By What Authority?

Prayer of confession

1 John 1:9–2:2 NKJV

9 If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us. 1 My little children, these things I write to you, so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. 2 And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world.

Prayer

Holy and almighty God,

Out of the depths we cry to you. If you counted our sins and iniquities, who could stand?

But there is forgiveness with you, that you may be feared.

When we are at our lowest and most miserable, there you are.

When we are in the depths, making our bed in the grave, there you are.

We cannot flee from you, for wherever you go, your goodness and your mercy pursue after us.

Father, lift up our hearts. Strengthen us with your joy. Establish our steps.

Bring our wandering children home. Protect us from our own foolishness.

Direct our eyes to where you sit enthroned in the heavens, reigning over all things for the good of the church.

And when we falter, hold us up.

When we wander, bring us back.

When we are downhearted, remind us of hope.

And above all, teach us to hallow and magnify your holy name. Shine brightly through all our words and all our works, so that those who see us will know that we serve the living God.

Protect the crews that are keeping the power on. Protect the first responders and those without power.

Thank you for the rain, for it comes from your hand.

Provide for us our daily bread. Teach us to be patient in adversity and thankful in prosperity. And teach us to trust you for the future, and lead us to quiet waters.

Give wisdom, for we are foolish. We need your strength each moment.

Give us rest, we pray. In the scurrying of life and the frantic toil that occupies our minds, teach us to sit quietly like weaned children on their mother’s lap.

Let that gospel of rest and peace spread like wildfire throughout the world. Give your servants boldness to speak wherever they are.

We know that proclaiming rest and liberty from sin and misery arouses the hatred of the world. For there is much money and power to be made when people are fearful and frantic. So give boldness in the face of enemies.

Give clarity of thought, courage, conviction – and may Christ shine brightly throughout the world. Give hope and light in dark places.

Give us courage to boldly conquer and endure this warfare to the end. Walk with us through the darkness. Give us light in the valleys. Set a table for us when we are frantic and afraid.

And bless the reading and preaching of your word today. Guide my lips and give us open hearts.

Text

Luke 20:1–8 NKJV

1 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 2 and spoke to Him, saying, “Tell us, by what authority are You doing these things? Or who is he who gave You this authority?” 3 But He answered and said to them, “I also will ask you one thing, and answer Me: 4 The baptism of John—was it from heaven or from men?” 5 And they reasoned among themselves, saying, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ He will say, ‘Why then did you not believe him?’ 6 But if we say, ‘From men,’ all the people will stone us, for they are persuaded that John was a prophet.” 7 So they answered that they did not know where it was from. 8 And Jesus said to them, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things.”

Sermon

Jesus has entered Jerusalem in triumph. He is the anointed one of God, Messiah. The Lord has entered his temple.

But it was also an affront to the ruling class of Jerusalem.

From the very beginning, true religion has been used and twisted by power hungry men to amass power to themselves and make themselves rich.

If Jesus is our only king, if Jesus is our only mediator, if Jesus is our only prophet - then men lose their control over others.

Men and women were created to have dominion over the creation, but sin twisted that dominion, so that now men lust to have dominion over each other - and they will use religion to do it.

They won’t say, “I am now going to take power over you.”

What they say is that you have a need that only they can fill.

I can give you purpose. I can make you acceptable to God. I can show you how to gain God’s approval.

But don’t disobey me, or you will incur God’s wrath...

The Sanhedrin kept a close eye on who had the power to teach and who did not. There is a lot of power in words, and that power can be used to build people up, bring them to God, encourage, strengthen and help one another.

Or the power of words can tear down and attack and destroy.

They can be used for good, or they can be used for ugly.

The sanhedrin knew the power of words. And they knew that in order to keep their power, they would need to keep the monopoly over the office of teacher.

No one can just teach in the temple. They have to be approved and appointed by the powers that be.

It sounds good on the surface - words are powerful and we need to make sure that God’s people aren’t being led astray. Only godly men should be teaching the people.

But God has a way of bypassing the decisions of the power-brokers.

What does God do when the power-brokers, the shepherds of the people, prove to be wolves?

He sends prophets, and bypasses the official channels. He can do that. He is God.

But sin can even twist that into an ugly thing.

A man might declare himself to be a prophet, called directly by God and therefore unaccountable to the authorities that are in place.

So God put in safeguards to be followed by the faithful.

It is true that we are called to discernment - “test the spirits”. We are not to follow just anyone who claims to be a prophet.

If God calls a prophet to prophecy, he will give that prophet the authority to do the job.

And there will be signs attached.

Deuteronomy 13:1–5 NKJV

1 “If there arises among you a prophet or a dreamer of dreams, and he gives you a sign or a wonder, 2 and the sign or the wonder comes to pass, of which he spoke to you, saying, ‘Let us go after other gods’—which you have not known—‘and let us serve them,’ 3 you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams, for the Lord your God is testing you to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. 4 You shall walk after the Lord your God and fear Him, and keep His commandments and obey His voice; you shall serve Him and hold fast to Him. 5 But that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he has spoken in order to turn you away from the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of bondage, to entice you from the way in which the Lord your God commanded you to walk. So you shall put away the evil from your midst.

His words were to be judged by the words of Moses - if he contradicted Moses, then he was a false prophet, for God does not lie.

Paul gave the Thessalonians instructions on how to judge those traveling preachers who went from place to place. Some were good. Some were wolves. Test them. Hold fast to what is good. Resist evil, no matter what form it takes.

The question of authority is a valid one.

This is the question that the Sanhedrin ask Jesus. They have a lot of power. They even have the power to twist the arms of Rome, which they will do in just a few days.

And Jesus, by entering his temple and cleansing it, has just challenged them. If Jesus is prophet, priest and king, if he is truly the anointed one of God, then the Sanhedrin will lose their authority and their source of income. And they can’t have that.

So, under the guise of being shepherds to the people, they confront Christ. It is a demand - the language indicates that they came suddenly, dropped the question on him, hoping to catch him stumbling on his words.

The problem

The problem is that Jesus must go.

The Sabbath -

He eats and drinks with THEM. He violates the sabbath.

If he is messiah, then everything I think that I know about myself and God is wrong. I must bend the knee and cast my crown at his feet.

And that I cannot do. So he must go before we lose our place and our nation.

He is a threat to our way of life.

But if they accuse him of breaking the Sabbath, the Romans will want to know what he did...

And if they accuse him of something else, the people will riot, for they all flock to hear his words.

Luke 19:48 NKJV

48 and were unable to do anything; for all the people were very attentive to hear Him.

They hung on his every word.

The solution

So they need to find a way to accuse him that will also discredit him in from of all of the people.

They want to avoid a riot.

So now they are springing question after question on him to catch him in his words.

But something else is going on. God’s word is being fulfilled by these wicked men, and they didn’t even know it - When the passover lamb was brought into the city, the priests were to examine it for five days to ensure that it was without blemish or spot.

And when the Lamb of God entered, this was what the priests were doing, even though they didn’t know it.

The question of authority

The question of authority is a valid one. Jesus cleansed the temple, and taught with authority. He didn’t say, “Thus saith the Lord.” He said, “I say unto you.”

So the question is this - did he just appoint himself? Was he a self-proclaimed prophet?

He wasn’t ordained by the ordinary schools. He did not have the approval or certificates of the accrediting bodies. So what was his authority?

Who appointed him and gave him the authority to cleanse temples and teach in the temple of God?

It was, of course, a trick question. They knew that he did not have the accreditation from the normal route. He didn’t attend the proper schools of the Rabbis.

So the only other answer was “God appointed me directly.”

And if he said that, they could then punish him for blasphemy, or at least discredit him before the people.

John the Baptist

But Jesus sees through them. It was common in discourse to ask questions back. The important thing was to clarify the question and make sure that you are answering the right one. So questions were perfectly acceptable.

So he asks, “By what authority did John baptize? Was it from heaven, or from men?”

We met John in the first chapter of Luke. We read of his miraculous birth. The public announcement of his conception in the temple by an angel of God.

Then he spent years in the wilderness until the word of the Lord comes to him.

His message was to the point - Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

He baptized to point to the necessity of repentance and cleansing.

The Pharisees were OK with the idea of cleansing - for other people. But they were children of Abraham. They didn’t need to be cleansed.

So they rejected John’s message.

But the authority of John was undisputed. He could not have had more solid credentials. Not only was his mission announced from the temple, but he fulfilled a long, long line of centuries of prophets.

Moses spoke of prophets to come. He spoke of God sending more, and finally culminating in THE prophet.

And as the centuries went by, God’s plan of salvation was more and more revealed. Each generation building on the previous.

God raised up more prophets and revealed more about himself. Everything was building to a climax -

There is a voice in Isaiah crying out, “Prepare the way for the Lord”

And this is John. The culmination of all of the law and the prophets - the penultimate fulfillment, I should say...

penultimate means one before the ultimate. It means the next to the last...

And this is what Jesus is getting at.

If John in the penultimate fulfillment of the Old Testament, then there can only be ONE ultimate fulfillment.

The one whom John baptized, and saw the Holy Spirit descending like a dove, the one whom the voice from heaven spoke and said, “This is my beloved son, in whom I am well-pleased”.

John’s authority to baptize didn’t come from men. He also didn’t get the diploma in the right school or get the approval of the right people.

In fact, the Pharisees sent a delegation to him to find out what he was doing and why he was doing it.

But under the guise of purity, they were really trying to hold on to their power. They couldn’t have a Rambo without any accountability - especially one who taught that everyone, even the Pharisees, needed to repent as if they were ordinary sinners...

But the rest of the people knew a prophet when they saw one. They flocked to him. They knew where his authority came from. They remembered the events of his birth at the temple.

And they repented and were baptized -

The next to the last fulfillment of the Old Testament . and then he pointed to the last, the ultimate and said,

Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.

This was what was involved in Jesus’ question. And the delegation knew it.

The question answered

They huddled together. All of the sudden, they are on trial. They are on the hot seat.

If they say, “From heaven” - Jesus would ask, “Why didn’t you let him baptize you then? Why didn’t you believe him when he pointed to me?”

And if they said, “From earth” - that is, he appointed himself…they would have been accusing John of being a false prophet, and that would have aroused the fury of the people.

It might actually lead to THEIR stoning.

The leaders of the Jews, the religious experts, were not interested in truth. They were interested in keeping the status quo. The gospel disrupts. The declaration of the conquering king is designed to turn lives upside down.

It makes kings beggars and feeds the hungry and sends the full away empty. It is good news to the poor in spirit, but to the proud, it is deadly.

The rich are made low and the poor are exalted.

But those who love money and power, who lust after the good old days when everyone knew who was in charge - they wanted nothing to do with it.

So the scribes weren’t looking for truth. They were looking to keep in power and keep their heads.

The truth is that John’s message and his baptism were from God.

Luke 3:2–6 NKJV

2 while Annas and Caiaphas were high priests, the word of God came to John the son of Zacharias in the wilderness. 3 And he went into all the region around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins, 4 as it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet, saying: “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord; Make His paths straight. 5 Every valley shall be filled And every mountain and hill brought low; The crooked places shall be made straight And the rough ways smooth; 6 And all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’ ”

Announced in the temple, foretold by Isaiah, and with the spirit and power of Elijah.

But if they said that, they would have to acknowledge Jesus as the Christ.

And if they did that, their whole world would collapse and their system would be dismantled.

And they went away sorrowful, for they were very rich...

That was the truth. But they couldn’t confess it.

So they took the coward way out.

We don’t know.

When all else fails, plead ignorance.

I don’t know that. God hasn’t given me all knowledge. There are several points of view on that one....And all the muddled double-speak that liars are so good at.

And there, they had their answer and they knew it.

So Jesus didn’t need to say anything else.

Conclusion

I spoke last week about the gospel and what it is. It is the declaration of the conquering king. He has won the victory and is now taking the spoils.

Psalm 68:17–18 NKJV

17 The chariots of God are twenty thousand, Even thousands of thousands; The Lord is among them as in Sinai, in the Holy Place. 18 You have ascended on high, You have led captivity captive; You have received gifts among men, Even from the rebellious, That the Lord God might dwell there.

And this announcement will turn everything upside down. It will make the comfortable uncomfortable. It will make the proud angry.

But it is life to the dying, hope to the hopeless, and courage to the downhearted.

Christ has conquered. He has won the victory and now commands allegiance.

He promises himself, he promises eternal life, he promises victory over sin and the power of the devil -

He is our prophet, priest and king.

And the question still remains -

By what authority does he do these things?

Who was he?

And the entire scripture, from beginning to end, testifies of him.

“Bears witness” like in a court of law.

And God cannot lie. The scripture, from beginning to end is full of history, miracles, prophecies, genealogies - and it is all for one purpose.

To answer the question, “By what authority does Jesus promise eternal life?”

By what authority does he command allegiance?

This is part of the proclamation - to show how every part of the Bible is for the purpose of revealing Christ and showing his authority and power to do as he promised and to command faith and trust.

The history shows God doing exactly what God said he would do. And in the fullness of time, God became flesh and did exactly what he said he would do.

The genealogies show that Jesus was of the flesh of Abraham and the heir to the throne of David, just as it was foretold.

The miracles that were done could only have been done by the Creator and Sustainer of the universe.

1 John 5:7–8 NKJV

7 For there are three that bear witness in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit; and these three are one. 8 And there are three that bear witness on earth: the Spirit, the water, and the blood; and these three agree as one.

Romans 1:1–4 NKJV

1 Paul, a bondservant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated to the gospel of God 2 which He promised before through His prophets in the Holy Scriptures, 3 concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh, 4 and declared to be the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead.

And the ultimate mark of his authority - he rose from the dead.

Lots of prophets can SAY that they have the key to eternal life. But only one rose from the dead.

He is worthy of our allegiance, our trust, our hope - whoever believes on his will never be ashamed.