Authority.
Our passage this morning is all about authority.
We live in a society in which authority is very important but which is being challenged. We see anarchy is around us too.
Even law enforcers like the police need authority to enter your house.
Otherwise any evidence found without the due authority of a warrant signed by a Judge is inadmissible in Court - even if they find evidence that clearly proves that the home owner had committed the offence.
It cannot be used in a Court of Law because it was obtained without the proper authority.
And in Jesus day, religious authority was important.
The Pharisees asked Jesus what his authority was for the things he was saying.
Michael Green summed the Pharisees’ attitude up like this in his Commentary:
“He had been to no scribal school and had no formal authorisation to give spiritual leadership in Israel.
What right did an unordained carpenter have to make a nuisance of himself. (Message of Matthew p.224)
In Jesus day, it was one of those Catch 22 questions:
For if Jesus had said God has sent me – then they could justify a blasphemy charge against Him
As Michael Green so aptly puts it, Jesus
“…senses that a straight answer would precipitate the final crisis before He had finished his work” (Message of Matthew p 224)
If he claimed human authority just from himself, he would lose popular support from the people.
In this way, the religious authorities could negate his message and ultimately much more easily have him executed without the fear of an uprising from the people.
So Jesus follows a great Rabbinic tradition of answering the question by asking a question in return.
And, as St Matthew tells us, that question caused the Pharisees a great problem
i) If they answered that John’s authority came from God Jesus would follow that up by saying: Then why didn’t you listen to him.
ii) If they said his authority was simply human they feared a backlash from the people and loss in popular support as the people who recognised John as having divine authority and that he was a prophet.
But the question Jesus asked the Pharisees was not only a Catch 22 question for them. It had implications fro them too
But Jesus reply went further.
It was only once the Pharisees recognised where the authority that John had come from- could they hope to understand who Jesus is.
Michael Green put it like this:
“Jesus’ question is highly apt. Jesus is emphasising the eschatological dimension of his cleansing of the Temple.
This harks back to the Old Testament where Malachi 3 verses 1 and 2 say:
“I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me.
Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come,” says the LORD Almighty.
As Michael Green put it: Jesus is saying that He is the Lord who will suddenly come to His Temple and John was the messenger sent to prepare the way (Message of Matthew p.225)
What you might ask what does Michael Green mean when he stated that
Jesus is emphasising the eschatological dimension of his cleansing of the Temple.
What is eschatological?
The simplest answer is to quote the definition from “The Oxford English Dictionary” which defines eschatology as
"the part of theology concerned with death, judgment, and the final destiny of the soul and of humankind."
So Jesus is saying in short:
“Once you realise where John’s authority comes from, you will realise from where mine comes too and what I am coming to do”.
In other words John was the Elijah figure predicted by Malachi about 400 years earlier who was to precede the coming of the Messiah sent from God.
And therefore the implication was that Jesus was the Messiah.
And the Pharisees would have been well aware of Malachi 3:2 speaking of the Messiah
2 But who can endure the day of his coming?
Who can stand when he appears?
For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap.
They would therefore - if they recognised Jesus’s authority – have expected that Jesus would have come to bring judgement and cleansing
And that aspect would not have been lost on the Pharisees and rulers of the people.
And they would certainly not have wanted that prophecy to be fulfilled!!!!
And today the question that Jesus was asked is still relevant.
Where does Jesus authority come from?
Jesus is described as the Word of God in Scripture and the Bible is referred to as the Word of God
That being the case, we - as Christians - have to ask ourselves the same question about the authority of the Bible.
Is it simply a human book or is it divinely inspired
1. If it is ONLY a human book, we can pick and choose what we want to accept and work out in our lives.
If you see it simply as human then when you come to passages that you don’t like you can ignore it.
2. If the Bible has divine authority, then we have to listen to it, however painful its teaching is to us.
And in the end if we are committed Christians we need to work out how to obey what Jesus and authors like Peter and Paul teach us.
Even when it goes against the natural grain.
That’s why we need to spend time daily in prayer and reading our Bibles.
Because if we believe that Jesus and those to whom he delegated authority, have divine AUTHORITY to exercise their gifts, then we need to listen carefully to what they tell us as recorded in the Scriptures
.
And in this way we can avoid being led astray by false teaching.
To conclude: If we recognise Jesus's authority as divine, then we are forced to listen to Him and allow him to impact our lives with His teaching through the record of Scripture.
If not the Bible simply becomes "Just another book"
