“Turn in your bibles to Mark 1:21-28.
And what God presents to us in this passage is the authority of Jesus. What authority does Jesus possess? And what does the authority of Jesus compel? When Jesus speaks, what happens?
Mark 1:21-22 And they went into Capernaum, and immediately on the Sabbath [Jesus] entered the synagogue and was teaching. 22 And they were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority, and not as the scribes.
This is not a rebuke against the scribes of Israel, rather an exaltation of Jesus. The scribes of Israel held the responsibility to preserve the OT scriptures by copying them to new scrolls and study the law in order to interpret the correct application and pass down that application to the people so they walked rightly with God. Now, they often inserted their own meaning and laid that heavy burden of manmade commands upon Israel. But even if the scribes interpreted the scriptures correctly, and helped Israel obey the law, the matter presented before us is the nature of the authority of Jesus, not whether the scribes were using their authority rightly or wrongly. Jesus taught as one who had authority, and not as the scribes, point being, Jesus had a different type of authority altogether than the scribes.
Most of you possess some type of authority. Where did that authority come from? Your authority came from a higher authority. Any authority that you possess came from something or someone else. If you have authority at work to make any sort of decision, someone else gave you that authority. Even you own the business, and you are your own boss, you still only have authority from someone else, namely, the government, which allows for business to be conducted in a certain manner.
Unlike us, unlike the scribes, Jesus simply had authority. Why did Jesus have authority? Did anyone give him that authority? Now, before you answer, you might be tempted to go to a place like Matthew 28:18 where Jesus said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” Jesus did receive authority from the Father, as the Son. But Jesus received authority as the Son within the being and activity of the Triune God. So when Jesus speaks, he speaks with the very authority of God, as God, because as Jesus says in John 10:30, “I and the Father are one.” Though Jesus received authority from the Father, his is not a derived authority from something or someone outside of himself. When Jesus speaks, God speaks. When Jesus acts, God acts.”
