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Let Jesus Have The Functional Authority

Writer's picture: Tim HemingwayTim Hemingway

 

By what authority are you doing these things?” they asked. “And who gave you authority to do this?

Mark 11:28



‘Authority’. It’s a word with both negative and positive connotations. Authority serves to maintain order for example - that’s generally perceived as positive, I think.

 

But then there can be an abuse of authority and that’s clearly negative.

But there’s also a way that good authority carries negative connotations. It’s usually when authority imposes itself on us.

 

We’re ok with authority by and large, when it clamps down on others and serves to maintain order, but when that authority raises its hand against us, it usually feels uncomfortable.


Here’s an example from my own walk of life. I recognise the good that it is to have building standards in this country. Without them, doubtless, many thousands of lives would be severely impacted by construction and some lives would needlessly be lost as well.

 

But what I don’t like, is when I submit my plans to the building inspector, and he measures them against the building regulations and finds problems.

 

That makes me feel really uncomfortable. It usually means some aspect of the design will need to change, and that will have knock on effects for the whole project. It means more work for me. And worst of all, I invariably have to answer some tough questions.

 

In that moment, I don’t like the authority of the building regulations or the building inspector.

 

In fact, in that moment, I respect the authority of the position of the building control officer, but I do not like the functioning of that position. I’m happy with the positional authority of building control; I’m not happy with the functional authority of building control.


The reason we’re focused on ‘authority’ is that Jesus, having just cleansed the temple of the merchants who had turned the house of his Father into a base marketplace, is being recognised as having authority.

 

He rode into Jerusalem with kingly stature, he cleansed the temple with assertive destructiveness, and now he’s back in the temple courts (v.27). And the teachers of the law and the elders want to know by what ‘authority’ he’s ‘doing these things’. ‘Who gave you authority to do this?’; ‘to disrupt our operations?’ ‘Where did you get that kind of authorisation?’

 

That’s the question at the top of the passage we have this morning. And what flows out of this exchange is, what I see as six demonstrations on Jesus’ part of his authority over foundational aspects of human life.

 

There is simply no hope for any human being unless Jesus has functional authority over these six aspects of their lives. That’s what I’m seeing in this passage.

 

And the thing I want you to take away with you is that if Jesus has taken up authority in these six crucial ways - over aspects of life asfoundational as these are – then you can embrace him as functionallyauthoritative in all the rest of your life too.

Even when it hurts to do so!

 

I want you to go away thinking, not only has Jesus given me everyconfidence to walk obediently under his authority, but he has walked that same path I’m on.


It’s like the canyon walker who is too scared to cross the footbridge that spans the gorge. It’s one of those suspension bridges with no supports in the middle – that sways just enough to make you doubt it.

 

The canyon walker recognises that the engineer who designed it has allthe credentials, but they don’t trust the engineer enough to functionally accept the requirement to walk over his bridge.

 

But, if that engineer comes alongside them and says, ‘I’ll walk with you, side by side, over this bridge I designed’, then the canyon walker is emboldened to act, and to believe in the functional authority of the engineer.

 

I want you to be like that person, emboldened to walk with Jesus, under his functional authority, obedient in all he says, knowing he cannot fail; trusting it will result in your good.


The question the Pharisees want answering is, ‘who gave you authority to do this?’ And Jesus knows it’s a trap - back in chapter 11, verse 18 Mark said, ‘they were looking for a way to kill him’.

Jesus, of course, doesn’t walk into the trap by giving an answer. Although if we look carefully, he does answer the question.

Rather he asks them a question: ‘was John’s baptism from heaven or of human origin’.

 

Now, that presented the Phariseees with a problem because all the people thought that John was a prophet - i.e. they believed he had a divine mandate.

So, if they said, ‘of human origin’, then the people would reject them as their leaders. Mark says they ‘feared the people’ (v.32). But if they said, ‘from heaven’ then Jesus would say, ‘then why didn’t you believe what he said’ – ‘why didn’t you believe what he said about me’.

 

So, they’re caught between a rock and hard place, and they dare not supply an answer. Therefore, Jesus does not answer their question either.

But the answer to their question is plain enough. John was the forerunner of Jesus; he was a prophet; he was powerful in word and deed; and his authorisation was a divine authorisation.

 

So, if the forerunner’s authority to speak came from on high, where does Jesus’ authority come from? From on high also. ‘All authority’ Jesus said, ‘in heaven and on earth has been given to me’ (Matthew 28).

 

Jesus’ authority is not an earthly authority, it is a heavenly authority. God has invested Jesus with divine prerogative, and it’s his to exercise.

 

Don’t ever think of Jesus as a good teacher with some special gifts to speak some exceptional sayings. That kind of thinking is an attempt to nullify Jesus’ authority. Jesus has all authority.

Trump looked powerful this week, with his big pens and even bigger signatures – but his authority is pitiful next to Jesus’ authority. I hope you all believe that, no matter whether you like or loath America’s new president.


Jesus flows right out of his discourse with the Pharisees and into a parable. And this is the first foundational aspect of human life that Jesus demonstrates his authority over. But before we identify it, let’s unpack the parable.

 

The parable is about a man who plants a vineyard and gives that vineyard everything it needs: a wall, a winepress, and a watch tower. But then he has to go away, and so he decides to leave the vineyard in the hands of some paid farmers.

 

Now when the harvest time comes, he sends his servant to collect the fruit - only the farmers have no regard for their master - they don’trecognise his authority as the vineyard owner.

They beat the first servant; hit the second on the head and mistreathim terribly; and they kill the third.

 

The owner doesn’t give up though; he sends more servants, but every one of them ends up either dead or injured.

 

So, at last he says to himself, ‘I’ll send my son whom I love, for surely they will respect him’ - a son represents his father’s authority; that’s the idea. But in a bid to steel his inheritance they plotted and murdered him also.

 

And the question is, what will the owner do? The answer: he’ll come himself and kill the farmers and give the vineyard to others. In other words, he’ll bring judgment on the old farmers and he’ll give the vineyard to new trustworthy farmers who respect his authority.

 

Now Mark helps us to interpret the parable when he says in verse 12 that the teachers of the law knew he had spoken the parable against them.

 

The parable is straightforward. The owner of the vineyard is God. The vineyard is Israel. The farmers are the teachers for the law. The servants he sends are the prophets that God sent to Israel and who they repeatedly mistreated. And the son is Jesus who, in due course the teachers of the law will kill.

And the judgement God will bring on them will be well deserved.

 

But notice that the owner of the vineyard also gives the vineyard to others. And I mentioned last time that Jesus is about to create a new covenant in his blood – on the cross. That he’s re-centring everything in and on himself. The time of God’s agreement with Israel is ending. And the time of God’s making a new agreement with a new people is beginning.

 

According to the parable, the first or old covenant failed really badly. The people who belonged to it hated the authority of God.

 

So, what will make the difference under a new covenant? And the answer is Jesus. Jesus is the stone the ‘builders rejected’ in verse 10. He was rejected by Israel, but he has become the ‘cornerstone’ for a new people of God.

 

He himself is the promise of a better covenant where the people have new hearts that are devoted to God and are willingly obedient to his authority.

 

So, Jesus came with the authority to guarantee a covenant between God and his people where everybody who puts their faith in Jesus doesn’t fall under God’s judgment but embraces God’s authority over their lives.

 

This covenant makes peace between God and people. There’s no peacefor people who are not in relationship with God. There are pretensesat peace: holiday peace; friendship peace; healthy-living peace; success peace; pet peace; [you insert the name] peace. But the human soul is never at real peace until it finds it’s rest in its maker; until it finds its rest in God. Jesus alone has the authority to guarantee that happens.


Peace, though, is not something the teachers of the law possessed. Mark says in verse 12, for the second time, that the teachers of the law ‘feared the people’. That’s not a problem Jesus had. You can see that in verse 14. The Pharisees and Herodians commented about Jesus that he wasn’t ’swayed by others’ and, he ‘paid no attention’ to who they were.

 

So much of the way that we think is governed by the crowd - governed by what people think. It’s like the ‘approval of people’ has become the functional authority in our lives.

 

Jesus is under one authority though and that is God’s authority. And I think he teaches us to be the same. Don’t let the approval ratings govern your heart. Let God govern your heart. Listen to him and do what he says, and we’ll find a very peaceful way of living. But try to obtain the approval of people all the time and we’ll find ourselves under a yoke of expectation.


Jesus also shows his functional authority in the very words of the Pharisees and Herodians. Their purpose is to catch him in his words. But they actually catch themselves in their own words and vindicate his authority.

 

In their attempt to engage Jesus and set their trap, they speak these words of truth about him: ‘we know you are a man of integrity’ and ‘you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth’ (v.14).

Jesus has authority to define the truth and teach the way of God. He doesn’t deny any of their words, because what they have said is trueabout him.

Our world has always been talking about truth. It has asserted what the truth is. It has defined and redefined what is true.

 

From Pontius Pilate, who said, ‘what is truth?’; to Nietzsche who said, ‘there are no facts, only interpretations’; to what Richard Rorty – the twentieth century American philosopher - said, ‘truth is what your contemporaries let you get away with’. Which is funny. But it serves to underline what godlessness does to truth - it makes truth subjective.

 

Jesus has authority to bring and establish the truth. He said of himself, ‘I am the way, the truth and the life’. It’s an absolutely staggering claim for anyone to make. And without authority it is a meaningless one.

 

There is no subjectivity with Jesus on the scene. And that’s something that every human being deep down really wants. They want the certainty of truth. They want to know where they stand. And Jesus gives that.


The Pharisees and Herodians also give Jesus the credit of ‘teaching the way of God’. And that is born out immediately. Their trap-question this time is about whether or not they should pay taxes to Caesar.

 

It’s a trap because the Caesars of Rome were revered as gods by the Romans. So ‘should we pay taxes to the Roman overlord who has set himself up as a god?’ is the question.

If Jesus answers yes, then he endorses false gods. If he says no, then they can report him to the Roman officials for insurrection. That’s what seems to be behind the question.

 

Every Roman coin bore the image of Caesar, and so he asked them to bring him a coin. He asked whose image was on the coin, and he concluded, ‘give to Caesar what is Caesars’ - namely the taxes they owed him. But that’s not all. He also said, ‘give to God what is God’s’.

 

The point is people are like Roman coins. People bear the image of their maker also - they were made in his image. And because all people were made in God’s image, all people owe God their allegiance. Just like the Pharisees owed Caesar their taxes.

 

Jesus has the authority then, to show us to whom it is that we owe our lives and our devotion. It is to God. And Mark says, ‘they were amazed at him’. They were amazed at his authority to point them in such concrete ways to God.


Next the Sadducees turn up, and Mark tells us they taught against the idea of resurrection. Their question for Jesus was designed to test whether or not Jesus would affirm resurrection.

 

They say, suppose a man has a wife, and he dies. And supposing, under the law the man’s brother marries her - as he should in order to support her - and he dies too. And supposing the first man had six brothers and each time a brother married the woman he died. At the resurrection whose wife will she be?

 

They think Jesus will have to deny the resurrection after being presented with such an impossible question.

 

But Jesus has authority to affirm the resurrection. Quoting the scriptures, which they did not know, he showed them that God was able to say to Moses 590 years after Abraham and 430 years after Jacob, ‘I am’ not ‘I was’; ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob’. He is not the God of the dead but of the living.

So, Jesus has the authority to affirm the resurrection. He said about himself, ‘I am the resurrection and the life’.

 

People live their whole lives, whether they admit or not, dominated by the inevitability of their own death. And they really need to know that there is a way to be resurrected that doesn’t result in eternal death, but in eternal life. Jesus has the authority not only to say it, but to createit.

 

These Sadducees were badly mistaken Jesus says, and he pins their error on not knowing the scriptures. So we have to uphold the authority of God’s Word to shape our understanding - and we do that by reading it and embracing it. If we neglect the bible, we will find error creeping into our faith.


The final part of this passage sees an individual teacher of the law coming to Jesus with a genuine question - not a trap-type question, at last.

 

The question is, which commandment, of the 613 Old Testament commandments, is the greatest? Jesus gives two - but they really are as one.

The second flows out of the first and they are both rooted in love. They are, in other words, of the heart.

 

The first is to love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength. And the second which flows naturally out of it, is to love your neighbour as yourself (v.30 &31).

 

Jesus has authority to sum up the whole of the moral requirement of what it is to be human. Love the Lord [that is a title of authority] your God with every faculty of your being - heart [that is affections], mind [that is understanding], soul [that is being] and strength [that is exertion]. He’s commanding whole-being devotion.

 

He’s not settling for half-hearted commitment here. He’s not accepting cool Christianity. He’s exercising his authority to call for red hot, unwavering, consecration to God. And then, on that back of that consecration, he’s calling people to give their lives away for others.

 

These two commands are better than burnt offerings and sacrifices because burnt offerings and sacrifices are for sins, but these commands have to do with love that leads to obedience.

 

Love God like this and you won’t sin against him. Love your neighbour like this and you won’t sin against them.

Jesus has the authority to define the moral responsibility of people. These are the duties of humanity - love the lord your God with everything you’ve got and love your neighbour as if they were your very self.


It's at this question, and the response the man gives that Jesus also demonstrates his authority to declare whether or not someone has entered into the kingdom of God.

 

The man recognised that obedience to these two commands would satisfy the moral standards of human-kind. But he hadn’t gone far enough. He hadn’t answered the problem that rises up out of that great conclusion.

 

The problem is, nobody can pull those commands off - and they certainly can’t do it consistently. And it therefore leaves the problem of sin. Sacrifice and offering are necessary after all, because we fall short of these great responsibilities to God and our neighbour.

 

And, like we saw last time, those priests who make the offerings, they die. And the offerings, they have to be continuously made or else the sinner will be guilty, which makes for a whole heap of a problem for every single one of us.

 

But not with Jesus! Jesus has the authority to intercede on our behalf with God, and to present himself as a lasting sacrifice. He is both priest and offering - forever.

 

And if this man were to depend wholly on Jesus he would enter into the kingdom of God because Jesus has authority to translate him into the kingdom of God - by his death on the cross.


So, Jesus has all authority from heaven and here we see him demonstrating his authority over six essential spheres of human existence: the promise of God over and against the judgment of God; the absolute truth; humanity’s debt to God; humanity’s problem of death; humanity’s moral responsibility; and humanity’s access into the kingdom of God.

Jesus has authority to both show the reality and provide the substance of that reality in himself.

 

These spheres of human existence are so foundational; and these ways in which Jesus exerts his authority are so essential to our lives, that they serve to deepen our appreciation of his authority over all things.


The conclusion must be, if Jesus has been given authority over things of this magnitude, what can there possibly be that he has not been given authority over?


What is so compelling about this testimony to Jesus’ authority is that he has not sat in heaven, aloof from us, and told us ‘I’m the authority’.

 

Rather, he’s got down with us in the sweat and the grind of life. He’s experienced what we have experienced. He’s walked the roads we are walking. And in that heat of life, he has demonstrated his authority.

He’s like the engineer who came out of his office and made his way down to the footbridge; and who stood next to the terrified canyon walker and said, ‘I designed the bridge and I’ll walk the bridge with you’. Not only does he have the credentials, he - by his actions - gives everyreason for the canyon walker to have confidence in the bridge. He gives every reason to the canyon walker to give functional authority to him - the engineer.


Jesus by his life, his teaching, his death and resurrection gives us every reason to give him functional authority in our lives, knowing that he will call us to walk some tough roads with him.

 

I want you to go away today we renewed confidence in Jesus. And withthat confidence, to give him more and more functional authority in your life.

 

Not merely to acknowledge that Jesus is king, knowing that he has all the credentials to be king; but living in such a way that he really is king - king of your life.


You know, I want to come under scrutiny at work and know the Lordship of Jesus in my life not to lie.

I want to receive an unfair charge against me and know the Lordship of Jesus in my life not to return evil for evil.

I want to have Amazon send me a second kettle that I didn’t order and know the Lordship of Jesus not to steel it.

I want to sit in a friends brand new car and know the Lordship of Jesus not to covet it.

 

I want, I want, I want, the Lordship of Jesus in my life. And I’m sure you do too.

I hope this demonstration of his Lordship, this morning, will serve to give us confidence to give him functional authority over more and more and more of our lives.

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