By What Authority Are You Doing These Things?

Now we come to our sermon, and I'm going to be preaching, picking up back up in Luke. We're in Luke 20, the first eight verses. And if you've been here regularly, you know that I've mentioned often, as we've worked through the gospel, that Jesus is always in the middle of conflict. There's always trouble around him. And this morning is no different. What I haven't said about this conflict and this turmoil that's always around Jesus' ministry is that this is often the way of faithful ministers. Conflict is a regular part of their lives and their ministry. And as we go through our text this morning, what we're going to see is basically two groups of leaders. We're going to see Jesus on the one hand and how he conducts himself in conflict. And we're going to see the scribes and the elders of the people and how they conduct themselves in the midst of conflict. And we're going to, at the end of it, learn how we ought to conduct ourselves in the midst of conflict. That's the point of the sermon today. Would you please stand now for the reading of God's word from Luke chapter 20.

verses 1 through 8. This is the word of the Lord, and it is eternally true. On one of the days, while he was teaching the people in the temple and preaching the gospel, the chief priests and the scribes with the elders confronted him, and they spoke, saying to him, Tell us by what authority you are doing these things, or who is the one who gave you this authority? Jesus answered and said to them, I will also ask you a question, and you tell me. Was the baptism of John from heaven? This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. The first thing I want to note to you about our text is that this is a public confrontation. You know, oftentimes when we want to have it out with somebody, we want to do it in private, we don't want to do it in public, but this is a public confrontation. You see that Jesus was teaching the people in the temple and preaching the gospel, and that's the point at which these Pharisees came, or the scribes and the elders, rather, came to confront Jesus. And you'll remember that just before this,

He had come into the temple and he had cleansed the temple. He had kicked out all of the money changers, all of the people who were corrupting the worship of God. He had driven them out with whips, overturned their tables, threw all their stuff away. And so you can understand there's already, this is coming right on the heels of already a public conflict. Toward the end of chapter 19, it says that they were seeking a way to destroy him. And so the conflict already existed, but here the Pharisees are going to to bring it to a head, and they're going to confront Jesus about it publicly in front of all of the people. For context, I want to read to you the last couple of verses from chapter 19. It says that he was teaching daily in the temple. This is after he's cleared the temple out. And the chief priests and the scribes and the leading men among the people were trying to destroy him. But they could not find out anything that they might do, and then they give the reason why. For all the people were hanging onto every word, he said. And so what you have is a group of people up for play. And the question is,

who's going to be the leader of that group? And at this point in the text, Jesus is the leader. They're hanging on every word he said, and that's why the Pharisees and the scribes, they can't do anything about it. They're not in a position yet. They haven't altered the affections of the crowd yet such that they're free to attack him and to kill him. And so they're seeking a way to destroy him, but they can't find any way because he's the leader. And so why was it a public confrontation then? Why didn't they go to Jesus privately? This is the first question we have to ask. Why did they do what they did? Well, they did it because the crowds were on his side. And for them to be able to kill him, they had to change the hearts and the minds of the people. You remember when Jesus stood before Pilate, what did they cry out? Crucify him, crucify him. Now the question is, who cried that out? The Pharisees. I heard someone whisper the Pharisees. Yes, they were part of it, but who else? The Jews. It was the crowds. It was these people.

they turned on him. Now, did all of them turn on him? No. But enough of them turned on him that the crowd could rightfully be called a mob, and they had gone from being in favor of Jesus to wanting to see him killed. And when Pilate says, I've not found anything wrong with this man, they cried out all the more, crucify him, crucify him. Their affections had been swayed. This is why they confronted him publicly. At the beginning of our text this morning, in our sermon, the question we have to ask now is, well, what's that have to do with us? The way that Jesus was confronted publicly. The question to us is, will you ever be confronted publicly for being a Christian? Will you ever have to deal with that? And the answer is, yeah, at some point in your life, in some way, you're going to have to deal with it. It's going to happen that you're going to be faced with the decision of whether or not you're going to give glory to God at personal cost or danger to yourself, or you're going to conform.

1 Peter 3 says this, Now, isn't that a strange thing to say? What's it tell us about those who are going to oppress the people Peter's writing to? Well, it tells us that they're going to be intimidated and troubled, that that's a part of what the confrontation is going to look like. And he tells them, for the hope that is in you. And then he tells them, gives instruction about how to do it, yet with gentleness and reverence and keep a good conscience so that in the thing in which you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ will be put to shame. Now you realize this is what's happening to Jesus. They're slandering him. They're trying to catch him in something. They want to destroy him. They're trying to intimidate him. The scribes and the elders have all come. There's one man. There's a big crowd of them that come. They're just trying to bully him.

And as Christians, you're going to face that same sort of treatment in some way or another if you're faithful. And so we can't expect to live a faithful life as a Christian and never face some sort of public confrontation over our faith. Now the question is, well, how do I handle it then? And we're going to come to that at the end of the text. So just hold that question in your mind. How do I handle that sort of thing? Because the reason we're told not to be intimidated is because that's a real temptation. When someone comes up and gets in our face, most people are inclined to back down. And so we're going to learn from Jesus about how to handle that.

And so now we come to the scribes and elders' question. They come to Jesus and they say to him, tell us by what authority you are doing these things. Or who is the one who gave you this authority? Now, one of the things I do from time to time is as I'm preparing to preach, once I've sort of got the basic structure in my head, is I'll go home and over dinner I'll talk to my kids. When you have questions like this, I'll just ask them the questions. What do you think? And so I asked them this, and I told them what was going on, and I said, here's what the Pharisees said. They came to Jesus, and they said, tell us by what authority you're doing these things, or who gave you this authority? Do you know the answer? This is what I asked my kids, right? What's the answer? What kind of question is it? Is it a hard question to answer? Is it a simple question to answer? Is there a right answer? Is it a rhetorical question? There's all kinds of things that could be going on. What do you think's going on? And you know that my children are young, and they said, well,

He's God. He's Jesus. He did it by his own authority. His father sent him. It wasn't a hard answer for even young children to come up with. Jesus did all that he did because he was God incarnate. And his father gave him all authority in heaven and on earth. When Jesus was being arrested and Peter whips out his sword and he lops off the ear of one of the men who's taking Jesus, what does Jesus say to him? He says, do you think that I cannot appeal to my father and that he will put it once? at my disposal more than 20 legions, 12 legions of angels? What he's saying is, do you not think I have the ability or the authority to deliver myself from this if I wanted to? Put your sword away. And then he heals the man, puts his ear back. And so the question of by what authority Jesus is doing these things, even our children understand the answers too. All of us understand the answers. He does it by God's authority. He's been given full reign by his father to save sinners.

And everything that he does during his earthly ministry is aimed at that end, to make it clear that he's the Messiah, and then to go to the cross for them, to save his people. So what's the purpose of asking the question? If it's such a simple question to answer, rhetorical even, why did they ask the question? Well, because there are questions that get asked to try to catch you in something. One of the common questions you'll often hear is, when did you stop beating your wife? They talk about police asking leading questions. They'll ask that question. Well, can you answer that question and not incriminate yourself? Three weeks ago, so you used to beat your wife. I never have. You're lying. There's leading questions that you can ask that don't have an answer that doesn't put you in harm's way. And so if we know the answer to the question, we can presume that everyone around knows the answer to the question.

So why do they ask him the question? Well, they ask him the question because if he says to them the truth, which is, I'm the son of God, what they'll accuse him of is blasphemy. And it's what they end up doing in that mock trial after they arrested him. They ask him directly, are you the son of God? And he says, yes, I am. And then they fall all over themselves. And they say, what further need do we have of testimony? You have heard it ourselves from his own mouth. And what did they heard? Well, they heard that he claimed that he was God. And that was enough to them to be able to accuse him of blasphemy and to kill him. And that's what they're trying to catch him in in front of the people because the people, while they're following Jesus and impressed by the miracles and his teaching and hanging on every word that he said, there's still a place in their minds where if he says, I'm the son of God, they might go, wait, who do you, wait, what? We hadn't gotten that far in our acknowledgement of who you are. And they might turn on him.

So at this point, if he says the Son of God, that's what's going to happen. Now, what happens if he doesn't say that? And he answers some other way, and he says, I'm just a good man. I'm just a man like you. Then what do the Pharisees say? What's that? Yeah, you have no authority, no jurisdiction to be doing what you're doing. And they would say to the people, why are you following this man? He's leading you away from God. And so if he answers the question, he loses. This is why they ask the question. The question is meant to turn the hearts and the minds of the crowds from being with Jesus to being against Jesus. And so Jesus then answers them. And he says to them, I'll ask you a question, and you tell me. Was the baptism of John from heaven or from men? And this is a very similar question to the one that they've asked, meaning that the answer has consequence. And you see the consequences in the way that the...

The elders and the scribes reason among themselves. They say, well, if we say this, then this is going to be the conclusion. If we say this, then this other thing is going to happen. And all of this has to do with the crowds. How are the crowds going to respond? And so you have to think, okay, what did the crowds understand? What is their answer to this question of John? What did they think the answer was? Did they believe that John's baptism was from heaven or from men? Well, the crowds believed that his baptism was from heaven. They regarded, we're told, they regarded John as a prophet. They were convinced he was a prophet. And so if they had spoken up and said, from man, they were afraid, the scribes and elders were afraid they were going to be killed. And if they said it was from heaven, then the question would have been, well, why didn't you believe him? Or, why weren't you baptized? And you remember that they came out to see John at the river when he was baptizing. As they came, he addresses them this way.

When John saw that many of the Pharisees and Sadducees were coming for baptism, he said to them, you brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? And right before that, it says everyone was being baptized and confessing their sins. And so do you think that these people were baptized by John? They weren't baptized by John. It doesn't say that they weren't baptized by John, but it's clear that they didn't believe him, that they came out to see what all the hullabaloo was about, that John confronts them with it. And that, you know, fast forward into when they're confronting Jesus, years later, they didn't believe. Aside from the fact that if they were willing to be baptized, do you think John would have baptized them? If you were the guy, you know, if I was baptizing people and the way I addressed them as they walked up was, you brood of vipers, who warns you to flee the wrath to come? And they said, well, we came out here to, if they didn't do exactly what everyone else was doing, which was falling down on their face,

and worshiping God and confessing their sins, they could say, we want to be baptized. I would have said, no, I'm not baptizing you. And so we can reasonably conclude that they only came out when John was baptizing to see what was going on. And so Jesus asked them about John's baptism, and they confer amongst themselves. They say, if from heaven, then he'll say, why didn't you believe in them? If from men, all the people will stone us to death. Now I want to note first about their deliberation. This is where we're going to slow down a little bit and dig in. What is the thing missing from their deliberation? What's missing from their deliberation is any question of what's actually true. They don't care what's true. There's a true and right answer to the question that Jesus has asked, and nowhere in their discussion do they address, well, they said, if we say it's from heaven, then they should say, then we should be baptized. We should have followed him. We should have done what all the other people were doing.

Because the truth of the answer to this question has consequence for them. If it's true that John was the messenger sent by God to prepare the way of the Lord, we should follow him. But they've already determined in their minds, we aren't following Jesus no matter who he is or what he says he is. He's not the one we're going to follow. So it doesn't matter whether John's baptism is from heaven. The truth of it is inconsequential. I want to read to you what Matthew Henry says on this point of their deliberation. He says, why they did not say it was for men, but because they feared the people. What good can be expected from men of such spirit? And so their answer is damning to them. And it's damning to them because they had no care about what was actually true. It didn't matter. They didn't care where John's baptism came from. They didn't care who Jesus was. All they cared about was their reputation and being able to maintain it. Did they give an answer? They did give an answer, and their answer was,

We don't know. Now, part of my work as a pastor is to ask people questions. A lot of questions, follow-up questions, sometimes uncomfortable questions, for the purpose of trying to figure out what's actually going on. What's the lay of the land in this situation in your life? What's going on? What's motivating you? And there are times when, in the course of my work, I ask people questions, and I start getting the answer, I don't know. Again and again. And again. And I don't tend to just let it go because it's not a satisfactory answer. You know, when I'm asking my kids, for instance, why did you throw that across the room? Why didn't you do your chores? I'm trying to teach them to understand what's going on in their heart. Why didn't you do what was expected of you? But when I'm talking to adults, I'm expecting that we're all sly enough to conceal the things we don't want people to know.

And each one of us, when we're faced with a question we don't want to answer, are tempted to say in response, I don't know. And I want you to know that there are plenty of things in this world you don't know. And if it's true that you don't know why you did something, then you should say, I don't know. But if you do know why you did something, or you do know something that you're unwilling to talk about, then you're behaving like these scribes and elders. You're unwilling to tell the truth. And when I end up in situations like that with people, one of the things I'll say to them is, I'll look them in the eye and I'll say, you know what I'm asking you. Tell me what you know I want you to tell me. And stop being evasive. Stop lying. Care about the truth. Because apart from that, there's no hope for them. And too often when we're answering, I don't know, or I'm not sure, it's because we're motivated by the same things that these scribes and these elders were motivated by.

We want to protect our reputation. We want to protect our interests. We want to make sure that the thing that we have our sights set on isn't taken away from us. So we say, I don't know. Now, is it true that the scribes didn't know? Did they actually not know? This is what we all want to say. Okay, well, did they know? Are you being too hard on them is the question. Or did they actually not know and are you expecting too much of them? Well, for perspective, let's look at another time when one of the leading leaders of Israel was questioned. When Nicodemus came to Jesus, by night, and asks him about being born again, what does Jesus respond? You know, when Nicodemus comes and says, how can a man be born again? Because he's thinking about body parts and grown men and things just don't work. And he's like, I don't understand it. And what's Jesus' response to him? He says to him, how can you, being a teacher in Israel, not know these things?

And I would grant that the question of regeneration and being born again is a much more difficult question to answer than the question of whether John's baptism was from heaven or not. And so we'd have to work hard to say that these men didn't know the truth. And the reason that we want to say that they didn't know the truth is because we knew that they didn't care about the truth. And may it never be that any one of us knows the truth but has a principle of having what we want. and make it a priority higher than what is true. I want to tell you a story about this in my own house to demonstrate what it looks like to answer appropriately when you don't actually know the answer, okay? Because there are times when I don't know is the real answer, and that's embarrassing in and of itself, right? You're like, okay, he thinks I'm supposed to know the answer. I really have no clue what he's talking about, and if I say I don't know, he just told me he's going to be mad at me, so what do I do? Well...

We were sitting at the dinner table, and this was years ago. And one of my sons, he was probably four or five at the time, young, maybe three. And we're sitting at the table, and he said, Daddy. Yes, son. I want some of that and some of that. He pointed. I said, okay, son, what is that? And he's like, he said, what do you want? He says, I want some of that and I want some of that. Son, what do you want? I want some of that and I want some of that. I said, honey, what are the, what is this? Silence, awkward, you know. He's in the position that I'm trying to describe you being, and he knows I want an answer, that I expect him to know what that thing is on the table, and he doesn't know the answer. And I'm thinking, you know, the reason I'm pressing this child is not because I want to be mean to him, it's because he has a propensity to be lazy in the way that he communicates or talks. He's just kind of like, yeah, you know, I want some of that and some of that.

is kind of how he would be wired if we don't disciple him through that. And so I don't want to just leave him in that position. So I'm pressing him and I'm saying, son, what is that thing? Call it by its name. And he's sitting here like, you know, his face is like, he doesn't know what it's called. He's not recalling what it's called. And I'm thinking, you're just being lazy and unwilling to answer the question. And so it's getting more intense at the table. And he's starting to wonder what's going to happen. Am I ever going to get some of that? And he's got kind of this puzzled look on his face, and finally he smiles, and he looks at me, and he goes, I don't know, but you could teach me. And at that point, I realized he actually didn't know that they were carrots. He just couldn't remember what they were called. I don't know, but you could teach me. And everything was diffused, and it was clear that he wasn't lying. He just didn't know what they were called yet. And so if you don't know the answer to something, say, I don't know.

would you teach me? Not, why'd you do that? I don't know. You're going to do it again? I don't know. How are you going to prevent it? I don't know. This is a conversation that's going the wrong way really fast. Because what's being communicated is, I've got a wall up, and I have my thoughts. I don't know any of you to be idiots, incapable of just knowing your own mind about the simple things that you do in your life. You know what you want. You go do it. And the thing that's going on is you don't want to look at me or your mom or your dad or your teacher and say, I punched him because I was mad at him. He stole my thing and I'm sick of it. And so I punched him. Is that a reason why kids hit each other? Is it a common reason why kids hit each other? Do you young kids actually hit each other for that very reason? Do you tell your parents that when they ask you? Why'd you hit him?

He took my, you know, it's him, he did something. There's always a reason. And in my house, I look at him and say, I'm not talking to you about what he did. I'll deal with what he did. I asked you why you did what you did. Oh, no, Daddy. And I don't want my kids to spend their life lying because that's really what they're doing. I want to teach them to know their own mind and to know their own hearts and know their own temptations and be able to say, I did it because I wanted to. Because then we can talk about whether that's an appropriate desire or not, or what the consequences of that, of making those sorts of choices is. But if they won't say, I did it because I wanted to, because I was angry, because that toy was more important to me than my brother, or my comfort was more important to me than doing what you told me to do, or I think you're stuffy and you don't let me have any fun, that's why I didn't do what you told me to do, because I was having fun.

If you were standing where I'm at and looking at the kids' faces, you would know they're sitting there like, yeah, that sounds about why I do stuff. And we as adults aren't any different than them. We're really pretty simple in our motivations. The Pharisees, the scribes, the elders, they were very simple in their desires and their motivations. They wanted to destroy Jesus. And the opposite of that is they wanted to protect themselves. And so they had a... prior commitment to not saying or doing anything that put them in harm's way. And if truth had to be sacrificed for that to be accomplished, so be it. So they refused to answer Jesus' question. We don't know. Can you imagine being in the crowds and hearing that answer? You've got leaders, Jesus and the Pharisees. Who are you supposed to follow? This is what's going on in your head, and this is the answer that you get. They plead ignorance. What are you supposed to do? What are the crowds supposed to do?

What are you supposed to do when there are Christian leaders who won't say what's true? Because they're protecting their reputation, or they're protecting their interests, or their bottom line, or whatever it is that's important to them. Recently, I had a friend of mine. I told you about him a couple weeks ago. He was having trouble in his church. One of the men that was discipling him, it turned out, was caught in sin. And the elders of the church, some of them knew about it, some of them didn't. But when the elder that didn't know about it found out, he said, I'm going to go talk to the other elders. And I'm sitting here going, okay, what's going to happen? Is truth going to prevail here? Or is the fact that it's a small church and this guy's prominent in the church, is that going to prevail? What's going to happen? What are the leaders going to do? Because they have a choice in front of them. They can protect their unity and their reputation and their status.

with this man. But it requires them to accommodate his sin. Or are they going to tell him no? And I didn't have a lot of hope that they were going to say no to him. I thought, you know what, they're going to be like, well, we're working with him and he's growing and just trust us. That's what I expected the answer to be. Because I know the pressure when you're in leadership to not want to say no to people. It's very difficult. It's hard. Because you're having to say no in the moment. And you don't know in the future what saying no will produce. But in the moment, you know they're going to get mad at you. They're going to be hurt. They're going to be offended.

It's all kinds of fallout. And so I was praying for the situation, talking to the young man, and he sends me a text and he says, this is what my pastor sent to me. And it was the most encouraging message because they disciplined the man. They told him, they took him out of every bit of ministry that he was in and apologized to all the people that they had foolishly put under his care. I was like, these people care about truth. They should have known sooner, but we can forgive, I can forgive all of that. They stood and said, no to this man for the sake of his soul and for all the souls that he was involved with. It was such an encouragement to me. They cared more about what was true than their reputation. This is a little tiny church in a small town, young, and one of the most integral men in their church. They disciplined him. It was just such a sweet thing to hear about. So I intend this week to call the pastor and to encourage him and say, thank you and you did the right thing. Because I know the temptation not to.

to try to find this middle ground where it's like, I can maintain a reputation and be faithful. But there was no way for them to do that in this situation. They had to tell the guy no in such a way that he understood the answer was no, and they did. Where what they could have said was, well, we don't know, and it's a particular situation, and we're working on it, and it wouldn't have been a faithful answer. So the Pharisees refused to answer Jesus' question, and Jesus replies to them, neither will I answer. nor will I tell you by what authority I do these things, and the confrontation is over. Now, there are two applications. The first has to do with truth. If you call yourself a Christian and you trust in Jesus for your salvation, you have to love his word and his truth more than you love everything, including your own life, your own reputation, your own trouble, your own hardship. You have to love him, and you have to follow him, even when it's difficult and when it's hard.

And you're going to face temptation to trim the edges of the truth and to say, well, no. It doesn't have to be that way. It doesn't have to be that intense. It doesn't have to be that hard. But I can tell you from experience, both being told no and having to say no, if you communicate in such a way that the person you're talking to understands that the answer is no, there's no easy way to do it. There's just not. And it's hard. If you were in Sunday school, I alluded to the first time that I was told no by a Christian. Looking back on it, I realized the cost to them telling me no. I was new to the church. Actually, I didn't even live there at the time. I was visiting regularly. And they said no to me. And the thing they said no to me about was Vanessa and my relationship. They said, this is no good. No. And the way they said it was, if she was my daughter, I wouldn't let you near her, whether you're a Christian or not, because the testimony of your life has been,

that you make a mess of things with women. And we wouldn't want to subject our daughter to that. Now, she's not our daughter. She's not even a member of this church. But you asked us what we thought, and that's what we think. We think you guys ought to break up. And at the time, I lived in Chicago, about four and a half hours away from where I was at. And I had to go get back in my car and drive back home. And then I had to decide what I was going to do. And it was very painful. It was very difficult for both Vanessa and me. And as I was processing through it, I'm thinking, why would they do that? Why would you say what they said? Who's ever, you know, who listens to that kind of stuff? Who gets told, you're a jerk, and says, you're right? None of us are wired to want to, I mean, sometimes by God's grace, we acknowledge the truth when someone says, you're a sinner, and you go, you're right. But most of the time, there's this thing that wells up inside of us that says, no, you can't say that about me. And that was,

One of my family members, when I was telling them about what happened, they said, how do they think they can say that to you? They don't even know you. And I'm like, but they're right. And how they got to be so right with so little knowledge of me is beyond me, but they're right. And I thought, why do these people say this? I'm bigger and tougher than they are, younger and stronger. And here they are going to tell me what kind of person I am. And I came away thinking first, well, they love Vanessa. And they were protecting Vanessa. And I love Vanessa. And so we actually have a shared interest. And so I can appreciate them saying that. That was good of them. Still hurt. Still wish there could have been another way. But good on them for loving her. I'm glad somebody's going to take care of her if I can. And the more I thought about it, I thought, you know, that's absolutely true and not the whole story. They actually love God. That's why they said what they said. And they said it to someone they had very little relationship with.

that lived in another state, they were willing to tell me the truth. And it was the most attractive thing to me, that they would love me and tell me no. So what I'm saying is it was actually a comfort to me to know that the people who were looking out for Vanessa and looking out for me actually cared about what God thought more than they cared about what I thought. That was a comfort and a protection to me, that they weren't bound up by what Dave Abusara thought of them when he was 22. three something, young. It was really a sweet thing. And I say they loved God more than they loved me. And I say, that's right. They loved the truth of God. They cared about his word and what he had to say and his law more than they cared about my impression of them or him. And it was a sweet thing. They cared about the truth. And it's set in such stark contrast with the Pharisees who didn't even, truth never even entered the conversation with them. They didn't care. They had their aim.

They were going to get it, and it didn't matter what collateral damage there was along the way. And so the first application to you is you need to concern yourself with the truth, what God has to say, no matter what the consequences are for you. You say, well, I can love the truth as long as it doesn't mean that. And I say, okay, well, I don't know if it means that, but what if it means that? What if it actually means that thing you're terrified of losing? What if that's what the truth requires of you? What are you to do then? It doesn't profit a man to gain the whole world and to lose his soul. Our dearest...

most closest desires are subordinate to the word of God. And we don't get to just decide that God wants it for us because we want it for us. Concern yourself with truth and upholding it no matter what the consequences are for you or for the people around you. The second thing has to do with how you handle your, the second application rather, has to do with how you conduct yourself in conflict. The first thing I want to say to you is don't be afraid of it. Don't be afraid of it. Do not fear the man who can kill your body and after that do no more, but rather fear God who after having killed your body can cast your soul into hell. You fear him. Yes, fear him. Don't be afraid of what people can say or do to you. Don't be afraid of conflict with them, which doesn't mean you're free to be a jerk to them or rude or behave however you want. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying to you is you're to be as innocent as a dove and as wily as a serpent. You realize Jesus, the question that's put to him,

He's very strategic in the way he answers it, or doesn't answer it, rather. Because this same question is put to him later when he stands before the Sanhedrin and he does answer it. And so basically what he did in this text is put off his death until he had finished his work on earth. He refused to answer the question because he knew full well what would happen if he answered it right then. And his work wasn't done on earth. And so he skirted the issue. It wasn't time to meet the conflict head on yet. And so you have to be wise about how you engage in conflict. There's a time to respectfully and quickly bow out of it and to say, it's not the time. You see Jesus doing this. You see Paul doing it. Hiding, being lowered down in baskets, being snuck out of cities. Every conflict that comes to you is not one you have to engage. It takes wisdom, though, to know how you should deal with it. Jesus doesn't diffuse the question and he doesn't dismiss it. He just doesn't answer it.

And this is the hard work of the Christian life, is knowing how do you navigate the waters of life? How do you make decisions? When do you engage? How do you engage? What do you say? What do you think but not say? What do you wait to say? This is the difficulty, isn't it? How do I conduct myself as a Christian in the midst of conflict? The first thing is you can't run away from it. You just can't run away from it. As your pat answer, whenever there's conflict, I do whatever I need to to get out of it. Well, that's not faithful. What would that have looked like if Jesus would have done that in this situation? If he would have backed down and, oh no, I'm sorry guys, I overstepped. I didn't mean to offend you. Can we work together and come to a mutual agreement about how temple worship ought to go and who I am? You realize he couldn't do that. And there are times when you're living your life where that's not an answer. A negotiation, a compromise of certain aspects of the discussion aren't on the table.

No, me saying yes to you is not an option. It doesn't mean I have to say no. It doesn't mean it has to be as nasty as it could be. But me going along with you is not going to. And we all face these sorts of things in our daily lives. How do we work it out? What do I say? Holidays are coming up. We got family. And how's that going to work? And what do I say about this? And how do I handle that situation at work? And by the way, my husband's a jerk and he doesn't listen to me. And whatever else is going on, this is what we deal with.

And I want you to know that you're not to deal with those things alone. If you've been here a while, you know that this is sort of one of the markers of our church, part of the DNA. Some of the things we care about is helping you process through these things, these conflicts, and how to conduct yourself as a Christian, how to fight the battle against sin and to win. And so don't bear those burdens alone. When you end up in these kinds of conflicts, don't, don't, don't. hold up by yourself and feel like, well, I've got to figure out how to do this and I've got to make the right decision and I've got to do it without any counsel. That's just silly. Ask for help. Here's what's going on. Here's what I've done so far. I think I've made a mess of it. Help me clean it up. What do you think I ought to do? Come talk to me. Come talk to the elders. Come talk to your small group leader or their wife. Find someone you think that is going to be helpful to you that you trust who isn't going to commiserate with you.

but is going to care about the truth more than you, and then tell them, here's what's going on. What should I do? And then do it. Don't be like the scribes and the elders who predetermine ahead of time what the outcome is going to be and sacrifice whatever you need to to get what you want. That doesn't end well. It's not satisfactory. Those men are not in heaven. They don't know Jesus. They're not enjoying themselves now. So don't sacrifice your comfort now for your soul later. Don't be afraid of conflict. Ask and learn how to conduct yourself as a Christian in the midst of it. That's our place and that's our work. Let's pray.