Matthew 22:15-46

Chapter 81

Prayer

Almighty God, do thou write thy law upon, our heart, and give us a disposition towards obedience, so that every word which thou hast spoken may become the rule of our conduct. To this end do thou grant us, through Jesus Christ our Lord and Priest, the continual ministry of the Holy Ghost, to enlighten the mind, to sanctify the will, to subdue and control the whole heart, so that there may be no disobedience or rebellion in us, but a quiet and loving delight in thy sacred word. We thank thee that thou hast addressed a speech to every heart: thou has left none out of the number to which thou hast spoken: may each hear the word thou hast sent to it in particular, and answer it with a readiness of joy and thankfulness then shall our life spread itself out in beauty before thee, and shall receive the showers of thy blessing and answer them with growing fruitfulness.

Thy Son Jesus Christ hath revealed thee unto us: he is our Lord and Saviour, he made atonement for our sins, and his blood is the answer to thy law. We rejoice in the revelation of thy person which he has made unto us, now we pray for the healthful influences of thy Spirit, that we may read that revelation deeply and truly, and receive it into our hearts with all joyfulness, and manifest it unto the world according to our opportunity and power. We have come up to thine house that we may make mention of thy lovingkindness: surely thy mercies shall not lie forgotten in unthankfulness we will preserve the memory of them, and in the rehearsal of all thou hast done for us in the years that are now gone, will we find the inspiration and the comfort we need for the days that are yet to come. We live in thy presence, thy goodness towards us is the sanctuary in which our souls dwell with the quietness of infinite security. Thou didst deliver us from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear: thou didst enable us to overcome the uncircumcised Philistine in the valley, and on the hill thy light has been round about us like a promise, and in all the winds that have blown around our life, we have heard the sound of thine own going. Therefore do we look onward to the unknown time, with the inspiration of gratitude, and the confidence of tender love. Thou wilt not bring down the grey hairs of thy servants with sorrow to the grave, thou wilt yet interpose in every crisis and difficulty, out of darkness thou wilt bring light, and thou wilt write songs for the night season. Give us confidence in these truths and hopes, yea establish us and build us upon them as upon rocks that cannot be shaken. May our whole life rise upon thee like a temple towards the Heavens, complete and beautiful and resonant with thy praise.

Thou hast been mindful of us: we should be witnesses against ourselves if we denied thy care or questioned thy providence. Every day uttereth speech to us concerning thy love. Wherein we have done wrong thou wilt come to us with infinite forgiveness. Where sin abounds grace shall, through Christ Jesus the Lord, much more abound, so that the littleness of the one shall not be thought of because of the greatness of the other. By grace are we saved, by blood are we cleansed, by the precious blood of Christ are we redeemed. We know our ransom price, and we know thou hast not paid it in vain thou wilt surely redeem us utterly, and bring us with completeness out of the snare of him who would entangle us, and out of the wilderness of despair and loneliness. Our hope is in Christ, our confidence is in God, our inspiration is from the Holy Ghost Thou knowest our life in its entireness: how few its days, how small its strength, how easily blown out its best hopes, and how soon blighted its noblest ambitions. Thou hast dug a grave in the garden, thou hast hidden a pit under the hearthstone, there is poison in the cup out of which we drink our life, and our whole course lies through thorns and thickets and most difficult places. Yet surely our extremity will be the opportunity of God, and because of the supreme difficulty of the road shall be the fulness and the tenderness of the ministry which waits upon us.

We now lovingly put ourselves into thine hands, to be conducted as thou wilt through all difficulties and snares. Disappoint us if it be for our souls' health that we should be stung and wounded and have sudden night descending upon our brightest days. Do thou hunger us and impoverish us and give us pain continually if it can be only through this process that we may be saved. Not our will but thine be done, only take not thy Holy Spirit from us.

Regard us in our special relationships, and according to our necessity let the blessing of the Most High God come to us this day. Preserve the little one that he may become a strong man, speak to the aged that he may renew his youth in the immortal hope of fellowship with the angels and with the spirits of the just made perfect. Address the busy man who is seeking his fortune in the dust, and excite in his soul a hunger which the bread of life alone can satisfy. Tell the afflicted that the time of weakness is but for a moment, and the time of immortal health is as the duration of God. Regard all who rule over us in the kingdom, preserve the wise and the strong for many years, that they may surpass themselves in the nobleness of their patriotism and their trust in the God of nations.

Be with all for whom we ought to pray and for whom it is our loving delight to intercede. For the absent, for the travelling, for those who are in danger, in weakness, in peculiar sorrow, in sharp agony. Be with those who are going through their highest joys, and with those who are far out in the deep waters of peculiar trouble. Sanctify all varieties of discipline and training through which we pass, and at last, washed in the blood of the everlasting covenant, sanctified and inspired by God the Holy Ghost, may we take our place in the city whose hills are light, whose walls are jasper, whose streets are gold. Amen.

Mat 22:15-46

15. Then went the Pharisees, and took counsel how they might entangle (ensnare) him in his talk.

16. And they sent out unto him their disciples with the Herodians (advocates of national submission to the emperor), saying, Master, we know that thou art true, and teachest the way of God in truth, neither carest thou for any man: for thou regardest not the person of men.

17. Tell us therefore, What thinkest thou? Is it lawful to give tribute unto Cæsar, or not?

18. But Jesus perceived their wickedness, and said, Why tempt ye me, ye hypocrites?

19. Shew me the tribute money (the denarius, which was in common circulation). And they brought unto him a penny.

20. And he saith unto them, Whose is this image and superscription?

21. They say unto him, Cæsar's. Then saith he unto them, Render therefore unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar's; and unto God the things that are God's.

22. When they had heard these words, they marvelled, and left him, and went their way.

23. The same day came to him the Sadducees (largely the upper classes of the priesthood), which say that there is no resurrection, and asked him.

24. Saying, Master, Moses said, If a man die, having no children, his brother shall marry his wife, and raise up seed unto his brother.

25. Now there were with us seven brethren: and the first, when he had married a wife, deceased, and having no issue, left his wife unto his brother:

26. Likewise the second also, and the third, unto the seventh.

27. And last of all the woman died also.

28. Therefore in the resurrection whose wife shall she be of the seven? for all had her.

29. Jesus answered and said unto them, Ye do err (a less stern tone than that in which the Pharisees were accosted), not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God.

30. For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven.

31. But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying,

32. I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.

33. And when the multitude heard this, they were astonished at his doctrine (teaching).

34. But when the Pharisees had heard that he had put the Sadducees to silence, they were gathered together.

35. Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying,

36. Master, which (what kind) is the great commandment in the law? (The meaning of this question was, whether anything were more perfect than the law, because he taught a new kind of doctrine, whereby the expounders of the law held themselves to be disgraced).

37. Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.

38. This is the first and great commandment.

39. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

40. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

41. While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them,

42. Saying, What think ye of Christ? whose son is he? They say unto him, The son of David.

43. He saith unto them, How then doth David in spirit call him Lord, saying,

44. The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I make thine enemies thy footstool?

45. If David then call him Lord, how is he his son?

46. And no man was able to answer him a word, neither durst any man from that day forth ask him any more questions.

Tempting Questions and Divine Answers

You will notice that the attacks which were made upon the Saviour were prepared. There is evidence everywhere of premeditation, arrangement, concert, so that there might be no weakness on the part of those who were about to approach the great and marvellous Teacher. No notice was sent of the questions: the preparation was complete on the side of the interrogators without Jesus Christ having any intimation that an attack was about to be made upon him. So far the advantage was upon the side of the questioners. They talked the whole matter over, they proposed and re-arranged and amended, and then settled the terms: having done so, they went with unanimous purpose to ensnare the Speaker.

Not only so, the questions were subtly adapted to the then state of the Speaker's mind. We have just seen that he was uttering parables of judgment in place of parables of illustration. His parabolical tone had changed completely. In the thirteenth chapter of this gospel, he spoke, as we have repeatedly said, a whole picture gallery of beauties into existence. Since the time of his revelation of his personality to his disciples, he has been speaking parables of fire, judgment, anathema, fraught with most searching and terrible penal criticism. The people round about him, therefore, had supposed that he was excited, and knowing what they themselves were when under excitement, they supposed they would catch this marvellous Speaker at a great disadvantage; he had lost his balance, he was off his guard, he was goaded into an unusual strain of adjuration, and now in this changed temper of his mind, they would very likely be able to ensnare him in his speech, and so to accomplish their own malign purpose.

Still further, the attacks were not inspired by love of truth or by anxiety to know God's mind upon this or that subject, but by hatred of the Man. Hence we have the most unusual combinations of parties, hence we have the horse and the ass yoked together in one team, hence we have colours that ought never to have been brought into juxtaposition, stitched together, hence we have contrasts which under other circumstances would be accounted anomalies and would evoke destructive criticism, but any union will do where such a Man's life is to be taken!

In the gospel by Luke, we read that these persons approached Christ feigning themselves to be just men, painting their faces with the colours of justness, borrowing clothes of righteousness and respectability, assuming with fatal skill the very tone of earnestness. Yet under all this feigning and similitude and hypocrisy, their aim was not to inquire about truth, its foundations and responsibilities and issues, but to strike with a dart the life of an excited Man.

This point is the one which brings its severe lesson to us. Herein we find the reality of the inspiration of the attacks which are made upon Christianity today. When men go forward to assail the Book, why do they exhibit so much anxiety to dispute its claim and invalidate its integrity and enfeeble its hold upon the attention of mankind? Judging by history, it is no whit uncharitable to suggest that they are not so anxious about its literary discrepancies and incoherencies and difficulties, as that they hate its moralities. It would be worth the while of any number of men to pay ten thousand pounds down today on any counter, if they could buy themselves off from the moral discipline of the Scriptures. Such an investment would be the beginning of their fortune from a merely secular point of view. The rope would be broken, the tether would be snapped, the chain that binds them would give way at its strongest link, and men would be free to do what they pleased. What wonder then if oftentimes they should shape themselves into little deputations and go in twos and threes for the purpose of asking questions about the literary part of the Bible, when the real heart and core of their purpose is to rid themselves of its moral rule?

How can I be charged with uncharitableness in making such a suggestion, when I have before me Pharisees and Herodians feigning themselves to be just persons, who go to ask a question about the tribute money, not that they care either for the Cæsar or the Jew in this or that particular, but that they want to ensnare an excited Man in his fluent and vehement eloquence? Let every man search himself in this matter. What if we go to the Bible for the purpose of propounding difficulties and asking religious questions, and take upon us the air of injured critics and anxious pilgrims, having but one supreme purpose, and that to find out the literal word and meaning of God, and in reality we want to rid ourselves of the humiliations of the Book? The Book takes no note of king or peasant, gentle or simple, rich or poor, but judges every man on the broad basis of manhood and sinfulness and dishonoured obligation, and commands every man to his knees, to put his mouth in the dust and to say, "Unclean, unclean." What if we want to escape its humiliations, under the mean pretence of wanting to rearrange its translation, and revise its literature, and throw into new arrangements that which is historical, chronological, and of antiquarian interest? Search your heart in this matter, say why you do go to the Book or to Christ. Do you feign to be just men when in reality you want to put your knife through the Bible's morality and to rid yourselves of the daily discipline of its abasements and humiliations? Be severe with yourself on this matter; do not play the fool to yourself, and never lose the dignity and the restfulness of your self-respect.

So much for the attacks which were made upon Jesus Christ. Now let us turn and look at the answers which he made to the onslaughts. Note in the first place that Jesus Christ's answers were extemporaneous, and herein they stand in contrast to the first point made, that the attacks of the enemy were premeditated and arranged. Speaking from a purely human point of view, the assailants knew by heart every word they were going to say, but Jesus Christ had no knowledge or intimation of the questions that were about to be put to him. His answers therefore were not prepared, studied, arranged, and calculated as to the force and value of words. Herein an argument begins. It surely cannot be an easy thing to answer the supreme intellects of the age, instantaneously, when they put knotty questions, yet this is the very thing Jesus Christ does. He never says, "The question is a novel one, I must consider it." We have seen old judges upon the English bench posed by novel suggestions or constructions of the law, and the hoary and learned men have had to ask to be permitted to consult some brother judge because of the novelty of the situation. This is wise on the part of all merely human critics, because no man is all men, and no man knows or can know so much as all men know. Consultation, therefore, and comparison of men's thoughts is not only desirable but just and right in all merely human consultations and inquiries. But here is a man who consults nobody, who asks for no time to think, who answers with the suddenness and the brilliance of lightning. Touch him, and you are healed, if the touch be that of faith. Speak to him, and you evoke a revelation; pray to him, and the whole firmament widens into a great answer to your request, wherein it is just and proper. But never was he to be allowed to consult the authorities or to take into his confidence the learned men of his day. He drew from the quiver of his own heart every arrow that he required. From the fulness of his grace he drew every gospel adapted to his age, from the infiniteness of his own sufficiency he satisfied the hunger of the world.

But an answer may be extemporaneous and nothing more. It may be as instant as lightning, and yet there may be nothing in it but words. But in this case we have the answers before us, and with those answers open to our criticism we may surely pronounce them to be intellectually acute. Sit down in your quietest leisure, when your head is coolest and your mind is steadiest, and try to amend any answer that is here given. Take paper and pen and ink, and in the mood of mind at which you are at your very best, write out a thousand possible answers to the attacks of the Pharisees and Herodians, the Sadducees and the Lawyers. Rearrange your replies, pick out the choicest English in which to express them, and when you have done, you will find that you cannot amend in one line or tone or hue the answers which are here given, perfect in wit, covering the whole case, silencing with gags for that is the true rendering of the speechlessness of the assailants those who made the attack. He put gags in their mouths, and forced them into silence. The dumbness was reluctant, but it was not to be broken through.

Sometimes we think only of Jesus Christ as a good man, kind-hearted, full of love, always trying to make the world better, yea even to save the world. All that is right, but we ought sometimes to consider the simple intellectual force and majesty of this unique mind. Christ had a great heart true but do not therefore disparage his mind. It suits the purpose of some persons to regard Jesus Christ as morally noble, but intellectually feeble. Wherein is the intellectual feebleness shown? Certainly not in this instance. The answer about the tribute money was an answer surprising and conclusive as a revelation from heaven. There was nothing else to be said; no man could add a word to it without spoiling its infinite simplicity, no mind can suggest a new turn to the phrase without trying to bend the sky into a completer circle.

Not only so for in that he might simply have been the greater wit of the two his answers were profoundly Scriptural. Take the instance of the resurrection of the dead. What was his reply? Was there any shuffling here, or any disposition to evade the difficulty? He said, in effect, "Sadducees, you are perfectly right from your point of view. The anecdote is exactly as you have related it; I myself knew all the circumstances of the case a very surprising instance indeed, rarely to be met with, and from your point of view it must really shape itself into something like a fatal argument. But, gentlemen, where you get wrong is in your foundation. You have nothing to stand upon but a handful of sand: I take it away and down you drop the whole fabric, anecdote, historians, and critics, and all. Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures and the power of God. You omit from your calculation the two great factors, you are perplexed by details, you rest upon no infinite rock." And they all were gagged. When the multitude heard this, they were astonished at his doctrine, or astonished at his teaching. Not so much at the substance as in the new way in which he put old truths and avowed revelations, and under his setting these old things shone with a new light. Herein is the greatness of all true teaching not to be inventing new theories and hypotheses, but so to set the old truth as to give it modern force, so to interpret the eternal as to make it a gospel to the dying time.

Poor Sadducees! I pity the Pharisees about their penny, and the Sadducees about their one little anecdote. Both parties seem to have been deprived of their one ewe lamb. It is sad to see how these little critics who suppose they had a case against Christ, have the case taken right out of their hands and turned to the advantage of the other side. I never knew a critic go away from Christ otherwise than with a slouching gait and with a kind of unconfessed wish that he had never made such a fool of himself as to go and touch that burning mountain.

Do not let us be misled by little cases that occur, by parochial anecdotes and by local circumstances that appear to contravene the infinite revelation of God. Let your circumstances go down and accommodate themselves to the eternal. Woe to the peace of any man who lives in mere details.

How did Jesus know all these Scriptures? He himself wrote them. The Scriptures were quoted from him, he did not quote from the Scriptures. He only quotes himself, and quotes himself with the emphasis which the writer of any deep literature alone can give to his own words.

I must add that the answers were complete. From our point of view we cannot suggest a solitary deficiency in the replies. He does not evade the question, but addresses himself honestly, morally, to the difficulty that was put before him. A lawyer thought he could put a case that might puzzle this singular Teacher. "Which is the great commandment of the law?" Jesus answered, "Thou shalt love." That must have been a surprise to any man who was nothing but a lawyer thou shalt love. It does not read like a legal phrase thou shalt love. And yet Jesus Says, "I did not invent that expression: you will find it in the law" and he goes to the very chapter with which he himself seems to have been peculiarly familiar, for in the Temptation in the wilderness, two of his quotations were out of that very selfsame chapter. And now when the lawyer comes to him, probably an emissary of an old tempter, he answers him out of the same chapter. Wonderful things you will find in any chapter of the Bible if you dig for them as for hidden treasure, and search it as for surprises of incalculable value. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. What can be a completer answer to the inquiry of the lawyer than "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart"? and to accommodate himself still further to the lawyer's possible condition, he says, "There is another commandment very nearly as great," and looking at him like a judgment, searching him through and through like a fire, he said, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." If a lawyer can do that, I know not what he cannot do.

We too send deputations to Christ, send our Criticism to him, and we say in effect, "Jesus, son of David, behold the document: we find that the date in this place does not accord with the date in that place; we find that one Evangelist relates a circumstance in one way, and another evangelist relates the same circumstance in another way. Now what are we to do?" And instantly he says, "You are not saved by the literary coherencies of the Book, but by its moral consistency. Look for its consistency in its consistent demands for righteousness and truth and purity and honour." Then our Criticism coming away from him, we send up our Curiosity, and curiosity, feigning itself to be very reverent and profoundly inquisitive in a right spirit, says, "Jesus, why not tell us more about heaven and hell, about the invisible world generally?" and instantly he answers, "I have told you enough for life, conduct, discipline, sanctification: use what you do know, and he that is faithful in little, shall afterwards be appointed ruler over many cities." Then we send up to him our Vulgarity, and the vulgarity says to him broadly, "Why is there so much mystery about this Book, why not make things much plainer?" and he answers, "The mystery is in yourself: there is no mystery in the Book that has not its counterpart in the mystery of your own psychology: you are the mystery, and until you recognise that fact, you will never rise to the occasion demanded of you as true students of the Book, which is not an invention apart from mankind, but a revelation to human nature as it is now constituted."

The questions are over, the assailants are quiet. "Now," says Jesus, "if you do want to ask a question that is a real difficulty from your point of view, I will put it into your possession: you shall have a really hard and deep question. Now, what think ye of the Christ?" Not "What think ye of me as the Christ?" but "What think ye of the Christ that is promised in your books? Whose son is he?" And they instantly answer like a number of children who had learned the Catechism, "The son of David." "Now how then doth David in spirit call him Lord? If David call him Lord, how is he his son?" A difficulty indeed to the literal intellect, a difficulty to those who live in pen and ink, a difficulty to those who suppose there is no multiplication beyond what is literally given in the multiplication table, yet no difficulty at all to the reverent imagination, that higher and sublimer life that embraces the whole revelation of God in its noblest suggestiveness. If the Christ were only the son of David, he could never be David's Lord: the fact that David sets lordship above sonship suggests that this Man is Wonderful, Emmanuel, God with us, a ladder with the foot on the earth, with the head bathed in the glad heavens. Great is the mystery of godliness, God manifest in the flesh. "Pharisees, Herodians, Sadducees, Lawyers," said he, "do not trouble yourselves about the tribute money, and questions of succession in family relationships: do not trouble yourselves with the merely numerical relationships of the points of the law, but do ask deep questions, grand questions, massive, noble questions, get up into the higher region of thinking, and there learn how possible it is for reason to blossom into faith, and for the hard, literal intellect to bow down in tender homage before the infinite God."

Such are the infinite retorts of Christ. Be sure, when you go to him with a question, that it is neither little nor irreverent.

Selected Notes

Matthew 22:21 . "And he said unto them, Render therefore unto Cæsar the things which be Cæsar's, and unto God the things which be God's."

Render. A clear acknowledgment of the divine authority of human government.

1. Though they went to pay Cæsar's tribute, they were not to adopt Cæsar's religion.

The paying earthly tribute does not defraud the Lord's service.

"Fear God, honour the king." 1 Peter 2:17 .

"Curse not the king, no not in thy thought." Ecclesiastes 10:20 .

"Thou shalt not speak evil of the ruler of thy people." Acts 23:5 .

"The wicked are not afraid to speak evil of dignities." 2 Peter 2:10 .

2. Obedience to the laws. "Let every soul be subject to the higher powers." Romans 13:1 .

"Use not your liberty for a cloak of maliciousness." 1 Peter 2:16 .

"License they mean, when liberty they cry." Milton.

There are times when resistance becomes a virtue. Psalms 149:8 , Psalms 149:9 .