In Matthew 21: 23-27 we read about an official delegation sent out from the Sanhedrin with the express purpose of discrediting Jesus with the people who were now hanging on His every word. It is now Tuesday of Jesus’ final week and the events of the day before were still being felt. Normally the Jewish rulers allowed considerable freedom to meet, teach and to converse within the Court of Gentiles, but this Jesus was another story. Everything that He had done the day before was a direct challenge to their power and their authority. In the view of the Sanhedrin, if they did not challenge Jesus, it would be seen by some as a tacit approval of all He did the day before. In order to effectively deal with Jesus, they had to challenge Jesus’ message and thereby show the people that His power could not possible come from God. They had to act with stealth and subtlety because of the large crowds that now surrounded Jesus.

Since all authority to teach in Israel came out of a rabbinic commission, they wanted to know if He was speaking from such authority and which rabbi gave that authority to Him. Since they knew that no rabbi in the land had given Jesus any kind of authority to teach, it was their hope that they could convince the crowd that Jesus’ power did come from any recognized authority within the Jewish religion, but Satan as they had contended all along.

Did you notice in today’s Bible reading that Jesus did not directly answer their question, but posed a question of His own? He then tied His own answer to that question. He pointed them to John the Baptist and to the source of John’s power and authority. If you think about it, both men’s power came from the same source. Jesus’ question puts the Jewish leaders in a bit of a quandary. You can see their dilemma as they meet privately in verses 25 and 26. Aware of their predicament, they plead ignorance as to the source of John’s authority, a plea so grossly dishonest that Jesus was justified in answering their original question.

All that lay behind the dilemma the religious leaders faced will be present throughout this week. They were dealing with an extremely explosive situation that threatened not only their power but also their very lives. It was Passover and the population of Jerusalem was swelling as people from all over were gathering for the celebration. Within that crowd would have been people whose lives had been changed by this Jesus fellow. Within that crowd were people from all over the known world who had heard about Jesus and now wanted to take a look for themselves. Psychologists will tell you that when rats are bunched together beyond a certain point, they get extremely aggressive and volatile. The same thing is true with people. In such a situation, a mob can form at the drop of a hat and things can explode in a moment. I’m sure it was foremost in the minds of the Jewish leadership that present right next door to the temple was the Fortress of Antonia with its heavily armed Roman garrison. If the Roman army had to restore the peace in Jerusalem that day, the sight would not look pretty.

So where do we take this event and apply it into our daily lives? If you are a Christian who lives their faith, there will be two different types of people who will come to you to gain an answer to the hope that lies within you. There are the people who truly want to know what makes you different, and there are the people who only want to discredit you so that they can live their lives exactly the way they want. It only took Jesus one question to expose which of the two He was talking to. It might take you a few questions more, but the Holy Spirit is good at revealing the truth of any situation. For the true seeker, the Bible tells us that that same Holy Spirit will guide us to say what those people need to hear. When you are confronted with the second group of people, Jesus gives us an excellent model in today’s reading. We find that it is alright to walk away from the situation without responding to their demands.

Day 2 – The Parable of the Two Sons

Yesterday, we were talking about Jesus as He dealt with a challenge to His authority to teach the people. This challenge came from a group who are described by Matthew as religious leaders and teachers of the Law. As we read on in Matthew 21: 28-32, we see that Jesus tells them a parable that exposes their lifestyle of disobedience to all that God wants of them. The parable deals with a single aspect of parenting.

Now parenting is something that I think that I know a bit about after having raised a couple of children. I don’t look at myself as an expert, but I have done the task. In my experience getting children to obey you must be an art form. Of course, some children obey their parents more readily than others. There are children who just seem to be born compliant and perfectly willing to live in the comfort and security of fulfilling their parent’s requests of them. Others come out of the womb demanding their own way and will only obey their parents if they are forced to or see that they will benefit in some way. I believe if you read this parable, you will see one of each kind of child in Jesus’ story. In my experience, there is present in the compliant child a streak of rebellion that lies just below the surface. That rebellion is not quite as overt as the defiant child, but it is there regardless.

As you read Jesus’ parable, you will see a father with but one demand; that his sons spend their day working in the family vineyard. When you look at the original language, the words appear in the emphatic imperative tense meaning that there was no equivocation or hint of compromise in the father’s words. The only thing he wanted of each son that day was that he go and spend his day hard at work. Now perhaps these boys had other plans for the day. Perhaps they had already committed to their friends that they were going to “hang out.” To the father, prior plans were meant to be cancelled and his will be done. To such demands, each son had a different response. The first initially refused. Now I’m sure what followed could be likened to a volcanic eruption, but we are not made party to the tirade that would have followed. We are told, however, that this son later thought better of his original decision and ventured out into the vineyard to spend his day working.

The second son was a bit more devious. He pleased his father by initially agreeing to cancel his plans, but then he played hooky and went out and did what he had originally intended for his day. While that son avoided the initial tirade, he was not going to avoid the wrath of his father that occurred at the end of the day when the lad’s deed was brought to light, probably by his brother.

The question Jesus now posed to these religious leaders was which of these two sons actually obeyed his father? Notice how had made these intelligent men condemn themselves. Even they recognized the fact that ultimate obedience is better than feigned obedience. They probably had no idea at that point that they were condemning themselves, but Jesus did bring the point home quite nicely in verses 31 and 32. What Jesus gives here is a complete vindication of His cousin John the Baptist. Like the second son, they gave a nodding ascent to John’s ministry in order to curry favor with the people who thought John the Baptist to be a prophet, while inwardly they continued doing exactly what they wanted.

In my life I have seen a lot of people who hide behind the cloak of religion. They spend their days making up rules for the general population to follow while they bask in their own positions as people of influence. Being part of the leadership in my church, I have seen a lot of wounded and battered people come to us in need of loving healing. These people didn’t come off the battle field; they came from other churches in our town. In everything that I have read in the Bible, I have never seen instructions on how to use religion as a club to beat others into obedient submission. We have never seen Jesus do it, it’s not right to do it today. As we will see later in our time together, conviction of sin is the job of the Holy Spirit. It is not the job of the church. We educate, we love and we encourage each other to “love and good works.” That’s the job that Jesus gave us to do.

Day 3 – The Parable of the Land Owner

Over the last several years we have all experienced the insecurity that exists at our jobs. If you have held your job over ten years, you are now the exception, not the rule in today’s business world. That reality is felt from the company janitor right up to the president. If you don’t produce, you’re history. One can really see this phenomenon in the world of professional sports, where even if you do a good job, it probably won’t be for the same team your entire professional career. It seems that we have lost that sense of security in life that once existed as we claw our way to the top of the heap. In a certain sense, the Jewish leaders that we have been dealing with over the last few days are about to go through a similar change. They are under the false illusion that once they get rid of Jesus, their lives will return to normal. What they don’t realize is that God has quite a different plan in mind. Today we will be taking a look at Matthew 21: 33-46.

After Jesus had finished telling these men the Parable of the Two Sons, He immediately launches into the Parable of the Landowner. Though the audience is the same, the message of this parable is quite different. As you read it, you notice that Jesus, in this parable, uses both the rule of three and the oral technique of end-stress in order to bring to His audience a lasting memory and to bring His point home. The parable involves a land owner who invests capital in his land in order to be able to profitably lease out that land to a group of farmers. Unfortunately when it came time to reap a return on that investment, the current group of farmers had other ideas about what to do with the profits. They reject the entire idea of profit sharing and resorted to violence in order to keep all of the fruit for themselves. That violence even extended to the land owner’s son as they killed him in order to make their possession of the fields more permanent.

The obvious lesson that Jesus was giving here is a criticism of how Judaism had always treated the people God had sent to them. When Israel had wandered from the path that God had directed for them, He would send a special representative, called a prophet, to speak forth God’s thoughts on the subject of the nation’s wandering. Since the people of Israel were already in a rebellious mood, they usually reacted by exercising a bit of violence upon God’s messenger, thereby removing the source of irritation, so they could go about their lives in relative peace. Generations that came after that prophet would then build large tombs for these “great men” and actually mourn their loss and spend a great deal of time studying their words.

Once more, Jesus allows His target audience to bring judgment upon themselves. For the men standing there that day will hear the very same words coming from the mouth of the God they believe they serve as He takes away all they have claimed spiritually and gives it to someone else, His church. To bring His point home, Jesus quotes Psalm 118: 22, 23 as He points to Himself as the capstone that the psalmist was talking about. Jesus pronounces that the Kingdom of God will be taken away from such men and given to others who will bear fruit for that kingdom.

So what does all of this have to do with me? I am one of those people who believe that the entire way God deals with His creation dramatically changed at the death of Jesus Christ. I believe that God no longer deals with the nations of the world and now only deals within the hearts of individuals. In the New Testament, you will find scripture after scripture that teach that once you accept the free gift of salvation, that gift can never be taken away from you. To that idea, I wholeheartedly agree. Yet I also believe that if I am given a task by God and fail to do it, He will find someone else. He will find someone else to receive the blessing of seeing God work in marvelous ways. I also believe that He deals the same way with churches. If you look at the history of any church, you will find times where they were walking in lock-step with God and the impact of their ministry changes their world. You will also find times when they refused to step out in faith, when they preferred the safe and secure, and had God leave and go somewhere else to get His job done. Hopefully that church realizes their error before it dies and turns back into the arms of a forgiving God and has a chance to, once again, change the world.

You may find yourself currently doing great things for God, or you may find yourself currently sitting on the sidelines. The difference lies in your willingness to hear God, step out in faith, and follow Him wherever He might lead you. What is truly wonderful about God is that He never loses faith in you and is always willing to let you back into the game. The choice is yours to make.

Day 4 – The Parable of the Wedding Banquet

To the group of Jewish Leaders and Scribes, it appears that Jesus told yet another parable that holds a unique application for our lives. At your first reading of Matthew 22: 1-14, you may walk away puzzled at what Jesus is trying to say. You see similarities in this parable to the one He told earlier that we call the Parable of the Great Banquet in Luke 14: 15-24, yet this one is different. In order to bring the main point of the parable into focus, let’s review what the symbols mean. The king is God, the Father. The son is, of course, Jesus Christ. The wedding banquet refers to that great day of redemption to which we all look forward. When Jesus talks about those who were bidden, the original invitees, He is talking about the Nation of Israel. The people on the highways who were invited instead of Israel are the nations of the Gentiles. Finally, the wedding garment that is required attire at this great banquet is none other than righteousness. It is a requirement for those who would stand in the presence of a pure and holy God that they be clothed in righteousness.

As you read through the parable again with the symbolism now explained, perhaps the meaning comes a bit clearer. Jesus is, once again, giving those Jews present another clue that things are about to change. It will no longer be the exclusive privilege of the Jews to be known as God’s people. Since the leadership of the nation is bent on rejecting and killing the Son of God, that title will now be given to a new class of people. It will no longer matter into what family you are born. The only thing that will matter is that you accepted the invitation that you are given to join in the great wedding banquet and that you are willing to put on your clothing of righteousness.

In Jesus’ parable, there is one present at this banquet who does not belong there. If we remember that many of Jesus’ parables used the oral technique of end-stress, we find that we must focus on the improperly attired guest in verse 11. The man certainly comes to the attention of the king as he surveys the scene of his great banquet. So who is this man and how did he get into the banquet without the proper clothes?

In this parable, the king enters the banquet hall and visually inspects those in attendance so that all may be perfect for his son’s entrance. It was not the king’s wish that anyone in attendance detract from the event to come. This man’s attire did detract. Though it was apparently not noticed by the other guests, this man had slipped in. He had not taken the time or trouble to change into clean and appropriate clothing. One can only wonder at why this man had no respect for the king and his wishes regarding his dress. Perhaps he thought that no one would notice. More likely, he had no respect for the king’s intelligence. The king’s only question of this man was why. This man, being caught, found himself absolutely speechless. At the king’s command, this man found himself thrown into a place that is often used by Jesus to describe hell, a place of eternal darkness and torment.

When we look at this man, we are looking into the face of hypocrisy. When we look into the face of this man, we see many who attend our churches and sit next to us who only go through the motions of giving God the worship He deserves. If we were able to see deep down into the recesses of their lives, we would see that they were clothed differently. For they love all of the things this world has to offer more than they care for the King of Kings. Their idea of sacrifice is to work tirelessly for more toys and more security in this life. They have no respect for the King and His call to take up their crosses and follow Him. They claim they believe in God, but care nothing for the obedience that God wants of them. Yes, our churches have these people within their walls every week.

Yet the parable tells us that God will take a careful look around with eyes that see far more than we can see. It is impossible for anyone to think that he can slip one over on the King. For the Bible clearly says that everything that is done in secret will be shouted from the mountain tops. The challenge for each one reading this parable is to make sure that we are wearing proper clothing. There is only one place where we can acquire the righteousness that is required to gain entry into God’s great banquet; that would be at the foot of the cross of Jesus. As we accept His payment for all this is wrong in our lives, we become clothed in His righteousness. Only then will we be able to enjoy the greatest feast the world has ever known.

Day 5 – Render Unto Caesar

One of the advantages that those of us have in the field of medical insurance is the ability for our clients to pay for those benefits with pre-tax dollars. As the cost of all forms of health insurance has sharply risen, so has the portion that has had to be born by the employees of a company. The ability to pay that share of your benefits with “pre-tax” dollars reduces the out-of-pocket expense of that portion by approximately twenty-five per cent. In the many times I have explained pre-taxing to people, I have never once had someone refuse to pre-tax because they insisted on paying more than their fair share in taxes. Most people’s opinion is that their government gets enough of their hard earned dollars, they don’t need more. That same opinion of paying taxes was shared by the nation of Israel in the first century. It’s now time to open your Bible to the 22^nd chapter of Matthew and to read verses 15 to 22.

The first thing that strikes you about these verses is the fact that we are seeing the Pharisees in the same general area as the Herodians. It would be the same thing as seeing the Pope appearing together with the President of Planned Parenthood today. As we have talked about earlier, the Pharisees were laymen who sought to bring back religious purity to Israel through the complete obedience to the entire Mosaic Law, including all of the oral traditions and were dedicated to the paying of the tithe. The Herodians were a political group that promoted the family of Herod the Great and wanted his descendants to rule Israel forever. The only thing that could explain such an odd combination would be the fact that both groups deemed Jesus to be an even larger threat to the status quo than each other.

As we talked about earlier, the payment of Roman taxes was not a popular thing to do in that time. We also know that it was Jesus’ popularity with the people that kept both the religious and civil authorities from arresting Him. So someone comes up with the brilliant idea to put Jesus in a classic “no win” situation in order to solve both group’s dilemma. After all, if Jesus admitted that it was lawful for the Roman government to collect their taxes, He would lose His popularity and then could safely be arrested by the Pharisees. If He said that paying taxes to the Romans was not lawful, the Herodians could handle the elimination of Jesus. For it was the zealot’s outcry in that time for the population to stop paying taxes to evil Rome. Jesus would be labeled as just another zealot and would suffer the same fate as all of the zealots Rome caught. For it was the zealots in Israel that kept the Roman crucifixion squads from becoming bored.

Do you notice the deference that these two groups pay Jesus? I’m sure that it was done to disarm His suspicions. Their reference to His integrity and that He taught the ways of God without thought to His own safety were meant to entice Jesus to commit Himself without reserve. In other words, they were trying to set Jesus up for a great fall.

Yet neither their words, nor their flattery proved any temptation to Jesus as you read His answer. Jesus’ kingdom is not of this world. Politics and religion can exist at the same time and place. For each of them exists in a completely different realm. Each of them occupies a different domain. There is nowhere in scripture where we are told to disobey the government unless that government is in direct conflict with a command from God, Himself. Notice that both groups walked away from Jesus that day amazed at the insight of His answer and disappointed that they had failed in their task.

Both the Apostle Peter and Paul taught that government was essential to the spreading of the gospel (see Romans 13 and 1 Peter 2). It is the role of government to keep order and peace within the population. It is within that context of peace that the good news of Jesus Christ can be spread freely. To be sure, the gospel has been spread even though governments have sought to stamp it out and erase it from the memory of the people they control. It has never happened. As I said earlier, both exist on entirely different plains. As followers of Jesus Christ, we are commanded to obey the government and promote peace within our community so that we are free to tell everyone about Jesus. As is true throughout scripture, you are only responsible for your own actions. The government will be held accountable for its actions. It’s not wise to ever get tripped up by worrying about what someone else is doing.

Day 6 – Heavenly Marriage

As we continue taking a look at the life that was lived by Jesus Christ on Tuesday of His final week on earth, we come to an episode where He was challenged by the liberal thinkers of His day. The Sadducees believed in only the physical world around them. To them, if one could not perceive something with their five senses, then it could not possibly exist. Take a look on any college campus in America and you will see a lot of Sadducees occupying the great seats of learning. In Jesus’ day, these men did not occupy high positions in the School of the Rabbis, but they tended to congregate in the political seats of power. The High Priest and his cohorts were all Sadducees. Why not take a moment to read Matthew 22: 23-33?

Here we see these great liberal thinkers taking their turn at attempting to trip up and publicly discredit this supposed teacher from Galilee. They come to Jesus with a philosophical question that, in their opinion, highlighted to total absurdity of one believing in any life after death. They used a passage that is found in Deuteronomy 25: 5-10 where Moses commanded that if a man dies without any children to continue his name and inherit his property, then his wife shall pass to his brother, so that both children and property can stay in his family. To the liberal way of thinking if you took that Law to its logical extreme and believed in the resurrection of the dead, there is a great conflict. For how could a single woman be married to multiple husbands in the afterlife? Obviously either Moses was wrong when he gave that law or there can be no life after death. Since Sadducees held Moses in highest regard, the obvious conclusion was that there is no such thing as life after death.

In Jesus’ response we see a two-fold answer to their query. The first thing Jesus does is to criticize their lack of understanding of the Word of God, which represents God as He is manifested today. Second, He criticizes their lack of understanding about God’s power, which represents God as He will be manifested in the future. Jesus teaches us that the world to come will not be a reproduction of what the world looks like now.

If you go back to Genesis, God gave the institution of marriage for two basic reasons; as a cure for loneliness and as a means to populate the earth. Since neither issue will exist in heaven, there is no reason for its inhabitants to marry. Heaven is always described as a place where your relationship with your creator will be far different than it is today. If you read Revelation 21, you get the idea of the continuous presence of God there. In heaven, the idea of a God who will never leave us nor forsake us has its ultimate fulfillment. If God is continually present, how can one ever experience loneliness? If those who inhabit heaven have put on the incorruptible body that Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 15, there will be no death, so there will be no reason for people to replace themselves by having children. That is why Jesus here describes a place where His creation is no longer given in marriage because marriage is no longer needed by them.

Jesus then defends the entire idea of life after death by pointing the Sadducees to the scriptures with the intent to show them they absolute absurdity of their position on the resurrection. He quotes Exodus 3: 6. Notice how He takes a verse from the Pentateuch, which the Sadducees had always believed to be the absolute word of God, and uses that section of scripture to prove how wrong they were. Jesus points out that God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. Once again the Jewish religionists are thwarted in their attempts to discredit Jesus. In fact their questions are having exactly the opposite affect. Jesus’ stock is rising higher and higher in the eyes of the people each time He passes one of their tests with ease.

There will always be people who believe they are smarter than God. I suppose it is a way of elevating themselves above other people. It does feed the ego to believe that one is the master of your destiny and that they will never answer to the God who created them. The problem with that kind of thinking is that belief never alters the truth. Truth exists outside the realm of belief. There are those who believe with all of their heart that the earth is flat. Does that belief make it so? In the end, the truth will win. The only question you have to ask yourself is, do you want to be on the winning side or not?

Day 7 – The Greatest Commandment

As each challenge from the Jewish Leadership was met by Jesus, their perception of the threat He poses to their nation and their way of life increased. To their way of thinking, there has to be a way to break Jesus’ hold on the people. As each moment passes, more people arrive in Jerusalem for Passover and the threat that the mob will want to proclaim Jesus as their Messiah and overthrow Rome becomes more of a possibility. The Pharisees choose among themselves their best and brightest expert in the law and send him into the fray to debate Jesus in an attempt to ridicule His lack of knowledge and to take Him down a peg or two in the people’s eyes. Unfortunately what those Pharisees did not know was that the man they chose apparently had his heart touched by the master. I get that idea when I compare the accounts of Matthew and Mark of the same event. Perhaps you may get the same idea from reading Matthew