What's Your Excuse?
Notes
Transcript
Handout
Text: Matthew 22:15-40
15 Then the Pharisees went and plotted how to entangle him in his words. 16 And they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying,
“Teacher, we know that you are true and teach the way of God truthfully, and you do not care about anyone’s opinion, for you are not swayed by appearances. 17 Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?”
18 But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, “Why put me to the test, you hypocrites? 19 Show me the coin for the tax.” And they brought him a denarius. 20 And Jesus said to them, “Whose likeness and inscription is this?”
21 They said, “Caesar’s.” Then he said to them, “Therefore render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” 22 When they heard it, they marveled. And they left him and went away.
23 The same day Sadducees came to him, who say that there is no resurrection, and they asked him a question, 24 saying, “Teacher, Moses said, ‘If a man dies having no children, his brother must marry the widow and raise up offspring for his brother.’
25 Now there were seven brothers among us. The first married and died, and having no offspring left his wife to his brother. 26 So too the second and third, down to the seventh. 27 After them all, the woman died. 28 In the resurrection, therefore, of the seven, whose wife will she be? For they all had her.”
29 But Jesus answered them, “You are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God. 30 For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.
31 And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God: 32 ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not God of the dead, but of the living.” 33 And when the crowd heard it, they were astonished at his teaching.
34 But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. 35 And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?”
37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
Throughout this passage, we see the religious leaders make attempt after attempt to trap Jesus in his words or expose him to the people as a false Messiah. But, even when Jesus answers their objections, they refuse to believe.
Main Point/FCF: People give all kinds of reasons and excuses for why they don’t believe in God. But, at the end of the day, refusing to believe is nothing more than rebellion cloaked in excuse.
The political excuse.
The political excuse.
15 Then the Pharisees went and plotted how to entangle him in his words. 16 And they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians,
saying, “Teacher, we know that you are true and teach the way of God truthfully, and you do not care about anyone’s opinion, for you are not swayed by appearances. 17 Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?”
Now, in order to understand what’s going on here, you need to know a bit of the background.
The Pharisees were the religious leaders for the common man, they served in synagogues and most of them were common men themselves.
Like most Jews, they weren’t terribly fond of the Roman government and didn’t like paying taxes to a Gentile/pagan government that used their tax money to build elaborate pagan temples, fund their conquests over other nations, and build up the army that they used to keep Israel under their thumb.
The Herodians, on the other hand, were Jewish people who supported the Roman government. The Herodian dynasty was a series of kings that the Roman government had set up to rule over Judea and the area. These Jews had embraced Roman rule because it made them rich. They were loyal to Rome and thought that the rest of their people needed to just get with the program.
So, these two groups—the Pharisees and Herodians—had almost nothing in common. They were oil and water. They didn’t get along. So, the moment we see these two groups coming together to ask Jesus a question, we know they’re up to something.
And then, they ask Jesus about taxes. Why?
The excuse: “Jesus is a traitor.”
The excuse: “Jesus is a traitor.”
Their question was nothing more than a clever trap designed to discredit Jesus with the people or with the Roman government.
If Jesus says, “No, don’t pay taxes to Caesar,” then the Herodians will report him as inciting rebellion.
If Jesus says, “Yes, pay taxes,” then many of the people will reject him. They will have the ammo they need to paint Jesus as a Roman sellout—“He encourages cooperation with the Roman invaders and welcomes tax collectors!"
And, no doubt, they had all kinds of “reasons” for why they thought refusing to pay taxes was allowable in Jewish Law—their tax money was going to fund pagan temple building projects where despicable acts were being done; their taxes were funding the Roman war machine that was keeping Jews under their rule; some Roman currency even hailed Caesar as “Lord and God,” a flat-out blasphemous claim.
But was this the real reason the Pharisees rejected Jesus? No, it was a smokescreen, an excuse to hide their hearts and their real motives.
The real reason: "If we acknowledge Jesus as Messiah, we have to acknowledge God’s judgement upon us.”
The real reason: "If we acknowledge Jesus as Messiah, we have to acknowledge God’s judgement upon us.”
It was far easier to view themselves as victims of a pagan, godless, corrupt Gentile system than to acknowledge that they had failed to live up to God’s standards and invited God’s judgment upon themselves.
It was easier to view Roman taxes as Satanic exploitation of God’s people by Gentiles—something that every God-fearing Jew had a duty to resist—than it was to acknowledge that they were being taxed and ruled by foreign invaders as a judgment from God himself.
Jesus’ response assumes God’s sovereignty over all human governments.
1 Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.
2 Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment.
3 For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, 4 for he is God’s servant for your good.
But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.
5 Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God’s wrath but also for the sake of conscience. 6 For because of this you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing.
Jesus says to pay your taxes not because Caesar and the Roman government were great models of Christianity and honoring to God, but because they’re instituted by God.
This means that the Romans were in charge because God had ordained them so to be. Which means that the taxes were ordained, or at least permitted, by God.
This was the same message that Jeremiah had preached centuries before when God sent the Babylonians to invade Judah. He spoke through Jeremiah to the King of Judah, Zedekiah, and told him to submit to the Babylonians and serve them because they were appointed by God as a judgement upon Judah.
4 Give them this charge for their masters: ‘Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: This is what you shall say to your masters: 5 “It is I who by my great power and my outstretched arm have made the earth, with the men and animals that are on the earth, and I give it to whomever it seems right to me.
6 Now I have given all these lands into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, my servant, and I have given him also the beasts of the field to serve him.
8 “ ‘ “But if any nation or kingdom will not serve this Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and put its neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon, I will punish that nation with the sword, with famine, and with pestilence, declares the Lord, until I have consumed it by his hand.
Then, later on after Nebuchadnezzar had invaded Jerusalem and carried them off into exile in Babylon, God commanded the Judahites again to submit Babylonian rule and “seek the welfare of the city” (Susa, the capital of Babylon):
1 These are the words of the letter that Jeremiah the prophet sent from Jerusalem to the surviving elders of the exiles, and to the priests, the prophets, and all the people, whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon.
4 “Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: 5 Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce.
6 Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease.
7 But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.
8 For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Do not let your prophets and your diviners who are among you deceive you, and do not listen to the dreams that they dream, 9 for it is a lie that they are prophesying to you in my name; I did not send them, declares the Lord.
You can imagine how unpopular a message that was. The Israelites didn’t want to hear that message. They wanted to hear, “We’re going to go back to Jerusalem soon, so don’t get comfortable here. Stand up against the Babylonians! Fight for your rights!”
What’s your excuse?
What’s your excuse?
The truth is that every government on earth that exists or has existed or will exist is there because God has allowed it so to be. Sometimes governments are a blessing upon the people and encourage righteousness and foster an environment where righteousness thrives.
Other governments are corrupt, selfish, filled with pride and lawlessness.
Institutes of the Christian Religion Chapter XX: Of Civil Government
Those, indeed, who rule for the public good, are true examples and specimens of his beneficence [kind provision], while those who domineer unjustly and tyrannically are raised up by him so punish the people for their iniquity. Still all alike possess that sacred majesty with which he has invested lawful power.
A lot of people are more concerned with what they hear on Fox News or CNN than what they read in the Bible, because they think that what’s happening in the political sphere is more important and more practical and relevant to their lives.
But have you considered that what’s happening in the political sphere is under God’s sovereign control? Whether the ruler is great or evil, he/she is there because God has allowed them to be.
That doesn’t mean that every government ruler is godly. Many are not. Some rulers are a sign of his blessing and provision, others are a sign of his judgment.
The problem is that when we see God’s judgment in our leaders, we usually assume that God’s judgment surely isn’t directed at us but at them—the people outside our church. It must be their actions that have lead to judgment, not ours.
We need to retrain our reflexes to examine our own hearts first.
17 For it is time for judgment to begin at the household of God; and if it begins with us, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God? 18 And
“If the righteous is scarcely saved,
what will become of the ungodly and the sinner?”
19 Therefore let those who suffer according to God’s will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good.
In other words, don’t become so preoccupied with whatever is going on in the political world that you miss what God might be trying to tell you and his hand in it all. Accept the discipline of the Lord, and “entrust your soul to a faithful Creator while doing good.”
Don’t hide behind politics and play the victim card. Search your heart and see if there is anything in you that God might be displeased with. Confess it.
Jeremiah was a prophet, and was probably much more righteous and godly than most of the people in Jerusalem. And yet, when the Babylonians invaded, he didn’t play the victim card and pretend that he was innocent of any wrongdoing.
20 We acknowledge our wickedness, O Lord, and the iniquity of our fathers, for we have sinned against you.
37 Who has spoken and it came to pass, unless the Lord has commanded it? 38 Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that good and bad come? 39 Why should a living man complain, a man, about the punishment of his sins?
40 Let us test and examine our ways, and return to the Lord! 41 Let us lift up our hearts and hands to God in heaven: 42 “We have transgressed and rebelled, and you have not forgiven.
14 Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved, for you are my praise.
Don’t hide behind excuses and play the victim card. Own your sins, confess them, and pray for forgiveness, and God will hear you.
The religious excuse.
The religious excuse.
23 The same day Sadducees came to him, who say that there is no resurrection, and they asked him a question, 24 saying, “Teacher, Moses said, ‘If a man dies having no children, his brother must marry the widow and raise up offspring for his brother.’ 25 Now there were seven brothers among us. The first married and died, and having no offspring left his wife to his brother. 26 So too the second and third, down to the seventh. 27 After them all, the woman died. 28 In the resurrection, therefore, of the seven, whose wife will she be? For they all had her.”
29 But Jesus answered them, “You are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God. 30 For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. 31 And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God: 32 ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not God of the dead, but of the living.” 33 And when the crowd heard it, they were astonished at his teaching.
The excuse: “Jesus believes in things that are unbiblical.”
The excuse: “Jesus believes in things that are unbiblical.”
“Jesus believes in the resurrection, which is nowhere in the Torah.”
The Sadducees and Pharisees are nowhere in the OT. They arose during the period of time between the close of the OT and the beginning of the NT. No one knows exactly how the Sadducees came to exist, but they were mostly comprised of priests and therefore were deeply connected to the worship in the temple.
They were mostly wealthy aristocrats, so they benefited greatly from Roman rule, which lead to their political corruption.
They were shrewd pragmatists. They didn’t care much about holiness or righteousness; they were all about whatever kept them in power and wealthy.
They followed only the Torah/Penteteuch (the first five books of the OT) and rejected the rest of the OT.
They rejected the idea of God’s involvement or sovereignty over human affairs, feeling that God was not really involved in directing human actions and events. So, when bad things happened, it wasn’t because of God’s judgment but simply because people did something dumb or wrong. They did not believe a Messiah was coming and they did not believe in any kind of judgement or afterlife.
The real reason: “Jesus is going to expose us as frauds.”
The real reason: “Jesus is going to expose us as frauds.”
The Sadducees were not morally upright or legalistic, they were pragmatic politicians concerned primarily with their status, wealth, and power. They wanted to keep the status quo. They were unscrupulous, ends-justify-the-means kind of people.
The Sadducees rejected Jesus not because they sincerely believed that his religious beliefs were wrong, but because they didn’t like the idea of a coming judgment. If there’s life after death, then there’s judgment after death, and that wouldn’t go well for them.
What’s your excuse?
What’s your excuse?
There are many denominations that exist today because someone decided that some aspect of orthodox, Christian belief (i.e., the Trinity) wasn’t biblical.
E.g., the Christadelphian “church” up the road, JW’s, Mormons, etc.
What seems to almost always happen, though, is that they don’t just change that one point of theology (which would be bad enough); rather, that one issue becomes the excuse they need to make a break with the authority of their local church and go start their own thing. This gives them control and authority.
Outwardly, they take a principled stand as if they are “recovering” the true faith, but in reality, they’re just rejecting God’s authority and Scripture’s authority in favor of a system where they get to make the rules.
The Sadducees weren’t trying to “recover biblical Judaism.” If they had really been about that, they would have sought out descendants of Aaron and Levi to take over the Temple complex and stepped down. They would have recognized foreign rulers as God’s judgment upon them for their disobedience and strove to lead the nation in holiness.
They didn’t care about what the Torah said or didn’t say about the resurrection, they just wanted a system they could control; one that freed them from any accountability.
What about you? What is Christianity to you? Is it about knowing God and helping other people know him more? Or is it just a means to an end—something to help you look good for other people.
The Sadducees dressed nice and acted holier-than-thou, but they twisted Scripture to suit what they wanted and then just rejected whatever they didn’t like.
Do you believe the word of God? Do you bring yourself under the authority of God and his word? Or are you just using Christianity to suit your own purposes?
The legalistic excuse.
The legalistic excuse.
34 But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. 35 And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?”
37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
The excuse: “Jesus doesn’t follow the Jewish Law.”
The excuse: “Jesus doesn’t follow the Jewish Law.”
The Pharisees were experts in the Jewish Law. They were Rabbis who taught in local synagogues. Unlike the aristocratic Sadducees, the Pharisees were common people and had the support of the common folks.
They were concerned with righteousness and holiness, and they did believe that God was governing the word and cared about human actions. They were expecting a Messiah and believed in an afterlife and coming judgment.
They saw in the OT a history of God’s people breaking his laws and being judged, so they wanted to create a “fence” around the Law with more laws to keep the people from breaking God’s Law.
But over time, they became obsessed with keeping the Law as an end in itself.
So, they frequently objected to what they perceived as Jesus’ flagrant law-breaking, like healing on the Sabbath, or eating with sinners, or touching unclean people.
So, they ask Jesus a question as a trap. Out of 613 laws in the Torah, which one would Jesus pick? They probably had a counter argument for just about anything Jesus could have said...or so they thought.
The real reason: “Jesus’ interpretation of the Law demands more than we want to give.”
The real reason: “Jesus’ interpretation of the Law demands more than we want to give.”
While the Pharisees probably intended well in the beginning, they had devolved into legalism. Legalism is focusing on the precise wording of the Law while ignoring its true intent.
Legalism can be used to heap restrictions and commands upon people and make their life really difficult, and the Pharisees definitely did this.
But, legalism can also be used to find loopholes to escape the clear intent of a law and make it easier on you.
Jesus rebukes the Pharisees in one instance for focusing so much on the letter of the Law that they had figured out a way to use the Law to justify not helping to take care of your aging parents. The Pharisees had taken another law, that you must always fulfill your oaths to God, and said that if your parents were aging and you didn’t want to be financially responsible for their care, you could just take an oath to give a large offering to God instead. Since you couldn’t break your vow to God, then you could just tell your parents, “I’m sorry, the money that I would have used to care for you I have vowed to give to God.” Then, that person could hide behind the guise of being “righteous” all the while breaking the true intent of God’s Law.
In another case, he rebukes the Pharisees for allowing easy divorce. Again, they exploited a small phrase in the Law of Moses and ran with it and twisted it around to allow for divorce for just about any reason. Jesus rebukes them for missing the point—God designed marriage to be for life, and divorce is against God’s design.
So, ironically, while the Pharisees are making themselves out to be righteous “Guardians of the Law,” they’re actually twisting God’s Law to make their own lives easier. The Pharisees turned God’s Law into an end in itself, so that you could just check the boxes and call yourself “righteous.” And sadly, some branches of Judaism still do this today:
“Ultimately, then, it is our mitzvot [commandments] that are responsible for preparing the world for the messianic era, a time when it will be possible to do all the mitzvot [commandments] fully, in their ideal context, and the world will be filled with G‑dly light “as the waters cover the ocean basin.”
Nevertheless, mitzvot [commandments] cannot be reduced to utilities to achieve any particular goal—even the ultimate perfection of the entire cosmos. If they were, they would not be G‑d’s innermost desire—they would be just another means to an end. Rather, the very act of a mitzvah [command] is its own end in itself.
Thus the Mishnah declares that despite all the wonderful things a mitzvah [command] brings to the person and to the world, ultimately “the reward of a mitzvah [command] is the mitzvah [command] itself.””
—Chabad.org [https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/1438516/jewish/Mitzvah.htm]
So, it’s easy to see why this kind of thinking is appealing. All you have to do in this system is keep the commandments. “Yeah, but aren’t there like 613 of them?!?!” you might say. True, but as this article later points out, most of them pertain to the system of worship in the Temple, which no longer exists, so those don’t even apply to you. And, at the end of the day, all you have to do is just follow the rules and check the boxes and you can pat yourself on the back as a “righteous man.”
Jesus’ way was much harder. It required wisdom, self-evaluation, and digs even into your motives. You might be able to find a loophole that allowed you to mistreat your aging parents or divorce your wife if you used the Pharisees’ interpretation. But, Jesus summed up the entire OT with two staggeringly difficult commands that no one is able to perfectly uphold:
37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment.
39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
This means that if you’re asking yourself the question, “Have I lived a righteous life?” You couldn’t just go down the list of the ten commandments and check boxes, you had to ask the question, “Do I love God with all my heart soul and mind?”
This means that rather than checking all the loopholes and legalese to see if your divorce was permissible, you had to ask, “Do my actions demonstrate love for my wife and kids?”
See, the bottom line is that legalism is easier than real faith.
What’s your excuse?
What’s your excuse?
Pharisees (both modern and ancient) had devolved God’s Law into blind rule-following believing that that following the Torah was an end in itself.
But, Jesus says that the aim of the commands [mitzvot] is to promote love for God above all else, and love for others more than self.
They missed the point.
Many people today are doing the same thing. Following the “rules” thinking that makes them a good person, and that is an end in itself.
The motto of these people is “I don’t drink, I don’t chew, and I don’t date girls that do.” They think that all that matters is keeping the rules.
Don’t drink, don’t do drugs, don’t curse, don’t watch bad movies, don’t have sex outside of marriage, don’t kill people, don’t take God’s name in vain, go to church, read your Bible, get married, have kids, get a job...etc. Why? Just because...Because that’s how good people live? Is there no more to it than that?
And many of our kids have grown up hearing nothing more than this—legalism. A bunch of rules. And then they get out on their own and realize that it’s perfectly possible to break most of those rules and still be considered a “good person” by the world’s standards.
But Jesus reminds us that we don’t blindly follow rules “just because.” The rules given in Scripture were not given to be shackles or burdensome or arbitrarily, they were given to point us to God.
The reason that we should go to church and read our Bibles is because doing so will point us to God and help us love God more deeply. The reason that we abstain from drugs, drunkenness, sex outside of marriage and God’s design, misusing God’s name and so on is because those things have a tendency to dull our love for God and become idols in our lives. Plus, they tend to result in us not treating other people with love and respect.
The Pharisees wanted to argue over whether or not to give to Caesar what was his, but Jesus wants us to focus on giving to God what belongs to him—our hearts.
The Sadducees were focused on the Temple complex and maintaining the status quo, but they had forgotten that the Temple was constructed to point everyone to worship and love the one true God—a God whom they did not know and whose word they did not know. And so, instead of promoting an environment where people could worship, they created an environment where extortion and greed were celebrated and later that week even plotted to murder their own Messiah in a room inside the temple complex.
They had all missed the point! And the entire OT had pointed to the day when God would reveal himself in his Messiah and save his people from their sins, yet here he was in front of them, and they couldn’t see it.
So, what about you? What is your excuse? What lies are you hiding behind that are keeping you from seeing the Creator of the Universe revealed in Jesus Christ?
But at the end of the day, Jesus says “Did you love God with everything you are? And did you love people as much as you loved yourself?”
And the only way that’s possible is if the Holy Spirit is living through you.
