Luke 20:1-8

Transcript

00:00:01:35 – 00:00:37:27
Clint Loveall
Hey, friends. Welcome back. As we continue through the gospel Luke getting into a new chapter, Chapter 20. Jesus is in Jerusalem. Pretty early in what we call Holy Week. Jesus has had some controversy. He’s created some controversy. Yesterday, we looked at the text where Jesus cleanses the temple. Certainly putting him at odds with religious leaders. We’re going to kind of pick up on that theme today, maybe a little less obvious conflict, maybe a little less passionate.

00:00:37:31 – 00:01:09:45
Clint Loveall
But we see here that this kind of growing animosity between Jesus and the Pharisees, Sadducees religious leaders, is is back on display in Luke. So let me jump in here. Verse one of chapter 20. Then we’ll come back and have some discussion. One day he was teaching the people in the temple and telling the good news. The chief priests and the scribes and the elders came to him and said, Tell us by what authority you do these things.

00:01:09:50 – 00:01:32:57
Clint Loveall
Who is it that gave you this authority? He answered them. I’ll ask you a question and you tell me. Did the baptism of John come from heaven or was it of human origin? They discussed it with one another. If we say from heaven, he will say, Why didn’t you believe him? But if we say of human origin, all the people will stone us.

00:01:33:01 – 00:02:00:43
Clint Loveall
They’re convinced that John was a prophet. So they answered that they did not know where it came from. Then Jesus said to them, Neither will I tell you by what authority I’m doing those things. Kind of a classic, a classic story here about Jesus. There are a number of these stories scattered throughout the gospels where the religious authorities try to set a trap for Jesus.

00:02:00:43 – 00:02:25:01
Clint Loveall
They approach Jesus with kind of a no win question. This thing or this thing, we’re going to see it again just a little bit later in this chapter. But this one happens to be about authority. Jesus has cleansed the temple. Jesus says, you know, criticized. Jesus is healed on the Sabbath. Jesus has done these things that are outside of the person, a normal person’s ability to do.

00:02:25:01 – 00:02:47:15
Clint Loveall
And so the Pharisees, the trap they lay for him is, Whose authority are you doing this on? Roman authority, Jewish authority, Godly authority, human authority. Answer the question, where do you get this authority? And remember, early on in the Gospels, one of the things we get told about Jesus is that he amazed the people because he taught as one who had authority.

00:02:47:16 – 00:03:23:02
Clint Loveall
So this idea and maybe the maybe the closest corollary word for us is something like power. It is approval authority here does mean approval. But it it also means ability. And so where do you have where does the power to do this come from? By what power By what authority do you do these things? And, you know, obviously the gospels are very pro Jesus, but they’re always written as if the Pharisees, the Sadducees, they they think they’ve got him each and every time.

00:03:23:16 – 00:03:28:47
Clint Loveall
They think they have Jesus back into a corner, only to have Jesus kind of turn the tables on them.

00:03:28:52 – 00:03:52:01
Michael Gewecke
Yeah, this is a really interesting text because it kind of hits a lot of us in our blind spot because John the Baptist was a significant force in Jesus’s Day. In fact, the text makes it abundantly clear that John was even considered by the people to be a prophet. This is a very high status. People looked upon, John, very, very highly.

00:03:52:01 – 00:04:25:46
Michael Gewecke
And so the point being there is that Jesus responding to this trap laid out by the highest teachers of the land. Right. The Ph.D. sitting in the very most prestigious place of learning the steward of Israelite culture and religion. These people come to Jesus and they asked him, you know, by what authority are you doing these things? And when Jesus turns to ask you question about John the Baptist, he’s calling upon the most common kind of conversations of the day.

00:04:25:46 – 00:04:53:16
Michael Gewecke
This is the stuff that people are talking about in the local synagogue. And in many ways, actually, there’s a fascinating kind of turn that’s happened in Luke. We’ve talked about this before, that when Jesus came into Jerusalem, we no longer hear about the Pharisees, We now hear about the teachers, the law, the scribes. Well, that population change actually matters in Jesus’s culture and day, because the Pharisees tended to be the religious leaders outside of the cosmopolitan Jerusalem.

00:04:53:16 – 00:05:26:56
Michael Gewecke
They were more located outside in the more rural areas of Jerusalem. They were the ones who were teaching the morality of the faith, sort of helping to make that a thing that people did in their everyday life. Now, in many ways, Jesus is making an argument that the schools are going to make the scribes very, very uncomfortable, because here John is considered to be a prophetic hero out amongst the country and amongst these religious leaders that he said things that are looked upon very highly.

00:05:27:09 – 00:05:50:24
Michael Gewecke
And now when Jesus asked this question, well, where did the baptism of John come from? Was it from God or was it from human origins? He’s put the scribes into a no win situation. Now all that is maybe just a summary. The text adds a little bit of background color. Clint, to your point, Luke is going to continue on with the same theme we’ve seen over and over again.

00:05:50:29 – 00:06:14:27
Michael Gewecke
No one gets the jump on Jesus. No one is going to make an argument. Trapped Jesus and make Jesus sort of give up an argument or a cause. And once again, we’re not surprised when that happens here. But I think it’s fascinating that regardless of whether it’s the Pharisees in their place or the scribes and the teachers of the law in their place, Jesus always has an answer.

00:06:14:27 – 00:06:20:23
Michael Gewecke
He always has something to account for, and he never misses a beat when it comes time to give it.

00:06:20:28 – 00:06:45:52
Clint Loveall
Yeah, and Luke here, as sometimes happens in the Gospels, takes us through their reasoning. We get we get to listen in as the scribes and the religious leaders, the chief priests and the elders, as Luke describes it, have a conversation about how do we answer his question? And so they end up saying, We don’t know. Now they have clearly have an opinion.

00:06:45:57 – 00:07:32:15
Clint Loveall
They say the people think John was a prophet, but in being forced to say we don’t have an answer, Jesus sort of one helps them in their gamesmanship. And now they’re in a position where they can’t say either thing. Again, we’re going to see this. No one out argues Jesus. It just doesn’t happen. There is an interesting story with a woman who responds to Jesus, maybe pushes back a little, but when it comes to the scribes, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the religious leaders, whichever formula you get them described with, depending on which gospel you’re in, they never they never outfox Jesus.

00:07:32:15 – 00:08:13:57
Clint Loveall
He He is always shrewd. He always with wisdom and with kind of foresight and awareness is always able to navigate, navigate around the traps that they have set for him. And behind that, I think, you know, so we have that going on in the text. That’s probably the obvious part of the text. I think the more interesting part of the text is this conversation about authority and the irony that you have humans endowed with some religious authority who are questioning the authority of the Messiah.

00:08:14:02 – 00:08:50:04
Clint Loveall
Where do you get the authority? Right? That’s the question. If Jesus says from God, they will just complain that that he’s arrogant, that he’s deluded, that he’s blasphemy. Though Jesus has established his credibility over and over and over again with what He’s done, with what he said, with the healings and miracles. This isn’t a real question. And and that is always kind of the the the accusation or the hook or the evidence of their, you know, not being genuine.

00:08:50:09 – 00:09:13:39
Clint Loveall
They’re not asking Jesus. They don’t want to have a real question about Jesus. Where does authority come from? What authority do you have when you do these things? They’re demanding an answer from Jesus, and Jesus refuses to play that game. I think largely because Jesus, he doesn’t owe them an answer or an explanation.

00:09:13:44 – 00:09:36:55
Michael Gewecke
Yeah, and let’s put this in context. So just yesterday we’re talking about or the previous study, Jesus is cleansing the temple. He’s getting rid of money changers. He’s making a strong case about a misuse of power in God’s place, in God’s house, the place designated for the worship of God has been taken over by humanity’s self-interest, and particularly those with the most power.

00:09:36:55 – 00:10:03:40
Michael Gewecke
This is, of course, a theme that we’ve seen throughout Luke. Luke is interested in those who are weak, those who are lost, those who are looked over. Then this is really part one of a part two conversation because the parable that Jesus is going to give in part to this conversation, that parable is going to lay out very clearly criticism against those people who have been charged with the furtherance of the worship of God.

00:10:03:41 – 00:10:33:46
Michael Gewecke
In other words, the people who are supposed to know better, the people who are supposed to lead others to Christ, or at least to recognize and accept the Messiah when he comes, these are the very ones who are acting wickedly. They’re the very ones acting in their own self-interest. And it betrays a kind of deep inner hypocrisy. It really exposes that these religious leaders have been interested in self advancement and in the acquisition of power this whole time.

00:10:33:46 – 00:11:04:23
Michael Gewecke
They’ve not been interested in seeing with humble eyes, courageous eyes, the coming of the Messiah, and that we’re going to see that teased out more, I think, in the parable to come. But what we have in today’s story in this particular example is we have individuals coming to Jesus trying to make a show of their intelligence and what’s going to end up happening as we’ve seen time and time again, is they will meet their match in Jesus as they come to question his authority.

00:11:04:28 – 00:11:26:21
Michael Gewecke
Jesus will subvert that question and make it so that they give account to where they think that authority is. And let’s make that very clear. It’s the people that they’re afraid of. They’re afraid that if they don’t give the right answer, that the people will turn against them. And of course, Jesus’s authority is not contingent upon what other people give him.

00:11:26:26 – 00:11:46:52
Michael Gewecke
It’s rooted in who he is. He is the son of God. He is the revelation of God who’s taken on flesh. So therefore, Jesus doesn’t need approval. He doesn’t need other people to give him a bone or a nod. Jesus doesn’t need the scribes to like him, and he doesn’t need the crowd to shout Hosanna! As we just had a few verses earlier.

00:11:46:57 – 00:11:56:43
Michael Gewecke
Jesus is who he is. And that’s enough. It’s the it’s the chief priests who are trying to leverage what they have into something better for themselves.

00:11:56:52 – 00:12:18:16
Clint Loveall
Yeah, and I think these things are not unrelated. Part of what we see in this week, as Luke describes it for us, is the turning of the crowd. The Pharisees are aware just in yesterday’s text we ended with they looked for a way to kill him, but they didn’t find anything they could do for the people were spellbound with what they heard.

00:12:18:21 – 00:12:43:04
Clint Loveall
Here. They again consider the reaction of the crowd and throughout the week, the Pharisees, Sadducees as Luke, sorry, I need to remember were and Luke, the chief priests and scribes, as Luke is going to describe them, know that if they’re going to get their way, if they’re going to deal with Jesus, they’re going to have to separate him from the crowd’s approval.

00:12:43:04 – 00:13:11:30
Clint Loveall
They’re going to have to do something that undermines him or at least turn the crowd against him. And part of the I think, the benefit of reading the gospel of Luke, Luke back loads a lot of this stuff during Holy Week. So in Luke, a lot of this week is filled with discussions, with questions, with parables, with challenges.

00:13:11:34 – 00:13:35:58
Clint Loveall
We’re going to see that interaction time and time again as as they try to trap Jesus and as they get angry with Jesus. Tomorrow, we’ll hear Jesus tell a parable and at the end they’re ready to attack him. But again, they know they can’t. Luke says they were afraid of the people. And so Luke really does this, I think, very, very nicely for us.

00:13:36:03 – 00:14:10:35
Clint Loveall
But by kind of housing, all these conversations and these arguments and disagreements together and focusing on them as a part of Jesus last week, we really get to watch the kind of spiral downhill that the fair, the scribes religiously orders become more and more desperate. They also become more and more committed. They then turn to, rather than being in the open, doing some things in secret, and ultimately they work on plying the crowd against Jesus.

00:14:10:35 – 00:14:17:07
Clint Loveall
Now that’s true in all the gospels, but I think it’s particularly observable in the way Luke tells a story.

00:14:17:15 – 00:14:38:12
Michael Gewecke
We said this at the beginning of our study that Luke is a master storyteller. He’s an excellent writer. And I think that the way that Luke tells the story of Jesus’s time in Jerusalem, this ultimate build up to his death is a beautiful masterclass in how you introduce the important characters. And this is happening right here in front of us.

00:14:38:16 – 00:15:02:16
Michael Gewecke
The chief priests are introduced as essential characters in this drama, but also the crowd, the people, this whole gathered mass who are in Jerusalem for the Passover, that this whole group are a part of this story. And there’s going to be more people to come. By the way, Luke is going to show us how this like a wave builds as it approaches the shoreline.

00:15:02:16 – 00:15:34:39
Michael Gewecke
It’s going to get bigger and bigger and bigger. Those could be more momentum behind it. And what this serves to do as readers is to make it clear to us that everyone in this story is implicated, that everyone’s going to have a part and a role, though as Jesus does consistently, the people who have the highest position of power and are supposed to be entrusted with the furtherance of the people’s faith and spiritual care, Jesus is consistently hardest on them, and that remains true in today’s text.

00:15:34:44 – 00:16:02:38
Michael Gewecke
And it is the really the starting gun for this wave of first, at least we could say suspicion. We might even say some hostility towards Jesus. But like you said, by the end of tomorrow, we’re going to see it’s not just the kind of intellectual hostility. It’s a physical, visceral hostility, a desire to capture and do harm. And that’s just simply going to rise in amplitude as the story goes on.

00:16:02:38 – 00:16:17:48
Michael Gewecke
But but Luke is he’s building a full account of the ways in which Jesus both angered and also portrayed the difference of the kingdom of God. And that’s all happening in real time in front of us.

00:16:17:52 – 00:16:43:17
Clint Loveall
Absolutely. And this this story, you know, obviously, we read that and we see history. I think if we were going to try and take this out of its historical context and make it devotional, and we’ve said we’ll do our best to tell you when we’re doing that and I’m certainly doing it here. I think the question of a text like this for us is what is our authority?

00:16:43:17 – 00:17:10:55
Clint Loveall
By what authority do we live? Is it the approval of others? Is it the approval of people who are quote unquote, powerful, or is it as it is for Jesus? The foundational bedrock of what is right and wrong according to God? What is the authority in our life and what does it lead us to do? Where do the decisions, what do we make most important?

00:17:10:55 – 00:17:38:15
Clint Loveall
What do we put on at level one in our life? And that’s not I mean, this isn’t a devotional text in that sense, but I think that’s one of the places we can kind of use as a jumping point to ask application questions for what is this text say to us? What does it mean to us other than telling us how Jesus got sideways with religious leaders?

00:17:38:20 – 00:17:54:37
Clint Loveall
Well, it says that first and foremost, that is a conflict of authority. And who truly has authority, God or them human or divine and and I think that is a helpful kind of question for all of us in our own lives.

00:17:54:37 – 00:18:10:35
Michael Gewecke
Michael Yeah. These chief religious leaders made the mistake of acting like Jesus’s authority was somehow, somehow equivalent to John the Baptist authority that they treat Jesus like a human to be debated with. That’s a fundamental flaw.

00:18:10:35 – 00:18:12:07
Clint Loveall
Or as if he has to answer to.

00:18:12:07 – 00:18:31:15
Michael Gewecke
Them. Exactly. They have they have in doing so, at least if you’re going to be charitable, they’ve set themself as equal to Jesus. If you’re going to, I think, read this through the eyes of Luke, which I think is maybe more accurate. They’ve put themselves above Jesus and so that’s checkmate. I mean, at the end of the day, game’s over.

00:18:31:15 – 00:18:55:31
Michael Gewecke
Jesus is the revelation of God. And Luke’s going to make it clear to us that when we missed, prioritize, if you want to read it in that way. When we do that, the Kingdom of God has a way of sorting that out. Even at our best effort to control and to exercise agency over God, we will at the end find ourselves subject to that kingdom.

00:18:55:31 – 00:18:58:58
Michael Gewecke
And that’s going to be the way that this story continues to unfold.

00:18:59:04 – 00:19:25:33
Clint Loveall
Yeah, the Bible doesn’t do a lot of what we might call comedy, so maybe a better word is irony. But as you read this text, don’t miss that part of it. These human beings demand to know by what authority the Son of God does what He does. That’s that that’s tragically funny, right? They’ve that they’ve missed it. That it’s not hilarious.

00:19:25:33 – 00:19:59:11
Clint Loveall
Funny. It’s sadly funny. It’s ironically funny. These men are standing in front of the messiah of Israel, the promised covenant savior of the world, and saying, Hey, who told you you could do that? We didn’t tell you. Give us an answer. Answer. I mean, that that’s both tragic. And I think in a in a sad way, maybe that’s some comedy relief.

00:19:59:25 – 00:20:00:27
Michael Gewecke
It’s ridiculous.

00:20:00:27 – 00:20:02:20
Clint Loveall
Yeah, it’s absurd. That’s a good word.

00:20:02:20 – 00:20:32:06
Michael Gewecke
Totally absurd. And and yet and this is maybe the most humbling component. These are the ones with the most access to the scriptures and to the understanding of those scriptures. There’s for all of us. This should be sobering. The idea that those who dedicate their life to understanding God and God’s future work in the world, we’re debating with the Son of God over authority that that is absurd, but it’s also challenging.

00:20:32:06 – 00:20:40:50
Michael Gewecke
And so I was glad to have you with us here today. I hope there’s been something interesting. This is a continue good conversation tomorrow. I hope you’ll join us for that. Until then.

00:20:40:55 – 00:20:41:29
Clint Loveall
Thanks to everybody.