his yoke, we shall find rest to our souls. The rabbis also talked of their yoke. They meant their authoritative interpretation of scripture.
And therefore, if you wanted to know what scripture did or did not demand, and you consulted the rabbis, they would lay down authoritative interpretations, which they put as a yoke on your life. Our Lord, likewise, here in Matthew, as much, perhaps more than in any other gospel, is presented to us not only as a king, but as a Lord who teaches. Come, take my yoke upon you and learn of me. Do you notice what he says? Come, take my yoke upon you and learn of me. He is a teacher who is offering to teacher, but of course his teaching comes with kingly authority, the yoke of his teaching.
So does Matthew preach to us the gospel. He will tell us, of course, eh, eh, of, uh, two things about that authority as he records for us the incidents, teachings of our Lord's life, ministry, death, and resurrection. He will present and examine as he does so, he will present the validity of our Lord's authority. How do you know he is the king he claims to be, and therefore he has the authority that he demands to wield? How can I be sure at that level that Jesus Christ indeed has, rightly has, the authority he claims? Another thing that Matthew will do for us, because, as I say, he has his eye upon us. He is not, he's not merely concerned to prove to you that Christ's claim is valid.
He is also concerned to induce you to accept that claim out of the authority and take up the yoke. Therefore, Matthew will analyze for us, by well-chosen incidents in our Lord's life, analyze for us the nature of our Lord's authority. So that, seeing that he is indeed king, and secondly, perceiving the nature of his rule and government, we may gladly respond to him and willingly take up his yoke. What I propose to do, therefore, for my contribution in this session is to give a bird's eye view of the central sections of this gospel as I perceive them.
To point out, not in detail, of course, but skipping over the mountaintops, so to speak, to point out what, as it appears to me, these three middle sections of Matthew's gospel are really about. They are not, of course, a haphazard collection of isolated stories. They are stories very carefully selected and very carefully arranged that they may deal with certain prominent themes and problems. First of all, would you care, therefore, to notice chapter seven and verse twenty eight. Seven twenty eight, where Matthew says, and it came to pass when Jesus ended these words, the multitudes were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, not as the s- their scribes.
Let me just point out, many have pointed out, that that phrase, and it came to pass when Jesus had ended these words, is a very common phrase in this gospel. It is a phrase with which Math- which Mash- Matthew uses in order to vi- to divide up his narrative. We shall find a similar phrase if forthwith we turn over to chapter eleven and verse one. And it came to pass when Jesus had made an end of commanding his twelve disciples, he departed thence to teach and preach in their cities. We shall find a similar phrase again if we look at chapter thirteen and verse fifty three.
And it came to pass when Jesus had finished these parables, he departed thence. We shall find another such phrase if we look at chapter nineteen and verse one. and it came to pass when Jesus had finished these words. He departed from Galilee and came into the borders of Judea beyond Jordan. Thus does Matthew, being, so we are told, originally a good and efficient civil servant in the income tax department, thus does he order his material and group it so that it illuminates different leading themes. I'm going to suggest that, first of all, in that section that runs from chapter seven twenty eight to ten forty two, that Matthew will talk to us first about the nature of our Lord's authority, and therefore also about the path of our discipleship.
In the next great section that follows, I'm going to argue that he talks to us about the problem of evil, and what are our Lord's tactics as sovereign Lord for coping with that problem of evil in this present day. And then in the third of the sections, I shall try, uh, to survey, I shall suggest Matthew is dealing with the formation of the Christian church and asking questions about the nature of her authority. Let me come, therefore, to the first part of my thesis, chapter seven, and we look again at verse twenty nine.
See how Matthew quietly develops his theme. He tells us that when our Lord had finished these words, that is the words of the Sermon on the Mount, the multitudes were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority and not as their scribes. We notice the thing again that struck the people about our Lord's teaching was its authority, or rather the authority of him who gave the teaching. That is what attracted them to him. Notice verse one of chapter eight: and when he was come down from the mountain, great multitudes followed him. As we pass by, let us not fail to notice it. You gain nobody's respect by preaching a tentative, apologetic, not quite sure whether it's this way or that way kind of teaching.
The thing still that commands people's respect is the teaching that comes with divine authority. We are not to lose our nerve in our modern generation. Our Lord taught them not as their scribes, but as one who had authority. And the multitudes followed him. Look, uh, uh, immediately at verse nine of chapter eight, will you? Here comes a centurion attracted to our blessed Lord and seeking a gift of healing for his servant. And what is it about our Lord that has impressed the centurion? Well, he tells us, for I also am a man under authority, having under myself soldiers, and I say to this one, go, and he goeth, and to another, come, and he cometh, and to my servant, do this, and he doeth it.
And if he himself wielded such authority, he expected our Lord to be able to wield an infinitely greater authority. Pass over to chapter nine, uh, for two verses there. First of all, verse six, said our Lord apropos of the paralytic whose sins he had just pronounced to be forgiven. He says in verse six, but that you may know that the Son of Man hath, now here much will depend upon your translations. Allow me pedantically to beg and beseech of you to use in your study exact translations. It will save you a lot of time. Matthew's gone out of his way to indicate to you he is dealing with the question of our Lord's authority, and if would be helpful translators go and spoil it for you and make life difficult by translating it somehow differently this time, they are somewhat stopping you, aren't they, from seeing the flow of Matthew's thought.
That you may know that the Son of Man hath authority on earth to forgive sin. Says to the sick of the palsy, arise, take up thy bed and go to thy house. But then Matthew, like other gospel writers who record this incident, described to us the reaction of the multitudes, verse eight. And if you read Matthew, uh, Lu- if you read Mark, if you read Luke, while they record this reaction, they record it in slightly different terms. It's only Matthew who chooses to repeat this word authority, but that's the kind of thing he's interested in. He tells us that when the multitude saw it, they were afraid and glorified God, which had given such authority unto men.
So in his chapter eight, and then in his chapter nine, Matthew is interested in this matter of authority. Lo and behold, in the final chapter of this little section, which is chapter ten, he introduces the chapter with the same. Verse, chapter ten and verse one: our Lord called unto him his twelve disciples, and he gave them authority. Along with the doctrine of our Lord's own authority comes in Holy Scripture and here in Matthew, cognate doctrine of the authority that our Lord delegated to his apostles. He gave them. And of course, that remark has enormous historical implication for the authority of the apostles.
We who are Christians do receive, do we not, the words of our Lord about his apostles, and our Lord announced about them, he that receiveth you receiveth me, but he that doesn't receive you doesn't receive me either. Our Lord delegated authority to his apostles. But if that is one side of Matthew's theme in chapters eight, nine, and ten, there is, of course, inescapably another side to it, just like a coin has two sides. So with this theme, if the authority of Christ is one side of the coin, the other side of the coin is our response to that authority. What shall that be? Let's notice how Matthew develops it.
Uh, eight verse one, chapter eight verse one. um And When he was come down from the mountain, great multitudes followed him. As I've already said, is the consequence of our Lord's authority. That's why they followed him. He taught them as one having authority. Oh, listening to those dreary scribes was a pain indeed in the head. Now they listen to someone who spoke with authority, and in consequence they followed him. You say, yes, but all that means is they followed him down the mountain. Well, yes, all right, it was physical following, geographical following, down the grassy slopes of the mountain. Okay, that makes a start anyway. Some people, having listened to Christ, go off and go swimming or something and forget all about him, and the distance between them and Christ becomes more than it ever was.
Even physically to follow Christ down the mountain is something, isn't it? Uh, they followed him. Presently, Matthew tells us in verse nineteen, our Lord decided to go on a journey, and a scribe said, teacher, I will follow thee. And another man came with various suggestions to Christ, and Christ replied to him, says verse twenty two, Jesus said unto him, follow me, let the dead bury their own dead. Verse twenty three adds, and when he was entered into a boat, his disciples followed him, which is a very reasonable thing for disciples to do, is it not? That is what disciples do. And Matthew, delightful preacher and very effective as he is, isn't afraid to say the obvious. If you have a teacher teaching with authority, and that authority is Jesus Christ our Lord, then what learners do is to follow.
But as we shall presently see, if these disciples are going to follow the Lord Jesus, that will involve them in a journey. And once more, it will start off being a physical journey, but presently it will transmute itself into a journey in a deeper spiritual sense. Very good. Let's come over to chapter nine. and what are we talking about here? Well, look at verse nine itself of chapter nine. And as Jesus passed by from thence, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the place of Tal, and he saith unto him, Follow me. Or again, verse nineteen. and Jesus arose, the thing has gone into reverse now, for this is Jairus, and he's come to ask the Lord to come and save his daughter, you'll see, or or to raise her from the dead indeed, and Jesus arose and followed him.
There are times, as we shall see, when we have to lead the Lord. If that's a novel notion to you, we'll wait and see what it means. But verse twenty seven of chapter, uh, nine again, and as Jesus passed by from thence, two blind men followed him. Thus has Matthew collected stories from all over the place and put them together in this section, because he is interested in this twin theme, on the one side, our Lord's authority, and on the other side, the response of the disciple, which is to follow the Lord Jesus. Now let's come back to chapter eight and begin at the beginning. What will Matthew do? First, a group of stories down to verse seventeen to illustrate to us the nature of, uh, our Lord's authority.
Suppose, uh, uh, Lucy, you went to Russia, and you thought that May Day would be a suitable day to be in Moscow, somewhere near the Kremlin, and you said to Andropov, please, Master Andropov, I understand you are a very powerful nation, please illustrate to us your authority and power. You might say to you, stand by here for a moment, while I parade before you our authority. You see this thing here? If we tell you what to do and you don't do it, then we can shatter fifty of your cities at once. Is it not great authority? And your knees sag in the middle. I suppose we shall have to give in.
What is the nature of our Lord's authority that would lead anybody to submit to him? As he came down the mountain, there came a leper worshipped him, saying, Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. And he said, I will, and touched, put forth his hand and touched him, and straightway his leprosy was cleansed. And Jesus said, go show yourself to the priests. Why that? Well, because the priests had a God-given authority. Let us be unmistakably clear. The priests in the Old Testament, in the name of God, banished uncleanness. I don't, this morning, go into the vexed question of whether you're right to see leprosy as a type of sin or something or not. That's another big question. But the priests in the Old Testament certainly were under command to banish lepers, and it was described as being unclean. God is not, uh, for unclean.
Now comes our Lord. How will he exhibit his authority in matters of cleanliness? By saying, ah, well, that law, you know, is old fashioned. Now we don't have to bother about cleanliness. We're in a much more permissive age. All sorts of things can now be done that shouldn't be done. Things condemned by the Old Testament, homosexuality and goodness knows what else. Now you can do them, it's okay. No, no. Our Lord shows his authority, but this way around, that whereas the Old Testament, uh, condemned uncleanness to banishment, our Lord banishes the uncleanness itself. He doesn't really say to you, try and be clean. He demonstrates his authority by making the man clean. And then he sent the cleansed leper to the priest.
What could the priest say? Of course, the priests were naturally a bit suspicious about the Lord Jesus, weren't they? Someone said he was a very loose man. They objected to his, uh, uh, uh, uh, claim to be the Messiah, and sundry other things. But what could you say if you were a genuine priest? You really believed your God-given mission was to uphold cleanliness, and here comes a Jesus Christ, and he sends you a man that was a leper but has now been cleansed. If you are again uncleanness, you will be for Christ, won't you? How can you be for cleanliness and against the man that can make lepers clean without denying everything you've stood for? Even for the most cynical, it is still one of those early pieces of evidence that the claim of our Lord to authority is true.
You for decency, for cleanness, then our Lord will demonstrate his authority by exhibiting his power to make people clean. And I didn't preach to you all those delightful overtones and undertones of this story, how that our Lord bridged that terrible gap brought about by uncleanliness that separated this man from society, symbolic perhaps of that greater gap that our moral uncleanness has brought between us and God himself, and unbridged must place us along on the wrong side of the eternal gulf. How he bridged that distance, not by saying uncleanliness does not matter, but quite the reverse, by touching the leper and banishing the unclean. Matthew gives us several examples now of our Lord in action, not only against uncleanliness, but against weakness.
Here comes a centurion, and his trouble is this, that though he has great authority as centurion to say to this soldier, go, and he goes, and this one, come, and he comes, and another do this, and he doeth it. Lo and behold, there is one poor man. The centurion can say it a hundred times a day if he likes to do this, and the man does nothing. Why? Because he's paralyzed. Once more, the centurion, of course, represented civil power, military and civil power under the Roman, uh, emperor. Now, the same situation may serve us again as a parable. Of all other known for- forms of authority, take the highest form of authority, the law of Moses itself. It will say to you, do this, and you're supposed to do it. And most of us have found in our experience what Saint Paul confesses to, that when the law says do this, I, stupid chump, either can't do it or don't want to do it.
And even though I get to the state where I delight in the law of God after the inward man, and my reason approves it, my emotions delight in it, and my will is ranged on the side of doing it, our sin rises up and overpowers me, and I can't. I say, oh, wretched man that I am. The nature of Christ's authority, not just adding another law, which would be to make life even more difficult, but the power to empower us to do what otherwise we could not do. And Matthew adds the story of what happened as the sun was setting and the sick around him were laid. Now, whether it was physical or spiritual infirmity, he healed them, that it might be fulfilled what was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, saying, he himself took our infirmities and bare our diseases.
The word is a vivid word given us by Isaiah. Messiah was to put his shoulder under our weak and carry our infirmity. That speaks volumes of the grace of Christ, the nature of his authority. Why, in that authority, there is release, there is salvation, because he comes alongside our weakness and puts his strong shoulder under our infirmity and carries it. Authority of Christ is not just the promulgation of another law, it is the announcement of a savior with authority to release us from our weakness and infirmity. And so the early stories are there, I suggest they present us, so to speak, the initial contact with Christ, that delightful gospel of his authority.
But initial contact with our Lord's authority must, if it is genuine, lead to deeper experience. So now, as the crowd was around him, says Matthew, our Lord was doing many miracles. Presently, our Lord announces that he's going to leave. Why leave when there are so many crowds around enthusiastic to hear his teaching? Why leave? Well, you will presently see why. Because when our Lord announces that he's going to leave on this journey, it presents people in that crowd with a decision to be made. Will they say, oh, do you know that was an unusual, uh, sermon we had this morning in church? Yeah, oh, it was quite interesting. Wonder what there is for lunch. Ah, but, uh, uh, here is, uh, uh, uh, this great teacher, my, doing some marvelous things, works of salvation.
He's going? No, he can't go. Well, then if he's going, I will, yeah, I will follow him. And now there begins a journey. You perceive at first it's a physical journey, but as they physically journey, there are, there are lessons to be learned on that journey which couldn't be learned if they weren't on the journey anyway, and it becomes a journey into the discovery of the Lord Jesus and a journey into the discovery of themselves, as our Lord allows circumstances to arise that will discover to the disciples their own hearts and then will discover to them the powers of the Lord Jesus. That is a path of discipleship. There are certain lessons to be learned as it starts. There are certain lessons to be learned in the middle, and there are certain lessons to be learned the other side, which is a very simple remark to make, isn't it? The Bible is simple.
In that sense, so is life. There are journeys to be learned at the beginning and in middle life and at the end. However, let's start at the beginning. One good man came. He was a scribe, used to the theoretical interpretation of Holy Scripture. I don't know whether he'd written any books on hermeneutics or not, but he was a scribe anyway, and he had a lot of theory in his head, and entranced by our Lord's teaching, he proposed to follow him. I will follow thee, said he, teacher, whithersoever thou goest. And Jesus said unto him, the foxes have holes, the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man hath not where to lay his head. What did our Lord mean? You say, well, perhaps that means that our Lord himself very often didn't have the ordinary common creature comforts of life, and that if you follow him in the path of discipleship, you may have to rough it in the middle of Africa somewhere.
I suppose that's true. Though it is to be noticed, isn't it, that very often our Lord did have somewhere to lay his head on earth, didn't he? At his mother and Mary's house. They were two very kindly, dear Christian women. They made him as comfortable as they could. I don't think he slept every night on the Mount of Olives, did he? All thirty three years. So what then did he mean? I wonder if he meant it in a deeper sense. You know, there is one place where it is actually written that he lay his head. Nowhere on earth to lay his head. Well, that verb is used once elsewhere, to my knowledge. There was one place where he laid his head, and that is when he said it is finished, as he hung upon the cross, and he laid his head and gave up the ghost. For my part, I'm inclined to take the saying in that sense. Nowhere on earth to lay his head. To lay his head in the expression that the work was finished and the goal achieved.
Oh wow. Our Lord came to our earth to do a work, the work was not finished. Never able to lay down his head one night and say, no, that's done, that's finished, I've arrived. Until on Calvary, that work was done. And all who follow him in the path of discipleship better lay it to their heart. They will never any place on earth, not Greystones or anywhere else, never on earth will you come to a place where you'll be able to say, and now, if you please, I've completed the course, PhD in discipleship. I have now arrived, and it's finished, and I can lay down my head. Never. For we are on a journey, and journey will never cease. Ever some progress to be made. It will never cease on this planet, I assure you, until we sit down with Christ in his kingdom.
And so that other good second disciple was taught that if we follow Christ, of course, there can be no prior claim upon us, not even the sacred claim of father. Indeed, if we follow Christ, one of the first things Christ will do is to send us back to behave well at home and to look after our elderly parents. But not even the claim of parents can come before the claim of Christ. There is no prior claim before his lordship. But see them now as they begin the journey and across, uh, the sea. When there comes a storm, you couldn't have learned it on dry land on this lesson. So they are in the middle of a storm now, and the waves and the wind are around them howling, and the boat threatens, it seems to them, to go down. And they wake the Lord, and he calms the storm.
But see them now as they begin the journey and across, uh, the sea, when there comes a storm. You couldn't have learned it on dry land, not this lesson. So they are in the middle of a storm now, and the waves and the wind are around them howling, and the boat threatens, it seems to them, to go down. And they wake the Lord, and he calms the storm. To tell us what? That if you're on a boat in life, you'll never go down? The rash thing to say that no true Christian has ever been drowned, wouldn't you? I remember a very vivid occasion once. I was at the Lord's Supper in England somewhere, at which occasion some good, rather kindly and sweetheart arose and expounded to us this story and comforted us no little, assuring us that the boat in which Christ travels will never go down. When he sat down, a very lank and lean man got up.
I didn't know who it was. It turned out to be Dr. Tidmarsh of Ecuador. His first words were, my dear brethren and sisters, I have to tell you that today the boat is on time. Five of your missionary brethren have perished under the Yarka. What is the story there to tell us is to tell me this, that the Christ I follow is Lord of the physical powers of this universe. They thought he might drown if he didn't hurry up and wake up. Ha! But when he's Lord, when he's Lord, and in him were all things created, and through him they hang together, and he is their gold, they were made for him. Powers of this universe will never catch him napping. He is their Lord, and sooner or later in the path of discipleship, I shall need to come to the conviction that Jesus I follow is not merely a theoretical teacher of theology.
He is the Lord of the physical powers of this universe, the physical powers of my body and brain, and service for him and discipleship will involve trusting him as such. He will maintain my boat if he wishes to, as Paul found on the Adriatic, on the Mediterranean Sea. And if it is in the Lord's interest that Paul should be at Rome, to witness for the Lord at Rome, Paul will be at Rome. The Mediterranean notwithstanding, to please the Lord of creation, Paul eventually died. He will die. That's no great disaster. The Lord remains the Lord of the physical parts of the universe. When they got to the other side, they had to learn another lesson that our Lord is master not only of the physical powers of the universe, but of the spirit powers of the universe too.
As they got to the other side, they met them out of the tombs, out of that country, two demoniacs. Matthew isn't content with recording just one, there were two according to him. And then he adds a phrase that no other gospel writer uses. two demoniacs so fierce that nobody could pass that way. What an obstacle. And now the path along which our Lord was leading them led them to a point where hostile spirit power seemed to threaten their progress and make it impossible to proceed. That occasion, or, or, or standing, of course, sooner or later, any true disciple will find a similar thing. Let a man or woman step forth after Christ to follow Christ along the path of discipleship, and at first there are many victories and triumphs and glories and joys, and then, sure as eggs are eggs, there'll come a point where Satan will intervene to make further progress impossible if he can.
Our Lord takes them this way to demonstrate to them that he is not only Lord of the physical powers of the universe, but Lord of the spirit realm as well, and he opens the path by dismissing the demons. And then there is a terrible thing. What is the nature of our Lord's authority? Oh, pray consider what Matthew now tells us. It is fearful and yet glorious. Our Lord stood there, demonstrated victor over the very powers of hell, and the locals came out, found that their pigs were lost. And considering this more than human authority that was now amongst them, they asked him to go, and he went. That is the nature of his authority. Want to, you must. You can come to him who has all authority on heaven and in earth and tell him to get going, and in the end he will, for he is not a tyrant.
He will never remove your free will, choose eternal disaster, then in the end he will let you choose. Oh, how we would wish, in some sense, that God were a tyrant and would save us against our will, but he won't, for he's not a tyrant. That demonstrated, we come back, don't we, in chapter nine. Here I shall be, uh, I must resist my temptation to sermonize. I'm back in chapter nine, one more must we learn about our Lord's authority and therefore of the path of discipleship? Once more, some glorious things, only this time you will see our Lord coming under criticism. There were those in his community who thought that, uh, he was a very loose man, really, and was gaining popular, uh, uh, popularity by making discipleship too easy, not hard enough.
So on, uh, this occasion, when he was presented with a paralytic, he said, thy sins be forgiven, and the scribes lifted up their hands in holy horror. Can't tell people their sins are forgiven just like that. They were used, of course, if people sinned and they brought a sacrifice to the priest, that the priest pronounced forgiveness, but for Jesus Christ to stand there and on in his own name to offer calm pleads and ask for forgiveness. No, the scribes said, you can't do that. That's blasphemy. People can't know on earth such forgiveness. And to this day, it appears to some theologians to be altogether too easy. They will tell you straight. No, no, no, no, you cannot know in that sense, ultimately, that you are completely forgiven while you're still here on Earth. They argue that if people knew they were forgiven in that sense, they would take, uh, uh, liberty therefrom and live the most disreputable lives because they knew their sins were forgiven.
And it's not only, uh, uh, professing Christians that will tell you that. Uh, I had Buddhist the other day after two and a half hours tell me the very same thing. That is there, isn't it? And the epistles expatiate on the matter. Christ does offer us complete forgiveness of sin. That demonstrates the reality of it, that he does have that authority to give that kind of forgiveness. How? By empowering the paralytic to walk. Let me remember it, that if I claim to have forgiveness from the risen Christ, the evidence of it before the world is my ability to walk straight to the glory of God. Similarly, uh, there came the, uh, uh, uh, Pharisees, again, we're told, uh, you'll see, uh, uh, uh, to criticize our Lord that he ate with publicans and sinners, and in particular tax gatherers, you'll see.
And Matthew tells us our Lord's answer to that criticism, first of all, by giving us his own conversion story. How did Matthew get saved? Why, he was sitting with his money bags at the receipt of custom on one occasion, tied to, although the job brought him disgrace and contempt, though he'd been excommunicated from the synagogue because of it, he braved all that social unpopularity, uh, and boycotting because his love of money chained him to his post. And our Lord came by with an authoritative follow me, with a command there came the power to do it that broke Matthew's bondage, and he never went back. He records it now, that's his own personal testimony. He never went back himself to this very doubtful occupation involving so much oppression and swindling.
But what Matthew did was to have a reception, breakfast or something in his house in which he invited other inspectors of taxes, and Jesus was there. And when the Pharisees saw it, you'll see, and Jesus, and he knew he was sitting at table with these, uh, Pharisees, these, uh, these, uh, tax gatherers, these filthy rich tax gatherers with all the Rolls-Rice and Rolls-Royces and Rolls Bentleys purring outside. They said this is socially unacceptable. Now, they criticized our Lord, mixing with the doubtfully rich, to whom our Lord made answer, they that are whole, well people don't need a doctor, but those who are sick. If a good man here has a smallpox, you won't send in your teenage daughter to care for him, I presume not. No, you'll put him in isolation. Of course you will.
But unless a doctor and a nurse go, man will die. Someone's got to go where he is. And you don't suppose to do that the doctor attending upon smallpox is evidence that he approves of smallpox. Everybody, I warrant you, everybody at that dinner table knew by the time the dinner was over what it was for. There were a few tax gatherers squirming in their seats when it became evident to them that this Jesus was telling them about their sin and their need for repentance, their need to be born again, to be reconciled with God, everybody at the table knew. Only what the Pharisees thought our Lord was talking about. There's no doubt inside the home, spiritual doctor was there not approving of the disease, but to banish it. It was not only Pharisees that got a little bit perturbed about our Lord and thought that he was, uh, too loose in his authority.
The disciples of John got a bit upset. Now they were dear people, and they had believed the message of the forerunner and professed repentance, hadn't they? But John taught them to fast, and when they observed our Lord, he didn't teach his disciples to fast. They were a bit worried about our Lord was making it too easy for his converts. And it's one way of getting popularity, isn't it, to give people a smattering of veneer, a a veneer of religion, but really hot it up a bit and make it not too difficult, in fact, considerably permissive, and you're liable to get more followers. And to the disciples of John, it appeared on times that our Lord was doing precisely that. Which casts an interesting light upon our Lord's ministry, doesn't it? How did people imagine that? Anyway, our Lord replied that when it comes to these matters, uh, fasting is to be applied when there is good reason and proper circumstance to apply it, and not applied as a rote, just because it's a rule on the book or something.
If you have, uh, wine, says our Lord, you'll see if it's old wine, you can put it into stiff old water bo- uh, wine bottle because the wine has settled down and mature, stay. If you've got new wine that's all full of ferment and on the work, well, you better not put that in old bottles. There's so much on the work, uh, it will break the bottle and you'll lose the wine and ruin the bottle as well. So the new wine, it'll have to be put into some kind of bottle. It better be a new leather bottle. Saying what? Well, you can read it at two levels, surely, at personal experience. Old, slow, settled, stayed believers who have been believers for about forty five years or fifty can and do, don't they, accept the discipline of life that is remarkably tough and perhaps unyielding.
They've grown to it over the years. Get a new convert and expect him to submit forthwith to that same stayed discipline and the emotions within him still working hard, and the strength and the powers might well break that state discipline. That doesn't mean that you can afford to have no discipline at all, but you will in some sense have to have a discipline suited to the condition of the person who is to receive it. View it historically. John preached to you repentance. Wow, when you sat under his ministry, you, you quaked, uh, dulce, and when you were baptized, uh, you were feeling pretty solemn, I tell you. I don't think you altogether shouted hallelujah at John the summons, did you? Warned you to flee from the wrath to come and had you down in Jordan being baptized, confessing your sins.
You didn't say, hallelujah, I'm now going to be baptized. And there came Jesus with his delightful message of forgiveness, the gift of eternal life, such joy as the previous dispensation had not known, let alone know how to express, and therefore there had to be a new kind of discipline. And as for fasting, said our Lord, you see, gentlemen, you went to a wedding, be an odd wedding, wouldn't it, where all the guests fasted. There's the bride, there's a bridegroom, one hundred and fifty guests, and when all the marvellous fare is brought on the table, they said, sorry, no, I'm fasting today. Nonsense.
The bridegroom's taken away, then shall they fast. Fasting has to be appropriate to the situation, not done because it's Friday. And with that, while our Lord was eh eh still speaking, Matthew introduces us to the fourth and final part of this, uh, these stories. There came Jairus. For people, you see, had been criticizing our Lord that he was too lax. Ah, but watch now what happens in the path of discipleship. There came Jairus. He was, in fact, ruler of the synagogue, but his daughter was dead.
Forgive my fancifulness. You'll see I'm incurably fanciful. There's more than one synagogue that's got dead daughters. And you can lay down the law in the synagogue and tell people how to behave, but if the young dear lady is dead, what use is that? What's the use of impeccable teaching in a church where everybody in the pew is dead. You have all your fastings and rules and regulations, but your first need is life. And Jairus comes saying, Lord, my daughter is dead, come and save her.
And the Lord followed Jairus. You say, things have gone into reverse. I thought we were meant to follow him, now he's following Jairus. Quite so. But you know, in the further reaches of discipleship, there will come times when our Lord will wait for you to come with your need to him and say, Lord, there's a bit of our church, there's a bit of my life that needs your attention. Will you come? And wait for us to show him the way there. So he went to Jairus' house, and as he was going, there came this woman with the issue of blood.
Now, according to Jewish laws, that woman spread defilement wherever she went. And here I'm not being fanciful when I say it's an illustration of things and dangers at the spiritual level. Says the writer to the Hebrews, to his readers, you be careful, lest there spring up a root of bitterness among you, and many be thereby Defile. defiled. Alas for our hidden weaknesses. Beneath our expensive clothes.
That spread defilement in our churches. Of gossip, of malice, and selfishness, and evil temper, and pride and all the rest of that ugly brew. Path of discipleship will mean that we shall have to come to the Lord Jesus for him to deal with those deeper hidden things. And then there came two men, blind men they were, and they followed him, and what a curious situation. Can you imagine it?
Here come two blind men to the Lord Jesus. They can't see him, so they're just listening, and they want to get near him, you see. And presently, he seems to be going, so they try to follow. Why doesn't he stop and heal them? Knows what they want. And now he lets them follow. And how difficult it was for blind men to follow him down those narrow little streets and in all the crowds, and presently the voice went quiet. Where has he gone to now? He disappeared. He'd gone into a house. These poor fellows had to follow him, follow him, groaning their way down the street, until at last they found out he was in this house, and eventually into the house they went. They must have wanted their sight, mustn't they?
Paul tells his young converts that he prays for them, assiduously prays for them, that the eyes of their understandings might be enlightened. Oh yes, they're Christians already. They've trusted the Lord Jesus already. There's a sense in which they still need their eyes to be opened. To see things about our Lord and the purpose of his calling and the power that attaches thereto. And if we want that kind of thing, we shall have to follow our Lord and persist in our follow and persist in our prayer.
It does not necessarily give it to give that illumination to us overnight. Chapter ten of this chapter, uh, uh, concludes this particular section on our Lord's authority. It is what you might describe as the briefing of the apostles as they went out to preach. Two things to be noticed about this briefing. First, that when they went out to preach, our Lord delegated to them his authority. That is historically true of the apostles in a very special sense.
In a subsidiary sense, it is true of us. Secondly, let us notice that there is a problem about this briefing, but let us make capital out of the problem. When our Lord briefed the disciples, he seemed to talk to them about things that went far beyond their present time. He said, you go and preach, and whosoever doesn't receive you, shake off the dust of your feet. It shall be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for that city. So he points them to the day of judgment. Secondly, he says, when they persecute you in one city, flee to another.
You shall not have gone over the cities of Israel until the Son of Man be come. Whatever did he mean? He seems, if you ponder it, to be referring to the second coming. You say the second coming didn't take place during that missionary journey. And finally, as he briefs the disciples, he says, whosoever shall receive a prophet in the name of a prophet, verily I say unto you, shall receive a prophet's reward. And once more, he turns their attention to the time of the Lord's second coming and the rewards. What is our Lord doing? Why, amongst all those, uh, uh, uh, commandments relative to briefing for the task of preaching the gospel, there is this common theme.
As they go to preach, they are to preach against the background of the coming of Messiah and of the day of judgment. Doesn't matter that he won't actually become, return for the second time in their lifetime, that's neither here nor there. They are to preach against the background of that ultimate authority. In knowledge that what they are saying now, perhaps to this man by the wayside, sitting by the wayside, sharing their lunch with him, talking the gospel to him, they are to preach against the background of the final judgment.
That man comes before the final judgment unconverted. The supreme judge must remind him of that conversation by the roadside. It was the word of Christ you preached, yes, and it came through your lips, and in that sense it was your word. And that man in the day of judgment will be required to answer for what he did with your word. Because the power of Christ is delegated to his servants. Man, if he perishes, will perish because, yes, it was the word of God he rejected.
In that other sense, it was the word you brought. It was your word. You see, if we are to preach the word with authority as our Lord preached it, we must preach ever against the background of eternity, the final judgment, the second coming. And I say again what I said at the beginning, it seems to me that sometimes in this modern day people lose their nerves, are afraid to get up in the name of Christ and preach his authoritative word. We are to preach it effectively to others.
It stands to reason, as chapters se- uh, and and nine have told us, we must learn ourselves to obey. We must be prepared for the path of discipleship. We must follow the Lord not only through the initial easy stages, but into those deeper and further parts of the path of discipleship, bringing him into the very center of life, bringing him to those weaknesses that spoil our testimony and spoil our churches. We must know his own authority working out in our own lives that we go and preach it, but when we preach it, our ultimate authority is not, oh, look how good a specimen I am. Our ultimate authority is that final day of judgment.
It is the Lord's word we preach. Now, I've tried to expound that passage superficially enough, I know, but in some sense to show how that those three chapters hang together. I'm now going to take five minutes, ten minutes maybe, uh, just to suggest to you, uh, what the next two major sections of this gospel are about and how they fit into the developing story. I'm not going to expound them. I'm just going to mention their leading themes, in the hope that perhaps, for some at least, I can thereby open a window for further study. And they go like this.
The very next section opens that our Lord began, uh, went around teaching and preaching. You say, yes, well, of course, didn't he always do that? Why mention it specifically, chapter eleven, verse one. When our Lord had made an end of commanding his twelve disciples, he departed then to teach and preach in their cities. You say he always did that, so why mention it now? Why? Because, in a very special sense, teaching and preaching there for was the main thrust of his ministry.
It is set against the background of the great problem of evil, which is illustrated to us by the fact that John was in prison. John the Baptist was in prison. He was in prison because he had rebuked Herod for his immorality, and rebuked Herod for his immorality in the name of the Lord Jesus. John had called upon Herod to repent so that he might prepare for the coming of Messiah, and Herod hadn't repented, and Herod had thrust John into prison. John naturally thought that our Lord would come and get him out of prison. And our Lord would put a stop to this evil in high place by instituting a day of judgment upon Israel.
To John's profound disappointment, our Lord did not do it. And John perished in prison. That little story raises for us the great problem of evil in this world, doesn't it? Why does God allow evil to carry on? And if Jesus is the Messiah, why doesn't he put a stop to evil? The disciples, many of them, were profoundly disappointed. They thought our Lord was going to do like the Maccabees did, that he would raise an army, maybe the armies of Israel, and with divine miraculous power, presently intervene and put down evil.
Our Lord did nothing of the sort. Therefore, they were grievously disappointed. It raises the whole question, doesn't it, what our Lord thought he was about? And therefore, what we are meant to be about in face of the great problem of evil that still exists in our world. If Jesus is the Messiah, in what sense has he come to put down evil, and how does he propose to put down evil? Matthew turns, therefore, to deal with the problem. Yes, Jesus is the Messiah, but in that sense he is not attempting to put down evil.
John, his own forerunner, is allowed to perish. Or to use a parable from chapter thirteen, he does not intend to pluck up the tares now. He's going to let them grow till harvest. Then will come the judgment. Not now. Well, if he isn't going to raise an army like the Maccabees and put down evil by force now, if that's got to wait till the second coming, what is the program for now by which the king shall establish his authority among men. And Matthew now gives us the answer.
He went forward to teach and to preach. To illustrate the same point, he told the parable of the sower. The sower went forth to sow, to establish his kingdom, not by the sword, but by the word. Matthew on the gospel of authority, as applied to the individual, as applied to the world now. This is the gospel of authority.
One day Christ will come again. He will come in power and great glory. He will come to execute the judgments of God and set up his kingdom publicly. That is not what he is doing now. Today is the time of the gospel of his authority. It allows evil to go on. He doesn't repress it by the sword. His tactics for the moment, himself to preach, and then sending out his apostles and servants to preach his word as the sower sows the seed.
Let's just bow our heads and ask God's blessing. We thank thee, Father, then, for these moments spent with thy servant Matthew, as he points us to our blessed Lord and his divine authority, and the gospel that it is to our hearts, the release it brings, the joy it brings, and the power we learn to appropriate from our risen Lord. Bless this word to our hearts, we beseech thee, that entranced and a- a- and uh, attracted to our Lord, we may gladly take his yoke upon us. Help us to be wise, we do beseech thee, in this present age, that we may be wise to our Lord's tactics, that we may do what he wishes us to do, and fearlessly and with full conviction go forth into this world to preach his word as the sower sowing the seed and looking for the ultimate harvest.
Bless us, we beseech thee now, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
