“And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, the people were astonished at his doctrine: for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes” (Mt. 7.28-29).

The sixty-six books of the Bible are the books we regard as being in the canon of Scripture. They constitute the word of God. They are holy writ. In them resides the absolute revealed authority of God to men. It is a grave mistake, however, to suppose that the authority of these books derives from their having been regarded by us as being in the Bible. They do not have authority because we say they have authority; we have recognized them as having authority because they already had it. Our saying they were the word of God did not make them the word of God. Their authority flows not from men or the opinions of men, but from God.

Jesus spoke in an entirely different manner than did the Jews. John Gill notes that the scribes “used to say, when they delivered anything to the people, ‘Our Rabbins, or our wise men say so and so:’ such as were on the side of Hillell made use of his name; and those who were on the side of Shammai made use of his name; scarce ever would they venture to say anything of themselves, but said, ‘The ancient doctors say thus and thus.’” In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus made some truly astonishing statements. In the fifth chapter of Matthew, He several times says, “Ye have heard that it hath been said,” and then quotes Old Testament texts. Then He comments upon those texts and says, “But I say unto you.” He places His own words right along side the Old Testament in authority, and even presumes to say what the meanings of those Scriptures were – but it was not presumption, for He really did have that authority since the words were His words, inspired by the Holy Ghost. Which of us would dare quote Scripture and then begin our remarks, “But I say unto you”? Christ was not contradicting the Old Testament, but He was correcting some misconceptions that were held concerning its meaning. In any case, His language very definitely contains a plain assertion of authority over the Scriptures. No scribe ever spoke with that kind of authority because no scribe had that authority.

There is a difference between giving our views on the Scriptures and giving the Scriptures themselves. Preachers stand before the Lord’s people and expound the Scriptures, but except when we are correctly reading or quoting the Bible, the views we give are our own. Hopefully they are correct, but we have no guarantee that they are correct, for we are but fallible men. The authority of the ministry lies only in the correct expounding of the Scriptures. When we teach the people what the Bible says, we can demand that they obey God’s word. When we give them our view of what the Bible means, our authority is limited by our correctness. IF we are correct in our views of what the Scriptures mean, then our hearers are obligated to give heed to us. However, in order to know if we are correct, they must go right back to the source, like the Bereans, and study the infallible Scriptures to know if what we have asserted regarding the meaning of the Bible is correct. The authority of the Bible lies not in our opinion of it, but in the fact that it is God’s word.

I will close with one of Pappy’s Proverbs: “You may tell me what you think the Bible means, and you might be wrong; but if you tell me what the Bible says, you will always be right, for the Bible is never wrong.”