The Preacher's Authority
Titus 2:15
Preparing to minister the Word of God week in and week out is such a great adventure. And I cherish every precious hour that I have to study God's Word. I can only plan so much and then I find myself under the compulsion of the Holy Spirit and sometimes my best plans have been laid aside at His bidding. And that's even a more wonderful adventure. I had planned to preach to you this morning on Titus chapter 2, just the last verse, verse 15, and then go right in to chapter 3 and cover several verses that really associate very well with verse 15. As I began to prepare for the message early in the week, I started by reading through verse 15 of Titus chapter 2 and I never got pass that verse. I read it and it hit me like a thunderbolt. And I read it again and again and by the time I had finished reading it I had memorized it inadvertently and that meant that everywhere I went and whatever I was doing it kept going over and over in my mind. "These things speak and exhort and reprove with all authority, let no one disregard you." And it just hit me that this is a statement about the preacher's authority...speak and exhort and reprove with all authority, let no one disregard you.
That is such a strong statement about authority. And the longer I thought about it and meditated on it, the stronger mandate it became to my own heart, to every preacher. The more I thought about it the more searching and the more compelling it became. And I began to think about the fact that the preacher is not a story teller. He is not really theologizing. He is not sharing insights. He's not counseling. He's not even just passing on facts. If he does what he is called to do he is speaking with authority...in fact, with all authority. That is to say all authority available to him is brought to bear in the exercise of his speaking and exhorting and reproving. And no one is allowed to justify or rationalize or evade what he says.
To realize that one has such authority is on the one hand exhilarating and on the other hand frightening. I began to think about what an unusual God‑given privilege preaching is. And because it carries this kind of authority, what an immense responsibility it is.
To go a little bit deeper I began to look closely at the word "authority." It's the word epitage in Greek. It appears a number of times in the New Testament. Every other time it is translated commandment or command. This is the only place the translators chose to use the word authority but it does convey the idea. It has the idea of commanding. The one who speaks, Paul says here to Titus, is to speak in the tone of commanding. We're not making suggestions. We're not just giving insights. We're not quote/unquote sharing thoughts. We're not passing on facts. We're not clarifying doctrine. All of those things may be components but the end effect is to command and to command really three things...that you hear, which implies to understand; that you believe; and that you obey. Speaking should bring about the first, that is that you hear. Exhorting should assist that you believe. And reproving should assist that you obey. So we are exercising a very unusual responsibility, speaking to you with authority so that you understand and you believe and you obey.
Paul said much the same back in verse 1 of chapter 2 of Titus, although not with the mention of authority, when he said, "But as for you, speak the things which are fitting for sound doctrine." And what does that involve? Telling the older men to be temperate, dignified, sensible, sound in faith and love and perseverance. That's a command. And telling the older women to be reverent and not malicious gossips and not enslaved to much wine and teaching what is good. That's a command. And telling the younger women to love their husbands, love their children, be sensible, pure, workers at home, kind, subject to their husbands that the Word of God may not be dishonored. That is a command. And then command the young people to be sensible and you set an example of what that means in good deeds with purity and doctrine, dignified, sound in speech which is beyond reproach and so forth. And then you command the bondslaves to be subject to their own masters in everything, verse 9, well pleasing, not argumentative, not pilfering but showing all good faith.
Preaching is commanding. It is speaking and exhorting and reproving with all authority and not allowing anyone to get around what you have said, periphroneo, to think around it, to rationalize, justify, evade, elude. Paul said to Timothy in 1 Timothy 4:11, "Command and teach these things." And then he said, "Be an example of them" in the next verse, and don't let anybody look down on your youth. Don't let anybody say to you you're too young to tell us that, you have the authority. Paul is telling Titus, and I think all of us who preach, that the preacher is one who commands, who must command. There is a teaching component, there is a theologizing component, there is a component of sympathy and empathy and identification, but in the end all of that leads to the point of command. A preacher then is to speak with full authority, demanding that people hear and believe and obey.
And, of course, the model of all of that would be our Lord Jesus Christ. Go back to Matthew chapter 7. Matthew chapter 7 verse 29, Jesus had just completed the Sermon on the Mount and the people were frankly amazed at His teaching and what amazed them verse 29 says was that He was teaching them as one having authority and not as their scribes. Scribes had viewpoints. Scribes had opinions but Jesus had authority. He commanded. He demanded.
The gospel of Mark, Mark wants to be sure that no one misses this note of Jesus' preaching so in Mark chapter 1 and verse 22 after Jesus had entered the synagogue and began to speak there, verse 22 of Mark 1 says they were amazed at His teaching for He was teaching them as one having authority and not as the scribes. Again the remarkable note about Jesus was He was not offering insights, He was not offering viewpoints, He was not giving suggestions and perspectives, He was commanding with authority.
In Luke's gospel chapter 4 and verse 36, amazement came on all the people and they began discussing with one another saying, "What is this message? For with authority and power He commands the unclean spirits and they come out." Everything about Him was powerful and authoritative and commanding and demanding. And in John 7:46 they said, "Never a man spake like this man."
It all came to a head, this matter of authority. In Mark 11:28 the leaders of Israel came to Jesus one day and they said to Him simply this, "By what authority do You do what You do?" What is Your authority? You never quote a rabbi. You never quote a professor or a teacher. You never identify with any Jewish school of thought. Where do You get your authority? You not only command men but You command demons. Where do You get Your authority?
Was it the same kind of authority that they had? No. Where did the Jews get their authority? Two thousand years of tradition. Jesus paid no attention to that. In fact, He said, "You have heard it said by them of old such and such, but I say unto you...." He rejected their two thousand years of tradition. Was His authority the current Jewish theology? No. He went contrary and across the grain of all of their extant theology. Was His authority some...some noble rabbi of the past? No. He paid no attention to any rabbinical teaching of the past except to set Himself against it. Was His authority the populous? That is did He speak for the majority? No, not at all. Was there some current obscure teacher somewhere who had discovered some things which Jesus was now taking and sharing? No. Was His authority that He attended some school somewhere and sat at the feet of some erudite individuals? No. Was His authority in His style or His looks or His voice or His skill as a communicator? Was it in some office that He bore or some title that He had acquired? No.
What was His authority? They wanted to know. How could He speak like this? There weren't any footnotes in His sermons. They didn't quote anybody. And everything He said was commanding and demanding and final and absolute. He gave the answer and it's recorded for us in John's gospel, look at chapter 7. This is where His authority came from. John chapter 7 verse 14, "It was now the midst of the feast and Jesus went to the temple and began to teach." And the Jews were marveling again because He was so learned but He had never been educated. They were overwhelmed at His erudition. They knew He was learned. They also knew He hadn't been to their schools. "Jesus therefore answered them and He said, My teaching is not Mine but His who sent Me. If any man is willing to do His will he shall know of the teaching whether it is of God or whether I speak for Myself. He who speaks from himself seeks his own glory, he who is seeking the glory of the one who sent him, he is true and there is no unrighteousness in him."
What Jesus said was very simple. My authority is this, I speak the words of God. My teaching is not Mine, it is His who sent Me. Dear friends, I submit to you that if that was Jesus' pattern and He was deity, how could any man assume to teach anything of his own? If I speak, it must be the Word of God.
Chapter 8 of John's gospel, just to make certain that no one misses this, Jesus answers these queries repeatedly with basically the same answer. Verse 28 of John 8, "Jesus therefore said, When you lift up the Son of Man then you will know that I am He and I do nothing on My own initiative, but I speak these things as the Father taught Me." Verse 38, "I speak the things which I've seen with My Father." Verse 40, "But as it is you're seeking to kill Me, a man who has told you the truth which I heard from God." Chapter 12 verse 49, "I do not speak on My own initiative but the Father Himself who sent Me has given Me commandment what to say and what to speak and I know that His commandment is eternal life therefore the things I speak I speak just as the Father has told Me." There, my friend, is the preacher's mandate, is it not? Then you can say what verse 48 says, "He who rejects Me and does not receive My sayings has one who judges him, the Word I spoke is what will judge him at the last day." If I speak for God, you better listen because if you don't hear, believe and obey, the Word which you heard will judge you.
You see, the preacher has authority if and only if he speaks the Word of God. Let me say it even stronger. The preacher has no authority outside the Bible...none. I have no authority beyond Scripture, no preacher does. The only authority I have is the Word of God. To preach then is to preach the Word of God. To preach the Word of God is to preach with authority. To preach with authority is to command. Therefore, to preach is to command. And that's what preachers are supposed to do.
Bruce Shelley(?), a church historian, wrote it, "If God lives as the followers of Christ assert, then man's existence is transformed into a destiny not of his own making. His life and liberty are suddenly circumscribed with the will of God," end quote.
Men are under the authority of God. The commands of that authority are given to us in the Bible and in the Bible alone and preachers are to proclaim that and only that. And so when Paul writes to Titus and says, "These things that I have been giving you, these commands that come authoritatively from God in chapter 1, chapter 2 and even more to come in chapter 3, these things which fit sound doctrine, all of this revelation from God you are to speak and you are to exhort and you are to reprove with all authority and let no one disregard you." He is giving the mandate for every preacher. We preach with authority. We command men by Scripture to hear, believe and obey. That is our authority.
That is a very very central and essential matter in preaching. We are not story tellers. We are not just counselors. We are not just purveyors of fact. We are commanders who stand in the place of God reiterating His own commands. This is our authority and our only authority. I'll say that again. Our only authority, I have no authority beyond Scripture. I may have some practical insight, I might have some good ideas, nothing more. I have no authority. I can only speak for God when I speak His Word.
Now some have misunderstood this, many, and misrepresented it. And I want to dwell on this concept for a little bit because I think it will be helpful for you to get a perspective on this.
There are many today frankly who go beyond the bounds of biblical authority. And they imagine themselves to have another kind of authority beyond Scripture which is an illusion if not a blasphemy. Such mistaken authority, I suppose, could fall into four categories...okay? And I'll give you these four and you could probably think of some other sub‑categories to these but I think these would maybe sum up the four general categories of mistaken authority that you see in the framework of Christianity.
First of all, the false authority from personal power...personal power. Some men think that they have in themselves because they are preachers some Messianic or some apostolic power and that they can do what Jesus did and they can do what the Apostles did. You see this particularly in the "name it and claim it" group of the Charismatic Movement or in the "signs and wonders" segment of it or in the spiritual warfare dimension. These people who believe they have a Messianic and Apostolic authority over Satan, demons and even holy angels can be called to their bidding and even God can be cornered and things demanded out of Him so that they assume themselves to have some great personal supernatural power certainly beyond Scripture. And you hear them often commanding Satan, speaking to Satan, demanding him to do this or do that or stay away or go away or tie himself up, you hear them speaking to demons demanding and commanding demons, you see them taking authority over disease over here and authority over illness and we take authority over cancer and authority over death and authority over angels and we call the angels to this and we...we take authority, as it were, over our rights before God and they are even impinging upon the freedom of God to operate within the framework of His own will and demand that God do for them what they assume He has to do. They are commanding where they have no authority. They are commanding where they have no jurisdiction whatsoever.
That should have been readily apparent by a very cursory reading of the New Testament. In Matthew chapter 10 obviously Jesus had this power but He, of course, was God. It says that He gave this power to the twelve disciples. In Matthew chapter 10 He summoned His twelve disciples, gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, to heal every kind of disease and every kind of sickness. So He gave to the disciples the authority or the power to heal disease and to cast out demons. In Mark's gospel, chapter 3, we have the similar record in verse 15 that He gave to them the responsibility to preach and to have authority to cast out demons. And you find again in Luke's gospel chapter 9 and verse 1 the very same thing...He called the Twelve together, gave them power and authority over all the demons and to heal diseases and sent them out to proclaim the Kingdom of God and to perform healing.
This was for Christ to do and for the Apostles to do. This was not for everyone. This belonged to them. These are what Paul in his letter to the Corinthians called the signs of an Apostle. And the best proof I know of that is found in a wonderful little vignette in the nineteenth chapter of the book of Acts. And here the Apostle Paul is doing miracles. I mean, they are just amazing in volume in the nineteenth chapter of Acts, verse 11 Paul is performing extraordinary miracles and by the power of God, of course, handkerchiefs and aprons are carried from his body to the sick and the disease has left them and evil spirits went out. So he was doing exactly what Apostles had been given the power to do, he being the last of the Apostles, sort of out of due season, as he says.
But verse 13, "Some of the Jewish exorcists who went from place to place attempting to name over those who had the evil spirits the name of the Lord Jesus saying, I adjure you by Jesus whom Paul preaches," so here were these guys going around trying to do what Paul did in the name of Jesus. They were seven in number, seven sons of somebody named Sceva who was a Jewish chief priest and they were doing this. And they had this illusion of authority based on their personal power. And I love verse 15, "And the evil spirit answered these seven guys and said to them, I recognize Jesus and I know about Paul but who are you?" What an incredible rebuttal. If you think we have to react to you, you've got another think coming, friend. "And the man in whom was the evil spirit leaped on them and subdued all of them and overpowered them so that they fled out of the house naked and wounded." The demon gave the man strength and he ripped up all seven of them. Jesus I know and Paul I know but who are you guys? The illusion of apostolic authority.
Some even think they have personal power to forgive sin. You find this in the Roman Catholic Church. They think they can do what Mark 2:10 says Jesus does, He has the power to forgive sin. They think that they can forgive the sins of people, they can grant them absolution through some mechanical means like confession or the saying of so many rosary beads or some other mechanism that brings about ablutions from sin and the church. They think that somehow they can say some incantations over an individual just prior to thei