Matthew 21:22-27 | "Daring to Question"

This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

Please take your Bible with me this morning to the Gospel of Matthew.

Matthew chapter 21.

Matthew 21 · chapter mention

We're going to be looking together this morning at verses 23 through 27.

Matthew 21.

And as we worship through the study of God's Word this morning, I'd like you to ponder this question.

What is the most daring thing you've done?

I didn't say stupid.

The most daring thing that you've done.

I went to the walk-in clinic the other day because I had some significant pain in my knee, kind of pain that I've not experienced before.

That's not a surprise.

It's just I know the pains that I have, and that one was new.

And it reminded me of the first time I went downhill skiing.

Bridger Bowl outside of Bozeman, Montana.

And started out in the lane with the very gradual slope.

And there was an instructor that taught us how to position our skis in an arrow so that you could go slowly and be able to control your rate of speed.

And we were encouraged as newbies to go down that at least two or three times.

I went down once because for me I could not go fast enough.

And so I went with some of my friends and got on the ski lift and went where they were going.

And that was that was quite the experience.

And I went down that slope a handful of times, and then I realized, you know what, I want to do something different.

And so I went without my friends to a different place.

And I was ignorant.

I did not know what I was doing or where I was going.

And I ended up on this trail that had a sign with a black diamond on it.

You know, you know about this.

That's good.

I did not know about the black diamonds.

I did not know what I was daring to do.

And I made it down that slope.

Again and again and again.

And as a result, I went into the walk-in clinic this week because of knee pain.

I dared to do that.

I survived, thankfully.

I'm here today.

What have you dared to do in life?

You know, sometimes the daring thing is to push ourselves outside of our comfort zone, to go beyond our personal limits of what's wise, of what's safe, of what brings well-being to us.

And so we we say, you know what, I'm going to try this.

I'm going to do something that I have not done before.

Maybe it's skydiving.

Maybe it's skiing.

Sometimes daring is staying within our comfort zone.

Some people enjoy going outside of the comfort zone, and it's it's daring to stay inside.

I can think of at least two biblical examples of daring action.

One is in Exodus chapter 3, where uh a prince of Egypt by the name of Moses dared to stand up to God.

Exodus 3 · chapter mention

God told this prince of Egypt that he was sending him back to Egypt, to the place where he was wanted for murder.

And he said, I'm sending you back to bring my people out.

And Moses said, Um, yeah, no.

Don't think so.

And Moses gave excuses.

You remember this?

God said, or Moses said to God in Exodus chapter 3, verse 11, God, you don't know me.

Exodus 3:11

I'm I'm nobody.

He said to God, I don't know your name.

He said to God, they won't believe me.

He said to God, I don't speak well.

And to each of those, God came back and said, Who do you think you're talking to?

Don't you know that I made your mouth?

Don't you know that I made your tongue?

Don't you know that I can tell you my name?

And in the end, Moses just said, No, God, just send somebody else.

And God said, Who do you think you're talking to?

Moses, you're going to go.

Another time is Exodus or 1 Kings chapter 19 with a prophet named Elijah.

1 Kings 19 · chapter mention

Elijah was on top of Mount Carmel, where he called down fire from heaven to devour a sacrifice.

Significant victory.

And then Elijah got on his knees and he prayed.

After three years of no rain, he prayed and prayed and prayed, and rain came so much that it became difficult to run in the mud.

And then he escapes from a queen who wants to cut off his head.

He runs out into the desert.

And he tells God, I'm the only one left.

You may as well kill me.

God, take my life.

I do not want to be your prophet anymore.

Kill me, God.

I dare to stand up to you.

Take my life.

Both Moses and Elijah were overtly daring in that they attempted to stand up to God.

In their desire to not be stretched beyond their comfort zone, they dared to tell God how it was.

They dared to stand up to God.

They dared to suggest that God didn't know what he was doing.

They dared to think that their way was better than God's way.

Of course, we would never dare to do such a thing, would we?

We would never be guilty of thinking that God doesn't know what he's doing when he brings something painful into our lives.

We would never be guilty of telling God that his way won't work.

We would never be guilty of saying, yeah, I just can't do that.

Or I'm all alone, God, I can't do it by myself.

Or would we?

Would we dare to be that way?

Our text for this morning in Matthew's gospel recounts what could be one of the most egregious examples of daring action in all of Scripture.

But while the people were initially quite daring, when it came time to really act, to take a step of faith that was incredibly daring, they refused.

Would you look at with it with me, Matthew 21, beginning in verse 23?

It says, When Jesus entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came up to him as he was teaching and said, By what authority are you doing these things?

And who gave you this authority?

Jesus answered them, I will also ask you one question, and if you tell me the answer, then I will also tell you by what authority I do these things.

The baptism of John, where did it come from?

Did it come from heaven or from man?

And they discussed it among themselves, saying, If we say from heaven, he will say, Well, then why didn't you believe him?

But if we say from man, we are afraid of the crowd, for they all hold that John was a prophet.

So they answered Jesus, We don't know.

And he said to them, Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things.

There are a couple of parables that follow this that we'll get into next time that Jesus uses to really explain what's happening here.

But we'll look at those next time.

For here we need to notice that this is all about authority.

Who has the authority to speak?

Who has the authority to declare God's word?

Who has the authority to act in God's name?

You see it several times here.

Verse 23, it's twice, verse 24, one time, verse 27, another time.

Authority, authority, authority.

Who has the authority?

But it's all set up by the chief priests and the elders of Israel coming to Jesus in order to trap him.

There is a daring kind of trap.

Looks like I put those in the wrong order.

We'll wait.

Jesus' authority here is questioned because the chief priests and the elders' authority was challenged.

Now, this is probably Tuesday, maybe depending on how you view it, Wednesday of Holy Week.

So you remember that, right?

Jesus comes down into Jerusalem on the donkey to all of the celebrations.

The triumphal entry, we call it, the triumphal entry of the king.

He goes into the city, he kind of takes a tour of the temple and he leaves.

He comes back the next day, and there are sheep and cows and pigeons and doves making all kinds of noise in the temple common area.

There are money changers, and Jesus is just fed up with it.

He says, Listen, this is supposed to be a house of prayer where people of all nations can come right here and pray.

And you've made it a den of thieves and a den of robbers.

Now he's teaching in the temple.

People are gathering around him, hearing his teaching.

And they want to know who told you you could do this?

Who told you you could teach this?

It used to be that you could do almost any work in your home without asking anybody permission to do it.

But now you have to get a permit for almost everything.

A permit from the city tells you you have the authority, you have the right, you have the permission to build a fence, to build an addition, to make significant changes to your home.

That's very much what's happening here in the temple.

This is the basis for what Jesus is doing and why he's doing it.

The authorities of the temple are coming to him and say, Where's your permit, Jesus?

Who gave you the authority to do this?

He's teaching, and those with authority come to him and they ask him, Who gave you the authority?

See, these were positions of recognized authority.

They had the authority to speak God's word, to read God's word, to sing the psalms, to lead the psalms.

When they spoke, people listened.

They were the elders of the people, the chief priests of the people.

Their words were the words of God.

And they came through multiple means.

Sometimes it was through ordination, through lots of training, through lots of questioning and examination, until finally you could serve as an elder or as a priest.

Sometimes it was through election, through voting, through appointment or through birth, being of the tribe of Levi, being from the high priest's family.

But the bottom line is that authority in the Jewish mind was never inherent.

That is, you didn't have authority simply because of who you were?

Only God had inherent authority.

So when they come to ask Jesus, where's your permit?

Do you have your certificate of ordination?

Who did you ask to be able to teach God's word in the temple?

Which of the priests, which of the elders signed off on your ability to teach?

Imagine that you spent a significant amount of time on a particular project at work.

And in the middle of your work, your boss comes and interrupts you and says, Who told you to do that?

Who told you to do it that way?

Or even, why are you doing that?

Your boss would be insinuating that he or she didn't tell you to do the task, that they didn't give you the instruction, that they didn't sign off on the project.

They would be insinuating you're on your own, you're doing this of your own authority, of your own responsibility.

You're not the boss, so you don't have automatic or inherent authority.

But since you're working on that project, somebody must have given you the right to do it.

These Jewish leaders didn't give Jesus any authority.

They didn't give him instruction and teaching.

So where did his authority come from?

That's what they want to know.

But they're not out just because of curiosity.

They're out because they want Jesus dead.

If this is Holy Week, which it is, Tuesday or Wednesday, within two or three days, he's going to be hanging on a cross.

This is a trap.

They want Jesus to identify his own authority so that they can arrest him and get him out of the temple.

That's why they interrupt him.

He's in the midst of his teaching.

He's got a crowd of people around him, probably gaining crowd, gaining more and more people.

Verse 26, we are afraid of the crowd.

Jesus represents an assault to their system.

He represents an assault to their comfort zone, to their claimed authority.

If Jesus has authority, then they're going to lose authority.

So they come and they interrupt him.

But we're not surprised by this, are we?

If you've been following along in the Gospel of Matthew, we expect this.

Because Jesus said as early as the Sermon on the Mount in chapters 5, 6, and 7, he said, You've heard that it was said to you, in other words, all of your teachers, all of your chief priests, and all of your elders have said this to you, but I say to you something a little different.

The standard operating procedure of the time was to quote someone else, to refer to another authority on the issue, because we don't have authority.

So I refer to Rabbi so-and-so, or Rabbi so-and-so says this.

You always referred to somebody else, but Jesus didn't refer to somebody else.

He said, I say to you.

Jesus assumed authority for himself, and that was unheard of.

You remember in chapter 5, verse 20, Jesus said, For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds, unless it goes beyond that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

No scribe or Pharisee would ever say that.

Matthew 7, verse 29, at the end of the Sermon on the Mount, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, because he taught them as one who had, possessed, held authority, and not as their scribes.

Matthew 7:29

Matthew chapter 16, verses 5 through 12, speaking of the leaven of the Pharisees, the sin and the teaching of the Pharisees, Jesus said, beware of the teaching of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees.

Matthew 16:5–12

See, Jesus was butting heads with these guys already for a long time.

He spent three years speaking out against the status, the position, the teaching, and the authority of the Jewish leaders, and they now want to know, why would you do that, Jesus?

Why would you teach without a permit?

Why would you teach without our saying you can do that?

Why would you enter our temple and drive out the money changers and drive out the sheep?

Why would you heal the sick and the blind and the lame and allow them to come into the temple?

Why would you do that?

Why would you accept the praise from children that should only be given to God?

Who gave you this authority?

Sounds like an IRS investigation.

The FBI, Department of Homeland Security.

You see, they can see clearly what Jesus is doing.

And they hear very clearly what Jesus is saying.

So they're gathering information in order to proceed to condemn.

They want a reason to accuse him, to do away with him, to shut him up.

Now, we have to be careful here.

And in our sanitized so-called Christian world, we tend to think, you know what, this is just outrageous.

Why would he just teaching?

He's a Jew in the temple.

He's teaching God's word.

Why would that be a problem?

Who in their right mind would question Jesus?

We know of Jesus, we read of him in our Bible.

Who would have the audacity to place themselves in a position superior to Jesus?

They saw the miracles, they heard the teaching.

Why would they do that?

Have you ever felt as though the Lord wants you to tell someone about him?

You're interacting with somebody, maybe at the store, maybe at the gym or at the gas station, and you just have this burden, this inward sense that God wants you to tell them about Jesus, and you don't?

If you've been in that position, then you've questioned Jesus' authority.

You said in your own way, no, Jesus doesn't have the authority to tell me what to do.

Have you ever seen a fellow believer in need?

And do you have the ability to meet that need, but you've not then acted on that?

You find some excuse to not step out and fulfill their need.

If you've been in that place, then you have ignored the Lord's commands and placed yourself in a position superior to him.

Now we aren't in a position to verbally respond to Jesus like Moses or Elijah or these chief priests and elders were, but by our actions, by our words, we often do the same exact things, don't we?

We shout to the Lord without volume.

No, you can't tell me what to do.

I am my own authority.

We may not verbally accuse the Lord in this way, but our actions may do that more loudly than words ever could.

Our actions may shout out that Jesus has no right to command our lives, no right to challenge our thinking, no right to correct our actions or to tell us what is the right way to think or the wrong way to think.

That's what the Jewish priests and the elders and the people of Israel were doing that day in front of all of the crowd of people that Jesus was teaching.

They were setting a trap for him.

But Jesus escaped the trap.

And in escaping the trap, he reset it for them.

He reset it for them.

Now the issue is about authority.

Jesus has already made it clear that he has authority, and the gospels tell us this over and over and over again.

Think with me back to Matthew chapter 9 and verse 6.

Matthew 9 · chapter mention

Jesus said, But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins, he then says to the paralytic, Rise, pick up your bed, and go home.

You might remember that context.

Jesus says to this man who's been let down through the roof, Son, your sins are forgiven.

What?

Who has authority to forgive sins?

Only God can do that.

Well, yeah, only God can make the paralyzed man rise up and walk.

Rise up and walk.

He proves he has authority to do that.

Two verses later, it says, when the crowd saw it, that is the healing of the man, they were afraid and they glorified God, who had given such authority to men.

We should not be surprised that Jesus has authority.

John, the Gospel of John makes it clear in other ways.

John chapter 5, verse 27, it says, And he has given, God has given Jesus authority to execute judgment because he's the Son of Man.

John 5:27

He's God in the flesh.

John chapter 10, Jesus said, Nobody takes my life from me, but I lay it down of my own accord because I have authority to lay it down.

John 10 · chapter mention

And I have authority to take it up again.

Wait a minute.

I have authority to die, and I have authority to rise again.

Wait a minute.

What kind of person has that kind of authority?

John chapter 17.

John 17 · chapter mention

You have given Jesus authority over all flesh to give eternal life to all whom you have given to him.

Do you see why we try to bring people to Jesus?

He's the one who possesses the authority to give life that is eternal.

Coming back to Matthew 28, Jesus came and said to the disciples, a little bit of authority is in my hands.

No?

All authority.

All leaving nothing out.

All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth.

That's why the book of Colossians would say in chapter 2, verse 10, you have been filled in Christ, who is the head of all rule and all authority.

When it comes to possessing authority, there is no one who has more than Jesus.

There is no question about his authority.

He has it.

And everyone who comes in contact with him recognized that he exercised it.

The leaders of Israel wanted to know: where does that authority come from?

We get that you're displaying it.

We get that you're exercising it, but where does it come from?

And Jesus comes back at them in a way that was common for the time.

He asked a question in return that kept the conversation going, but also challenges the debaters.

He comes back and says, What right do you have to try to set a trap for me?

He's not avoiding the question.

He's following a standard procedure of debate for the time, and in doing that, he's reversing the flow.

There's no longer a challenge directed at him, but a challenge directed towards his accusers.

He's no longer on the hot seat.

They are.

And his question is quite simple.

What about John?

What about John's baptism?

Now notice, there's no explanation there.

There's no further conversation of, you know, you know that that strange guy out in the desert who ate locusts and wore camel's hair clothing and was scratching himself all the time because of the camel's hair?

That's not what he says.

They know exactly who he's talking about.

And they know exactly what Jesus is referencing when he's speaking of John's baptism because everybody knew of John the Baptizer, even the Roman proconsul who ruled over Judea at the time, knew of John.

He knew him so well that he had him beheaded in prison for speaking against his marriage.

And these leaders of the Jewish people knew him well.

Back in chapter 3 of Matthew, verse 5, we read, then Jerusalem and all Judea and all the region about the Jordan were going out to him, to John the Baptist.

They were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sin.

But when John saw many of the Pharisees and the Sadducees coming to him, he said, You brood of baby snakes, you baby vipers, you poisonous little things, who warns you to flee from the wrath to come?

Quite the way to win friends and influence people, isn't it?

John denounced these leaders of Israel as hypocrites who would soon face the wrath of God.

So it's not difficult to imagine then when the leaders of Israel, what the leaders of Israel would think about John and his baptism.

If he spoke out against them, then there's no way that they would think that he came by the power and the message of God.

And so Jesus' key question is, what about John?

What about John's baptism?

Were John's ministry, were his baptism empowered and authorized by God, or by some kind of ministerial association that you've never heard of before?

The crowds believed that John was a prophet sent by God.

The reality is recorded in the Gospel of John, chapter 1, verse 6, where it says there was a man sent from God, whose name was John.

John 1:6

If you're sent by God, sent to do what God is calling you to do, then what you're doing is authorized by God.

And you have the authority given to you from the God who sends you.

But those leaders refuse to repent and bear fruit in keeping with repentance, as John told them to do.

They refuse to acknowledge that John was sent by God.

So if God did send John the Baptist, then the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the chief priests and the scribes and the elders were all wrong.

And of course, they couldn't be wrong.

They couldn't be wrong.

So the end of this account is that the trappers are trapped.

They refuse to acknowledge Jesus.

Because they refuse to acknowledge John.

I love the way that this is pictured.

But they huddle up.

What are we gonna do?

What do we say?

Can't you just imagine this?

Imagine in the Temple Commons, in the court of the Gentiles, where Jesus has driven out the animals and the money keepers.

Maybe they go and they they huddle up in Solomon's colonnade, sort of barricaded by the columns.

They've walked up, they've interrupted Jesus' teaching, challenging his right to speak, to heal, and to cleanse in the temple.

And it would be just a great and wonderful thing if they could embarrass Jesus in front of his pupils.

But when Jesus asks his return question, there's no more arrogant accusation, there's no more braggadocious challenging, it's survival instinct now.

We have to survive.

What are we going to say?

And they can't figure out what to say.

But they end up being the ones intimidated.

They act as the rightful teachers of God's law, who are then thrown into confusion by the true teacher, the greater than Solomon one.

What do you do in that moment?

You can just imagine the crowds facing Jesus, and now they're watching the chief priests.

I wonder what they're gonna do.

What are they gonna say?

And you can just feel that tension and that that strain in the moment.

That strain when you realize you've chosen the black diamond route.

What do we do here?

I can't go back.

How do we get down?

So they dodge the question.

We don't know.

Seriously.

You're the guys that know everything.

But but you you don't know?

They refuse to answer.

You see, they do know the answer.

They do know the answer, but they refuse to tell it.

They do know the answer, but they don't want to answer.

And isn't that like us?

Isn't that so much like us when God challenges our way of living, when God challenges our way of thinking, when God tells us that the way we're moving is the wrong way, and we face conviction, we feel guilt, we feel shame because we've been pointed out as being wrong, our tendency is to not want to acknowledge that, isn't it?

Look at verse 25.

If we say from heaven, he will say to us, then why didn't you believe in him?

Verse 26, if we say from man, we are afraid of the crowd.

Put it in mission.

They could have answered Jesus.

They had an answer.

They could have answered him.

They had two answers, in fact.

But did you notice how they debated the two answers?

There's only two options, from God or from man.

Those are your two choices.

Pretty simple to make a choice between one or the other, isn't it?

Well, you would think so.

But they are debating the answers based on their outcomes.

They weren't interested in the truth.

They were only interested in what benefited them.

They were only concerned about the consequences.

If they answered from God, then Jesus would have won the debate.

And they would have been shamed in front of the crowd.

If they answered from man, then who knows what the crowds would have done to them because they were afraid of the crowds.

And these are the leaders of Israel who are leading their people based off of what consequences they will face.

Not from what is true.

So rather than face the consequences, they pass on the question.

And in passing on the question, they refuse to acknowledge Jesus as the Son of God, their Messiah.

They rejected Jesus' claim.

And in the end, they show that they have more fear of people than they do of God.

In this one statement, they rejected not only God the Son, but God the Father, whom they claimed to worship.

They're standing in the temple and they refuse to acknowledge their God.

How do we know that?

We know that because of what John says in John chapter 5: whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him.

In dodging the question, they demonstrated that they didn't even have faith in the God of their fathers.

And so these are people, priests, leaders who would die in their sins.

So Jesus says, Well, if you won't answer me, then I'm not going to answer you.

And Jesus refuses to waste his time and his energy the last few days that he has left in arguing against these people who won't even genuinely respond.

In fact, in the next several sections, Jesus continues to tell several parables that condemn these very leaders.

But we fail to really grasp what's going on here if we leave it there.

We can't just leave this 2,000 years ago with chief priests and elders that we don't know and we've never met and never experienced.

So how do we respond?

How do we process through what do we do with this?

Well, really, I think it's quite simple.

There are only two answers.

Who is Jesus?

There's only two answers.

He's either God in the flesh, or he's an insane human being.

He's either God or man.

He's either from God and therefore he is the one whom the scriptures declare him to be.

He is God the Son, he is Emmanuel, he's the one who died for my sins and who has every right and all authority to command my life, or he was simply a man and was, therefore, delusional, foolish, and in a few days dead.

And if that is who he is, then my life is my own, to live as I please.

Now, if you believe the latter, if you believe that Jesus was just a man who said some things and got himself killed, that he was a good teacher, that he was a spokesman for God who did not suffer in your place, if that's what you believe, then I beg you to repent of that sin and to trust in Christ as your Savior today.

He is ready and willing to receive you.

And he will receive you because he has the authority to forgive sin.

If you do not, you will walk the road to eternal destruction for your rejection of Christ.

And as the psalmist says, the one who sits in the heavens will one day laugh at your mocking insolence.

But my friend, there is great peace in coming to Jesus.

There is a peace that even brings calm in a wild world.

Robert Murray McShane said, You will never find Jesus so precious as when the world is one vast howling wilderness.

Then he is like a rose blooming in the midst of the desolation, a rock rising above the storm.

If I can put that in North Dakota terms, you will never find Jesus so precious as when the plains are one vast howling blizzard.

And he surrounds you in that moment to provide you peace when you cannot see, when you cannot feel your extremities, and you don't know what to do.

What sort of people will we be?

What sort of church will we be?

If we believe that Jesus is indeed whom he claimed to be, then Christ is our Lord and our master, and we should not question out of unbelief or lack of trust.

We should trust and obey.

Because we're no longer strangers and aliens, but fellow citizens and saints, members of the household of God.

We're no longer our own.

We've been bought with a price.

Therefore, glorify God in your body.

As Peter says, what sort of people ought we to be then?

We ought to be holy and godly, people who keep his commandments.

Let me finish with this.

A quote from Charles Spurgeon that I think really says it all for us.

Trying to understand this challenge of authority and understanding that Jesus is the authority.

He is our authority.

What do we do with that?

Spurgeon said, Well, if Christ is glorious, then it is all the heaven that I ask for.

If he shall be king of kings and Lord of Lords, then let me be nothing.

If he shall but reign and every tongue call him blessed, it will be bliss to me to know it.

And if I may be but one of the withered roses that lie in the path of his triumph, that will be my paradise.

It's a poetic way of saying, if Christ is all and I be nothing, that's a great place to be.

That's what he calls us to.

Will we do it?

Lord Jesus, we come and we bow before you, seeking your glory, seeking your enthronement, seeking that you would be all in all.

We know you are, that is the reality.

But we ask that that would be made effective in our lives and in the way we live, that we would recognize that you are the one we follow.

Lord, we know that we will fail.

We know that as the writer of the Hebrews says, that we have sin that so easily entangles and trips us up.

We confess that to you, and we we ask that when we fall, you would lift us up, that you would strengthen our weak knees and enable us to keep following you again until all the world bows before you and acknowledges you as the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.

Amen.

That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.

Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.

You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.