Mark 11:27-33
A Question They Would Not Answer
27After their return to Jerusalem, Jesus was walking in the temple courts, and the chief priests, scribes, and elders came up to Him.
28“By what authority are You doing these things?” they asked. “And who gave You the authority to do them?”
29“I will ask you one question,” Jesus replied, “and if you answer Me, I will tell you by what authority I am doing these things.
30John’s baptism—was it from heaven or from men? Answer Me!”
31They deliberated among themselves what they should answer: “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ He will ask, ‘Why then did you not believe him?’
32But if we say, ‘From men’...” they were afraid of the people, for they all held that John truly was a prophet.
33So they answered, “We do not know.” And Jesus replied, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.”
Berean Standard Bible
A delegation crosses the temple courts to reach him: chief priests, scribes, and elders. Those three groups together are the leadership of the nation, and they have come as a body. The day before, he had wrecked the trading arrangements in a building they were charged with running, so their question is a fair one and anybody in their position would have asked it.
"By what authority are You doing these things?" they asked. "And who gave You the authority to do them?"
What they want to know is who he thinks he is, walking about the place as though nothing had happened. Jesus does not answer. He offers a trade instead, one question for one question, and if they answer his he will answer theirs. Then he asks them whether John's baptism came from heaven or from men.
Then Mark takes us inside the huddle and lets us hear the leadership of the nation work out what to say.
If we say, "From heaven," He will ask, "Why then did you not believe him?" But if we say, "From men"...
Nobody in that circle asks what the true answer is. They are not weighing whether God sent John, they are weighing what each answer will cost them, and the second sentence never even gets finished, because they were afraid of the people, who all held that John really was a prophet. Mark gives us the whole conversation and adds no comment of his own to it.
So they answer that they do not know. It was a lie, and every man standing there knew it was a lie. These were the people whose whole office was to tell the nation what God was doing, and claiming to have no opinion about a prophet the entire country had gone out to hear was a public admission that they had stopped doing their job. They preferred that to the alternative.
Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.
That is not evasion, it is exact. He had offered them a real exchange, they would not answer honestly, and the conversation stops where they stopped it. He is not keeping back something they were hungry to know. He is refusing to hand an answer to men who had just shown him they would use it only to work out the price.
How We Know
The three groups who approach in verse 27, chief priests, scribes and elders, are the same three Mark lists at 8:31, at 14:53 when the council assembles, and at 15:1, where he calls them the council. Naming the same bodies consistently across the book is consistent with a writer who knew how the institution was composed.
Josephus describes a council in Jerusalem that a high priest could convene to try a case, which is the kind of body Mark is describing. Later rabbinic writing pictures a court of seventy-one sitting in the temple, and historians differ over how closely that matches the council of Mark's day.
- Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 20.200; Mishnah Sanhedrin 1:6.
Questions
1 Who walks up to Jesus, and what do they want out of him?
AnswerChief priests, scribes, and elders, which is the leadership of the nation arriving as a body. They want to know by what authority he cleared out the temple, and who gave that authority to him.
2 Jesus does not answer them. What does he put on the table instead?
AnswerA trade: one question for one question. He asks whether John's baptism came from heaven or from men, and he promises to answer them if they answer him first.
3 Listen to what they say to each other in the huddle. What are they weighing up?
AnswerThe cost, not the truth. If we say heaven, he asks why we did not believe John. If we say men, the crowd turns on us. Not one man in that group asks which answer is the right one.
4 Has there been a time when you knew the true answer to something and gave a different one because the true one was going to cost you? What happened?
AnswerMost of us have one, and the honest ones are usually small: a question at school, a question at work, a question from someone at this table. The men in the temple did the same thing in front of a crowd.
What This Means for Us
They asked which answer was cheapest and never asked which one was true. This is a habit rather than a crime, and it is easier to fall into than we like to think. What will people say, how will this land, what does it cost me: all reasonable questions, and not one of them is the first question. The first question is whether it is true.
You can tell the habit has set in when you notice you have stopped asking it. It does not feel like lying at the time. It feels like being careful. So when something with a price on it comes up in this house, put the true question first, before anybody works out what it costs.
Prayer
Father, we work out what things will cost us before we work out what is true. Forgive us. Give us the courage to ask the real question first, and to say what we actually think, even when it is expensive. Amen.