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Sermon
The Gospel of Matthew

Jesus’ Authority

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July 26, 2026
Matthew 21:23–27
Sam Crabtree
Pastor for Care

Transcript

0:16"And when he entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came up to him as he was teaching and said, 'By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?' And Jesus answered them, 'I also will ask you one question, and if you tell me the answer, I will tell you by what authority I do these things. The baptism of John, from where did it come? From heaven?' Hmm? 'Or from man?' And they discussed it among themselves, saying, 'If we say from heaven, he will say to us, "Why then did you not believe him?" But if we say from man, we're afraid of the crowd, for they all hold that John was a prophet.' So they answered Jesus, 'We do not know.' And he said to them, 'Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things.'" Our Father, I ask now that you would come by your Spirit and penetrate the very core of our hearts, and let the meditations of our hearts on this text be pleasing in your sight.

1:38Amen. Does Jesus have more authority in my life than I do? The aim of this message this morning is to help us see the authority of Jesus and gladly surrender to him. And if you miss the point of this text, you'll miss Jesus. Though our text is about chief priests and elders of the people and about Jesus, I ask you to see yourself in this text. So let's look. We're preaching through the Gospel of Matthew, and the entire Book of Matthew can be summed up in three words like this: Jesus is king. We were singing about it this morning. Brian Hansen, that was an outstanding prayer. I just feel like we could close the service. I don't know why you want to listen to me for the next few minutes, but that was great.

2:39Jesus is king. He's a particular kind of a king called Messiah, but a king has authority, and a king with no authority is no king. So authority is the crux of the issue in our text. When they ask, "By what authority are you doing these things?" What things do they have in mind? Well, a couple of days previous to this, he made this triumphal entry into Jerusalem, where the crowds were singing Hosanna, and he received that from them. He just cursed somebody's fig tree as though it was his, and the day before this, he entered the temple, and he entered it as if his father owned the place, and he cleansed it, overturning tables, and in the process, healing the lame and the blind.

3:32He called it his Father's house. If those chief priests that were there were old enough that they had been there 20 years or so, they might have remembered that he was there when he was 12, confounding them and saying he must be about his Father's business. When this table-turning episode is recorded by Mark instead of Matthew, Mark notes that Jesus did not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. So I ask you to ask yourself this morning whether he's simply putting a stop to the money changing, which he was, or is he closing the temple permanently, ending Judaism. Because by Friday, he's going to be the final sacrifice.

4:23No more sacrifices. He will have fulfilled the sacrificial system. So by what authority are you doing these things? These things are a big deal. And who are these chief priests? Well, they're not just passersby, but they come from the cultural power center as official gatekeepers. They consider the temple their turf. So the chief priests ask, "Who gave you this authority? Who made you the sheriff?" And to question Jesus' authority is to assert one's own authority over him. It's to put him in the dock, and you consider yourself the jury. So to ask by what authority, it's not the wrong question.

5:11It's a legitimate question, but it's asked with the wrong attitude, the wrong aim. They don't want to identify what is your authority. They want to stifle that authority, squelch that authority. When they raise the question of his authority, his question back to them raises the question of their competence to recognize true authority, even when they're looking right at it. They're demanding to see his credentials when they don't even know what constitutes good credentials. They can't tell a ball from a strike. They don't consider things like his miracles that he's done. He just healed some people right in front of them, and then they ask for, "What's your authority?"

5:55They don't consider his fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies. Furthermore, one's sinful nature, like theirs, like ours corrupts our ability to see things accurately. If we here are half as sinful as the Bible says we are, and the Bible says our righteousness is as filthy rags, then we, like the chief priests, are not able to rightly diagnose our own problems. We must look to God for right understanding. We dread looking candidly at ourselves through God's lens, for we might find ourselves to be half-hearted, self-obsessed, self-deceived, God-belittling, neighbor-coveting creatures. And I hate to admit to myself how much I can be that way, and this all smells very bad to God.

6:58We need a great Savior. The chief priests in our text, they don't ask about the content of his teaching, but has he followed procedure? Did he check with the committee? Does he have a permission slip? And Jesus answers, in effect, "I don't need your permission." They don't see who they're talking to. Do we see who we're talking about? Do we believe what we just sang about the King? Now, Jesus' answer when he says, "Now let me bring up John's baptism," he's not being evasive. Their answer is evasive. "We don't know."

7:50I've got to keep myself on track here. I could go down a rabbit trail there. By bringing up John, Jesus is not changing the subject, but he's focusing on the subject, authority. By what authority did John baptize? And he's testing to see if these chief priests are swine, because earlier in Matthew, he said, "Don't cast your pearls before swine." And since they demonstrate they don't know how to receive and steward truth, he's not going to give them any pearls of truth. He doesn't give them facts because they don't want to know the facts. By the way, don't you marvel at how untrappable he is? He just can't get sucked in.

8:41As D.A. Carson says, "Rejection of revelation." So you've been given something and you reject it. "Rejection of revelation already given is indeed a slender basis on which to ask for more." So they're asking Jesus, "Give us your credentials." And he's already given them credentials. He did a healing right there in front of them. Jesus is basically saying, "By giving me the correct answer to my question, you will have the answer to your question." Their unbelief is not owing to insufficient evidence, but suppression of evidence already given.

9:30He's saying, "If you can't recognize John's authority, then you won't recognize mine because it's the same authority." If you don't recognize the goose, you won't recognize the gander. Now, having heard Jesus' answer, they find themselves in a bit of a quandary because if they say John's ministry is from God, that puts them at odds with Herod, who killed John. And they want to cozy up to Herod to stabilize their own standing in the community, their position. They actually want to destroy Jesus. That's what Mark says in chapter 11. He says, "They conspire to destroy him." Their goal isn't to receive God's authorized messenger, but destroy him.

10:23Instead of trying to determine the truth, they're calculating, "What are the consequences if we say this or we say that?" And this is sinister. In their little huddle there, Satan is in that huddle. Now, we should ask, what is authority? Here is a definition. Authority is jurisdiction with the power and the right to command and expect obedience. Now, what authority does Jesus have? I scanned the Gospel of Matthew asking, "Over what does Jesus have authority?" And I made a list of over 100 things. Let me give you a sampling. His authority is rare, singularly rare. He has authority over wind and waves.

11:22In the Old Testament, only Yahweh had control over wind and waves. Jesus is God. He controls water in jars and in floods. He has authority over paralysis and over forgiveness. Listen to Luke 5:24. "But that you may know that the Son of God has authority on earth to forgive sins," he said to the man who was paralyzed, "I say to you, rise, pick up your bed, and go home." Do you see the coupling there? He has authority over paralysis, and he has authority to forgive sins. Aren't you glad he has the authority to forgive ours?

12:14Jesus also has the authority to curse. We saw it in the fig tree last week. He has authority over death. Consider Lazarus. He has authority over leprosy. Nobody would touch it. He would touch it. He has authority to touch it. Others who would touch it would become unclean. He touches the unclean, and they become clean. He has authority over pigs, thousands of them, and when they go over a cliff, he put the cliff there, and he put the lake at the bottom.

13:00He commands authority over diseases and injuries. That means he has authority over cells in our bodies. Organs and tissues obey him. They do better than we do. He has authority over demons. He has authority over men and their livelihoods. He can call them out of one livelihood into another livelihood. He wields authority and power over weather. Atmospheric conditions yield to him. They were invented by him, and they're sustained by him. And on today, when there's a heat warning index of 99 degrees or whatever, don't you wish that you could exert authority over today's weather? He can. He did. He has authority over muteness, and we see Jesus demonstrating authority over boats and storms, and when he walked on water, whatever it may have looked like, and I'm sure curious to know what it looked like, if he was doing this on the waves or if he just flattened out the-- I don't know how he did it.

14:10He was neither swimming nor levitating. He had no craft, no flotation device, no sailboard, no paddle. What he had was authority. With authority over Simon, he changes his name to Peter. He has authority over taxes. Now, he argues that as the son of a king, he is under no obligation to pay taxes, and he has no obligation to human authorities. He has authority. He is authority. He is free, and yet he pays taxes. And as you know, fish don't normally have shekels in their mouths, and even if there was one in a million that did have a shekel in its mouth, what are the odds that such a fish is precisely the one that Peter would catch on the first catch of his hook, first cast of his hook? Jesus has authority over Peter. He has authority over the sea. He has authority over the fish.

15:10He has authority over the hook. He has authority over the shekel because he has authority over everything in heaven and on Earth. A few sermons ago, in Matthew 20, Jesus demonstrates authority over blindness. He need not draw near the two blind men to heal them. He could heal them from a distance, could heal them from anywhere. But take note, they're blind before they're healed.

15:46He has authority over their seeing and over their blindness, both. Even by default, one would have to calculate that by not yet healing them, he had designated their blindness. God is behind the blindness of all the blind. As God said to Moses in Exodus 4, "Who has made man's mouth? Who makes him mute or deaf or seeing or blind? Is it not I, the Lord?" And Jesus knew in advance that the donkey and the colt would be there, that we read a couple of weeks ago. He possesses authority over taking them and authority over directing the disciples to do the fetching. He exercises authority, as we saw before and we're seeing in today's text, over the temple, and those who occupy it, and those who rule there.

16:51Jesus possesses authority over this sermon, and this room, and everyone in it, and he will be the final judge of whether it is a faithful sermon to the text or not, helpful or not, fruitful or not so much, and he has authority over your response to it. He shows that he, by eating grain on the Sabbath, has authority over the Sabbath, and by inference, he's claiming that he has authority over Mosaic law, days of the week, and cropland. He's claiming authority over all of Judaism and its laws, and over the Pharisees themselves. He has authority over genealogy, where you came from, even the relatives you have never met several generations ago.

17:46He has authority over prophecy and history and the structure of the universe. We read it in the text together in unison before. The structure of the universe. This wood holds together because his word says so. He has authority over relationships, spiritual dynamics, of relative values, one thing being more important than another. He has authority over how things are and how they work. As the Bible says, "He upholds the universe by the word of His power." Jesus has authority wherever you look. You can't look anywhere where He does not have authority. As Abraham Kuyper famously put it, "There's not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign over all, does not cry, 'Mine!'" Now, let's look more closely at one aspect of His authority.

18:48He has authority over wind and waves and wine and women and all kinds of stuff, but let's look at one thing here in this text He has authority over, namely speaking. He speaks with authority. Let me go back to Mark, his first chapter. He said, "They went to Capernaum, and immediately on the Sabbath He entered the synagogue and was teaching, and they were astonished at His teaching, for He taught them as one who had authority, and not as the scribes." Ooh, poke them in the eye. Now, how does one teach with authority? What marks authoritative teaching? Let me give you several markers. One, Jesus' teaching is self-authenticating.

19:34He speaks unilaterally without consulting anyone. He says, "But I say to you." In contrast, the scribes have to huddle up and try to come to a consensus. Jesus has the last word. He makes no retractions, whereas the scribes keep amending their law books. Jesus fearlessly exercises dominion. The scribes are afraid of losing their place. Not Jesus. He asks no permission. He doesn't need a permission slip. The scribes send to Pilate and they send to Herod, and they're looking for some authorization to come from somewhere. Jesus doesn't need any. He's got it. Jesus makes no apology. He confesses no sin.

20:22What a way to talk. If you never apologize, you're arrogant, conceited. Not Jesus. Jesus is not sucked into tricky questions scribes pose as veiled traps. Jesus loves His listeners, even the scribes, and without exception, He speaks for the sake of their well-being. The scribes love themselves, and they try to trick and trap their listeners. They lay obligations on them. His teaching is authoritative. Their teaching is authoritarian. Jesus' authority to speak forgiveness was validated by supernatural, miraculous signs as we've noted. The scribes operated in natural flesh. Jesus' authority was validated by the obedience of demons.

21:26In contrast, the scribes were powerless over demons. Listen again to Mark. "And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying out with a loud voice, came out of him. And they were all amazed, so that they questioned among themselves saying, 'What is this? A new teaching with authority. He commands even unclean spirits, and they obey him.'" That's authoritative talking, authoritative speech. Jesus' authoritative teaching had the effect of astonishing the people with His wisdom and grace. The scribes teaching the same old law and obligation, and the people could smell the difference.

22:11So in response to Jesus' multiple choice question, namely, "John's baptism, where did it come from? From heaven or from man?" They say, "We cannot tell." Be warned, dear friends, the effort to conceal one's own heart is seen by God. Can't you even see their hearts in this? Can't you see their duplicity, their cowardice, their evasiveness? That duplicity will be found out and judged severely.

22:54It's not that they can't tell. They won't. "We will not tell, for we will not have this man as our Messiah, our King." Because if we acknowledge that John, the forerunner, is from God, then we need to heed what he said, and what he said is, "There's one coming after him who was before him, whose sandals he's not worthy to unlatch, one about whom he says, 'Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.' And we must of necessity welcome this Jesus as Christ, and we're not going to do it."

23:32From heaven or from man? They're not interested in either answer. They didn't give two cents for the truth. They're not interested in the truth. They're suppressing the truth. They do not respond with "Hosanna!" like the crowds did a few days earlier. They're being evasive, evading the truth, and as a result, salvation will evade them. They'll reap what they've sown. "We don't know." In our day, it's called agnosticism. Don't know. Which is often not driven by intellectual puzzlement, but unrighteousness. It's a cop-out. "I don't know" means I don't believe, and I don't want to These priests are not embarrassed by their duplicity.

24:28It's typical. A Pharisaical kind of pride can pretend to know everything. "Oh, I know all about that." Or, "I don't know anything about that. I'm puzzled by that," when it's A or B. Is it from heaven or somewhere else? You could toss a coin. They suppress the truth, refuse to believe. It's not just that they lack faith, they squelch belief. As we will see in next week's sermon text, get this verse: "For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him. But the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him. And even when you saw it, you did not afterward change your minds and believe him." It's a faith question.

25:22So Jesus has authority. It's the main point of this text and this sermon. There is no higher authority than Jesus, and he's the great dividing line. Either you recognize his absolute authority over everything. That's what he's going to say about himself by the time we get to the end of Matthew in this sermon series. He's got all authority in heaven and on earth. Either you recognize his absolute authority, his lordship, or you don't. You hedge, you qualify it, you nuance it, or reject it. It won't work to accept some of his authority. To not receive him as absolute Lord is to not receive the real Jesus.

26:17In light of his complete authority, consider Colossians 1. It says, "He holds all things together." Now, I'm going after something here. I'm going to couple something to authority here, namely his love for you is linked to his authority. So see if you can follow this. By his authority, holding all things together, he held together the thorns that plowed his brow.

26:53He made them stab him. And when in his thirst there was less saliva in him than on him from the spitting, it was his authority that was holding that spitting there, and that enabled them to spit. He empowered them to do it. He was granting breath to his executioners, an execution that did not rightfully belong to him, but to a sinner like me. The spikes holding him to the cross were held there by him, the one who has all authority. He could have dissolved them. He could have pulled them out and thrown them in a ditch. He could have called legions of angels to set him free. He didn't do it. He had authority to do it, didn't do it.

27:57He used his authority for something else. He felt the hot breath of the Father's wrath and did not take the escape hatch. His authority was at work on the cross, loving us by taking the punishment we deserve, and now authoritatively praying for us. Right now, he's praying for us. The authoritative lover of your soul is the one calling you to obey. We need a great Savior.

28:40The great Savior we need is the great Savior we have. Good news is that his word and his love are more powerful than our disobedience. Romans 1. No, Romans 8. "Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—again, who's at the right hand of the Father, indeed interceding for us." And what will separate us from the love of Christ? Not tribulation, not distress, not persecution, not peril, not nakedness, not famine, not sword.

29:24I'm persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor things present or things to come, nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus, our Lord, because he has all authority. He can overcome everything because his love is working for us, and his love will continue to work for us because he has authority. So how shall we respond to this authority? Four things. One, because of his authority, praise him. Tell him he's great. Right now, sitting in your chair, you might silently whisper to him, "You are really something.

30:09You are really great. Amen to your authority. You're God, and I'm not." Number two, because he uses his authority for your good, don't just praise him, love him. Love him. Let your affection for him grow, and that affection will be demonstrated by, number three, love your neighbor as commanded. Obedience is basically surrender to an authority. And he says, "If you love me, keep my commandments." Honor my authority. Surrender in obedience to me if you love me. So if you see his authority, praise him. Because he's working his authority for your good, love him. If you love him, obey him. And fourth, sing the following song with heartfelt earnestness. So as I pray, the worship team's going to come up here, and you get your heart ready to sing.

31:12Father in heaven, we come to you in the name of your authoritative Son, who clears away all the obstacles so that we can come to you. We don't need any more oxen, bulls, goats, pigeons, high priests. We have a high priest who's at your right hand interceding for us. He's using his authority for our everlasting good so that there would be fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore at your right hand.

31:43He's using his authority for our good. We come to you in his name, asking that you would continue to pour out your favor upon us. Help us to gaze upon him, to see him, to love him, become like him. And now, help us to sing this song. Amen.

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Sermon Text

Matthew 21:23–27

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