Let us turn together to the New Testament as we read in the seventh chapter of Matthew, verses 28 and 29. I have to eat my words this morning because last Sunday I indicated that it was the last exposition in the Sermon on the Mount through these great chapters, Matthew 5 to 7, but one of the wonders and the thrills of preaching is that very often one's views change and I've had it impressed very strongly upon my spirit in these past few days of this week that we cannot leave the Sermon on the Mount without considering the final two verses which are certainly not some kind of useless epilogue to the Sermon on the Mount but are bound up with it and convey to us the final message, as it were, of this great teaching of the Lord Jesus. And so this morning we are turning to these two single verses alone of Matthew 7, verses 28 and 29. When Jesus had finished saying all these things, that is, the amazing teaching, of these three chapters, five, six, and seven, when Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowd were amazed at his teaching, because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law. Thanks be to God for this portion of his own word. Now we are coming this morning as I have indicated to you in my prefatory remarks on the reading itself to the very last exposition in this series on Matthew 6 and Matthew 7 in the Sermon on the Mount and what amazing teaching of the Lord Jesus this has been as we have been considering over a period of many weeks together these remarkable words and sayings of the Lord Jesus. There is a sense in which a sermon like this had never been preached before. And in a true sense, a sermon like this has never been preached since that time when Jesus delivered it on the mountains of Galilee. It is the most amazing teaching, the most remarkable sermon in many ways that has ever been preached and how necessary it has been for us together as a congregation to have gone through these remarkable and mighty things that we might begin to understand them and apply them more fully in our Christian lives and experiences. How humbling this has been to us in terms of the humbling of our pride as we have seen the teaching of Jesus that except our righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees we shall in no way enter into the kingdom of heaven. And how very constructive for us as Christian men and women too as we have considered that these things are only possible for us because we have come to a new relationship with the Lord Jesus who has made it possible, increasingly, for us to live in this way. Now, as we have considered these things in the Sermon on the Mount, they have been, I believe, to many of us, in the words of that old Puritan, Thomas Watson, a piece of spiritual needlework, a very Bible epitomized, he says. a garden of delight through which we have moved on these Sunday mornings together, plucking flowers with which to deck the inner man of the heart. These sayings of Jesus, Watson says, have been the cabinet in which the great jewel, the jewel of great price, has been hidden for us. And they are the golden pot in which the heavenly manna has been stored for us. And so you see, as we consider these things together this morning, there is a real sense in which we cannot bypass the last two verses with which the account of Jesus' teaching in the Sermon on the Mount now concludes. Verses 28 and 29 that give to us the effect of this famous sermon upon those who originally heard it. And you see, the importance of these verses for you and for me this morning is very clear, that they give us an opportunity to consider together the effect which it should always produce in the hearts and minds of those who hear this teaching of Jesus still today. And you see, as you and I consider this this morning, we must come to a conclusion. And it is that these two verses are not a useless kind of epilogue to the Sermon on the Mount, not some inconsequential kind of conclusion to all that has gone before, but they are of greatest importance to us. Because, you see, they direct us to what the original hearers of this sermon were directed to. Not simply the teaching, beloved, but the teacher. Not simply the preaching, but the preacher. Not simply the content of what Jesus gave, but the person who gave this amazing and astounding instruction that we now call the Sermon on the Mount. Now you see, as you have gone through these things with me for these many weeks, you might well have said, why should we listen to these teachings? Why should we seek to obey these commands and injunctions and exhortations and illustrations of our Lord? Are there not many teachers in the world and many teachings? What makes this so unique and so different? And you see, the answer to this question is given to us in these final two verses with which the chapter ends. When Jesus had finished these things, the crowds were amazed because he taught with authority. And so, you see, I believe these two verses call our attention very powerfully to three things that we must consider and which arise from the two verses before us. And the first of them, you will notice, is this, the attitude of the people, the original hearers of Jesus' sermon. When Jesus had finished these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching. Now I want you to consider with me for a moment how important this reaction of the people really was. This attitude of the people. The most famous sermon that the world has ever heard has come to a conclusion. It is finished. The great teaching on the Beatitudes, blessed are the meek and the poor in spirit and those who hunger and thirst after righteousness. Flowing on, you remember, to the duties of disciples to be salt in a world that is going bad, to preserve it from corruption, light in a world that is full of darkness, the distinctive life that the Christian lives in the midst of the world as he deals with his enemies and treats with them, his attitude to marriage and its sanctity, to divorce and its provisions. all these other wonderful things that Jesus expounded and applied. The unveiling of a true religion as opposed to a hypocritical one with true prayer and true self-discipline and true giving to the Lord's service. and all the wonderful teaching on God as the Heavenly Father who so provides for those who love Him that they are not materially minded like the rest of men, but they seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. the solemn warnings with which this sermon concluded about the two roads that are narrow or wide, the two buildings, one with a foundation, one without a foundation, one that crumbles into ruin, and the other that lasts and stands amidst all the fury of the storm. Well then, as you consider these things, you would expect the reaction, wouldn't you, from the crowd, what great teaching is this? What a sermon this has been! Or else the reaction, well, what do you make of this teaching? What do you think about it? But do you notice, beloved, that the core of the reaction is not that at all. They were amazed at his teaching, certainly. But the question on their lips was another one. Who on earth is the teacher for he taught us one, having authority. And beloved, you see, the attitude of the people is so vital in that it underlines for us the uniqueness of what is taking place and the uniqueness of our Christian faith. In every other religion the world has ever known, the important thing is the teaching, isn't it? But in the case of Christianity, you see, the important and fundamental thing, ultimately, is not simply the teaching, but above all, the teacher. And here, in a sense, the teacher is more important even than the teaching itself. Although, finally, we can never, as we recognize, separate the two. Now do you notice then that the attitude of the people focuses in upon two things, the manner of the teaching and then the matter of the teaching. Do you see this, the manner of the teaching? For he taught not as their teachers of the law, but as one having authority. now you see it was very natural that these original hearers of our Saviour's words should begin to compare him with the many teachers that they had heard all through their lives in the synagogues and in the temple the religious teachers of Jewry the scribes and to some extent the Pharisees and the Sadducees the great religious leaders of the nation and they began to compare him as was very natural with what they were familiar in their day-by-day lives and particularly you notice with the scribes the teachers of the law he's not like the teachers of the law that we are familiar with they began to say he's not at all like them he's completely different in the manner in which he teaches now what did they mean well very simply we know that the scribes in Jesus' day and with whom these people were familiar were basically commentators they were basically expositors of the law and the characteristic you see of one of the scribes in these New Testament days was that they were endlessly quoting other authorities for what they said but they never on any occasion uttered a single original thought their language would be something like this Moses commanded us and away they would go or Rabbi so and so said this and that or Rabbi such and such said that and that and they were experts you see not so much in the law itself but in what other men had said about the law they were purveyors of second-hand opinion and some of you here in the congregation are in the legal profession as attorneys and you've been in court and you've witnessed many cases and you know what happens that the lawyer stands up there and he cites certain opinions and certain cases and he appeals to the judge on the light of these precedents and it's all very dry as dust isn't it if you've ever been to some of these legal cases And these men, you see, never claimed any authority of their own at all. Whereas the manner of Jesus' teaching was that he claimed nothing but his own authority. And what amazed these men and women, you see, was that he stood there, not as the commentator and the expositor, but as the legislator. as though this was a second Mount Sinai where the people were being led into the depths and profundities and the wonders of God's law and their eyes were being opened in a new way to see things that they had never seen and never considered before. You have heard that it was said by them of old time, Jesus says, but I say to you and there is nothing, beloved, more remarkable in all the teaching of Jesus than that he commanded and he prohibited and he corrected and he promised entirely on his own authority and on that alone. Now, my dear friends, this is truly remarkable. But do you notice, secondly, that they were amazed not only in the manner of his teaching but about the matter of his teaching. They were amazed at his teaching, Matthew tells us. And I was reminded as I prepared for this Sunday morning service of our own great confession of faith, the Westminster Confession of Faith, in that glorious chapter with which it commences, chapter one, on scripture. and in the later sections of that chapter reminding us of the reasons why we need to attend to the voice of scripture and you will recall this lovely language that is used in the Westminster Confession. The heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy or the powerfulness of the doctrine, the majesty of the style, the consent or the agreement of all the parts, the scope of the whole, which is to give all glory to God, the full discovery it makes of the only way of salvation, the many other incomparable excellences, and the entire perfection thereof, move us to consider the Scriptures with the greatest seriousness. Now you take these very things, beloved, and you apply them to Jesus' teaching. The heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, the scope of the whole, to give all glory to God. No wonder they were amazed and humbled in the presence of this teaching, as well as of the teacher. As you consider the Beatitudes and the salt and light and the real religion, and Jesus' teaching applying to real situations in real life and the vivid illustrations that he provided and the powerful applications that searched into men's consciences. They were amazed at his teaching. And I want to say to you then, in summary, if this was the reaction of those original hearers to this teaching of Jesus, do you find it echoed in your hearts this morning, as we have come through these many Sunday mornings together? Have you said to yourself and within yourself, nothing could be further from complacency Why these words of Jesus and this teaching of Jesus fills me with astonishment and amazement and awe and I'm humbled and I'm instructed and I'm driven to consider these things as of vital and essential and even of eternal importance for my destiny. Well, then you see, secondly, these people were not only driven to consider from Jesus' manner and matter that he was a teacher with authority, but they were driven, you see, to consider, secondly, the authority itself, the authority of the preacher. And this is the second thing. Now, it's very interesting to you and to me, I'm sure, as you consider this great epilogue to the Sermon on the Mount. but the overriding impression that these men and women and probably young people in the great crowd who had listened to his teaching, the great impression that they went away with was concerning the authority of Jesus. The very word that is used here, the Greek word exousia, according to one of the commentators upon this passage, should literally be translated dumbfounded. As he taught with authority, they were amazed. They were dumbfounded. And what you see impressed the crowds above all else was not the manner or the matter, but the person. Because in that person resided a unique authority that they had never witnessed or never experienced before. They had never met anyone like this man. and I wonder if you and I can grasp this fully this morning we've become so used to the idea that Jesus is the Christ and the Son of God and that he taught with authority it's no longer a matter of consideration to us but when you think for a moment who was this preacher? well he was a humble Galilean carpenter who preached the most famous sermon in all of history And he was barely 31 years of age. He wasn't old enough even to be a theological professor in one of the theological seminaries. He'd never written a single book. And yet he had preached a sermon that has influenced in its profundity the whole of the world through nearly 20 centuries now. And when you begin to consider these things, You say to yourself, I am standing in the midst of the extraordinary, of the remarkable, of the unique. I'm standing in the presence of someone whose authority I have never experienced in my life before. And your attention begins to focus upon the person and you say, who is this preacher who can preach in this way? And you see this was the very powerful conviction and impression that was conveyed over all the mass of the crowds along with the disciples who heard Jesus' teaching. Well you see we need to begin to ask ourselves this morning as they began to ask the question doubtless, how did he come by this authority? Who is this preacher? And I want to give you very quickly four or five conclusions from the sermon itself that they must have been driven to as the answer to their question. How did he come by this unique authority? Well you see as you look, you and I look at the Sermon on the Mount it not only contains the direct teaching that Jesus gave in all its wonder and powerfulness but it also contains the most remarkable clues and suggestions as to his identity. And this is one of the most striking things. We have alluded to it occasionally as we've gone through these lengthy expositions together, but here I want to draw it out, however briefly this morning, the clues in the Sermon on the Mount that reveal the identity of the preacher. Now do you notice, first of all, that he taught with authority because he was the Christ? Have you noticed that as we've gone through these remarkable passages of the sermon? There's evidence in several parts of the Sermon on the Mount that Jesus knew himself to be on a mission. Do you remember that great verse in Matthew 5 verse 17? I am come, he says, not to destroy the law or the prophets, but to fulfill them. and not a jot or a tittle, not the slightest smallest letter of the Hebrew alphabet nor punctuation mark would pass away until all was fulfilled. Now that's remarkable, isn't it? I am come, he says. Do you notice immediately he had the sense of mission resting upon him as the burden that drove him to teach in this way. Not I have been born for this, but I am come into the world for this purpose, that the law might be fulfilled in me." Now it's a remarkable statement, not to abolish the law and the prophets, but to fulfill them. And you see what he's saying to us in that single verse of Matthew 5 is this, that all the Old Testament predictions All the old covenant promises, all the types and shadows of the Old Testament converge in a single focus of blinding light upon the person of Jesus. He is not another prophet, you see. He is not even the greatest of the prophets. But he is the one in whom all the prophecies are fulfilled. When I look at Jesus, I see the fulfillment of everything that God has predicted concerning his messenger, the Christ of the Messiah, whom he would send into the world. I am come for this purpose. and Jesus therefore knew himself to be the Christ, God's messenger of Old Testament expectation and what authority therefore clothed him in his public speech and utterances. Now secondly do you notice that in the Sermon on the Mount is the clue that he had authority as Lord there is the remarkable section to take only one example in chapter 7 verses 21 and 22 which we were considering just a few Sundays ago where you remember he describes the judgment day and people will come before him and they will begin to say to him what? Lord! Lord! have we not eaten and drunk in your presence and in your name we have done all these wonderful works and he begins to deal with that situation as we saw But do you notice how they address him? Lord! Lord! Now, you see, this is not the common designation that would be used of an ordinary teacher, which would be Rabbi, Rabbi, or Sir, Sir in the Greek. He's not someone simply to be respected, you see, in the eyes of these men who stand before him on the Judgment Day. But he is someone to be obeyed. He is the Lord. He has authority. And there is a suggestion in that, as we will see in a moment, that he is also God, that he is divine. He is more than a teacher, you see, giving advice which people might take or refuse to take according to their whim. But he is a master, issuing commands, expecting obedience. And on people's response to him rests their eternal destiny. My dear friend, have you considered this? He is the Christ, but he is also the Lord. And to say to him, Lord, Lord, carries us a whole universe beyond saying to him, Rabbi, Rabbi. Now thirdly, do you notice that in this sermon there is his authority as Savior? Well, this may not be so directly here in the sermon, but it's certainly there by implication. It's all through the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount. When, for example, he pronounces these wonderful ninefold beatitudes, blessed are the meek, blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, and so on. He declares, on the one hand, who are blessed, and on the other hand, who are not. He declares in another part of the sermon, here is the narrow road that leads to the hard way, but ends in life. And on the other hand, here is the broad road that has no curves to it, that is the easy way, but it leads to destruction. He descends upon the two houses, one without a foundation, the other with a foundation. One that survives, the other that collapses into ruins. And all through this teaching, you see, is the implication that he not only knows the way of salvation and is setting it out for us, but that he actually is the one who bestows it. And you see, he's come not merely to outline the teaching of salvation in the Sermon on the Mount, but actually to give it to men, to bestow it upon them, to make it possible. And you see, all through this sermon, as you and I have been experiencing it, it is Jesus who brings us, isn't it, to brokenness of heart. It is Jesus who, looking over the congregation, sees the averted head as the Spirit says, you are the man, who sees the silent falling of the tear, who sees the blush on the cheek of the sinner. and it is Jesus who begins through his word to bring us to the very gates of salvation as we are convinced of our sin and of our need and of his righteousness and of his graciousness to receive us his authority as saviour is woven into the very web and woof of this great sermon but then there's a fourth thing, his authority as judge It's John Stott in his commentary on the Sermon on the Mount who says that the sermon was preached against the somber background of the coming day of judgment. Well, we've seen that as we've worked through these parts of the sermon on these Sunday mornings. again and again Jesus urges men to consider what he is saying because one day they will stand in his presence and he will pass judgment upon their lives and with whatever judgment he passes their eternal destiny is forever settled well have you ever heard a rabbi or a teacher say anything like that? look at the great religions of the world look at Mohammed, look at Buddha Look at the founder of the Mormon sect today. All that they could say finally was, I am a signpost. I believe this is the way that you are to live. These are the things that you are to follow. This is what you are to believe. But never once did these men stand before their peers and say, depending upon your reaction to my teaching, I will judge you in the last day. And here you see as Jesus sets out the conditions of salvation and warns against the causes of destruction, he is warning in the role of the judge of men's eternal destiny. You see it so clearly in chapter 7, verses 22 and 23. It is no light thing, beloved. what we think of Jesus' teaching. The word which I have declared to you, he said in John 12, verse 28, the same will judge you in the great day, in the last day. The carpenter of Nazareth, the central figure in the last day at the judgment seat. Well, finally you notice His authority was not only as the Christ and as Lord and as Saviour and as Judge, but above all as the Son of God Himself. O my friends, as we have been through these great passages, as He has spoken in such a familiar way of His Heavenly Father, as He has revealed counsels that only a divine person could have known, have we not stood in awe before these passages as He taught His disciples and said here is one who is so unique he is the very son of God himself did you notice in the body of this sermon on the mount just to take one example that he taught his disciples that your heavenly father will provide for you and in the Lord's prayer he taught them to say our father who is in heaven but that he never associated himself with that designation of God's, that it was always and everywhere, my Father, in an utterly unique and different sense. It is the will of my Father in heaven, he said. And so he comes before us in this sermon supremely as the Son of God himself. who controls the judgment day and determines the resting place of men and women according to their reaction to him and to his teaching. Well then I ask you as I finish this section, is this your view of Jesus this morning? You know all through the Christian Church, and particularly in those liberal sections of it, theologically speaking, men and women in all their foolishness have said, Oh, give me the simple teaching of the Sermon on the Mount, these great moral maxims by which I need to order my life, but don't take me into the theology of the New Testament. Don't take me into all these teachings of the Apostle Paul that have complicated salvation, that have taught me the need of the cross, and a Saviour and everything else? Do you feel like that this morning? Well, I want to tell you, my dear friend, that you are greatly mistaken. Here in this Sermon on the Mount is the clearest description that we could ever desire of one who is utterly unique as the Christ, as the Lord, as the Saviour, as the Judge, as the very Son of God Himself. And this is the ultimate sanction for every word that he spoke, for every sentence that fell from his lips. Oh, my dear friends, this morning we are not in the presence of some petty fogging scribe, but we are here in the presence of the Lord of Scripture, the legislator in whom our salvation rests, the very Word of God Himself. And as the writer to the Hebrews reminds us, God, who at sundry times and in divers ways spoke to our fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken to us by his Son, the very Word of God himself. And we have been in the presence of this. Now my dear friend, how do you stand in the light of this? Have you felt in your spirit the majesty and the awe of Jesus in all the authority of his teaching? Well thirdly and finally I conclude this morning by reminding you that in these verses there is not only the attitude of the people and the authority of the preacher, but there is his absolute perfection. his absolute perfection. I want to remind you that all that we have been through on these Sunday mornings have not been spoken by some intellectual in a university setting, not by some great religious guru who is placarding his most recent theories, not by some person who is skilled in a debating society, or by some legal expert who takes us into all the intricacies of a legal situation. But these are the words of a man who embodied everything that he taught in his own life. Have you considered that? This is what impressed these people. that here was a man of absolute integrity and absolute perfection. Here is one speaking to us, they would have said, in whose life there is utter consistency with everything that he has taught. And I'm reminded of those great words of Edward Denny in his hymn, what grace, O Lord, and beauty shone in all thy steps below, what patient love was seen in all by life and death of woe. He epitomized, you see, in his own life and experience, every word that fell from his lips. And this is the authority that they felt. You think of those disciples who had been with him already many months, and they had not found a single fault in him. They had never seen him yield to evil. He was always master of every situation. He was always perfectly self-controlled, even in the midst of the greatest provocation of his enemies. And he knew God better than anyone else. they had ever met. And such a sermon as they had never heard before fell from the lips of a man who was absolutely perfect. Unsullied holiness, unspotted righteousness, absolute perfection. My dear friends, as I finish this morning, where does it leave us? I say to myself, but Lord, I am not like this. And I am convicted of many sins and of many failures and shortcomings of the most serious nature. And I know that I shall have to give account one day before that awful and solemn judgment seat of God concerning the heart-searching lessons of this sermon and what I have done with them or not done with them. And this is where my Saviour, you see, comes to me and speaks with all authority. And he shows that he has condemned once and for all in this sermon every human endeavor that is undertaken as a means of leading to salvation. He has condemned man's natural ability to put himself right with God. And he has shown me in all this teaching of wondrous authority that he came to be the Saviour, that He came to impart the new birth that leads men and women into a new relationship with Him, so that what was otherwise impossible for them becomes possible. That He has come to make this new relationship with God possible by His own life of obedience, by His own suffering death upon the cross. And beloved, as you have sat here on these Sunday mornings, through all these sessions in the Sermon on the Mount, he has seen that averted head. He has watched the silent tear trickle down the face. He has seen the hidden blush of shame and he has observed it and he comes, beloved, and he says, I died for you. I gave myself for you. In order that on that great day you might not come before me and I might have to say of you, depart from me, you workers of iniquity, into the destiny that is appointed for you. But rather come, beloved of my Father, and inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. Oh, my friends, this morning he has come to establish a new humanity. He is God's new man, and all who are united with him here will one day stand with him there in the world to come, justified freely from all their sins by his redeeming blood, as men and women in whose lives the Spirit has more and more been producing the fruits of righteousness based upon the Sermon on the Mount. This life begins at the cross, it continues in loving subjection to him, and it will come to its fruition and consummation in the glory above, when we stand with him forever and ever, who taught with authority and amazed those who heard him and was himself the epitome of absolute and peerless perfection let us pray Our Father in heaven, as we stand in the midst of these things, what shall we say but that our hearts are searched and our minds amazed that this teaching should be given to us and we should be so privileged to be able to hear it, and attend it, and by the Spirit's empowering and presence, obey it with greater and greater consistency. O Heavenly Father, gather up the fruits of these many Sundays in all our lives, and may we be indeed people who are distinctive, the new society, following God's new man, the man Christ Jesus, that we may stand with him there in the glory and be owned by him as those who are his. For his name's sake, amen.