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Feb 02, 2025

Who's In Charge Around Here?

Passage: Mark 11:27-12:12

Preacher: John Repsold

Series: Mark

Keywords: stewardship, worship, leadership, authority, repentance, fruit, conviction

Summary:

Authority is baked into virtually every aspect of life. This message looks at the authority Jesus claims over our lives and how we can respond to that in a life-giving way.

Detail:

Who’s In Charge Around Here?

Mark 11:27-12:12

February 2, 2025

Fellowship Question:  Who has been one of your favorite authority figures in your life and why? 

INTRO:

Authority is baked into life. 

  • Family: someone has to be in charge.  I’m not talking about making all the decisions or being heavy-handed about leadership.  Just between parents and children, from toddlers to teenagers, either the kids are in charge or the parents are in charge.  Authority is baked into family life.
  • Business: the owners/shareholders, CEOs and supervisors are in charge.  The people who walk into the grocery store aren’t in charge.  If they think they are, they’ll probably get arrested fairly soon…or the store will fail.  Authority is baked into business.
  • Government: whether we’re talking about law enforcement or the Supreme Court, certain people in government have authority while others don’t.  A lot of those boundaries of authority are getting tested of late in the Executive Branch as millions of government workers were recently told they must actually “go to work” in order to get a paycheck.  Authority is baked into government.

We could go on and name just about every institution in existence whether schools, churches, non-profits, neighborhoods, clubs, highways, the internet, etc.  Authority is baked into every level and facet of life. 

            It’s human nature to challenge authority.  If you don’t believe that, you haven’t raised children.  Everywhere you go, people want to know, “Who died and left you in charge?” That is especially true when someone does something that threatens the status quo.  Those who are or have been in charge want to know, “Who gave you the authority to do that?” 

            Today we’re going to try and look at two different incidents in the Gospel of Mark which both deal with authority.  One is another encounter Jesus had with the religious authorities in the Temple.  The other is a parable Jesus went on to tell about those authorities and the authority they were under and that had been delegated to them.  Together these two incidents have a lot to tell us about God’s authority in our lives and how we may or may not be relating to Him as we should. 

PRAY

Mark 11:27-33

27 They arrived again in Jerusalem, and while Jesus was walking in the temple courts, the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the elders came to him. 28 “By what authority are you doing these things?” they asked. “And who gave you authority to do this?”

29 Jesus replied, “I will ask you one question. Answer me, and I will tell you by what authority I am doing these things. 30 John’s baptism—was it from heaven, or of human origin? Tell me!”

31 They discussed it among themselves and said, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will ask, ‘Then why didn’t you believe him?’ 32 But if we say, ‘Of human origin’ …” (They feared the people, for everyone held that John really was a prophet.)

33 So they answered Jesus, “We don’t know.”

Jesus said, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.”

BACKGROUND:      This story follows on the heals of Jesus driving the moneychangers and market-makers out of the Temple. He’s now back a couple of days after that table-turning encounter. And the people in charge of the franchise system that was making money off of worship requirements are feeling the pinch.  After all, they considered themselves the top-dogs when it came to the Temple.  Herod and Caesar might be over them in the grand scheme of things.  But there was NO other human on earth that trumped their authority when it came to the Temple. 

            So finding Jesus back on the Temple mount, they decided to bring this thing to a head.  They want to know who possibly could have given him the authority to intrude on their area of expertise and authority.  I’m sure they had already talked among themselves to be sure that none of them had messed up and given Jesus a permit to play “court monitor”.   The top dogs in the Temple pecking order certainly hadn’t. 

            I don’t think that Jesus’ answer to them was an attempt to make them look bad publicly (which was apparently a really important thing to them).  Jesus’ answers them with a question that is designed to help them actually answer their own question while giving them another opportunity to face the condition of their hearts.  How they had responded to God’s previous revelation of Himself to them through John the Baptist was the critical indicator of how they would respond to Jesus—the fuller revelation of God. 

            Dr. Luke in his Gospel includes a very revealing statement in regard to this in Luke 7:29-30-- 29 (All the people, even the tax collectors, when they heard Jesus’ words, acknowledged that God’s way was right, because they had been baptized by John. 30 But the Pharisees and the experts in the law rejected God’s purpose for themselves, because they had not been baptized by John.)

APP:  How people respond to God’s representatives in this life is usually a clear reflection of how they are responding to God himself and God’s design and purposes for them.  It all comes down to who is in charge of your life.  Luke noted that even the most hardened sinners of his day (“even the tax collectors”) were more open to God’s leadership in their lives than were those who you would naturally think would be most anxious for God’s will to be worked out over their lives—the clergy of the day. 

Sensitivity to the conviction of the Spirit about sin in our lives is one of the primary prerequisites for embracing God’s purposes for our lives.  Conversely, resistance to the convicting work of God leading us to repentance will lead to callousness.  It’s a matter of who is in charge. 

If I allow the Holy Spirit to be the one to tell me what is right and wrong, moral and immoral, then I’m submitting to the necessary baby steps in the process of learning to submit to God’s authority in my life.  But if I rebuff the convicting work of God whether directly in my conscience or through the conviction that comes by being around righteous people of God, I will inevitably reject the broader and greater plans of God for my life. 

APP:  This is why how people outside of Christ respond to genuine followers of Jesus is truly important and telling.  Jesus told his disciples that

John 15:18-19-- 18 “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. 19 If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you.

Jesus, speaking to the 72 that he sent out in Luke 10:16 said this, “Whoever listens to you listens to me; whoever rejects you rejects me; but whoever rejects me rejects him who sent me.”

APP:  Like it or not, when we are truly walking with Christ, our very lives will be like the call of John the Baptist to repentance. 

  • The fact that you don’t swear like the rest of your coworkers on the job site will itself convict your coworkers that they are not fulfilling God’s purposes to use their tongues to bless rather than curse.
  • The fact that you treat your sexuality as something holy, a gift of God to be kept pure in marriage, will be like a convicting message from John the Baptist to your peers who are defiling God’s plan for their gift of sexuality.

This is why holy living in Christ matters so much.  God intended our lives to be something that calls people to the beauty of having God in charge of life.  But to those who refuse His great and marvelous plans and purposes for their lives, the life of anyone around them truly submitted to God will most likely confirm them in their rebellion. 

            Jesus’ answer to their question of His authority to call them to account for their sin was to ask them a question.  Rather than simply state, “Well, my authority comes from God himself,” he forced them to wrestle with the root of their rejection of Him, namely their rejection of repentance and the convicting ministry of John the Baptist.  He knew they needed to respond to a previous work of God in their lives (John the Baptist) before they could respond to the work of God in the present (Jesus).

            This brings us to a spiritual principle that applies as much to us as it does to unbelievers rejecting the Lordship of Jesus.

God graciously does not give us greater revelations of truth than we are willing to respond to. 

Stated another way, failing to respond to what God has already spoken to us about will mute God’s speaking to us about further things. 

ILL:  When we pray The Lord’s Prayer--Failure to forgive others as God has forgiven us will limit God’s answers to us about other things in life.  EX:  a believer I know who has cut off all relationship with their parents out of some bitterness about the past.  Ever since, they have had continual, confusing, non-specific health issues along with nearly 30 surgeries, none of which has helped them get better. 

  • Period in my life when I wasn’t hearing from God about future direction until I truly submitted to His purposes for my life at the time which was to learn that God was more than enough for my life desires even if I never got the other things I longed for. I needed to really let go of those desires so that I could truly take hold of Him.  I needed God to “be in charge” of my life and longings more than I had ever let Him be.  When that happened, so much changed…and the doors came open to His greater purposes for my life. 

This principle of God’s continued revelation of Himself and His will for us depending on our continuous decisions to put Him in charge, applies to both those without Jesus today and us who know him today. 

APP:  Is there anything in my life in which I’m resisting God being the complete boss, the final authority?    Sometimes the silence of God in one area of our lives might be due to our resistance to God in another area. 

 

Let’s move onto the second snapshot, the parable of the vineyard owner and the lousy tenants.  Mark 12:1-12

Jesus then began to speak to them in parables: “A man planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a pit for the winepress and built a watchtower. Then he rented the vineyard to some farmers and moved to another place. At harvest time he sent a servant to the tenants to collect from them some of the fruit of the vineyard. But they seized him, beat him and sent him away empty-handed. Then he sent another servant to them; they struck this man on the head and treated him shamefully. He sent still another, and that one they killed. He sent many others; some of them they beat, others they killed.

“He had one left to send, a son, whom he loved. He sent him last of all, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’

“But the tenants said to one another, ‘This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’ So they took him and killed him, and threw him out of the vineyard.

“What then will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others. 10 Haven’t you read this passage of Scripture:

“‘The stone the builders rejected
    has become the cornerstone;
11 the Lord has done this,
    and it is marvelous in our eyes’?”

12 Then the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the elders looked for a way to arrest him because they knew he had spoken the parable against them. But they were afraid of the crowd; so they left him and went away.

This too, is a parable about “Who’s in charge?” 

So here is the clear meaning of this parable.  BTW, parables are a story with a central meaning and some related sub-points. 

            The central meaning of this parable is clarified in vs. 12—The religious leaders “knew he had spoken the parable against them.”  They were the “farmers” to whom God had “rented the vineyard” of the Promised Land.  God had done all the work of preparing this property for them.  He had made it fruitful.  He had put up the “wall” of his divine protection around His people.  God had done the work of bringing them into this place the first time under the Exodus from Egypt and the second time under the return from Babylon. 

            They had enjoyed hundreds of years in this vineyard.  And when God had sent to them the prophets, His “servants,” to “collect from them some of the fruit of the vineyard,” they had rejected those servants, despised most of them, killed some of them and continued to live as if this was their property, their nation, their land and for their personal enrichment rather than something to steward for the one who really owned all they were enjoying. 

            Jesus’ reference to the “the son, whom he [the owner] loved” who was sent last in hopes they would respect and finally obey, was a clear reference to himself.  The absolute injustice and evil of killing a close family member of the one who owned the property these “farmer-renters” were absconding with was clear to all.  The story was designed to elicit a visceral reaction in anyone who had the least bit of conscience about injustice. 

ILL:  Watching a movie a couple of nights ago with twin-plots of injustice, both racial and judicial, reminded me again that even secularists in Hollywood recognize and write scripts that appeal to the most fundamental and basic sense of justice.  This is what Jesus was doing with this parable.  Watching injustice unfold is maddening and it should move us to say, “No.  That is wrong.  That is evil.  That must be stopped and punished.”  And that was precisely why Jesus told this parable.  It was like making a movie in our day that galvanized people’s sense of justice and injustice. 

            But it only worked for people who were still letting their souls and consciences be informed by the authority of God.  For those religious leaders who saw themselves as the ultimate and final authority rather than God, it served to harden them in their moral callousness.

Jesus’ words in vs. 9 were meant as both warning and prophecy.   

“What then will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others.

As we’ve noted in earlier weeks, this is precisely what happened in 70 A.D., some 40 years later, when Jerusalem was brutally destroyed by Roman General, Titus, under the rule of the Roman Emperor, Vespasian.  The Temple was completely destroyed and the priesthood came to a complete end.  It has never been restored since.  And in a much grander way, the “vineyard” of the people of God was given to “others”—to the Gentile world itself and more specifically to the church that is now called upon to steward the kingdom of God.  WE are now the farmers, the sharecroppers.

            Which brings us to the necessary application of this parable to us today.  While “the Church of Jesus Christ” has not, I believe, completely replaced Israel and the Jewish people in the plan of God, clearly the stewardship of God’s kingdom has been at least temporarily transferred to the church.  While the “stump” of Israel remains in the world, we have been “grafted in” (Romans 11:17, 19) as the church.  Paul was clear that, if they don’t persist in unbelief, the Jews will be “grafted in” again to this plan of God (Rm. 11:23-24). 

            But for now, WE are the “tenants” of this God-built vineyard called “the Church.”  So, what are we to do with the vineyard?  Let’s observe a few things from this parable without stretching it farther than Jesus intended.

1.) God owns the vineyard of the church, not us.  Treat the church with the value God places on it.  No part of the Church belongs to any of us.  It belongs to God.  This isn’t “my church”.  It isn’t “your” church.  It is only in the sense that we belong to it; it does not belong to us. 

            What we do to this vineyard…to each other…really matters.  To care for, build, steward and enjoy the church of Jesus today is to be good farmers in the field.  To neglect, ignore, or worse yet, damage this vineyard, the church, is to do damage to God’s property, God’s handiwork. 

ILL:  former pastor, who I had given a “second chance” to after he had been dismissed by a previous church, once came to me after he had been leading a large Sunday School class for about 2 years—“You know, I could split this church if I wanted to.”  (That after I had spent years trying to heal it from an ugly split.)  “Yes, you probably could.  But you’d be messing with God’s church, not mine.” 

APP:   It is a joy to be a part of this grand “farming experience” of the church with people who love the vineyard so much.  It is a wonderful experience to be “working the land” with people who recognize and long to live out having Jesus “in charge” of their lives as well as this church.  It is pure joy to see so many of you enjoying the place and people God has given us to cultivate, to care for and to steward in this corner of the world. 

            In many ways, we are in a field of abundance.  There is an abundance of joy here as people’s lives are being rescued.  There is an abundance of fellowship as people are ministering side-by-side, planting new lives in Christ, trimming off old habits and hang-ups, lifting up and strengthening lives that may have been trampled upon by the world or soiled by sin.  

APP:  If you’re enjoying the vineyard, keep it up!  Keep laboring in it “as unto Jesus” because He truly is the one who owns the church and deserves the fruit.  Don’t let it become a burden.  Don’t think it all depends on you; it doesn’t.  Learn to enjoy some of the fruit of your labors while doing it all for the Owner, Jesus.

 

2.) Live like the farmer God has called you to be.  Just as God had called Israel to build a nation of people who showed the world what God was like and drew others to that experience of living under the authority of God, so we, the Church, are called to do the same.  Christ has called us to work in his field, to enjoy the fruits of our labor, to make life around us green, fruitful, safe and sanctified.  That’s just the joy of living in this household called “The People of God,” “the Church.”  We get to work…and we get to enjoy farm life.

            Farmers are workers.  Whether you’re the farmers wife in the kitchen canning, cooking meals for the farm hands, balancing the books and ordering the supplies, OR whether you’re the person herding the cattle, tilling the soil, maintaining and running the tractors or picking the harvest, farm families work together.  Farming is work.  So is “spiritual farming” which is what this parable is all about. 

            Again, this is truly one of the greatest joys in this “farm family” of Mosaic.  So many are working at so much that is really growing on this “farm.”  I think God rejoices over us in that.

            And if you’re felling like you’re missing out, if you’re hearing the stories of others around you laboring in the fields of people’s lives and you’re wishing those were your stories, feel free to click off the remote and come, say, to pray.  Maybe it will mean leaving work a little earlier one evening a week in time to join a ministry team (like Worship, Missions or Youth or Changing Lives).  Maybe it will involve sitting in on a Discovery Bible Study dinner in one of the buildings or being part of the Kid’s Team that invests in those parents’ children as they study the Word.  Building the people of God, this vineyard called the Church, IS our calling as spiritual farmers. 

APP:  My advice: don’t hesitate to get close to a fellow-farmer who can teach you how to grow in skill and effectiveness in this spiritual farming enterprise called the church.  Ask one of the pastors or leaders around here how to do that.  Join any one of the teams or groups of people building the kingdom through consistent ministry to others.  Develop those daily disciplines of fruitful servants that help you be a fruitful follower of Jesus Christ.  Grab someone you respect and see as spiritually fruitful and figure out a way to just spend time with them learning. 

 

3.) Rejoice in the blessings you can give back to our divine Landlord. When God is actually in charge of our lives, life becomes really fruitful and the Owner’s requests for occasional “rent” become opportunities for gratitude and thanksgiving. 

ILL:  about 7 or 8 years ago, we got a loan from the bank in order to buy this building.  I think it’s at about 2.5% interest which looks pretty darn great right now.  I think they loaned us about $500,000-600,000.  So, every month, we pay about $5,000 which is about 12% of our annual income. 

            Whenever I see that payment go out the door, I don’t groan, I rejoice.  I’m grateful for a bank that trusts us with that much money.  I’m grateful for an interest rate that is manageable.  I’m grateful for a church that is that generous and faithful. I’m grateful every day I walk around this place for the blessing of this place, where we are in the city and who we are able to bless with this. 

            That’s how I know most of you feel about the opportunities God gives all of us in this journey together to “give back to God” a little of the “fruit” from our lives and from His kingdom that he has entrusted to us.  Every weekend, virtually every day of the week, is an opportunity to say to God, “Thank you for the privilege of being in your vineyard, the Church.  Thank you for filling my life with SO much life in Christ.  Thank you for delivering me from the train-wreck of running my own life.”

“Here.  Take some of the fruit this life you blessed me with has given.  Take some of my…

  • Time that you blessed me with this week.
  • Love that I can share with children, youth and adults needing it.
  • Money that you gave me this week.
  • Speech that I can now bring as praise and worship to you.
  • Skills in cooking or encouraging or teaching or coaching that I can use to just say, “Thank You, Lord of the Church.”
  • Energy & health that you have filled me with and with which I can now express my gratitude to you for by sharing it with someone who has a bit less than I do.

CLOSE:

  • Who is really in charge of your life? Is Jesus really the cornerstone of it all?  Have you embraced Jesus Christ as your Savior and Lord?  (Call to repentance & faith.)
  • Are you enjoying giving back some of the fruit of the “vineyard/farm of life” God has blessed you with back to Him? Thank Him for that often.
  • Need help figuring out how to do that? Don’t just walk away; walk into the life of someone who can help you do that, here or in some ministry you feel called to.