Today’s message is about authority, the one subject which everyone questions these days. We 1ive in an age that demonstrates against authority; Students shouting against their college heads; Workers rejecting the authority of Management; People rejecting the authority of Government or even the Law Courts, and almost everywhere the authority of parents, the church, and the Bible. These are not only questioned but totally rejected.
Now of course the temptation is that people who believe in authority try and bolster it up with a threat of force or punishment, some kind of moral or spiritual blackmail.
Pilot was the Governor of Judea and he was speaking for all of us when he said, to a defenceless prisoner who wouldn’t even defend himself, “Don’t you realise I have power to crucify you or set you free?” And the prisoner said, “You have no authority over me except what is given you by God”. The Governor was baffled as were those Russian tanks in the rape of Czechoslovakia in 1968, when a student immersed himself in petrol and then proceeded to set himself on fire. No power, no tank, has authority against that kind of self-sacrifice, because it recognises a higher authority, a truth greater than any force on earth.
Now we’re going to be thinking about authority again tomorrow, but for today, if you would like to read the essential attitude about authority, the openness to the truth of God, read what Jesus said about becoming like little children, in Matthew Chapter 18, then turn to Luke 10 verse 21. It’ll surprise you.