Reasoning Through the Bible
Taking a cue from Paul, Reasoning Through the Bible is an expository style walk through the Scriptures that tells you what the Bible says. Reviewing both Old and New Testament books, as well as topical subjects, we methodically teach verse by verse, even phrase by phrase.
We have completed many books of the Bible and offer free lesson plans for teachers. If you want to browse our entire library by book or topic, see our website www.ReasoningThroughTheBible.com.
We primarily do expository teaching but also include a good bit of theology and apologetics. Just like Paul on Mars Hill, Christianity must address both the ancient truths and the questions of the people today. Join Glenn and Steve every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday as they reason with you through the Bible.
Reasoning Through the Bible
S42 || Jesus Confronts the Temple Leaders || Mark 11:25 - 12:11 || Session 42 || Verse by Verse Bible Study
Jesus's final days in Jerusalem reveal not a victim being swept along by events, but a Messiah deliberately orchestrating the completion of his divine mission. Walking through Mark 11-12, we explore how Jesus strategically confronts the religious establishment, forcing their hand toward his predetermined purpose—to die on the cross for our salvation.
We begin with Jesus's powerful teaching about forgiveness: when we pray, we must forgive others so that God will forgive us. This spiritual principle reveals how harboring unforgiveness creates barriers in our relationship with God. Having been forgiven an immense debt ourselves, how can we withhold forgiveness from others? This teaching provides practical guidance for maintaining spiritual health and wholeness in our daily walk.
The confrontation intensifies when Jesus enters the temple courts. Religious leaders challenge his authority, attempting to trap him with theological questions. With masterful wisdom, Jesus turns their question back on them, exposing their political calculations and fear of public opinion rather than genuine concern for truth. This exchange demonstrates Jesus's complete control and wisdom in dealing with opposition.
The climax comes when Jesus tells the Parable of the Vineyard, deliberately echoing Isaiah 5 where God uses this same metaphor to represent Israel. By appropriating this prophetic imagery, Jesus speaks with unmistakable divine authority. The message is clear: the religious leaders, like their predecessors, had rejected God's messengers and now plotted to reject God's Son. They had positioned themselves as owners rather than stewards of God's people.
This episode reveals Jesus deliberately intensifying conflict, forcing the religious establishment to show their true colors as part of God's redemptive plan. The central question remains relevant today: Do we recognize Jesus's divine authority in our lives, or do we resist it to maintain our own control?
Join us as we unpack these profound theological truths and discover their practical application for believers today. Subscribe now to continue this journey through Mark's Gospel, as we reason through Scripture together and deepen our understanding of Jesus's mission and message.
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May God Bless you!! - Glenn and Steve
Hello and welcome to Reasoning Through the Bible. My name's Glenn. I'm here with Steve. If you have your copy of the Word of God, open it to Mark, chapter 11. If you've been with us so far, you've found out that there's a series of incidences in Mark. It's a lot of action, it's a lot of going and doing and it's also a long series of people that the Lord Jesus is encountering. So we're going to see that today, jesus is in the latter part of his ministry. He's in the last week of his life. He's in Jerusalem and he's forcing the hand of the Jewish leadership to do what he has predetermined his mission, which is to die on the cross. He is in control and it's his timing and he's in control of the entire situation from start to finish. Let's go ahead and jump in right now. Steve, if you could read Mark 11, verses 25 and 26.
Speaker 2:Whenever you stand praying, forgive if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father, who is in heaven, will also forgive you your transgression. But if you do anything against anyone, so that your Father, who is in heaven, will also forgive you your transgression. But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father, who is in heaven, forgive your transgression.
Speaker 1:Now, the first thing you may notice in this is that verse 26 is either in your translation either in brackets, or in some of the modern translations they don't include it. Some of the modern translations go from verse 25 to 27. Why is that? Well, if you look at the footnotes and study the issues, and what we find is that there are many, many Greek manuscripts. The New Testament was originally written in Greek and as Christians we have an embarrassment of riches. We have thousands of Greek manuscripts and there are many early translations that were done in the first few years of the church. With that, there are literally thousands of documents that the translators have to account for and dig through. They're not all exactly the same. Simply because the Greek language lends itself to some flexibility, you can say the same things without them being exactly word for word, and there are indeed some copy errors that were handed down to us. The Word of God in the New Testament is 99.5 or 99.9% accurate. There are very few places where there are some copy errors and there's some differences in the manuscripts, and this is one of them.
Speaker 1:The translators have to make a decision. Do they go with the majority of the manuscripts as far as just numbers which have verse 26, or do they go with the earlier ones that the translators hold to be the better manuscripts, that some of them don't have it? That's really the decision. From our standpoint, there's really no issue. First of all because, as we said, 99.5 plus percent of the New Testament is not in question, even verses like this. If you look at verse 26 and 25, there's nothing added or subtracted with verse 26. Can we have confidence in the Word of God?
Speaker 2:I think that we can. The fact that this is called out to note that there are earlier manuscripts don't have this particular verse is a testament that there's nothing that's trying to be hidden here in Christianity or in these books of the New Testament that we have through the I think the proper term is textual criticism where the scholars have gone through I think it's upward of 5,000 manuscripts, glenn, related to the New Testament books that we have and they go through all of them and compare them to each other Through that. That's how we know and can trust that we have the actual things that were written from the very beginning, because they all match to the standpoint that they can tell that. But whenever there is a questionable verse, such as this, it's noted there's nothing there that's trying to be tricked on people or anything else. I think the fact that we don't have these type of notations all over our New Testament is a testament that we can trust the Bible that we have in the New Testament that has been passed down to us.
Speaker 1:We can contrast what we have here in the New Testament which again, they're very open with places in the early manuscripts that might not agree exactly. Contrast that with the Quran, for example, where the early leaders gathered all of the manuscripts that disagreed and burned them, and so now they can claim well, we have a unified copy that was passed down to us. Well, yeah, when you get rid of all the ones that might disagree. We are very open with this and others are not. Back to the text If we look at verse 25, what is it really saying? This passage should make us pause, simply because it's a very serious concept that it says here. Let's look again at verse 25. It says Whenever you stand praying, forgive if you have anything against anyone, so that and this is the important part so that your Father, who is in heaven, will also forgive you your transgressions. Steve, what's the connection there between us forgiving other people and God forgiving us?
Speaker 2:I hold this to be in the same category as that the Sabbath was made for man versus the Sabbath being made for God.
Speaker 2:The position that Jesus is saying here is that we need to be able to forgive the transgressions of others against us, because God has given our transgressions against him and it benefits us.
Speaker 2:If you hold or harbor hard feelings or a grudge however you might term it towards someone else, it's not good for your health, it's not good for your mind to do that. The best thing to do is to forgive them of that and let them deal with this problem or issue with God and show an example to them. I'm forgiving you of this thing that you have done against me because I'm a Christian, because God has forgiven me for the things I have done against him. This is the example that we're supposed to have. So it's good for us to clear us of that and get that out of the way, to be the example, so that we can move on and live the Christian life, versus having this grudge in the back of our mind or something of thinking that, hey, this person over here hasn't come and apologized to me for doing me wrong If we continue to hold on to that rather than letting it go. It's not good for our health.
Speaker 1:I think what he's saying here is that if I have somebody that has wronged me and I've not forgiven them, I'm holding on to that wrong and I'm not forgiving them. Now I sit down to pray. It's getting in between me and God. That's the hint here. Right yeah?
Speaker 2:exactly. We need to get that out of the way. I think also in one of Paul's letters he also says you should not be taking the Lord's Supper what we call the communion unless we have first gone. If there's any type of a transgression that we have done to somebody else or that they have done to us, we need to go settle that first before we take that communion, so that our heart and mind will be in the right place with God. So I think exactly that, glenn. It gets in between us and God and we need to take Jesus' example of what he did for us and God's example and we need to forgive others.
Speaker 1:I'm reminded of the parable that Jesus told, where there was a member of royalty that forgave a vast quantity of debt for one of his servants, and then the servant went out and didn't forgive a smaller amount from one of his friends. So the analogy there is clear. God has forgiven us of this huge sin debt. We should then go and forgive those around us. We should then go and forgive those around us. If we go to God in prayer or go to God in fellowship and we're holding on to unforgiven thing, god can look at us and say I forgave you much more than you're holding on to with that person that you haven't forgiven. Therefore, that's why it gets in between us and God. We don't need anything that gets in between us and God. We don't need anything that gets in between us and God. We don't want anything that's going to strain our relationship with the Lord. What can we do on a practical basis to keep short accounts with God and fellow human beings we have?
Speaker 2:the verse over in 1 John that we mention quite often in our teaching, where it tells us that we are to continually go to the Lord and ask for forgiveness for our sins so that they might be forgiven, but we should also go to others and forgive them for the things that they've done against us. There might be a question whether or not you should go to them and tell them that you have forgiven them. I don't think that's necessary, that you have to do that. The real point is that we have forgiven them in our heart. I don't think it necessarily means that they have to know that we have forgiven them. You have the opportunity to tell them that. I think you can turn it into an opportunity to witness to them about Christ and what he's done for us.
Speaker 1:Sometimes the emotional scars of when other people wrong us make it very difficult to forgive and to let go. So we need to go to God and say God, I'm having trouble letting go and forgiving this other person, and pray to the Lord. Say God, please take away the bitterness in my heart towards others. We need to take that to the Lord and admit to him that we're having trouble forgiving this and ask for his help, and he will indeed help his children. Let's go ahead and move on to the next one, starting in. Verse 27 says this they came again to Jerusalem and as he was walking in the temple, the chief priest and the scribes and the elders came to him and began saying to Jerusalem, and as he was walking in the temple, the chief priest and the scribes and the elders came to him and began saying to him by what authority are you doing these things, or who gave you this authority to do these things? And Jesus said to them I will ask you one question and you answer me. Then I will tell you by what authority I do these things. Was the baptism of John from heaven or from men? Answer me. And they began reasoning amongst themselves, saying If we say from heaven. He will say Then why did you not believe him? But if we shall say from men, they were afraid of the people, for everyone considered John to have been a real prophet, so answering Jesus. They said we do not know. And Jesus said to them Nor will I tell you by what authority I do these things. So with this he gives a master class in how to deal with people that are trying to trap you in questions. So let's walk through this.
Speaker 1:At the beginning of that, it says they came again to Jerusalem. This indicates that Jesus and his followers were going out at night and outside the city and sleeping at night in Bethany or one of the communities outside of Jerusalem, and then going back into Jerusalem in the morning. This is again the final week of his life. He's going in every day, spending hours every day in the temple confronting the Jewish leaders and teaching, and then going outside of the city at night. The final week of his life.
Speaker 1:Jesus came into Jerusalem every morning, but he did not stay there. He was walking in the temple. It said in these verses the last week of his time on earth. He came into the temple every day. So this comes into play later, when the Jewish leaders arrest him in the dark of night outside the city and he was telling them I was there every day in the temple with you. Why didn't you arrest me then? No, they're doing it in the dark of night, with a lot of secrecy going on and there's a lot of underhandedness going on here. They didn't want to arrest him in front of the people. They arrested him late at night instead of when everybody else would have seen it. The Jewish religious leaders were failing to trap Jesus in these words by getting him to say things. Steve, what is the trap that they're laying for him here with this question?
Speaker 2:The trap that they're trying to set here is the authority that he has. He had previously come in, overturned the money changers and cleared the temple and even prohibited any type of transactions to go on in the temple at all. Now we see these chief priests, scribes and elders come to him asking him what authority do you do this under? That's the trap they're trying to set. But this, remember, is during the time of the Passover week. Go back to when he came in the what we call the triumphal entry. It was the 10th of Nisan. That was the day that the Passover lamb was brought into the house to be inspected. It was kept inside the house to make sure, number one, that it didn't get any blemishes for when it would be sacrificed and, number two, to make sure that it didn't have any blemishes.
Speaker 2:This portion of chapter 11. And in chapter 12, we're going to see this examination of Jesus by the leadership. Here it's the chief priests, scribes and elders. A little bit later we're going to see in chapter 12, it's the Sadducees. Then a little bit after that we're going to see the Pharisees. Through all of these series of questioning from the leadership all aspects of leadership Jesus answers them and he is not found with any fault. So it's a symbol of the Passover lamb being taken in and being held for inspection prior to the sacrifice to make sure that it's perfect and that it's one which can be satisfactory sacrificed. And now we start seeing them doing this with this first challenge on his authority.
Speaker 1:They were asking him about his authority. He had gone in and was very assertive, very aggressive and was taking charge over things in the temple. So they ask him by what authority do you overturn these tables and drive out all these people that were selling animals and let loose to doves, things like that? So he turns around and asks them another question. They were trying to trap him because if he would have answered that, oh, I'm working from God's authority, I'm here speaking for God, then they would condemn him to death for blasphemy. If, on the other hand, he says, oh, this is my own authority, then they could have him arrested because accused of a crime. You don't have authority here to do this. At a minimum, they would then divide his followers. One of the reasons why they did not arrest him immediately there in the temple is because he had a large crowd of supporters following him and the Jewish leaders were afraid of the crowd. We'll get to that in a little bit. The leader should always do what's right and not just what pleases the crowd.
Speaker 1:But that's the situation here is, they're trying to put him into a paradox. With whichever way he answers, he's going to be able to accuse them of something. What does he do? He turns around and asks them about John the Baptist, and they recognize the trap, right. If they were to say, oh well, john the Baptist was from God, he was inspired prophet of God, well, why didn't you follow him, why didn't you believe in him, why did you turn your back on him? But if he's from men, now they've split themselves from the people, from their supporters, which is exactly the trap they were trying to put him in. It's always interesting they try to put Jesus into a trap and he always turns it around on them.
Speaker 2:It's also interesting that they don't think of these things prior to them asking the questions. To me, it's like all right after the first couple of times of encountering Jesus and him doing this type of answer back to them, which is asking them questions back to have them answer. It would seem to me that before they would come and challenge him, they would get together and say, okay, here's the question we're going to ask him what are the different possibilities that he might come back at us? But they just don't learn their lesson from it and they continue to try and challenge him on all types of situations as far as who he is.
Speaker 1:That brings us to the end of chapter 11. At this point the Jewish leaders are getting very frustrated. They're getting increasingly frustrated with Jesus because they're trying their best to deal with him. They're trying their best to pin him down with theological issues that they could accuse him of and get rid of him, to kill him or throw him in prison at least, but they're not able to. They're getting increasingly frustrated and this brings us to chapter 12, where Jesus starts to tell a parable.
Speaker 1:Jesus, of course, as we said, is in charge of the situation here. He's in total control of what's happening. As we get to chapter 12, what we're going to see is that we enter some very deep theological waters here. We first read these passages, we say, oh, these stories are quite simple, but Mark is telling very profound stories here and we're going to learn some very complex things about God and the nature of the Lord Jesus and his work here on earth. These stories are quite profound, so we're going to get to now the parable of the vinedressers. Steve, could you read the first 11 verses of Mark, chapter 12?
Speaker 2:And he began to speak to them in parables. A man planted a vineyard and put a wall around it and dug a vat under the winepress and built a tower and rented it out to vine growers and went on a journey. At the harvest time he sent a slave to the vine growers in order to receive some of the produce of the vineyard from the vine growers. They took him and beat him and sent him away empty-handed. Again, he sent them another slave and they wounded him in the head and treated him shamefully. And he sent another, and that one they killed, and so was many others, beat some and killing others. He had one more to send, a beloved son. He sent him last of all to them, saying they will respect my son.
Speaker 2:But those vine growers said to one another this is the heir. Come, let us kill him and the inheritance will be ours. They took him and killed him and threw him out in the vineyard. What will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the vine growers and will give the vineyard to others. Have you not even read this scripture? The stone which the builders rejected, this became the chief cornerstone. This came about from the Lord and it is marvelous in our eyes.
Speaker 1:We have this parable here that he tells, and the interpretation of it must take into account where he is and who he's speaking to. So at the beginning of that, Steve, it says he began to speak to them.
Speaker 2:Well, who's the them In this part? It's the chief priests, the scribes and the elders, the ones that had just challenged him as far as his authority, exactly.
Speaker 1:He's in the temple and he's speaking to the leadership of the nation. The religious and secular leaders were wrapped up in one. This parable speaks of an arrangement where there's a landowner who has set up this vineyard and he then rents out the vineyard to other peoples to maintain the vineyard and the expectation is that later, when it produces fruit, the landowner is going to come back and expect a portion of the harvest. This is done periodically over the years. My grandfather was a sharecropper and he didn't own the land he farmed. He had to give a percentage of it to the landowner and then he would keep a percentage to live on, and that was his business. This parable is telling that story. Now, steve, there's a real close parallel to this in the Old Testament. Right Again, the Jewish religious leaders are going to know exactly what he's talking about, am I correct?
Speaker 2:In our version that we use the New American Standard 1995 version. Whenever something is being referenced in the Old Testament, you'll see it there in capital letters noting, and there'll be a note as to where it is being referenced. From this particular part that Jesus starts off in in chapter 12, verse 1, is a reference back to Isaiah, chapter 5, verses 1 through 7. Glenn, as we talk about this, I'd like to read these seven verses from Isaiah so that we can get a context as to why Jesus is using this particular reference that he's telling them in the parable. So over in Isaiah, chapter 5, 1 through 7, it says this Let me sing now for my well-beloved a song of my beloved concerning his vineyard and the his. There is Yahweh God, my God's well-beloved, had a vineyard on a fertile hill. He God dug it all around, removed its stones and planted it with the choicest vine. And he God built a tower in the middle of it and also hewed out a wine vat in it. Built a tower in the middle of it and also hewed out a wine vat in it. Then he God expected it to produce good grapes, but it produced only worthless ones. And now, o inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. What more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done in it? Why, then, when I expected it to produce good grapes, did it produce worthless ones?
Speaker 2:So now let me, god, tell you what I am going to do to my vineyard. I will remove its hedge and it will be consumed. I will break down its wall and it will become trampled ground. I will lay it waste. It will not be pruned or hoed, but briars and thorns will come up. I will also charge the clouds to rain. No more on it, for the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel and the man of Judah, his delightful plant. Thus he looked for justice, but behold bloodshed, for righteousness, but behold a cry of distress. This is the background of the parable, or the verses in Isaiah that Jesus is quoting to this leadership. They know very well, as he starts off this parable, what he is referencing to and what the actual verses back in Isaiah say that God is. It's clear to them in this parable that the vineyard is the house of Israel. In fact, in verse 12, we'll see here they understand that he is talking to them about it.
Speaker 1:So the passage you read in Isaiah God had sent the prophet Isaiah to speak to the leaders of Israel in his day. It was hundreds of years before Christ. God sent the prophet Isaiah with those words the message of this vineyard and that God had done these things for the vineyard, but the vine growers were being judged because they were not obeying the landowner. Then Jesus here in Mark 12, picks up that same story and uses it against the leaders here in the first century in Jesus' day. Of course, those people would know exactly what he's talking about. They would know that passage in Isaiah quite well and they would understand immediately what he was saying. And that's what it said here in chapter 12, is that they understood he was talking about them?
Speaker 1:Jesus is very clearly picking up a theme of where God was speaking in Isaiah's day, and now Jesus is speaking the same words. There's a very powerful message being communicated here by Jesus to the Jewish leadership. By saying this parable in the way he did it, he is in their ears, speaking as God. He is speaking as God because he's giving the message that God gave through Isaiah, and now Jesus is picking up on the same one, accusing them. What's going through the minds of these chief?
Speaker 2:priests at this point From the previous verses already going through their minds is that they don't want to stir up the people against themselves. You mentioned it before that if they answered it in a certain way, that they would separate themselves from the people. Well, jesus is very clearly telling them and showing them you're already separated from the people and you're not understanding. And you're exactly right, glenn. He's picked up on these verses from Isaiah, where, in Isaiah it says the vineyard is Israel, the house of Israel. The expectation from God is it's going to produce good fruit.
Speaker 2:But Jesus is adding to it and he's giving this description that the owner of the vineyard has set prophets. He set slaves and the vine growers, the ones that are supposed to be producing good fruit. They beat them, they wounded them, they sent them back empty-handed. Now he's sending the son, clearly describing himself as being the Son. He's equating himself with the Son in this parable that's being sent. And, glenn, in verse 7, it says there that those vine growers said to one another this is the heir, come, let us kill him and the inheritance will be mine. That just that's not sensical. That just doesn't make sense. That the vine growers are going to say let's kill the rightful heir to the vineyard so that then we can control the vineyard altogether. It shows that Jesus is telling them you're not thinking right. So what do you make out of this verse 7, where it talks about let's kill the sun and then it's going to be ours?
Speaker 1:I think the Jewish leadership here was putting themselves in the place of God. They viewed the nation as theirs. Just like in the parable, the servants viewed the vineyard oh this is our vineyard, we want to take this over, we want to kill the air, so it'll be ours. Because they viewed the land owner as absent, so it's going to be ours. We're not servants anymore, we're owners. We just own this. So that's the parallel he's making. Is that you're viewing yourselves as the ones that own the vineyard. Or, if we make it into a shepherd and sheep analogy, you're not viewing yourselves as hired shepherds, you're viewing yourself as the owners of the sheep. That's the problem.
Speaker 1:Think of the big picture. The big picture here is that, if you remember most of the book of Mark, the big picture here is that, if you remember most of the book of Mark, jesus spoke in parables. At one point, his disciples said why are you teaching in parables? He said so I can teach you things, but the leaders won't understand. The people that are just trying to trap me won't have any ammo to use against me. Well, here he's doing exactly the opposite. He is being crystal clear with what he's saying. He's gone into the temple itself and he is.
Speaker 1:With every conversation, he is increasing the frustration of these Jewish leaders and now, with this parable, jesus is saying the same things that Yahweh said to the Jewish leaders back in Isaiah's day. He's very clearly speaking as God to them. Jesus is cranking up the heat and cranking up the tension, forcing their hands to crucify him. So that's really what's going on here. Now. What we probably ought to do is pause here for today, because there's still a lot we can unpack in this parable and think possibly we ought to get to that next time, because there's some practical things going on with the same parable that we can draw out of this. But we probably should do that next time.
Speaker 2:As always. We thank you so much for watching and listening, and we also hope that God will bless you.
