2017-01-22 Luke 20:1-8 Who Gave Jesus The Right?

WHO GAVE JESUS THE RIGHT? (Luke 20:1-8) January 22, 2017 Read Lu 20:1-8 The issue in this parable is, who is Jesus? With all the evidence from Jesus’ life of His divine authority, people stand in judgment of Him at great risk. Bob Hope had a great one-liner in 1984 after Walter Mondale lost his presidential bid to Ronald Reagan. Mondale had objected to Xn’s support for Reagan. Hope said, “Remember? Mondale said God had no place in politics. Apparently God feels the same way about Mondale.” Well, in this passage Jesus encounters Israel’s national leaders who thought Jesus had no place in their religious or political life. Perhaps you are one of many who have taken the same position – that Jesus has no place in your life! Then this is for you. It is a fascinating account that plays out in four stages that will help us understand the danger and folly of sitting in judgment of Jesus. Those who reject Him will find that God has no time for them either. I. An Iniquitous Inquiry This is probably Tuesday of the last week before Jesus’ death. He cleansed the temple yesterday, restoring it to its rightful teaching purpose for a couple of days. He will be interrupted by various groups of brilliant but unbelieving men desperate to trap Him into saying something wrong so the fawning crowds will turn against Him. But never will He be more brilliant than He is on this day or two in turning every effort back on those who make these attempts. First to come -- “the chief priests and the scribes with the elders.” This designation almost certainly means that this was an official delegation representing the leadership of Israel – the Sanhedrin. The Sanhedrin was a council of 71 men from elite background consisting of chief priests – high ranking priests – scribes – highly educated Pharisees who were expert at the tangled web of tradition they’d built up around Moses’ Law – and elders, political leaders of local tribes who had been assigned to leadership in Jerusalem. Jesus, by His unprecedented entry to the city and cleansing of their domain, the temple, represented a national threat to these men. They’ve now sent their best and brightest to undermine Jesus’ popularity. “Came up” is an aggressive word indicating harmful intent. They’re after Jesus. To do that, they’ve devised a clever question. It is not intended to solicit information; it is intended to subtly embarrass and denounce Jesus without 1 confronting Him head-on which would have angered the crowd. “Tell us by what authority you do these things?” “These things” certainly includes the cleansing of the temple, but because it is plural, it extends backward to His spectacular entry into the city which they had tried to denounce at the time (Lu 19:39), and to all of His previous offenses – forgiving sin, healing on the Sabbath, calling them out as hypocrites. They’ve come up with a relatively polite way to say, “Who in the world do you think you are?!” The question is intended to sound reasonable. “Who is it that gave you this authority?” They, and everyone in the crowd, knows Jesus is operating in their domain. They call the shots in the temple. But with a still adoring crowd around Him, they are reluctant to challenge Him head-on, so they say, “By the way, Jesus, who exactly was it that gave you authority to take the law into your own hands?” Gentle on the outside – hostile on the inside. They thought they had Him boxed in. He couldn’t say He had their authority; everyone knew He didn’t. If He said He had no authority, He would be discredited with the crowd. But their fondest expectation was that He would do as usual – claim that His authority came from God who was uniquely His Father. Then they could accuse Him of blasphemy. Furthermore, if He actually claimed to be Messiah, they could make the case with the Romans that He represented a threat toward them (after all, that’s why the crowd was so persistent, hoping He would lead a revolt). They had created a question to which there was no right answer. Jesus would be discredited no matter what. But they drastically underestimated Jesus. They would never accept His identity as God in the flesh. Anytime you assign Jesus to a lesser category than who He really is, you are in denial of reality. That can only end in disaster. You can deny the law of gravity and step off the Empire State Building. But you will shortly find your denial did not change reality. And that’s what Jesus enemies are about to find out. Their denial of His divine authority did not negate His divine authority. Reality always wins in the end. II. A Cutting Comeback In this case, Jesus quickly turns the tables. He answers a question with a question to uncover the hostile, hypocritical intent of His enemies. Brilliant! “3 He answered them, “I also will ask you a question. Now tell me, 4 was the baptism of John from heaven or from man?” You talk about a zinger from left field, here it is. John the Baptist was long ago and far away by this time – dead for 2 years. A defense attorney would have quickly objected, “Relevance?” 2 But, in fact, Jesus’ question is exceedingly relevant and the whole crowd knew it. Why? Because Jesus and John were tied at the hip. Jesus was baptized by John at the beginning of His ministry. John consistently pointed forward to Jesus, identifying Him in Jn 1:29 as “the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” They preached the same message: “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.” Jesus had identified John as the greatest of the OT prophets and said in Matt 11:14 that John would have been the fulfillment of Mal 4:5 predicting a return of Elijah – if the people had been willing to accept it. If John’s authority was from heaven, Jesus’ authority is from God as well. Jesus is pressing life’s most critical question: what do you think of Jesus Christ? He’s basically saying, “Guys, every word I’ve spoken and every miracle I’ve performed exhibits my authority. My record speaks for itself. I’m not here to be judged by you. But you are here to confront the decision that will save or haunt you for all eternity. What do you think of Jesus Christ? Is he the God of heaven or merely a man of earth? How say you?” This is the foremost question for every life. And you’ve got to go against a lot of evidence to get it wrong. Here’s a man who lived like God, talked like God, healed like God, cast out demons like God, raised the dead like God and still people question: “Was He really God?” Reminds me of Dizzy Dean before the 1934 baseball season predicting he and his brother Paul would win at least 45 games for the Cardinals. When a reporter accused him of bragging, Diz said, “It ain’t braggin’ if you can do it.” He got the last laugh when he won 30 games and Paul won 19 on the way to a world championship. Similarly Jesus’ claims were validated in full sight of thousands of witness, Beloved. His claim to be God was no idle claim, and that puts all of us in debt to Him. C. S. Lewis said concerning Jesus’ ministry: “These claims in a mere man would be egoism carried to Imperial megalomania. The discrepancy between the depth and sanity, and (let me add) shrewdness, of his moral teaching and the rampant megalomania which must lie behind his theological teaching unless He is indeed God, has never been satisfactorily got over.” He’s right. You can have Jesus as God from heaven, or you can have a madman suitable for institutionalization. But you can’t have great man. He just didn’t leave that option open. Is He God or is He not? That’s the question that now faces Jesus’ accusers. And it creates problems for them. III. A Desperate Dilemma 3 Keep in mind, these men thought they had backed Jesus into a corner. “By what authority do you do these things?” But instead He turned the tables on them: “Was the baptism of John from heaven or from man?” I wish I could have seen their faces when He said that. They thought they had Him right in their crosshairs and suddenly they’re the ones sweating bullets. His question put them on the horns of a desperate dilemma. 5 And they discussed it with one another, saying, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will say, ‘Why did you not believe him?’ 6 But if we say, ‘From man,’ all the people will stone us to death, for they are convinced that John was a prophet.” Suddenly they are the ones who have no right answer. What a dilemma! If they say what they really think, the people will turn on them. But the other alternative which would give credibility to Jesus is unthinkable. So, what to do? They are caught. Of course, there should have been no dilemma. As official leaders it was their job to answer questions like these. If John had truly been a prophet ordained by God, they should have followed him and encouraged others to do so as well. If he was not, they should have explained the reasons they were rejecting him, taught the people that and taken their stand. But at heart they were exactly the hypocrites Jesus constantly suggested they were. Face with life’s most fateful question – who is Jesus? -- they were fearful of the crowd; rejecting clear evidence; in denial of reality, trusting their own instincts and going up in smoke. Quite a dilemma. The question of Jesus often puts people in that kind of dilemma. These men, unfortunately, did what many do when it comes to Jesus. They took the easy way out. They said, “We don’t know.” IV. A Damning Denial 7 So they answered that they did not know where it came from.” “We don’t know.” No more damning denial exists. We don’t know. Beloved, that is the one thing you must not say concerning Jesus. “I don’t know?!” Then you owe it to yourself, to your family, to your friends – to your eternal destiny to find out. “I don’t know,” doesn’t work. I mean, think about it. Are you really prepared to stand before God one day and say, “Well, I just didn’t know”? That was apparently Ben Franklin’s approach. Despite being friends with and hearing often the great evangelist, Geo Whitfield, and even writing a highly evangelical epitaph for himself, a few weeks before he died Franklin was asked by Yale president Ezra Stiles about his faith. Franklin replied, “As to Jesus of Nazareth … I have … some doubts as to his Divinity, tho’ it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an opportunity of 4 knowing the truth with less trouble.” That answer sends chills down my spine. Unbelievers will surely find out with less trouble than examining Jesus’ claims now, but unfortunately eternal consequences attach to rejecting Him in this life. And “I don’t know” is the same as rejecting. It is a condemning comment. You’ve heard about the guy caught in a flood who, when his house was floating away, climbed up onto the roof to await help. Fortunately a boat came by and asked if he needed help. He replied that he did not, because he was praying and believing the Lord to save him. Next a fellow on a surfboard came by and offered to share it, but again he expressed his faith in the Lord to save him. Finally a helicopter came by and all but ordered him aboard, but he refused, steadfast in his faith that the Lord would save him. Shortly after, he was knocked off his perch and drowned. Arriving in heaven, he found the Lord and asked, “Lord, I believed that you were going to save me. What happened?” “Well,” the Lord replied, “I sent a board, a surfer and a helicopter. What more could I do?” I hesitated to tell that story because it makes light of such a critical issue. But it well illustrates the point. Tell God you didn’t know who Jesus was and you are in essence saying, “God, it’s your fault. You didn’t give me sufficient information.” And the response is going to be, “Wait a minute. I gave you all of Creation to speak of my greatness.” Rom 1:20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. 21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.” The problem wasn’t lack of information; it was the heart that you foolishly hardened against my truth. “Furthermore, I spent 1500 years sending my apostles and prophets to reveal my Person and will in writing, and then I preserved that precious record against all attempts to destroy it. So you had the Word of God in 5 versions sitting around your house gathering dust. Had you bothered to look you would have seen Rom 10:17, “Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of Christ.” You just never took time to look. You didn’t want to know. “Furthermore, I sent you my ultimate witness. I sent Jesus to you. With every miracle, He demonstrated that His authority was divine. With every word, He spoke truth and reality. With His own death He took your sin on Himself if you would accept it. And with His resurrection I gave evidence to 5 the whole world that His message was mine and His authority was mine.” Heb 1:1-3: “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, [I] spoke to your fathers by the prophets, 2 but in these last days [I] have spoken to [you] by [My] Son. . . 3 He is the radiance of the [my glory] and the exact imprint of [My] nature.” That’s what I did! And you sloughed it all off as unimportant – to be examined later. Sorry -- that answer will not do. You didn’t lack information. You lacked the will to know the truth.” Talk about a dilemma. But it will be too late. Your denial will damn you just as the denial of these men condemned them. Which it did because note: 8) And Jesus said to them, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things.” “You deny Me; you leave Me no choice but to deny you.” Conc “By whose authority do you do these things?” It was, of course, by the authority of God. Any attempt to explain the life of Christ apart from that fails completely. Here were intelligent men who, in the face of all the evidence to the contrary, rejected the Lord of Glory right to His face – fearing the crowd more than they feared the Lord. How could they have missed Him? Do you really want to know by whose authority Jesus lived? He makes an amazing statement in Jn 7:16: “My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me. 17 If anyone’s will is to do God’s will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority.” What He’s saying is if you really want to know whether Jesus was true or false, you can. But the moral condition is, you must be ready to not only believe but obey. That’s the issue that really keeps people from Christ. Perhaps it’s the issue that is keeping you from Christ. A young man, new to London, came to see John Stott. He said he had given up going to church; he could not say the Apostle’s Creed without feeling himself a hypocrite. He no longer believed it. Stott said, “If I were to answer all your intellectual issues, would you be willing to change the way you live?” The young man was caught. He smiled and answered, “No.” So it is with all who reject Jesus. The problem is moral, not intellectual. The atheist Thomas Nagel was at least honest when he said, “I don’t want there to be a God.” But what if there is. And what if He really did die for your sins to reconcile you to Himself? You can be sure if you have no place for Him, He will have no place for you. He’s earned His place in every life! Don’t judge Jesus; embrace Him. Let’s pray. 6