Attacking His Authority Luke 20:1-8

Luke’s Baptismal Reading and John’s Warning of the Coming Messiah

Our next song is, You are my all in all, and may that be our prayer. The scripture reading will be from the book of Luke, chapter 3, verses 15 through 18.

Once again, Luke chapter 3, 15 through 18. Verse 15,. Now as the people were in expectation, and all reason in their hearts about John, whether he was the Christ or not, John answered, saying to all, I indeed baptize you with water, but one mightier than I is coming, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to loose.

He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly clean out his threshing floor, and gather the wheat into his barns, but the chaff he will burn up with unquenchable fire.

And with many other exhortations he preached to the people. This is the word of the Lord.

Let's stand together again as we sing the gospel song. This song is, Come to Jesus, rest in Him, and thankfully in our world that's full of chaos and discord, we can rest in Him, no matter what comes before us.

Be seated. Your people are dismissed. Please turn with me to Luke chapter 20,.

Jesus’ Authority Challenged in the Temple

Verses 1 through 8. Luke chapter 20, verses 1 through 8. Now it happened on one of those days, as he taught the people in the temple, and preached the gospel, that the chief priests and the scribes together with the elders confronted him, and spoke to him saying, Tell us, by what authority are you doing these things?

Or who is he who gave you this authority? But he answered and said to them, I also will ask you one thing, and answer me. The baptism of John, was it from heaven or from men? And they reasoned among themselves, saying, If we say from heaven, he will say, Why then did you not believe him?

But if we say from men, all the people will stone us, for they are persuaded that John was a prophet. So they answered, that they did not know where it was from. And Jesus said to them, Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things.

This is the word of the Lord. Let us pray. Father, we are grateful that you have graciously revealed to us your son Jesus Christ, and that you sent him to die on the cross for our sin, so that we may live with him.

Thank you that he is the risen Lord who reigns from above, and we're under his command. Help us to bow down to him, help us to love him, help us to trust him, and help us to delight in his authority. In Jesus name, Amen.

The Temple Showdowns in Luke 20

Now we have entered chapter 20, and chapter 20 is composed of five different theological showdowns between the religious establishment and Jesus Christ. And this is occurring around the temple, the very dwelling place of God.

This text is regarding Jesus' authority. They're challenging Jesus' authority to teach and do the things that he's doing, which in the immediate context was driving people out, the money changers. The next passage will be on Jesus' parable against the religious establishment.

They were supposed to steward God's land and God's people faithfully, yet they have failed to do so. Then one after that would be regarding taxation, regarding paying taxes to Caesar. They're trying to pit Jesus against Rome, and after that the Sadducees will question about the resurrection, because they don't believe in it.

And then the fifth one is Jesus will ask them a question. He will have the last say, and they will not be able to answer. They will be silenced. And all of this, this whole chapter, is the religious establishment's futile attempts to trap Jesus in all spheres, whether it's theological, political, or even social.

They want to trap Jesus and publicly humiliate him, because they know it would be too unpopular to physically kill him at this moment. And after each match, we will see Jesus standing victoriously, because he is always on the side of truth.

My pastor from seminary said, it's just never a good idea to debate with God. Now the question of Jesus' authority is important, because if you look at false teachers and different heresies all over church history, it always gets at the authority of Christ.

One of the earlier ones is what we call Arianism, and it's called Arianism in the third and fourth century, because the guy who spearheaded it was a guy named Arius. And his idea was that there was a time when Jesus was not.

He would actually say there was a time when the Son was not, as in the Son has not been the pre-existing divine figure. He argued that Jesus is special, he's better than man, but he's still a created being.

And that gets at the authority of Christ. If Jesus is just another created being, even if he's more special than the angels, what he did on the cross becomes insignificant. Only God, who is the truly offended party, can take on the offense and the judgment for that offense that we deserved.

Only the offended party can pay for the sin of the offenders. If Jesus is anything else but God, our salvation would be null. And although Arianism may seemingly not exist, they're recycled. Some of the more famous ones are Mormonism, right?

They believe even God the Father was once created, and the Son was literally begotten, right? In terms of there was a time when he wasn't existing. And then Jehovah's Witnesses, they don't believe Jesus, the Son of God, is truly God in the sense that God the Father is God.

Again, over and over again, Satan finds ways to attack Jesus' authority. Because if Jesus' authority is attacked, then you shake, you shake the core of the gospel. The main point of today's text is, what happens when Jesus' opponents challenge his authority?

What happens when Jesus' opponents challenge his authority? First, those who attack Jesus' authority oppose God's redemptive plan. Those who attack Jesus' authority oppose God's redemptive plan. The first temple showdown occurs when Jesus is teaching in the temple.

Now, it happened on one of those days as he taught the people in the temple and preached the gospel, that the chief priests and the scribes together with the elders confronted him. And this immediately follows the temple cleansing in Luke when he drove out the money changers.

Now, Jesus is teaching and sharing the gospel. Sharing the gospel in this case means that he is proclaiming the good news that the kingdom of God has arrived because the King is here. And Jesus is the King who came to restore his people from the domain of sin and death through his own death, right?

That's the centerpiece of the gospel. It is what the King has done now that he is here. And as Jesus is teaching, the same three leaders from last week confront him, right? The chief priests, the scribes, and the elders.

While they were scheming in darkness just last week, now they will publicly appear to challenge Jesus, to humiliate him. And this is because they couldn't quite assassinate Jesus due to his popularity.

They are now seeking to humiliate him publicly so that his teaching will be null. If Jesus is brought low before the crowd, Jesus will no longer be protected by him. He will no longer be a threat to the religious establishment.

So they ask the question, tell us, by what authority are you doing these things? Or who is he who gave you this authority? These things here from the first question includes not only the teaching that he is doing, but the act of temple cleansing.

Jesus really poked the bear when he cleansed the temple, right? The temple is the hub of the religious establishment. That's where they derive their authority. But now that Jesus is showing that he has the authority to cleanse the temple, who could he be?

By what authority do you get to overthrow the money changers and cause a scene in the temple? Now the second question is similar. What's the source of your authority? Who gave you permission to challenge the money changers and teach here?

Who are you? Now it's important to note that in this context, these leaders are not asking these questions to learn more about Jesus. These questions are a trap for Jesus. They are challenging Jesus. And hence, instead of answering their question, Jesus asks them a question.

But he answered and said to them, I also will ask you one thing and answer me. The baptism of John, was it from heaven or from men? The baptism of John represents this eschatological cleansing of God's people that John the Baptist participated in, in baptizing before the coming of the Messiah.

Remember what was read this morning, John's baptism was to prepare God's people so that when Jesus comes, he will restore them, right? They're tied together. And in its face, this is seemingly a random question.

John the Baptist, he's been dead. What are you talking about? But it's a brilliant question on multiple levels. First, Jesus limits their answer to two choices. They don't get to nuance their way out of it.

You know, with those theologians, they can just go slippery. They, they, you can't pin them down if you want to catch them at speaking of something heretical. Oftentimes, they can nuance out of it. That's why they can sign statements of faith and then teach something that's totally opposite.

Not before Jesus. You have two choices. Baptism of John, from heaven or from men? There's no third option. Was he a prophet or a heretic? Second, this question places the religious establishment on the defensive.

They will have to respond to this question first before Jesus answers their questions. Third, if the Jewish leaders honestly answered Jesus' question about John the Baptist, they would have actually answered the first two questions that they asked in verse two.

Since John the Baptist was sent by God to prepare the way for Jesus, John's baptism and Jesus' authority come from the same source. After all, their ministries were linked even when they were in their respective mother's wombs.

And Luke clearly showed that. I mean, Luke is the only one that shows the connection between John the Baptist and Jesus before they're even born. They go hand in hand. Hence, if you reject John the Baptist, you will reject Jesus, the final climax of God's redemptive history.

If you reject John the Baptist, who is the signpost to the Savior himself, you're rejecting God's only method of salvation, God's only means of salvation, God's only person of salvation. Ultimately, if you reject John the Baptist, you reject Jesus, you reject God.

This is a hard question to answer for the religious establishment. Similarly, the modern man has no shortage of rejecting God's redemption by attacking Jesus' authority. You may have heard many atheists and agnostics who claim that Jesus to be just a good teacher, but not God.

The irony of this claim is that if Jesus were just a good teacher, then his teaching and actions would actually disqualify him from being a good teacher. Rather, what he taught, what he proclaimed would make him a megalomaniac or a planet lunatic, crazy person.

Why is that? Well, how could a Jewish man, remember Judaism, a famous monotheistic religion, oh you know, one of the main religions in the world, there's where in which they believe in one God. Well, there is that.

If they only believe in one God, how, what business does this Jewish man have claiming that he's the truth, the way, and the life, right? How can, how can he claim that and still be a good teacher? If he was just a normal man, he had an over-inflated view of himself, and that's that's not humble at all.

Either Jesus truly was God incarnate, or he was the biggest fraud in history. To call Jesus a good teacher is either an understatement or plain dishonest, but what it does attack is Jesus' authority. I get to decide Jesus' identity.

It's plain idolatrous. I get to define who God is. I get to define how he fits into my plan, my life. If he's God, that's too much. He has too much power over me, but if he's a good teacher, I can just choose to listen to the lesson or not.

That's the problem, and the moment you believe Jesus to be just a good teacher, but not God, not the Son of God who came to die for the world, then you're rejecting God's redemptive plan. No one can be saved by calling out to a good teacher.

You're saved by calling out to the Lord and Savior, God incarnate. Now, other religions do an upgrade, you know. They don't remain a good teacher. They may see Jesus as a prophet, but only a prophet. Don't go farther than that.

Famously, Islam views Jesus as an important prophet, but not God, and this is also problematic because the Bible shows that Jesus, in fact, is divine. John 1 .1, that's how it starts. In the beginning was the Word.

Who is this Word? Jesus. The Word was with God, so he knows God. He has a relationship with God. The Word was God. Oh, so he is God. That one verse is packed with the doctrine of the Trinity. He's God's fellow, but he is God.

It's three in one, and you could not get any clearer than that. The fact that he is God means he can't just be a prophet. The Word of God represents God, the invisible God, fully, just as the Word of God does.

God's Word represents who God is. Jesus is the full effulgence of his being. If you want to see God, you look to Christ. Now, no matter how positively you view Jesus, any view of Christ against the Bible is insufficient and attacks his authority.

It's an act of treason. It's a betrayal of the King. Only the Bible, God's Word, gives us the accurate view of Jesus. He's the Son of God. He's God the Son. He's God who came down to redeem the sinful world.

He's the God who died on the cross in order to save sinners and rose triumphantly from the dead. And this God will come back to judge the world. And any view that places Jesus lower than this is heretical.

And such a view opposes God and his plan of salvation. You cannot be saved with an insufficient view of Jesus' authority. If Jesus is anything less than God, then he cannot save. Now, what is the response of the opponents when they rely Jesus' authority?

Saving Face at the Expense of Truth

Those who oppose Jesus will save their image at the expense of the truth. Those who oppose Jesus will save their image at the expense of the truth. Now, we get to see a private conversation among the religious establishment from verses 5 to 6.

Verse 5 discloses the consequence of choosing the first option, from heaven, right? Answering Jesus with the first option. John the Baptist's baptism is from heaven. And they reasoned among themselves, saying, if we say from heaven, he will say, why then did you not believe him?

And this is truly a dilemma. Jesus' two options are traps that reveal their corrupt hearts. The argument goes like this. Well, if they respond that John the Baptist was sent from heaven, the natural flow of the argument is, then, why then did you not respond to him?

After all, if he's from heaven, then he must be a prophet. And as a prophet, he's the mouthpiece of God. And whatever he commands and speaks in the authority, under the authority of God, would be the command from God.

Now, why didn't you respond to him? Then it would lead to the fact that they failed to respond to the very person that John the Baptist prepared the way for, Jesus himself. It's a checkmate. Now, what if they answer from man?

But if we say from man, all the people will stone us, for they are persuaded that John was a prophet. Verse 6 is what they truly believe, right? Because if they really believed that John the Baptist was sent from God, then they would have responded.

But since they didn't respond, they truly believed that John the Baptist was just a nobody. But if they actually tell the truth, what happens then, then this disclosing their inner thought could prove deadly.

After all, the crowd in the temple believed John the Baptist to be a prophet of Israel. And in Israel, if you reject God's prophet, you're rejecting God. And if you're rejecting God, then you're an idolater.

You're worshiping a false God. And if you are an idolater, you are putting the whole community at risk of judgment. You're jeopardizing the whole community. Why? Because in Israel, God dwells among his people.

But God cannot dwell among sinners. So what do they need to do? They have to kill the sinner. Through what means? Stoning. Stoning is one of the main forms of execution in which the whole community is involved, because the whole community is impacted.

An idolater impacts the whole community of God's people. And that is even true in the church. Now, ironically, those who attempted to kill Jesus will get killed themselves if they tell the truth. If they disclose what's really going on in their heart, they're gonna get killed before Jesus does.

A couple of important observations here. First, this private conversation among the religious leaders shows us that they have no desire to respond to Jesus in faith. Their questions were not about finding the truth, but to trap Jesus Christ, the truth himself.

Hence, their private conference shows that their inner thought is vastly different from their outer life. They want to seem like they care about God and his plan, but inwardly they reject God's plan. What they believe is different from how they live, and they are what we would call professional hypocrites.

Their inner life does not match their outer life. They are the politicians par excellence. They will quote Bible verses, but pass legislations that are directly against the Bible, and these are the religious leaders of God's people in the first century.

Now, how did they respond to Jesus? So, they answered that they did not know where it was from. Externally, the very theologians of Israel cannot evaluate if a single person, John the Baptist, came from God or not.

I don't know was a conveniently cop-out answer even 2 ,000 years ago. I don't know. I don't recall. In the end, they decided to save their face rather than to respond to Jesus in faith. They chose their public image in exchange for their souls.

They chose what is temporarily glorious in exchange for the eternal glory in heaven, and because of their hard-hearted response, Jesus ends the conversation there. Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things.

In one sense, he knows, they know what the true answer is. They don't really need that response. Rather, they need to respond themselves. As a young Christian, I guess I'm still a young Christian too.

It's not like I've been a Christian for multiple decades like some of you. I used to think that if I just improved in defending the faith, right, if I just sharpened the apologetic sword, my family and friends would come to faith.

If I could just give an answer for everything they try to ask about Christianity, why it's wrong, if I could just give the right answer, maybe they'll come to faith because I believe that it was their ignorance that kept them from trusting in Christ.

Over the years, I've learned that it's not the lack of information by which people reject Christ, but what their heart treasures. It's a heart issue rather than a brain issue. It's a sin issue rather than a knowledge issue.

It is not their ignorance that keeps them from Christ, but their lack of desire to surrender to him. If Jesus died for their sin, then they can't live in their sin anymore. If they, if Jesus died for their lives, then they can't live for themselves anymore.

That's the issue. It's a moral issue rather than an intellectual issue. And consider the religious leaders from this passage. When they challenged Jesus, they had the opportunity to respond in faith. They could have admitted their wrong approach to John the Baptist and surrendered to Jesus in faith.

They could have said, you're right, we needed to have stood up against Herod when he imprisoned John the Baptist. How dare he, this phony king, imprison the prophet of God? No, they were probably glad.

Ah, that annoying voice in the wilderness is gone. The crowd can come back to us, come back to the temple. Rather, they decided to be right in their own eyes at the expense of being right with God. They chose their temporary reputation over their eternal destination.

And this morning, if you have not responded to Jesus, it is important that you don't follow their steps. All it takes is to look to Him and believe, to trust Him. What this means is it requires you to look away from yourself and surrender to your Savior.

This requires you to see all that you have held on to are deficient at best, and that you must cling to the Lord Jesus alone, who is fully sufficient and authoritative to save you to the uttermost. This means you have to see your sinfulness at its face, without minimizing.

It's not too bad, it's just a one little white lie. And without self-justification, everyone does it, and you must turn away from it. This means you have to abandon your pet sin that you've been feeding for however long.

You delight going to it in secret, you think about it when you're doing nothing, and you must flee from it and run to your Savior. On Judgment Day, you will not be able to plead ignorance before the judge who sees your heart.

I don't know will not work on Judgment Day for the Pharisees. You must see that you are too wicked that only the death of the Son of God on the cross could save you, nothing less. Your good deeds were too corrupt that trusting in them only led to digging deeper into the abyss.

And clinging to your good deeds to save yourself is like chaining lead weights onto your foot as you drown in the Don't be like the religious leaders. Your reputation, your lifestyle, your pet sins are not worth saving at the cost of your soul.

They're not worth keeping. Look like a fool for Christ. Live like one of those zealots. Live like a fundamentalist. Live like the evangelicals. Live like the ones that the media love to hate. The ones who love Jesus.

The ones who stick by Jesus even if they lose their jobs. Because whatever that prevents you from wholeheartedly surrendering to Christ this morning, in the end, will not save you. It will kill you. Don't throw away your eternal life to save that.

Rather, surrender to the Savior who died to save you. That's the proper response. Let us pray. Father, we pray this morning that if there is anything that is preventing us from wholeheartedly coming to Christ, your Son, to surrender to Him, we pray that you would take that away from us.

Take that desire to hold on so tightly. Take that away. Whether it is security, whether it's reputation, whether it's a specific sin, whether it's some sort of worry of the future. Father, we pray that you would take those things away from our hearts so that we can receive Jesus Christ.

Help us to respond to Christ properly, in faith. In Jesus' name, amen.