The Authority of Jesus

Joshua Kirstine (0:00)

Good morning, Disciples family. Good to be with you this morning. Grateful for the Lord's provision for us to be here. So many things have worked well for us today, things that we're slow to give him praise for. And I just pray we would be a grateful people. So much to be thankful for coming off for a time with the Lord's Supper and corporate praise. I'm grateful for your prayers for Jennifer and I as we traveled last weekend to see old friends, many of which were in our wedding 27 years ago. Visit my childhood home church, the church where Jennifer got saved, and share testimony and get to preach there. It was really a true honor and blessing. The Lord did many wonderful things at that time. Grateful for my brother Justin and continuing to bless us with great preaching. My absence and personally blessed by the focus of last week's sermon. Pray it continues to have good dividends in your life. As we consider wanting really nothing but the Lord, gonna continue to really build on some of that this morning. As we return to Luke's gospel, if you grab your Bibles with me and turn to chapter 19 Today we'll finish chapter 19, the last couple of verses, and move into chapter 20 So let's pick up where we left off with verse 47 Luke 19, 47 And he was teaching daily in the temple. The chief priest and the scribes and the principal men of the people were seeking to destroy him.

What we find ourselves here looking at is after clearing the temple of people who were profane in the sacred space, space that had been set apart by God for prayer, Jesus began to display his compassionate care for souls to begin what is going to be a longer stretch of teaching in the temple. All of chapter 20 and 21 are a recap and a testimony of his teaching that happens there. So we're going to spend some time looking at Jesus' teaching now for a while. Jesus' teaching and preaching has been a major part of his ministry since he began, all the way back in Luke chapter 4, verse 15, where we read that he taught there in the synagogues. Being glorified by all. No longer in the synagogues, right? In these local townships, but now standing in the temple in Jerusalem, Jesus continues to speak the truth and love and grace of the very word of God himself. While Jesus rid the temple of selfish, wicked vendors, we see here the temple's evil caretakers remain present. The chief priests, the scribes and the principal men essentially take the baton from the Pharisees who had their leading contention for Jesus along the way. And now they pick that baton up in effort to get rid of Jesus. Their collective disdain and hatred for Jesus would motivate them to such a degree that they will seek to literally destroy him. To give you some insight into who these three named groups are, the priests have oversight of the temple by virtue of their birth. The scribes are legal specialists, and the principal men are Jewish elites, political and social, who have authority. They're involved by virtue of their knowledge or by their wealth. Like any upper class that longs to continue its rule and power, these men collectively are going to go to great lengths to silence and remove Jesus from really ruining the good thing that they have going. And isn't that funny how we seem to be part of something, and then when it messes with something we love more, then all of a sudden now I'm not, and now I'm against you.

In this, we see that they hate Jesus. They envy him. They see his influence increasing, and they see their own power waning. So they resolve to stop his progress. This popular teacher being willing to do whatever it will take. Slow with me to consider how hate-filled you have to be to set out to destroy someone, right? Taking a closer look at the words we see here, they're not looking just to hurt him. They're not looking just to get rid of him. They're not looking just to discredit him. Their hate is so great, they want to destroy him, right? Church it's important that we don't lose sight of the depth of what sinful hatred of the enemies of God, what it looks like, what they have against Christ, and therefore what they have against Christ's disciples. Jesus warned his disciples in John 15, 18 through 20, if the world hates you, know that it hated me before it hated you. And if you are of the world, the world would love you as its own, but because you are not of the world, because I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, that the servant is not greater than his master, if they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. And yet, how comfortable do we get in our modern day, in our daily routines? We get used to things going smoothly. We get used to not having a lot of contention, especially, I think, in our western context. And so we can begin to kind of get surprised when contention raises, when persecution shows up, when visceral hatred starts to be pointed at people we love who are faithful to the Lord. What is this? Jesus essentially is telling the disciples, don't be surprised when the world hates you for being a Christian. For you who hold fast to my word, who faithfully submit to my commandments. Beloved, I want to ask you today, have you been surprised with people that you've loved for a long time, or have loved you for a long time, but they turn on you? Because in the end, they prove to hate Jesus, and his true word. We need to see the significance of why Luke highlights this testimony in his gospel. The persecution Jesus is going through, the hatred that he speaks of, is not just the beatings on the cross. It is all of these little moments where the enemies are jockeying, and they're working, and they're trying, and they're angling at him.