By What Authority (Mark 11:27-33)

Authority is everywhere. It's inescapable.

You can't get away from it. If you walk out your door and

continue on foot or get into your car, it will not be long

before you come to a stop sign or red light telling you to

cease your motion. By what authority can this sign

or light tell you to stop? Who put it there?

Another example of authority being everywhere.

I took my three daughters to a UNC women's soccer game this

last week in which they defeated Alabama 4 to 0.

We were looking for a parking spot along Stadium Rd.

Nothing there. All the parking spots are taken.

You know, we, we go on this little side Rd. that kind of

cuts toward the stadium. There's all these open spots,

but they all say parking restricted 24 hours for visitors

to the Sports Science Center or something or other.

All these open spots, but I can't take it because it is

restricted 24 hours. Thankfully, at the very bottom

of the hill, tucked away, there's this little spot for,

you know, a daytime service worker.

And it ended at 5:00 PM. And it was open so we could go

to the game. How can UNC do that to us?

Well, they own the land, they own the property.

They get to decide who parks there.

I'm just a humble supplicant trying to get to a soccer game,

not knowing where to park. If you've got parking secrets

for Dorrance Field, let me know, because I won't be the last

soccer game I take my girls to. In those minor ways, authority

puts a stop to things you might want to do or plan to do.

It's that confrontation with your desire or effort or long

held ambition that when authority confronts you in some

more significant way, that's why you don't like it.

We don't like it when an authority tells us we don't want

to do something or we we can't do something we want to do.

We don't like it when an authority makes a claim on us to

make us do something we don't want to do, pay this amount in

taxes or pay this ticket that got snapped on your car when

you're on the freeway, etcetera. There's a clash between the

desires of our heart and the things that authorities often

require or forbid. And one of our most natural

responses then is to question the legitimacy of that

authority. Well, who says, are you really

in charge? Maybe this authority is

illegitimate. Maybe it's maybe it's overreach.

And of course, in some cases it is.

In some cases there are legitimate grounds to question

authority or lodge an appeal about a given authority.

But all that I'm trying to highlight right now is that

we're often motivated to question authority because of a

previous desire or commitment, something deeply rooted in our

hearts. In our passage this morning,

we're continuing our series in Mark's Gospel, Chapter 11,

verses 27 to 33, a whole gathering of religious leaders,

really representing all the main religious authorities of Israel

during Jesus time, headquartered in Jerusalem, get together and

challenge Jesus about the nature and source of his authority.

That's what our whole passage is about.

It's in response, as we'll see, to what Jesus did just

previously in the temple where he he brought everything to a

halt and called the whole show off.

So then actually come to him and say, where'd you get off doing

that? Who says you can do that?

This is what happens when Jesus's authority is challenged.

What does it reveal to us? Please follow along as I read

Mark 1127 to 33. And they came again to

Jerusalem. And as he was walking in the

temple, the chief priests and the scribes and the elders came

to him. And they said to him, By what

authority are you doing these things?

Or who gave you this authority to do them?

Jesus said to them, I will ask you one question, Answer me, and

I will tell you by what authority I do these things.

Was the baptism of John from heaven or from man?

Answer me. And they discussed it with one

another, saying, If we say from heaven, he will say, Why then

did you not believe him? But shall we say from man?

They were afraid of the people, for they all held that John

really was a prophet. So they answered Jesus, We do

not know. And Jesus said to them, Neither

will I tell you by what authority I do these things.

Now that Jesus has entered Jerusalem, the last week of his

life has begun, and the Gospel of Mark is going to be dedicated

for about the next chapter to a series of conflicts between

Jesus and the religious authorities.

Conflicts over his authority, Conflicts over the nature of

what it means to be Messiah, conflicts over who has or has

not been a rightful steward of the leadership of the people of

Israel. This passage is kind of an

introduction, an entryway to this whole series of conflicts

that, Lord willing, we'll consider in our next few

sermons. Here, the point is simple to

kind of summarize the text in one sentence.

Jesus refuses to defend his authority on terms set by

unbelief. In other words, divine authority

does not submit to human scrutiny, just like we saw a few

moments ago in that reading from Job 40.

So the question we can ask that will frame our study of the

whole passage is this. What happens when human unbelief

challenges divine authority? What happens when human unbelief

challenges divine authority? What's revealed?

What do we discover? What does it show us about

ourselves? What does it show us about the

right way to relate to God? So our outline's going to have

two parts, human unbelief and divine authority.

We're going to consider 3 aspects of each.

So if you are a note taker or you really want to keep the

outline clear in your head, two points.

Each will have 3 sub points point #1 human unbelief.

So in a sense, we're going to consider the question from the

religious authorities and kind of study all that that implies

from them and their response. We're going to focus on them in

the first half, then on Jesus in the second-half.

So human unbelief .1 The first aspect of it we see is human

dishonesty. Sub .1 human dishonesty.

Look again at verses 27 and 28. And they came again to

Jerusalem. And as he was walking in the

temple, the chief priests and the scribes and the elders came

to him and they said to him, By what authority are you doing

these things or who gave you this authority to do them?

The context is likely Wednesday of the last week of Jesus life.

He's come back into Jerusalem, he's walking around, he's likely

teaching as he has been customarily kind of out in the

open in the temple to whoever wants to come.

And so he's accessible to the religious leaders.

We see that the chief priests, scribes and elders came to him.

This represents the full Sanhedrin, which is a technical

name for 71 religious authorities who sort of all

acting together had authoritative oversight of the

life of Israel and the city of Jerusalem.

So the chief priests in particular were over the temple

and its worship and sacrifices. Describes were kind of highly

trained religious experts that you would go to to understand a

matter of the law or kind of resolve a a dispute and

interpretation, maybe tell you if something was permitted or

not. Is it OK for me to do this or

not? The elders function kind of like

civic community leaders, sort of like informal magistrates,

judges, that kind of thing. You put it all together and this

is the entire combined official power of religious leadership in

Jerusalem. They're all together come and

ask Jesus or to 71 verses one this question about his

authority. So when they ask by what

authority are you doing these things or who gave you this

authority to do them? The occasion of their question,

the grounds of their question, is Jesus's dramatic act from

just a couple days ago. When he goes into the temple, he

prohibits people from selling doves, from exchanging money.

He pauses anybody from being able to carry vessels throughout

the temple, as we saw last week. That's to put a pause to the

whole sacrificial system, all the operation of the whole

temple in this hugely busy season when pilgrims have come

and they're offering sacrifice upon sacrifice as upon

sacrifice. Jesus stops it in its tracks.

It's a bold assertion of authority.

How can you come into the temple and stop it?

How can you come and just, you know, find the little pause

button that's going to turn off the whole temple and go dink,

and all religious activity ceases.

It is an audacious act. It's natural they'd go.

Who does this guy think he is? It is, in one sense, a

reasonable question. But what are they looking for?

What are they hoping to find? In asking him this question,

they hope to find something in Jesus's answer as a pretext for

arresting him. That's what we learn just a

little bit afterward in chapter 12, verse 13, some of the

Pharisees, some of the Herodians came to trap Him in his talk

1215 knowing their hypocrisy. So we we know, and I'll give you

one more detail that'll really lock it in.

But their question is not an honest one.

It's got ulterior motives. It's got a hidden agenda.

So they asked him about who gave you authority to do these

things. It's in the plural.

These things might refer to the kind of whole complex of actions

he performed in the temple, but it might also go back to his

entering the city on a cult, a royal symbol, a messianic

symbol. It might even go back to his

other miracles, the things they've seen.

What's the source of Jesus authority that enables him to

cast out demons, to forgive sins, to raise the dead?

Who gave him that authority? So we know this is a trap just

from verse 28. And here's the decisive evidence

for that. If you go back to verse 18 of

this chapter, the immediate response of the chief priests

and the scribes, two of those three groups named here, Chapter

11, verse 18. And the chief priests and the

scribes heard it. They heard what Jesus was saying

and doing and were seeking a way to destroy Him, for they feared

him because all the crowd was astonished at his teaching.

They were afraid of Jesus. They wanted to destroy Jesus.

They felt his powerful pull on the crowds and they didn't like

it. So we know this is envy over his

influence. We know they're already plotting

against him. The text just told us that.

So when we hear this question, this is not humbly seeking an

answer. This is not good faith trying to

remedy ignorance. They already have a plot and

they're looking for a kind of device to insert into the plot.

This sounds like an honest question, but it's not.

And I think actually Joe helped me see this in kind of studying

the passage this week. I think it kind of summarized it

nicely. Basically what they're after is

if he claims a kind of high enough authority that sort of

somehow puts him on a footing with God, well then they can

charge him with blasphemy. I think in particular, given the

huge nature of what he did in the temple, what's an authority

big enough to measure up to that if he somehow claims a divine

authority, they can go, aha, he's blaspheming, he's treading

on God's territory. He's claiming as a human being,

an authority that only God can have.

So I think the specific kind of target they have in their trap

is grounds for charging him with blasphemy, which is ultimately

what they will do in his trial. If he says his authority is from

heaven, poof, blasphemy. If he says, oh, I don't know,

just human messianic authority, something like that, well then

they can say, well, you don't have authority to do what you

did. You're you're trapped.

What right did you have to smash up the temple?

Zoom out a little bit. Think about how to apply this.

There is such a thing as an honest question for God.

There is such a thing as honest seeking for God, but it's more

rare than you might think. Some people sincerely think of

themselves as open minded, open to persuasion, willing to

believe if they get sufficient evidence, when actually deep

down in their heart of hearts they're committed to unbelief.

Not so much for intellectual reasons As for simply wanting to

keep living their own way, not wanting to give up being their

own master and Lord. If you aren't willing to give up

being your own master and Lord, there's no way to come to God as

an honest seeker. There's no way to ask God an

honest question, because the presupposition, the basic step

one, is your willingness to submit to anything he reveals,

anything he says, anything he demands of you.

The Sanhedrin might have thought that they were suspending

judgement, keeping an open mind, as we say, but in reality they

had some measure of skepticism, unbelief, and cowardice.

If you're not a believer in Jesus, what questions for God do

you have? Are those questions something

you're willing to ask and wait for his answer and consider it

changing your mind and heart and your fundamental commitments in

life? If you are that open, then I

really think those are honest questions.

When we think about verse 28, apart from their intent to trap

Him, who gave you this authority is a good question.

It shows us that the impression Jesus made on his contemporaries

was someone doing things that you can in no way account for on

normal human terms. He is not just good teacher

Jesus. He is not just radical prophet

Jesus. The impression he made on the

religious leaders who knew Israel's scriptures and

traditions inside and out, but their whole life studying them,

is there is no way to account for the things he's saying and

doing in normal human terms. So who gave Jesus this

authority? It's a good question.

If you're not committed to faith in Christ, how would you answer

it? What kind of things does he do?

What kind of things does he say? Where does he get his authority?

Do you think that Jesus has any real authority?

So that's their question. That's the setup, the trap

they're trying to lay for Jesus. Now when we look down, Jesus

refuses to answer their question.

We'll come back to that, but then they discuss basically

Jesus gives them this dilemma. This question they have to

answer. Was the baptism of John from

heaven or from man? You have to answer that.

Then I'll answer your question. So they discuss it verses 31 and

32. If we say from heaven, he will

say, why then did you not believe him?

But shall we say from man? They were afraid of the people,

for they all held that John really was a prophet.

Another word for their problem in verses 31 and 32 is

hypocrisy. They're pretending they're play

acting. Their outward words don't match

their inward thoughts and desires and intentions.

They're not motivated by the truth.

They're motivated by what's going to have a potential

backlash with the crowds that they need to keep on their side.

They didn't believe in John. I think it's important to

recognize that when they anticipate Jesus's question and

response, verse 31, he will say, why then did you not believe

him? Meaning they must not have

believed in John because the people who believed in John the

Baptist message got baptized by John And at the beginning of

Mark's gospel, we learned that virtually everybody in Judea and

around Jerusalem was going out and being baptized by John.

So the the Sanhedrin, all the members who made it up would

have known. Well, they didn't actually get

baptized by John. That'd be fairly sort of public

knowledge. Pretty obvious.

You kind of keep tabs on what the religious leaders are doing.

Well, were they baptized by John?

No. Jesus could check.

Jesus could verify. If they say his authority is

from heaven, well, he can stick them.

Why didn't you get baptized by him?

So, kids in the congregation, I want you to notice something.

These religious authorities who were entrusted with the

knowledge of God and teaching the people and leading the

people, they rejected the prophet that God sent them to

prepare for Jesus. They didn't accept it, and their

rejection of this earlier revelation made it harder for

them to accept Jesus. When he came, they had already

rejected the revelation God had given them, so they were not

motivated to accept this further revelation.

What your parents are trying to do when they're teaching you,

training you, having family devotions, helping you memorize

Scripture, is put revelation from God into your mind and

heart as early as they can. The more of that you accept now,

the better off you'll be when you get more and more and more

later. The less of it you accept now,

the more you reject God's teaching you through your

parents, more spiritually dangerous it'll be for you

later. A second point here of human

unbelief. Human disordered desire.

Human disordered desire, underneath their unbelief is a

disordered desire. We see that in verses 31 and 32.

They were afraid of the people. They desired to preserve their

position more than to submit to the truth.

They desired to save face more than to serve God.

They prioritized politics over truth, power over goodness,

staying in charge over faithfully stewarding their

charge. Their only legitimacy is leaders

derived from their faithful stewardship of God's word.

And they failed at this. They failed to receive God's

prophets. They failed to receive God's

Messiah. And in terms of substance,

whatever happened politically, whatever happened with their,

their kind of followers and the common people, their inability

to discern spiritual matters with reference to John

invalidated their standing as spiritual leaders of Israel.

What are you tempted to choose over truth?

What are you tempted to prefer before truth?

Whether you're a a believer or not, you know, it's common

today. I think because we have a

relatively affluent society, modern medicine can have all

kinds of marvels to buffer us from death, advance teams that

it sends out through illness, through sickness.

It's tempting to just kind of go through life and think, you know

what, it doesn't really matter what I think about God.

Doesn't really matter what I think about is there a life

after this or not. A lot of people are not so much

opposed to God. That's just indifferent.

Yeah, I don't really know. Not really concerned about what

happens after I die. It doesn't really seem to matter

very much to me. I would just want to point out

that life is short and life is uncertain.

I would want to point out that the intuition you have deep in

your heart that some things are really right and really wrong

for everybody, doesn't just point out there to other people

about how they should change or how the world should be fixed.

It points in here. To convict you of things you've

done wrong. And if you follow that down,

you'll see you haven't just done wrong, you are wrong.

I'd want to suggest to you that it's folly not to care about

ultimate questions like is there a God?

What happens when you die? Are you in a good spiritual

position before the God of the universe?

A third element of unbelief that we see in this passage is human

fear. Human fear again, verse 32, it's

a distorted desire, specifically because they're afraid.

Verse 32, What are they afraid of?

They were afraid of the people, for they all held that John

really was a prophet. In this case, popular opinion

was correct. John really was a prophet.

Jesus knew that, the common people knew that.

And so Jesus's countermeasure, which we'll talk about more in

the next point, is he's putting them into a place where they

know what the people think and they know there's going to be a

consequence if they go against that.

They're going to lose standings, they're going to lose faith,

they might lose favor. It's a delicate and highly

charged time politically, because Judea exists under Roman

governance and there's always tensions.

They resent that. They don't want to be under

Roman governance. They want to have full autonomy

in their own land. Rome is always a little bit

uneasy. What are these strange people

who have these strange customs and worship only one God and

refuse to sacrifice to the other gods?

There's a weird, tense relationship between Rome and

Judea. And so there's a weird tense

relationship between the Jewish governing authorities always

have an answer to Rome and trying to stay in good touch

with the people. They're always caught between a

rock and a hard place. So what is Jesus pushing on?

Jesus pushing on their fear. They fear losing power.

Why? Because they love it too much.

We fear losing what we love. They should have had a higher

allegiance to God and His truth, but instead they feared losing

favor with the people. What you love, you'll fear to

lose. What you'll love you'll fear to

have damaged. And of course, a healthy,

rightly ordered love will lead you to care for that person you

love. It'll lead you to seek to

preserve that good you love. You will work to see good come

to a, a school or a family or a church that you love and you

care for. And so there's a kind of natural

anxiety over its well-being and what you can do about it that

leads you to pray, it leads you to act.

It leads you to to mobilize resources to protect and

preserve well. That's a healthy way that love

leads to fear within limits, that can then lead to good

action. But there's an unhealthy way.

If you love it absolutely, your fear will take over.

Your fear will distort your loyalties.

If you love this child so much, you're willing to say, well, you

know, I used to thank God, thought that was a sin.

But now, well, I don't know. I've evolved what's happening.

Yes, it's good to love your child.

No, it's not good to love your child more than you love God.

And if you compromise something God says out of a kind of what

you think is a loving accommodation to a child, you're

showing that your love is disordered, Your fear is

disordered. The scribes, the Sanhedrin,

we're not willing to believe in Jesus because it would mean

losing control. They feared giving up control.

So dishonesty, disordered desire, and fear, all these

things motivate their unbelief. Their unbelief is not some sort

of neutral, pure scientist, scientific skepticism, just

going into a lab and weighing up evidence and doing experiments.

Dishonesty, disordered desire, fear, those are all underneath.

Those are all under the hood. Those are all motivating their

rejection of Jesus's authority. Their rejection was a spiritual

blindness both to Jesus and to John and Lord willing, as we'll

see next week, to the whole series of prophets God sent to

His people to bring them to repentance.

What's the evidence of their unbelief that it comes from

spiritual blindness? Again, it's back in verse 18.

They've already formed a plot to destroy him.

From one angle, the essence of unbelief is rejecting God's

authority. What are some of the realms in

which we do that? One is rejecting the authority

of Scripture. Scripture is breathed out by

God. What Scripture says, God says.

Every word of it is true. And yet we're often tempted to

reject its total claim on us to think, well, maybe I could

believe most of it. I would carve out these little

pieces here that would be convenient for my pre-existing

scientific beliefs or moral commitments.

But in and of itself, a partial rejection of the authority of

God's word is actually a total rejection of the authority of

God's word because you're putting yourself in authority

over it. If you say I'll keep these

pieces and I'll get rid of these, your own reason becomes a

higher authority than God's word.

We're tempted to reject God's claims on us in terms of our

ethics, our morality, our way of life.

It's tempting to push back on God's reign over your

conscience, to try to kind of put up boundaries, put up

defenses, put up a firewall. If you're hearing from

Scripture, if you're hearing from someone godly, if you're

hearing from someone where you really should be thinking, yes,

I, I know that's what God says. I know that's what God wants.

I know that's what I should do or shouldn't do.

Any effort you make to build up a wall against that is a

rejection of God's authority. And of course, there's the most

fundamental decision. Will you repent and turn from

sin and believe in Jesus or not? A right relationship with God,

made possible through the sacrifice of his Son, begins on

our part with repentance, submission, total surrender.

But why should we submit to God's authority?

We've considered a detailed human unbelief.

Now we turn to divine authority .2 Divine authority.

As with our first point, there's going to be 3 sub points.

The first one is divine testing. Divine testing.

That's one expression of divine authority.

Again, they come to him. They ask by what authority you

do these things. Now we'll focus on Jesus

response, verses 29 and 30. Jesus said to them, I will ask

you one question, answer me, I will tell you.

Answer me and I will tell you by what authority I do these

things. Was the baptism of John from

heaven or from man? Answer me.

So we want to consider first the fact that Jesus doesn't answer

but poses another question, the fact of his counter question.

Even in doing that, he's asserting his authority rather

than submitting to theirs. Now in rabbinic debate of the

time, it was understood as a legitimate debating move.

It was a card you could play. If someone asks you a question,

you can ask them a question in return.

So it's understood as kind of Fair play in an argument like

this. But at the same time, given that

the question is about Jesus very legitimacy, kind of the whole

basis of his teaching, his refusal to answer is a kind of

deliberate sidestep. He's not going to do this on

their terms. He has an authority that is

unique, that's not on the same playing field as theirs.

Instead of allowing them to test him, he tests them.

Instead of him being on trial, he puts them on trial.

A faint analogy of this is a story by my wife Kristen, just

reminded me of from her college days this week.

She was in a high level anthropology class as an

undergrad. They had to take turns preparing

A lecture based on a signed reading that the whole class

had. So everybody reads the book.

One person gives a lecture and leads a discussion.

Kristen, I don't know, just want to kind of hunch A Spidey sense.

Before she began her lecture, she just asked everybody in the

class who have you actually read the book?

And very few hands went up. And her classmates were not

entirely pleased with her because then they're not

reading. The book was exposed to their

teacher who adjusted their grades accordingly.

Their refusal to do the assignment was exposed in a way

that it would not have been otherwise.

The Sanhedrin was putting Jesus to the test, but actually it

turned out he instead would put them to the test.

Just like we saw in the reading from Job 40.

When we put God to the test, we might think we're testing him,

but he's actually testing us. And the very fact that you're

putting him to the test means that you're failing.

What does it mean to put God to the test?

Practically, I would say it's any approach to God that takes

the form of God. If you do X for me, I will do Y

for you. Now, there's a sense in which

and some of the Old Testament context, you know, somebody

could make a vow. They could say, Lord, if you

deliver me, I'll offer you the sacrifice.

That's not putting God to the test.

That's just saying there'll be a kind of expression of

Thanksgiving and outpouring of recognizing God's deliverance.

So I don't mean in the sort of Old Testament sense of making a

vow and following up on it. I mean more in the sense of

putting a condition on God where he has to do something for you

first before you will agree to trust him, believe in him, obey

him, submit to him. Again, this could be something

you would do as a non believer if you're really thinking

seriously about following Jesus. It also could be something where

you sort of bargain with God in your heart, where if you're

convicted, if you're aware of something you really need to

change, you kind of put a condition on God first.

So that's the fact of Jesus. Counter question, He's testing

them. God tests us.

We don't test him. We just want to consider the

content of Jesus. Counter question, was the

baptism of John from heaven or from man?

Answer me. When Jesus refers to the baptism

of John, he means his whole ministry.

John was preaching, John was baptizing.

If you agreed with John's preaching, you'd get baptized by

him. It's a it's a package deal.

So to understand what Jesus is getting at, I think the key we

need to keep in mind is that John's whole ministry pointed to

Jesus as its fulfillment. John was the forerunner.

John was the voice of one crying in the wilderness.

John is the one saying make way of prepare the way of the Lord,

make his path straight. John is a giant pointer finger.

That's his whole ministry. That's how he gets represented

in Christian art throughout the centuries.

He is a finger pointing. That's the nature of his

ministry. So you go back really quick to

the very beginning of Mark's Gospel chapter 1, verses 7 and

8. This is about John the Baptist

and he preached saying after me comes he who is mightier than I,

the strap of whose sandals I'm not worthy to stoop down and

untie. I have baptized you with water,

but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.

In a nutshell, Jesus point is if you believed John's message, you

would believe Jesus authority. John pointed to one who's so

much greater than him he's not even worthy of stooping down and

untying A sandal. John pointed to one who's so

much greater than him, he's going to baptize with the Holy

Spirit. Not just water.

Only God can pour out the Spirit.

Only God can baptize with the Spirit.

If you paid attention to John, if you heard him, if you

accepted him, you would accept me.

I'm the whole point of John's ministry is what Jesus is

saying. A decision about John is a

decision about Jesus. That's the dilemma.

Jesus is forcing back on them, and so he denies them standing

to ask their question. He's saying, oh, this is kind of

a prerequisite to enter into this particular court case, this

particular trial. If you are not on record about

John the Baptist, you do not have the standing to come into

my court and ask me about my authority, because John has

already told you all you need to know.

So Jesus turns the tables and tests them.

He exposes their unbelief. He exposes their rejection of

God's prophet. They come trying to expose

Jesus. He turns it around and exposes

them. What are some of the ways in

which God tests us throughout our lives as believers?

1 is through hard truths in Scripture that make us work.

They make us pray. They make us rack our minds and

hearts to understand them. And sometimes then even when we

understand them, there's still more work to do emotionally, to

embrace them, to submit to them. You can say all things work

together for good for those who love God and are called

according to His purpose. But do you know it?

Do you rely on it? Do you feel it when you most

need it? There are hard truths in

Scripture. Another way God tests us is

through providential appointments in which He inserts

us between a rock and a hard place.

In Psalm 139, verse 6, David says, you hem me in behind and

Psalms 139:6

before you lay your hand upon me.

If you've not suffered very much, you might just think

that's God's care, His provision, His presence, His

guidance. He's before and behind us.

He's holding us, but the language of being hemmed in is

like God putting you between a rock and a hard place.

Being hemmed in means there's nowhere for you to go.

There's nowhere for you to move. Go forward.

You get scraped by a rock as sharp as a knife?

Go back. You fall off a Cliff.

God sometimes double parks us by his Providence.

He puts you in somewhere, then He comes and shuts you in, and

then you're stuck and all you can do is submit.

All you can do is trust. The only thing you can apply any

strength or effort to is endurance.

He's testing you. What do you do when you can't

move? What do you do when the Lord of

Heaven double parks you in? God also tests us by requiring

us to continue to ask and ask and ask in prayer for an answer.

It's a test. He's strengthening our faith.

He's withholding for good reason.

We don't know why. We trust He has his reasons.

He tests us through suffering. He tests us through a sense of

his absence or his silence or his distance.

Believers have very different experiences of this.

Some live most of their days with a sense of kind of God's

love, smiling down on them like sunshine.

Some genuine believers feel abandoned by God, deserted by

God, convinced that God has set his face against them.

In what ways has God tested you? What has he revealed to you

about yourself through that testing?

That's a good topic to discuss over lunch.

Divine testing Another element of divine authority we see in

Jesus response back to Mark 11 is divine hiddenness.

Divine hiddenness. Here we come to the the sort of

payoff and punchline of our passage, verse 33.

So they answered Jesus. We do not know.

And Jesus said to them, Neither will I tell you by what

authority I do these things. They won't commit themselves to

an answer, so Jesus won't commit himself to them.

Those who cannot be honest with themselves will not be honest

with Jesus or about Jesus. They haven't been travelling

with Jesus. They haven't been learning from

him. They haven't sought him

honestly. They're not seeking to engage on

fair terms. So Jesus cuts them off.

Jesus refuses to reveal himself as God.

He does not owe them an answer. He's invoking a kind of divine

prerogative and divine privilege not to answer, not to reveal

himself to those who are set against him.

Jesus answer would be, and we'll explore this more soon, that his

authority is from God and even in a way from himself because he

is the divine Son Incarnate. But he doesn't give him an

answer here. He hides himself.

He drops the veil and keeps it between him and them.

Now sometimes this is obviously a kind of confrontation with

people who are fundamentally not believing.

But even as believers, sometimes God hides himself because we ask

with wrong motives. James for three says you ask and

do not receive because you ask wrongly to spend it on your

passions. There is a way to ask for

something from God with such distorted motives that it's

better for us not to get it. And so God refusing to answer

God in that sense, hiding himself is actually doing us a

mercy because our hearts are so distorted we would further harm

ourselves. But the main point here that we

see in Jesus divine hiddenness is that he's content to let

somebody walk away. He's not going to argue somebody

into his Kingdom. He knows their hearts are hard.

Only God can soften a hard heart.

He knows they have hearts of stone.

Only God can give a new heart, a heart made of flesh.

God is powerful to do that. He answers prayers to do it.

And we should seek to persuade people and reason with them,

yes. But ultimately, what gets

someone into the Kingdom, what gets someone into belief is the

omnipotent power of God giving them a new heart.

So it takes wisdom when you're, when you're sharing the gospel

with someone, when you're having long running conversations with

a friend or a family member. It takes wisdom to know, am I

feeling anxious or timid because of fear of man and I should

really push through? Or have I really laid it all

out? The good news?

God's claims, ways they're going wrong, Have I laid it out as

fully as I can and it's really over to them.

That's a hard judgement call. It's easy to excuse fear of man

and think, Oh yeah, I've kind of done all there is to do.

But prayerfully consider that. Prayerfully pursue that.

There is a limit to what we can do and say.

We can't change people's hearts. Revelation is God's sovereign

prerogative. He is not obligated to reveal

himself. He chooses to whom to reveal

himself. Revelation does not follow from

our demand, but from God's freedom.

God's revelation is not a given, it's a gift. 3rd element of

divine authority we see in our passage, particularly the way it

kind of points back to the rest of the gospel, is divine

evidence. Divine evidence.

Jesus has given evidence in answer to their question.

He's just done it already. He's done it throughout the

whole gospel. He's done it every time he

performed a miracle. He's done it through his

teaching. He's done it every time he cast

out a demon with a word. He's done it by raising people

from the dead. He's done it by walking on

water. He's done it by the

Transfiguration. All of these miracles show a

divine authority that he is both authorized by God and has in his

own person God's own authority. So if Jesus's powerful deeds so

far have not convinced the Jerusalem religious authorities

of his divine power, then nothing will.

It's not that he's given no evidence, it's that he's given

abundant evidence. He's given so much evidence, you

just turn any page back into Mark's Gospel and you'll see

evidence for his divine authority.

The problem isn't too little evidence.

The problem is hard hearts that aren't willing to see it.

So the evidence he's already given convicts them of their

unbelief. They had no good reason for

rejecting John. They have no good reason for

rejecting Jesus. Their unbelief is obstinate.

It's hard hearted. It's persistent in the face of

overwhelming evidence. Jesus isn't giving them more

evidence because he knows that's not the problem.

He has given evidence of his divine authority all along.

So on Jesus's side, we've seen divine testing, divine

hiddenness, and divine evidence. All of that reveals his own

divine authority. All throughout Mark's Gospel

this has been implicit but consistent.

It's been beneath the surface, but ever present.

Jesus speaks and acts as God Incarnate.

His. His authority is from God in the

sense that he's a faithful prophet.

He is the Messiah. He's carrying out God's plan of

salvation as a human being. He is authorized by God to

fulfill the mission of the Messiah.

And yet also at the same time, he has in himself divine

authority. He is himself the Lord, He is

himself the eternal second person of the Trinity.

That's the only full and adequate and right answer to.

By what authority do you do these things and who gave you

this authority? Ultimately, God the Father has

given him this authority from all eternity as he has given him

his own nature, given him his own life.

So the biggest thing Jesus authority isn't is just from

man. The dilemma he forces on them is

if they say John his authority was just from man, then John's a

charlatan, John's a charade, John's a false prophet.

You don't get to go call all Israel to repentance just

because you thought that was a good idea.

If John's authority is quote UN quote from man, then it's fake.

It doesn't hold up. He's a false prophet.

Similarly, Jesus does not leave us with the option of just

saying, Yup, good teacher, Yup, inspiring moral figure, Yup.

You know, I'm a secularist, I'm an atheist.

But boy, I prefer the fruits of Christian culture over the

disaster that it sort of came from in the Roman world and the

disaster we seem to be headed to in many respects in our society

today. When nobody can say what's right

and wrong, you can't just say good moral influence.

The question remains, by what authority?

By whose authority? What authority does he have?

He has authority as the master of the house, the Lord of the

temple, the judge who has come to inspect and evaluate his

people. He has authority not just from

God, but as God, He has come to wield that authority to preview

judgement and accomplish redemption.

The reason we fear authorities is because we're not convinced

that they will act in our own true best interest.

We are afraid of ways that they will knowingly or unknowingly

harm us. We are afraid of ways they will,

willingly or unwillingly, no, wittingly or unwittingly, damage

our lives, harm us from experiencing true flourishing

and fullness and freedom. We're afraid of authorities

because the bad things they can do to us, whether legitimately

or illegitimately. So we have to ask, what did

Jesus do with his authority? What does he do with his

authority? He's told us all along, He tells

us in the beautiful one sent in summary in Mark 1045.

The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and to give

his life as a ransom for many. This contest between unbelief

and God's authority has defined human existence since Genesis 3.

The very first sin was a rejection of God's authority.

The very first sin was a refusal to live on His terms.

And we've done that ever since. We've rejected His authority.

We've run from Him. We viewed the authority of God

Himself as if were bad for us. That's the essence of sin.

That's the deep, sick heart of sin.

And what did Jesus come to do? He came to bear the penalty, the

punishment that we all deserve for all of our rejections of

God's authority. He came to make the most pure,

the most perfect, the most selfless exercise of authority

in the history of the universe. That's what he does with his

authority. No self seeking, all other

seeking, no vengeance, all forgiveness, no lording it over

people, but all submitting to incalculable cruelty and pain

and suffering to redeem you. That is what Jesus uses his

authority to do. And I haven't told the whole

story because if you want proof, you just ask what happened next

in our text. Today is Wednesday.

Thursday he'll be betrayed. Friday he'll be killed.

Saturday he'll like hold in a tomb.

Sunday he gets up out. He slips from death's authority

because death had no authority to hold him.

He got himself up out of the grave.

It's true to say God the Father raised him.

It's true to say he was raised in the power of the Holy Spirit.

It's also true as he says in John's Gospel, I have authority

to lay my life down and I have authority to take it up again.

Jesus authority is to take his life up again and to take yours

up with him if you trust in him. From the beloved Puritan

commentator Matthew Henry, commenting on the conflict in

this passage and the question Jesus refuses to answer said let

them wait but three or four days and his resurrection shall tell

them who gave him his authority. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we praise You for this confrontation that

exposes our sins. It exposes our unwillingness to

submit to You, our unwillingness to trust You, our desires for

the wrong things or desires in the wrong ways, where we love

things and more than You and put them in Your place.

Father, we thank you that Jesus came to exercise his divine

authority to bear the curse and give life and rescue from death.

We pray these things in Jesus name.

Amen. To respond to God's Word, we'll

sing a beautiful, touching modern hymn that celebrates how

Jesus exercises all of his authority with the tenderest

love. Jesus, strong and kind, let's

stand and sing.