Friends; Jesus spoke with authority that infuriated some and stunned everyone else. It was amazing.  Have a super week … Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #952

February 11, 2025

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Amazing Authority

By Bob Walters

“When Jesus finished … the crowds were amazed at his teaching …because he taught with authority, and not as their teachers of the law.” – Matthew 7:28-29

At our E91 Christian Church, adult Sunday school classes are aptly called “Adult Bible Fellowships” – ABFs – because their reach far exceeds Sunday mornings.

Larger churches, generally, need to build in the smallness of tight communities of Bible study with intimate knowledge and caring for each other.  Our Logos class, which I’ve been a part of since 2002 (I was baptized in late 2001), 53 years ago started as a group of young parents. Today we are all grand- and even great-grand parents. Anyone not yet on Medicare would be considered the youth group.

While there are strong social and service aspects in all our ABFs, teaching and amplifying scripture to deepen relationship with Jesus and each other is our core objective; our mission being to constantly mature in faith in Christ as Lord and Savior.

That’s something that requires fellowship to accomplish. “Small Groups” often emanate from larger ABF relationships, as we “do life together” sharing joys and challenges. Small groups of 10-12 are common features of any vibrant, Jesus-focused, Bible-based church.  Everybody gets in the act of study, sharing, serving, and teaching.

Anyway, we had a good session in Logos ABF last Sunday discussing the familiar Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6:9-13. It is part of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-6-7 and recast in Luke 6:17-49). The prayer appears again, shortened, in Luke 11:2-4

Logos had a guest teacher, Andy Baker, a missions leader at E91, filling in for regular teacher Dave Schlueter (a retired physician who is warming up in southern Florida for a couple of these winter months). Like Dave, Andy is one of those guys who gets everyone thinking and (especially me) talking, and noticing fresh dimensions of even the most familiar passages.

The authority Jesus invoked in his teaching – as noted in Matthew 7:28-29 above – would truly have been amazing to his first-century listeners.  We recite the prayer now as Christians almost by rote. Jews would have been shocked by the whole sermon.

Practically everything Jesus said was virtually opposite the demands of the Law. Reading the Gospels today as a believing Christian is an exercise in affirming what we generally already know.  A pious, Law-obedient Jew, then, would never turn the other cheek, love or forgive an enemy (Matthew 5:38-47), or bless the poor, the mourner, the meek, the hungry, or the persecuted (Beatitudes, Matthew 5:2-11).

The merciful, pure of heart, and peacemakers (Matthew 5:7-9) would envisage Jesus, but be antithetical to the Law’s insistence on righteousness and vengeance.

Does that mean God changed when Jesus arrived?  No, the Covenant changed. The Law, God always knew, was what man could not do.  Jesus, God knew, replaced the non-saving obedience of Law with salvation by faith.  Man could not recover his lost relationship with God through the Law; God’s loving perseverance – in Jesus, His Son – now invited and demanded man’s faith. The Law was true, but Jesus was the truth.

Did Jews have faith?  Absolutely. Could they save themselves through works?  No. And neither can we.  Salvation is in the gracious and amazing authority of Jesus.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) notes that Jesus’s parables typically undo the Law.

Spirituality Column #430
February 10, 2015
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville-Fishers-Zionsville

By Bob Walters

Jesus wept.  Peter wept.  Mary wept.

Overwhelmed by love.  Devastated by shame.  Consumed with mourning.

From Genesis to Revelation, there is a whole lot of crying in the Bible for a whole lot of different reasons.  People cry out to the Lord in despair and pain.  God is beseeched amid the fallen world’s groaning chaos.

But blessedly, if only occasionally, like our Lord we cry to express our love.

Jesus dearly loved His friends Mary, Martha and Lazarus.  As Jesus reacted to the sadness of the two sisters at the death of their brother (Luke 11), we see the overwhelming love Jesus feels for all mankind as we deal daily with our down-fallenness.  Jesus knows what He is about to do – raise Lazarus from the grave.  He also knows what this act sets in motion – the frenzied ire of the priests who within days will insist that Jesus be crucified by the Romans.  Jesus also knows why He is going to the cross – for the redemption of mankind from sin, the defeat of eternal death, the rekindling of our fellowship with our Creator, and our adoption into the Kingdom of God.  Jesus weeps for all of us, because He loves all of us.

Peter wept because He had blown it.  He had blown it big.  He loved Jesus, but hated himself when his fear of the Sanhedrin (Matthew 26:57-75) surpassed his customary open bravado of identifying Jesus as the Messiah Christ, the Son of God.  In his weakness, Peter’s witness wobbled; his shame thundered in devastating cries.

Mary loved her son Jesus.  She knew from the angels before His birth that He was the glorious savior of mankind.  Yet she mourned His death on the cross and wept at His grave; convinced of her loss, consumed in her sadness and undoubtedly confused by His death and disappearance.  How much faith do we really have that Jesus is our “all in all”?  Too often, not enough.

The Bible contains roughly 400 references to all manner of weeping, wailing, crying and crying out.  It is obviously man’s natural reaction to great desperation and frustration.  Jesus presents a nearly unique dynamic of weeping as a sign of love.  (We also see it in Genesis 43:30, where Joseph weeps – albeit privately – at the sight of his beloved brother Benjamin.)

We can cry and curse, or we can weep for joy.  We can lament humanity, or glorify God by crying out in great praise.

Never forget that weeping can be a superior, though too rare, expression of love.

So I ask you … what are you crying about?

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) notices that crying can be evidence of either a soft heart or a hard head.