The Book of Mark
The Confrontation Over Authority
Mark 11:27-33
Text
What we have here is the beginning of the confrontation that will ultimately lead to the death of Jesus Christ. And if you notice, it was initiated by the Lord. We need to always keep that in mind. Jesus is calling the shots when it comes to His death. The Jews and the Romans are operating on His calendar and timetable, not theirs.
If you go back one day to verse 15 of this chapter, you discover the setting for this confrontation. Jesus and His Apostles showed up in Jerusalem, and after a wonderful parade in His honor, He went to the temple and drove out those who were desecrating and defiling what He called “the House of Prayer”.
And it is that act of cleansing the temple that precipitated
1. The Confrontation
verse 27
The picture I get there is He is walking around and interacting with the crowd. One wonders if the crowd is not largely than usual because of what has happened there recently. It’s not every day that you see someone running the moneychangers out and turning over the tables and loosing the animals!
But they will see none of that today. Instead, Mark tells us Jesus is walking in the temple. Luke adds, “He was teaching the people and preaching the gospel.” Most likely He is in the courtyard of the Gentiles. That’s where the largest crowd would have been and it just seems most likely that there we would find Him ministering.
And for one day, this was His temple. It was His classroom and His pulpit, and as such, it was God’s house for one day and for one day the truth would be heard in the courtyards of that temple where it hadn’t been heard for hundreds of years. And for this one day, the truth was heard there as Jesus took center stage and preached the gospel.
He must have preached the truth about sin and judgment and the inevitability of hell for those who refused to believe in Him and to come to God by faith and not works. He must have preached righteousness and the hopelessness of trying to attain salvation on your own.
He must have talked about humility, the need for brokenness and meekness and a sense of one’s spiritual bankruptcy and crying out for something you do not have and cannot earn.
He must have spoken of the great compassionate love for God for sinners. He must have spoken out about the forgiveness of sin and peace and grace and eternal life. He must have warned them about false prayers, vain repetition, hypocritical giving and doing religious deeds to be seen by men.
He must have talked to them about the price of discipleship, about denying yourself, taking up your cross, following Him.
Surely He talked to them about eternal glory, the kingdom, heaven. He must have warned them that this was a narrow way and that the temple was the broad way that leads to hell, and all this while He was walking through His Father’s house for one day.
And Scripture tells us the people were hanging on every word He said. If ever there was a teacher who could captivate His audience, it was Him! Can you imagine what it must have been like to sit at the feet of Jesus and listen to Him teach from Scripture?
And as He is walking and teaching, verse 27 says the chief priests and the scribes and the elders approached Him. By the way, we’ll see each of those groups have private conversations with Him in chapter 12. And if we read what Luke says about this approach, we discover they were coming to attack Him. Now obviously that was not a wise thing to do because they were no match. But they couldn’t hold back.
verse 28
Now here we find a little insight into the thinking of the Jewish leaders and what it is that gets under their skin so much when it comes to Jesus. The key word here is authority. That’s really where we find the crux of this confrontation.
Now you know I like word studies and this word is a very interesting one to study.
What we interpret “authority” in this sense is defined in the original language of Greek as “the freedom or liberty to act”. So to their way of thinking, to have authority is essentially to have the right to act or to determine or to decide.
And whether they want to admit it or not, no one who has ever walked on this planet has ever had such authority as Jesus Christ. He had ultimate authority, absolute authority, divine authority and He exercised it.
In fact, in Matthew 28:18 He put it this way, “All authority is given to Me in heaven and earth.” That’s why, as we saw back in chapter 1, “They were amazed at His teaching, for He was teaching as one having authority, not as the scribes.”
The scribes never taught based upon their own authority. They always quoted others as their authority. Seventy-five times in the gospels, Jesus said, “Truly I say unto you...” Rabbis didn’t talk that way. But He didn’t need to quote anybody else because He was and is the ultimate authority.
He has authority over the unclean spirits and they obey Him. He has authority over doctrine. He has authority over demons. He has authority to forgive sin. He has authority over the weather and the wind and rain and storms. He exercised authority over disease and even over death.
Jesus never asked permission from anyone to do anything. He labored under no earthly authority. The only authority in His life was that perfect harmony with the Father and the Spirit so that He did what was the Father’s will in the Spirit’s power.
So when Jesus showed up and took control of the temple activity that struck a massive blow to the spiritual pride of the Jewish leadership which led to this question of who authorized Him to do what He was doing.
And they didn’t ask expecting Him to give them His rabbinical credentials. They knew He didn’t have those. They knew He hadn’t gone to any school. He had no official credentials to present to them. What they want Him to says is, “My authority comes directly from God.”
And He certainly could have said that and said it truthfully. But had He said that, they would have spun it as the final straw in His blasphemy. But He was too wise for that. And so we go from the confrontation to
2. The Counter
verse 29
Jesus uses a very typical rabbinical approach to counter their approach. Jesus says, “I’m going to ask you a question and if you answer the question I ask you, I’ll answer the question you ask Me.”
And the question comes in verse 30
Now with that question, the Jewish leaders are officially between a rock and a hard place. He asks about the baptism of John the Baptist.
Now John the Baptist is quite an intriguing guy by himself. He was every bit an Old Testament prophet, the forerunner of the Messiah, the one chosen by God, filled with the Holy Spirit from His womb, the one who was conceived miraculously by Elizabeth and Zacharias because of the miracle plan of God.
He spent his ministry out in the wilderness preaching repentance and preparation for the coming of Messiah. And one day the Messiah shows up and Jesus comes and John says, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”
And the ministry of John revolved around baptism. He was preaching repentance, preaching preparation for Messiah, preaching that Jesus is the Messiah and he was baptizing with a baptism of repentance. People who wanted to be prepared to receive the Messiah give an outward symbol of inward heart preparation by letting John baptize them in the Jordan River. This was his ministry to prepare people for the arrival of Messiah.
So that’s what Jesus is talking about here. What was their opinion of the ministry of John the Baptizer, including his preaching, his teaching, his calling of the people to preparedness and repentance and most importantly his declaration of Jesus as the Messiah. “ Was it from heaven or was it from men? It had to be one or the other. So what is your answer?
So here is the dilemma that creates. If they said the ministry of John is from God, then they have to admit that Jesus is the Messiah because that’s what John said.
If they say the ministry of John is not from God, it’s from men, then they’ve got a problem because all the people knew that John was a real prophet. In fact, Luke tells us Jesus said of John the Baptist there was never a greater man born of a woman. And when people heard that, they agreed and acknowledged God’s righteousness.
The Pharisees and the scribes rejected God’s the ministry of John and refused to be baptized by him.
They didn’t want anything to do with John and they didn’t want anything to do with Jesus. The people embraced John as a true prophet and they were willing to embrace Jesus as the Messiah, at least at the beginning.
But the leaders wanted nothing to do with Jesus and they certainly wanted nothing to do with John who said that Jesus is the Messiah. So they have a big problem. And Jesus nails them when He says, “Answer Me.”
So they had to have a meeting to figure out how to answer.
verses 31-32
The rest of the story is told by Luke who tells us they feared being stoned if they denied John the Baptist was a prophet of God. Since John the Baptist was a prophet, if you said he wasn’t that made you a blasphemer by virtue of discrediting a true prophet of God and the penalty was death. So they couldn’t go there.
So it’s easy to see the dilemma Jesus has created. So what are they going to do?
They’re stuck. If they say John’s ministry is from God, then they have to embrace Jesus and that they cannot do. If they say it’s from men, they’re liable to get stoned to death and they can’t let that happen, and so they were reduced to the worst possible thing that can happen to somebody who has intellectual pride.
They were forced to say in
verse 33
“We do not know.” Boy, that must have come out hard. How did they ever spit that out? “We do not know.” And there we find the final point as we move from the confrontation to the counter to
3. The Condemnation
verse 33b
How tragic it is to get to the place where Jesus says, “I’m through talking to you.” But that’s where they find themselves. He says, “I’m done. This conversation is over. I have said all I am going to say. You’re not entitled to any further information.”
He would not cast His pearls before swine to have the truth again trampled. The curtain has fallen on them and they are forever damned. Reject the light and ultimately the light goes out.
Scripture warns us about that time and time again. Today is the day. Believe while the light is here for the time will come when the light is gone. My Spirit will not always strive with man.
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Luke 19:31 to 44, How often I would have gathered you as a hen gathers her brood, but you would not therefore your house is left to you desolate. What a sobering thought when Jesus says, “I’m done.”
It’s interesting, isn’t it that the same authority that allowed Jesus to speak is the same authority that sealed His lips. That is a vivid reminder that if you don’t want to hear what God has to say to you he is under no obligation to speak to you at all.
In fact, notice how chapter 12 begins:
Verse 1
Parables prevented those from hearing who did not listen with ears of faith. When Jesus first began His public ministry, He preached openly and plainly but the farther He goes, the more He restricts who can hear. Here we find Jesus ending His conversation with the Jewish leaders and finally He will stand before Pilate and not say a word.
The most important thing that can happen in the world is people hear the truth. The only place they’re going to hear it is from God’s Word and through His servants.
The Father has authority, He gives it to the Son, the Son delegates it to us so that we might warn a lost and dying world about the future that awaits them apart from God. May God help us to use that authority wisely.
Let’s pray.
