Cascading thoughts 1

So, as I was writing the last post, more thoughts kept coming to me. But I didn't want to drag that thought out into too many rabbit trails!

I was using a portion of a section from Matthew 7 about Yeshua not knowing the workers of lawlessness who thought they knew Him. It is a teaching about being aware of false teachers and the road leading to life being a narrow one. It ends with this verse:

^(AO)And when Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes.
Matthew 7:28-29

I always read that as proof that the scribes were worthless people who were so caught up in "deeds" that they were far away from God and had no real authority. When I read it this time, I saw something different. Notice what Yeshua says a few lines up:

24^(AL) "Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like^(AM) a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. 26And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like^(AN) a foolish man who built his house on the sand. 27And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it."

He doesn't say whoever follows God's words. He says "everyone who hears these words of mine and does them..." The scribes never would have taken that kind of authority. If I remember right, they were teachers of the law, helping those around them to understand God's authority. Yeshua was God.

The point of that last verse wasn't to show the inadequacy of the scribes as worthless religious men, but to show the obvious authority, power and anointing of ha Meshiach. If it is to be taken as the inadequacy of the scribes, it would have to be applied to all teachers of the word, not just Jewish ones. And compared to Messiah, no matter how much of the law teachers or leaders keep or don't, they are and will always be inadequate.

The Authority of Jesus