"Question Authority?" Matthew 21:23-27 Sunday Evening Worship Service

Matthew 21, verse 23.

Matthew 21:23

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

The baptism of John, from where did it come?

From heaven or from man?

They discussed it among themselves, saying, Well, if we say from heaven, he'll say to us, then why didn't you believe him?

But if we say from man, well, we're afraid of the crowd, and they all hold that John was a prophet.

So the answer to Jesus, we don't know.

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

So this is Jesus' last stop in the temple.

This is likely on Tuesday.

He is teaching in the temple all day, Tuesday.

Most of Matthew 21, where we jumped in here this morning, all the way through really Matthew 24, is taking place on this day in the temple.

He had gone to it earlier before, of course.

He came to the temple on Sunday and then went home.

He came back the next day and he cleaned it out.

Brought his cord with them, made a whip with him, turned over the tables, and just devastated the temple.

And then the next day he comes back, and remember he curses the fig tree that morning.

As he walks by the fig tree, this is described earlier in Matthew 21, verse 18.

Matthew 21:18

He curses the fig tree because it had no figs on it.

And then he shows up in the temple.

He's going to come back to that same fig tree that evening, Tuesday evening, and it will have no figs on it.

It will have been withered, and the disciples are going to marvel at him that he is a prophet.

Now the fig tree, of course, is standing in for Israel.

All of this is an image of Israel's absolute intellectual decadence, their intellectual dishonesty.

The Israelites are fully embracing their own man-made religion, despite the fact they have the Torah, despite the fact that God gave them the scriptures, they now have God in the flesh there.

The second person of the Trinity, Jesus, the eternal Son of God, has showed up in the temple.

And instead of receiving him and instead of worshiping him, they want to trap him.

They want to get rid of him.

They want to treat him like they treated John.

And that's really in the background of all this.

It's been maybe two years since John has been put to death.

John was ministering out in the wilderness, John the Baptist was, and everybody in Israel flooded out to see him.

I've mentioned this many times, but it's worth repeating.

Some historians estimate that more people went out to see John the Baptist in the wilderness than had ever traveled to see anybody else in world history.

I mean, people went from all over Egypt and the Mediterranean basin, certainly all over Israel.

They went out to see him in a day without TV and electronics and social media or any of that.

This was this is what you did.

And there was a religious teacher, and hundreds of thousands of people came to him in the wilderness to watch him baptize people for repentance of sin.

And remember, John uh lumbasted the Pharisees.

When the Pharisees showed up there, John rebuked them and said, Who told you to flee the wrath to come?

And that was John's version of the same question you see Jesus asking today.

Why are the Pharisees out there?

Are they there to repent from their sins, which is what John is doing, or are they there to mock John and to mock his followers?

And certainly it's the latter.

John calls them a brood of vipers, he tells them to go back from where they came from, and he fully dresses them down, rebukes them, they go away, and the Pharisees don't know how to handle this because they don't want to lose influence of the people, they don't want to turn against John.

Fortunately, the Roman government enters into the equation and puts John to death.

That was problem-solved for the Pharisees.

But that taught them a lesson, the Pharisees did.

They couldn't handle John.

They couldn't argue with John because John spoke with authority.

They couldn't argue with John because the people listened to John and followed John.

They couldn't argue with John because John's message was in line with the Old Testament prophets.

John's message was repent, just like the prophets said.

Very different than the Pharisees' message.

And so now, jump forward two years, Jesus is in the temple.

He shut down the economy of Jerusalem here with this during Passover week.

And the Pharisees remember how they got out of the John the Baptist dilemma.

If only the Roman government would step in and put to death Jesus, just like they did John, then this problem goes away.

So that's in the background of this showdown.

The Pharisees don't come at Jesus with weapons.

They don't come after him with clubs, with swords, with spears.

That'll happen on Thursday night.

On Thursday night, the Pharisees will arrive, or at least Judas will arrive with the soldiers, and they have clubs, they have spears.

Jesus rebukes them for that, remember?

Did you come out with me as a robber?

In fact, Jesus tells them every day this week I was in the temple teaching.

Why didn't you come get me then?

And the reality is because they were cowards.

First of all, the Roman government wasn't provoked by the Jews to arrest Jesus until then.

But first it would have to be the Pharisees that bring him in, put him to trial, sentence him to death.

Pharisees, the Jewish leaders, can't put somebody to death, so they have to turn them over to Rome.

So that's the strategy here.

So to get Jesus in trouble.

That's the goal of these questions.

These four questions over five weeks we'll look at them.

To get Jesus into trouble, they are not going to attack him with weapons of iron.

They're going to attack him with weapons of words.

This becomes a very intellectual part of the scripture here.

There's no miracles that are really taking place here beyond the cursing of the fig tree.

All that's taking place here is in the playing field of the minds.

The Pharisees are trying to trap Jesus with words.

And if they can get Jesus to say something that contradicts Jewish law, then the crowd will turn against him.

If they can get Jesus to say something that can be viewed as treasonous against Rome, then the Romans will turn against him.

Either way, the Jewish leader's job is done if they can trap Jesus.

So that's the nature of these questions.

So these next few weeks, as we look at these questions, they're very, I want to say intellectual, because again, this is at the level of the mind here.

They are trying to outsmart or out fox Jesus.

In fact, there's different words used in both Matthew and Mark's telling of these of this account, and they they both love to use words that stress this.

The Pharisees were plotting or scheming.

They were laying traps for him with their words.

Those words are dotted all throughout this series of questions.

So the first question starts in a very appropriate place.

They do begin with the right question.

That's seen in verse 23.

Jesus enters the temple.

The chief priests and the elders and the people came up to him, said, By what authority are you doing these things?

And who gave you that authority?

So you have to admit that this is the right starting point.

That is the right question.

What authority does Jesus have to do the things he is doing?

Now, when they say that the things that you're doing, what do they mean by that?

Well, I mean they kind of they kind of mean all of it.

You know, how can you do what you're doing?

How can you do you, is what they're asking.

He has raised Lazarus from the dead.

They all know this.

Okay, Lazarus had dinner with them a few nights ago.

They know Lazarus, they were at his funeral and they had him over for dinner a few nights ago.

They know Lazarus is raised from the dead.

That's what they're talking about.

Some of these people were likely up in Capernaum when the layman was lowered through the roof.

So they know that happened.

And do you remember what happened with that showdown?

Jesus heals the man and but first tells him your sins are forgiven.

The people, you know, lose their minds over that.

And Jesus says, Well, okay, pick up your mat and walk.

And he asks, what's it easier to do?

To tell the guy to pick up your mat and walk, or your sins are forgiven.

Nevertheless, so that you know that his sins are forgiven, he's going to pick up his mat and walk.

There you go.

I mean, how do you argue with that?

It was shortly after that when they were in the synagogue in Capernaum, and the Pharisees were trying to trap Jesus.

They had already confronted him about his disciples that were plucking grain.

And they said, How dare you do that?

That's against the fourth commandment.

They're plucking grain on the Sabbath.

The scripture doesn't say that Jesus was doing it, it says his disciples are doing it.

Nevertheless, Jesus goes into the synagogue, they're all surrounding him.

Now they're waiting to catch Jesus working.

It's the Sabbath, and Jesus tells everybody, I can only do my Father's work.

He even uses the word work.

And there's the man with a withered hand, and Jesus asks if it's okay for him to work on the Sabbath to heal that person.

They don't know how to answer that.

And so Jesus heals the guy without lifting a finger.

Jesus doesn't actually do any, he doesn't, you know, put a cast on it, he doesn't even touch him.

Yeah, I mean, sometimes he spits in mud or he lays hands on him.

He doesn't do any of those things.

He just heals him at a distance without doing any work.

And so the Pharisees, again, have been outsmarted.

They thought they would catch him doing, he said, It's my work to heal.

Okay, let's see if you work on the Sabbath.

He does, but they can't, they can't make the charges stick.

So that's what's going on.

When they say, How can you do this?

That's what the this is.

Who gave you authority to do these things?

But there is one particular thing that is outshines all of the others.

And that's what happened yesterday.

Yesterday, Jesus showed up into the temple and he cleared it out.

To understand the significance of this, you really need to understand what Jerusalem was like at this time.

The Israelites did not have their own country.

The Israelites lost their country to the Assyrians.

I mean, you can go back even further.

They lost their country when Solomon died, and Rehaboam took ten tribes and went home.

Well, the northern part of Israel, uh, the side that was led by Jeroboam, the ten tribes led by Jeroboam, they lost to the Assyrians 700 or so BC, 700 years before this.

Israel was taken into captivity.

Gone, never to return.

The Samaritans are still hiding in the hills.

That's the overflow from that.

But Israel lost his country 700 years before this.

Judah remained for another few hundred years, and they go into captivity.

Around 470 or so BC, they're taken off into captivity, and the whole temple was destroyed.

There's nothing standing in Jerusalem except foxes and such.

Nehemiah comes back, has to rebuild everything from scratch, remember?

He still doesn't get a country.

From that point forward, Israel is not its own country.

It's a state, it's a province of the Roman Empire.

So they don't have their own country.

They don't have their own laws.

They're under Roman law.

They don't have their own government.

They have the Roman government.

They don't have their own army.

They have the Roman army.

They don't have their own language at this point.

They're not even speaking Hebrew in Jesus' lifetime.

They're speaking Aramaic.

Most of them can read Aramaic, but the trade language isn't even going to be Aramaic.

The trade language is Greek.

That's why the New Testament is written in Greek.

So they don't have their own country, their own laws, their own army, their own language.

They don't have their own currency.

They have to use the Roman currency with Caesar's face on it.

Oh man, they hated that.

That's going to be question number two, by the way.

They have nothing of their own.

But they have the temple.

And all those things that are lacking are on full display in the temple.

They don't have their own government, but they have the Sanhedrin.

71 leaders.

They have legal authority over the temple.

There's Pharisees, scribes, lawyers, some Sadducees.

That's the Sanhedrin.

It's their who's who.

It's their governing body.

They can't set laws for Israel, but they can set laws for the temple.

I mentioned they don't have their own currency, but they have the temple coin.

They have a coin that they use in the temple for the temple offerings.

They have to change out their Roman coins before they get in the temple.

So that's their little enclave here of sovereignty.

Their own Hebrew, Aramaic.

They would sing the songs in Hebrew, they would talk to one another in Aramaic.

That's what's happening in the temple.

It's the nostalgia.

They'd memorize the Psalms and Hebrew.

So that still takes place in the temple worship.

Like I said, they don't have their own government, they don't have their own police force, their own money, none of that.

But they have all of that in a little tiny way in the temple.

And that was the deal they made with the Romans.

The Romans would build the temple of Herod the Great, the one who butchered the babies in Bethlehem.

That guy, that villainous, murderous guy, he's the one who built our temple for them.

And said, if you don't rebel against me, I'll let you do whatever you want in the temple.

So that was the detente, they came to an agreement there.

That was where they settled.

The Jews wouldn't rebel against Rome, but they would get the temple.

The Romans would rule Israel, but let them do their own thing in the temple.

So you get why the temple is such a huge part of this.

This is where Jesus goes in Jerusalem.

He goes to the temple and he clears it out.

He overthrows it.

He rebukes the Sadducees for how they're treating it, rebukes the Sanhedrin, clears it out, and says, You have made this into a den of robbers.

He calls it his father's house back in John chapter 2.

John 2 · chapter mention

And so they are astonished.

Jesus has returned, cleaned the temple out again in Passover week.

I mean, there's just hundreds of thousands, if not a million, people that have funneled in Jerusalem this week.

This is the week.

And that's when Jesus pulls this stunt.

So when they ask Jesus, who gave you the authority to do this?

That's what they're talking about.

He set up camp on the steps of the temple.

He's teaching people on the steps.

He's not hiding here.

And maybe after he turned over the tables, they thought he would, you know, run away.

Oh, he didn't run away.

He went right back to the steps.

Everybody's going to the temple has to walk by him.

He's holding court there.

There's a massive crowd.

He's dominating this whole scene.

He is the dominating presence.

And who gave him permission to be there?

He's not part of the Sanhedrin.

He's not one of the 71 rulers.

Those rulers, by the way, Sanhedrin, flowing gowns and obstinate, ornate hats.

I mean, over the top.

And yet, Jesus is there, not dressed like one of them, standing on the stairs, teaching way more profoundly than any of them.

So they demand to know who told him he could be there.

This would be like you showing up at Tyson's Corner on a busy shopping day, the Friday after Thanksgiving, and you wheel in your little lemonade cart and start wheeling it down the middle of a Tyson's gallery, a mall, or something like that.

How long do you think you'll be allowed to sell lemonade in a busy shopping day inside Tyson's Mall?

Not very long.

You'll probably get tased.

That's how I would see it playing out.

But certainly somebody's gonna come up to you and say, Do you have permission to be here?

From who?

That's the nature of the question.

Now, I'm telling you, this is the right question to ask.

Everything in Jesus' ministry hinges on this question.

Is he a prophet that borrows his authority from the long line of prophets?

Is he a scribe that borrows his authority from the written word?

Is he a Pharisee that has his authority from being recognized as a religious leader?

Did he get his authority from John the Baptist?

Who gave him permission to do what he's doing?

That's their question.

They're trying to figure out who they're dealing with here.

And he's already declared himself to be God.

They know that, if you remember, earlier in his ministry, about a year before this, he told them in Jerusalem.

So the same Pharisees, he told them in Jerusalem that he and the Father are one, the Pharisees in Jerusalem picked up rocks to stone him, and they say, and Jesus says, Which of my good deeds are you stoning me for?

And they say, No, we're stoning you because you keep making yourself out to be God.

So they fully knew what they were dealing with.

So when they're asking him, Whose authority do you have?

They're they're baiting him here.

They want him to say that he's operating with God's authority.

Because in their mind that's blasphemy, and even the crowd would see that.

So that's the trap.

Jesus' message does indeed come down to authority.

It has since the very beginning come down to authority.

I mean, he read in the synagogue of Nazareth the scroll and said, This is fulfilled in your presence.

He has the authority to fulfill Scripture.

He is the one that is, he at the forgave lepers, told them they're cleansed.

The woman with blood who would have been unclean and banished outside the city for seven days, Jesus declared her to be clean immediately.

He has authority over the dead, he has authority over the wind and the waves, he has authority over sin to forgive sin.

I mean, everything comes down to authority.

And this is why they want to attack him on that.

First question is who gave you this authority?

Second question is going to be authority over the Roman government.

Third question, authority over marriage, who gets to design marriage.

Fourth question, authority over God's word.

Who determines what scripture is important and which laws are more important than others?

Those are the questions they're going after them.

They're all about authority.

But just for now, understand that it is the right question.

And it's a question for you too.

Who is in charge of your life?

Who has authority in your life?

Is your life submitted to the Word of God?

Have you gotten to the third beatitude?

Have you surrendered to the will of the Lord?

Is God in charge of your life, or are you still wearing the captain's hat?

Are you still in charge of your life?

It's probably the most important question you can answer.

It was a while ago one of my good friends went through the fire academy and became a firefighter, and he told me something very interesting.

He said that firefighters are told, at least in the academy he went to, we're told the most important thing, the most important thing when you arrive at a working fire, the number one rule, the first thing you do, and you, in my mind, is he telling me something, save life or something, you know?

Like find somebody who's trapped.

I mean, what's the most important thing?

He says the most important thing when you arrive at a working fire is find out who is in charge and report to him.

You don't go into a building, it doesn't matter if somebody's trapped, you don't do anything until you find out who's in charge and present yourself to them because he's got to know who's there and what he's got to work with.

That principle applies to your life.

The most important question for your life is who is ultimately in charge?

Who has authority over your life?

Is it you or somebody else?

That's what they're asking Jesus.

Who is in charge on this scene?

That's the right question.

The second observation from here, they ask this question.

It is the right question, of course, but they ask it with the wrong motive.

And this is seen in verse 24.

Jesus answered them.

Let me ask you a question.

And if you tell me the answer, I will tell you by what authority I do these things.

Now, Jesus is not being choir obstinate.

This is a typical rabbinical way of answering a question.

The Jews love this.

It's like a sport to them.

You know, we have we have football, we have college football, the Jews had rhetoric.

And if you could answer a tough question with a tough question, a tougher question, then you won.

You get the points.

So this is a this is a no, some people read this, Americans might read this and think that Jesus is dodging the question, you know.

That's the way we do schools.

You know, no teacher would ask a student a question, the student would respond with, let me ask you a question, teacher.

Oh no.

No recess for you, is how that would work.

But in the Jewish mind, that would be a brilliant way to answer a question.

And so Jesus is handling it that way.

He's not being recalcitrant to them, he's actually going along with this.

They have a question for him, where's his authority from?

So he has a question for them.

Now you should ask yourself is this a lesser question or a greater question?

Is Jesus saying that John the Baptist's authority is below his or that it's above his?

And that's a question for the Pharisees and the chief priests, the Sanhedrin, the elders.

That's a question for them to decide.

He says, I got one question for you.

The baptism of John, was it from heaven or from man?

Now, we'll circle back to those two options in a few minutes, but for now I just want to draw your attention to the middle of verse 25.

They discussed it.

The ESV renders it discussed.

It is a really neat Greek word.

It's a Greek word that means uh scheme.

It's got negative connotations to it.

Ponder, contrive.

It's this image of them huddling up with their arms around each other and plotting how to answer the question.

Now, notice that they are pondering, scheming, plotting, not what the right answer is.

You see their thinking here.

Nobody asks, Well, did you see John?

What did you think?

Is what he said true?

They're not interested in actually answering the question truthfully.

They are trying to answer the question in a way that will get them out of this jam they have now, this corner they've now painted themselves into.

They recognize this.

Well, if we say it's from God, Jesus will ask us, why didn't you believe him?

And if we say it's from man, the people will turn against us.

So they they loaded the trap and they got then stuck into the trap.

They set the mouse trap and now they reach their hand, their own hand.

Into it.

They are not interested in figuring out was John actually speaking the truth?

That ship has sailed.

That dude was put to death a long time ago.

They're just interested in how to get out of their dilemma.

This shows their flagrant hypocrisy.

They don't actually care what authority Jesus has.

Do you see that?

They don't really care about the authority of Jesus.

It's the right question, but they are such hypocrites they do not actually care about the answer.

They are only caring about their own power, their own autonomy.

In their case, their autonomy is seen in the temple.

You know, it is the same for us too.

So often we approach the Bible not with the desire to find out if what it says is true or not, not out of the desire to submit ourselves to it.

We often approach the Bible with the desire to see if it allows for our lifestyle to continue in the way it's headed.

That's the old W.

C.

Fields joke where somebody saw him reading a Bible and asked him what he was doing, and he said, I'm looking for a loophole.

That's the way I think many times we approach the Bible.

Trying to find justification for our current course of action more than trying to explore if what it says is actually true.

And so they're unable to answer Jesus' question.

They just come back to Jesus and say, we don't know.

It's not a lack of information, by the way.

It's not that they don't know because they haven't studied John the Baptist enough.

They knew a lot about John the Baptist.

They don't know because they're not willing to know.

They're not willing to submit themselves to the truth.

This leads to the verdict.

You see the right question, the wrong motive, finally.

Verse 27, the verdict.

Jesus said, Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things.

So Jesus withholds knowledge from them.

This is the same reason he spoke in parables.

He spoke in parables so that they would not understand.

You know, he tells them that.

He did not speak in parables the first year of his ministry.

In the first year of his ministry, he spoke clearly and directly.

I bring this out because there, I've heard people say, oh, you know, today to make church more engaging, it should be more story-oriented, just like Jesus told stories and Jesus told parables.

That's the way people relate.

You know, it's very common for people to take Jesus' storytelling as a model for good communication.

But remember, Jesus told those stories to heal them from the truth, not to teach them the truth, but to blind them from it.

If Jesus didn't reveal the truth of the parables to the disciples, they wouldn't know.

Remember, the disciples heard Jesus teach parables and said, We don't understand what you're saying.

And Jesus said, Okay, I'll tell you, but don't tell them, because I don't want them to know.

That's why I'm teaching in parables.

The same thing is true here.

Jesus says, Because of your unbelief, I am not going to shine more light in your direction.

You don't get more truth.

If you get more truth, you get more judgment.

So I'm withholding revelation from you so that your hell is not as hot as it's going to be.

If I keep telling you, you're just going to increase the temperature of your own judgment.

So he's withholding revelation from that's the verdict.

They are so willfully blind in their own sin, Jesus stops revealing himself to them.

I mean, they're asking Jesus, but who are you?

What authority do you have?

And Jesus says, You are so blind in your own sin, I'm not answering that question.

How different he answers people who are seeking him.

How different?

He related to the blind man.

He says, Do you want to find the guy who healed you?

And he says, Yeah.

And Jesus tells him, the Messiah.

I am he.

You know, he blind Bartimaeus on the road, just four days before this.

Jesus reveals to him that he's the descendant of David.

He's David's son and David's Lord.

People that are searching for the truth, Jesus reveals himself to them.

People that are holding on to their own sin and their own self-identity and their own obstinate way of life, their own works, righteousness, their own authority in the world, Jesus hides himself from them.

And that's the verdict.

They're turned over to their own sin.

I want to go back though to brought a couple observations.

This is my I'm sneaking an entirely second outline into this message tonight.

Some observations.

These are observations really from verse 25 where Jesus gives them two choices.

Did the baptism of John come from heaven or did it come from man?

A couple observations.

First, these are findings of the court case here.

First, truth has to have a foundation.

Every truth claim has to have a foundation.

Even something as basic as what is two plus two?

Two plus two is four.

What's the foundation of that knowledge?

And there's different foundations possible for it.

Your own experience, you took two Skittles and you took two Skittles and you have four Skittles there.

Two plus two equals four.

You could prove it other ways.

There's properties in math.

You know, you can, the transitive property, you know, of one plus one equals two, and then one plus one equals two again, and that would equal four.

There's different ways you can prove it.

The stability of the world from God's own revelation, that leads you to two plus two equals four.

But there has to be some foundation behind it.

And a truth claim is only as secure as the foundation upon which it's built.

Now, ultimately, when you push truth back far enough, there are only two sources of truth people and God.

Or truth and lies.

God's word is always true.

People sometimes say things are true because they're borrowing truth from God.

People do that all the time.

They'll borrow some kind of truth from God, they'll use it.

Sometimes they'll return it worse in a worse condition than they found it.

But all truth is either invented by man or delivered by God.

And if you think about that, how do you determine what's right or wrong?

You know, take something simple.

Why is it wrong to steal?

Why is it wrong to steal?

And the Christian can say it's wrong to steal because the Bible forbids stealing.

Let the thief no longer work, uh let the thief no longer steal, but work so he has enough to give away to the poor.

Ephesians 5.

You know, there.

That's why stealing is wrong.

Um you can have the tenth commandment, don't covet.

You can have the eighth commandment about stealing.

You can you can go to specific verses that say don't steal.

That's why stealing is wrong.

However, what do you do if you reject God's authority?

If you deny God's word is true, how can you arrive at the idea that stealing is wrong?

You get all sorts of nonsense in the world.

Stealing is wrong because of utilitarianism.

Okay?

Whatever is best for the most amount of people, that's what's true.

And for the most amount of people, it's best to not steal, therefore, stealing is wrong.

And of course, that's circular reasoning.

Who decides what's best for the most amount of people?

I mean, that's begging the question.

You're starting by saying stealing is not good for the most amount of people, and you're using that to determine that stealing is bad because it's bad for the most amount of people.

And you see whole cultures and worldviews get sucked into that thinking where they're unable to articulate why stealing is wrong.

Think about even a country like Zimbabwe, which stole land from just countless, countless people out of the blue, because they determined that it was actually better for the most amount of people to take the farmers' land from them, ushering in a generation of poverty that's still going on to this day.

I mean, there are countries that have had that approach to truth.

What's best for the most amount of people, that's what works.

That's what's right.

That's what happens when you try to build truth in a foundation of man, not of God.

How do you know if something is good or right?

Utilitarianism doesn't work?

Some people say, I just know what's right and wrong.

I just know.

Well, that makes you God, right?

If you want other people to follow what is right and wrong based on your own understanding of it, and I just know that's right, well, you're the one who's in charge then.

Your truth is only as secure as you are, and you're not going to live forever.

And you had a starting point.

I mean, it was stealing wrong before you were born.

I know you just know it was wrong, but it was wrong before you were born?

Will it be wrong after you die?

This is why in our kind of post-Christian world right now, where do people go for right and wrong now?

Where do people derive their moral truth from now?

Usually government.

This is why people idolize government so much.

Because it's their source of right and wrong.

If the government says it, it's gotta be right.

Or if the government forbids it, it's gotta be wrong.

And so the government bans stealing, therefore it's bad.

And if you can get the government to unban stealing, then it would no longer be bad by that logic.

And this is why you see so much in the abortion fight.

Like, why was abortion morally acceptable to people?

For many people, it was morally acceptable because it was legal.

The government says it's allowed, therefore it's acceptable.

And people lash out at any government hands-off approach to that.

Or authority.

Something is right or wrong based upon people in authority.

You what do moral, what do philosophers say?

What do religious leaders say?

You had this fully exposed in COVID, right?

You know, what do the people in authority say is right or wrong?

What do they say we should do?

And they, of course, appeal to science.

What does the science say?

But you know, you watch COVID for a few months and you realize the science is not what the authorities say it is.

Or popular opinion.

That's another place that people love to draw from today.

Popular opinion.

I know something is right because everybody says it's right.

And if you disagree, you're not allowed to speak.

That way I know everybody agrees with me.

That really is so much of our Western world.

That is, do you understand?

That is the result of being a post-Christian nation, a post-Christian culture.

If you have lost the foundation of truth, being the Word of God, you have to replace it with something else.

Either you replace it with government or experts or popular opinion or everybody says, or I just think.

They don't hold the weight of truth, though.

And that's not uniquely American.

That's what's happening right here in Matthew 21.

They want to know from Jesus whose authority he's operating on, and he turns it back on them.

These are the leaders.

Whose authority do they have?

They don't have authority.

They have the nice robes, they have the nice hats, they have a very fancy temple, by the way.

You know what Jesus is gonna say tomorrow?

That temple's going down.

Every single brick is gonna get pulled apart.

Their authority is built just on myths and shadows.

So, truth has to have a foundation.

Every religion, now we're narrowing it a little bit from truth to religion particular, has one of two ultimate sources.

Every religion is either from God or from man.

Every religion is teaches works righteousness, that's it's of man.

Every man-made religion wants to pursue works righteousness, do this, do that, climb the ladder, try harder, you can get to God.

We promise.

Religions that are like that all cling to authority.

Religions that are that are man-centered and on works righteousness all appeal to the authority of their leaders.

They've given a decree.

Their decree says this is true.

How do you know that's true?

Because they said it.

What a contrast with Christianity.

Christianity does not have its source in man, it has a source in God.

It is not about works righteousness, but about God giving righteousness.

And the truth of Christianity is not established by appealing to the elders of Emmanuel Bible Church or, you know, Christian leaders.

The truth of Christianity is established by appealing to God Himself revealed in His Word.

It's just fundamentally different.

And sometimes we can be tempted to think, yeah, but every religion is like that.

Every religion appeals to God as revealed through his word.

No, it's that's not true.

Once you start studying any other religion, you realize that's not true.

You know, even Islam existed for so long without the Quran.

It was supposedly memorized and kept by Muhammad, and what he and the caliphate said was true was true.

It wasn't, don't picture scholars pouring over the Quran to deduce Islamic doctrine.

I mean, that never happened.

You see that in every religion, except Christianity.

And that's why every religion is works righteousness except Christianity, which says God gives you righteousness.

That which is invented by man is designed to obscure truth.

That's why John the Baptist is out of the wilderness saying, repent, so you can be forgiven.

And the religious leaders of the Jews are out there saying, What are you doing?

You can't do that.

They have to show up at the temple with the right offering and the right sacrifice and the right coin.

Because of that, thirdly, unbelief is a moral issue.

When people refuse to believe in Christ, it is a moral issue.

It's not about lack of revelation.

It's that they love their own authority in their own life.

When they refuse to bow the knee to Christ, it's not because they don't have enough information.

Because here is Jesus in the witness box, so to speak, and he's offering them the information they need to render a verdict, and they don't want it.

That's why unbelief is a moral issue.

That's why Romans 1 says, you suppress the truth in unrighteousness.

Unbelief is a moral issue.

The more you know, the more you're judged.

They knew where Jesus and John got their authority.

They weren't willing to accept it.

One commentator said it this way this exchange shows you that epistemology begins with theology.

I like that phrase.

Epistemology, how you know something, kind of the concept of knowing, the science of knowing, begins with theology.

You're not going to have a good epistemology or a functioning epistemology if you don't have a functioning theology.

So I'm going to reduce this to kind of a logical argument here.

This is the last slide.

If truth has a source, either God or man, and if true religion is from God, and if rejecting Jesus is immoral.

Now I'm saying that all three of those truths there, all three of those conditions, so to speak, are taught by this passage.

This passage teaches you, Jesus gives you in the dichotomy, that John the Baptist is either baptizing from God or man.

So Jesus paints the picture.

And that covers all knowledge.

Everything you know, every religion is either from God or man.

True religion is from God.

That's the implication.

John was baptizing from God's authority, Jesus is speaking God's word.

And if rejecting Jesus is immoral, something Jesus has said over and over again, and you see it here, I'm going to withhold light from you as well.

If all of that is true, there's only one possible conclusion, and that is that Jesus is divine.

If he is speaking with authority about religion, if he is speaking the truth of God against the so-called authority of the Jewish religion, as he is saying that he is the source of this knowledge, and Jesus is the source of this knowledge, then that means he is divine.

He is from God, he is of God, and he is speaking God's truth.

That's the only conclusion possible at the end of this exchange.

And that's why they can't believe it.

They refuse to acknowledge that.

Rejecting false religions is not immoral.

You're supposed to reject false religions.

You see a false religion, reject it.

But rejecting Jesus is immoral.

It is ungodly.

If the greatest command is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind, and that's coming up, that's the two questions from our three questions from now.

What's the greatest command?

The answer is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind.

It follows that the greatest sin would be to reject Jesus Christ.

And that's because Jesus is God in human flesh, the nature of God incarnate, with the nature of man who made his dwelling among us and demonstrated to us a wisdom that exceeds the wisdom of any prophet, exceeds the wisdom of any Greek philosopher.

This is why at the end of the week, at the end of these questions, the crowd just looks at Jesus and marvels.

That's Mark's word.

They marvel.

They're astonished at what they saw.

They can't believe it.

Because he spoke as one with authority, not like the scribes.

God, we're thankful for the gospel of Jesus Christ.

It is a gospel that meets us in the intellect that we can study and understand, that we can know.

It's a gospel that meets us in the affections of the heart, because what we know directs what we feel.

It's the gospel that meets us where we where we live and how we act.

We see here the Pharisees making a run at Jesus at his head, going after his intellect, trying to trap him, trying to conspire.

But Lord, we see how you masterfully dealt with them.

You rebuffed their attack.

You exposed their hypocrisy.

So I pray for the people here tonight.

I pray tonight that every heart hearer be able to answer that basic question: who is the authority in their life?

Do they live for themselves or do they live for you?

Remember John the Baptist and his boldness.

He preached where he was not supposed to preach.

He confronted the sins of his society that he was not supposed to confront.

And it cost him his life.

The heart of his message was that of repentance, and that message echoes to us tonight.

Jesus embraces it here, passes it along to us.

Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.

So Lord, I pray that every heart here would be a repentant heart.

A heart that is broken, aware of its spiritual bankruptcy, a heart that is mourning over its lack of righteousness, a heart that is meek, that is surrendered to you, and a heart that hungers and thirsts for righteousness.

We know that's John's charge to us, that's Jesus' charge to us.

That's the charge that you've given us tonight in your word.

We surrender our wills and our intellect to you.

Lord, we give you thanks for your word in Jesus' name.

Amen.

And now, for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to TMS.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.