Well, congregation, we open our Bibles again this morning and turn to Mark chapter 11. We come to the end of this chapter, taking up verses 27 through 33. And for a few weeks, the end of Mark, we'll come back to Mark in due course, not too long down, but we'll take a little pause from Mark after this morning. We are in that section of the Lord Jesus Christ proclaiming the reckoning of Israel, their just due for their denial of the promises that were given to them of the coming of the Messiah, and he is there, and they are rejecting him. We saw that in terms of his coming as the prophet and the address to the fig tree. We saw that in his coming as the high priest and his cleansing of the temple. And now we notice it in his promising and proclaiming of his office of the king and of his great and perfect authority. So let's consider these things this morning in Mark 11, beginning at verse 27 and through to the end of the chapter. They arrived again in Jerusalem. And while Jesus was walking in the temple courts, the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the elders came to him. By what authority are you doing these things, they asked, and who gave you authority to do this? Jesus replied, I will ask you one question. Answer me and I will tell you by what authority I am doing these things. John's baptism, was it from heaven or from men? Tell me. They discussed it among themselves and said, If we say from heaven, he will ask, then why didn't you believe him? But if we say from men, they feared the people, for everyone held that John really was a prophet. So they answered Jesus, we don't know. Jesus said, neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things. Let's fire to your congregation God's perfect and glorious word, which his people love and we need. So let's ask for help this morning. Let's come and let's take upon ourselves and believe the promise of our God that the spirit will lead us to all truth. Let's pray asking for that help, shall we? Our Father and our God, we are your church, gathered here this morning in a moment of time. Part of your church militant, part of the apple of your eye, knowing that you love us as you do, that you sent your very son for us as you did, we pray now that you would provide for us as you said you would. Grant to us this morning, O Lord, to be able to understand your word. We pray for ears unstopped that is opened. We pray for hearts softened. We pray for minds able to understand. And then, Lord, hands and feet ready to respond, hearts beating with the glories of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Help us by the Spirit's work. He is powerful and able. And so we pray, asking in Jesus' name, amen. To a congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ, in this section of Mark, as we just said, the reckoning of faithless Israel, we have seen the great prophet declare Israel to be fruitless, like a fig tree out of season. We have seen Jesus, the high priest, cleanse the pollution Israel allowed into the sanctuary of God. And now we watch the King of Kings exercise his perfect right and authority, listen, over the nation's leaders, over their most powerful personages. Israel has denied God in outright unrighteousness, in ceremonial unsanctity, and now in failures of church leadership. The nation needs their Savior, Jesus. So does the church today. Maybe more. The nation needed the true King. How obvious, how clear is the need for a King of righteousness today? We need King Jesus. The Lord causes a confrontation to reveal the lies of the leaders. And in that we should add his glorious, kingly rule. The Lord causes a confrontation to reveal the lies of the leaders. Well, first of all, then, Jesus has perfectly placed himself to force the confrontation. 24 hours before verse 27, Jesus entered the temple, verse 15, on a righteous mission. The high priest came to cleanse the confines of God's holy house. What an unbelievable unsanctity that the people had allowed to transpire into the courts of the place of God's worship, and yet, here is Jesus. Now, 24 hours later, it is Tuesday morning, and his mission is no less significant. He comes back to the spot where he had made such a scene the day before, and delegates of the Sanhedrin were waiting for them. Now, we don't often kind of ask this question, but I think it's important that we scratch our heads a little bit and ask the question, how did they know he would come back here? How did they know that he would come back the next day to the temple confines? Now we need to do a little reverse engineering. And it goes something like this. They know that he must be about his father's business. Now we're granting them a lot in saying that, but it needs to be said not only because Jesus at age 12 said that to his own parents, didn't you know that I must be about my father's business? But because this people had seen a zeal in him, a zeal for the house of the Lord, and so they make a logical conclusion, they plan according to what they anticipate he would do. But there's something going on even behind that, you see. And here is what we need to realize. He planned according to what he knew they knew. He planned according to what he knew they knew. He knows that they will come anticipating that he would be there. And so in a certain sense, he has laid the trap. And they walk right into it. Notice this in the text. They arrived again at Jerusalem, and while Jesus was walking in the temple courts, was he at this point teaching? We don't know. Mark only says he was walking there. As he is there, the delegates of the Sanhedrin say, now's the moment. Let's spring our trap. And yet it is Jesus who is springing the trap. to capture those ones profiting off religious power. As we said last time, they know the forms of old covenant worship and the temple was the heart and the soul of it. So Jesus returns there as he has planned for this confrontation. They think traditionally Now, that's a word in certain parts of our culture that has fallen out of vogue and out of acceptability, except perhaps in the church. If there's a single word which summarized the religious attitude of the delegates of the Sanhedrin, as we're told of them here, the chief priests, the teachers of the law, and the elders, if there is a word that defines their religious perspective, it is traditionalism. They knew all of the traditions. They were very comfortable in all of the traditions. It is why three years before, in A.D. 30, as we said two weeks ago in the sermon, three years before, the then high priest had tried to enact this new tradition of moving those places of the buying and the selling and the money changing off of the Mount of Olives into the court of the Gentiles. The high priest then wanted to establish a new tradition because it was one that was very profitable for the Sanhedrin members. They all got their cut. And so tradition, you see, ruled the day. They were very comfortable in those ways. And these Sanhedrin members had unchallenged power and authority, now listen, inside those traditions. And the populace, the people, had ease and comfort inside these traditions. But here comes Jesus. And He is overturning all of that. As He overturned the tables of those buying and selling and those exchanging the money, He is overturning those traditions and the authority they have derived from that tradition. He is, in a sense, cursing traditionalism like he cursed the fig tree. And so, beloved, though we might not like to think this way, there's a certain application already that we need to beware of living as traditionalists. Can I put it more bluntly? We are not saved by knowing and keeping all the traditions. We are not Christians because we keep this or that tradition and get them all right. What matters rather is a living relationship with the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Could we consider ourselves in this moment transported to a church in Africa to worship with believers there in Africa who would have traditions very uncomfortable for us? Would we be able to say, I am here as a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ and I have a living relationship with him no matter the setting? no matter the environment. Why is this an important question? Why am I going on about traditions? And you're going to hear a lot about it in this sermon. Because it was the basis of authority for these delegates of the Sanhedrin, for the Sanhedrin as a whole. And it had been foisted upon the nation as the way to define right and wrong and good and bad and life and death. How many times did Jesus say, your traditions have you looking like whitewashed tombs, alive it seems on the outside, but dead in. May he bring us back out of the ease and deadness of traditionalism if we are there, and rather than into a living and vital, fruitful walk with Jesus Christ. These traditionalists were saying, tradition gives us authority. Beloved, where do we say authority resides? If I were allowed to preach in a Roman Catholic church, Now follow me, and I just pose that question, and I'm not trying to be mean to those in the Roman Catholic Church, but rather to the system itself, and I were to pose that question, where do you say tradition resides? Their answer, if they know their own theology, would be to say in the church, not in Jesus Christ. Do we see the problem? Well then secondly, let's look at it more. The Sanhedrin delegates believe they have the power to control him. Make no mistake about it, this entire clash is a clash of powers. This traditionalism of fig tree dead Israel has quite a church structure to it. They have a comprehensive church government form of godliness which denies the power of godliness. And in that tradition, in that church government, was leadership. It was leadership from the top, the Sanhedrin, which consisted, the Sanhedrin did, of three groups. First are the chief priests. These were mostly Sadducees. They flowed from the high priestly line of Aaron or so they claimed. Next were the teachers of the law, also called the scribes. These were mostly Pharisees. They were the ones who were supposed to know the Scriptures inside and out and be able to divest and carefully separate and apply all of the Old Testament Scriptures to all of the situations. The third group consisted of those delegates from the small communities, from every little village that would be assigned in turn to be the elders. And so, these men, verse 27, had been dispatched by the whole Sanhedrin to confront him. Now, you can imagine how it worked, as with any group sending delegates. If it's to send delegates to a tricky situation of great and weighty significance, you would probably select some of your better delegates. Maybe your cream of the crop you would send, because you knew it was going to be an important meeting But all of them were men that were revered by the populace. They were looked up to by the citizens not only of Jerusalem itself, but of the whole land of Israel. These were the men in whose presence, if you were able to stand, you would bow before them. You would hold them in esteem and high regard and be very careful about what you said because it's the Sanhedrin after all. And they send some of their best, empowered by the whole to speak for them all. Now listen, and they expected that Jesus would listen. would bow in a certain sense, would give way to them. How could they think that after three years of his earthly ministry? They could think that because of the power of tradition. Their expectation was that with their two questions, verse 28. By what authority are you doing these things? Because you don't have the authority that tradition has granted to us. And who gave you the authority to do this? Because certainly it wasn't we ourselves, the ones who tradition has granted this authority. We didn't give it to you. Where did you get it from? They require him to answer. They trust their church government power structure because traditionalism is a closed system to their mind. It must work this way. Beloved, the worldview of these, the delegates of the Sanhedrin, is about to be shattered. And every religious worldview that has traditionalism as its defining rule needs to be equally destroyed. We are somewhat distanced from the whole concept now of traditionalism so that we find it hard to put these things together with what I am saying to the text. But if we ask Islam, is tradition powerful? If we ask Hinduism, is tradition powerful? If we ask so many world religions, is tradition powerful? They will all say, to a man or to a woman, well, of course. Which begs the question. In terms of authority, what do we say about the king? Whose rule, after all, is the defining rule? Can I say it another way to us? I'm not trying to unnecessarily make us uncomfortable, but there's a part of this in all of us that we need to question. If we find comfort in traditions as opposed to in a living and vital relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ, it is likely that Jesus himself would make us very uncomfortable. What is authoritative in our hearts, minds, and lives? Here's the good news. He brought us to this text. to roust us out of our comfort zones. And that because he loves us. We can respond today and praise him for bringing us out of our comfort zones, and they might be different comfort zones of traditionalism for each one of us, as he says to us, no, what matters is a vital and living relationship with me, the King of kings and the Lord of lords. So that if I might just give you a summary of it, we are then encouraged again to ourselves, read our Bibles. Does that sound strange? Because as we ourselves are, again, reading our Bibles, if I can put it that way, we are submitting ourselves under, again, the authority of the King of Kings. We are saying, this King is the Lord of my life. He is the King over all, and his word is supreme to me, and I'm going to submit myself to his word. Secondly, we can engage in prayer. Now, you may find that to be a strange thing to say, an application of this, but no, it isn't really, because if we are engaging in prayer with the king of kings, what more powerful activity is there for the Christian? Beloved, you have the right and the access, as he says it in Hebrews, to come and lay your appeal and to set your need before the one who has all authority. Can I put it differently? You don't need to get permission from the Sanhedrin. To pray about this or that. Do we see beloved? How glorious is the relationship that we have in Jesus Christ? In these ways, and there are so many other ways, like singing from our hearts, like giving sacrificially, like faithfulness and attendance in the house of the Lord. In these ways, what are we showing? That we have but one King. And his name is Jesus. Well, thirdly, then, the king commands the Sanhedrin to make a pronouncement about John's authority. And now it gets very interesting. Many times, as we have been working through Mark, have we noticed Jesus intentionally putting himself in front, in the center, saying, you must deal with me. We've seen that many times in this text. That action is obvious, isn't it? He engages, if I can put it this way, in judo. And do you know what judo is, that martial arts? It's not an offensive martial arts, but it is rather a defensive martial art. In Judo, when somebody thrusts at you with their fist or their arm or some weapon, what you do is you grab hold of that thing being thrust at you and you pull it in such a way as to use the force and the energy they expelled, you use it against them. The arm comes out at you, you grab the arm and you throw them to the ground and they wonder, how did I get on the ground? I was just gonna hit that person. That's Judo. It's what he does here. Do you see it? I'm going to ask you a question. They came with guns ablazing from their authority based on tradition. And they said, Jesus, you have to answer us. We're throwing it at you. And he grabs what they threw at him, and he throws it back around. And all of a sudden, they're laying flat on their backs on the ground, as it were, rhetorically, in religious terms, wondering how they're going to answer his question. but it is rather a command. I like how our NIV puts it here at the end of verse 32, that assertive command voice. Tell me. I require of you an answer. What does he command? Declare your position on John the Baptist. As you're reading through Mark, if you were just reading from chapter 1 to now chapter 11, and you came to this last section of chapter 11, would you say, wait a minute, John the Baptist? Why that? Why him? Why now? There's very great and significant reason for that. The way to summarize Jesus' reason for asking them to make a declared position on John the Baptist, the summary is this. John was a new covenant reformer. Go back with me and Mark to the very first chapter. I want you to notice this. Mark chapter one. Notice, by the way, what we said when we began our study in Mark. There's no birth narrative. Matthew has his, Luke his, John in a different way, something of a beginning narrative, but not Mark. Just the beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God, as it is written in Isaiah the prophet. Then what? What's next? You know, don't you? John the Baptist. I will send my messenger ahead of you who will prepare your way. A voice of one calling in the desert. Prepare the way for the Lord. Make straight paths for him. Now listen to verse 4. So John came baptizing in the desert region. Already you should be stunned saying what baptizing? You should be stunned. We should be amazed at that. It goes on. And preaching what? a new covenant reality, a flowering of all of the old covenant promises, a fulfillment of all of the old covenant realities, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Now, as he was doing this, he didn't get a minor response. He didn't get a little small percentage of the people say, oh, there's a unique individual. He's wearing this weird clothing. He's out there in the middle of nowhere. Rather, it says, verse 5, the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him. We're supposed to say the response was stunning. Everybody knew about John the Baptist and the amazingly new things he was saying and doing, which were really not new at all. But as I just said, fulfillments of all of the old covenant promises. Speaking of Jesus to come, the one whose thongs of his sandals he, John says, I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. It's John and Jesus of the same ilk, of the same kind, of the same sort. And so we should not at all be surprised to hear Jesus the King requiring from, listen, the religious experts, the guys who are supposed to know it all, an official statement about John. An official statement about the one who the people were enthralled about until, of course, Herod took his head off in prison. Jesus is saying, do you see that who John was, I am, only now in full and perfect ways? What John said, I am saying. What John promised, I am doing. He is asking them, do they understand the kingdom of God and its righteousness? He requires of them an answer. What will you say? And particularly now to this question, Is that ministry that John portrayed, and I am fulfilling, heaven-sent or man-authorized? Do you see it? Is it of God or traditions? It's exactly the question he asks. He requires them to answer. Was it from heaven or from men? And beloved, it remains to be today the simple, clear, and penetrating question that needs an answer. Can I put it to us in the form of a slightly different question? How do we say Jesus is my King? Notice I didn't ask, do we say Jesus is my King? Because I know the answer that we would all give to that question. We would say, well, of course I say Jesus is my King. The question asked is this, how do I say that Jesus is my King? How do I show that Jesus is my King? What is it about my life that shouts, Jesus is my king? Is this an appropriate application of the text? Well, it is if you understand that the question being posed to the Sanhedrin was, where is authority really found? From heaven or from men? Does it come from God? Or does it come from the decisions of people? Now, I say that, beloved, not only because of the day in which we are living, you have the authority of people ruling the day, you get enough people together believing a certain thing as crazy and insane as that thing is, that all of a sudden everybody is required to believe it simply because everybody else said you must believe it. That needs to die a thousand deaths. In the church, in the hearts of Christians, we need to say unequivocally, without hesitation, lovingly, but boldly, I will do what Jesus calls me to do. He is my King. Heaven rules. Heaven rules. Oh, beloved in the church, heaven rules. And then the church says to the world, heaven rules. And the people ask, how do I find myself safe under the kingship of Jesus Christ? And we say, let me tell you about the Savior. Jesus here is requiring nothing less than for these religious leaders to say, to assert, to affirm heaven rules. Does God rule in our politics, in our court decisions, in corporate boardrooms, in the decisions that hospital officials make, and on and on and on? Does heaven rule? Is Jesus the king? Now, never mind all of those particular applications that we could think about and perhaps run amok in our thinking about. Let's go back to the basic one. How do we answer? What do we say? How do I show that Jesus is king? Well, these fearful men, fourthly, won't tell the truth. It would cost too much. So verses 31 to 33, a very interesting part of the text. It's amazing actually to be given an insight like we are here given. to the internal deliberations of these delegates of the Sanhedrin. You can imagine the scene. Jesus demands an answer. They say, just a minute. And they excuse themselves, perhaps a few feet away, a dozen or more feet away, maybe, to a different part of the area that they were talking just at that moment. And they say, we need to confer. We need to talk amongst ourselves. Beloved. When we hear their reasoning, we've got to realize something. We don't often think of this thought. These are the men who are supposed to be the religious leaders of God's people. We find it very easy to criticize them, and rightly so for all of the things that are going to come next in the text in chapters 12 to 16 in Mark, especially that section having to deal with the trials and his crucifixion. We have very harsh things to think and to say about them, but that's a little bit ahead of the time. That's a little bit anachronistic. It's a little ahead of the game. What we might be thinking about them right now if we keep our thinking in the text is that these are the ones assigned to protect, provide, care for, nourish, shepherd God's people. And instead, what we discover about them is politicking. They disgusted among themselves and they said, if we say from heaven, because you see, that's probably what they believe. They'll never say that. They can't say that. But it's the first thing they consider. If we say from heaven, then Jesus will rightly respond, why didn't you believe him? Well, because it would have cost us too much to believe him. It would have taken away, stripped out all of our power of authority. We would have lost all of that weight and pomp and circumstance and wealth that tradition has granted to us. If we say from men, we might be dragged outside the walls of Jerusalem and stoned because the populace believed that John was a true prophet. The implications of that deliberation, now mind this carefully, the implications of that deliberation is standing right in front of them. There he is. John himself declared Jesus as king. But the delegates of the Sanhedrin will never acknowledge Jesus as Lord. Such an acknowledgement would immediately end their power by tradition. They would be thrown out of office. And they give the coward's answer. We don't know. Liars. Liars. They know, but saying it would cost them too much. Oh beloved, our praise and thanks today can and must be in the reality of real rule. of real kingly rule with the shepherd's heart, because that is our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, so that we can say, and I hope we sing, and I pray we shout, Jesus is Lord! To the glory of God the Father. He is, as King, doing, verse 28 and verse 33, quote, these things, which things? Those things illegally allowed by the power of tradition, such as the tables of the money changers and the sellers of goods inside the temple confines, and teaching the truth which contradicted their tradition. And yes, today, still today, ruling his church by his word, especially, now don't miss this, ruling his church by his word, especially in the midst of the me, myself, and I culture we find ourselves living through. He hasn't changed. He is still the one with all authority, with all power, And it is now for the church, the required response, to seize the day. To seize the day and say through our actions, Jesus is Lord. The time is now. It is not a duty we should assign to the next generation. We should not cast this debt to our children or grandchildren and say, well, now you've got to take up the mantle because we can't. No, today is the day for the church to boldly, lovingly say and behave, Jesus is Lord. To seek to make every leader fall down before him from husbands and marriages, to fathers and families, to elders and churches, to congresspersons in Congress, to judges on the benches, to presidents and kings and princes in palaces, to all who hold authority, to require them to say, Jesus is Lord, for he is. Amen. Our Father and our God, how we praise you for the wonderful beauty that we find in the kingdom of God, where there is a true king who reigns, who will never, never give his authority to another, nor his glory to be shared. And oh, Father, we pray that we would bow down before him, that we would be the ones to say and say it first, loudly, lovingly, boldly, Jesus is Lord. that we may give way in all questions to his unchallenged authority. By your spirit, work that in our hearts, we pray asking in Jesus' name, amen. Congregation let's respond by singing this morning again to his glory and for our good. We'll start at number 26 And then after the benediction the doxology of our response will be 490 so let's turn first in our psalter hymn