Jesus Dismantles Disqualified Leadership (Pt 1)

Matthew Series | Matthew 22:15-46 | Pastor Duane Smets

This week is an exegetical sermon on Matthew 22:15-46 where the religious leaders bring a final assault on Jesus before they arrest him. The assault comes in three different waves questioning Jesus on taxes, life after death and the relevance of the Bible. In each case Jesus dismantles their argument and redirects the focus onto God and mankind’s need for him. This sermon was originally preached on October 10th, 2010 at The Resolved Church in San Diego, CA.

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The Resolved Church
Pastor Duane Smets
October 10th, 2010

Jesus Dismantles Disqualified Leadership
Matthew 22:15-46

Corrupt Leaders Challenge Jesus
I. On Taxes (22:15-22)
II. On Life After Death (22:23-33)
III. On The Relevance Of The Bible (22:34-40)
IV. On The Need For A Divine Savior (22:41-46)

Introduction

Well, my sermon for this morning is titled “Jesus Dismantles Disqualified Leadership.”

This fall we’re in tail end of the book of Matthew, which we’ve been studying through here at The Resolved and really where were at is in the last week of Jesus life before he goes to the cross. Depending on how you divide it up he’s got just two or three days left, so it’s either Tuesday or Wednesday in the week.

The truth is we we’re going to cover a huge chunk of Scripture today and go all the way from Matthew 22:15 through to the end of the chapter 23. But I decided late yesterday that was too much. It would have taken too long, hit too much stuff and I want to see the Charger game.

What we’ve got going on today is a third and final wave of verbal attack and questioning from the religious leaders since Jesus arrived in Jerusalem. After the encounters with the religious leaders we read about today we won’t see Jesus interact directly with them until they come to arrest him and take him to the cross.

Now it’s hard to tell exactly how it all this went down because Matthew doesn’t give us enough textual clues but the way I’ve been dealing with it is by taking the waves of assault and Jesus’ responses all together.

That helps us because then you get a feel for what is really going on in the story. Sometimes when we just rip out a little verse or paragraph here and there you completely miss the whole drama of what is going on in the book.

So my goal really, each week is time travel. I want to take us back into the first century, into the Bible so we can see and interact with Jesus face to face and that by doing so the Holy Spirit might use it to work in our hearts and in our lives for his glory.

Alright, so let’s read it, pray over it, and dive into studying it together. (read text and pray)

Corrupt Leaders Challenge Jesus

Okay, so the way we’re going to work through all this stuff we just read is by first looking at the four different ways corrupt leaders challenge Jesus.

I. On Taxes (22:15-22)

First let’s talk taxes. One of everyone’s favorite topics. I don’t know if taxes have ever been popular anywhere. Especially for these guys. It was estimated that 49% of a Jewish household’s income went to taxes. That’s a lot. Here in California you pay anywhere from about 2-10% depending on how much money you make.

And it was even more loaded than that for these guys because they lived under a foreign government’s rule, the Romans. It’d be like if North Korea had invaded the US, ruled over us and we had to pay them 49% of our income or they’d kill us. That’s really what we have going on here. And it didn’t make anyone happy.

Jesus has come into Jerusalem a couple days ago and if you were here when we looked at it in chapter 21 of Matthew, the whole town was stirred up…like an earthquake, with over a million people (about the size of all of San Diego) coming out to Jesus, this potential Christ or deliverer and see if he’s going to lead a revolt against Rome.

Now it’s been a couple days and no one is seeing Jesus start boot camp yet and doing military drills, instead he’s teaching and preaching and saying some pretty potent stuff to the reigning religious authorities and they’re not too happy about it. So they get a plan together. Verse 15 of chapter 22 in our text today says they “went and plotted how to entangle him.”

What’s their plan? They send some of their disciples, the pastors in training along with the Herodians, that’s the Jewish king’s family and his entourage, and together they go to question Jesus about taxes and whether or not Jews should be paying him.

They figure, if Jesus says no they shouldn’t pay taxes then they can have the Romans arrest him for starting a revolt and if Jesus says yes they should pay taxes then all the crowds who are all hyped on Jesus will turn on him. It’s a trap. They’re trying to force him either into revolt or to public rejection and humiliation.

So they come at Jesus and try and butter him up, “Teacher, we know that you are true and teach the way of God truthfully” and you do not care about what anybody think…what do you think about taxes?”

But Jesus sees right through their false flattery and takes them down fast and hard. He asks for a coin. Coins haven’t changed much throughout the ages. I’ve got a coin here, it’s got an image on it just like the one they gave Jesus. This is a quarter and it has a picture of George Washington on it and it says “In God We Trust.” If I was from a foreign country and didn’t know any better I’d assume that this guy was our country’s God.

The coin they gave Jesus actually did say that the guy’s picture on it was god. Jesus asks whose picture it is on the coin. They reply, “Casear’s.” A first century denarius had a picture of Tiberius Casear with this inscription on it, “Divus et Pointifex Maximus” which means “God and High Priest.” Jesus looks at the picture and says, “give to Casear what is Casear’s and to God what it God’s.”

What’s Jesus getting at? What’s he trying to say? Think about it this way. Who made the coin? Who really owned the coin in the first place? Casear.

So then what’s the parallel with God? Think about it this way. Whose image is imprinted on man? Who made man? God.

Jesus pierces through their question and goes to the underlying motive behind not wanting to pay taxes. The assumption is if they didn’t have to pay taxes then life would be good. If there was no financial constraint or government oppression then they would be happy.

Jesus here sidesteps all of that and says the essence of life comes from God and life is meant to be lived for him since he is our Creator, we bear what theologians have called the “imago dei” the image and likeness of God and thus we are meant to worship and live for God. We belong to him because we have his image in us and no governmental rule or tax changes that.

When Jesus says “give to God’s what is God’s” he’s saying “give your life to God” and stop giving excuses for why you’re not living for him. You are meant for him and any life apart from him will not satisfy.

For us today this hits us on a few levels. On just a straight literal level…ask yourself if you’ve been putting your hope or happiness in human government. You think if just the right person got elected or if just the right law got passed then things would be good. You need to give over your life to God.

On a financial level for some of you, be really honest…when you have money are you happier and went your low on the flow are you more stressed and/or sad? If so, it’s a sign that you really think life consists in economical security. You need to give over your life to God.

Lastly on a plain worship level for all of us. If God really is our Creator then our lives are meant to be lived for him. I don’t know if we really make that connection much of the time. Our life is God’s. It belongs to him. We are made in his image. We owe everything to him and so our life is meant for him.

We’ve got to ask ourselves the question…are we living our lives for God, for someone else, or for ourselves? Who are we really living for…we need to give our lives to God.

II. On Life After Death (22:23-33)

Well after this response from Jesus, verse 22 says they “marveled” and walked away. Then a new group comes at Jesus. So far the Pharisees disciples and the Herodians have attacked him, now it’s the Sadduccees come to question him about life after death.

Now the Sadduccees are a group of religious leaders, they’re pastors kind of like the Pharisees, only they’re a little bit more conservative because they only accepted the first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch, instead of all the rest of the Hebrew Bible which we know as the Old Testament. Because of that they didn’t believe in some things, like life after death or angels because you don’t really find much of that in the first five books of the Bible.

So the Sadduccees are super conservative. Kind of like the Christians who think that you should never watch movies, dance, listen to music or have sex. They sort of take the fun out of fundamentalism.

Their main bone to pick with Jesus is this resurrection bit. Jesus has spoken of his own resurrection directly three times already. So Jesus obviously believes in resurrection. The people are divided depending on if they follow the Sadduccees. They’re unsure about whether there is life after death.
Not too uncommon with people today. I actually had a conversation with a good friend of mine this week who asked me, how can we really know. And for most people, it’s either everyone goes to heaven when they die (universalism) or no one goes anywhere, it’s just the end (annhilationism).

The Sadduccees go into this conversation with Jesus already knowing he believes in a resurrection, so they come up with this hypothetical analogy which is really to trick him into saying he’s okay with adulterous incest.

Let me explain. Here’s what’s going on. It was law, a leverite law, that if a woman’s husband died then his brother had to take her on as his wife or an additional wife so that her and her kids could be provided for because the Bible universally views and calls the man to lead and provide for his home. So they come up with this silly scenario in hopes Jesus will say in heaven the woman will end up being married to seven different brothers. No good. In orthodox Mormonism a dude can have multiple wives but not the girl.

Now as usual, Jesus sidesteps the details of their analogy, turns the tables and focuses on life with God. It’s actually when you try and force Jesus into their proposition that you get into all kinds of wacky untrue theologies like humans becoming angels, no children in heaven, and marriage being sinful. So I’m not going to spend time and go into any of that today. I’m just going to focus on the heart of Jesus answer.

Two things. First, check out verse 29, “You are wrong because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God.” Here’s the thing. Obviously they “knew” the Scriptures. They were experts in the Scriptures…but they had not yet penetrated their real meaning. They missed that the hero of all the Scriptures is God…as theologian Francis Schaffer said, “The God Who Is There.” When you are reading the Bible it meant to turn your gaze upward, to God.

How many of you…you know what the Scriptures say, but it’s not a reality for your life? You’re like, yeah, I know what the Bible says…but it doesn’t excite your soul. I hear this all the time…”Well I know that’s what the Bible says, but…” Then you don’t know what the Bible says! You really don’t know the Scriptures if it does not excite you to life and living for God. The Bible is meant to be breathed not just debated over. It’s meant to give life to your soul.

That’s the first thing, that there’s a difference between knowing what the Bible says and actually penetrating it’s message. The second thing he says is that they not only did not get the Bible, but they didn’t know “the power of God” and then he makes an exegetical argument to support that.

What’s that mean? Well, the power of God is this…If God is the Creator of life, from the start when there is none, then he has the power to bring back life, once life ends.

And here is his exegetical argument, exegetical means based on the very words here and in this case even the tense of the word. Jesus quotes from Exodus 3:6 when God shows up and talks to Moses who wrote the first five books of the Bible that the Sadducces so cherished. God introduces himself in this way, you can look at in verse 32, “I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.”

Now get Jesus’ point. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are long dead. But God uses the present tense, “I am.” So Jesus picks up on that and says, look, even in the Pentateuch, the books the Sadducces do accept as the Bible, and says they speak of a resurrection beyond death because God did not say “I was” the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob…but “I am” meaning that they were living!

This is exactly how Jesus explains himself. Look at the end of verse 32, “He is not God of the dead but of the living.”

In the last scene Jesus pointed out that we bear the image of God. God is eternal. Part of that image is that we are eternal too. The question really is not whether there is a resurrection but whether God, the God of the Bible, is your God.

Where are you at today? Would God say of you I am the God of, and then _______________, your name. I am the God of Duane Smets. Who’s your God? Do you believe in and worship the one true, real and living God or do you believe in a dead God? Where are you really at this morning?

III. On The Relevance Of The Bible (22:34-40)

Well, interestingly enough right after Jesus makes an exegetical argument from the Bible the next way they attack him is about the relevance of the Bible. So let’s check out this third attack.

The Pharisees hear about what just happened, verse 34 says they “heard that he had silenced the Sadducees.” Presumably they heard how he put such weight on that passage in Exodus. Now they figure they’ve got him because the Pharisees were all about categorizing and ranking the various laws and Scriptures. They was an actual debate going on about which parts of the Bible were really important and which parts were not…they had a whole ranking system.

Does that sound kind of familiar to some of you? It’s a very popular idea today that the Bible is true in matters of faith and spirituality but not in matters of history and science. The problem with that is that you don’t really end up with a Bible but a you because you, because what you like or don’t like becomes the standard for what you accept from the Bible. You become your own authority standing over the Bible rather than standing under the authority of the Bible.

Okay, back to this scene. Now remember, they’re trying to trap him or “test him” it says in verse 35. The plan is…if they can get Jesus to say some parts of the Bible are more important than others then they will have ground for saying he has rejected the law of God, either the crowd will turn against him, or he could possibly then be legally tried and convicted and potentially stoned as a heretic.

So they ask Jesus, “Which is the great commandment in the law?” And yet again, Jesus pulls something out you never see coming, which is simply astonishing. Rather than pick one commandment, Jesus picks a passage which says loving God is the key to keeping all the commandments. Jesus goes underneath the whole concept and idea of a commandment and probes at the motivation of why anyone would ever obey a single command.

Just look at what he says, beginning in verse 37, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all Law and Prophets (22:37-40).”

I’ll just say one thing about this because I think “love” is one of the weakest words in our culture. It’s like playdough, you can make it mean just about anything. I typed in “I love” on Google. Here’s some of the results I got: ilovedust.com , ilovelibraries.com, ilovebees.com, ilovedogs.com, ilovemountains.com, ilovesushi.com.

So you Google “I love” and the most meaningless things you could think of come up…dirt, bees, suchi. That’s because people don’t know what love is.

You see I have no idea what people mean when they use the word love much anymore. It’s just this mushy word that can mean anything and everything from describing your own personal interests to sexual arousal…but none of it is really love, at least the kind of love the Bible talks of.

And to be honest, too often it seems to me, when I hear this verse quoted that Jesus speaks here, how I hear it being used is… ”It’s all about love man, just love, Jesus was all about love…as if we should all get in a circle, hold hands, sing a song and smoke some weed.”

So here’s my point. When you hear Jesus saying all of the commandments of the Bible are about love, don’t forget the second part, what kind of love, who it’s directed towards…namely God. We are to love God. Saint Augustine said, “Love and do what you will.” He should have said, “Love God and do what you will.”

If we are loving God we will naturally fulfill all the commandments of Scripture, including loving our neighbor. The truth is, anytime we are doing something and it is not motivated by a love for God, in one way or another, if we really looked at it we would discover it is motivated by a love for ourselves.

Here’s a test, when you think of the word “love” is the first thing that comes to mind “loving God” or is it something else? Is God the standard of your definition of love?

IV. On The Need For A Divine Savior (22:41-46)

Alright, after saying the key to living Bible is loving God, Jesus next point and our final one for today is that you ought to then love and embrace him as God’s son. Let’s check it out.

Verse 41-42, “Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them a question, saying, “What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he?”

Okay, so apparently after the whole great commandment discussion they didn’t walk away like the other times and are just hanging around or something. And this time, Jesus turns the tables and goes on the offensive and asks them a question…and it is a loaded question. Jesus basically straight out asks them if they believe he is the divine son of God sent to save.

First thing, remember “Christ” is not Jesus last name, it’s a title…it means messiah or deliverer or savior. And that’s what the whole city thinks or expects him to be. When he first came into town two days ago, they were shouting “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”

Everyone thinks Jesus is this promised Christ, they think it means he will deliver them from Rome, so far he’s not doing that, but here we’ve got Jesus here assuming the role and the title and asking them what they think about him. When Jesus asks, “whose son is he (the Christ)” the automatic and immediate answer is, “the son of David.”

There were supposed to be a number of identifying marks of the messiah but this is one of the biggest, he’s in the family lineage of David. That’s one of the reasons why Matthew’s book started out with that long list of names…in order to show Jesus’ genealogy through David.

So when the Pharisees answer, “the son of David” it’s a no brainer. But watch what Jesus does. Look at his response in verse 43-45, “How is it then that David, in the Spirit calls him Lord, saying, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet.’ If then David calls him Lord, how is he his son?’”

Whoa! We won’t get too bogged down here but I want you to get what he just said. Jesus quotes here from Psalm 110, which is actually the most quoted chapter of the Old Testament in all the apostolic writings. It’s a Psalm of David and what Jesus points out, another exegetical argument, is that David refers to the messiah as being greater than him and is in fact one who is actually on par with Yahweh, God himself!

The messiah, the Christ, is not just a son of David but is the Lord himself. So then, what’s Jesus trying to get at with the Pharisees here? If Jesus is in fact the Christ, then he is the son of God, the Lord and they ought to bow down before him and follow him.

Jesus just told them the key to all the Scriptures is loving God. If Jesus is in fact God, as he is implying here, then what Jesus is calling for here is for them to love and embrace him and thereby fulfill all the commands of the Bible.

Interestingly enough is exactly what Jesus said in his first sermon, his famous “Sermon on the Mount.” Jesus said, he did not come to destroy the law but to fulfill all the law and the prophets and called everyone to follow him. The key to the Scriptures is the love of God and the key to the love of God is Jesus.

Verse 46 says that after this, none of the religious leaders dared to talk to Jesus anymore. The next time they talk to him it will be to arrest him, mock him, beat him and kill him.

Conclusion

Well the last thing I want to do for us this morning is preach the gospel to you. Jesus quoted Psalm 110 which said the mission of the messiah is to destroy the enemy. It begs the question, whose the enemy? Let’s think about it…

When they pressed Jesus about taxes, his answer was that we are made in God’s image and thus ought to be giving our lives to God. But what the truth? We don’t, do we? We have failed at this. Romans 1 says, rather than worship the Creator we have marred his image in us by worshipping other things than him, mostly ourselves (Rom 1:23).

When they pressed Jesus about the resurrection, his answer was that God is the God of the living and we are meant to live our lives for God. But what’s the truth? We don’t, do we? We tend to worship things that are dead gods, not gods at all.

When they pressed Jesus about the commandments, his answer was to love God with all of our heart, soul, and mind. But what’s the truth? We don’t, do we? That one’s actually the most condemning and complete of all…all our heart, soul and mind…who does that really? It’s really one of the main purposes of all the commandments, to show us how far we fall short…what great need we have.

When Jesus turns the tables and presses them about who the Christ is, his answer is he is the Christ, the son of the living God and he came to take down the enemy.

So who’s the enemy? We are. Our sinful propensity to not live for and love God.

You see here’s the thing I can tell you, you’re are made in God’s image, so it’s about him and not you and give your life to God. I can tell you God is alive and exists, he’s the God of the living so live for God. I can tell you love God with all your heart, soul and mind. I can tell you all those things until I am blue in the face.

But here’s the reality, you won’t be able to do it. Which is why God sent his son Jesus into the world, to do what we couldn’t do and have failed miserably at.
• Jesus isn’t just in the image of God, he is God himself and he gave his life to God fully and always.
• Jesus is not a dead God, but he’s the one who rose from the dead and said, “I am the resurrection and the life.”
• Jesus is the only one who has fulfilled all the law and prophets, full of love for God and his people.
• And most of all Jesus is the one who gave up his life on the cross to pay the penalty of wrath we deserve from God for defacing his image, for considering him dead, and for not loving him or his word.

You see this is the gospel, the good news! Jesus lives the life we have failed at and dies the death we deserve in our place. That is so good! He defeats the real enemy. The real enemy isn’t the Romans, the real enemy is sin and wickedness in us. And Jesus has put that enemy under his feet by dying on the cross and rising again!

So here’s my conclusion. Believe in Jesus. Repent of your sin. Be freed to love God, live for him and honor his image in you. We’re going to go to the table in just a minute to receive Jesus body and blood for us in the bread and wine.

Some of you need to do business with Jesus today because your life has been all about you and it really is devoid of any love or living for God. Hear the gospel today, Jesus loves you, and died for you, put faith in him.

This message of Jesus in these words today ought to hit all of us on several levels. Repentance, joy, faith, love. Let’s take it all and go to Jesus, respond to his grace and worship him.

Let’s pray.