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Good morning everyone.
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Welcome to welcome to the Mosaic Teaching Service.
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Today this is teaching number 152 as we progress through the four gospels of Jesus Christ.
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And we have been on the last several teachings have entered into what is known and liturgically speaking in the church as Holy Week.
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Began with that triumphal entry that we celebrate in the liturgy as Palm Sunday.
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And then have been experiencing some of Jesus' interaction with not only his disciples as they are going into the city of Jerusalem, and they've encountered a fig tree that Jesus had some words with that we'll see the result of today.
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But also when Jesus is up on the Temple Mount as he is engaging those who have opposition to him.
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And we are seeing that that tension is beginning to truly rise.
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And Jesus is as previously, before the Passion Week, the Holy Week, at times Jesus has either kind of reverted back from the crowds, or he's told people to be quiet about certain things, or he's kind of circumvented questions by uh answering them in ways that kind of went over most people's heads.
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Uh, but now he's being very direct in who he is and what his mission is about, what he's going to accomplish, uh, truly bringing things to kind of come head to head.
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And so that's where we're going to be picking things up today.
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But let's first get started with prayer.
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Now let's bow our heads.
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We pray.
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Blessed Lord, who has caused all holy scriptures to be written for our learning.
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Grant that we would so hear them.
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Read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, so that by patience and comfort of your holy word, we would embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have given to us in your Son Jesus Christ.
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Amen.
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In Mosaic, we value our Bibles.
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Uh, always encourage you to bring your Bible with you to the Mosaic Teaching Service.
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But if you need one today, you just can grab one in the pew or chair around you.
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And if you need to keep that as your own, uh please accept that as a gift from us to you.
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But if you will, take your Bible, hold it up, and repeat after me.
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This is my Bible.
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Jesus is who it says He is.
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I am what it says I am.
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I can do what it says I can do.
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Today I will be taught the Word of God.
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My mind is alert.
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By God's grace, my heart is receptive.
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The Bible is the incorruptible, the indestructible, ever-living word of God.
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My encounter with the Bible today will transform and grow my faith.
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And we say together, in Jesus' name.
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Amen.
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So we're primarily going to be in the Gospel of Mark today, Mark chapter 11.
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Uh, where we left off last week uh was uh we were in Mark 11, but we also did a little skirt over to John chapter 2, and we talked about the differences between the synoptic gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and that of John regarding this particular interaction of Jesus kind of clearing out the merchants and so forth, that the Synoptic Gospels have them at the end of Jesus' ministry here in Holy Week and the week of his passion.
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And John has it at the beginning of Jesus' ministry, uh right in the same chapter that you have Jesus' first miracle of the water into wine, and we talked about different ways we can reconcile that and so forth.
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Um, but primarily when we looked at John, we saw that phrase about tear down this temple, uh, and I will rebuild it in three days and unpack that a little bit.
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And now we're gonna be flipping back into Mark's account of it, and we're gonna pick it up in Mark chapter 11, uh, beginning in verse 19.
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So let's read this verse together.
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In the evening he went to the outside of the city.
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They were passing through in the morning, and they saw the fig tree had withered from its roots.
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So, kind of as that big day of clearing out the merchants was over, Jesus goes outside of the city.
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And so, if you think about the geography of Jerusalem, you have the Temple Mount with the walls around it.
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Jesus would have left through what is known as the eastern gate to go outside of the city, and he would have gone across the Kidron Valley, and then he would have walked up the Mount of Olives, and just on the other side of the Mount of Olives is where Jesus kind of hung out, uh, right?
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That's where uh Beth um uh you have Bethany and you have Lazarus, Mary, and Martha.
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We also know outside of the city, outside of the Eastern Gate, and on that Mount of Olives, that's where Jesus was also known to spend time, to spend time with his disciples and so forth during these crowded festivals.
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Uh, and so they leave after this busy day, and then when they come back through in the morning, they notice this fig tree had withered from its uh roots.
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And so after this busy day of overturning tables, teaching in the temple, and generally Jesus uh from the religious leadership's perspective, generally making a nuisance of himself, Jesus returns to Bethany for the evening.
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And he and his disciples again left the Temple Mount area, left out the eastern gate, crossed the Kidron Valley, and up the Mount of Olives.
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And the next morning when they arose early, they would have, of course, being that it was the week of Passover and all of those festivities, all of those preparations, uh, they would have headed back to the temple to participate in its services.
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And on the way, Simon Peter took note of the fig tree, which the previous morning had been in full leaf.
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Uh the tree's leaves had all browned, curled, and drooped, and the tree withered from its roots.
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In verse 21 of Mark 11, it has uh Peter saying, Rabbi, look, the fig tree which you cursed, it has withered.
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Uh Simon Peter noticing this detail.
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The miracle so captivated the disciples that whatever deeper prophetic significance Jesus intended by the sign act was largely lost on them.
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So Jesus dismissed his disciples' amazement.
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They too could accomplish such things if they would only ask with faith.
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A major point of the disciples to know then, but also something that's very important for us as disciples today to still know is that everything that Jesus did here, Jesus actually was doing in his human nature, not in his divine nature.
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The cursing of the fig tree was by the power of the spirit that was within him, in his human nature.
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And so for Matthew, Mark, and Luke, for those synoptic gospels, they all said this, that therefore he told Peter that if they had true faith, even the disciples would do such things.
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And likewise in John chapter 14 and verse 12, Jesus said, He will do the works that I do, and even greater than these.
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And I think these are words of Jesus that largely go unheard by today's disciples.
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That is, Jesus here in the week of the Passion, but also earlier in John 14, had clearly told his disciples that what they saw him do, they could do, that they would have the ability to do that.
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And in fact, in John 14, Jesus even adds that caveat that they could do even greater things than Jesus.
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And in some ways, how in the world could we do greater things than Jesus?
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And one of those greater things is when you think about Jesus' ministry itself, just its physical geographic nature of it, Jesus did all of his ministry in a very small space, right?
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The Sea of Galilee, the region where a solid 80 to 85 percent of everything you know about Jesus, from what he said to what he did, was done right there on those shores.
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That's only eight miles by 14 miles wide, that lake, right?
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And so very small perimeter.
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And if you even think about driving in a car, Jesus was never more than a two-hour drive from where he was born, right?
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He was very, very, very localized.
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There's a good chance some of you will be driving more than two hours today, right?
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Very localized.
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What do his disciples do after him, right?
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They go beyond Judea and into Samaria and then into, you know, eventually the ends of the earth.
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And so they were able to accomplish something that he did not in his ministry.
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And so uh it's something we can think about.
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Um, too often we simply look at Jesus and only see him in his divine nature and think that everything that he did came from that, but he's being clear here that that's not the case, that what he was doing, uh including with this fig tree, right, is is something that uh we are capable of doing because we have that same spirit within us.
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And so Jesus takes advantage of the opportunity for a short teaching on the efficacy of simple faith and devout prayer.
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And he gave his disciples uh essentially in this teaching moment uh three principles for prayer.
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He told them that they needed to have faith in God, to believe that you will receive, and forgive others before asking for forgiveness.
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And so I want to kind of break down each of those three things.
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Uh first by looking at have faith in God.
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So in Mark chapter 11, verses 22 and 23, uh, let's read these two verses together.
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We read, let the faith of God be in you.
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For amen.
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I say to you, anyone who says to this mountain, be lifted up and moved into the middle of the sea, and does not doubt in his heart, but rather believes that what he says will be done, so it will be for him as he said.
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So Jesus believed in approaching God, his father, with the honest expectation of being heard and answered.
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And that should be our same posture in prayer, that when we enter into prayer, we should have that expectation that we will be heard, that we will be answered.
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Just as a child can approach his earthly father with an earnest request, Jesus taught his disciples to pray with this kind of intimacy.
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It's also a type of vulnerability and not just some kind of theological sophistication or some kind of philosophical system.
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He said that if we will pray with this simple sincerity, we will be able to move mountains, casting them into the sea.
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The moving of mountains, that metaphor, it has resonance with certain messianic prophecies in the Bible that speak about the mountains being lowered before the day of Messiah or before the dawning of the messianic era.
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And they climbing the hill called the Mount of Olives, Jesus may have prophetically signified this mountain.
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He may have had the Mount of Olives in mind when he made this statement.
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Because according to the prophecies of Zechariah, the Messiah will one day appear on the Mount of Olives to rescue Jerusalem from a siege.
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And it says in Zechariah 14, verse 4 At that time the Mount of Olives will be split in its middle from east to sea by a very large valley, so that half of the mountain will move toward the north, and the other half will move toward the south.
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At the same time, the term uprooting mountains is also a frequent metaphor that the rabbis used during this period.
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Rabbinic literature is filled with this hyperbole to move mountains to express the idea of doing the seemingly impossible.
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And so, in other words, Jesus really wasn't saying literally, you can uproot a mountain and move it, but he was saying you have every right and expectation to pray to God for something that seems absolutely impossible, something that seems that could never happen, or something that seems beyond the scope and the realm of human imagination, that you should have the confidence and the vulnerability to go into prayer about that.
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And there's also something else with this moving the mountain that Jesus may have had in mind.
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Not just only the Mount of Olives, as in the day of Messiah, that mountain would literally move, but also just outside of Jerusalem and within eyesight, uh, on the horizon of the disciples was a place known as the Herodium.
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It still exists today.
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It's a little mountain, if you will, a little hill.
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Um, and it's where King Herod, the infamous King Herod, is buried.
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And the thing about that is it's an artificial mountain.
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Uh, because King Herod, when he was deciding what would be his burial place, what would be that great monument to his awesomeness, right?
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He had a great ego.
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When he looked out on the horizon, he saw a mountain, but he was like, I don't like where it's at.
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I want it over here.
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And so he had all of his slaves and all of his laborers take down that mountain and move it over here.
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And so Jesus is also kind of making the point: if someone like Herod, who is filled with ego and is contrary to the things of God and the will of God, if he can move mountains, how much more so can your father in heaven move mountains?
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And so uh with this moving of mountains metaphor, you could have he could have had in mind um the Mount of Olives, he could have had in mind the Herodium, uh, certainly the rabbinic hyperbole of the seemingly impossible.
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Paul himself remarks in 1 Corinthians 13 and verse 2 if I have all faith so as to move mountains.
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Um Eliezer bin Hyrcanus engaged in a difficult argument with his colleagues, when he wanted to have proof that he was the one who had the correct opinion, he called down from heaven that they would prove his case by uprooting a tree.
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And Jesus uses the similar example to encourage his disciples in the power of simple faith.
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When the disciples said, Increase our faith in Luke 17, Jesus replied, If you have faith like a mustard seed, you would say to this mulberry tree, be uprooted and be planted in the sea, and it would obey you.
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And so first he encourages his disciples that what they've seen in him can also exist within them.
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And part of uh activating that is having the simple faith to interact with God in prayer with this belief, uh which leads into the second one, which is to believe that you have received.
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And so he continues in Mark 11, verse 24.
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And let's read this together.
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Therefore, I say to you, all that you ask in your prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be so for you.
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So he told his disciples that when they prayed for something, that they needed to trust God, that he would hear them, and that he would answer them.
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Now, on one level, this teaching can create difficulties because it might at first seem to imply that if a believer has sufficient force, we can somehow force God's hand to perform our bidding as if God is some kind of genie in a bottle.
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It also may at first seem to imply that unanswered prayers, or that what we are defining as unanswered prayers, which very often it means it just didn't the answer that we wanted, can result from some kind of lack of faith.
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And surely Jesus does not intend his disciples to draw either one of those conclusions, because both of those conclusions are inconsistent with the rest of the testimony of Scripture.
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Both contradict the full counsel of God.
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Even the logic of simple faith accepts that our will is not always God's will in any given situation.
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And so part of what prayer is about, it's about dialogue.
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It's about relationship, it's about intimacy with the Father rather than just a wish list or a list of demands.
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In other words, what you will discover if you take your prayer life seriously is that you will over time begin to realize your prayer is less about trying to get God to do something for you and less about trying to get God to cause the outcome that you want, though you're free to express all of that to him.
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But you will find that prayer is more about changing you and changing your heart and getting your will in line with his.
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And so the more we pray, the more we learn, oh, it's not about praying God's will be my will, but rather it's about praying that our heart understand God's will and align with that will and fit into that will and understand that will.
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And so the conclusion that unanswered prayers represent inadequate faith is also unwarranted in the light of Jesus' other teachings on faith and prayer.
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He told his disciples that the faith, the size of a mustard seed, that that, that is adequate to move mountains and uproot trees.
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Jesus here is only meaning to convey to his disciples that they should not doubt that God hears their prayers and that God does answer their prayer.
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And so part of that conversation you begin to have with God that not only involves your words, but involves praying with Scripture and so forth, is understanding what that answer may be, because it may be different than what you wanted or expected.
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And so a person must ask in faith without doubting, Jesus Brother James says.
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The person praying must be confident that God will answer the prayer and it will be to the satisfaction of what God desires.
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Um, you know, that's more what Jesus is getting at.
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And then he launches into a very important component that again, as we take our prayer life seriously as disciples of Jesus, if we are harboring grudges, if we are harboring ill will, if we are withholding forgiveness, or we think others are not worthy of being forgiven, that this kind of acts as kind of a clog in the pipeline, uh, that that's gonna, you know, cause some difficulty uh in your relationship with your father.
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And so that's why he he says these words in context of you praying and you expressing your desire to God.
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He says this beginning in Mark 11, verse 25.
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Let's read it together.
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And when you stand to pray, pardon everyone for what is in your heart against them, so that your father who is in heaven will also forgive your transgressions.
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But as for you, if you do not pardon, neither will your father who is in heaven forgive your transgressions.
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And so forgiveness is a very important part of the life of a disciple.
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Uh, and it's deeply connected to our prayer life and our also our understanding the will of God in that.
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Conversation of prayer.
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There is something very important going on from a first century worldview in this verse that we're gonna unpack.
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And that is just in those opening words.
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And when you stand to pray.
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Now, here Jesus is actually not just saying, hey, there's a posture for prayer and you need to stand whenever you pray.
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That's not really what he's saying.
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This is something that really only will be known to you if you know the first century Jewish context of Jesus' world.
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And that is three times a day, Jews gathered together in worship, whether it was in the temple or in their communities far away from Jerusalem in their local synagogues.
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And when they would gather on these three times a day, they would do a prayer known as the Amidah.
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A-M-I-D-A-H, Amidah.
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It's also called the Shemoneas Re, the 18 Blessings.
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But the Amidah, the word Amida, it literally means in Hebrew to stand.
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And so whenever they would say this very specific liturgical prayer, the way kind of like we pray the Lord's Prayer, that's liturgical, right?
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It's said in a service every week.
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We know what it is, it's said at a certain time in the service and so forth.
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Or you may remember from liturgy things like Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy.
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It's liturgical.
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Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.
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We have all kinds of liturgical prayers.
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And the Amidah was one of those liturgical prayers.
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So I want you to kind of keep that in mind because standing then as well as now was the common posture of prayer for these 18 blessings, these 18 kind of petitions of the Amidah.
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Rabbi Liechtenstein connected Jesus' words saying, when you stand praying, indeed to this daily standing prayer of the Amidah.
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So here Jesus is referring to the liturgical service of his day.
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He's saying, when you go to synagogue or when you go to the temple, when you participate in the daily life of your people, when you come to this prayer, the standing prayer, this is what you should have in mind.
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Forgive if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father who is in heaven will also forgive you your transgressions.
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Why Jesus would mention this prayer is because in one of those 18 blessings, one of those 18 petitions, it says this.
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Blessed are you, O Lord, who is abundantly gracious to forgive.
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And Jesus solemnly warned us that if we are unwilling to forgive when they sin against us, when they trespass against us, when they cause us offense, that that has a direct connection to our relationship with God.
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And so here you can think of horizontal, your relationship with your fellow human being, and vertical, your relationship with God.
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Jesus is essentially teaching here the technology, the spiritual technology, that those two are connected, right?
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And sometimes we can trick ourselves into thinking horizontal and vertical, that those two dimensions never interact.
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That is, how I treat the people around me, how I treat family, how I treat friends, how I treat coworkers, how I treat strangers, uh, that that is different than my relationship with God, that those are two separate things.
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And so that I can act one way in the horizontal realm in the ways of this world, but be completely different in my relationship with God.
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But this goes all the way back to Jesus' great teaching when he was asked, you know, what's the most important commandment in all of Scripture?
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When he's essentially asked, Jesus, if there's only one thing from the Bible that I need to know, one and only one thing, what would that one thing be?
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What would you have me know?
00:26:31.200 --> 00:26:37.680
And Jesus says, quoting Deuteronomy, love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your mind, with all of your soul.
00:26:37.839 --> 00:26:40.160
But then he says, but that's not the end of it.
00:26:40.240 --> 00:26:41.839
There's one that's just like it.
00:26:42.000 --> 00:26:47.039
In other words, it's really the same commandment: love your neighbor as yourself.
00:26:47.599 --> 00:27:00.079
And that those these two are linked because in the Bible, in the Hebrew language, the Hebrew word veah, and you shall love, that's only used in two places.
00:27:00.240 --> 00:27:05.039
It's used in love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and soul, and love your neighbor as yourself.
00:27:05.200 --> 00:27:14.480
And so, because it's a unique word only used in those two places, not only did Jesus see that, but all of the rabbis of his day saw that those two meant the same thing.
00:27:14.640 --> 00:27:18.079
They were connected by that same introductory verb.
00:27:18.480 --> 00:27:21.279
And so loving God is how you love your neighbor.
00:27:21.359 --> 00:27:24.160
And loving your neighbor, well, that's how you love God.
00:27:24.240 --> 00:27:26.400
And so it also works the same way.
00:27:26.559 --> 00:27:31.359
These two horizons, vertical and horizontal, connect with forgiveness.
00:27:31.599 --> 00:27:42.799
If we are an unforgiving people to others around us, we have no reason to expect that we would be receiving forgiveness from God.
00:27:43.359 --> 00:27:49.839
In other words, Jesus was telling his disciples that forgiving was really not an option for them.
00:27:50.319 --> 00:28:07.839
Matthew 6, in the Sermon on the Mount, right around the area where he gives the Lord's Prayer, which is really a summary of the Amida, Jesus says, For if you forgive others of their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.
00:28:08.079 --> 00:28:13.759
But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions.
00:28:14.160 --> 00:28:23.279
This principle of forgiveness is known as nida kneck nida, that is measure for measure.
00:28:23.599 --> 00:28:30.480
The rabbis frequently invoke this principle when discussing matters of forgiveness.
00:28:30.720 --> 00:28:33.200
To be forgiven is to forgive.
00:28:33.359 --> 00:28:36.240
To forgive is to receive forgiveness, right?
00:28:36.319 --> 00:28:37.279
They are connected.
00:28:37.440 --> 00:28:40.720
And again, James, the brother of Jesus.
00:28:41.200 --> 00:28:54.880
One way to look at the epistle of James in your Bible is James is really a sermon or a Bible study, if you will, by James on Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.
00:28:55.119 --> 00:29:00.880
So Matthew 5, 6, and 7, James is a commentary on that.
00:29:01.039 --> 00:29:04.480
It is James explaining and unpacking that.
00:29:04.559 --> 00:29:06.559
And you can see that in the vocabulary.
00:29:06.720 --> 00:29:15.519
James is clearly interacting with the Sermon on the Mount and then James' epistle in James 2 verse 13.
00:29:15.839 --> 00:29:17.039
Well, where did that go?
00:29:18.880 --> 00:29:20.079
I'm all messed up.
00:29:22.319 --> 00:29:22.960
There we go.
00:29:23.039 --> 00:29:23.519
Thank you.
00:29:23.759 --> 00:29:28.400
A person must ask in faith without uh doubting.
00:29:28.799 --> 00:29:31.599
It's the next James passage, James 2 and 13.
00:29:31.759 --> 00:29:40.319
A judgment will be merciless to one who has shown no mercy, but mercy triumphs over judgment.
00:29:40.960 --> 00:29:46.400
And so I'll find it here so that maybe I just didn't put it in there.
00:29:46.640 --> 00:29:47.119
All right.
00:29:47.359 --> 00:29:54.720
Forgiveness is um, though not a one-time event, and that's something Jesus is wanting to teach his disciples here.
00:29:54.880 --> 00:30:00.720
Uh, when they would pray the standing prayer three times a day, they would pray it in the morning, the afternoon, the evening.
00:30:00.880 --> 00:30:08.240
It would be clear reminders to them, morning, afternoon, and evening, all throughout the day, the importance of forgiving.
00:30:08.480 --> 00:30:21.759
And by telling us to forgive, Jesus implies that a person should conscientiously resolve to forgive offenses not only every day, but multiple times every day.
00:30:22.000 --> 00:30:28.480
And in the same spirit, the traditional prayer recommends a bedtime prayer to clear the slate.
00:30:28.960 --> 00:30:34.319
And so a prayer that Jesus would have prayed before he went to bed.
00:30:34.480 --> 00:30:43.599
This is one of the reasons I love reading the prayer books and the prayers from the time of Jesus, because we know he was observant.
00:30:43.759 --> 00:30:54.400
We know that he participated in the religious life of his people, we know that he was in synagogue as often as it was open, we know that he visited the temple for all of the feasts.
00:30:54.480 --> 00:31:08.079
These are things we absolutely know for certain from our gospels, which means the prayers that they prayed in their homes, they would have been prayers that Jesus prayed as well.
00:31:08.640 --> 00:31:24.240
And this is a prayer that uh Mary and Joseph, when they would have tucked little Jesus in at night, this is the prayer the parents pray with their children, then eventually the children grow up to pray as adults.
00:31:24.559 --> 00:31:28.640
It's this Master of the universe, Rebono Shalom.
00:31:29.519 --> 00:31:54.799
I hereby forgive all who have angered or provoked me or who have sinned against me, whether it has been against my body, my possession, my dignity, or against anything of mine, whether they did it unwittingly, whether they did it willfully, whether they did it accidentally, or whether they did it intentionally, whether they did it through speech or action, thought, or other intentions.
00:31:55.279 --> 00:31:57.759
I hereby forgive them.
00:31:58.640 --> 00:32:03.279
And those would be the last words you spoke before you went to bed.
00:32:03.519 --> 00:32:14.160
And so Jesus kind of wraps all of that up in a teaching for his disciples as they kind of marveled at the fig tree that withered at his word.
00:32:14.720 --> 00:32:20.880
He wanted them to realize that their word could also have that same kind of power.
00:32:21.039 --> 00:32:28.000
And one of the most powerful words we could ever speak are the words of forgiveness.
00:32:28.319 --> 00:32:30.799
Those are the most powerful words we have.
00:32:31.039 --> 00:32:32.720
That is the gospel, right?
00:32:32.799 --> 00:32:36.400
And that can change lives, including our own.
00:32:36.960 --> 00:32:38.720
Let's keep going in the text.
00:32:38.960 --> 00:32:43.359
The third day in Jerusalem, a question of authority.
00:32:43.519 --> 00:32:47.200
Uh, and I think I think if we get there today, I think we'll get there.
00:32:47.359 --> 00:32:48.319
Maybe we won't.
00:32:48.480 --> 00:33:06.640
Um, this answers a question that uh often gets asked, and that is when you study the first century world, uh you you quickly learn that in order to become a rabbi, you had to study under a rabbi, and a rabbi had to ordain you.
00:33:07.279 --> 00:33:11.359
Um and we know from the gospels Jesus is called a rabbi.
00:33:11.680 --> 00:33:14.640
And so who was Jesus' teacher, right?
00:33:14.960 --> 00:33:17.920
Well, we're gonna get that answer either this week or next week.
00:33:18.079 --> 00:33:20.480
All right, so let's let's dive into this.
00:33:20.720 --> 00:33:27.599
So Jesus is on the Temple Mount, uh, as it says in Mark 11, verse 27.
00:33:27.920 --> 00:33:29.680
What is going on with this thing?
00:33:31.759 --> 00:33:34.160
Uh Mark 11, verse 27.
00:33:34.400 --> 00:33:36.240
Let's read this verse together.
00:33:36.480 --> 00:33:39.839
They returned and came to Jerusalem.
00:33:40.160 --> 00:33:46.079
All right, so they've come back from Bethany, they've come back from the Mount of Olives, they've entered back into the Temple Mount.
00:33:46.400 --> 00:33:54.720
Um, this is be the morning for his third visit since arriving in Jerusalem for the festival of Passover.
00:33:55.039 --> 00:34:06.559
On the first day, which would have been Sunday, the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Nisan, he enters the city on a donkey and looks around the temple before returning to Bethany for the evening.
00:34:06.960 --> 00:34:24.159
On the second day, which would have been a Monday, the tenth day of the month of Nisan, he curses the fig tree, casts out the money changers and the merchants, and on the third day, he returns to the temple to continue teaching the crowds that have gathered there daily to hear him.
00:34:24.719 --> 00:34:33.199
Luke 21, verse 38, and all the people would get up early in the morning, and they would come to the temple to listen to him.
00:34:33.440 --> 00:34:42.559
And so on your handout, I kind of give you kind of a little bit of a breakdown of the holy week, the Passion Week, beginning on that Sabbath, the Nisan 8th.
00:34:42.880 --> 00:34:49.039
Jesus comes to Bethany, he celebrates the Sabbath with Mary, Martha, and Lazarus.
00:34:49.199 --> 00:34:52.559
The next day on Sunday is the triumphal entry.
00:34:52.960 --> 00:34:54.480
We call Palm Sunday.
00:34:54.719 --> 00:34:56.400
He returns back to Bethany.
00:34:56.639 --> 00:35:00.639
Monday, the fig tree cursing the clearing of the temple.
00:35:00.880 --> 00:35:08.400
Tuesday, more teaching in the temple, and what will, and we'll get into it, is known as the Olivet Discourse.
00:35:08.719 --> 00:35:21.360
And then marching through the week, you come to the Friday, which is the Passover sacrifice of the lamb, but also the crucifixion and burial of Jesus.
00:35:21.840 --> 00:35:24.800
And so the text continues in Mark.
00:35:24.960 --> 00:35:30.559
As he was walking around in the temple, the leading priests, the scholars, and the elders came to him.
00:35:30.719 --> 00:35:35.119
And they said to him, By what authority are you doing these things?
00:35:35.360 --> 00:35:38.719
And who gave you this authority to do these things?
00:35:39.039 --> 00:35:40.960
So this is a very important question.
00:35:41.039 --> 00:35:42.400
It's actually a good question.
00:35:42.480 --> 00:35:47.199
It's a question his opponents as well as his supporters should have asked, right?
00:35:47.440 --> 00:35:49.679
This is a legitimate question.
00:35:49.840 --> 00:36:01.199
This would be no different than someone standing up in front of you in this building and preaching to you a sermon and administering to you sacraments to say, What seminary did you go to?
00:36:01.519 --> 00:36:03.280
And who ordained you?
00:36:03.360 --> 00:36:04.320
Where are you ordained?
00:36:04.400 --> 00:36:06.880
And are you actually the called pastor here, right?
00:36:07.039 --> 00:36:09.760
Those are legitimate questions of authority.
00:36:09.920 --> 00:36:11.760
And so this is what they're asking him.
00:36:11.920 --> 00:36:15.119
When they say, by what authority are you doing these things?
00:36:15.280 --> 00:36:17.199
They're saying, Who is your teacher?
00:36:17.360 --> 00:36:19.679
That's the first century context.
00:36:19.920 --> 00:36:21.280
Who's your teacher?
00:36:21.519 --> 00:36:23.280
Who told you these things?
00:36:23.599 --> 00:36:24.960
By what authority?
00:36:25.119 --> 00:36:34.800
Uh, smika in Hebrew, who passed this on to you and told you it was okay to teach these things in their name?
00:36:35.039 --> 00:36:37.679
Where are you getting this stuff?
00:36:38.000 --> 00:36:39.519
Because we want to know.
00:36:39.679 --> 00:36:44.239
Just like if someone showed up here and started preaching, you're like, Well, which seminary did you go to?
00:36:44.320 --> 00:36:48.400
And they said, I never went to seminary, I've never studied theology a day in my life.
00:36:48.480 --> 00:36:49.599
You'd be like, Okay.
00:36:50.320 --> 00:36:52.880
Well, who ordained you?
00:36:53.199 --> 00:36:54.320
I've never been ordained.
00:36:54.400 --> 00:36:55.599
I told you, I didn't go to seminary.
00:36:55.679 --> 00:36:56.719
I've never studied theology.
00:36:56.880 --> 00:36:58.880
Why in the world would I be ordained?
00:36:59.119 --> 00:37:01.199
Well, are you called to preach here?
00:37:01.280 --> 00:37:02.400
No, I'm not called to preach here.
00:37:02.480 --> 00:37:04.079
I just got something to say to you, right?
00:37:04.239 --> 00:37:07.039
You'd probably be very skeptical of what they'd say.
00:37:07.119 --> 00:37:08.320
They have no authority.
00:37:08.480 --> 00:37:09.920
Where are they getting this from?
00:37:10.159 --> 00:37:11.360
That's what they're asking.
00:37:11.519 --> 00:37:14.639
Now, Jesus is going to kind of answer this from two angles.
00:37:14.880 --> 00:37:17.920
He's going to give kind of two answers to this.
00:37:18.159 --> 00:37:21.679
Um, and we're going to see that by what authority.
00:37:21.840 --> 00:37:26.559
So he enters the temple, his disciples are trailing behind him, right?
00:37:26.639 --> 00:37:30.159
And if you have disciples again, it's this first century model.
00:37:30.639 --> 00:37:40.480
You have a rabbi, you study with a rabbi until that rabbi releases you to go and do in his name, and then you make disciples and you teach.
00:37:40.559 --> 00:37:44.880
And then the goal would be at some point, you release them.
00:37:45.199 --> 00:37:51.679
Dare we say, all authority in heaven and earth is given to me, therefore I say to you, go and make disciples, right?
00:37:51.760 --> 00:37:54.400
That's Jesus saying, now it's yours, guys.
00:37:54.639 --> 00:38:01.199
Now you go and you teach in my name, and everything you do and say, you're baptizing and you're teaching.
00:38:01.280 --> 00:38:04.239
It's in my name and it has my authority.
00:38:05.039 --> 00:38:08.639
So he has disciples, so they're wanting to know.
00:38:08.800 --> 00:38:16.079
So people had no doubt had gone and alerted people like Caiaphas that the prophet from Nazareth has returned.
00:38:16.320 --> 00:38:23.199
And after the previous day's episode in the temple market, Caiaphas had to address the situation.
00:38:23.599 --> 00:38:25.840
But the matter required delicacy.
00:38:26.159 --> 00:38:29.440
Caiaphas does not want to incite a riot.
00:38:30.159 --> 00:38:39.280
So he sends a delegation consisting of his colleagues along with scholars, legal experts, and elders to challenge Jesus.
00:38:39.519 --> 00:38:44.159
They intercept Jesus and say, By what authority are you doing these things?
00:38:44.320 --> 00:38:45.440
Who's your teacher?
00:38:45.599 --> 00:38:46.960
Who taught you this stuff?
00:38:47.119 --> 00:38:48.880
And how are you doing it in their name?
00:38:48.960 --> 00:38:50.480
Where is this coming from?
00:38:50.880 --> 00:39:00.320
The very official-looking delegation attempted to intimidate Jesus, and so immediately the crowd's going to draw tightly in to watch the confrontation.
00:39:00.559 --> 00:39:05.199
The chief priests ask him, Who gave you this authority to do these things?
00:39:05.440 --> 00:39:09.440
Again, it's not just merely a curiosity question.
00:39:09.840 --> 00:39:16.880
The Sadducees had reasons to suspect that Jesus may have been working with their opponents, some of the Pharisees.
00:39:17.039 --> 00:39:28.239
And perhaps the Pharisees had sent Jesus to disrupt the marketplace, hoping to incite a riot against the controlling priesthood, and then Rome might intervene and remove that priesthood.
00:39:28.559 --> 00:39:36.960
No doubt the Pharisees wanted to return to the Sanhedrin, to the hall of the hewn stone within the temple, and have authority.
00:39:37.360 --> 00:39:45.920
Annas, Caiaphas, the high priesthood, they had their suspicions that maybe Jesus was some kind of pawn in all of this.
00:39:46.079 --> 00:39:49.360
So they wanted to know whose authority?
00:39:49.519 --> 00:39:50.480
Who do you represent?
00:39:50.639 --> 00:39:51.920
Where are you getting this stuff?
00:39:52.079 --> 00:39:53.440
What's your agenda?
00:39:54.960 --> 00:39:57.679
And so they asked Jesus the question.
00:39:58.239 --> 00:40:04.320
Now, Jesus being a good first century Galilean rabbi, right?
00:40:04.559 --> 00:40:06.079
And maybe you've learned this.
00:40:06.239 --> 00:40:13.679
Hopefully, if you've asked me questions, uh, Jesus doesn't answer questions with an answer, he answers questions with questions.
00:40:14.159 --> 00:40:21.039
Because if you know the answer to his question, you'll have the answer to your question, but in a better, more profound way.
00:40:21.519 --> 00:40:22.719
So they ask him.
00:40:23.599 --> 00:40:25.920
This is important because he's telling you the answer.
00:40:26.159 --> 00:40:28.800
The answer is his question.
00:40:29.360 --> 00:40:30.239
Who's your teacher?
00:40:30.400 --> 00:40:31.199
Who ordained you?
00:40:31.280 --> 00:40:32.960
Where are you getting this authority?
00:40:34.400 --> 00:40:38.000
Jesus' response The baptism of John.
00:40:39.760 --> 00:40:41.039
Was it heaven?
00:40:41.519 --> 00:40:43.039
Was it from heaven or from men?
00:40:43.679 --> 00:40:44.559
Answer me.
00:40:44.880 --> 00:40:51.599
So Jesus' question is, or his response is, I'm not gonna answer your question.
00:40:52.000 --> 00:40:53.519
I'm gonna ask you a question.
00:40:54.159 --> 00:40:57.280
John the Baptist, who was he?
00:40:58.159 --> 00:41:00.079
Was he a prophet from on high?
00:41:00.320 --> 00:41:02.800
Was he an inspired prophet of God?
00:41:03.039 --> 00:41:05.440
Did he have God's message with him?
00:41:05.679 --> 00:41:11.440
Or was he a complete nut job and solely from human inventions?
00:41:12.079 --> 00:41:14.559
Jesus says, answer me that.
00:41:15.679 --> 00:41:21.920
So again, in the manner of the sages, Jesus replies, a question with a question of his own.
00:41:22.159 --> 00:41:23.519
I will ask you a question.
00:41:23.679 --> 00:41:27.840
Answer me, and then I will tell you by what authority I do these things.
00:41:28.320 --> 00:41:30.320
John, who is he?
00:41:30.800 --> 00:41:34.639
The question really means, did John, did God send John?
00:41:35.199 --> 00:41:36.960
And was John a real prophet?
00:41:37.119 --> 00:41:38.960
Was John filled with the Holy Spirit?
00:41:39.119 --> 00:41:41.760
Was John truly inspired by God?
00:41:42.000 --> 00:41:48.639
Or was John a false prophet, a fake, a phony, a nobody, a loser, a heretic, a reject?
00:41:49.440 --> 00:41:52.639
The answer to that question would answer their question.
00:41:52.880 --> 00:41:58.719
If John was a false prophet, a heretic, a loser, a nobody, so was Jesus.
00:41:59.360 --> 00:42:01.679
Because John endorsed him.
00:42:01.920 --> 00:42:17.280
If John was sent from God, if John was filled with the Holy Spirit, if John were truly the voice of the wilderness in the wilderness crying out and preparing the way for the Lord, then Jesus was 100% legitimate.
00:42:17.840 --> 00:42:21.920
Jesus is letting you know, I get my authority on earth.
00:42:22.000 --> 00:42:23.360
He's going to answer it in another way.
00:42:23.519 --> 00:42:25.599
He gets this authority from his Father in heaven.
00:42:25.760 --> 00:42:27.519
It's coming, don't worry, it's there.
00:42:27.679 --> 00:42:30.800
But he also answers it on the human level that they want.
00:42:31.360 --> 00:42:32.800
Where did I get my authority?
00:42:32.960 --> 00:42:34.639
I got my authority from John.
00:42:35.440 --> 00:42:38.159
So tell me, what do you think about John?
00:42:39.440 --> 00:42:44.639
This puts the chief priests and the scribes and so forth on a defensive.
00:42:44.800 --> 00:42:49.760
They knew that the people were not overly enamored with them, right?
00:42:49.920 --> 00:42:56.480
Just like we often have people in political leadership, and even though they've been elected, they aren't necessarily beloved.
00:42:57.519 --> 00:43:06.880
And they knew that the pilgrimage festivals, such as Passover, had a long time-honored history of erupting into violent protest with unpopular leadership.
00:43:07.119 --> 00:43:13.280
And so they would not publicly denounce John the Baptist at risk of infuriating the crowds.
00:43:13.679 --> 00:43:17.039
And even Josephus believed in John's ministry.
00:43:17.360 --> 00:43:33.039
On the other hand, if they endorsed John and said he was a legitimate prophet, they had to account for their own refusal to submit to his words, to submit to his authority, and to submit to the one who took over his ministry and his disciples.
00:43:33.599 --> 00:43:37.760
Giving credence to John meant giving credence to Jesus.
00:43:38.079 --> 00:43:42.000
So they confer with one another in their quick whispers.
00:43:42.400 --> 00:43:44.320
I don't know why it's doing that.
00:43:46.639 --> 00:43:56.719
And they basically say in Mark 11, verse 31 if we say John is from heaven, he will then say, Why did you not believe him?
00:43:56.880 --> 00:43:59.039
i.e., why didn't you believe me?
00:43:59.760 --> 00:44:12.880
But if we say he's from men, he's a nobody, he's a nothing, he's a heretic, he's a loser, they were afraid of the multitude because everyone considered John to have been a real prophet.
00:44:13.360 --> 00:44:19.920
And so after a brief consultation with one another, they simply replied, We do not know.
00:44:20.880 --> 00:44:26.960
To which Jesus says, Well, then I'm not going to tell you by what authority I do these things.
00:44:27.280 --> 00:44:28.880
But he actually has.
00:44:29.920 --> 00:44:38.880
By these words, Jesus is indicating that he's acted on the same authority that John the Baptist had acted upon, and this is where ultimately it gets to the Father.
00:44:39.119 --> 00:44:41.679
Well, he acted on John's authority.
00:44:41.920 --> 00:44:43.599
He took over John's ministry.
00:44:43.760 --> 00:44:46.400
Most of his original disciples were John's disciples.
00:44:46.480 --> 00:44:53.039
And remember, John pointing his followers to Jesus, all rabbinic succession stuff.
00:44:53.599 --> 00:44:56.880
And so, where did John's authority come from?
00:44:57.280 --> 00:45:00.559
Well, he's the one who's crying out in the wilderness.
00:45:00.719 --> 00:45:03.920
He's the one responding to the Father.
00:45:04.400 --> 00:45:08.559
So Jesus reveals something else about his relationship with John the Baptist.
00:45:08.880 --> 00:45:16.880
John was Jesus' teacher, his mentor, his rabbi, and but also the question of by whose authority?
00:45:17.119 --> 00:45:19.599
Well, who was John the Baptist's authority?
00:45:19.840 --> 00:45:24.719
Jesus is also saying it was the source of John's message, the Father.
00:45:24.960 --> 00:45:27.679
So Jesus answers kind of both ways.
00:45:28.000 --> 00:45:34.000
My authority comes from John, and my authority comes from my father.
00:45:35.119 --> 00:46:02.159
And that is where we will end it today, and we will pick things back up next week, uh, continuing in this Passion Week of Jesus on the third day of that week as things are quickly progressing toward Monday, Thursday, and betrayal, Good Friday, and crucifixion, uh, burial and holy Saturday, and ultimately into the resurrection.
00:00:09.279 --> 00:00:10.320
Good morning everyone.
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Welcome to welcome to the Mosaic Teaching Service.
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Today this is teaching number 152 as we progress through the four gospels of Jesus Christ.
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And we have been on the last several teachings have entered into what is known and liturgically speaking in the church as Holy Week.
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Began with that triumphal entry that we celebrate in the liturgy as Palm Sunday.
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And then have been experiencing some of Jesus' interaction with not only his disciples as they are going into the city of Jerusalem, and they've encountered a fig tree that Jesus had some words with that we'll see the result of today.
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But also when Jesus is up on the Temple Mount as he is engaging those who have opposition to him.
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And we are seeing that that tension is beginning to truly rise.
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And Jesus is as previously, before the Passion Week, the Holy Week, at times Jesus has either kind of reverted back from the crowds, or he's told people to be quiet about certain things, or he's kind of circumvented questions by uh answering them in ways that kind of went over most people's heads.
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Uh, but now he's being very direct in who he is and what his mission is about, what he's going to accomplish, uh, truly bringing things to kind of come head to head.
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And so that's where we're going to be picking things up today.
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But let's first get started with prayer.
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Now let's bow our heads.
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We pray.
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Blessed Lord, who has caused all holy scriptures to be written for our learning.
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Grant that we would so hear them.
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Read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, so that by patience and comfort of your holy word, we would embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have given to us in your Son Jesus Christ.
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Amen.
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In Mosaic, we value our Bibles.
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Uh, always encourage you to bring your Bible with you to the Mosaic Teaching Service.
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But if you need one today, you just can grab one in the pew or chair around you.
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And if you need to keep that as your own, uh please accept that as a gift from us to you.
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But if you will, take your Bible, hold it up, and repeat after me.
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This is my Bible.
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Jesus is who it says He is.
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I am what it says I am.
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I can do what it says I can do.
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Today I will be taught the Word of God.
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My mind is alert.
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By God's grace, my heart is receptive.
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The Bible is the incorruptible, the indestructible, ever-living word of God.
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My encounter with the Bible today will transform and grow my faith.
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And we say together, in Jesus' name.
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Amen.
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So we're primarily going to be in the Gospel of Mark today, Mark chapter 11.
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Uh, where we left off last week uh was uh we were in Mark 11, but we also did a little skirt over to John chapter 2, and we talked about the differences between the synoptic gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and that of John regarding this particular interaction of Jesus kind of clearing out the merchants and so forth, that the Synoptic Gospels have them at the end of Jesus' ministry here in Holy Week and the week of his passion.
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And John has it at the beginning of Jesus' ministry, uh right in the same chapter that you have Jesus' first miracle of the water into wine, and we talked about different ways we can reconcile that and so forth.
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Um, but primarily when we looked at John, we saw that phrase about tear down this temple, uh, and I will rebuild it in three days and unpack that a little bit.
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And now we're gonna be flipping back into Mark's account of it, and we're gonna pick it up in Mark chapter 11, uh, beginning in verse 19.
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So let's read this verse together.
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In the evening he went to the outside of the city.
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They were passing through in the morning, and they saw the fig tree had withered from its roots.
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So, kind of as that big day of clearing out the merchants was over, Jesus goes outside of the city.
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And so, if you think about the geography of Jerusalem, you have the Temple Mount with the walls around it.
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Jesus would have left through what is known as the eastern gate to go outside of the city, and he would have gone across the Kidron Valley, and then he would have walked up the Mount of Olives, and just on the other side of the Mount of Olives is where Jesus kind of hung out, uh, right?
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That's where uh Beth um uh you have Bethany and you have Lazarus, Mary, and Martha.
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We also know outside of the city, outside of the Eastern Gate, and on that Mount of Olives, that's where Jesus was also known to spend time, to spend time with his disciples and so forth during these crowded festivals.
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Uh, and so they leave after this busy day, and then when they come back through in the morning, they notice this fig tree had withered from its uh roots.
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And so after this busy day of overturning tables, teaching in the temple, and generally Jesus uh from the religious leadership's perspective, generally making a nuisance of himself, Jesus returns to Bethany for the evening.
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And he and his disciples again left the Temple Mount area, left out the eastern gate, crossed the Kidron Valley, and up the Mount of Olives.
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And the next morning when they arose early, they would have, of course, being that it was the week of Passover and all of those festivities, all of those preparations, uh, they would have headed back to the temple to participate in its services.
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And on the way, Simon Peter took note of the fig tree, which the previous morning had been in full leaf.
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Uh the tree's leaves had all browned, curled, and drooped, and the tree withered from its roots.
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In verse 21 of Mark 11, it has uh Peter saying, Rabbi, look, the fig tree which you cursed, it has withered.
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Uh Simon Peter noticing this detail.
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The miracle so captivated the disciples that whatever deeper prophetic significance Jesus intended by the sign act was largely lost on them.
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So Jesus dismissed his disciples' amazement.
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They too could accomplish such things if they would only ask with faith.
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A major point of the disciples to know then, but also something that's very important for us as disciples today to still know is that everything that Jesus did here, Jesus actually was doing in his human nature, not in his divine nature.
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The cursing of the fig tree was by the power of the spirit that was within him, in his human nature.
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And so for Matthew, Mark, and Luke, for those synoptic gospels, they all said this, that therefore he told Peter that if they had true faith, even the disciples would do such things.
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And likewise in John chapter 14 and verse 12, Jesus said, He will do the works that I do, and even greater than these.
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And I think these are words of Jesus that largely go unheard by today's disciples.
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That is, Jesus here in the week of the Passion, but also earlier in John 14, had clearly told his disciples that what they saw him do, they could do, that they would have the ability to do that.
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And in fact, in John 14, Jesus even adds that caveat that they could do even greater things than Jesus.
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And in some ways, how in the world could we do greater things than Jesus?
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And one of those greater things is when you think about Jesus' ministry itself, just its physical geographic nature of it, Jesus did all of his ministry in a very small space, right?
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The Sea of Galilee, the region where a solid 80 to 85 percent of everything you know about Jesus, from what he said to what he did, was done right there on those shores.
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That's only eight miles by 14 miles wide, that lake, right?
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And so very small perimeter.
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And if you even think about driving in a car, Jesus was never more than a two-hour drive from where he was born, right?
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He was very, very, very localized.
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There's a good chance some of you will be driving more than two hours today, right?
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Very localized.
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What do his disciples do after him, right?
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They go beyond Judea and into Samaria and then into, you know, eventually the ends of the earth.
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And so they were able to accomplish something that he did not in his ministry.
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And so uh it's something we can think about.
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Um, too often we simply look at Jesus and only see him in his divine nature and think that everything that he did came from that, but he's being clear here that that's not the case, that what he was doing, uh including with this fig tree, right, is is something that uh we are capable of doing because we have that same spirit within us.
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And so Jesus takes advantage of the opportunity for a short teaching on the efficacy of simple faith and devout prayer.
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And he gave his disciples uh essentially in this teaching moment uh three principles for prayer.
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He told them that they needed to have faith in God, to believe that you will receive, and forgive others before asking for forgiveness.
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And so I want to kind of break down each of those three things.
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Uh first by looking at have faith in God.
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So in Mark chapter 11, verses 22 and 23, uh, let's read these two verses together.
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We read, let the faith of God be in you.
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For amen.
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I say to you, anyone who says to this mountain, be lifted up and moved into the middle of the sea, and does not doubt in his heart, but rather believes that what he says will be done, so it will be for him as he said.
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So Jesus believed in approaching God, his father, with the honest expectation of being heard and answered.
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And that should be our same posture in prayer, that when we enter into prayer, we should have that expectation that we will be heard, that we will be answered.
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Just as a child can approach his earthly father with an earnest request, Jesus taught his disciples to pray with this kind of intimacy.
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It's also a type of vulnerability and not just some kind of theological sophistication or some kind of philosophical system.
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He said that if we will pray with this simple sincerity, we will be able to move mountains, casting them into the sea.
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The moving of mountains, that metaphor, it has resonance with certain messianic prophecies in the Bible that speak about the mountains being lowered before the day of Messiah or before the dawning of the messianic era.
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And they climbing the hill called the Mount of Olives, Jesus may have prophetically signified this mountain.
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He may have had the Mount of Olives in mind when he made this statement.
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Because according to the prophecies of Zechariah, the Messiah will one day appear on the Mount of Olives to rescue Jerusalem from a siege.
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And it says in Zechariah 14, verse 4 At that time the Mount of Olives will be split in its middle from east to sea by a very large valley, so that half of the mountain will move toward the north, and the other half will move toward the south.
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At the same time, the term uprooting mountains is also a frequent metaphor that the rabbis used during this period.
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Rabbinic literature is filled with this hyperbole to move mountains to express the idea of doing the seemingly impossible.
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And so, in other words, Jesus really wasn't saying literally, you can uproot a mountain and move it, but he was saying you have every right and expectation to pray to God for something that seems absolutely impossible, something that seems that could never happen, or something that seems beyond the scope and the realm of human imagination, that you should have the confidence and the vulnerability to go into prayer about that.
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And there's also something else with this moving the mountain that Jesus may have had in mind.
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Not just only the Mount of Olives, as in the day of Messiah, that mountain would literally move, but also just outside of Jerusalem and within eyesight, uh, on the horizon of the disciples was a place known as the Herodium.
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It still exists today.
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It's a little mountain, if you will, a little hill.
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Um, and it's where King Herod, the infamous King Herod, is buried.
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And the thing about that is it's an artificial mountain.
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Uh, because King Herod, when he was deciding what would be his burial place, what would be that great monument to his awesomeness, right?
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He had a great ego.
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When he looked out on the horizon, he saw a mountain, but he was like, I don't like where it's at.
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I want it over here.
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And so he had all of his slaves and all of his laborers take down that mountain and move it over here.
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And so Jesus is also kind of making the point: if someone like Herod, who is filled with ego and is contrary to the things of God and the will of God, if he can move mountains, how much more so can your father in heaven move mountains?
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And so uh with this moving of mountains metaphor, you could have he could have had in mind um the Mount of Olives, he could have had in mind the Herodium, uh, certainly the rabbinic hyperbole of the seemingly impossible.
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Paul himself remarks in 1 Corinthians 13 and verse 2 if I have all faith so as to move mountains.
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Um Eliezer bin Hyrcanus engaged in a difficult argument with his colleagues, when he wanted to have proof that he was the one who had the correct opinion, he called down from heaven that they would prove his case by uprooting a tree.
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And Jesus uses the similar example to encourage his disciples in the power of simple faith.
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When the disciples said, Increase our faith in Luke 17, Jesus replied, If you have faith like a mustard seed, you would say to this mulberry tree, be uprooted and be planted in the sea, and it would obey you.
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And so first he encourages his disciples that what they've seen in him can also exist within them.
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And part of uh activating that is having the simple faith to interact with God in prayer with this belief, uh which leads into the second one, which is to believe that you have received.
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And so he continues in Mark 11, verse 24.
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And let's read this together.
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Therefore, I say to you, all that you ask in your prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be so for you.
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So he told his disciples that when they prayed for something, that they needed to trust God, that he would hear them, and that he would answer them.
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Now, on one level, this teaching can create difficulties because it might at first seem to imply that if a believer has sufficient force, we can somehow force God's hand to perform our bidding as if God is some kind of genie in a bottle.
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It also may at first seem to imply that unanswered prayers, or that what we are defining as unanswered prayers, which very often it means it just didn't the answer that we wanted, can result from some kind of lack of faith.
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And surely Jesus does not intend his disciples to draw either one of those conclusions, because both of those conclusions are inconsistent with the rest of the testimony of Scripture.
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Both contradict the full counsel of God.
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Even the logic of simple faith accepts that our will is not always God's will in any given situation.
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And so part of what prayer is about, it's about dialogue.
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It's about relationship, it's about intimacy with the Father rather than just a wish list or a list of demands.
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In other words, what you will discover if you take your prayer life seriously is that you will over time begin to realize your prayer is less about trying to get God to do something for you and less about trying to get God to cause the outcome that you want, though you're free to express all of that to him.
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But you will find that prayer is more about changing you and changing your heart and getting your will in line with his.
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And so the more we pray, the more we learn, oh, it's not about praying God's will be my will, but rather it's about praying that our heart understand God's will and align with that will and fit into that will and understand that will.
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And so the conclusion that unanswered prayers represent inadequate faith is also unwarranted in the light of Jesus' other teachings on faith and prayer.
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He told his disciples that the faith, the size of a mustard seed, that that, that is adequate to move mountains and uproot trees.
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Jesus here is only meaning to convey to his disciples that they should not doubt that God hears their prayers and that God does answer their prayer.
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And so part of that conversation you begin to have with God that not only involves your words, but involves praying with Scripture and so forth, is understanding what that answer may be, because it may be different than what you wanted or expected.
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And so a person must ask in faith without doubting, Jesus Brother James says.
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The person praying must be confident that God will answer the prayer and it will be to the satisfaction of what God desires.
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Um, you know, that's more what Jesus is getting at.
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And then he launches into a very important component that again, as we take our prayer life seriously as disciples of Jesus, if we are harboring grudges, if we are harboring ill will, if we are withholding forgiveness, or we think others are not worthy of being forgiven, that this kind of acts as kind of a clog in the pipeline, uh, that that's gonna, you know, cause some difficulty uh in your relationship with your father.
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And so that's why he he says these words in context of you praying and you expressing your desire to God.
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He says this beginning in Mark 11, verse 25.
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Let's read it together.
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And when you stand to pray, pardon everyone for what is in your heart against them, so that your father who is in heaven will also forgive your transgressions.
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But as for you, if you do not pardon, neither will your father who is in heaven forgive your transgressions.
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And so forgiveness is a very important part of the life of a disciple.
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Uh, and it's deeply connected to our prayer life and our also our understanding the will of God in that.
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Conversation of prayer.
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There is something very important going on from a first century worldview in this verse that we're gonna unpack.
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And that is just in those opening words.
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And when you stand to pray.
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Now, here Jesus is actually not just saying, hey, there's a posture for prayer and you need to stand whenever you pray.
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That's not really what he's saying.
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This is something that really only will be known to you if you know the first century Jewish context of Jesus' world.
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And that is three times a day, Jews gathered together in worship, whether it was in the temple or in their communities far away from Jerusalem in their local synagogues.
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And when they would gather on these three times a day, they would do a prayer known as the Amidah.
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A-M-I-D-A-H, Amidah.
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It's also called the Shemoneas Re, the 18 Blessings.
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But the Amidah, the word Amida, it literally means in Hebrew to stand.
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And so whenever they would say this very specific liturgical prayer, the way kind of like we pray the Lord's Prayer, that's liturgical, right?
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It's said in a service every week.
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We know what it is, it's said at a certain time in the service and so forth.
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Or you may remember from liturgy things like Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy.
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It's liturgical.
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Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.
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We have all kinds of liturgical prayers.
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And the Amidah was one of those liturgical prayers.
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So I want you to kind of keep that in mind because standing then as well as now was the common posture of prayer for these 18 blessings, these 18 kind of petitions of the Amidah.
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Rabbi Liechtenstein connected Jesus' words saying, when you stand praying, indeed to this daily standing prayer of the Amidah.
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So here Jesus is referring to the liturgical service of his day.
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He's saying, when you go to synagogue or when you go to the temple, when you participate in the daily life of your people, when you come to this prayer, the standing prayer, this is what you should have in mind.
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Forgive if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father who is in heaven will also forgive you your transgressions.
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Why Jesus would mention this prayer is because in one of those 18 blessings, one of those 18 petitions, it says this.
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Blessed are you, O Lord, who is abundantly gracious to forgive.
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And Jesus solemnly warned us that if we are unwilling to forgive when they sin against us, when they trespass against us, when they cause us offense, that that has a direct connection to our relationship with God.
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And so here you can think of horizontal, your relationship with your fellow human being, and vertical, your relationship with God.
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Jesus is essentially teaching here the technology, the spiritual technology, that those two are connected, right?
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And sometimes we can trick ourselves into thinking horizontal and vertical, that those two dimensions never interact.
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That is, how I treat the people around me, how I treat family, how I treat friends, how I treat coworkers, how I treat strangers, uh, that that is different than my relationship with God, that those are two separate things.
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And so that I can act one way in the horizontal realm in the ways of this world, but be completely different in my relationship with God.
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But this goes all the way back to Jesus' great teaching when he was asked, you know, what's the most important commandment in all of Scripture?
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When he's essentially asked, Jesus, if there's only one thing from the Bible that I need to know, one and only one thing, what would that one thing be?
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What would you have me know?
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And Jesus says, quoting Deuteronomy, love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your mind, with all of your soul.
00:26:37.839 --> 00:26:40.160
But then he says, but that's not the end of it.
00:26:40.240 --> 00:26:41.839
There's one that's just like it.
00:26:42.000 --> 00:26:47.039
In other words, it's really the same commandment: love your neighbor as yourself.
00:26:47.599 --> 00:27:00.079
And that those these two are linked because in the Bible, in the Hebrew language, the Hebrew word veah, and you shall love, that's only used in two places.
00:27:00.240 --> 00:27:05.039
It's used in love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and soul, and love your neighbor as yourself.
00:27:05.200 --> 00:27:14.480
And so, because it's a unique word only used in those two places, not only did Jesus see that, but all of the rabbis of his day saw that those two meant the same thing.
00:27:14.640 --> 00:27:18.079
They were connected by that same introductory verb.
00:27:18.480 --> 00:27:21.279
And so loving God is how you love your neighbor.
00:27:21.359 --> 00:27:24.160
And loving your neighbor, well, that's how you love God.
00:27:24.240 --> 00:27:26.400
And so it also works the same way.
00:27:26.559 --> 00:27:31.359
These two horizons, vertical and horizontal, connect with forgiveness.
00:27:31.599 --> 00:27:42.799
If we are an unforgiving people to others around us, we have no reason to expect that we would be receiving forgiveness from God.
00:27:43.359 --> 00:27:49.839
In other words, Jesus was telling his disciples that forgiving was really not an option for them.
00:27:50.319 --> 00:28:07.839
Matthew 6, in the Sermon on the Mount, right around the area where he gives the Lord's Prayer, which is really a summary of the Amida, Jesus says, For if you forgive others of their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.
00:28:08.079 --> 00:28:13.759
But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions.
00:28:14.160 --> 00:28:23.279
This principle of forgiveness is known as nida kneck nida, that is measure for measure.
00:28:23.599 --> 00:28:30.480
The rabbis frequently invoke this principle when discussing matters of forgiveness.
00:28:30.720 --> 00:28:33.200
To be forgiven is to forgive.
00:28:33.359 --> 00:28:36.240
To forgive is to receive forgiveness, right?
00:28:36.319 --> 00:28:37.279
They are connected.
00:28:37.440 --> 00:28:40.720
And again, James, the brother of Jesus.
00:28:41.200 --> 00:28:54.880
One way to look at the epistle of James in your Bible is James is really a sermon or a Bible study, if you will, by James on Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.
00:28:55.119 --> 00:29:00.880
So Matthew 5, 6, and 7, James is a commentary on that.
00:29:01.039 --> 00:29:04.480
It is James explaining and unpacking that.
00:29:04.559 --> 00:29:06.559
And you can see that in the vocabulary.
00:29:06.720 --> 00:29:15.519
James is clearly interacting with the Sermon on the Mount and then James' epistle in James 2 verse 13.
00:29:15.839 --> 00:29:17.039
Well, where did that go?
00:29:18.880 --> 00:29:20.079
I'm all messed up.
00:29:22.319 --> 00:29:22.960
There we go.
00:29:23.039 --> 00:29:23.519
Thank you.
00:29:23.759 --> 00:29:28.400
A person must ask in faith without uh doubting.
00:29:28.799 --> 00:29:31.599
It's the next James passage, James 2 and 13.
00:29:31.759 --> 00:29:40.319
A judgment will be merciless to one who has shown no mercy, but mercy triumphs over judgment.
00:29:40.960 --> 00:29:46.400
And so I'll find it here so that maybe I just didn't put it in there.
00:29:46.640 --> 00:29:47.119
All right.
00:29:47.359 --> 00:29:54.720
Forgiveness is um, though not a one-time event, and that's something Jesus is wanting to teach his disciples here.
00:29:54.880 --> 00:30:00.720
Uh, when they would pray the standing prayer three times a day, they would pray it in the morning, the afternoon, the evening.
00:30:00.880 --> 00:30:08.240
It would be clear reminders to them, morning, afternoon, and evening, all throughout the day, the importance of forgiving.
00:30:08.480 --> 00:30:21.759
And by telling us to forgive, Jesus implies that a person should conscientiously resolve to forgive offenses not only every day, but multiple times every day.
00:30:22.000 --> 00:30:28.480
And in the same spirit, the traditional prayer recommends a bedtime prayer to clear the slate.
00:30:28.960 --> 00:30:34.319
And so a prayer that Jesus would have prayed before he went to bed.
00:30:34.480 --> 00:30:43.599
This is one of the reasons I love reading the prayer books and the prayers from the time of Jesus, because we know he was observant.
00:30:43.759 --> 00:30:54.400
We know that he participated in the religious life of his people, we know that he was in synagogue as often as it was open, we know that he visited the temple for all of the feasts.
00:30:54.480 --> 00:31:08.079
These are things we absolutely know for certain from our gospels, which means the prayers that they prayed in their homes, they would have been prayers that Jesus prayed as well.
00:31:08.640 --> 00:31:24.240
And this is a prayer that uh Mary and Joseph, when they would have tucked little Jesus in at night, this is the prayer the parents pray with their children, then eventually the children grow up to pray as adults.
00:31:24.559 --> 00:31:28.640
It's this Master of the universe, Rebono Shalom.
00:31:29.519 --> 00:31:54.799
I hereby forgive all who have angered or provoked me or who have sinned against me, whether it has been against my body, my possession, my dignity, or against anything of mine, whether they did it unwittingly, whether they did it willfully, whether they did it accidentally, or whether they did it intentionally, whether they did it through speech or action, thought, or other intentions.
00:31:55.279 --> 00:31:57.759
I hereby forgive them.
00:31:58.640 --> 00:32:03.279
And those would be the last words you spoke before you went to bed.
00:32:03.519 --> 00:32:14.160
And so Jesus kind of wraps all of that up in a teaching for his disciples as they kind of marveled at the fig tree that withered at his word.
00:32:14.720 --> 00:32:20.880
He wanted them to realize that their word could also have that same kind of power.
00:32:21.039 --> 00:32:28.000
And one of the most powerful words we could ever speak are the words of forgiveness.
00:32:28.319 --> 00:32:30.799
Those are the most powerful words we have.
00:32:31.039 --> 00:32:32.720
That is the gospel, right?
00:32:32.799 --> 00:32:36.400
And that can change lives, including our own.
00:32:36.960 --> 00:32:38.720
Let's keep going in the text.
00:32:38.960 --> 00:32:43.359
The third day in Jerusalem, a question of authority.
00:32:43.519 --> 00:32:47.200
Uh, and I think I think if we get there today, I think we'll get there.
00:32:47.359 --> 00:32:48.319
Maybe we won't.
00:32:48.480 --> 00:33:06.640
Um, this answers a question that uh often gets asked, and that is when you study the first century world, uh you you quickly learn that in order to become a rabbi, you had to study under a rabbi, and a rabbi had to ordain you.
00:33:07.279 --> 00:33:11.359
Um and we know from the gospels Jesus is called a rabbi.
00:33:11.680 --> 00:33:14.640
And so who was Jesus' teacher, right?
00:33:14.960 --> 00:33:17.920
Well, we're gonna get that answer either this week or next week.
00:33:18.079 --> 00:33:20.480
All right, so let's let's dive into this.
00:33:20.720 --> 00:33:27.599
So Jesus is on the Temple Mount, uh, as it says in Mark 11, verse 27.
00:33:27.920 --> 00:33:29.680
What is going on with this thing?
00:33:31.759 --> 00:33:34.160
Uh Mark 11, verse 27.
00:33:34.400 --> 00:33:36.240
Let's read this verse together.
00:33:36.480 --> 00:33:39.839
They returned and came to Jerusalem.
00:33:40.160 --> 00:33:46.079
All right, so they've come back from Bethany, they've come back from the Mount of Olives, they've entered back into the Temple Mount.
00:33:46.400 --> 00:33:54.720
Um, this is be the morning for his third visit since arriving in Jerusalem for the festival of Passover.
00:33:55.039 --> 00:34:06.559
On the first day, which would have been Sunday, the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Nisan, he enters the city on a donkey and looks around the temple before returning to Bethany for the evening.
00:34:06.960 --> 00:34:24.159
On the second day, which would have been a Monday, the tenth day of the month of Nisan, he curses the fig tree, casts out the money changers and the merchants, and on the third day, he returns to the temple to continue teaching the crowds that have gathered there daily to hear him.
00:34:24.719 --> 00:34:33.199
Luke 21, verse 38, and all the people would get up early in the morning, and they would come to the temple to listen to him.
00:34:33.440 --> 00:34:42.559
And so on your handout, I kind of give you kind of a little bit of a breakdown of the holy week, the Passion Week, beginning on that Sabbath, the Nisan 8th.
00:34:42.880 --> 00:34:49.039
Jesus comes to Bethany, he celebrates the Sabbath with Mary, Martha, and Lazarus.
00:34:49.199 --> 00:34:52.559
The next day on Sunday is the triumphal entry.
00:34:52.960 --> 00:34:54.480
We call Palm Sunday.
00:34:54.719 --> 00:34:56.400
He returns back to Bethany.
00:34:56.639 --> 00:35:00.639
Monday, the fig tree cursing the clearing of the temple.
00:35:00.880 --> 00:35:08.400
Tuesday, more teaching in the temple, and what will, and we'll get into it, is known as the Olivet Discourse.
00:35:08.719 --> 00:35:21.360
And then marching through the week, you come to the Friday, which is the Passover sacrifice of the lamb, but also the crucifixion and burial of Jesus.
00:35:21.840 --> 00:35:24.800
And so the text continues in Mark.
00:35:24.960 --> 00:35:30.559
As he was walking around in the temple, the leading priests, the scholars, and the elders came to him.
00:35:30.719 --> 00:35:35.119
And they said to him, By what authority are you doing these things?
00:35:35.360 --> 00:35:38.719
And who gave you this authority to do these things?
00:35:39.039 --> 00:35:40.960
So this is a very important question.
00:35:41.039 --> 00:35:42.400
It's actually a good question.
00:35:42.480 --> 00:35:47.199
It's a question his opponents as well as his supporters should have asked, right?
00:35:47.440 --> 00:35:49.679
This is a legitimate question.
00:35:49.840 --> 00:36:01.199
This would be no different than someone standing up in front of you in this building and preaching to you a sermon and administering to you sacraments to say, What seminary did you go to?
00:36:01.519 --> 00:36:03.280
And who ordained you?
00:36:03.360 --> 00:36:04.320
Where are you ordained?
00:36:04.400 --> 00:36:06.880
And are you actually the called pastor here, right?
00:36:07.039 --> 00:36:09.760
Those are legitimate questions of authority.
00:36:09.920 --> 00:36:11.760
And so this is what they're asking him.
00:36:11.920 --> 00:36:15.119
When they say, by what authority are you doing these things?
00:36:15.280 --> 00:36:17.199
They're saying, Who is your teacher?
00:36:17.360 --> 00:36:19.679
That's the first century context.
00:36:19.920 --> 00:36:21.280
Who's your teacher?
00:36:21.519 --> 00:36:23.280
Who told you these things?
00:36:23.599 --> 00:36:24.960
By what authority?
00:36:25.119 --> 00:36:34.800
Uh, smika in Hebrew, who passed this on to you and told you it was okay to teach these things in their name?
00:36:35.039 --> 00:36:37.679
Where are you getting this stuff?
00:36:38.000 --> 00:36:39.519
Because we want to know.
00:36:39.679 --> 00:36:44.239
Just like if someone showed up here and started preaching, you're like, Well, which seminary did you go to?
00:36:44.320 --> 00:36:48.400
And they said, I never went to seminary, I've never studied theology a day in my life.
00:36:48.480 --> 00:36:49.599
You'd be like, Okay.
00:36:50.320 --> 00:36:52.880
Well, who ordained you?
00:36:53.199 --> 00:36:54.320
I've never been ordained.
00:36:54.400 --> 00:36:55.599
I told you, I didn't go to seminary.
00:36:55.679 --> 00:36:56.719
I've never studied theology.
00:36:56.880 --> 00:36:58.880
Why in the world would I be ordained?
00:36:59.119 --> 00:37:01.199
Well, are you called to preach here?
00:37:01.280 --> 00:37:02.400
No, I'm not called to preach here.
00:37:02.480 --> 00:37:04.079
I just got something to say to you, right?
00:37:04.239 --> 00:37:07.039
You'd probably be very skeptical of what they'd say.
00:37:07.119 --> 00:37:08.320
They have no authority.
00:37:08.480 --> 00:37:09.920
Where are they getting this from?
00:37:10.159 --> 00:37:11.360
That's what they're asking.
00:37:11.519 --> 00:37:14.639
Now, Jesus is going to kind of answer this from two angles.
00:37:14.880 --> 00:37:17.920
He's going to give kind of two answers to this.
00:37:18.159 --> 00:37:21.679
Um, and we're going to see that by what authority.
00:37:21.840 --> 00:37:26.559
So he enters the temple, his disciples are trailing behind him, right?
00:37:26.639 --> 00:37:30.159
And if you have disciples again, it's this first century model.
00:37:30.639 --> 00:37:40.480
You have a rabbi, you study with a rabbi until that rabbi releases you to go and do in his name, and then you make disciples and you teach.
00:37:40.559 --> 00:37:44.880
And then the goal would be at some point, you release them.
00:37:45.199 --> 00:37:51.679
Dare we say, all authority in heaven and earth is given to me, therefore I say to you, go and make disciples, right?
00:37:51.760 --> 00:37:54.400
That's Jesus saying, now it's yours, guys.
00:37:54.639 --> 00:38:01.199
Now you go and you teach in my name, and everything you do and say, you're baptizing and you're teaching.
00:38:01.280 --> 00:38:04.239
It's in my name and it has my authority.
00:38:05.039 --> 00:38:08.639
So he has disciples, so they're wanting to know.
00:38:08.800 --> 00:38:16.079
So people had no doubt had gone and alerted people like Caiaphas that the prophet from Nazareth has returned.
00:38:16.320 --> 00:38:23.199
And after the previous day's episode in the temple market, Caiaphas had to address the situation.
00:38:23.599 --> 00:38:25.840
But the matter required delicacy.
00:38:26.159 --> 00:38:29.440
Caiaphas does not want to incite a riot.
00:38:30.159 --> 00:38:39.280
So he sends a delegation consisting of his colleagues along with scholars, legal experts, and elders to challenge Jesus.
00:38:39.519 --> 00:38:44.159
They intercept Jesus and say, By what authority are you doing these things?
00:38:44.320 --> 00:38:45.440
Who's your teacher?
00:38:45.599 --> 00:38:46.960
Who taught you this stuff?
00:38:47.119 --> 00:38:48.880
And how are you doing it in their name?
00:38:48.960 --> 00:38:50.480
Where is this coming from?
00:38:50.880 --> 00:39:00.320
The very official-looking delegation attempted to intimidate Jesus, and so immediately the crowd's going to draw tightly in to watch the confrontation.
00:39:00.559 --> 00:39:05.199
The chief priests ask him, Who gave you this authority to do these things?
00:39:05.440 --> 00:39:09.440
Again, it's not just merely a curiosity question.
00:39:09.840 --> 00:39:16.880
The Sadducees had reasons to suspect that Jesus may have been working with their opponents, some of the Pharisees.
00:39:17.039 --> 00:39:28.239
And perhaps the Pharisees had sent Jesus to disrupt the marketplace, hoping to incite a riot against the controlling priesthood, and then Rome might intervene and remove that priesthood.
00:39:28.559 --> 00:39:36.960
No doubt the Pharisees wanted to return to the Sanhedrin, to the hall of the hewn stone within the temple, and have authority.
00:39:37.360 --> 00:39:45.920
Annas, Caiaphas, the high priesthood, they had their suspicions that maybe Jesus was some kind of pawn in all of this.
00:39:46.079 --> 00:39:49.360
So they wanted to know whose authority?
00:39:49.519 --> 00:39:50.480
Who do you represent?
00:39:50.639 --> 00:39:51.920
Where are you getting this stuff?
00:39:52.079 --> 00:39:53.440
What's your agenda?
00:39:54.960 --> 00:39:57.679
And so they asked Jesus the question.
00:39:58.239 --> 00:40:04.320
Now, Jesus being a good first century Galilean rabbi, right?
00:40:04.559 --> 00:40:06.079
And maybe you've learned this.
00:40:06.239 --> 00:40:13.679
Hopefully, if you've asked me questions, uh, Jesus doesn't answer questions with an answer, he answers questions with questions.
00:40:14.159 --> 00:40:21.039
Because if you know the answer to his question, you'll have the answer to your question, but in a better, more profound way.
00:40:21.519 --> 00:40:22.719
So they ask him.
00:40:23.599 --> 00:40:25.920
This is important because he's telling you the answer.
00:40:26.159 --> 00:40:28.800
The answer is his question.
00:40:29.360 --> 00:40:30.239
Who's your teacher?
00:40:30.400 --> 00:40:31.199
Who ordained you?
00:40:31.280 --> 00:40:32.960
Where are you getting this authority?
00:40:34.400 --> 00:40:38.000
Jesus' response The baptism of John.
00:40:39.760 --> 00:40:41.039
Was it heaven?
00:40:41.519 --> 00:40:43.039
Was it from heaven or from men?
00:40:43.679 --> 00:40:44.559
Answer me.
00:40:44.880 --> 00:40:51.599
So Jesus' question is, or his response is, I'm not gonna answer your question.
00:40:52.000 --> 00:40:53.519
I'm gonna ask you a question.
00:40:54.159 --> 00:40:57.280
John the Baptist, who was he?
00:40:58.159 --> 00:41:00.079
Was he a prophet from on high?
00:41:00.320 --> 00:41:02.800
Was he an inspired prophet of God?
00:41:03.039 --> 00:41:05.440
Did he have God's message with him?
00:41:05.679 --> 00:41:11.440
Or was he a complete nut job and solely from human inventions?
00:41:12.079 --> 00:41:14.559
Jesus says, answer me that.
00:41:15.679 --> 00:41:21.920
So again, in the manner of the sages, Jesus replies, a question with a question of his own.
00:41:22.159 --> 00:41:23.519
I will ask you a question.
00:41:23.679 --> 00:41:27.840
Answer me, and then I will tell you by what authority I do these things.
00:41:28.320 --> 00:41:30.320
John, who is he?
00:41:30.800 --> 00:41:34.639
The question really means, did John, did God send John?
00:41:35.199 --> 00:41:36.960
And was John a real prophet?
00:41:37.119 --> 00:41:38.960
Was John filled with the Holy Spirit?
00:41:39.119 --> 00:41:41.760
Was John truly inspired by God?
00:41:42.000 --> 00:41:48.639
Or was John a false prophet, a fake, a phony, a nobody, a loser, a heretic, a reject?
00:41:49.440 --> 00:41:52.639
The answer to that question would answer their question.
00:41:52.880 --> 00:41:58.719
If John was a false prophet, a heretic, a loser, a nobody, so was Jesus.
00:41:59.360 --> 00:42:01.679
Because John endorsed him.
00:42:01.920 --> 00:42:17.280
If John was sent from God, if John was filled with the Holy Spirit, if John were truly the voice of the wilderness in the wilderness crying out and preparing the way for the Lord, then Jesus was 100% legitimate.
00:42:17.840 --> 00:42:21.920
Jesus is letting you know, I get my authority on earth.
00:42:22.000 --> 00:42:23.360
He's going to answer it in another way.
00:42:23.519 --> 00:42:25.599
He gets this authority from his Father in heaven.
00:42:25.760 --> 00:42:27.519
It's coming, don't worry, it's there.
00:42:27.679 --> 00:42:30.800
But he also answers it on the human level that they want.
00:42:31.360 --> 00:42:32.800
Where did I get my authority?
00:42:32.960 --> 00:42:34.639
I got my authority from John.
00:42:35.440 --> 00:42:38.159
So tell me, what do you think about John?
00:42:39.440 --> 00:42:44.639
This puts the chief priests and the scribes and so forth on a defensive.
00:42:44.800 --> 00:42:49.760
They knew that the people were not overly enamored with them, right?
00:42:49.920 --> 00:42:56.480
Just like we often have people in political leadership, and even though they've been elected, they aren't necessarily beloved.
00:42:57.519 --> 00:43:06.880
And they knew that the pilgrimage festivals, such as Passover, had a long time-honored history of erupting into violent protest with unpopular leadership.
00:43:07.119 --> 00:43:13.280
And so they would not publicly denounce John the Baptist at risk of infuriating the crowds.
00:43:13.679 --> 00:43:17.039
And even Josephus believed in John's ministry.
00:43:17.360 --> 00:43:33.039
On the other hand, if they endorsed John and said he was a legitimate prophet, they had to account for their own refusal to submit to his words, to submit to his authority, and to submit to the one who took over his ministry and his disciples.
00:43:33.599 --> 00:43:37.760
Giving credence to John meant giving credence to Jesus.
00:43:38.079 --> 00:43:42.000
So they confer with one another in their quick whispers.
00:43:42.400 --> 00:43:44.320
I don't know why it's doing that.
00:43:46.639 --> 00:43:56.719
And they basically say in Mark 11, verse 31 if we say John is from heaven, he will then say, Why did you not believe him?
00:43:56.880 --> 00:43:59.039
i.e., why didn't you believe me?
00:43:59.760 --> 00:44:12.880
But if we say he's from men, he's a nobody, he's a nothing, he's a heretic, he's a loser, they were afraid of the multitude because everyone considered John to have been a real prophet.
00:44:13.360 --> 00:44:19.920
And so after a brief consultation with one another, they simply replied, We do not know.
00:44:20.880 --> 00:44:26.960
To which Jesus says, Well, then I'm not going to tell you by what authority I do these things.
00:44:27.280 --> 00:44:28.880
But he actually has.
00:44:29.920 --> 00:44:38.880
By these words, Jesus is indicating that he's acted on the same authority that John the Baptist had acted upon, and this is where ultimately it gets to the Father.
00:44:39.119 --> 00:44:41.679
Well, he acted on John's authority.
00:44:41.920 --> 00:44:43.599
He took over John's ministry.
00:44:43.760 --> 00:44:46.400
Most of his original disciples were John's disciples.
00:44:46.480 --> 00:44:53.039
And remember, John pointing his followers to Jesus, all rabbinic succession stuff.
00:44:53.599 --> 00:44:56.880
And so, where did John's authority come from?
00:44:57.280 --> 00:45:00.559
Well, he's the one who's crying out in the wilderness.
00:45:00.719 --> 00:45:03.920
He's the one responding to the Father.
00:45:04.400 --> 00:45:08.559
So Jesus reveals something else about his relationship with John the Baptist.
00:45:08.880 --> 00:45:16.880
John was Jesus' teacher, his mentor, his rabbi, and but also the question of by whose authority?
00:45:17.119 --> 00:45:19.599
Well, who was John the Baptist's authority?
00:45:19.840 --> 00:45:24.719
Jesus is also saying it was the source of John's message, the Father.
00:45:24.960 --> 00:45:27.679
So Jesus answers kind of both ways.
00:45:28.000 --> 00:45:34.000
My authority comes from John, and my authority comes from my father.
00:45:35.119 --> 00:46:02.159
And that is where we will end it today, and we will pick things back up next week, uh, continuing in this Passion Week of Jesus on the third day of that week as things are quickly progressing toward Monday, Thursday, and betrayal, Good Friday, and crucifixion, uh, burial and holy Saturday, and ultimately into the resurrection.
