November 18, 2011 – Luke 19:28 – 20:8

They couldn’t find a reason to put Him to death because everyone was hanging on His every word. Have you ever had that feeling. Not to put someone to death, obviously, but had that jealous feeling of someone and down deep you wanted to catch them slipping up so that you could have that “ah ha” moment. You can get the leaders sense of this as they are watching the crowds grow and Christ teaching them. I am sure there are also the back and forth challenges that the leaders always lose when testing Jesus. It is because of this popularity and inability to have that “ah ha” that they had to accuse Christ in secret, having His trial in the middle of the night, bringing false witnesses.

The question of authority is often brought up when talking about non-Catholic Christians. I have never heard anyone bring up this passage as part of the argument. The Christian could say that Christ would not disclose His authority, so I don’t need to disclose mine or define it or have one. My interpretation given by the Holy Spirit is my authority. But I don’t think Christ had that in mind at all. He was merely showing the motivation of the Leaders. Their sole motivation was to trap Christ. They didn’t care for His answer, only the reaction they could get from His answer. Much as any answer Christ gave they would use to destroy Him, Christ would use either answer to discredit them. Christ causes a stalemate for their testing and leads them nowhere. I don’t think Christ was saying there was no authority, He was only refusing to answer.

Matthew 28:18 - And Jesus came to them and spoke unto them, saying, All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth.

So, Christ says there is authority. And He gives this authority so that the world can be converted. This authority was not given to all but the 11 that were told to come to Galilee.