23rd June 2023

23rd June 2023


Pray (ACts)


Read - Mark 11:20-33


Message Alan Burke 


Some time ago now I was sitting in someone’s house doing a pastoral call when there was a knock at the door. The person I was with got up, answered the door and it was someone saying that they had been sent by NI Water to check the mains pressure in the house as many people had called in the area to say that they were having problems with their water pressure. The man I was with invite them in told them where the kitchen was, they said they’d need to check the bathrooms as well and it would take some time. Now at this stage I’m sitting in the other room but alarm bells were ringing in my head and I simply went out, the man looked shocked, I asked to see his ID and apparently he left it in the van and said he’d go out to get it and he didn’t come back. 


A different day and I wouldn’t like to imagine what would have happened (for future reference NI Water check the water pressure outside your house, they do not need to come inside). That little ID card that he should have had would have told me an awful lot about him, more importantly it would have told me that he had indeed had the authority to represent NI water. 


As Jesus comes to the temple courts he is descended upon by the Chief priests, the teachers of the law also known as the scribes and then the elders. They are those who made up the Sanhedrin. Now the Sanhedrin had a responsibility to check credentials from any itinerant rabbi, they wanted to check that they who they say they are, makes sense, you don’t just want every Tom, Dick and Harry from every backwater place coming and arriving in and being treated as something their not. 


They ask two questions of Jesus, by what authority was he doing these things, and the second question was who gave him the authority. Jesus was in a no win situation. Option one if he had said his authority was from God then he would be arrested and he would have been charged with blasphemy. Option 2 if he claimed that his authority was secular, ie the people were with him, supporting him, then he would have been charged with insurrection. Option two would have been an easier one to deal with for the Sanhedrin because they could have simply passed him over to the Romans for execution. 


Jesus though counters their question with his own. This was a common debating method, and the emphasis was on those who were asked the counter question to answer first, the ball was in the court of the Chief priests, the scribes and the elders, but they couldn’t answer and as a result Jesus did not answer their question about his authority. 


We know as the reader that the authority of Jesus comes form God, the one who had in a voice form heaven declared “you are may Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased” (Mk 1:11), he was one whose authority was clear to the people for as he taught the people were amazed as he taught as one who had authority (Mk 1:22), they asked “What is this? A new teaching—and with authority! He even gives orders to impure spirits and they obey him” (Mk 1:27), he had the authority to drive out demons (Mk 3:15) and in all the miracles he was showing that his authority came from God the Father. 


Those who confronted Jesus just didn’t want to accept the authority of Jesus for if they had then it would have meant that they needed to bow the knee to him. It’s something that is repeated to this day, many people who are happy to acknowledge the Jesus excited but dismiss his teaching, because what he demands of them and all is to trust in him, to our our knee, to place our lives into his hands because his authority is of the living and true God. ‘Jesus’ Authority Is Given By God’


Pray (acTS)


Sing


WSC
Q 80 What is required in the tenth commandment?
The tenth commandment requireth full contentment with our own condition, (Heb. 13:5, 1 Tim. 6:6) with a right and charitable frame of spirit toward our neighbour, and all that is his. (Job 31:29, Rom. 12:15, 1 Tim. 1:5, 1 Cor. 13:4–7)
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