A Sermon on Matthew 22: 15-46
By Nate Wilson
This passage is set during Jesus’ last time in Jerusalem. By now, He had been teaching for a couple of years, and people were asking, “Who is this guy?” Some had already formed their opinion of who Jesus was, and others hadn’t. The whole book of Matthew was written to tell us who Jesus is, so let’s look at the description Matthew gives of three people who interacted with Jesus to test Him out.
The first group we encounter is the Pharisees. They were staunch believers in all the Old Testament Scriptures and in the Rabbinic teachings which expounded on those Scriptures, but their religion was very physically oriented – the Pharisees basically believed in salvation through outward obedience to the Biblical laws and Rabbinic rules. So, Jesus’ fraternizing with prostitutes, Galilean fishermen, and thieving tax-collectors, and, even worse, Jesus’ claims to forgive such people didn’t sit too well with the Pharisees. The Pharisees also had a high view of the Almighty God, and, as far as they were concerned, Jesus was an imposter because He, a man, was making himself out to be God. The Pharisees had already decided who Jesus was – He was a false teacher.
So they decided to trip Jesus up in public so that people would stop listening to Him. They set a cunning trap. They began by insincerely flattering Jesus and then asked a volatile political question about taxes. They asked him if it was right to pay taxes to Caesar. This kind of tax was an annual tax based on the census and on the value of a man’s property. Now, the Pharisees made sure that when they asked the question, people were present who would dispute Jesus, no matter what His answer. You see in verse 16, it says that the Pharisees sent a bunch of their disciples as well as a bunch of Herodian disciples. The Pharisees were looking for the coming of an independent Jewish state, but the Herodians (named after the Roman governor Herod) were pro-Roman. So, if Jesus were to come down against taxes, the Herodians would attack Him for political insurrection and the Romans would jail him – or worse; and if Jesus came down in favor of taxes, He would be attacked by the Pharisees and lose popular support since everybody knew the Messiah would overthrow Rome and end the taxes, that would prove Jesus was not the Messiah.
Jesus’ answer caused them to marvel: “Why are you testing me, hypocrites? Show me the coin for the tax… Whose is the icon and the inscription on it? … Give back to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's.” Jesus’ answer could not be criticized by either the anti-Roman Pharisees or by the pro-Roman Herodians. Tiberius Caesar had minted that coin for the very purpose of his subjects paying taxes with it, and he had stamped his image upon it. It was entirely right to pay a tax with it. But, at the same time, Jesus acknowledges that God’s purposes must also be honored with the life and wealth He gives each person. However, instead of honoring Jesus, the Pharisees went away, even more determined to get rid of him.
Do you know people like the Pharisees? People that have already formed their opinion of who Christ is and who have decided that He is a threat, so they attack anything that has to do with Christianity. I remember distributing tracts in a neighborhood near Paris, France, the year after I graduated from High School. The people of France have been galvanized against Evangelical Christianity for hundreds of years by strong Roman Catholic leaders. They look upon anything outside of the traditions of the Roman Catholic church with suspicion, and tract distribution and evangelistic literature are not particularly Roman Catholic traditions. So when we started putting tracts in people’s mailboxes, their response surprised me. They showed their scorn by throwing the tracts on the ground. The rest of the junk mail in their mailboxes they carried to the trash can, but the tracts, they pulled out and threw on the ground. When we came back through the neighborhood a couple of hours later, there were all our tracts littering the ground. The French Catholics perceived us as a threat and showed their hatred by throwing our literature into the dirt without even reading it.
There is another class of people, whose scorn for Jesus is not so overt.
The Sadducees apparently didn’t care much who Jesus was. They were the wealthy ruling class of Jews who, although they believed in the first five books of the Old Testament, were generally more interested in politics than in religion. They didn’t believe in a resurrection, so, for them, their life on earth was all there was, so they were going to go for the gusto with wealth and power. Since Jesus was not a political force to speak of, they could pretty much ignore Him.
They weren’t even asking the question, “Who are you?” of Jesus. Rather, if you’ll look in verse 23, they were just making light of Him, asking a conundrum which they had probably used for decades to stump the Pharisees concerning the resurrection. The question is strange to us as Westerners, but in the Orient, they have a much higher regard for family lines and the honoring of ancestors. In fact, God provided a law through Moses by which a man’s line could be continued even if he had died childless – a brother of his could marry his widow and raise a son as though that son were his deceased brother’s, even giving the child the name of his deceased brother. So, if God gives provision in the Bible for a woman to be married to more than one man during the course of her life, the Sadducees thought that would throw a wrench into the works if there was some kind of afterlife. They didn’t believe in the afterlife, and I think they just kind-of lobbed this question at Jesus to have some fun. They probably didn’t care if Jesus answered or not.
I met a guy like that on the plane on my way to France that Summer I went there. He was “older and wiser” than me – he had already graduated from college, and we were chatting about what we would do in France. He said he was headed to do some anthropological study. When I told him that I was going to do mission work, he got a smirk on his face and said, “You know, there’s something I’ve wanted to ask a Christian like you. Christians say they’re better off than non-Christians because they will go to heaven when they die and non-Christians will not, right?” I said that yes Christians were “better off” in that sense. “So,” he replied, “that means you are better than me, and I resent that.” Of course, that’s not what I said, and I told him so. “Oh, but you said you were better off than me because you are going to heaven and I’m not, so that means you think you are better than me.” I tried to explain that my goodness was not the point but rather it was God’s grace that takes us wherever we are and gives us the blessing of a relationship with Him forever, and that he could have that too. “So, in other words, you think you’re better than me…” This anthropologist had no intention of a serious discussion - he didn’t care to understand my faith; all he wanted to do was confuse and frustrate me (and I must admit, he succeeded!).
But the Sadducees did not succeed in confusing or frustrating Jesus. His reply must have come as a shock: “You are mistaken because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God, for in the resurrection, they are neither marrying, nor are they being given in marriage, but are as the angels in heaven. But concerning the resurrection of the dead, have you not read God's word to you, where He said, ‘I myself am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead, but rather of the living.” That answer shut the mouths of the Sadducees and challenged them to take Him seriously. Jesus used a mere verb tense (a Present tense) out of the Pentateuch (which the Saducees respected) to prove that, at the time of Moses, God still had a continuing relationship as God to the Israelite patriarchs who had been dead for hundreds of years! “I AM the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” Jesus knew God’s word. But how did Jesus know that there is no marriage in the afterlife? He must have had an inside track on the subject – if He was God, He certainly would have an inside track on the afterlife!
Now we have to go to the Gospel of Mark to fill in some details on the third person who asked a question of Jesus. In Matthew, the third person to ask a question was a law-expert; he is called a Scribe in Mark 12. In Matthew, the motives of the Scribe are not clear, nor is Jesus’ evaluation of the Scribe, but in Mark 12, verse 28, we see that the Scribe asks a question because Jesus “had answered them well.” The Greek word in the Matthew account translated “tempting” in the King James could just as well be translated “testing,” just as a craftsman would test a piece of gold or silver to see if it were genuine. I believe that this Scribe was beginning to think that Jesus was genuinely the Messiah, but he wanted to test his hypothesis. If a Scribe were to follow Jesus, He would have to know at least as much of the Biblical law as a Scribe – an expert in the law – did. So he asks, in Matthew 22:36, “Teacher, what kind of command is great in the law?” or “What is the greatest commandment?”
Now, there was a scribal tradition that tallied up all the affirmative precepts and all the negative prohibitions in the Mosaic law and came up with 613 laws in the Bible – incidentally, the same number as the number of words in the 10 Commandments. This was the kind of detail with which the Scribes were familiar with the law! Would Jesus pass the test and prove genuine? Some scribes said that the most important commandment was the one about having fringes on the bottoms of your robe. What did Jesus say?
Verse 37: “You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart and with your whole soul and with your whole mind [and Mark adds ‘And with your whole strength’]. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is similar to it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. In these two commandments the whole law is framed - and the prophets. [Mark says, ‘There is no other commandment greater than these’]”
This Scribe was sincerely asking to find out who Jesus was. If Jesus was indeed the Messiah, then He should have a perfect understanding of God’s word. After asking his question, the scribe was quite satisfied that this Jesus knew His stuff. Jesus quoted directly a summary of the law from Deuteronomy 6 and added another summary from Leviticus 19:18.
At another point on my trip to France, I talked with a widow and her young son. Someone had told her that my traveling companion could fix her computer, so she invited us for lunch and to look at her computer. As we talked, it was obvious that she was a seeker of the truth. She had started reading the Bible in Genesis, but had gotten bogged down by the time she had gotten to Exodus. She had a lot of questions concerning the ark of the covenant, but she wasn’t asking them to be antagonistic; she really wanted to understand the ways of God.
This kind of seeking is encouraged by Jesus; in the Mark 12 account, Jesus says to the Scribe, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” He then asks a question designed to lead the Scribe to the next step of believing in His divinity.
Without actually coming out and saying that everyone should believe upon Him because He was God, Jesus asked a leading question of those present. His aim was to reveal who He was to those who were prepared for it. “You want to know who I am?” says Jesus, in effect, “Look at Psalm 110.”
“‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand until whenever I place your enemies underneath Your feet’ If therefore David calls Him “Lord,” how is He his son?” The word “Christ” is a Greek word meaning “Anointed One;” the Hebrew form of this word is “Messiah.” How can David, in Psalm 110, call the Messiah both his Son and his Lord?
This question cuts to the heart of who Jesus, as the Messiah, is. The only way that David could call the Messiah both “son” and “lord” is if the Messiah were both man and God. “He was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the virgin Mary,” says the Apostle’s Creed. There was no other way for the holy God to have fellowship with sinful humans except that He become a man Himself in order to suffer the punishment of sin and give His sinless status to His people. No other way. And this is what Jesus was doing.
Anyone who believes in a transcendent God – like Jews or Muslims – cannot conceive of God becoming man. The Jews now had a healthy respect for Jesus’ intellect, but the Pharisees were not willing to accept this God-becoming-man business. You know how they dealt with it? They decided that Psalm 110, which they had originally thought to be a Psalm describing the Messiah, was instead a Psalm describing David. If you look in a Jewish commentary today, that’s what it will say!
Now, we’ve gone through all four questions asked in this passage and looked at how each different person approached the question of, “Who are You, Jesus?” And, just as Jesus turned the tables on His questioners by asking them a question, I want to level a question at you,
“Who are You?”
If you are any of the first three, this book is for you. Matthew shows clearly by the miracles of Jesus, the amazing Teachings of Jesus, the perfection of His goodness, and by Jesus’ fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy that this is indeed the Messiah. I challenge you to read the book of Matthew thoughtfully and see for yourself who Jesus is!
If, however, you are a believer in Jesus, like Matthew was, then you can take a step further and learn from Jesus what He is looking for in His people. The answers to each of the four questions posed in this passage give us insight into what Jesus would like to see you do as a follower of Him.
So, we’ve seen four people in the Bible who have asked the question, “Who are you?” concerning Jesus.
Which one are you? If you are one of the first three, I encourage you to take up the Bible and read it and be convinced that Jesus is who He claimed to be. If you already believe it, then I encourage you to keep growing in that faith, let your life be characterized by love, read your Bible, and obey it without hypocrisy! May God give us the grace to do this!
