Read Luke 20:1-8…
Set the stage:
Chapter 20 continues the final week of Jesus, after He has entered Jerusalem and after He has made a scene in His clearing of the Temple and chided the money changers and crooked business practices that took place in the Temple!
On a side note, when Jesus was driving these heretics out of the Temple, it is important to note that they had not set up inside the Temple sacrificial area, but were set up in the Court of the Gentiles, which reflects the Jewish view of Gentiles at this time in history.
To the Jew, the Gentiles were on par with animals and not worthy… this stance on Gentiles revealed much about the Jewish leaders, who had allowed the moneychanging to be set up and continue to happen… it reveals they had NO respect for Gentiles and they truly believed that God did not care about the Gentiles…
Luke says ‘on one of those days’… meaning one of those days that followed Jesus’ entry on the colt to praise and worship where He refused to silence His followers and that He had driven the moneychangers out of the Temple… both instances angering the religious leaders! They are so mad at Jesus, they cannot contain themselves I can see them storming up to Him during His teaching… and DEMANDING that He answer their question!
Jesus was about teaching about God and revealing God for who He truly was, and NOT as the Pharisees and religious leaders of the day had portrayed God! To them, God was more concerned with the ritual and ceremony… than He was with their relationship with Him.
In defense of the Pharisees, they had been taught this from a young age and were devout in their belief system, but sadly their firmness in this belief was a blinding factor to their spirit! They could NOT see because their minds refused TO see who Jesus was and what He was doing!
Now v.1 says, ”One day, as Jesus was teaching the people in the temple, and preaching the gospel…”
The beginning of this verse is very important for us as believers today. It reveals and implies many things for the believer today. First, Jesus is teaching IN the Temple… but where in the Temple do you think He is teaching?
Scripture does NOT give us any indication where in the Temple He was, but if the Gospel of Luke is any indication… I believe it would be safe to say that Jesus was teaching in the newly cleared out portion of the Temple that He had cleansed just a day or so before! And that would have been the Court of the Gentiles… where ALL had to come by to enter the Temple!
Jesus sets up where all could see Him and boldly proclaim the Gospel and teaches the people about God. Jesus had cleansed the Temple for spiritual reasons, but also for what I believe to be a very practical reason Jesus cleared the Temple to free up space for Him to teach those who chose to come!
We find Jesus in the Temple a day or so after entering Jerusalem teaching and preaching to those all who will listen. Now while He is preaching, He is approached by a group of religious leaders, asking Him who He thought He was…
v.1 continues into v.2 and it says, “…the chief priests (Pharisees) and the scribes (lawyers) with the elders came up and said to Him, ‘Tell us by what authority you do these things, or who it is that gave you this authority…”
Now the chief priests and scribes and elders were a group of religious leaders, some with actual appointed authority within Judaism and others who carried with them implied authority… could have been older priests who were no longer serving on a day to day basis… OR those who had political aspirations within Judaism.
They had a common disdain for Jesus, just as there had been for John the Baptist. However, with John, these leaders believed the problem would go away when John was gone.
But, this man named Jesus, He had proven far more resilient and these followers of John had jumped from John to Jesus, because John had endorsed Jesus. Jesus was now in their capital city proclaiming these teachings… John had been in the wilderness, out and away from the people, and although the people had gone out to see him, it was going to stop now that he was not around anymore.
But Jesus was now invading their comfort zone, the Holy City of Jerusalem. He had come into their ‘personal spiritual space’… He was now too close for comfort! After His entry into Jerusalem [like a king] and then what he did at the Temple [clearing it of the moneychangers] and now daring to teach IN the Temple, how could He? They could not allow it… they HAD to stop it!
These men feared they were losing relevance in the eyes of the people. They believed that God had appointed them as the voice of God to the people, so who was this Jesus and what was this message He brought to the people?
The sad but true part of this story is that the priesthood was appointed by God in the time of Moses. [Exodus 28 & 29 describe the consecration of Aaron and his sons as the 1st priests] God established the priesthood to become the spiritual leaders of the nation and it was their job was to lead Israel in the worship of God, and teach Israel about the commandments of God.
According to Scripture the priesthood was established by God to perform duties under three main categories. They were called to serve, they were called to teach and they were called to pray for the nation.
However, the office of the priesthood had corrupted and those who held this office began to put their office and God’s calling to a perverted use and purpose. It was more about control and power, and not about service, teaching and prayer!
This was definitely NOT what God desires when He established the priesthood, but it is what the priesthood had developed into by the time of Jesus. So when we look at this passage we can somewhat get the flavor of what was going on in the city… These men felt entitled by God and they believed Jesus to be the enemy…
So we find them here in this passage demanding an answer from Jesus… And to be honest with you, there is NOTHING wrong with their question. It is actually an extremely valid question. I don’t believe that Jesus took offense to the question itself, but instead, Jesus knew their hearts and Jesus knew what the priesthood had become…
Several times already Jesus had been challenged by these men, and Jesus had rebuked them time after time… let’s look at just a few instances:
Matt 15:1-8 the religious leaders condemn Jesus and His disciples for not washing their hands before they eat, according to the tradition of the elders, but Jesus counters that condemnation by pointing out that the Pharisees had a tradition of withholding from their families that which they deemed for God, they were using tradition to supersede God’s commandment to honor their father and mother… a tradition they had developed over time.
In Matt 22 Jesus teaches that the Pharisees lay a heavy burden on the people with the oppressive rules and regulations they have developed from the basic laws God had given, but they themselves were not living up to the standard they demanded from the people…
Overall Jesus’ main objection to the religious leaders of His day was that their walk did not match their talk. He said in Mark 7 where He tells them that they honor God with their lips, but their actions do NOT honor God…
So there has been a tension between Jesus and the religious leaders throughout His ministry and now they have come to directly challenge His authority, but their demand has actually backfired on them and they find themselves in a very awkward and defensive position. In fact their question actually leads to the exposure of their overall spiritual blindness toward the real things of God.
They could surely see the Law and the traditions that developed out of the Law… to them the Law was God… They believed tradition and the Law were the authority, and Jesus was not doing things in accordance with that Law, which they knew had come from God, so they believed they were acting FOR God in their opposition to Jesus, but in actuality they had lost sight of the God behind the Law!
“…by what authority…” is their cry! They want to hear Jesus begin to give His lineage and the credentials He has to teach as He is teaching! But they also want to know by what authority can Jesus ride into the city with such pomp and ceremony… and why He thinks He can drive out those in the Temple who they believed to be performing and needed service!
By what authority could Jesus do any of this… by what authority was He standing in the Temple teaching? They knew he had no formal training, He has never sat under a rabbi, and that He had come from the region from where many believed no good ever came… How can Jesus justify what He is teaching?
I can almost hear the religious leaders saying, “How in the world can he be teaching like He teaches? What gives Him the right to come in here and turn all we have upside down? We have to confront Him and do it NOW!” Basically the religious leaders had no other choice, the showdown had come, it was time to shut this man down for good!
So they challenge Jesus directly and straight forwardly… but we find Jesus is a cool customer, and He refuses to play their game! Instead of going off on a diatribe to answer their question with genealogies and CLAIMS of ties with God… Jesus uses a 1st century method of debate, by asking a question in response TO a question…
In v.3-4 Jesus says, “…I also will ask you a question. Now tell Me was the baptism of John from heaven or from man?...” now the implications here are so very LOUD they are impossible to miss!
The answer Jesus gives to these religious leaders reveals to all who read Luke’s Gospel that Jesus KNEW the ministry of John was God-sent… but it also shouts out, that HE was ALSO God-sent! Jesus wanted these leaders of Judaism to know that if they rejected John and his teachings and his baptism (which they had) then they were going to also reject Him as well (which they had as well).
In other words these men were NOT seeking the authority, by which Jesus did these things, but they wanted to validate their own authority to teach and they saw this slipping away as long as Jesus was around. Jesus was a threat to their very way of life, to their very existence as they saw it.
But Jesus does not attempt to answer their question. He places the ball back in their court, and bewilders these wise men of Israel. They don’t know what to say…
In v.5-7 Luke gives us an account of their discussion among themselves. Now I am sure that this discussion is a condensed version of a more heated and confused exchange between these leaders. Let’s read what the Bible tells us…
“…and they discussed it with one another, saying, ‘If we say, ‘From heaven’, He will say, ‘Why did you not believe him?’ But if we say, ‘From man,’ all the people will stone us to death, for they are convinced that John was a prophet.’ So they answered that they did not know where it came from…”
Now from their response to Jesus we can see that they sense a trap being laid by Jesus. They see the futility of their position on this matter and it dawns on them that there is NO answer they can give that will cast them in a good light.
A ‘yes’ answer would cause people to doubt their connection with God. A ‘no’ answer would surely bring a riot against them because of John’s popularity and a refusal to answer would leave egg on their face (so to speak)… but we find that they choose the least of the three embarrassments… they choose to claim ignorance, rather than stating their true belief that John was NOT of God.
Darrell Bock of the IVP Commentary on Luke writes this about their decision, “…rather than acknowledge their view and its unpopularity, they try to finesse the question [from Jesus]. By doing so, they give up any moral ground for challenging Jesus. If they cannot decide about John, how can they decide about Jesus?” (p.321)
I see these men as cowards and out for nothing more than the power and standing of their position in society… this meant more to them than the people really knowing God. Their hypocrisy is so evident to all around, so in v.8 we find Jesus easily dismissing these men and their question. “…and Jesus said to them, ‘Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things…”
When these men refuse to state what they believe about John, their indecision gives Jesus the opportunity to walk away without answering their question… if they can’t decide on things about John then they can’t ask Jesus this question!
How often do we do the same thing with God? We hold God to His promises and but we are not living the way we are called to live. We hold others to standards far beyond what the Bible has established but we demand certain things because of tradition. When we demand things be done in accordance with tradition and it is in contradiction or it adds to the teaching of Scripture, we are overstepping our bounds as teachers and believers.
Who are we to set the standard by which people live? That is a position for God alone, and we are to steer clear… We are called to live by the Bible and when we try to add to it or revise it to fit with tradition we are perverting what Scripture is telling us… and we are going against what God desires.
