Hey, my friends. It's Matt. This is the 10 minute Bible hour podcast. This is already a short podcast, but this is going to be an extra short one because I just want to make one simple point here.

We looked at this passage yesterday where Jesus demonstrates an incredible wit in the moment. The smarmy religious leaders are sneaking up to him. They're super happy that he's back in the temple teaching.

And they put their character on display and he puts his character on display. And I just want to contrast these two characters that are on display.

So I want to read the text again. I just want to look at a couple of things that stood out to me that we didn't get to yesterday.

Verse 23, Jesus entered the temple courts and while he was teaching, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him.

By what authority are you doing these things? They asked and who gave you this authority? Jesus replied, I will also ask you one question. If you answer me, I'll tell you by what authority I'm doing these things.

John's baptism. Where did it come from? Was it from heaven or from men? Oh, they disgusted among themselves and said, I don't know if we say from heaven. He'll ask them why didn't you believe him? But if we say from men, we're afraid of the people.

They all hold the John was a prophet. So they answered, Jesus, we don't know. Then he said, all right, neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things. The only paraphrase in there was the word, all right. I guess I added that one. I probably shouldn't mess with the Bible, my bad.

Look at this right from the beginning. They've been scheming and lurking not just for one page or one paragraph, but all the way back to like here. You can't quite see it because it's an audio format. But like here is where the scheming started.

End of Matthew chapter seven, implicitly, this is where I would pinpoint everybody listens to Jesus teaching the sermon on the mount and he teaches with authority and the teaches of the law don't and the crowds can see it for the first time when Jesus had finished saying these things. The crowds were amazed at his teaching because he taught his one who had authority and not as their teachers of the law.

And all of a sudden this racket that they've been running this very profitable deal that they've got working out for them in terms of power and money and reputation and prestige and opportunity. It is shaken because the only thing that actually makes that go is the ongoing belief amongst the masses that they need this religious leadership.

That these people in authority are somehow their friends who are looking out for them and going to bat for them and without them. Well, the whole thing would fall apart. Sure, we might not like every single thing that they do.

But without them, how could we have the things that we so deeply need and so deeply love? Is it a problematic system? Sure, it's not perfect, but nothing is perfect.

And all of a sudden, they see something that maybe is perfect and like, wait, just a dang minute, that right there sounded pretty good.

It was interesting. That felt like it was coming from a higher authority than dirty, smarmy politics and we liked it.

And that sets us on this collision course. Jesus keeps saying things that are authoritative, that are spoken as though he was actually around from the beginning of time.

And as though he's like, I don't know, God in the flesh. And actually has the authority to say these things and to make proclamations about what the old testament means and where things are going next.

And their religious leaders don't do that. They consider out in muse and pontificate. And then when that doesn't work, they can leverage power to get their way on different things amongst their various religious parties.

It's a completely different world. Imagine if somebody came along right now, who just did things in a way that was completely transcendent, out of the muck and the mud and the yuck, and all of the categories were different and all of the tone was different, then everything felt other from the stupid, unending, ongoing social squabbles that we have, that we got to muddle through and suffer through all the time right now. It's exhausting.

It's exhausting. What if something truly refreshing came along to the degree that it came along here? Well, you can imagine that all the rats are going to start scrambling real quick.

They would be like, what are powers being challenged? Our racket is being exposed. Do you think they would look deep inside themselves and be like, maybe we should stop abusing people and behaving in ways that are absolutely criminally immoral in any other context, but we can get away with it because of positions of authority and privilege that we wield.

Like, no, they're not going to look deep inside their hearts and be like, maybe we should stop with that. They're going to scramble to protect their power and they're going to give into their ugliest grossest impulses.

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