Rejecting the King’s Authority

Jesus was His own authority. He spoke prophetically.

He rightly interpreted the Old Testament Scripture. He forgave sin. He healed sick people. He raised the dead. He cast out demons.

And He did it without ever seeking permission from anyone. Perhaps you remember a document published in 1994 titled Evangelicals and Catholics Together, or one from 2001 called Christians and Muslims Together. Those papers emphasized what Christianity has in common with Catholicism and Islam, respectively. And basically, they called Christians not to worry so much about doctrine. Well, the question you need to ask yourself is, does doctrine matter to God? How did Jesus deal with those who brought dangerous, damning error to God's people, and what can and what should you learn from His example? Consider that today on Grace to You, as John MacArthur shows you how Jesus dealt with enemies of biblical truth. It's part of John's study called How to Talk to a Heretic.

And with that, here's John. Luke chapter 20, verses 1 through 8. I will read it so that you have it in mind as we listen to what the Lord says to us through this event. It came about on one of the days while He was teaching the people in the temple and preaching the gospel that the chief priests and the scribes with the elders confronted Him. And they spoke saying to Him, tell us by what authority You're doing these things.

For who is the one who gave You this authority? And He answered and said to them, I shall also ask you a question and you tell Me. Was the baptism of John from heaven or from men? And they reasoned among themselves saying, if we say from heaven, He will say, why did You not believe Him? But if we say from men, all the people will stone us to death for they're convinced that John was a prophet. And they answered that they did not know where it came from. And Jesus said to them, neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things. This is a sad conversation. This is a final declaration on the part of Jesus that He has nothing more to say to Israel, to the leaders.

He is finished with them. The issue that brings up this tragic final declaration by our Lord is the issue of authority. We understand the word authority. We understand what it is to be in authority and to be under authority. Authority is a word that is packed full of significance.

It denotes permission, power, privilege, rule, control, domination and our world is filled with it. We face it in our homes, fathers and mothers being given authority over the children. We face it in our schools. There are always those who are in authority over us. We face it in all of our workplaces. We face it in terms of governments that are responsible to make laws and enforce them and wield them with authority.

We're used to that. We're all people who are under authority and in some cases we have some authority as well. So we get it. We know what it means to have authority. We also know what it means to be under authority.

All of us are both given some authority and under generally much more authority. But when it comes to Jesus Christ, authority is a very different reality. In Matthew 28 18, Jesus said this, all authority is given unto Me in heaven and earth...all authority.

This is what it means to be absolutely sovereign. This is what it means to answer to no one outside yourself, to have all authority. Jesus demonstrated His authority in a number of ways. In Matthew chapter 7 and verse 29 at the end of the Sermon on the Mount after Jesus had preached that masterful evangelistic sermon which began by dismantling the false religion of Judaism and ended by an invitation to enter the narrow way, the people's response was simply this, He spoke as one having authority.

That was absolutely unique. They weren't used to people who were their own authority. They were used to people who quoted somebody else, who identified with somebody else, who drew their authority from somebody else. But Jesus spoke as one who Himself is an authority. Later on in Matthew's gospel, chapter 9 verses 6 through 8, it says He had authority to forgive sins.

And authority that they understood belonged only to one and that one is God. In the tenth chapter of Matthew and the first verse, it becomes apparent that He had authority over all the forces of hell...authority over demon power. In John chapter 1 and verse 12 He claimed authority to save, that is authority to give life, spiritual life and salvation. In John 5, 27 it says that He was given authority to judge all men. In John 10, 18 He said, I have authority to lay My life down and I have authority to take it again. That is to say, He had authority over death and authority over life. Expressed wonderfully in Revelation as having the keys to death and Hades. In John 17, 2 tells us He has authority over all mankind. He is not under anyone but God and He is in perfect agreement with God as God. He has authority. He has a kind of authority that we know nothing about.

He has absolute unilateral authority to do whatever He will whenever He wills with whomever or whatever He wills. Maybe a simple way to understand the essence of this authority is to grasp two Greek words that can be translated authority. The first one is dunamis, usually translated power, that's the word from which the English word dynamite comes. Dunamis refers to the ability to do something, the ability to do it.

The other word is exusia. Exusia is the word usually translated authority such as in this text where the word authority appears three times. This means the right to do something. To have all authority then is to have all power and all right to do everything and anything one wills to do. He has the ability to do whatever He wants and He has the right to do whatever He wants with whomever or whatever He wants and this is having all authority. He has both dunamis and exusia, He has the power and He has the permission.

He has it because He is God. And even though He is incarnate, even though He is God come in human flesh, even though He has lowered Himself as a servant, He still has the power and the authority to do precisely what God wills Him to do. There are no limits to His power. No one can withstand His power. There are no limits to His ability.

There are no limits also to His right. He has both the right and the ability to do everything He wills to do and He wills to do what is in perfect harmony with the Father. Consequently, and this is the important point, consequently Jesus never in His earthly life asked permission to do anything...never.

He never sought it from any normal channels in His ministry. There was no one higher other than His own Father and He said, I always do what the Father tells Me to do. I always do what the Father shows Me to do.

I always do and only do what the Father wills for Me to do. No matter what it was, there was no authority to whom Jesus went. Now you have to understand, this is shocking in the experience of the Jews to teach as He did in the Sermon on the Mount and basically attack every treasure of Judaistic, legalistic religion and smash it and to have no authority outside Himself is an outrageous thing to do. He went after their giving. He went after their fasting. He went after their praying. He went after their sacrifices. He went after their self-righteousness.

He went after everything they considered sacred. He went after the sum and substance of their entire religious system in His teaching and He quoted no rabbi. He had permission from no Sanhedrin. He had no rabbinical counsel to which He was answerable. He was not ordained in the appropriate way that all teachers and rabbis were ordained and nor was His theology checked and signed off on by the Sanhedrin. And even when He made a whip at the beginning of His ministry and through all of the buyers and sellers out of His Father's house, He asked no one for permission to do that. He did not go to the ruling council of the temple which was made up, of course, of the high priests, the chief priests, the priests under them and all the rest of the people who ran that enterprise to get permission. He didn't go to the Sanhedrin, the ruling body made up of chief priests and scribes and other official elders, Sadducees and Herodians. He didn't seek any permission when He did it the first time, nor did He seek any permission when He did it the last time. As you remember, don't you, in verse 45 of chapter 19, He entered the temple, began to cast out those who were selling, saying to them, it is written, my house shall be a house of prayer, you've made it into a robber's cave.

And He cleaned them out. He didn't get any permission to do this. This is a total disruption of all that's going on there without any authority to do this.

But He never sought human authority. Now you have to understand that this is in a sense just another huge offense to the Jews who are in leadership in Israel. They are distressed, first of all, that He attacks their theology, attacks their credibility. He unmasks them as hypocrites of the rankest kind. And now He gets physical with their very domain. And He teaches without any connection to any prior mentor or rabbi and without credentials and without ordination which can only be given by the Sanhedrin.

Such behavior is outrageous to start with and such unauthorized behavior is doubly outrageous. Jesus was His own authority. He spoke prophetically. He spoke truly. He rightly interpreted the Old Testament Scripture. He spoke the true Word of God.

They even admitted that. He forgave sin. He healed sick people. He raised the dead. He cast out demons. And He did it without ever seeking permission from anyone.

Now the bottom line is this. He treated their entire religious system as if it was non-existent. He didn't care about the Sanhedrin. He didn't care about the chief priests. He didn't care about the councils. He didn't care about any popular opinion.

He didn't care about any thing. He was totally indifferent to the priests. He was indifferent to the rabbis. He was indifferent to the lawyers, the scribes, the theologians. He was indifferent to the sacrificial system. He was indifferent to the temple enterprise. He treated it as if it was non-existent. It had no bearing on His life. It had no bearing on what He taught. It had no bearing on what He said. In fact, He basically attacked it with a vengeance.

You have to understand that the mounting hostility at this point is really immeasurable. He treats them all. And remember this, they lived to be elevated. They lived, these leaders did, to wear long robes and tassels on their robes and pretend holiness. They lived to fast in public and put ashes on their head and make their donations in the temple in full view of everyone while someone was blowing a trumpet to announce their arrival.

They sought the chief seats and the high places and to be elevated and to be called master and teacher and father and all of those things. It was all about elevating them and Jesus literally treated them with the utter disdain. As far as He was concerned, they were non-existent. They had nothing to do with God. They had nothing to do with the Kingdom of God. They had nothing to do with the true people of God. They were alien to the purposes of God and the life of God.

There's nothing more devastating and hard to swallow than being treated as if you don't matter when you think you really do. And you add all of the elements of this together and there is a fury inside of them to the degree that their souls are literally on fire with the flames of hatred. And it's escalating rapidly and it explodes in a conflagration of crucifixion on Friday.

Now let me give you the setting. On Monday He rode triumphantly into Jerusalem, as you know, on the colt, the foal of Anas, to fulfill Zechariah 9-9 that the Messiah would enter Jerusalem riding on the colt, the foal of a beast of burden. He comes through the eastern gate. He is hailed by the massive crowd as the Messiah. The great parade then ends at the temple which is just inside the eastern gate.

He just gets in the gate in this mass of humanity and He's right there at the temple site. That's Monday. Monday ends then at the temple. It's twilight.

It's in the evening. And so He leaves Jerusalem, works His way back through the crowd, returns to Bethany to spend the night with Mary, Martha and Lazarus and His Apostles. Tuesday He comes back in the morning in a holy fury. The last sight that He had on Monday night was the temple. And as He came through the eastern gate after the triumphal entry and looked at the temple, He would have seen the disastrous cacophony that the robbers were perpetrating in the place that was to be God's house.

That image remained in His mind surely overnight and in the morning He came back with a vengeance. In holy fury He came in and threw out the wretched, wicked desecrators of His Father's house. While that was going on, some boys in the temple, we are told by one of the other gospel writers, were hailing Him with shouts of Hosanna, further incensing the leaders.

Just imagine, while He's throwing them out, boys are hailing Him with Hosannas. And so they escalate the necessity to murder Him to stop this unrelieved desecration of their sanctimonious religion. They cannot tolerate one who's overthrown their false worship, unmask their rabid hypocrisy and done what He's done without permission. After cleansing the temple on Tuesday, He goes back to Bethany. On Wednesday He returns.

So in chapter 20, verse 1, it is Wednesday. He returns again to the city. He comes back into the temple, clean now.

They didn't come back, which speaks of the power that He wielded. He's now cleansed it and He's going to become its center. The Lord has come to His temple. As the prophet said, He would come suddenly to His temple. He has come to His temple.

It's Wednesday morning when He arrives and He comes to teach, verse 1, that came about on one of the days, namely on Wednesday, when you compare all the accounts, while He was teaching the people in the temple and preaching the gospel. It's time for some truth in the temple. It's time to run out the liars and the fabricators and the manipulators and the false teachers and the hypocrites and the frauds and the fakes. It's time for some truth. It's time for God's true teacher and God's true Word and God's true gospel of salvation.

It's time for the real good news. And so He comes and He becomes the center of attention. Back in verse 47, remember, it said, He was teaching daily in the temple but the chief priests and the scribes and the leading men among the people were trying to destroy Him and they couldn't find anything that they might do for all the people were hanging on His words and they continued through these few days to hang on His words. If you look at verse 38 of chapter 21, chapter 21 ends saying, verse 37, He was teaching in the temple and then verse 38, all the people would get up early in the morning and come to Him in the temple to listen to Him.

So this was His daily routine, Wednesday, Thursday for certain. Friday the events of the trial take place and His crucifixion. So here on this Wednesday He comes back to bring truth to a place where there's been nothing but lies, to bring God's genuine message to a place where there's been nothing but a satanic counterfeit and deception. And so He comes teaching the people in the temple and preaching the gospel.

It's His final time to teach, His final time to speak. And to the people He preaches the gospel. To the people He teaches the true Word of God. This is grace, this is compassion, this is sympathy, this is tenderness, this is patience, this is endurance, this is mercy and this is His turf, one final few days to call Israel to repentance, to call Israel to salvation.

He has no interest in bringing about social reform, political reform, military reform, not to an unbelieving nation. And so He comes to teach the truth and to preach the gospel. And Mark tells us He did it while walking around, in and around that great courtyard in the temple with all of its locations and colonnades and courts. He moved in this vast crowd, always the leaders were there, always trailing Him. Verse 47 of chapter 19 says, He was teaching daily in the temple, the chief priests and the leading men among them were trying to destroy Him, couldn't find anything they might do for all the people were hanging upon His words. They wanted to find something to trap Him with.

They couldn't and they were afraid of the people. This was a rabbinic way to do things. You walked and you moved and you reacted and you interacted and there was dialogue and there was disputation and that's how He taught. What was He saying? Well He was teaching the people. What was His message? Well, probably the same as it tells us in Acts 1, 3, He was speaking of things pertaining to the Kingdom of God.

It wasn't about politics and it wasn't about economics and it wasn't about civility and it wasn't about those things that the people wanted the Messiah to bring to them, it was issues of the Kingdom. He probably talked about sin, the wretchedness of it and the folly of hypocritical religion which couldn't deal with sin. He probably talked about judgment, the inevitability of divine judgment and hell. Probably talked about righteousness, the hopelessness of trying to achieve righteousness on your own. I'm sure He talked about humility, the need for bankruptcy of spirit and brokenness and a contrite heart. And He talked about love, the compassionate love of God for sinners and He talked about the possibility of peace with God and entering into the Kingdom and eternal life, the hope of glory. He probably also talked about the folly of false prayers and vain repetition and doing superficial religious deeds and being seen by men and being satisfied with that rather than having God's approval. He probably talked about false humility and spiritual pride and maybe talked about the cost of following Him, self-denial, breaking up your cross. Perhaps He talked about persecution, the suffering of one who identifies with Him. Maybe He talked about the Scripture, the Word of God, about honesty, about forgiveness, about true riches, about faith, about grace, mercy, all those things.

All a part of euangelizumai, the verb preaching the gospel. He talked about all the matters that had to do with salvation, and they listened. This is Grace to You with John MacArthur. Thanks for being with us. Today John showed you how to talk to a heretic.

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