Keep sharing good news without ads.
No description available
The word authority is a controversial one in our day. One evidence of a decline in society is a disregard for true God-given authority. God puts hierarchies in place for the good of society, for order to be present.
The only thing worse than an evil government is no government. A government where anything goes at all times. And we've seen this in our country. We've seen mobs, we've seen anarchy, and not just in our country, but this has happened all over the world.
Governments are a blessing as long as they are done God's way. In this fallen world, there have been good governments down through history. There have been healthy monarchies, but a monarchy is only as good as the king in power at that time.
If a nation or empire had a good king, it would be a pleasant place to live. But if a bad king reigned, the people would moan. This has led wise people down through history to build republics. Republics exist to limit the power of the government.
In republics, the highest authority is the constitution that is written. The leadership must govern without violating the rights given to the citizens. Over the last couple of years, we have seen so much turmoil because we have been under a government that does not really follow the constitution that closely.
And the constitution is there to be a blessing to the people. It's built on biblical principles that give people rights. People do not receive rights from the government. People receive rights from God Almighty.
So governments are healthy when they understand their place. They are not the ultimate authority. They are under the authority of God. But when a government does not carry out their leadership in this way, the question that citizens should always ask is, by what authority are you doing these things?
Now that is government. But what about God's church? Can one run a church any way one wants to? The answer is obviously no. The only way a church can be a true church is if it follows the instructions outlined in the pages of Scripture.
Within the church, there is a leadership structure. The highest leaders within the church are the elders. Later on in our quarterly meeting, we will be voting to put Keith Johnson in this position, along with Mark and I.
Now, shepherds obviously do not have unlimited authority. The authority of the elders are limited based on the Word of God. If shepherds veer from the Bible, our authority goes away. And people in the church have every right to raise concerns with the leadership.
The question from church members should always be, by what authority are you doing these things? The same goes for the home. God has designed the home to be a place where the man leads the house, the husband, the father.
But he must lead the way the Bible tells him to. His leadership should never be domineering, but always the servant leadership outlined in the Bible. But the question should always be, by what authority are you doing these things?
Whether it is government, the church, or the home, this is always the question. The leadership within those God-given institutions must always lead under the authority of God. When a leader leads according to God's design, no one can legitimately question what he does, because what he does, he is doing as God would have him.
This morning, as we continue our sermon series through Matthew, we are going to see Jesus once again confronted by those who thought they were the authority in Israel. And what these religious leaders are going to do is question Jesus' authority.
Something that he has showed over and over again throughout his ministry. At this time, I encourage you to turn in a Bible with me to Matthew 21. We'll be looking at verses 23 -27. And if you're using a red Bible, it's on page 982.
This sermon is titled, By What Authority? And I will begin by reading the text. Matthew 21, verses 23 -27. And when he, Jesus, entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came up to him as he was teaching and said, By what authority are you doing these things?
And who gave you this authority? Jesus answered them. I also will ask you one question. And if you tell me the answer, then I also will tell you by what authority I do these things. The baptism of John.
From where did it come from? From heaven? Or from man? And they discussed it among themselves, saying, if we say from heaven, he will say to us, why then did you not believe him? But if we say from man, we are afraid of the crowd, for they all hold that John was a prophet.
So they answered Jesus, we do not know. And he said to them, neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things. Here's our big idea. Understand where the true authority lies in the world. And I don't mean like tells a falsehood.
Understand where the true authority lies in the world. Where does it belong? We're going to see one practice how in this text. But before we jump in, let me give you a little recap of where we were one Sunday ago.
We looked at verses 18 -22 of Matthew 21. In the passage, Jesus was walking with his disciples and he told the fig tree to wither and suddenly it withered. It was a miracle that was performed by the power of Christ.
But this was not some random display of power to show off. Jesus did this miracle for a purpose. And that purpose was to show his disciples the power that they have in the name of Jesus. And what he tells them is, you see this power that I just showed you?
You have this power and you are able to ask for things and I will give it to you. You are able to move mountains in my name. Now this leads us to our text that we've already read, but now we're going to zero in on.
And I'm going to begin by looking at verse 23 where we read that Jesus enters the temple. And the chief priests and the elders of the people are there and they come up to him. And they ask him, by what authority are you doing these things?
And who gave you this authority? What we read in verse 23 is that after Jesus had gone outside Jerusalem, he returns. And what this verse tells us is that he returns to the temple. Remember, not long before this, we saw this two Sundays ago, Jesus drives out the money changers and those buying and selling from the temple.
And as he enters the temple, the Jewish leadership, namely the chief priests and the elders see him and they ask him a question. As they ask this question, they have on their minds the scene that Jesus just made.
It was quite a scene. We saw it. He took a whip of cords and he drove them out. What the chief priests and elders ask Jesus is by what authority are you doing these things? Who gave you this authority?
When they ask him who gave him the authority to do these things, the phrase, these things, is both broad and narrow. It is broad in the sense that they question everything that he taught and did. As we have seen throughout Matthew, Jesus repeatedly went against the Jewish establishment.
Sometimes you hear someone talk about someone from history and what they say about a particular person is that they say this person was a non-conformist. Jesus, more than anyone in history, was a non-conformist.
Jesus never went with the flow because going with the flow would be sinning. Because the flow of the first century in Israel was corrupt to the core. He couldn't go along with it. What we have seen through Matthew is that what Jesus taught was different than what the Jewish establishment taught.
And the miracles that he performed, the Jewish establishment could not deny. So what they said in Matthew 12 -24 is that it is only by Belzebul, the prince of demons, that this man casts out demons. All the miracles that Jesus did, they attributed as originating from Satan.
This was Jesus' miracles. But they hated everything that he did. They hated that he had this power. They hated what he taught. He was a great teacher that the people wanted to listen to. But what we must understand is that Jesus was far different from the scribes who taught the people.
In the first century, Israel, the Jewish leadership, had an ordination process. Three years ago, I was ordained by the local church, by this church, through our denomination, through their process. In the first century, they had a process.
And of course, if it's corrupt, the process isn't going to be good. The people who taught at this time were called rabbis. And to become a rabbi, they had to go through this ordination process. They would complete the ordination through a process set up by the Sanhedrin.
The Sanhedrin was a group of 71 Jewish leaders. These leaders were from the high priest and his family, the scribes, who were the teachers of the law from the class of the Pharisees. And this group was also made up of lay elders.
They were the most powerful people in Israel under the Romans, who were in power at this time. After going through the Sanhedrin's process of ordination, the candidate would be ordained. There, he would be given the titles rabbi, elder, and judge.
Once he was ordained, he was given the authority to teach the Old Testament and their traditions and even make judgments on religious and civil matters. But Jesus never went through such process put forth by the Sanhedrin.
Jesus was an itinerant preacher, which means that he traveled from place to place preaching. And wherever he went, people followed him. And he taught. He did not need the endorsement of the Sanhedrin to teach.
He had authority. And this authority came from God. As we have seen through Matthew, his preaching drew him large crowds. Tens of thousands of people would listen to him preach. And as you might imagine, and as we've seen, the Jewish leadership was greatly offended.
The people said things about him that they didn't say about the other teachers in Israel. As Matthew recorded at the end of the Sermon on the Mount, the crowds were astonished at his teaching. For he was teaching them as one who had authority and not their scribes.
It was different. When the scribes taught, they're like, okay, we've heard that before.
No big deal.
There's no authority here.
There was no power.
When Jesus taught,.
There was power.
He did it in the power of the Spirit. And the people noticed. It was different. When he spoke, people heard from God. They heard the voice of God. So he didn't go through their silly ordination process.
And he didn't teach what they taught. He contradicted what they taught. Furthermore, Jesus had just driven out the money changers and those buying and selling in the temple. The Jewish leadership let the people carry out this practice.
And Jesus drives them out. Going against their authority. So at the end of verse 23, when they asked Jesus, by what authority are you doing these things? These things is broad. They are talking about his whole ministry.
And what is on the forefront of their minds is what he just did. He drove the money changers and those treating it like a marketplace. He drove them out. And they're upset because they said, people can do this.
They were offended. The chief priests and the elders as their leadership was challenged. Their anger has reached a boiling point as Jesus has been repeatedly challenging their authority. And what they are asking Jesus is, who do you think you are?
What makes you think you can do what you have done? He's a preacher from Nazareth. And he does all these things. Everything he's done has been against the Jewish establishment. And this is why they have been plotting to kill him from the beginning.
As Jesus is in their midst in the temple, they challenge him. What is interesting is that in a parallel passage in John 2 .18, John doesn't really follow the chronology from the beginning of his ministry to the end like Matthew does, but the parallel passage in John is John 2 .18.
These same Jewish leaders ask Jesus, what sign do you show us for doing these things? What they are asking him to do is to perform a miracle. To offer proof that he has authority to do what he has done.
What is helpful about looking at the three other Gospels is that one gives information that the others do not. In John 2 .19 -21, this is how Jesus responds to their challenge of his authority. He says, destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.
The Jews then said, it has taken 46 years to build this temple, and you will raise it up in three days? But he was speaking about the temple of his body. When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this.
So what Jesus is saying is, the authority that I have to do what I have done has already been proved, but it will be proved again when you crucify me and I am raised from the dead. So that is how he responds in John 2.
But let's see how he responds in our text to the question, by what authority are you doing these things? In verse 24 he says, I also will ask you one question, and if you tell me the answer, then I also will tell you by what authority I do these things.
What we see him doing here is doing things on his terms. He does not need to answer them the way they want him to answer. This is so because Jesus knows who he is. And he knows who they are. He knows that he is not under their authority.
So this is how he responds to them. In verses 25 -27. The baptism of John. From where did it come from? From heaven or from man? And they discuss it among themselves. If we say from heaven, he will say to us, why then did you not believe him?
But if we say from man, we are afraid of the crowd. For they all hold that John was a prophet.
Ok.
So Jesus here is doing things on his terms. He is all wise. Two weeks ago I explained that Jesus always does and says the right thing at the right time. In Matthew 10 -16, Jesus has instructed us to follow his example by being as wise as serpents and innocent as doves.
This is the one time in the Bible where something good is said about snakes. What Jesus says is that God created snakes to be wise. And they are wise. There are dumb animals out there. Snakes are not one of them.
They know their environment. They know how to protect themselves. They know how to prey on other animals. They know what they are doing. In the same way, Jesus knows exactly what he is doing here. He operates differently here than he would around other people.
For example, when he is with children in the week, he is kind and gentle. But when he is around the corrupt Jewish leaders who have profaned the name of God through their whole adult lives, Jesus has no problem putting them in their place.
This is what he does in our text. He puts them in their place. He does this by asking them a question. This question puts them in an impossible position. He traps them by asking a question about his friend John.
We know him as John the Baptist. He asks them, from where did the baptism of John come? From heaven or from man? When Jesus says from heaven, what he is saying is that God endorsed John's ministry. We have to remember the ministry of John the Baptist.
John is the forerunner to the Messiah. He was the bridge between Old and New Testaments. His purpose was to prepare the people of Israel for the Messiah. The people would only be ready to receive the Messiah if they first repented and returned to the Lord.
The story of Israel is one of unbelief down through the centuries. The people had been cast out of their land because of their idolatry. Once they were brought back into the land, even then, they were under the authority of other empires and the nation largely rejected God.
The people of Israel had experienced the judgment of God because of their unbelief and now the Messiah was coming and they needed to repent. And so John preached repentance and called the people to be baptized.
Jesus knew, of course, that John's ministry was from God, but the corrupt Jewish leadership did not believe this. They were steeped in their extra-biblical traditions for centuries. They saw John the Baptist and Jesus as those not following the law given by God.
The Jewish leadership truly thought they were the ones following God even though they had fallen off the rails.
Way off the rails.
They formed their own religion that just had some biblical terms attached to it. Their hard hearts had deceived them into thinking that they were the ones on God's side, not John and Jesus. As I think about this, I think about where the 2022 American church is.
There's a divide in the American church and the question is, which side is honoring God and which side is corrupt? The answer to this is obvious when you look at the facts. You have to have lived in a cave over the last five years not to see what's going on.
What we have seen in the American church is a mass drift. A worldly drift. Christian leaders are not getting their cues from the Bible, but from the surrounding secular culture. Some are so blinded by the drift that they see no drift happening.
When one ignores one's conscience so many times, the conscience becomes seared as 1 Timothy 4 says. If Christian leaders, churches, and Christian institutions think there is no drift, what do they think about those saying there is a drift?
The answer is, they don't like them. They don't agree with them. They either call them names or ignore them. Last year I wrote in my Facebook account a comment concerning the Southern Baptist Convention, which is the largest Christian denomination in America.
And what I said was, the leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention eerily resembles the corrupt religious system that Jesus called out in the first century.
As you might imagine,.
This was not a popular post. I had one pastor who graduated from the same seminary that I went to, who pastors in the SBC,.
Who said,.
No liberal drift is happening. What you said is patently false. Every word I said was true. So people like me are saying, there needs to be widespread repentance across the American church. And those being called to repentance think the call is illegitimate.
And what they have done is continue to live within compromised Christianity when they should be going to God in sackcloth and ashes. And I believe the parallel between much of the leadership within American Christianity and the corrupt leadership in first century Judaism is a correct parallel to make.
In both cases, people are using religion to gain power and the benefits like money and fame that come with that power.
And by the way,.
I think there's some people who, I suppose there's some that possibly could be deceived. But there's some evil actors out there, no question about it. Just like in the first century in the American church today, the calls to repentance are ignored and the corrupt leaders continue in their corruption, pushing their corrupt agendas, somehow thinking that they're still following God.
When John Harris was here, someone asked him the question, can you think of one example of an American Christian leader who has repented? And he said,.
Can't think of one.
That's how bad it is. The Jewish leadership in the first century thought that the call to repentance and the baptism of John were illegitimate. They thought they were doing good. They wanted to continue in their corrupt religious system, their man-made, God-dishonoring system.
And as we look at this conversation that Jesus is having with the Jewish leaders, He knows who He's dealing with. They are playing hardball with Him. So He plays hardball in return.
As we have read,.
What Jesus does is ask them a question knowing what they believed. But He asks them the question knowing that they can't answer it. He knows He's dealing with evil people here. He knows how they operate.
He knows the position He's going to put them in. In the second half of verse 25 and verse 26, we learn why they can't answer it. They can't say that John's baptism is from heaven because they clearly rejected John.
And so Jesus will answer them by saying, why then did you not believe in Him? Of course they're not going to answer that way in this state of hard-heartedness. The last thing they want to do is say that John's ministry was legitimate, because if they did that, they would have to admit that their ministry is illegitimate.
It would mean humility. It would mean repentance. And these are the self-righteous people who think that they are good. And we might read this and say, why can't they just say that John's ministry is illegitimate?
And everything he did did not come from God, but from himself. We learn in verse 26 why they can't answer this way either. What they say among themselves is this, if we say from man, we are afraid of the crowd, for they all hold that John was a prophet.
As this conversation is taking place, Jesus and the Jewish leaders are surrounded by a crowd. They can't answer Jesus the way they want to answer Him because they fear what the people will do to them.
The people in large measure had a positive view of John the Baptist. Early on in his ministry, people went to him in droves. How the people viewed John is how the people viewed Jesus when He rode into Jerusalem on that young donkey during the triumphal entry.
Three weeks ago, we saw this episode where the people proclaimed, Hosanna, Son of David! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord. What they were proclaiming is that Jesus is the Messiah, but when asked by the people in Jerusalem who He is, remember, they quickly demoted Jesus.
Oh, He's a prophet from Nazareth. But for a moment, the people thought He was the Messiah. Most of the people at this time did not truly believe in Jesus for who He really was, and therefore did not believe in John for who He really was.
This is a package deal. If you believe in John the way that John's ministry was intended to be, then of course, you're going to believe in Jesus. If you believe in Jesus, that means you believe that John's ministry is legitimate, that He truly was the forerunner to the Messiah.
What went on with the fame of Jesus also went on with the fame of John. Much like Jesus, the masses followed John. Matthew 3, verses 5 and 6 says that Jerusalem and all Judea and all the region about the Jordan were going out to Him.
And they were baptized by Him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. And we don't know how many were legitimate. I mean, there's certainly some false confessions here, but the people still have a favorable view of Him.
In our text, in verse 26, you will notice that it says all the people believed that John was a prophet. So the Jewish leaders were afraid to say that John was for a man because the people, largely speaking, held him in high regard.
The Jewish leaders used to have a stranglehold on the people. The people of Israel did what they said, but ever since John came on the scene, and even worse, when Jesus came on the scene, things had changed.
The people were moving away from this Jewish religious establishment and to these two guys. I mean, John the Baptist was a voice crying out in the wilderness. The clothes he wore was ridiculous.
The food he ate.
Locusts.
Jesus is from Nazareth. And one of Jesus' disciples says, does anything good come out of Nazareth? I mean, you can see how this would attack the pride of the Jewish leaders. These two guys, they haven't been trained.
They haven't gone through this rabbinical process of ordination. And here they are, getting a lot more people coming to them than to these Jewish leaders. And as this conversation is happening between Jesus and the chief priests and elders, there's a crowd around them.
They're in a trap. Jesus put them in an impossible situation. They are caught between a rock and a hard place. There's no way out. But there is a third option. And the third option is not a good option, but it's better than the first two options.
And so they go with the third option in the beginning of verse 27. They answer Jesus,.
We do not know.
We don't know if John's ministry is legitimate or not. This is the best they could do and what a weak response it was. Any thinking person should be asking the question, if the Jewish leaders cannot give a verdict on whether John is from God or man, how could they possibly give a verdict on whether Jesus is from God or man?
The answer is obvious. They cannot. And they have lost any voice they have with the people. Sometimes leaders lose credibility. And when a leader loses credibility, it's very hard to get it back. It might never be brought back.
And at this point, it's clear that these Jewish leaders have lost all credibility. These are not people that the Jewish people, the common people, can trust to make judgments on important religious matters.
The fact they don't respond the way that they should is disqualifying, because they are being dishonest to cover for themselves. Any chance of the Jewish leaders putting Jesus to death with the approval of the masses is gone.
The only way they are going to put Jesus to death is by doing it in secret. And we will see them do that as His arrest and trial will not be before the masses of people who followed Him during His ministry.
It will be before the Sanhedrin. And then Pilate. What you must understand is that as the Jewish leaders ask Jesus the question from verse 23, by what authority are you doing these things and who gave you this authority?
They already know what He thinks of Himself. They know that Jesus believes all His authority comes from God. But it is interesting that Jesus does not answer this way.
Why is this?
Earlier I mentioned that He doesn't need to answer them because the authority of the Jewish leaders is only an artificial one. It's no real authority. As I mentioned in the introduction, humans only possess true authority when they function according to God's design.
The Jewish leaders have no authority because their priests are not functioning according to the Old Testament law, and the teachers of the law teach false doctrine. Teaching the traditions of men. Therefore, as religious leaders of Israel, they possess no true authority.
And since they have no authority, Jesus does not need to answer them. Instead, He plays a game with them. And the goal of this game is to humiliate them. We might think, well, that's mean. Well, that's what godly people do to wicked people.
They humiliate them.
We should not be afraid to do that. Putting people in their place. There's a time for that. He knows who has the true authority. He is the one who has the authority. He is the Messiah. He is from God.
He has shown that clearly throughout His ministry. As the one who truly has the authority, He wisely handles this conversation by asking a question that will show the Jewish leaders how unqualified they are, and more importantly, show the people how unqualified they are to be leaders in Israel.
And if they can't say whether John is from God or man, then why should anyone in Israel listen to them? But there is another reason why Jesus does not answer them. He does not answer them because if He says that He does these things under God's authority, then what He will be doing is making the claim that He is God and Messiah.
If Jesus directly answered them saying, I am the Son of God. I am the Messiah, predicted long ago in the Old Testament, if He did this, the Jewish leaders would tell all the people, see, He's a blasphemer.
According to the Old Testament law, any man who claims to be God should be put to death. Leviticus 24 -16 says, whoever blasphemes the name of the Lord shall surely be put to death. Earlier in Jesus' ministry, He healed a man on the Sabbath.
In John 5 -17, He said, My Father is working until now, and I am working. Then in the next verse in John 5 -18, the author John wrote the response from the Jewish leaders. The Jews were seeking all the more to kill Him because not only was He breaking the Sabbath, but He was even calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God.
When Jesus told the Jewish leaders that He was working claiming to be God, only they were around. They could not get the crowd of Jews to be on their side by stirring up the crowd saying, He has committed blasphemy.
So in our text, Jesus wisely does not answer them the way they wanted. They wanted Him to say that so that they could arrest Him on the spot and take Him out. Instead, Jesus answers by humiliating the Jewish leaders.
He puts them in a lose-lose situation and shows their inadequacy as religious leaders. The people listening come away realizing who is the true leader? Who is the true authority? And that person is not any of the chief priests, not the rabbis.
It is Jesus Christ. And after He humiliates the Jewish leaders, this is what He says to them in the second half of verse 27.
He says,.
Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things. You don't give me the answer that I want to hear from the question that I asked, then I'm not going to give you the answer that you want. So He puts them in their place.
This is wisdom on display here. When the Jewish leaders ask this question to Jesus about where His authority comes from, they're not asking an honest question. They want to set Him up. They are playing hardball with Jesus, so Jesus plays hardball in return.
They don't want to lose their cushy position. This corrupt religious establishment. They don't want to be exposed. They don't want Him to take it away like He has been. And Jesus doesn't give them what they want.
He exposes them. In this conversation, what we see is where the true authority is. It does not lie with those who force their way in and achieve man-made authority. The true authority in this world only belongs to God.
Can I hear an amen? I've had people ask me,.
Is it okay if I say amen?
Absolutely. Say amen. And the timing of this is interesting. This conversation that Jesus has. This conversation that Jesus is having with the Jewish leaders is on Tuesday. He is only two days away from being arrested and three days away from being sent to the cross.
One might ask, why does Jesus not just confess publicly that He is God and Messiah and then go to the cross as He said numerous times that He would die in this way? The answer is that He wanted to take this time before His death to show where the true authority is before the crowd who was watching this conversation.
The Jewish leaders were completely inadequate to lead, and Jesus showed this through this conversation. This would show the people before His death that the people putting Him to death are corrupt and He is the one they should listen to.
And down the road, as the truth of Jesus was preached after His death and resurrection, many would come to see this. Follow Jesus. Do not follow the corrupt Jewish establishment. Only two days from now, He would be arrested and then sent to the cross.
But He desired to go after the Jewish leaders before that happened to expose them. And you know what we're going to see? He's not done exposing them. In chapter 22 and chapter 23, He's going to be exposing them more and more.
So we are to understand where the true authority lies in this world. In this text, we've seen one practice how. This practice how is by discerning true authority from false. What we have seen in this text is that Jesus is the true authority.
And any authority the Jewish leaders thought they had was a false one because they were out of step with God to manufacture one's own authority is to have no true authority at all. As we live in a world in disarray, as power is abused and it surrounds us everywhere, we need to remember this.
God is the true authority. And to Him we submit, and to Him alone. We only submit to authorities as long as they are operating under the authority of God. The moment they stop doing that, we submit to God by not submitting to them.
Anything we do, we do because He has said so. Whether following an authority structure or following His ways in this world, everything we do, we do because it comes from His legitimate authority. So may God strengthen you to forsake false authority, but rather to embrace His true authority where blessing awaits the one who submits to Him in everything.
Now next Sunday, we will look at a parable. Two parables, in fact, where Jesus rebukes the religious leaders of Jerusalem. And as I just said, this rebuke is the beginning of a long rebuke that we will see over the next several weeks as He prepares Himself to go to the cross.
The very ones He's rebuking are the very ones who are going to hang Him on that cross. At this time, let's bow our heads in prayer. Oh, Father in Heaven, we know how it happened.
These Jewish leaders,.
These wicked religious people, so ugly in Your sight. You hate external religion. You hate corruption. And Jesus came and He exposed them. He showed them who they are. He showed them who the true authority is.
And this is what we need to hear as we live in this world. We want to obey You in everything, and I pray that we will. And we need to understand where the true authority is. It is not with evil people who do things for their own benefit to advance their own agendas and in the process hurt others.
You want us to submit to Your authority because Your authority always brings blessing.
To Your people.
So help us to live this out. Give us wisdom in this. Help us to please You as we submit to You and to no wicked, evil authority in this world. In Jesus' name, Amen.