The Trap In The Temple

The Value Proposition: Why People Act on Perceived Benefit, Not Truth 0:25

What compels an individual to make a transaction? Transaction. Well, all good businesses have sort of figured this out, that in order to compel an individual to transact, to make a purchase, there has to be some sort of proposition of value. People need to see a benefit, some benefit that they'll receive in order for giving them their hard-earned money.

That's what a proposition of value is. It's a business conveying to the consumer base, here's what you will receive by virtue of purchasing our product. Now, if you're a company that sells diet pills, that's an easy proposition of value. You say, hey, hey you, 21st century North America, you put on a few pounds.

If you'd like to lose those unsightly pounds and inches, here's a pill that will help you. So people understand the value proposition. They say, well, yes, I could stand to lose some weight. Winter's coming.

And so a pill can help me, you say. And whether it will or won't is irrelevant. They like the idea of it. They like the proposition that it will help them to lose weight, especially if they want to continue to eat the way that they're eating.

So this is a simple value proposition that is pursued by millions of people every year. Now, generally speaking, the simpler the value proposition, the easier it is for a transaction to occur. But the one constant is this: people need to see some benefit. People will not lay down money if they can't perceive what the value is.

Now, in ministry, in the church, and in first century Israel, you would think that people would be motivated not necessarily by value, but by truth. That you can just tell someone something that's true and that they'll respond because it's true. You would think that's the way it works. Propositional truth does not move the needle for people.

If you tell someone who's been smoking for 20 years, you go up to them and go, I don't know if you ever heard this, good sir, but smoking is bad for your health. A, they're not going to be shocked or surprised because they've heard that 10,000 times before. But B, they're not going to argue with you either because they know it's bad for their health.

They understand the propositional truth of what you're saying. The difference is this, that they value what they're pursuing more than they value the truth and the consequences thereof. They value the perceived benefits from smoking more than they value the implication of what it might be doing to their body. Whatever the case, the point is this.

So whatever decision people make — in diet pills, smoking, any choice that they make — they do so on the basis of some value they perceive through their actions. Some value. There has to be a value proposition.

The Parable of the Wedding Feast: A King's Rejected Invitation 2:44

“The kingdom of heaven is like a certain king who arranged a marriage for his son, and sent out his servants to call those who were invited to the wedding; and they were not willing to come.”

— Matthew 22:2-3 (NKJV)

Now, in today's text, we're going to see a biblical example of a value proposition that some will not see the value in, and so they will not pursue it. In today's text, you're going to have a king, and he is going to call everyone, not necessarily just invite, but call everyone to attend a wedding feast.

Now, this is the most important wedding in the history of the kingdom. He's invited all the members, all the participants within the kingdom to attend. However, of those who hear this call, not everyone is going to receive the call in the same way. Not everyone is going to value the invitation in the same way.

Specifically in this parable, we're going to see that some will get this call to attend the most important event in the history of the kingdom and will make light of it, today's text says. And some would go their own ways, one to a farm, one to the business, and so forth. Now, people receive a call across the scope of the land to attend this event, and some will say, hey, yeah, I see that, the call, yeah, but I got things to do on the farm or the business or what have you.

Now, what was so important at the farm? Well, I don't know, but I know this. It was perceived as more valuable to the individual than attending this wedding. Whatever was going on on the farm or the business or down the street was perceived to the individual as more valuable than doing what the king had called them to do.

Spoiler alert, people do what they want to do. You ever wonder why someone does something? You scratch your head and go, why did you do blank? Maybe you look in the mirror and you say that, why did I do that?

Well, it's usually because we want to or compelled by our wants. Whatever the case. The value proposition, whatever the king is offering, whatever the consequences are thereof, the individuals say, nah, we're good. They shrug their shoulders.

They do not attend. And some of them even get tired of the invitation themselves. And so when the messengers come in this parable, the messengers come to invite them to the feast. They not only reject the messengers, but they kill them.

Clearly, the citizens of this particular kingdom do not value the king or the son whose wedding is about to occur. Clearly, the citizens of this particular kingdom did not want to be participants in this wedding. And this is an incredibly poor decision with incredibly significant consequences. And that's the nature of the parable that Jesus is giving to the religious elite of their day.

And he is telling them that the value proposition that they've assigned to this book, to the Old Testament prophecies therein, the value proposition that they've extended to the Messiah who was sent to the people, the great wedding supper of the Lamb yet to come — the value proposition they assigned to these things was insufficient, and they were about to pay the consequences for their choices.

All right, let's look at verses 1 through 6. I'll reread these, and we'll just work our way through the balance as time allows. Verses 1 through 6. So Jesus, remember, He's talking to Pharisees and the religious elite, the Sadducees, the scribes, all the elders, the people in tall pointy hats.

So he was talking to the religious elite, and he says this in verse 1. So Jesus spoke to them again by parables and said, The kingdom of heaven is like a certain king who had arranged a marriage for his son and sent out his servants to call those who were invited to the wedding, but they were not willing to come.

And so again, he sent out other servants, saying, Tell those who are invited, see, I've prepared my dinner. My ox and my fatted calf are killed. All the things are ready. Come, come to the wedding.

But, verse 5, they made light of it and they went their ways. One who was farmed, the other was business. And then verse 6, and the rest seized his servants, treated them spitefully, and killed them.

The Setting: Cleansing the Temple and the Coming Crucifixion 6:15

All right. As we said at the outset this morning, today's text occurs just one day after Jesus had cleansed the temple of the money changers and is three days before His crucifixion and His death. Now, after cleansing the temple of all the commercialization that He found, so He cleansed it on one day, He chased out all the rogues gallery that was there.

It's like Mos Eisley's cantinas, this den of iniquity taking place right in the temple courts. He sends them packing and then He returns the next day. You know, they're gone, but they've been replaced by an even scurvier lot, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the like. So His enemies are waiting for His return.

Now, they were waiting with a plan, the scheme. And their scheme was this, that when this one comes back, when the guy who came in chasing everyone out, when He comes back, we're going to put him to the test. We're going to ask him, what authority do you do this? That's number one.

We're the religious elite. You're the son of some carpenter from upstate somewhere. Who are you to do this? So they're going to question about His authority, but then they're going to try to trap Him.

And they're going to come at him from different angles. The Pharisees will try first, and they've got questions. They've been writing their questions down all night, planning what they're going to do. So they got their questions.

But then the Sadducees, they were also a grumpy sect. They got their own questions, and they're all intending to ask questions that will demonstrate the failure of this individual to conform to the laws and practices of Israel. And to fail that, they're just going to try to lay their hands on to kill That's their other plan.

The Apostasy of Israel: A Faithless People and Faithless Leaders 7:49

But one way or another, he's walking into a trap. And again, you have to understand that Israel was lost at this point, as lost as lost can be. When Jesus came to the city, He wept over it from afar. He took one look at it, and He just wept, and He realized that 90-some-odd percent, certainly the overwhelming majority, were just lost.

They still had practices. They still had the equivalent of stained glass and pews and the like. They still had things that looked religious, but the glory had departed. There was no faithfulness left.

And the proof that there was no faithfulness left across Israel was that Israel's religious leaders were faithless. If you want proof that the layman in Israel had lost the plot, you just had to look at the leaders, the people who had grown up reading the book and been taught this stuff. So the religion of the age was hollow and empty.

The people who had claimed to have the faith of Abraham had denied the faith of Abraham by their choices. And because of that, when the one shows up that their own book had told them about for centuries, that their own prophets had told them, remember the servants in this parable? The servants had kept coming and showing up throughout the ages and saying, hey, look ahead, this guy's coming, the Messiah, the one, right?

And they would kill the prophets. They were always killing prophets. The blood of the prophets is one of the great stories of the Old Testament. So they kept killing the prophets, even as the prophets explained that the Messiah would one day come.

Well, when He finally showed up, the Messiah showed up in the person of Jesus Christ. He shows up and He fulfilled all that the prophets had said to a T. He did all the things they said He was going to do. But remember what we've said in the past. When He showed up, they were so lost, so far gone, so faithless that they didn't recognize Him when He was standing in front of them.

The people that culturally had expected a Messiah to show up across the history of their existence, didn't realize it when they were looking in the eyeball. That's how far gone they were.

False Expectations of the Messiah: Rejecting the One Who Came to Save 9:38

Now, part of the problem was that when He showed up, they had developed a series of expectations about who He would be and what He would do. If you're a Pharisee, you thought he'd be a Pharisee. You thought Jesus would show up and have the same rigidity and hard-heartedness and sternness and all the grumpy things that they had.

They expected another Pharisee to show up. But instead, you have a guy who loves lost people, sits with tax collectors and sinners. And they go, ah, do you see who he's dining with? This is not the one we're looking for.

These are not the droids. This is not the one. This is not the guy that we've been anticipating all this time. This can't be the Messiah.

This can't be the one. They had a level of expectation of who He would be and what He would do, and this one wasn't fulfilling it. Furthermore, this one was not dealing with Rome at all, and that's what they really wanted, a Messiah.

The Doctrine of Sin: One Sin Fractures Fellowship with a Holy God 10:26

Remember, they had no grasp of the idea that the Messiah would come to save them from sin and death. They just didn't care about that. Most of the people in our culture don't care about that either. If you go and preach in downtown Gulfport and say, you know, your problem is sin, people go, okay.

If you really drill in, you ask them to tell you what their problem is, they'll say, well, it's poverty or hardship or cancer or sickness or whatever. And there might be a hundred very difficult things going on in their life, all of them understandable, and yet none of them is as consequential as sin.

The Messiah shows up in first century Israel and their number one problem is Rome. They just got to deal with Rome. We got to get rid of Rome. We need a Messiah to come, but when He comes, He's got to deal with Rome.

Well, Jesus shows up and that's not even at all His main concern. Jesus shows up and His main concern is dealing with sin and death. Remember the value proposition we talked about at the outset, the value proposition? Well, here's Christ's value proposition to first century Israel.

He says, I have come, I have come to call sinners to repentance. That's why I'm here. I've come to call sinners to repentance. Now, as value propositions go, you know, people don't see themselves as sinners, so that really didn't move the needle with them.

The apostle Paul, he described Jesus, His advent, His coming for this purpose. He said this: this is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance, that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, of whom I'm the chief. So Paul says, you want to know why the Messiah came? He came to this end, to save sinners.

Jesus Christ says, I came to call sinners to repentance. This is the value proposition. But guess what? It's a value proposition no one wanted because they didn't think it was that big a deal.

Honestly, there may be people in this room, there's certainly people in our community who don't think sin is that big a deal. They just don't. They can compare themselves to one another and say, as long as I'm better than that guy over there, I'm all right. I'm not as bad as the villains in our age.

And if there is a God, He'll accept me on that basis. I'm not that bad. In fact, I'm pretty good. You know, my mom likes me.

Grandma likes me and the like. Well, phooey. One sin. One sin is enough to fracture your relationship forever with a holy God.

That should tell you two things. God's very holy and sin is very bad. That's the problem we have. We are sinners and we've broken the law of one that is greater than ourselves.

We have broken the law of a perfect God, a perfect judge, and if He is a just judge, then He must do justly and He must deal with our sin. Now, for your average person, that's still not a problem until you explain what the consequences are. You say that the consequences, the wages of sin is what?

Death. And so they scratch their head and go, well, that's no good. And then you ask them, well, how many times have you sinned this week? And the truth is we can't even count them up, let alone across the scope of our lifetime.

So the wages of sin is death. You've sinned more times than you can conceivably count. Our problem is significant. And apart from some payment, some fix, some solution to our problem, our relationship with our maker will be forever fractured and we'll never be able to dwell with them.

Justification by Faith Alone: Not by Works, but the Righteousness of Christ 13:29

Now, most people solve that problem by simply saying, well, yes, my sins are bad, but my good deeds are better. And that's where the balance comes in. I've done wrong, but I've done right. And the right is more than the wrong.

And God goes on a curve, doesn't He? He's got to go down a curve. Again, phooey. I don't know if it's a Yiddish word, but phooey.

That's not the way it works. It can't work that way. A just judge cannot just weigh things and just let you in on the basis that your good deeds outnumber the bad ones. He has to deal with the bad ones.

Even a single sin, He has to deal with, and He can't sweep it into the coat closet of heaven. He has to deal with it. How? By administering the consequences.

The wages of sin is death. The man of sin, then a man must die. That's the teaching of Scripture. That's the first part of the Gospel.

Any effective Gospel presentation starts by telling people the problem. You've sinned and broken the laws of an infinitely holy God, and the wages of that sin is death. What are you going to do about it? Well, you on your own can do nothing about it.

A right understanding of the law breaks us. That's true. Luther — he was a lawyer. The more he understood the law — see, Luther dealt honestly with the law.

He was a lawyer, see. He dealt with the law and he understood that law breaking had consequences. And when he applied the biblical law to himself, he realized his problem. And so he thought he could work it off by doing all these good deeds and shining pots in the monastery.

He tried to be the best monk he could be, as if he could be saved by monkery. In fact, that's his own phrase. He says, if anyone could be saved through monkery, through the things I've done, it would have been me. But I can't.

Because he began to understand that you can't transactionally pay off your debt by doing more good deeds than bad ones. Instead, he came to understand this, that the righteous are saved by faith. The problem is that you're a sinner. The solution is that Jesus Christ died to save sinners.

And if you want to know how you get to heaven, it's not because you've done enough good deeds. It's because you have faith in one who did everything perfectly, who lived the life that you should have lived but didn't, and then who died the death that you deserve to die. You don't earn your way to heaven.

There's no works by which you climb your way there. You have faith in the person and work of Jesus Christ. That's what Jesus is telling the Pharisees. He says, that's why I came.

That's why I came. Not to deal with Rome, not to do all these things you would want me to do, you know, fulfill your basket of expectations. He said, I came for the singular purpose to call sinners to repentance and to lay down My life as a propitiation, as a sacrifice for them.

That's why I'm here. And again, the Apostle Paul, that's what he explains too. He says, this is a faithful saying, worthy of all acceptance. Jesus Christ came to save sinners.

The Pharisee and the Tax Collector: False Piety Versus True Repentance 16:15

“God, be merciful to me a sinner!”

— Luke 18:13 (NKJV)

All right, let's go back to the Pharisees who are hearing this stuff. They've heard the value proposition. They've heard a presentation of the value that Jesus came to bring. It's not just the servants who have come to tell them about the invitation to the kingdom of God.

It's the son who showed up to give them the invitation. The son himself says, come to my wedding. And their desire at this point was just to seize the son and kill him. It's all they could see.

The value proposition that he brought didn't move the needle, not one bit. The Pharisees were hard-hearted. Earlier in our call to worship, we read a text from Luke 18, and Jesus explained the difference between a Pharisee's understanding of their problem and a repentant sinner, even a tax collector who was the scourge of society at that time.

The difference between the false piety of a Pharisee and the true sincere repentance of even a tax collector. In Luke 18, he says this, two guys go up to the temple to pray. One's a Pharisee, the other's a tax collector. The Pharisee stands up in the temple and prays thus, God, I thank You that I am not like the other men.

I'm not like the extortioners, the unjust, the adulterers, or even this tax collector. Thank You, God. I'm not like all these bozos, all these clowns who've really done bad. Thank You.

I'm not like them. I fast twice a week. I give tithes of all that I possess. So that's a Pharisee.

He goes into the temple and he immediately says, I've done good deeds, oh God. I give tithes. I — I do all this good stuff. Just thank you, I'm not like the people who really sin.

Oh, thank God, I'm not like them. So the pride that comes with that — there's no repentance in that at all. That's — that's just pride and expectation that, God, You love me because I'm so lovable. Meanwhile — meanwhile, we see in Luke 18 that the tax collector, the guy that the other Pharisee had just run down — the tax collector stands afar off.

Luke 18 says he would not even raise his head to heaven. He wouldn't even bother to look up because he knew he was totally unworthy. He would not raise his eyes to heaven, but rather he beat his breast. In Jewish society, this was a sign of great guilt.

He beat his breast saying, God, be merciful to me, a sinner. Now Luke 18 goes on to say that one of those two guys — one of those two guys is found righteous in the eyes of God. Which one do you think it is? It's not the Pharisee.

It's not the Pharisee, rather, it's this tax collector. See, the Pharisees who are standing there in the temple courts, they didn't see themselves as God saw them. They didn't see themselves as guilty. And honestly, that's the problem in our culture as well.

Most people don't see themselves as guilty. I can go all day long and read the law, and they'll say, yeah, I think I did such and such wrong. Yeah, I've thought things I shouldn't think or whatnot, but they diminish that as if that's nothing. One sin.

One sin was enough to cast the entire universe into chaos. You've sinned more times than you can count. In some ways, less egregious. In some ways, more egregious.

But you've done more things wrong probably than you've done right, if you're being honest about yourself and you can take every thought into consideration. With that said, what's your hope? To stand there before God on the day you stand before Him in His holy temple and to say, God, thank God I'm not like that other lot of rabble down there.

Thank God I didn't do all that they'd done. If you think you're going to stand before God on the day to come on the basis of your self-righteousness, like the Pharisees stood before Jesus Christ in the temple and thought that they were sufficient in God's eyes on the basis of their righteousness, then there's another pastor who puts it this way.

On that day, if you try that, you will melt before His fiery nostrils like a wax figurine in front of a blast furnace. That's the future that awaits the Pharisee or those who have a Pharisaical mindset. Rather, we approach God with humility, repentance. God, have mercy upon me, a sinner.

In the temple courts, this was what Jesus was seeing overwhelmingly. Those that were there were Pharisees, either by nature of their vocation or just their heart, but that was their mindset. And their forebearers, their Pharisaical forebearers, had been killing prophets for centuries, killing people who came in and told them the same sort of thing.

Here's the problem. Here's the solution. Killing them. Three days after this parable was given, they would kill the one who gave it.

They would kill not just the servants of the king, but the son. And the consequences for this would be so dire. I hope you're with us next week as we're going to talk about this as we get into the Olivet Discourse.

Divine Vengeance and the Ingrafting of the Gentiles 21:01

With that said, let's see how the king responds in verses 7 through 10. Now, when the king heard about this, he was furious, and he sent out his armies and he destroyed the murderers and he burnt up their city. Then he said to his servants, the wedding is ready, but those who are invited were not worthy.

Therefore go into the highways, and as many as you find, invite to the wedding. So the servants went out in the highways and they gathered together all whom they found, both bad and good, and the wedding hall was filled with guests. You know, one of the Israelites in years past, centuries past, that had killed God's prophets was an evil king.

Believe it or not, Israel had some evil kings back in the day, and one of them was a guy named Ahab. Now, Ahab and his wife Jezebel, both terrible people, terrible names, Ahab and Jezebel — they'd been killing prophets left and right. It was like a pastime for them. Well, in 2 Kings 9, God sent a message to Ahab about what was going to go down by virtue of them killing the servants, killing the prophets.

In 2 Kings 9, we read this: Thus saith the Lord God of Israel to His servants at the time, you shall strike down the house of Ahab your master, that I may avenge the blood of My servants, the prophets, and the blood of all the servants of the Lord. God in His time repays.

Vengeance is Mine, I'll repay. Well, in time He does that. In verse 7 of today's text, we see this in this parable. The king hears about what's gone down, the rejection that his people, even his own son, has faced, and he said, vengeance is coming.

And that's not a trite thing, dear heavens. If we're honest about ourselves and honest about this book, we understand that the consequences of standing before a holy God when you're caked in sin — and worse yet, when you've rejected and murdered His son — oh my goodness, of all the cataclysms that a man can face, that is undoubtedly the gravest, which is what we hear in verse 7.

And yet, and yet, that's not the most fascinating part of these last few verses that we just read. The most fascinating part is that after talking about the vengeance that is coming upon those who rejected and even murdered his son, this king says to his other servants, he says, all right, the people have rejected me.

They rejected my son. They won't attend their wedding. You go out and you go into the highways and byways and you invite everyone you see. Everyone.

Everyone you see, just invite them on in to the wedding. Now, theologically, what do you think this is a picture of? Well, theologically, that is a picture of the invitation that God would extend to the Gentile nations upon the rejection of Israel to His son. In other words, after Israel rejected, murdered His son with the complicity and execution of the Romans, God says, after you have done this, then the invitation is going to be extended to still others outside.

The invitation is going to be extended to what we call the Gentiles, to be engrafted into the kingdom.

The Wedding Garment: The Imputed Righteousness of Christ 23:53

“Friend, how did you come in here without a wedding garment?”

— Matthew 22:12 (NKJV)

Let's see what he says then in the second half of this parable, verses 11 through 14. So when the king came in, so he comes in and he sees all the guests that have now been invited in. So the king comes in to see the guests, verse 11, but he saw a man there who did not have a wedding garment.

And so he said to him, friend, how come you got in here without a wedding garment? And the man was speechless. Then the king said to the servants, bind him, bind him hand and feet, take him away, cast him into outer darkness. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

For many are called, but few are chosen. Do you have any idea how many people expect to get to heaven? It's virtually everybody. I mean, assuming you have any belief at all in some eternal future, assuming you have any belief of any kind and any stripe and any definition of there being a heaven, almost everyone on our globe today thinks they'll get there.

And if you drill into it, as we said before, what you'll find is that almost everyone of every stripe and belief system ultimately believes that they get there on the basis of having done enough things. They think, all right, heaven, when I get there, the reason why I get there and the reason I'm presentable is because of the things that I've done.

If self-righteousness was like a robe, people say, I'm clad in the right robe. I'm a good person. I've done enough. Again, people believe that in every culture and tribe and nation.

I'll be accepted by whoever sits in the hereafter on the basis of just having been good enough. I walk in to that future — wedding feast or whatever — and I'm clad in enough works to punch my ticket. I deserve to be there. Look at me.

Look at me. I deserve to be there, right? That's the mentality. But just picture this.

Picture someone trying, on the day of judgment, standing before God, and they take the robe of their self-righteousness, and they wear it and so forth, and they stand before God amongst all the other people that are there and then, you know, hope no one notices. I mean, my robe's a little smudgy. I got some stains on it and the like.

People have the idea you can stand before God with a robe of your own self-righteousness as caked with layers and layers and layers of sin as it is. And in this parable, God says, no. You try to come in in a wedding garment, so to speak, to the marriage supper of the Lamb of God caked in your own sins and you think you're going to make it in?

Nope, not going to happen. Throughout Scripture, we regularly see that righteousness that you need, the garments you need, is the white robe of Christ's righteousness, which is a reference Paul makes elsewhere. The white robe of Christ's righteousness. If you're going to stand before God, it's not going to be caked in your own works.

Your own works are only enough to condemn you, not to save you. Rather, you're clad in the righteousness of Jesus Christ to the degree that when He looks down upon you, He sees the righteousness of His Son, and that's why you may remain. And those who attempt to stand before Him on the basis of things they did, like the Pharisees, they won't make it.

In fact, it's not just that they won't make it, but these wedding crashers, these wedding crashers will be bound, so to speak, and cast out into outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. This is a picture clearly of hell. Whatever hell is like, it involves that. A removal from the presence of God and His saints, cast into darkness, a pit, however that is, whatever that looks like, cast there, and you don't want to be there due to the weeping and the gnashing of teeth.

It is a place not to go, and it's a place that the Pharisees were going with the speed of a bullet. That's what Jesus warns them about — what's about to go down.

Render Unto Caesar: Jesus Escapes the Trap on Taxes 27:21

All right, let's look at verses 15 and 22. The Pharisees, they heard all this. They're angry. They're angry, and so they plot.

Verse 15, then the Pharisees went away and plotted how they might entangle Jesus in His talk. They didn't like anything they heard, so they figured, how can we entangle Him? And they sent him their disciples with Herodians saying, teacher, we know that you're true and you teach the way of God and truth and you don't care about anyone nor regard the person of men.

So they butter him up a little bit here. And here's the question. Here's the theological shiv they try to slip between his ribs. They say this, verse 17: tell us therefore, you smart Jesus, you tell us therefore, what do you think?

Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not? Now this, of all the gotcha questions — remember, they had been up all night like working this out — of all the gotcha questions, this was the big one. Tell us, teacher, is it lawful to pay taxes or not? But verse 18, Jesus perceives their wickedness and says, why do you test Me, you hypocrites?

Show Me, you got a coin, show Me the tax money. So they brought Him a denarius, verse 20, and He said to them, this denarius, whose image and inscription is this? And they said to Him, it's Caesar's. And so He looks at it and says this, all right, so this is Caesar on the coin, well, render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's.

Now, evidently in verse 21, when they heard these words, they marveled and they went on their way. They tried to trap Jesus. There's an unwinnable situation. This is Kobayashi Maru, an unwinnable situation they had tried to establish for Jesus, and He passes it just like that, and they marvel, and they head on their path.

They took their best shot, and Jesus responds in a way they didn't expect. They tried to trap Him, because on the one hand, if Jesus had said it's lawful to pay taxes to Rome, then the Jews would have hated Him, and if He said, no, it's not lawful to pay taxes to Rome, then the Romans might have imprisoned Him, but He answers in an authentic way, which turned aside their ability to trap Him.

Now, they gave their best shot, but they weren't the only ones that are going to take one last shot at Him. There's one other group, and we'll look at it with our last verses here this morning.

The Sadducees and the Resurrection: The God of the Living 29:33

It's another group called the Sadducees. So in verse 23 through 33, the Sadducees that same day are going to try to trap Him. Verse 23, that same day, the Sadducees who say there's no resurrection came to Him and asked Him saying, teacher, Moses said that if a man dies having no children, his brother shall marry his wife and raise up offspring for his brother.

Now, there were with us seven brothers. The first died. The first died after he had married, and having no offspring, he left his wife to his brother. Likewise, so did the second and the third, even all the way to the seventh.

They all had this gal as a spouse. Verse 27, finally, the woman died also. Therefore, so here's the question, in the resurrection, whose wife will she be? Of the seven brothers, whose wife will she be?

For they all had her. Verse 29, Jesus answered and said, you are mistaken, not knowing the scriptures nor the power of God. For in the resurrection, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but rather they're like the angels of God in heaven. But concerning the resurrection of the dead, have you not read which was spoken of you by God saying, I'm the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob.

God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. And when the multitudes heard this, they were astonished at His teaching. All right, so verse 23, this is the Sadducees that are approaching. Now, how did the Sadducees differ from the Pharisees?

Well, two main differences. Number one, the Sadducees didn't believe in anything real spiritual. The Pharisees at least believed in an afterlife. The Sadducees, no. In fact, they didn't believe in anything spiritual.

There was no angels and demons and things like that, and there was no resurrection. The Sadducees were really a political party. They weren't really a religious party. They were more of a political party.

So they don't believe in resurrection, which is part one of what's ironic about their question, because they asked Jesus about the resurrection. Now, the second part of their question was that the question itself was flawed. You see, when we refer to marriage here on earth, we have this expectation that it carries over in the same way there, which it doesn't, which is what Jesus said.

Now, this is not to say that husbands and wives have no future together. Of course they do. Of course, we'll have reunions with the spouses that we've lost. If you've lost a spouse, you will embrace this loved one again.

However, the covenantal nature of the relationship you entered into here in a fallen estate does not carry over point to point there. Now, Jesus, He just leaves that with them, but He doesn't expand on that too much because He wants to get to the real heart of the issue. And the real heart of the issue was not marriage, it was the issue of resurrection.

You see, the Sadducees and Pharisees both placed value in God's word in the Torah, but the Sadducees denied a resurrection. The same people that denied this resurrection failed to notice something in their study of Scripture. When God talked about Himself, He said, I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But when He talked about that, He said it in the present tense, not the past.

You see, when God said, I'm the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, He wasn't saying, I was the God of them when they were alive, but now they're dead, and that's it, and that's all. He says, I'm the God now of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. How can He say that? They're still alive.

They're gathered around the throne at the time he spoke these words. The transfiguration — remember, we talked about this a few chapters ago, and Moses and Elijah show up on the Mount of Transfiguration. The Old Testament saints are still alive. So you see this, Jesus says, you guys haven't read the scriptures because God said in the past, I am the God — present tense, right now — of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

You who deny resurrection don't accept even the basic principles of Moses, who you revere. You don't understand the scripture.

Truth Cannot Be Smothered: The Enduring Church and Its Buried Enemies 33:03

All right, I'm going to have to leave that last point there, but I'll say this, just like the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the priests and the scribes, they all like to take their shots at Jesus. Throughout His three, three and a half years of ministry, all these groups, ironically, the religious leadership of Israel took their best shot at Christ, and at each turn they were rejected.

In our own day, there's institutions, media, academics, political entities as well that take their best shot at what we believe, take their best shot at Christianity. They critique its premises, they disagree with its contents, but it's still here. 2,000 years after Jesus Himself, it's still here, it hasn't gone anywhere. Truth has this effect, it shines a light that you cannot smother with a blanket of lies.

The culture around us tries to throttle and smother that which has been given to the saints. The Pharisees and Sadducees tried to smother truth when it was standing right in front of them. Just shortly thereafter, Nero would do the same, the Gnostics would do the same, but none of them succeeded. 2,000 years later, the only thing that's buried, after they tried to bury Christianity and bury the church in the first century, the only thing that's buried is them.

The same is going to be true of all the rebels, the atheists, the agnostics, those who reject Christ, the same is going to be true of them. Let's pray.