Bill's Bible Blog

In this week’s lesson, Pastor Chan pointed out that there were a lot of different kinds of power on display. Here is a summary of each kind of power as I saw it and some of the implications.

I. The Power of Popularity: There are several places in Mark chapters 11 and 12 where we see that Jesus was popular with the masses.

A. (As Jesus entered Jerusalem riding on a donkey…) 11:8 …many people spread their cloaks on the road, while others spread branches they had cut in the fields. Those who went ahead and those who followed shouted,

“Hosanna!” (Hebrew, “Pray you, save us!)

“Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!”

“Blessed is the coming kingdom of our forefather David!”

B. Reaction of the Jewish Religious Leaders

11:18 The chief priests and the teachers of the law heard this and began looking for a way to kill Jesus, for they feared Him, because the whole crowd was amazed at His teaching.

11:27 … while Jesus was walking in the temple courts the next day, the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the elders came to Him and asked, “By what authority are you doing these things?  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. John’s baptism—was it from heaven, or of human origin?”

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

12:12 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.

12:37 David himself calls him ‘Lord.’ How then can the Messiah be his son?” The large crowd  listened to Jesus teach with delight.

🤓 COMMENTARY

1. The advantages of popularity.

A. If you’re popular, people will be very welcoming, they’ll want to give you meals and gifts for free. Essentially, people want to be seen being with popular people to enhance their own reputation. However  once you are no longer popular, all that will disappear.

B. Popularity affords you protection from those at the opposite end of feeling for you– those who want to hurt, destroy or even kill you, and remove you as the source of their anger and discomfort. As long as you’re seen to be popular, you’re safe from your enemies. But as we see in the gospels, the Jewish leaders who hated Jesus figured out how to catch Jesus away from His screen of admirers and arrest Him.

2. The Dangers of Popularity

A. Disappointing Expectations: Pastor Chan pointed that the people welcoming Jesus to Jerusalem were expecting the Messiah promised in their Scriptures, who would establish an eternal kingdom and rule from Jerusalem, with the Israelites being His favored people.

Unfortunately, that was not the Messiah that Jesus had come as. First He had to suffer and die so our sins could be forgiven by God, THEN He would come again and establish His kingdom on Earth.

So, the first source of Jesus’ popularity was the expectation that He would give them something they wanted, something they had dreamed of and prayed for after chaffing under Roman rule for so long.

The downside of being popular for the wrong expectation is that when it becomes clear the expectation is not going to materialize, the people will turn on the one who disappoints them and go just as far in the negative direction. We’ll see this later when the crowd shouted, “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!.”

B. The other reasons we see that Jesus was popular was His teachings amazed and delighted the crowds. Note that these are emotional responses.

So, what happens when what you say doesn’t ‘amaze’ and ‘delight’ the crowds anymore? They drop you like yesterday’s leftovers and go looking for someone new to ‘delight’ and ‘amaze’ them.

CONCLUSION. The point is, whether individually or en masse, people are fickle and quickly change their attitudes and interests. That is the danger of depending on the power of popularity.

II. THE POWER OF PRAYER

Pastor Chan pointed out there is an incident in the middle of Jesus’ week in Jerusalem that has been difficult to understand to many theologians.

A. Jesus Curses a Fig Tree

11:12 The next day as they were leaving Bethany, Jesus was hungry. Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, He went to find out if it had any fruit. When he reached it, he found nothing but leaves, because it was not the season for figs. Then he said to the tree, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again!” And his disciples heard him say it.

11:20 In the morning, as they went along, they saw the fig tree withered from the roots.  Peter remembered and said to Jesus, “Rabbi, look! The fig tree you cursed has withered!”

Pastor Chan explains that the fig tree is a metaphor for Jesus coming to Israel. The leafy fig tree represented the nation of Israel. It was vibrant and alive, but when looked at closely, there was no godly fruit.

God had expected Israel to be a light to the world. That people would hear and come  to Jerusalem, the city of God, and go to the temple, the House of God, and find out who God is. There was even an outer court, called the Court of the Gentiles, for non-Jews to visit. However, in Jesus’ day, it had been turned into a place of business where visiting out-of-country Jews had to exchange their foreign currency for local currency, at a highly unfavorable rate, and buy Temple approved sacrifices at outrageous prices. This was a source of much revenue for the Jewish leaders.

Jesus first public act in Jerusalem this final week was to drive out the money changers and condemn their actions. This immediately put Jesus on the wrong side of the Jewish leaders who then sought to arrest Him and have Him put to death, but Jesus’ popularity with the crowds prevented that.

Immediately after Peter’s observation that the cursed fig tree had died, Jesus launched into a series of teachings on prayer, cementing the connection between the lesson of the fig tree with what Israel had become.

C. Jesus made these points about prayer:

1. Believe and don’t doubt, it will be granted.

2. Believe you have received it, and it will be yours.

3.  Make sure you’re not holding a grudge against someone so God can forgive you when you pray and then listen to your request.

This one might seem out of place, but the implication is God will answer our prayers when we are in right relationship with Him  and that means being in right relationship with each other.

II. Power versus Authority

Did Jesus have the POWER to curse The fig tree to death, or did He have the AUTHORITY?

People often use the two terms interchangeably, but they don’t mean the same thing. Therefore, I think it is essential that we understand that difference.

The way I had it explained to me was using the example of a police officer directing traffic.

When the police officer holds up his hand indicating you are to stop, he doesn’t have the actual ability to MAKE you stop. You could choose to keep going and there is nothing he can physically do to stop your vehicle. But you can bet that he will take note of your license plate (if you don’t run over him) and you will become involved with the criminal justice system shortly afterward.

So, the point is the police officer didn’t have the personal POWER to enforce his command, like imagined super heroes, but the officer represents a larger organization that has the power to arrest you, to judge you, to fine you and even to incarcerate you. The police officer represents a GREATER POWER, the power of the government, and he has been given the AUTHORITY to give those commands and expect them to be obeyed.

Remember when Jesus commissioned the Twelve and sent them out? Jesus gave them the AUTHORITY to heal the sick and cast out demons. When they spoke the command to be healed, they had no power to heal, but they represented a GREATER POWER, the POWER OF GOD. GOD’S POWER healed people. GOD’S POWER cast out the demons. When Jesus cursed the fig tree, GOD’S POWER worked overnight to kill it. When we pray correctly, it is GOD’S POWER that acts to answer.

Therefore, there isn’t POWER in prayer, there is AUTHORITY in us, disciples of Jesus Christ, when we pray believing. The POWER comes from GOD.

III. CHALLENGES

The Jewish leaders understood what ‘authority’ meant. The next day, while Jesus was teaching the crowd in the temple and amazing them with what He had to say, they sent a delegation to ask Him, “By whose authority do you do these things?

We would say, less formerly, “What gives you the RIGHT?”

They were asking, “What gives You the RIGHT to come into our temple, overturn the tables with the money and sacrifices, and run the money changers out with a whip of rope cords? What gives You the RIGHT to come in here and tell us what we can and cannot do?”

“What gives you the RIGHT to speak a parable of condemnation against us, the leaders and teachers of the Jews? What gives you the RIGHT to say who’s right and who’s wrong?”

“What gives you the RIGHT to come here and teach the people something different than what we teach them, the traditions of the Fathers? What gives you the RIGHT to say what is right and wrong?”

Notice that Jesus never answered their question. Instead, He traps them with a question about where they thought John the Baptist’s authority came from. They couldn’t answer what they really thought, that John was not really a prophet sent from God, but just another wannabe who caught the attention of the masses for a short while and rode that wave of popularity for as long as he could. That is, until his big mouth got him in trouble with Herod. If the Jewish leaders had said that, they would have had a riot on their hands as the people attacked them. So, they didn’t answer Jesus’ question.

The Jewish leaders were looking for something they could use to discredit Jesus, arrest Him, and then have Him executed, which they eventually did. The rest of our passage this week shows how each Jewish religious and secular sect tried to trap Jesus the same way He had trapped the temple priests. They weren’t able to because each time, Jesus showed them just how much smarter He was than any of them. You can do that when you’re God.

IV. APPLICATION 🍎

Pastor Chan ended his lesson by referencing where Jesus warned His disciples that they could expect the same kinds of attacks and persecution.

John 15:18 “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated Me first. 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.

20 Remember what I told you before: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will persecute you also…

 21 They will treat you this way because of My name.”

The whole thrust of Pastor Chan’s presentation of Mark’s gospel has been discipleship. Jesus came to accomplish three purposes. One of them was to leave behind a cadre of trained and experienced replacements to carry out God’s plan of saving the entire world through the preaching of the gospel. As we approach the imminent departure of Jesus in the story, Jesus doubles down on His time and instruction of His disciples in final preparation.

If we call ourselves ‘Christians,’ that means we have accepted the responsibility to be one of those ‘little Christs’ in our own generation, in our own place in the world.

Approaching the study of Mark for the purpose of learning what Jesus did and taught so that we can do the same as His disciples is very different from the intellectual approach to study that I learned in school, and it’s hard to change how I’ve been studying for so many years.

I began this study because I wanted to learn to be a worshipper of God with my whole heart. What I’ve been learning instead is how to follow Jesus with my whole life.

God is funny that way. He guides you into what you think is one thing, only to find out it is something else…, actually something better, closer to God’s plan, rather than to my own desires.

In the process, I have realized that He’s been changing me behind the scenes in ways I had never imagined possible. I hope as we approach the holiday season, that you are yielding your life to our Lord and Savior in new ways too. AMEN!