Opposers: Daily Thoughts from Mark (Mark 11:27-33)

Opposers!  If we ever attempt to proclaim the truth about Jesus Christ we will face opposition.  We will get flustered by it, or become defensive, not being confident in the truth of what we’re saying, or we can handle it the way Jesus did.

Jesus has been coming day by day to Jerusalem this last week of his life before being crucified, and interacting with those who hate him and want him dead.  Just the day before he cleansed the temple.  Today, Tuesday of what we have come to call Passion Week, Jesus has yet another electrifying confrontation.

And they came again to Jerusalem. And as he was walking in the temple, the chief priests and the scribes and the elders came to him, and they said to him, “By what authority are you doing these things, or who gave you this authority to do them?” Jesus said to them, “I will ask you one question; answer me, and I will tell you by what authority I do these things. Was the baptism of John from heaven or from man? Answer me.” And they discussed it with one another, saying, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will say, ‘Why then did you not believe him?’ But shall we say, ‘From man’?”—they were afraid of the people, for they all held that John really was a prophet. So they answered Jesus, “We do not know.” And Jesus said to them, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things.” (Mark 11:27-33, ESV)

Jesus taught us not to cast our pearls before swine (Matthew 7:6).  There are some situations in which it is best not to answer a fool according to his folly (Proverbs 26:4).  Jesus knows that to simply answer the religious authorities, “My authority to cleanse the temple and do what I am doing comes from God,” would not have satisfied them.  If they had said “Prove it”, and he had pointed to his miracles, as he did on another occasion, they would argue about doing his miracles on the sabbath, or by the power of Satan, etc.  So he traps them in their own question.

They plead ignorance as to whether John the Baptist was from God.  But it was their responsibility to evaluate all such religious claims according to Scripture.  By confessing that they didn’t know, they were also confessing that they had no ability to evaluate whether Jesus was from God either.  This, of course, did not stop them from persecuting Jesus.

I love how brilliantly Jesus handles the foolishness of people who oppose him.  In a sense he was giving anyone in this posse a chance to see their own foolishness and repent, or else hang themselves with their own admission.  We can learn from Jesus how to deal with opposition.  It will not, of course, mean we will succeed in fending off that opposition.  It may only inflame it, as it did for Jesus.