Today we will conclude our two year journey through the Sermon on the Mount. The conclusion of this series could not possibly touch everything we have tried to learn over the last two years so we have to conclude with a final look at the Teacher. Matthew tells us that when Jesus had concluded the Sermon on the Mount that the people that had heard Him were amazed by His authority. As they walked away, as they followed Him down the mountain they were not just talking to each other about the things that Jesus had said, they talked to each other about Jesus Himself. His teaching had revealed His heart, His character, His identity and most of all His authority. When we see Jesus as He truly is, as the “image of the invisible God” as Paul wrote in Colossians 1, there must be response of amazement in our hearts. Matthew focuses us on exactly what had amazed the people that day and I pray that it will be what also amazes us today, he writes that the people were amazed because Jesus taught them “as one having authority”. The authority of Jesus, if we truly understand it can free us to live in Him and like Him. His teaching that day was not like the scribes, which is not an attack on them as teachers, it is a revelation of what they saw in Jesus. The scribes taught by retelling the things they had learned from others but Jesus taught by revealing what He had known of the Father by being His Son. The scribes taught something they had learned, Jesus taught truth He had experienced. The scribes taught from their heads but Jesus taught from His heart, one was the giving of information, the other was the revelation of relationship. The scribes taught the people things about God, Jesus taught them the character of His Father and then, taught the thing that led the religious to want to kill Him and the broken to want to follow Him, He revealed that God was also our Father. His authority is what made them believe Him, it was what made them willing to follow Him, it is what made those opposed want to kill Him, to silence Him because when Jesus spoke you could not simply reject His words, you had to respond to what He said, everything He taught required obedience or disobedience, trust or rejection, submission or rebellion because everything He said was filled with authority and realized as true. Today we will close the Sermon on the Mount by recognizing that the key to denying ourselves, taking up our crosses and following Jesus is found in seeing His authority and giving a response. The people that first heard the Sermon on the Mount were amazed at the authority of the One who had preached it, I pray that our response today will be the same, that we will be completely amazed by the authority of Jesus.