Passion Week of Christ (Part 5)
Jesus is Lord of the Living! - Selected verses from Matthew 22:1-46;
Mark 12:41-44

In our study of this last week in the life of Christ, we are still in the
midst of a long series of discussions on Tuesday...a day of controversy
for our Lord.

Some opening comments
One of the fascinating characteristics of the parables of Jesus is the
many possible applications which confront the reader and stir his
conscience:
· In this man who profaned the wedding feast with his garments, was Jesus
depicting the shallow devotion of listening multitudes who had hailed
Him as the Messiah, but had no idea of sacrificing too much of their own
convenience in His service?
· Whatever the application, there is a tenderness of appeal in this
parable and an emphasis upon the great joy of the kingdom lost by those
who reject the invitation or who do not equip themselves to share its
glory.
· Even to these hypocritical fiends who are plotting His death, Jesus
still gives gentle intimations of mercy, if they will but repent.

This chapter clearly establishes Jesus as God in the flesh, as the
Messiah, as the Son of the King and as the Bridegroom, and as Lord of the
living!

Parable of the wedding banquet
The double invitation pictured in the parable is true to the customs of
the East. Both the relatively good and bad were invited, and those who
had been noble and those who had been very sinful alike realized their
destitute appearance and attired them-selves in the wedding garment
provided by the King—all of the guests, except one man.

The closing verses emphasize the fact that the guests must receive a
covering from the King to be accepted. The King called "both bad and
good" (v. 10), but provided a garment to make them acceptable.

The punishment is thought by some critics to be too harsh in the light of
the of-fense of the man:
· so easily does man undertake to assume the prerogatives of God
· the violation of the hospitality of the King was as great by the man
who brazenly refused to show appreciation of the occasion and to prepare
himself for it as by those who scorned and rejected the invitation
Verse fourteen helps us understand much about the sovereignty of God. It
says that many are invited, but few are chosen. How are they called?
· The messengers in the parable represent the prophets who were rejected
and killed.
· Their preaching was the invitation—the calling. And how were they
chosen? By their willingness to respond to the call of God (i.e., the
preaching).
· According to this text, the call of God is not irresistible. God’s
election includes our response as well as his choice.

Four important questions
In the following passages we will read about four questions. The first
three are asked by Jesus’ opponents, representing the three major
political/religious parties of the day: Herodians, Sadducees, and
Pharisees.

In turn, they each try to trap Jesus with a particularly difficult
question. Not only does Jesus answer their questions so well that they
don’t dare ask him another, but he perceives and exposes their true
hypocritical and hostile motives in the process.

Finally, Jesus asks his own difficult question which no one is able to
answer. This will end the discourse between Jesus and his enemies. There
is nothing left to talk about.

The first group to try their hand at outwitting Jesus is a tag-team of
Pharisees and Herodians. Under normal circumstances, these two groups
were enemies. The Pharisees represent the religious right-wing. The
Herodians, on the other hand, believe the road to peace and prosperity in
Palestine is alignment with Rome.

Since no one did that better than the Herod family, they are supporters
of the Herods in their various governmental positions.

Through their false flattery they act like they sincerely want an answer.
They say to Jesus: (1) You are a man of integrity, therefore, we can
follow your example in this. (2) You accurately teach the will of God,
therefore we can trust your opinion on this. And (3) you are not swayed
by men, therefore we can believe your answer will be un-biased.

No one is fooled by their false flattery. It is clear that their simple
question, "Should we pay taxes to Caesar or not?" is designed to trap
Jesus. If he says, "No," the crowds will be delighted, of course. They
hate taxation. More than one third of their income goes to pay Roman
taxes.

While the crowds would have loved Jesus to ban taxation, the Herodians
would have immediately arranged for his arrest and execution.

On the other hand, if Jesus says "Yes, we should pay taxes to Caesar,"
the people, urged on by the Pharisees, will stop following him. After
all, any Messiah who can’t throw off the shackles of Roman domination
(and especially taxation) is not worthy of support. Jesus is trapped!

Jesus knows what they are up to and calls them on the carpet. It must
have hurt being identified publicly as a "hypocrite." But the big sting
is yet to come. Jesus calls for a coin. The very fact that they have a
Roman denarius in their possession indicates they accept Roman rule at
some level. After all, you can’t accept a government’s right of coinage
without also admitting its right of taxation.

Jesus simply holds up the coin and asks whose picture is on it. They must
have seen where he was headed even as their answer slips from their
tongues. The logic is so simple and yet so profound: Give to Caesar what
belongs to Caesar and give to God what belongs to God.

The word "give" is literally "give back." Thus, Jesus implies that our
taxes are obligatory. That is, we owe them to the government as surely as
we have financial obligations to God as part of our stewardship.

This has some ponderous implications:
· a government does have the right to taxation. If we cheat on our taxes,
we are disobeying the ordained authority of God (Rom 13:1-7; 1 Pet
2:13-17).
· We don’t obey a government because we like what it does, who’s in
charge, or how it spends its money.
· There are appropriate occasions for civil disobedience (Acts 4:19;
5:29). However, these should only be reserved for times when the
government asks us directly or individually to disobey what God has
commanded us to do or not to do.
· If his picture is on the coin, then it belongs to him.

The Pharisees and Herodians are stymied. They have laboriously contrived
this "impenetrable" question. Their scheme was foolproof. Yet in less
than fifteen seconds this uneducated Galilean dismantles their question,
exposes their motives, and con-victs their hypocrisy. Strike one—the
Herodians are out. The Pharisees, however, will be back for a second
beating.

Here comes "round two": The Sadducees. This group died out with the
destruction of the temple in A.D. 70. So the little we know of them comes
from the Bible (only men-tioned fourteen times in the Gospels), from
Josephus, and early Christian writers.

Since all of these sources were "enemies" of the Sadducees we should
handle our in-formation with care. Nevertheless, the Sadducees were
apparently the religious "liberals," denying any kind of a resurrection,
either in the form of angels or spirits (Acts 23:8; cf. Josephus,
Antiquities of the Jews 18.1.3-4; Wars 2.8.14).

They, too, come to Jesus with "objectivity," and false flattery. Their
question concerns marriage as it would apply to the resurrection. All
three Synoptics clarify that the Sadducees do not believe in a
resurrection. Thus their goal is not to trap Jesus with a false dilemma
or to illicit any kind of real answer from him.

Jesus is going to give two answers to their question. The first relates
to the power of God and the second relates to the Scriptures, both of
which the Sadducees are ignorant:
· First, the Sadducees apparently believe the resurrection would
necessitate a new body like this present one, including sexual
attributes. But God can give us new bodies that are beyond the bounds of
marriage.
· Jesus’ second answer concerned the interpretation of the Scriptures.
His rhetorical question, "Have you not read… ?" was, no doubt, taken as
it was intended—as an insult. Quoting from Exodus 3:6, Jesus uses typical
and acceptable Jewish interpretation.
· Jesus asserts that the resurrection is a logical necessity. But more
than this, God’s immense greatness demands his servants be raised in his
presence. That is, God is the God of the living and not the dead.
· The resurrection is a living relationship that cannot be broken.

Two major points show this.
God is the God of past saints, believers who have passed on. God is the
God of Abra-ham, Isaac, and Jacob. Jesus means at least two things in
this point. God’s relationships are active relationships, not inactive.
God says, "I am the God of...." not, "I was the God of...."

His relationships with His subjects are continuous. They are maintained.
God is eter-nal; therefore, He creates and maintains eternal, active
relationships. God’s subjects do enter into the spiritual realm of His
presence and actively relate to Him. The resurrection is a fact.

God’s relationships are good and rewarding. The patriarchs of old were
promised rewards, personal rewards (cp. Hebrews 11:13-16). There has to
be a resurrection if our relationship with God is good and rewarding. To
die and be left dead as a decayed corpse is not good or rewarding.
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob have a good and rewarding relationship with
God. They are alive, more alive than they were while on earth, for they
are perfected and eternal. They are with God Himself. And so shall we be.
The resurrection is a fact.

God is the God of the living, not of the dead. God is the God of Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob, not the God of dead decayed corpses. When Moses wrote
these words, the three patriarchs had been dead for many years. If they
were dead, God was not their God. Since He was their God, they were
alive, living in God’s presence in relationship to Him, perfect and
eternal. There is to be a resurrection.

One simple fact clearly comes to the forefront in these points made by
Christ: since God is, God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.

Again, the crowds are duly impressed. The Sadducees are confounded. They
had nothing to say in response and no more questions to ask. Strike
two—the Sadducees are out.

Now this legal expert seems to be more amiable to Jesus than the others.
(1) He notes that Jesus has given a good answer to the Sadducees. (2) He
asks a more reasonable and more important question. (3) He acknowledges
the beauty of Jesus’ answer. So (4) Jesus affirms his integrity by saying
that he, himself, is not far from the kingdom of God.

The lawyer’s question was a common debate among the Pharisees. With 613
OT commands and innumerable oral traditions, the answer is not a simple
one. Once we recognize that our greatest obligation is to love God, the
obvious question is, "How does one express his love to God?"

God would rather us show our love to him by meeting the needs of our
fellows...if we keep these two commands we will, by necessity, fulfill
all the crucial features of the entire Old Testament law.

This "lawyer" is impressed. Jesus strikes a chord in his Jewish heart.
For the true Jew there is nothing more central than the love of the one
true God and charity shown to our neighbor.

Jesus answered these three questions from the three major parties of the
day. They have no more questions for him. So Jesus has a question for
them. It was really the only question left to be answered—the only one
that really matters: Who is Jesus?

By the end of this third round the Jewish leaders are thoroughly
frustrated and the crowds are ecstatic. This is a major league spectacle!
Now that Jesus has disarmed all their ambushes he turns the tables and
they have to answer a question of his.

It was a simple question, "Who is the Christ?" Why that would be David’s
son. "All right," Jesus says, "that being the case, let’s exegete Psalm
110, beginning at verse 1. How can the Christ be both the son of David
and his Lord?"
Now that was a more difficult question for a couple of reasons:
· First, in their culture, the father was always greater than the son.
There is simply no "natural" way that David would call one of his
offspring his Lord.
· Second, this Psalm was understood as a Messianic Psalm, predicting the
coming of the Christ. It is also the most often cited OT passage in the
NT (cf. Acts 2:34-35; Heb 1:13; 5:6; 7:17, 21; 10:13).
· They couldn’t dodge it or deny it. After all, it was Scripture inspired
by the Holy Spirit, so says Jesus. But neither could they explain it!
· The implication is that this human Son of David (referring to Jesus)
was also the divine Son of God.

This must have been a serious embarrassment and a shock to these "Bible
scholars" to suddenly realize how little they know about the basics of
their faith. They are stunned by this uneducated Galilean.

Jesus got no pleasure from lambasting the Pharisees (Mt 23). Nor does he
rejoice over Jerusalem’s impending destruction (Mt 24). Here we see his
heart, full of pathos, and his eyes full of tears for what he sees for
this city’s future.

Jesus leaves the temple courts proper for the last time( at the close of
chapter 24; we will not discuss cpt. 23 since we studied it at length
recently).

Mark 12:41-44: "Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings
were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple
treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts. {42} But a poor widow
came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a fraction of a
penny. {43} Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, "I tell you the
truth, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the
others. {44} They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her
poverty, put in everything--all she had to live on.""

He seats himself in the court of the women across from the 13
trumpet-shaped bronze receptacles. Each of these boxes were for different
kinds of offerings, with labels tell-ing what the money was for.

Jesus watched deliberately and carefully as the rich proudly tossed in
fistfuls of coins. As they slid down the bronze coffer and clanked
against the metal, they made quite a clamor and no doubt attracted a
great deal of desired attention.

In the midst of this spectacle, there came an unassuming widow. In fact,
she probably wanted to go unnoticed, a bit embarrassed by her meager
gift. You could barely hear her two puny coins in the coffer. They were
so small, in fact, that their name, often called mites, was derived from
the word "to peal."
They were a mere shaving of metal. Together, they were only worth 1/64 of
a day’s wage. They would almost be more of a hassle to count than they
were worth, kind of like pennies in our offering plates.

Jesus excitedly calls his disciples. They must have had great
expectations as they ran to his side. How shocked they must have been to
discover that all the hubbub was over two mites! But to Jesus it is a big
deal. This woman has given more than all the rich because she gave all
that she had!

Last modified: April 18, 2006