With the Federal Election Day looming, we find ourselves inundated with various people trying to convince us that we should cast our votes for them. As we listen to what is being said, we hear a lot of words and a lot of promises. Very often it is couched in a tone that tries to appeal to our emotions, to make a connection.
Occasionally, they are successful. But often we are able to see through their pitch and their words fail to have any lasting impact on us.
I must admit, I find this scenario sad, as we should be able to believe in our leaders and be so engaged that we hang from every word.
However, when we do hear one of our political leaders speak with a sense of authority, we gravitate to their words like a child being drawn towards an ice cream!
Being drawn towards someone who speaks in such a manner was something that impacted me when I recently read the following verse from the New Testament passage of Matthew 7:29, talking about how people received the words and teachings of Jesus. This passage states that “He taught as one who had authority, and not like the teachers of the law.”
This verse gives the sense that the people of Jesus’ times were drawn to Him by how He spoke as much as what He spoke about. One Bible commentator described it as the people were spellbound by the things Jesus said. The New Testament book of Mark makes a similar comment when it states, “The people were all so amazed that they asked each other, ‘What is this? A new teaching—and with authority!’”
Obviously, it was the authority with which Jesus spoke that arrested people’s attention. Other teachers quoted authorities on various subjects. But Jesus spoke with authority.
What was that authority? An authority imposed from without? No, it was the authority of the facts. Jesus was lifting the meaning of life, the meaning of the laws and principles underlying life. Jesus was speaking in a way that was uncovering Reality, reality with a capital R!
A good many people make the tragic mistake of thinking of Jesus only as a moralist, who imposed a moral code upon humanity, which humanity was not made for. But Jesus was not a moralist in that sense at all. He was, in fact, the Revealer of the nature of Reality. He revealed first the nature and character of God, then went on to show how the very nature and character of God is the ground of both God’s conduct and ours. He then lifted up the laws of effective living which are written into the universe and into every fibre of our being and showed us that there is just no other way to live. It was not imposed idealism, but exposed realism. Reality itself was speaking! No wonder people heard Jesus as one who spoke with authority.
The people realised that when they looked at Jesus, they were looking at life, and He spoke words that took them to the heart of reality.
It is because Jesus spoke and taught with authority that we as a community desire to start each day as a staff and then with the students in a time of devotion. It is during this time we can hear Jesus’ words. These words help us to have a deeper appreciation of the nature and character of God, and we can be drawn into deeper relationship with Him.
What a blessing it is to be able to start each school day with hearing the one who speaks with authority.