The Authority of the King

Introduction

A guy was visiting his daughter out of town, and he was an early riser so instead of disturbing everyone he slipped out of the house, found a small diner just out of town, up on top of a hill by a lake, and had breakfast. He got there before anybody else. The waitress told him to sit where he wanted, so he found a table where he could look down at the lake, sat with his back to the wall, and just reflected, drank coffee, and waited for his food. Soon, other people began to come in as the restaurant started to fill up. As first he didn’t notice or pay attention. But then he noticed an entire table of people staring at him.Staring at him to the point that it was awkward. He kind of frowned at each one of them, so they could see that he noticed, and looked back toward the lake. "What’s up with that?” he wondered. “I know I’m not from around here, but what’s so interesting that an entire table would turn and stare at me? Small towns really are the worst.”

As you can imagine, he was starting to get really self-conscious, when he saw two more people, at another table staring at him. Same insecurities, same questions, even deeper anger. Then another table started staring at him. He was just about to leave. “Maybe I don’t belong here” he thought. “Maybe I’m in someone’s normal seat. Maybe I’m intruding." All these things were running through his mind. But then he got another thought. Slowly, he turned around and looked up and there it was right above his head on the wall ... a chalk board listing all the specials of the day. He said in the quote I came across, “It wasn’t about me at all! But I sure thought it was. I thought I was the special of the day! But I wasn’t. They weren’t even paying attention to me.”

Can you relate? Do you often think of yourself as “the special of the day”… to the degree that criticism, even criticism from a friend, doesn’t just bother you; it destroys you? You see a group of people whispering on the other side of the room, and you just know that they must be whispering about you? You hear a song about vanity by Carlee Simon written WAY before you are born, but she’s right; you really do think that that song is about you!

Let me encourage you. If that’s you, you’re not just vain, you’re normal.

Because the truth is, EVERYONE thinks that this song is about them, this song called “life.” It’s our default position, especially here in the West. The individualism of our culture made us creatures obsessed with our individuality, our autonomy, our personal authority.

To the degree that it’s OFFENSIVE to even suggest that I might not be my own authority, that there might be something, Someone outside of myself that has authority over me.

And that’s a problem, because the truth is, you’re not the center of the universe. You’re not the special of the day, and neither am I. That position, that authority, belongs to Someone else.

And as Christians, we believe that that someone is Jesus.

IF you have the Bible with you in some form, keep that passage we read together earlier in front of you, Luke chapter 20. If you’ve been around here for a minute, and if you’re kind of type A, you’ll be relieved to know that we’re back in the Gospel of Luke. If you’re new, which several of you are, it might help to know that before last July when I went on Sabbatical for a couple of months, we had been studying Luke’s gospel for a good long while—off and on for several months, in fact. Today, we’re picking it back up here in chapter 20, in a final push to finish Luke on Easter Sunday. The title of this series is King Jesus, and, as we make our way through these last chapters of Luke, we’re going to be focusing on the final teachings, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus, as well as key moments in Jesus’ journey to the cross, His fulfillment of prophecy, and the call to discipleship.

But today we’re thinking about authority, the true authority, the only authority worth following, the authority of King Jesus.

Here’s what’s happening in our passage today. Jesus has ridden into Jerusalem on a donkey, the fulfillment of ancient prophecy. He cleansed the temple, driving out the money changers, showing his authority over the religious system.

Now He is confronted by the people over that religious system, the Sanhedrin, with a question about His authority. And the way this conversation goes down helps us see some things about who really has the authority in our lives.

The main idea, the big message of our passage this morning: when it comes to authority, it’s not about me. When it comes to authority, it’s all about Jesus. If you’re around here a lot, yes, I know that sometimes I sound like a broken record player. I’ve said that before and I will most definitely say it again—a lot.

And the reason I will most definitely say it again—a lot—is twofold. First, the Bible says it a lot. The Bible says, over and over and over again, that the central authority of our lives is not to be ourselves, as some religious (notice that I didn’t say “Christian”) preachers and teachers promote. The central authority of our lives is not to be ourselves. The central authority of our lives is to be God. Period.

And so when you’re doom scrolling and somebody pops up on your reels and says things like, “You just live YOUR truth,” don’t listen to them anymore. Turn it off. Just put your phone back in your pocket. Because the whole reason we’re here, the secret to this thing we’re doing, the secret to all the joy and hope that we have in this life is the fact that we recognize that it’s not about me. So I’m going to say it over and over and over again.

But the other reason I’m so repetitive on this note is because this concept is so hard…so hard for us to get. I mean it’s not hard for us to understand. Most everyone of us in here , if you were to ask us, “Who’s the boss of your life?” most every one of us would say, “Jesus.”

But, when it comes to the everyday decisions of our lives—the everyday “do I do this or do I not do this” decisions of our lives, even though we say Jesus is Lord, too often those decisions are governed, not by the fact that Jesus is Lord, but instead they are governed by whatever it is we want to do in the moment.

And when we do that, what we are saying, practically, is, “Jesus? What Jesus? I am my own authority.” And, friend, that mind-set, that natural tendency, does not belong to Christ. And, so, for that reason, we have to weed it out. Every day, we have to pray, over and over again, “Lord, help me to own it. Help me to live, really live, like you are the central authority of my life.”

It’s not enough just to say it or think it. We have to own it.

And so, that’s what I want to invite you to do this morning. I want to invite you, once again, to own Jesus’ authority, as we look at this passage where Jesus is confronted about His authority.

So, let’s dive in here. Look with me at the first couple of verses that we read together earlier…

Luke 20:1–2 NASB 2020

On one of the days while He was teaching the people in the temple and preaching the gospel, the chief priests and the scribes with the elders confronted Him, and they declared, saying to Him, “Tell us by what authority You are doing these things, or who is the one who gave You this authority?”

These religious leaders want to know where Jesus had received his authority. Because, again, Jesus was certainly acting with authority. You didn’t just go marching into the temple and start throwing things around. And so they asked him, where do you get this authority? Is your authority coming from God or is it coming from one of our rabbinical schools? Of course, just in asking the question, they were betraying their real motives. They didn’t believe Jesus had any authority at all. They were just trying to put him on the spot in front of the people.

If they believed that Jesus’ authority was legitimate at all, they would have listened to him. They would have changed some things in their system. They would have reformed the bureaucracy and elitism. They would have corrected the unethical behaviour and downright sinfulness that head crept in among them. Jesus quoted scripture the day before as he cleansed the temple, so they should have recognized, at the very least, that his authority came from God’s Word. And if they were really paying attention, and if their hearts were open, they would have recognized that he was the very definition of authority. They would have recognized that he was the Messiah, the Son of God.

But they didn’t recognize that. And the reason they didn’t recognize that, the reason they came to Jesus in the first place, is because he upset their way of doing things.

At that brings us to the first sign that you have your authorities mixed up, that YOU are your own authority, and not King Jesus.

You elevate your traditions over the God’s work in the world.

God upsets our way of doing things sometimes, doesn’t He? Sometimes, God does things that we don’t like. Sometimes, we read the Bible and Jesus says things that we don’t like. But here’s the thing. We don’t have to like them. We don’t have to understand them. If He is our authority, we just submit to them. Sure, we can question. Nothing wrong with asking questions, nothing at all!

But at some point, even if we come to the end of our questions and we still don’t understand, if Jesus is our authority, we still surrender to His will and His ways. Because He is the authority of our lives, and we’re not.

There are nothing wrong with questions. Jesus can handle our questions. Wrestling with the questions is part of what it means to follow Him. Asking Jesus the source of his authority wasn’t necessarily a bad question, if that’s what you really want to know. But if, when you question God publicly or privately, if your main motive is simply to prove Him wrong, to show just how much smarter you are than the Word of God, or people who follow Jesus, or when you’re just trying to make excuses for not submitting to His authority, well, that’s when you can be sure that you have your authorities mixed up.

When you give your life to him, you’re not the boss anymore. He is.

Again, there’s nothing wrong with asking questions. There’s a big difference between asking God about your own suffering because you are fighting to trust in him, and asking about it because you are convinced he’s wrong for allowing you to go through it.

There comes a point sometimes, when we find ourselves under the authority of Jesus, where we just have to say, “Lord, I don’t get this. I don’t understand it, but I know that you are the King of Kings and Lord of Lord, and I’m going to trust you with it.”

Let’s keep reading. Pick up in verse 3:

Luke 20:3–7 NASB 2020

But He replied to them, “I will also ask you a question, and you tell Me: Was the baptism of John from heaven or from men?” They discussed among themselves, saying, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ He will say, ‘Why did you not believe him?’ But if we say, ‘From men,’ all the people will stone us to death, since they are convinced that John was a prophet.” And so they answered that they did not know where it came from.

Why did Jesus ask them that question? I’ll be honest. I used to read this passage, and I really couldn’t figure that out. What did one thing have to do with another? Why would Jesus ask this?

Well, you see, Jesus is a lot smarter than me, and Jesus knew what he was doing. And what he was doing is, he was demonstrating, very clearly the sinful motives of these religious leaders.

You see, the only thing these guys were interested in, when they asked Jesus about the source of His authority, was making themselves look good. Jesus could have easily answered that question. Jesus was acting on the authority of his Father, with whom He was one. Jesus could have said, “I am acting on the authority of the One who spoke heaven and earth into being, who is able to eliminate the greatest armies of earth with the breath of His mouth, who raises the dead to life, who parts seas and put the stars into place!”

Jesus could have said that. That was the correct answer to the Jewish leaders’ question. But that’s not how Jesus answered. In fact, Jesus didn’t answer their question at all. Instead, he asked them a question which he knew they wouldn’t answer. And again, He did that to reveal their sinful motives.

He asked them whether they believed John’s baptism was from heaven, in other words, from God. John the Baptist is who He’s referencing. “Was John the Baptist’s baptism from God or from man? The religious leaders, of course, believed that John’s baptism was from man. But instead of acting with courage and integrity, they acted in fear. They were so desperate to keep their power, to stay in their sinful position, they didn’t answer at all, because they knew that to say what they really believed would bring everything they’d worked for crashing down around them.

And that brings us to something else. Again, the question is how to know when we put our own authority above that of Jesus? You elevate your traditions over the revealed will of God. Second...

You persist in your sin instead of surrendering to God’s authority.

Basically, that’s what persisting in sin is. It’s tucking tail and running from Jesus’ authority. It’s looking him in the eyes and saying defiantly, “I don’t care what you say. I don’t care if the Bible says it’s wrong; I’m going to do what I want to do.”

So, surrender. Let me ask you to do something. When you go home today, get out of piece of paper, or maybe your phone and, wherever you make lists, make a list of the things that you do that you know you shouldn’t. And the reason you know you shouldn’t is because God’s Word tells you so, OR because God’s Holy Spirit with in you has convicted you of that thing.

Do that, because what that will reveal are areas of your life that you have yet to surrender to God. Might be something you do, some way that you spend your time that you know is destroying you. Might be an attitude—some deep-seeded bitterness or anger that you need to surrender to God. Might be a spirit of judgement or pride, looking down on others as less spiritual because of something that they do.

Whatever it is, be specific, and give it to God. Because what you’ll see is that He will slowly but surely begin take those desires away from you. Slowly but surely, replace that bitterness with forgiveness and love. Slowly but surely He’ll help you see yourself for who you really are. But it only happens as you surrender.

Let’s look at the last verse here, verse 8:

Luke 20:8 NASB 2020

And Jesus said to them, “Neither am I telling you by what authority I do these things.”

Jesus, like the religious leaders, had every opportunity to compromise; to back down; to slip away; to dance around the question. But Jesus, unlike the religious leaders, never did. Never once did he fear man more than God. Never once did he act politically. Never once did he act for any reason other than the glory of the Father.

These eight verses give us another glimpse—a real, historical glimpse—at the absolute refusal of Jesus to stray from the Father’s will, no matter the consequences that he knew were coming. He knew that He was headed to cross, as a result of, at least in part, this conversation right here. He would be scourged, beaten, humiliated and crucified. Jesus was obedient all the way to death.

Jesus is righteous, perfect and good, but He doesn’t declare his righteousness. He doesn’t broadcast that He is the Son of God. He doesn’t have to. It’s not His job to proclaim His own righteousness. That’s our job.

And that’s something else we see here. When we put our own authority above that of Jesus, we elevate our traditions over the revealed will of God, we persist in our sin instead of fully surrendering to God. Third…

We find ourselves more concerned with our glory than we are His.

Let’s step back for a minute and think about the truth, the reality that Jesus never once committed a sin, tempted in every way, but never did anything out of the will of the Father.

Every minute of every day we are faced with choices that either align with God’s goodness or don’t. Will I love my neighbor or gossip about my neighbor? Will I take captive every thought that comes into my head or will I feed it with garbage that doesn’t belong there? Will I forgive or carry around bitterness and judgment?

Jesus was tempted in every way that we are, according toHebrews chapter 4, verse 15. And, yet, every time He was tempted, he made the choice to walk in righteousness. Praise him for that! Give Him glory for that., because Your salvation is the result of that. Had Jesus given in to sin even once, you and I would be stuck in ours. Give him glory for his righteousness.

But also, work according to the grace and forgiveness that you’ve experienced to get sin out of your life. If you know the Lord, if you have received salvation in Jesus, you are already forgiven. The righteousness of Christ is your righteousness. You don’t have to do anything else for God to love you any more.

But because of that, because of His unconditional love, because of His righteousness, and because you want to represent Him well in this life, learn to walk in the power of the Holy Spirit within you, free from guilt and shame; free from sin. Do life with Him as your authority.

Let me ask you, who is your authority? Sometimes the transition is slow, and it’s never easy, but if you follow Jesus, it’s a process, a transition we all have to make.

So, don’t elevate your traditions over God’s will. Don’t persist in your sin instead of fully surrendering to God. Don’t worry more about your glory than you are His. We’re not worthy of glory and power and dominion. We’re not worthy of authority. Only He is.

Again, let me ask; do you know Him? Are you living, maybe not perfectly, but are you at least trying to live under the authority of King Jesus?

If not, the Good News is, you can begin today.