The Voice of the Author Text: Matthew 7:28-29
Introduction: The End of the Footnotes
Every generation of Christians must learn to distinguish between the voice of God and the echo of God. An echo is a real phenomenon, but it is always derivative, it is always fading, and it has no power to create. The religious world of the first century was a world full of echoes. It was a hall of mirrors where scribes and Pharisees would quote other scribes and Pharisees, who in turn had quoted their revered predecessors. Their entire system was a vast, intricate web of footnotes, a library of commentaries on the law that had grown so dense it had entirely obscured the law itself. It was a religion of scholars, for scholars, by scholars. It was safe, predictable, and utterly dead.
Into this dusty room, Jesus of Nazareth walks in and throws open the windows. The Sermon on the Mount, which concludes with our text, was not another commentary. It was not another echo. It was the sound of the original voice, the voice that spoke the world into existence. And the reaction of the common man was not mild appreciation. It was shock. It was astonishment. They were stunned, not just by what He said, but by the way He said it. They had grown accustomed to the drone of the bureaucrats, the careful qualifications of the academics, and the endless citations of the scribes. And then they heard a King.
This passage is the hinge upon which the entire Sermon on the Mount turns. It is Matthew's inspired commentary on the sermon itself. It explains why this teaching was not just another lecture, but a world-altering event. It was a seismic shift in the spiritual landscape. The people were confronted with the difference between derivative authority and original authority, between the authority of the librarian and the authority of the Author. And that is the same confrontation that faces us today. Do we listen to the Word of God Himself, or do we content ourselves with the endless, powerless chatter of men talking about the Word of God?
The Text
Now it happened that when Jesus had finished these words, the crowds were astonished at His teaching; for He was teaching them as one having authority, and not as their scribes.
(Matthew 7:28-29 LSB)
The Finished Word (v. 28)
We begin with the first part of verse 28:
"Now it happened that when Jesus had finished these words, the crowds were astonished at His teaching..." (Matthew 7:28)
Matthew tells us that Jesus had "finished these words." This is more than just a literary device to signal the end of a speech. The Sermon on the Mount is not a collection of helpful hints or pious suggestions for self-improvement. It is the constitution of the Kingdom of God. It is the law of the new covenant. Jesus, the new and greater Moses, has come down from the mountain, not with tablets of stone, but with the law written on the heart. These are not proposals; they are pronouncements. They are the foundational, legislative words of the King.
And because these are the words of the King, they are performative. They do what they say. When God speaks, reality rearranges itself to comply. When Jesus finished these words, He had not just concluded a lecture; He had established a new reality. He had defined the character of His citizens, the nature of true righteousness, and the foundation upon which a life must be built to withstand the judgment of God. He spoke of a narrow gate and a wide gate, of good trees and bad trees, of rock and of sand. He was not philosophizing; He was creating a great divide. He was sorting.
The reaction of the crowds was astonishment. The Greek word is ekplesso, which means to be struck out of one's senses. They were thunderstruck, blown away. Why? Because they had never heard anything like it. They were used to religion as a known quantity. They knew the rules of the game. You listen to the scribe, the scribe tells you what Rabbi Shammai said in debate with Rabbi Hillel, and you try to parse the details. It was a manageable, predictable, and thoroughly human enterprise. But this was something else entirely. This was not a man telling them about God. This was a man speaking as if He were God. And the force of it knocked them sideways. Their categories were shattered. This was not an incremental improvement on their religion. This was a revolution.
The Nature of True Authority (v. 29)
Matthew then gives us the reason for their astonishment in verse 29.
"...for He was teaching them as one having authority, and not as their scribes." (Matthew 7:29 LSB)
This is the central contrast, and everything hangs on it. The authority of Jesus was not like the authority of the scribes. So what was the authority of the scribes? It was a borrowed authority. It was a second-hand, third-hand, fourth-hand authority. A scribe's authority was entirely dependent on his ability to quote other, previously accepted authorities. He would say, "Rabbi so-and-so taught..." His entire credibility rested on his footnotes. He was a curator in a museum of past opinions. He had no authority in himself. He was a conduit for the traditions of men.
This is the essence of all dead religion. It is a closed circle. Men quote other men who quoted other men, and the living voice of God is nowhere to be found. It is a system built on precedent, not on revelation. It is safe, because no one has to take ultimate responsibility. The scribe is not responsible for the teaching; he is just passing on what he received. This is the spirit of bureaucracy, the spirit of the academy, and the spirit of Pharisaism. It is a system designed to manage God, to tame Him, to put Him in a box of human traditions so that He can be handled without fear and trembling.
But Jesus taught "as one having authority." The Greek word is exousia, which means inherent authority. It is power and right that originates from within. Jesus did not come with footnotes. Throughout the Sermon on the Mount, His refrain was, "You have heard that it was said... But I say to you." He did not appeal to Moses as a higher authority; He spoke as the one who gave Moses the authority in the first place. He did not need to quote the prophets because He was the fulfillment of all the prophets. He did not cite the law as an external document; He spoke as the living Lawgiver.
When the author of a book shows up, he doesn't have to speculate about what the characters meant. He can tell you. Jesus was not offering an interpretation of the Old Testament; He was giving the definitive authorial reading. His authority was not the authority of a scholar; it was the authority of the Creator. He spoke of the Father's will with the intimate knowledge of a Son. He spoke of judgment with the finality of a Judge. He spoke of the kingdom with the sovereignty of a King. The scribes were talking about the text. Jesus was the Text, the living Word made flesh.
Our Astonishment
The crowds were astonished, and we should be too. We live in an age that is drowning in scribal religion. We have Christian bookstores filled with endless books about the Bible, endless commentaries, endless study guides, endless podcasts, a babble of voices all talking about the Word. And much of it is good and helpful. But it is all derivative. It is all secondary. It is all the work of scribes.
The danger is that we can become so accustomed to the echoes that we lose our ear for the voice. We can become so fascinated with the commentaries that we neglect the Text. We can become so comfortable with the traditions of our denomination or our favorite teachers that we substitute them for the raw, untamed authority of Christ Himself speaking in Scripture.
The scribes of our day are those who would blunt the edge of Scripture. They are the ones who say, "Well, the Bible says this, but modern science says that..." They are the ones who say, "We have to understand the text in its historical context, which means it doesn't really apply to us..." They are the ones who build elaborate theological systems that explain away the hard sayings of Jesus. They are the ones who offer us a Christ who is a gentle moral teacher, a revolutionary, or a therapist, anything other than the sovereign King who speaks with absolute authority.
The message of this text is that we must recover our sense of astonishment. We must come to the Word of God, not as academics picking apart a dead text, but as subjects listening to the living voice of our King. His Word still carries the same exousia. It still has the power to shatter our categories, to overthrow our traditions, and to build our lives on the rock. When Jesus speaks, worlds come into being. When Jesus speaks, the dead are raised. When Jesus speaks, sins are forgiven. When Jesus speaks, demons flee.
And when we read the Bible, we are not reading the words of a long-dead founder. We are hearing the living voice of the one who has been given all authority in heaven and on earth. The scribes can only offer you a religion of footnotes, a faith of second-hand reports. But Jesus Christ offers you Himself. He speaks, and if you have ears to hear, you will be astonished. And that astonishment is the beginning of true faith.