Israel's religious leaders approached Jesus asking that He show them His credentials authorizing Him to disrupt the buying and selling in the courtyard and to heal people.
"Two incidents about authority (21:23-27 and 22:41-46) serve as bookends' to three parables (21:28-22:14) and three controversial dialogues with the Pharisees and Herodians, the Sadducees, and the Pharisees (22:15-40)."788
21:23 Jesus taught in the temple courtyard or perhaps under one of the colonnades that surrounded it. The chief priests were high officials in the temple. At this time in Israel's history the Roman authorities appointed these leaders (cf. 2:4). They constituted part of the Sanhedrin, the ruling council in Judaism. The elders were evidently non-priests who represented leading families in Israel. They also had representation on the Sanhedrin.789Matthew described these men in terms of their clerical status, not their party affiliation. His point was that these were high-ranking leaders of Israel.
They inquired about Jesus' authority to drive out the money changers and merchants, heal the sick, and teach the people. They were the people with authority to control what happened in the temple area. Authority (Gr. exousia) is the right, and the power that goes with the right, to do something.790They wanted to know what authority Jesus had and who had given Him the authority to do what He did since they had not. The quality of Jesus' authority depended on its source.791Their question indicated their opposition to what He did.
"The real issue in the passage concerns not information about the authority of Jesus but the unbelief and unreceptivity of the Jewish leadership. The latter knew well enough that Jesus would have claimed divine authority for his doings in the temple area. Their question thus reflects not an inquisitive openness but an already established rejection of Jesus and the attempt to gain evidence that could later be used against him."792
21:24-26 Jesus responded to their question with one of His own. This was common rabbinic debate technique.793By referring to John's baptism Jesus meant everything associated with his baptism, his whole message and ministry. Since John was Jesus' forerunner the leaders' response to John's ministry would answer their own question about Jesus' authority. If they said John's ministry was from heaven they would have had to acknowledge that Jesus' received His authority from God, since that is what John announced.794If they said John's ministry was from men, lacking divine authentication, they knew the people would rise up against them because the people regarded John as a prophet from God. The leaders' refused to commit themselves knowing that whatever they said would have bad consequences for them.
Any honest seeker among the leaders would have understood and accepted Jesus' answer to the leaders' question. However most of the leaders simply wanted to get rid of Jesus having previously rejected Him. Jesus pointed out with His question that their rejection of Him grew out of an earlier rejection of John.
21:27 The leaders' equivocation gave Jesus a reason to refuse them a direct answer. Why did He not give them one? They had refused earlier revelation through John. Having refused that revelation they had no ground to ask for more. They were incompetent to judge Jesus' authority since they misunderstood the Old Testament and rejected the ministry of John. That was tragic since these were the men charged with evaluating the claims of those who said they spoke for God. They were ineffective spiritual leaders because they refused to judge fairly.795
Matthew used this confrontation over Jesus' authority to introduce three parables. He typically used events to introduce teaching in this Gospel. All three parables deal with these religious leaders.
