God’s Word for You
Mark 11:29-33 a deadly dilemma
by Pastor Timothy Smith on Friday, December 24, 2021
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 The baptism of John—was it from heaven or from men? Answer me.”
The Sanhedrin, the ruling council of the Jews, had long before been told by Jesus where his authority came from. This had all been gone through at the Feast of Tabernacles (John 7:25-29), and before that when he healed the paralyzed man (Matthew 9:8), and even before that, when he healed a demon possessed man in Capernaum (Mark 1:27). But Jesus wanted them to confess: Did they believe anything at all? If they truly believed the Scriptures, they would put their faith in him. If they truly believed that John was a prophet, what would they say? John had pointed to Jesus as the Christ. So he asked them about John. He wasn’t avoiding their question; he was trying to lead them to stop doubting and believe. Lenski fleshes out the full force of the question: “Jesus uses a deadly dilemma, a form of logic which caught the Sanhedrists with its two horns” (Mark p. 502).
The same kind of question could be asked today. You, who come to church once or twice a year, do you believe what you hear? Do you secretly, deep down, find comfort and joy from the message of the hymns, the Scripture passages, the recitation of the children? Does the gospel of the birth of the Son of God who came to save mankind stir something in you, some relief that there is forgiveness, something after death, some kind of reunion with loved ones long gone? Jesus asks: Well, do you believe it or not? Your secret joy isn’t doing anyone any good. Your hidden thrill at the manger looks to outsiders like nothing but a stone wall. You try to say, “I don’t have to go to church to be a Christian,” but does that answer Jesus’ command for us to gather together in churches (Matthew 16:18; Matthew 18:17; Revelation 2:1, 2:8, 2:12, 2:18, 3:1, 3:7, 3:14)? By staying away, you don’t edify anyone: “Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing” (Hebrews 10:25). You don’t support your wife’s faith. And worse, you nurture doubt in your children! Nobody will think less of you if you lift up your voice and sing, “Oh, come, let us adore him, Christ the Lord!” Nobody will think less of you if you don’t sound exactly like Bing Crosby when you sing it. So if you can come once or twice in a year, then come and hear the gospel once or twice in a month. Or more. Do you believe it, or not?
Jesus adds an insistent command: “Answer me!” He demands an immediate reply.
31 They discussed this with one another, saying, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will say, ‘Then why did you not believe him?’ 32 But if we say, ‘From men’….” (They feared the crowd, because everybody held that John really was a prophet.) 33 So they answered Jesus, “We don’t know.” Jesus said to them, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.”
They had stuck their necks out too far. They were so intent on killing Jesus that they set themselves up for their own kind of questioning. The same true answer about John was the true answer about Jesus. If they admitted anything about John, including why they had failed to challenge or silence John, then they would show their hypocrisy about Jesus.
That left them with no option, in their opinion. Either I collapse into nothing and follow Jesus, or I turn on him and keep the power and glory I’ve made for myself in the world. Will I trade today for eternity, or trade eternity for today? Man, all mankind, must become nothing. We must step around the ruined, rotting corpse of the Sanhedrin and become nothing. We must give up trying to win the approval of men, or we cannot be the servants of Christ (Galatians 1:10). To give up everything means giving up on our own righteousness, admitting that our sins ruin us in God’s sight, and that we can only be made whole, healthy, and righteous in God’s sight through God’s work and not our own. Let Christ fix me, for I am broken! Let Christ heal me, for I am deathly ill! Let Christ raise me, for I am dead if left to myself. I have all the righteousness and life and personal glory of a stone in manure. When the lint from the lint trap gets wet, and there is just a disgusting wet handful of goo left, then we might recognize what we truly are apart from Christ. This is the condition the Sanhedrin chose in their stubbornness.
Fall down before Jesus! Fall at the manger, at the cross, at every path he took between; worship him and throw yourself on his mercy, and know with a content and comforted heart that he has indeed shown you mercy. Whatever idols of stubbornness any of us once had, we have been turned away from them to faith in Christ, “to serve the living and true God’ (1 Thessalonians 1:9), “and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath” (1 Thessalonians 1:10). His mercy endures forever.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in New Ulm, Minnesota. To receive God’s Word for You via e-mail, please visit the St. Paul’s Lutheran Church website.