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Matthew's Gospel, and it's been
good, but it's been long and kind of tedious, and I apologize,
but we're trying to learn some things, and we're noticing this
is the final week, beginning in chapter 21, and no sooner
than he goes in and presents himself as king, most of the
mixed multitude is not interested. And so we're noticing the events
of Monday and Tuesday where the Lord is giving, if you will,
10 warnings to the people, and he's doing it just very through
words. That's all he's doing, just warning
them. He curses the fig tree, cleanses the temple, he silences
critics over the question of authority. He gives some parables
of the disobedient son and the wicked husbandman and the parable
of the king's son. And that got us all the way through
chapter 22, verse 15. So all these things are happening
in rapid succession over a two-day period. And we're still here
on Tuesday. And what we're going to come
to today is the three leading opponents of the Lord are going
to come forward with a bunch of questions. Now, the Bible
is a book with answers. And the Bible does not mind people
asking questions. And in the Old Testament, back
in the book of 1 Kings 10, what had happened a few chapters before
that, a young man prayed to God for wisdom. And that would be
Solomon. And God granted him wisdom. so that he would know how to
be a good ruler and how to teach people to live well on planet
earth. And he began to build his kingdom in his early years
around the wisdom that God gave him, and the reputation began
to spread. And in 1 Kings 10, a nearby queen
from Sheba, the queen of Sheba, heard of the fame of Solomon
concerning the name of the Lord. Notice, she didn't hear about
him so much about the wealth that he had, or the type of administration
he had, but concerning the name of the Lord. And she came to
prove him with hard questions. People want to know things about
God. And they're going to come with questions. And there are
honest questions. And verse 3, Solomon told her
all her questions. There was not anything hid from
the king which he told her not. God's got the answers. in the
Bible. Sadly, we're going to learn there
are questions of sincere hearts and there are foolish questions
and scornful questions and people that aren't really looking for
answers, they're looking for an escape valve to get away.
From God, and that's what's happening here with Jesus and these three
groups are going to come in rapid succession The Herodians are
going to come in verse of 15 Which we'll see in 15 the Pharisees
took counsel and they sent the Herodians out along with their
disciples and and the Herodians will ask a question, the Sadducees
will ask a question in verse 23, and the Pharisees will ask
a question in verse 34, and then Jesus is gonna wind the whole
chapter up by, he's gonna ask a question. So we'll take a look at these
questions and to see what it is that's going on. Are these
people looking for answers? Are there answers to their questions?
In verse 15, the Pharisees took counsel how they might entangle
Him, that's Jesus. He'd just been teaching that
great parable of the marriage of the king's son. And they want
to entangle Him in His talk. And they sent to Him disciples
with the Herodians. who said, Master, we know thou
art true and teachest the way of God in truth, neither carest
thou for any man, for thou regardest not the person of men. Tell us,
therefore, what thinkest thou? Is it lawful to give tribute
unto Caesar or not? But Jesus perceived their wickedness.
and said, why tempt ye me, ye hypocrites? Show me the tribute
money. And they brought unto him a penny.
And he sayeth to them, well, whose image in superscription
is this? And they said, Caesar's. Then
he said to them, well, render therefore to Caesar the things
which are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's.
And when they heard these things, they marveled, and left him,
and went their way. And the first thing they do is
they come with a political question. The Herodians were the politicians
of the day, the Jewish politicians of the day. You'll find that,
like in America, there are different people that have their different
interests. There are people that are conservatives.
There are people that are liberals. There are people that are historians. There are people that are New
Agers. There's people that break up
into different groups. And the Jews had broken up into
three major groups by the time Jesus arrived. There were the
Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Herodians. The Pharisees
mostly kept the temple. The Sadducees mostly kept the
scribes and the copies of the law. And the Herodians were like
the civil leaders. They're the ones who weren't
so much interested in religious duties. They were interested
in civil duties. And the one thing they liked
was Herod was part Jew. He was an Itamian with a little
bit of Jewish blood. And he had purchased his throne
in Rome many, many decades before. And because he had a little bit
of Jewish blood, they thought it was best to have someone in
office that was somewhat related to their people. rather than
a full-blooded Roman or someone that Caesar might appoint like
Pilate. It's better to have someone like
Herod." And they were the Rhodians. They said, look, as long as we
retain a little bit of governmental power, we're doing okay. By the
way, there are Christians that like that too. If we could just
retain a little bit of governmental power, we're doing okay. So the
question is a political one. The political one is, we are
the Jewish people, and why are we paying taxes to the Romans? Now, why are they doing this?
Well, their method is to, of course, take counsel through
committees and councils, and their design is to entangle Jesus
and snare Him in His words, and find contradictions in what He
says. That goes on today. The method of a lot of people
is to look for contradictions in the Bible and look for something
that doesn't line up here because now basically we've just found
this is a discredited manuscript. That's a discredited man. We
don't have to listen to him. So we're looking for a way to
make him look bad publicly like we're looking for a way to make
the Bible look bad publicly. That's their design. Their narrative,
you'll notice in verse 16, when they begin speaking, they begin
with the word, Master. They give him a little lip service.
Oh, he's a good teacher. He's a good man. We know Thou
art true and teachest the way of God in truth. Neither carest
Thou for any man, for Thou regardest not the person of men. It said
about two or three things that were true and one thing that
wasn't. and their narrative is to mix truth with error. This
is the way you set up a narrative. You put a couple of grains of
truth in there, and then you slip in just a little bit of
error. What's the error? The error that He doesn't care
for any man. That's the leaven in their message. Jesus doesn't
regard the person of men in that He's going to say, well, I'm
going to regard this Jew more than a Philistine, because for
both of them, they both have a soul, and both are in need
of truth and salvation. And to say he doesn't care, he
just went around three and a half years helping people and doing
good to those that were oppressed and giving himself and ministering.
Obviously, he cares. But the way they're showing you
is in a lot of these discussions, we're in a political realm now,
the way political people will work is they'll mix a little
bit of truth with a straw man, fake... lie in the narrative
to kind of frame the narrative in such a way where it's no longer
accurate or honest. Almost no matter seems like how
you would answer it, you're going to come out with something wrong
because you swallowed a little bit of the leaven of the falsehood
in what they've set up. This is how the newspaper is
operated forever. They put a little bit of truth
and a little bit of error, and they set it up in such a way
that no matter how you respond to it, you've swallowed a little
bit of leaven. This is the way they work. And
so, Jesus knows that. Why are you tempting me, you
hypocrites? In Mark, he talks about verse
18. He said he perceived their wickedness.
In Mark, he calls it hypocrisy. In Luke, he calls it craftiness.
And basically what he's saying is there are crafty, hypocritical,
wicked people who take counsel to entangle God's Word and in
God's people. That's why they exist. That's why I try and warn you,
there's no need for any of you to watch any news. That's what
destroyed the United States of America were the newspapers and
radio and television. This is what built, the Bible
is what built the United States of America early on. And early
on when people had truth, the whole truth and nothing but the
truth, we were doing fine. And as we started listening to
the narrative of liars using the politics of newspapers and
getting politics in everyone's life, everyone's political now.
Nobody needs to be political. Nobody needs to be political,
you need to be biblical. Nobody needs leaven. A little
leaven will leaven the whole lump. The whole thing's leaven
now. Have you seen where it's gone? After 150 years of the
newspapers? Cancel your subscriptions. and
read God's Word. Anyways, they come with this
political question. Now here's their design. Their
design is this. They know that there's great
division amongst the Jewish people. The Jewish people are divided.
Some of the Herodians think maybe it's okay to pay the tax because
it keeps our guy in the throne there, Herod. Most of the Jews
are against the tribute and the tax. And I could take you back
to Old Testament passages, but that's not the issue. The issue
is, they're thinking, no matter how Jesus answers this question,
if He says, yes, we should pay tax, He's going to alienate a
whole bunch of Jews. And if He says, no, we shouldn't
pay tax, He might alienate a few Jews, but He's going to alienate
the prevailing government forces. and they're going to get him
for insurrection and sedition. So no matter how he answers this
question, we framed it as an either-or question, as a yes-no
question. No matter how he answers it,
he can't answer it in a way that will satisfy people. By the way,
they do that a lot. Lawyers are trained to do that
when people are on the stand. Don't allow them to give an open
answer. Funnel them down to a yes or a no answer, but frame the
question in such a way that no matter how they answer it, they're
going to look bad. If you stop beating your wife, There's evidence this man used
to beat his wife. Have you stopped beating your
wife? No. No. No. Oh, you're still beating
her, are you? So you frame, this is the careful,
crafty framing of issues in such a way they do this as they accost
certain senators and congressmen coming out with a yes or no question,
an either or question. No matter how they answer it,
they're going to look bad. And that's what they're trying
to do with Jesus here. This is the nature of politics. Like
Brother Ed likes to say, a tick is something that bites you.
And polyticks are many things biting you. You don't want those
things on you. Stay away from them. Now, Jesus, though, perceived
their wickedness. Jesus is one step ahead of them.
He's not going to answer yes or no, either or. Instead, he's
going to ask them for something. Show me the tribute money. Now
they have to bring forth the money, and they bring one of
the pennies that had been minted in Rome. And on that penny was
an image of the head of Julius Caesar. And he asked them, whose
image is this? Caesar's. Not only that, his
name was there. It's not uncommon for Gentile
entities to print money, to mint money, whether it be coin money
or paper money, and to put people's faces on it, usually their rulers,
and the names of those people. We have it on our dollar bills,
and we're used to that. And they said, well, this money,
it's Caesar's. Well, then render to Caesar the
things which are Caesar's. After all, he printed it, he
made it, isn't it his? He apparently is sharing it with
you, he wants some of it back, give it back to him. Is this
not unreasonable? You're living in whatever land
you're living in. They print the money. They've
set up the economic system. If they want some of it back,
give some of it back. I have no problem with that,
says the Lord. The Lord will take account one
day. That's perfectly fine. You can pay tribute. You can
pay tax. It will not contravene your work
with God. That's his image. Give him what's
his. Here's a question that he didn't
ask. Whose image are you made in? The greater question isn't about
the money and the image on the money. Who stamped his image
on you? The money you can render back
to Caesar. He's the one that printed it.
But God put his image on you. Shouldn't you render back to
God the things that are God's? Isn't God worthy of some of your
time and your treasure and your devotion? That's what He's leaving
open for them to consider. We've been made in the image
of God. They say, well, our image has
been marred and it's fall. That's correct. But we understand
it's been restored in Jesus Christ. Ephesians 4, verse 24, put on
the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and
true holiness. And so therefore, what Jesus
is wanting and desiring and is teaching through His apostles
and His prophets is, I beseech you by the mercies of God, present
your body a living sacrifice, wholly acceptable to God. You
can give your money to Caesar. You give yourself to the Lord.
God's not interested in your money. He's interested in you. One day the money will canker
and rot and be done away with. So, the first is the political
question. And the Lord turns it around
on them. Render to God the things that are God's. You're in the
image of God. Give God your time. Give God your prayers. Give God
your devotion. Give God your attention. And when they heard these words,
they marveled. And the Herodians went their way and said, we're
not gonna get him with politics. We can't get him to descend to
our level of politics. He stays on the higher plane
and the higher level, which is spiritual. He doesn't get down
in the dirt with us. And the Lord doesn't want His
children down in the dirty political world. He wants them on the higher
road of spiritual truth and talking about the things that are God's
and things that are the Lord's, as opposed to the things that
are going to pass with time anyways. You do know our currency will
fail. Currencies have failed. By the way, those Roman coins
aren't worth anything today. They're gone. The dollars they
were using in Nazi Germany, those are all gone. And your money
will be gone soon, too. I mean, it's planned obsolescence.
The people printing it right now, the fiat currency, they
tend to do away with it. Have you noticed the prices are
going up? Because the stuff is more worthless. Yeah. Yeah, nickel's not worth a dime
anymore. Anyways, I think Yogi Berra said that. So first is
the political question. The next question that's going
to be brought to him, the next group is watching the Sadducees.
The same day came to him the Sadducees, which say there's
no resurrection. Interesting group of people.
Sadducees, if you were to go back and you were to study them
at that particular time, they were the scribal tribe that kept
the law of Moses. And they had great reverence
and respect for Moses. They believed all the Mosaic
books were inspired. They did believe the other books
were semi-canonical, but they really were inspired. They gave
all their devotion to Moses. In other words, in their mind,
they had subtracted many of the writings of God. The MO of the Sadducees is subtracting
from God's Word. Today, the modern Sadducees are
scholars. Both begin with S. They have
the hiss of the serpent. They subtract things from God's
Word. The first Bible I had in my hands
was something called an NIV. It stands for the Non-Inspired
Version. And in that NIV it had 64,000
fewer English words than a King James Bible. It had entire verses
missing out of the book. It's the Bible light. It's had
a pen knife taken to it and scalped it and a whole bunch of things
have been taken out of it. Now, we know in the book of Deuteronomy,
He shall not add to the word which I command you, said the
Lord, neither shall ye diminish ought from it, that ye may keep
the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you.
That's Deuteronomy chapter 4. of Revelation 22. We know what
God says. That which is old, there's no
new thing under the sun. What the Sadducees were doing,
the scholars today are doing. And Jesus warned, if any man
shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy,
God shall take away his part out of the book of life and out
of the holy city and from the things which are written in this
book. By the way, He didn't say if someone reads it. He said
if someone's involved in performing and committing that act of treason.
The men and the women on those committees are the ones who God
sought to that they are not saved. Most Christian scholars, Hebrew
and Greek, are unsaved. Probably 99% of them. Every so often there's a Christian
guy who naively becomes a Christian scholar, a Bible scholar. He
doesn't know what he's doing. He'd be better off just to be
a humble student of the Word of God. But it happens. Some
of God's kids make mistakes. But those people that took away
from the words of the book are not saved, says God. So the Sadducees subtracted from
God's Word. There were many great teachings
in the Old Testament they did not believe in. You read about
them in Acts 23. when Paul was being brought before
this Jewish council after being arrested in Jerusalem, and there
was the high priest, and there were some Sadducees, and there
were some Pharisees, and it would be like there was probably an
aisle down the middle with some on the right and some on the
left. The Pharisees on one side, the Sadducees on the other. The
liberals on one side, the conservatives on the other. And when Paul perceived
the one part was Sadducee and the other part Pharisee, he cried
out and he said, Men and brethren, I am a Pharisee, the son of a
Pharisee of the hope and the resurrection of the dead. I'm
called in question. And when he so said, there arose
a dissension between the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the multitude.
For the Sadducees say, There is no resurrection, neither angel
nor spirit, but the Pharisees confessed both. And so the Sadducees
had subtracted key teachings from the Word of God. They would
be like the modern scholars who don't believe in the virgin birth,
who don't believe in the bodily resurrection, who don't really
believe there is a heaven and a hell. You're going to see by
the nature of the question, all of their thinking is based on
the way they live right now. Everything is based on this present
life, and maybe if there is a life after, it'll be just like this
life, only a little bigger, but pretty much basically the same.
And that's the way a lost religious man thinks. He knows nothing
of the spirit world. So in their question, verse 23,
back where we are in Matthew 22, They don't believe there's a
resurrection in verse 23, so the first thing they do is ask
about a resurrection. And Moses says, if a man dies and he has
no children, and his brother marry his wife, he should raise
up seed to the brother. Now, there were with us seven
brethren, and the first, when he married a wife, deceased,
having no issue. He left his wife to his brother.
Likewise, the second brother also, and the third brother unto
the seventh, and all of the women died also, last of all. So all
these men are supposed to raise up and none of them have any
children with her. In the resurrection, whose wife
shall she be of the seven? For they all had her. And here's
the funny thing about a liberal, scholarly mind. It asks a question
about something it doesn't believe in. Why would you discuss something
you don't believe in? Why are you spending all your
time talking about God if you don't believe in God? Why are
you asking questions about a Bible if you say you don't believe
it? I wouldn't waste my time in it. I don't believe in any
of the writings of Confucius. I don't waste my time with them.
I don't ask questions about them. I don't read it. I don't believe
DC or Marvel comics. I don't read those things. I
don't ask how Captain America's doing. I don't want to know where
Superman is. I don't worry about that stuff. I don't believe it.
Why would I be involved in something that I don't believe in? This
shows the warped nature of a liberal mind. The Sadducee is a liberal. He doesn't know what he believes
in. And the second thing that he tends to do is he will ask
a fabulous, exaggerated, imaginary, hypothetical, unlikely situation
that will lead the listeners so far down into the woods and
and into a thick cloud of gray darkness That he finds himself
stuck in a situational ethics I got I better come up with something
for this bizarre situation, which is never going to occur It's not based anywhere in reality And the Sadducee is like the
scholarly philosophical thinker that sits around and just imagines
things and he twists himself up into yoga knots in his mind.
And he can't come up with any answers. He can just come up
with a bunch of fabulous questions that have no answer to them because
they have no reality to them. And the Lord is listening to
this insanity. And His answer, very simply,
verse 29, is, Ye do err. Why is that? Not knowing the
Scriptures. Because truth is only found in the Scriptures.
And you guys have wandered so far out in the woods there, you're
nowhere near the rock of truth that God tried to set you on. Truth is in the Scriptures. This
is known as the Scripture of truth. And if you want to know
spiritual truth, you can only know it here. And if you reject
it like they did, they whittled that. We don't believe that.
We don't believe in the resurrection. Well, the resurrection's in the
Old Testament. You've seen it, right? Job 19, verse 25. It's in the book of Isaiah. We've looked at these passages
before. That was the hope of their people. By the way, it's
curious. They talk about the resurrection. Verse 28. And you know that word isn't
found once in the Old Testament? In the book of John, I think
it's the 11th or 12th chapter, I can't remember what chapter
off the top of my head, I think it's the 11th. Let me see, yeah. The 11th chapter, when they raise
Lazarus from the dead, Martha runs out and says in verse 24,
I know that I'll rise again in the resurrection at the last
day. She just used a word that's not in the Old Testament. Why
is that? Because the concept of the resurrection
is taught throughout the Old Testament. That was the hope
of the Jews, is to be resurrected and to live in the land with
the Messiah. That was the hope. And so, what
did God allow them to do? He said, although I haven't given
you the word, I'm going to permit you to give a word to that concept. The very concept where Job said,
I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that He shall stand at the
latter day upon the earth, and though after my skin worms destroy
this body, yet in my flesh I shall see God. And that hope is all
through the Old Testament. And the Jews that read it said,
wow, he's talking about raising us up one day. We can call that
resurrection. And God said, go ahead, use that
word. Go ahead, use it. And when it came back, Jesus
came the first time, they were using a word not found in the
Old Testament. Now why are you telling me this, Brother Mike?
There is a word we all use today. about a trumpet sounding and
us flying up in the air and it's called the rapture and it's not
written in the New Testament anywhere by that name yet the
concept is found in 1st Corinthians 15 Revelation 4 and 2nd Thessalonians 2, 1st Thessalonians
4. I mean the concept is found all
over the place and we've put a name to it and God says that's
good. My children that read my book, I'm gonna give them the
privilege of naming a couple things. I'll give them privilege
of naming something else. You know what, what would you like
to call this folks? Bible. That's not in either testament. And God accepts it and allows
us to call it the Holy Bible. He allows his children to have
a couple of gifts and a couple of privileges. Isn't that a blessing?
That's the goodness of God. Now, he just allowed us a few.
They got to name rapture. We get to name rapture. They
got to name resurrection. We both got to use the word Bible,
and God accepts it. I'm just showing you something.
The resurrection's taught plainly in the Old Testament. The rapture's
taught plainly in the New Testament. But you know what? Philosophers
and scholars don't believe in either. And yet they'll ask questions
about it. Scoffing questions. Confused
questions. And Jesus says, well, if you
don't know the Scriptures, you're in error. Because without the
book, you can't know the truth. And without the book, you don't
know the power of God. And let me tell you some things
about the resurrection, verse 30. In the resurrection, people
don't marry. And they're not given in marriage.
They're going to be as the angels of God are in heaven. Angels
don't marry. God made a fixed amount of angels. And He fixed the number. And
they don't reproduce and procreate. And that was it. And with men,
God allowed men and women, and the two shall become one. In
the sense that his DNA and her DNA come together and make one
brand new one with new DNA. And this one came from those
two. And both parts of those two are
in that one. And God permitted procreation
as long as we're in this part of life. But when we get our
glorified bodies that live in heaven, just like the angels
in heaven, there's no more need for procreation. Heaven's only
so big, we're not going to have a population crisis up there.
We're going to have a fixed number of people moving up there, and
we're set. And the other thing which you
learn in Mark's passage and Luke's parallel passage is once we're
up there, we not only don't marry, we can't die. That also makes
us like angels. Angels cannot die. Those who are believers in glorified
bodies cannot die. So they won't need to reproduce.
It's not like they're going to die and they need to pass on
their heritage. They're going to be alive forever. Their heritage
is going to stay with them. They don't need someone to pick
it up after them. And as touching the resurrection
of the dead, verse 31, have you not read? That's something Jesus
says about 10 times to them. Have you not read? Did you never
read? Have you not searched the scriptures?
I hope he never says that to you. I hope you have read. And
you can say, yes, I did read, Lord. I didn't understand it,
but I read it. But have you not read that which was spoken unto
you by God, saying..." Now notice what he's going to do. He's going
to go all the way back to Moses. Why? These people claim they
revere Moses. These people... Oh, I don't know
if Isaiah's inspired. I don't know if Jeremiah's inspired.
He's just a prophet. I don't know if Daniel's right
with what he said. But Moses, that's our man. So he goes all
the way back to when God met Moses at the bush in Exodus 3. And he said, I am the God of
Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. God is
not the God of the dead, but of the living. Notice, when he
was speaking to Moses, and he's speaking to Moses, I'm trying
to get the timing right, about 500 years after Abraham lived,
about 450 years after Isaac lived, and about 400 years after Jacob
lived. And he didn't say, I was the
God. of Abraham, and I was the God
of Isaac. I am right now at this moment
the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Why? Because they're with
me. I'm not the God of the dead. I'm the God of the living. And
my children live unto me forever, even if their bodies die." And
trying to show them the fact that there had already been a
soulish and a spiritual resurrection of those people in Abraham's
bosom with God at the very moment, when they didn't believe in Abraham's
bosom either. And most scholars, religious
scholars, probably don't believe 90% of what's in a Bible. They
don't believe in a soul. They don't believe in heaven.
They don't believe in hell. They don't believe in a supreme
God. They don't believe in the devil. They don't believe in
a resurrection. They don't believe in a millennium.
They don't believe in the rapture. But God's the God of the living.
And basically they're dead in their trespass and sins and they're
dead to God with no relationship to him. And they do err not knowing
the scriptures. And the multitude, when they
heard this in verse 33, they were astonished at his doctrine.
Wow, he really seems to know the book, literally and spiritually. So the political question has
been kicked aside. The philosophical question has
been kicked aside. Next is going to come the Pharisees. When the Pharisees heard that
he put the Sadducees to silence, they gathered together. And then
one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting
him and saying, Master, which is the great commandment in the
law? Now, the Pharisees were the conservative
religious group. Their M.O. was not to subtract
from the Word of God. Sadly, their M.O. was to keep
the Word of God and then add to it. Remember a few chapters
back in the 15th chapter when Jesus was dealing with them earlier,
and the Pharisees were arguing with Him. Why are Your disciples
transgressing our traditions? And what the elders say. And
Jesus said, why are you transgressing the commandment of God by your
tradition? I mean, in vain you're teaching
people to worship me, teaching your doctrines and commandments
of men. And then the disciples said, knowest thou that the Pharisees
were offended when they heard this saying? And he said, well,
too bad. Every plant which my father hath
not planted will be rooted up. Let him alone. They're blind
leaders of the blind. If the blind lead the blind,
they'll both fall into the ditch. My Father said not just don't
subtract from My Word, don't add to it. But they loved to
add to the Word of God. They loved to hyper-divide and
study the Word of God and chop it up with a knife and add pieces
to it and flavor it and condition it and do all kinds of things.
They had gone through the writings in the Old Testament. I guess
there were 613 so-and-so commandments that they had found through the
books of Moses. And they divided them up into
the positive ones and the negative ones, and the 248 positive ones
and 365 negative ones. And then they went through and
they weighed them. They said, and these are considered the
important ones. We call them heavy. They're heavy.
And these are the ones that are not so important. They're the
light ones, the unimportant ones. And we're trying to rank them
as to which this one. And so what do you say, Lord?
What's the most important one? We're gonna get your stamp of
approval on this thing here. Because there's some we don't
even like to follow at all, the real light ones, we can just
kick them off to the side. But thank goodness Jesus came
to fulfill every jot and tittle, and not to break the law, but
to fulfill it. But it is kind of a good question
for a religious man to ask. I mean, you ought to know what
is the great commandment in the Scriptures. And Jesus answers
him in verse 37, and He takes him back to the Shema in Deuteronomy
chapter 6. Thou shalt love the Lord thy
God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy
mind. This is the first and the great
commandment." They were required three times a day to recite this.
It's in the book of Deuteronomy 4. Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is one Lord,
and thou shalt love the Lord. thy God with all thy heart and
with all thy soul and with all thy might." And that was to separate
them from all the people on the planet. I mean, God called Abraham
aside and Moses aside because the rest of the world was off
into polygamy and had all kinds of idols and false gods, and
He wanted them to know that here, O Israel, there is one God. The
Lord our God is one Lord. And that was the Shema they call
it Shema because the word in Hebrew here is Shema Shema it's
that I L. I don't I Elohim I don't I had
that's kind of how they say it in Hebrew forgive my accent and
that's how they would say it and they would record that thing
every day and Say it three times a day. They'd recite it and and
the point is that Jesus is saying is To love God is more than just
a Lip service. It's more than just to say I
have fond feelings for God. To love God is to do God's will
and to serve God and to be obedient to God. That's what real love
is. And that's the first and the
great commandment. But not only that, Jesus also reaches back
into the book of Leviticus in the 19th chapter. And he shows
them you can't separate the love of God from the love of men because
men are made in the image of God. Render unto God the things
that are God's and men are made in God's image. And I came here
as a lover of mankind. And you too must learn to do
that. Thou shalt not avenge nor bear grudge against the children
of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. I am the Lord. Leviticus 19.18
And that's the second commandment, loving thy neighbor as thyself.
On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
God was trying to teach the love of God to His people. We have
the Ten Commandments back there. And you look at table number
one, and there's spiritual commandments about knowing the Lord and not
making graven images and not taking His name in vain and honoring
the Sabbath. And that's all the love toward
God. And all the others are the social commandments. honoring
your mother and your father and not harming someone. Paul would
go on and explain in the book of Romans that that's how the
law is fulfilled in loving one another. If you love someone,
you're not going to steal from them. If you love someone and
they get something, you're not going to covet what they have.
This, thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not kill, thou shalt
not steal, thou shalt not bear false witness, thou shalt not
covet. If there be any other commandment,
it's briefly comprehended in this saying, thou shalt love
thy neighbor as thyself love worketh no ill to his neighbor. Therefore, love is the fulfilling
of the law. And on those two, loving God
and loving your neighbor as all the commandments hang. And this
is what God is basically doing with His people, is teaching
us so one day we will have a new world that He's going to set
up in a millennium where people are going to love God and love
their neighbor and there will be peace on earth. Because there's
love to God and glory to God in the highest. And we won't
need Congress's making up laws because the law will be in everyone's
heart and everyone's living it and fulfilling the law. So, Jesus replies to them. Now, they've had a political
question. Ridiculous. Don't need to worry
about it. The simplicity is this. If you
are a Christian, your higher citizenship is to heaven. And
you can love God and you can devote yourself to God and you
can still serve in your nation as long as your nation is not
asking you to do something contrary to God's law. So even if your
nation says it's okay to kill babies since you know it's contrary
to God's law, you wouldn't kill a baby. Even other people are
doing it. And if your nation says it's
okay for your son to marry another boy, you know God doesn't like
that. Your son's going to marry a girl,
even if your nation is permitting that stuff. And your higher citizenship
is that to the heavenly citizenship, not your earthly one. And in
terms of philosophical questions, you can just abandon them altogether,
because philosophers err. They don't know the Scriptures.
And in terms of religious questions, and religion seems to be real
big on the Ten Commandments, but they miss the heart of the
Ten Commandments. The heart of the Ten Commandments
is loving God and loving your neighbor. And so, now the political,
philosophical, religious questions aside, Jesus turns around and
said, let's ask the eternal question. Let's ask the spiritual question.
Verse 41, And while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus
asked them, Well, what think ye of Christ? Whose Son is He? You want to ask questions? Let's
ask the most important one. Forget about politics and philosophy
and religion. Even if you were to get the religious
question right, and you recited, I'm supposed to love God and
love my neighbor. Can you? The real question is,
what are you going to do with Christ? What think ye of Christ? God didn't give that religion
just for the purpose of you doing your own works. God gave that
religion to get you ready for His Messiah, the Christ. What
think ye of Christ? Whose son is he? Well, he's the
son of David. And I understand those men, the
Pharisees particularly, the Herodians, the Sadducees secondarily, they
probably didn't give much thought to it anymore. But they understood
that there was a Messiah promised in the Old Testament. Now what had happened to them
is over the years, reading like we were studying this morning
about the first and the second coming and not being able to
see the difference, they got confused that there were two
messiahs. Messiah ben Joseph and Messiah
ben David. And the Messiah ben Joseph is
the one that suffers like Joseph was thrown into the prison. But
the Messiah ben David is the one that sits on the throne.
And they kind of drifted toward their love of the Messiah ben
David, the conquering Messiah, the powerful Messiah, the kingly
Messiah, the great Messiah that would take the shackles of the
Gentile governments off of us. And so their answer is, well,
he's the son of David. And they didn't go much further.
So Jesus now said to them, well, how does David in spirit call
him Lord? When he says in verse 44, going
all the way back, he's quoting Psalm 110. He's quoting the great
Messianic Psalm 110. I don't know if you're familiar
with it. You might want to put your finger there. But in that
particular Psalm, one of the great messianic Psalms that David
himself wrote under the inspiration of the Spirit of the Living God.
Notice carefully how it's written in Psalm 110. with capital L, capital O, capital
R, capital D, said unto my Lord, look at it, it's capital L, little
O, little R, little D, sit thou at my right hand till I make
thine enemies thy footstool. David is saying, David's writing,
he's saying the Lord, Jehovah in heaven said to my Lord capital
L little o little rd David saying I have a Lord besides Jehovah's
and The Lord Jehovah is saying to my Lord to sit at my right
hand till I make thine enemies thy footstool and How can he be David's son
because no father refers to his son as Lord and The Son refers
to the Father as Lord, and David wasn't talking about Jesse. And
he's talking about the Messiah that he knows has been promised
to him in the book of 2 Samuel 7, verses 11 through 16, when
the promise was given that of the seed of David would we want
to sit on the throne forever and ever and ever, and that would
be the Messiah. The Messiah, the Son of David, and yet He's
His Lord too. How can that be? If David calls
Him Lord, how is He His Son? Verse 46, And no man was able
to answer Him a word, neither just any man from that day forth. Ask Him any more questions. He
stopped every mouth. He shut them all up. Because
the whole point that he wants them to understand is the Messiah
is not just David's son, he's God's son. And the Messiah is
more than a man. He's the God-man. And that's
the eternal question. That's the spiritual question.
What think ye of Christ? What will ye do with Jesus who
is called the Christ? And the last question he's asking
there to these people on that Tuesday, this is the final question. Next week he's not going to be
asking questions. Matthew 23, we'll read it next week. He's
just rebuking them, calling them hypocrites and cursing them seven
times over for the fact that they've taken God's religion
and thrown it in a trash can. But the last question, he asks
the most important one, what think ye of Christ? What think
ye of Christ? Verse 42. That's the question
God's going to ask. Every individual, whether it's
a philosopher, a politician, a religious man, or just a member
of some guy in the multitude just sitting around watching
the intellectual tennis match back and forth as people are
batting the ball around, nobody getting the right answers. The
question God's going to ask is the eternal spiritual question,
what think ye of Christ? Every mouth is stopped, but what
think ye of Christ? Well, what you're supposed to
think of Christ is that He's the Lord Jesus Christ and God
raised Him from the dead. And when you believe in Him with
your heart, then you believe unto righteousness. For with
the heart man believeth unto righteousness, not behaveth.
believeth and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation
the confession isn't even so much that i'm a sinner although
i am it's the confession that he is the savior he is the lord
jesus what think ye of christ whose son is he was the only
begotten Son of God, just like it was in the first chapter of
Matthew. I mean, here we are 21 chapters
later. And she shall bring forth the Son. Thou shalt call His
name Jesus. That which is conceived in her
is of the Holy Ghost. He's God with us. And the eternal
and the spiritual question is the important one. And the hard
questions really aren't that hard after all when you've got
a Bible. They're simple to answer. Any thoughts, comments, or questions
on what we looked at? Let's thank the Lord. Lord, thank
You for stopping every mouth right there with a very simple
question, what think ye of Christ? And Lord, we're thankful that
You've taken the time to draw us, Father, and to enlighten
us and to show us, as you showed Thomas, my Lord and my Christ. Thou art the Son of the living
God. To whom shall we go? Thou hast
the words of eternal life. And we thank you in the Savior's
name, the one in whose name we pray, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Matthew 22:15-46 "Hard Questions"
Series Matthew
| Sermon ID | 530211859457001 |
| Duration | 51:26 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Language | English |
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