This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

Welcome to our last day of looking through Mark chapter 11, day 5, verses 27 to
33 today. We're walking through this week with Jesus Christ, this significant
week. Sunday, we saw Jesus enter Jerusalem as the king, Bosanna, palm branches
before him.

Monday, he enters Jerusalem as the priest and he cleanses the temple. And now we
come, now we come to Tuesday. And Jesus is entering Jerusalem as the prophet.

And now we're going to see him throughout this day, throughout this Tuesday
teaching. Teaching in such a powerful way that his enemies begin to challenge
his authority to say what he's saying, to do what he's doing. What happens on
this powerful day?

Listen to verses 27 to 33. They arrived again in Jerusalem. And while Jesus was
walking in the temple courts, the chief priests and 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 the
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. This talk that Jesus has with these
rulers and elders and teachers of the law about authority, it reveals to you and
I some powerful truths about God's authority in each of our lives.

Now, what does this word authority mean? For some of us, it has a negative
image. And when we talk about God's authority, authority simply means the right
to rule and the right to be obeyed.

And God has authority. He has the right to rule. He made everything.

And he has the right to be obeyed. And as we read these verses about authority,
the truth is for you and I as followers of Jesus Christ, we live our lives under
God's authority. The truth is you're going to live life one of two ways, either
under God's authority or questioning God's authority.

One of two ways. Watchman Nee has written a famous book entitled Spiritual
Authority about this entire issue of God's authority in our lives and how we're
to respond to it in a humble way. In that book, he talks about, well, he calls
it positional authority and spiritual authority.

And he defines positional authority as that which we take to ourselves and
spiritual authority as that which is given by God. Positional authority is a
matter of titles and control and spiritual authority is a matter of ministry.
Here's what Watchman Nee says, "One's authority before man is equal to one's
ministry before God.

The measure of ministry determines the proportion of authority. If authority
exceeds ministry, it becomes positional and therefore it's no longer spiritual.
" He's just saying in a different way what Jesus has been saying again and
again, "The greatest among you will be your servants.

" Now some people as they talk about this idea of spiritual authority, they try
to take it all the way down the line and talk about the spiritual authorities in
the government and the spiritual authorities that we have in family. The truth
is that can get very confusing because only God's authority is perfect.
Governmental authorities are going to be imperfect.

Authority in family, parents and children, that's going to be imperfect. Being
obedient to the authority of a government is essentially being obedient to God's
authority. That's what these verses are talking about as we read about authority
throughout the scripture.

And as we read in these verses, we see these religious leaders questioning
authority instead of living their lives under God's authority, they are
questioning that authority. They questioned it from the very beginning because
it threatened their way of life. By the way, that's why we question God's
authority.

It threatens our way of life. I don't want God messing with my business. I don't
want God messing around in my life.

I want to live life the way I want to live it. What is it that causes our pride
to rise up? What is it that causes us to decide to live life ourselves instead
of trusting him?

These religious leaders are a study in the personal challenges, the heart
challenges that we all face. Why is it that we question God's authority?
Essentially it's because we are afraid.

Three reasons you see in these leaders. We question God's authority because we
are afraid of change. Number two, we question God's authority our lives because
we are afraid of other's opinions.

And number three, we question God's authority in our lives because we are afraid
of facing the truth. First we question God's authority in our lives because we
are afraid of change. If you live your life under God's authority, He's going to
make some changes.

He's going to make some changes in your heart. He's going to make some changes in your
life. He's going to make some changes through your life.

He's going to take you to some places you're not sure you want to go. Now after you
go there, you're going to say, what was I thinking? Of course this is where I was
supposed to be.

You know me better than I know myself. You wouldn't have brought me here unless
you knew you could use me here, work on my life here. But while we're headed
there, we're afraid.

And so we question God's authority in our lives. Look for a place in your life
where you're saying no to God right now. It might be some place of ministry.

It might be some place of growth, some temptation that you're allowing not only
to come into your life, but what be welcomed in your life. Some place where
you're holding God at arm's length. You're questioning God's authority.

Look at some place where you're saying no and it's likely it's a place where
you're afraid to change. Because we're afraid of change, because we're afraid of
letting go of our life and enjoying God's life, we say no to God's authority
over our lives. We say no to God's right to rule and his right to be obeyed.

There's a second reason we question God's authority, you see, in these religious
leaders. We question God's authority because we're afraid of others' opinions.
Jesus asked them a question.

They're saying, "Why do you have authority to do the things? " And he says,
"Well, John, John the Baptist, "was he from God or men? " And the Bible says, if
we say that he was from men, the people are not going to like us because the people
think that he was from God and so they answered Jesus, we don't know.

We question God's authority in our lives because we're afraid of others'
opinions. It's a scary thing. It's a humbling thing.

It's even an embarrassing thing to look at my life or for any of us to look at
our lives and realize the times that we have said no to God simply because we're
afraid of what somebody might think of us. The times when instead of sharing a
word of faith, we've just said nothing. The times when instead of stepping away
from a situation, we've just stayed.

The times when instead of standing up for God in a situation, we've just been
quiet because we're afraid of what somebody else is going to think of us. We're
afraid of other people's opinions. It happens to all of us.

It happened to these religious leaders in that day, but they're not the only
ones. It happens to me, it happens to you. We question God's authority, his
right to rule, his right to be obeyed because we're afraid of what somebody else
might think of us.

Now, when you call that for what it really is, it helps us to see who we really
want to be. I don't want to be a person who lives my life based on others' opinions.
I want to be a person who lives my life based on the great love of God that he's
put into my heart.

We question authority, the authority of God because we're afraid of change.
We're afraid of other people's opinions. And we also question God's authority in
our lives because we're afraid of facing the truth.

They didn't want to face the truth about themselves. These religious leaders
didn't want to face the truth that they had gotten a pretty comfortable life and
that if Jesus was to be accepted into their lives as the true prophet of God,
the true Messiah from God, they'd have to make some radical changes and face
some truths that they had never faced in life before. Face the truth.

When you face the truth, you have a new power from God in your life, even if
it's the power of a humble recognition that you were wrong. There is power in
humbly being able to say, I was wrong, I faced the truth about this. One of the
reasons that you and I live our lives without the power of God in our lives is
this fear of facing the truth, facing the truth about myself, facing the truth
about life, facing the truth about others, facing the truth about this
circumstance.

You face the truth and you have power, God's power, but you ignore the truth and
you have no power because you know deep down that you're hiding from what you
know to be true. And you also are holding God's truth at arm's length in your
life. These religious leaders come to Jesus that day and they say, by what
authority do you do these things?

Jesus had already given them the answer. You can read about it in the Gospel of
John. In John 5, 26, Jesus says, "The Father has life in himself, "for he's
granted his son to have life in himself, "and he has given him authority to
judge all mankind "because he's the son of man.

" In John 17, 2, Jesus prays, "For you have given him," praying to his father,
"you've given him authority over everyone and all the earth, "and he gives
eternal life "to each one you have given him. " Who gave him authority? God did,
the Father did.

Now, the answer was there, but they couldn't see it. They could not see the
truth. The question that I have to ask as I read these verses about authority
is, under whose authority am I living my life?

And much of the time, I have to admit, I have to say it's under my authority.
I'm living life under the authority of what I want to do in that moment, or what I
feel is right in that moment. And instead of being obedient, I'm resistant to
the call, the will of God.

I'm living life under my authority. As small and as powerless as it is, I'm
comfortable with my authority. But a life lived under my authority, questioning
God's authority, it's a lonely life.

It's a limited life. A life lived under God's authority. It is a full, rich,
relational, powerful life.

But it starts with humility. It starts with the humility to humbly pray. Let's
pray together, this simple prayer.

Father, I accept your authority in my life. I accept your authority in my life
in Jesus' name, amen. Join us next week.

Do not miss next week. It is a day of teaching in the life of Jesus that will
turn your life inside out and right side up.