{"id":7178,"date":"2015-12-08T00:05:53","date_gmt":"2015-12-08T08:05:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/?p=7178"},"modified":"2015-12-07T16:31:11","modified_gmt":"2015-12-08T00:31:11","slug":"whos-the-boss-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/2015\/12\/08\/whos-the-boss-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Who&#8217;s the Boss?"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><em>They came again to Jerusalem. And as He was walking in the temple, the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders came to Him.  And they said to Him, \u201cBy what authority are You doing these things? And who gave You this authority to do these things?\u201d <\/p>\n<p>\tBut Jesus answered and said to them, \u201cI also will ask you one question; then answer Me, and I will tell you by what authority I do these things:  The baptism of John\u2014was it from heaven or from men? Answer Me.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>\tAnd they reasoned among themselves, saying, \u201cIf we say, \u2018From heaven,\u2019 He will say, \u2018Why then did you not believe him?\u2019  But if we say, \u2018From men\u2019 \u201d\u2014they feared the people, for all counted John to have been a prophet indeed.  So they answered and said to Jesus, \u201cWe do not know.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>\tAnd Jesus answered and said to them, \u201cNeither will I tell you by what authority I do these things.\u201d (Mark 11:27-33)<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>\tWho\u2019s the boss?  The religious leaders believed they were.  But Jesus acted with obvious confidence.  He never asked the religious leaders for their permission.  He never sought their favor.  That was part of their annoyance with him.  He didn\u2019t acknowledge who was boss.  In fact, he acted as if he was the boss.  So the chief priests, the scribes, the elders questioned Jesus\u2019 right to do what he was doing.  <\/p>\n<p>\tWhen they asked him who had given him his authority, they weren\u2019t really looking for an answer. They  already knew that they had not granted Jesus permission to do what he was doing.  With their question, they were simply telling Jesus to shut up and go away. <\/p>\n<p>\tBut the religious establishment had forgotten that they were not in charge of the temple.  The temple belonged to God. They served in the temple because God had placed them there. They served God, and they served the people of Israel.  They were merely servants, not the bosses they imagined themselves to be.  But they couldn\u2019t understand that, any more than they could understand who Jesus actually was: the God they claimed to be working for, whom they claimed to worship and love and care about.  In that sense, Jesus was boss, not them.<\/p>\n<p>\tSo who\u2019s the boss?  Not even the right question.  It had never been about being in charge.  Even Jesus wasn\u2019t about being in charge.  He was all about being a servant.  <\/p>\n<div class='kindleWidget kindleLight' ><img src=\"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-content\/plugins\/send-to-kindle\/media\/white-15.png\" \/><span>Send to Kindle<\/span><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>They came again to Jerusalem. And as He was walking in the temple, the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders came to Him. And they said to Him, \u201cBy what authority are You doing these things? And who gave &hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/2015\/12\/08\/whos-the-boss-2\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"yes"},"categories":[17,16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7178"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7178"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7178\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7180,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7178\/revisions\/7180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}