Untitled Sermon (14)

What questions would you like to ask Jesus?

You have them don’t you? There are probably some personal “why” questions. Like why did this happen. There are also more broad questions like “why is the world set up the way it is…why did you create this stuff this way.

In our text this morning there are people who have questions for Jesus. Listen in to some of their questions...

Luke 20:19–40 ESV

The scribes and the chief priests sought to lay hands on him at that very hour, for they perceived that he had told this parable against them, but they feared the people. So they watched him and sent spies, who pretended to be sincere, that they might catch him in something he said, so as to deliver him up to the authority and jurisdiction of the governor. So they asked him, “Teacher, we know that you speak and teach rightly, and show no partiality, but truly teach the way of God. Is it lawful for us to give tribute to Caesar, or not?” But he perceived their craftiness, and said to them, “Show me a denarius. Whose likeness and inscription does it have?” They said, “Caesar’s.” He said to them, “Then render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” And they were not able in the presence of the people to catch him in what he said, but marveling at his answer they became silent. There came to him some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection, and they asked him a question, saying, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, having a wife but no children, the man must take the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. Now there were seven brothers. The first took a wife, and died without children. And the second and the third took her, and likewise all seven left no children and died. Afterward the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had her as wife.” And Jesus said to them, “The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage, but those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, for they cannot die anymore, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection. But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed, in the passage about the bush, where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. Now he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for all live to him.” Then some of the scribes answered, “Teacher, you have spoken well.” For they no longer dared to ask him any question.

Is it wrong to ask questions of Jesus? Is it wrong to question Jesus? Those are two different questions, aren’t they?

We need to rewind just a little bit to cover some of the stuff that we didn’t get to last week. The first 18 verses are about the authority of Jesus. They are questioning his right to do things like overturn tables in the temple. They are angry. They hate him. They hate all that he represents and what it means for their own power and position.

So they ask him basically, “who gives you the right to do this”. And his answer is brilliant. He asks them about John. Was his ministry from heaven or not?

Now look at what happens here with the religious leaders. They talk it over…hmmmm....how do we answer this. If we say this, then he’ll say this. If we say this, then the people will stone us.

What does that tell us?

It tells us that they aren’t actually concerned with truth. They aren’t going to follow the truth to wherever it leads. But they want to win an argument and keep the favor with the people. That is what is driving them.

I’m going to give you a nerd word and then explain that nerd word…because it’s something you might hear on occasion..or at least something you might hear a bit more in the future.

We are in what is to be called an epistemological crisis. Now because I just spoke in tongues let me interpret that for you. What that means is that we aren’t at this point arguing about what IS and IS NOT true as much as we are arguing about HOW you come to truth. How do I know which set of facts to believe?

What is fake news and what isn’t? But more importantly how do I arrive at that truth? It’s really asking “by what authority do you say and believe these things” And why I’m saying we are in a crisis on this point is because we’ve lost our anchor here.

We determine truth not based upon it’s bare claims but we determine truth these days based upon who, which party, which person, which celebrity, which politician, which religious leader said the thing. And we tend to be just like the religious leaders…we aren’t following a truth claim for itself but we’re handling truth the way they did...

well if we say this…then they’ll say this. That’s not worried about truth. That’s trying to win a debate. That’s making sure your side wins.

well if we say this…then the people will do this. That’s not worried about truth. That’s making sure you stay in favor with the people you want to stay in favor with. That’s making sure you tow the community line. That’s shaping truth into what you want it to be for the sake of your own comfort or power or something else.

That’s how you can tell if someone really wants to know the truth. Are they going wherever the truth leads them? Are they able to speak against their tribe if the truth leads them there?

Fake news.

How do you determine that? How do you know what is and is not true? It’s asking another layer…how do I know that is true or false? Am I just being driven by confirmation bias? Am I using good skills in determining this thing to be true or false? That’s why I say we are in an epistemological crisis. We no longer know how to come about answering these questions…we’ve lost our anchor.

See, what Jesus is doing here is he is getting them to ask a very important question. How? How do I know this? How will we come about the answer to whether or not the baptism of John was from heaven or from man? How do we determine that...

An actual truth-seeker is going to pause. What leads me to this assumption? Why do I think I’m correct? What might happen if I’m wrong? What are the uncertainties here? Where are the holes? What are the advantages and disadvantages to what I’m believing? What is the best argument from the other side? How might they be seeing the world?

That’s what should have happened with the religious leaders here. But they didn’t. Look at the text, they knew they rejected John. “Why did you not believe him”. They didn’t care about truth. They cared about winning a debate. They cared about staying in power. The truth wasn’t leading them.

I try to ask all these questions when I’m wrestling with stuff.

Let’s do a quick exercise. Imagine that I tell you this morning that after we leave the service we are going to be met in the parking lot by pink dinosaurs who will swallow up every third person.

Now that’s not a heated one. And so you’re able to just see how ridiculous it would be, right?

You reject that because you are pretty sure there aren’t any pink dinosaurs anymore. And it just sounds pretty preposterous. What evidence would Pastor Mike have for making such a claim? He’s just making a silly illustration. There aren’t actually pink dinosaurs.

But what if I had changed this a little. What if I told you that Democrats don’t want you to believe in pink dinosaurs because believing this truth will just expose everything.

Now pending on your political persuasion something just happened. You either started trusting that claim a little more or a little less. What is happening here?

How do you know that this claim is true? How would you test this? Well one way is to go out in the parking lot and see if it happens. But before you go. You actually CAN NOT test this truth claim. How would you argue with me about this?

Pink dinosaurs don’t exist. Oh well, that’s just what they want you to believe. That’s fake news.

With what authority do you make this claim pastor? I know. I’ve found this out. I was given this information. I have some secret knowledge and I’m letting you in on it.

THIS is what you call an epistemological crisis. In the early church there was a heresy called Gnosticism that was spreading like wildfire. And it was very similar. Gnosticism was secret knowledge. They said that they had secret information about the universe, about how things really were, and about what the gospel was really about. How can you disprove that?

What the early church did, and what I think we need to do in our day, is they connected it with Christ, the Scriptures—the rule of faith, and the fruit of the Spirit.

Somebody makes a claim about pink dinosaurs you weigh that against Scripture. And if Scripture is silent then you know that this truth claim isn’t on the same firm footing as that which God has clearly revealed.

You measure it by the rule of faith. Is this what the church has historically believed?

What kind of fruit is this producing? Am I more loving, joyful, peaceful, gentle, etc.?

You want to know if something is true in our day. Weigh it by those. If it’s not found in Scripture it’s tentative. You don’t know. Just admit that. You don’t have an uncertain anchor to hold onto. You COULD be wrong.

What kind of fruit is this producing?

We see what fruit was being produced by the religious leaders. They want to have Jesus killed. That’s what we see in verse 19. But they don’t know how to have him killed so they figure they can lay a trap for him. Look at verse 20...

They recognize the Son. They see that he comes from God but they don’t like him and so they want to have him done away with. What kind of heart does this?

Are those truth seekers? Not at all. They are convinced that Jesus is wrong and evil and awful and so they’ve shut off the possibility of listening to him. Now their just looking for him to trip up. So they pose a politically charged question to him.

It’s a question where they think they are pinning him down. He’s going to fall off on one side and anger somebody. He’ll either blaspheme the Father or he’ll say something that will provoke the ire of Rome.

Mark tells us that those asking questions are the Herodians and the Pharisees. . For the Pharisees political rescue will come when Messiah comes into power and overthrows Gentile rule and oppression. When God’s King finally sits on the throne again all of these Gentiles will be booted out of God’s kingdom. For the Herodians political rescue will come by partnering with the powerful Romans—even though they are Gentiles.

And so this question is a weighty one. Do we pay taxes? This is likely a poll tax which they had been paying for about 20-30 years. It would have kind of been like in the 1700s when colonials were trying to determine whether they ought to pay taxes to the British government for stamps and tea and sugar and such or if they ought to revolt and not pay taxes.

Imagine in the height of the Revolutionary War a couple of people asking an influential pastor in Boston what he thought about paying that tea tax. One of those people is a guy who reports directly to the King of England. The other guy is one of the popular revolutionary leaders—let’s say someone like Patrick Henry who said, “give me liberty, or give me death”. Now, if that pastor from Boston answers that we ought to just be quiet and pay the taxes to King George then he is going to lose respect from the people who see the King is an evil tyrant. If he answers that we shouldn’t pay taxes then he is looking to get imprisoned for treason by the King’s men.

Jesus is facing something similar but a hundred times worse. Because what is at stake isn’t faithfulness to the Revolution but faithfulness to God Almighty. If he says unequivocally “pay your taxes” then in the mind of the people he is committing treason against God. But if he says “don’t pay your taxes” he’ll see Herod’s men lopping off his head any day.

The way Jesus responds is absolutely brilliant. He says, “go grab me a coin”. Now it’s telling that Jesus doesn’t even have a coin but his questioners do. Who is on the coin? It’s the image of Caesar. Well, this belongs to Caesar and so give it to him. This will satisfy the Herodians, they can’t call him a political revolutionary who isn’t paying his taxes.

And then he says, “give to God what is God’s”. Well what is that? It’s you and I. We belong to God.

Jesus has just distanced himself from the argument. He isn’t pinned into a corner by the Herodians because he shows himself as not being a political rebel. And he’s also not pinned in a corner by the Pharisees because he is acknowledging God’s rule over everything. Give to God what belongs to him.

Their trap questions aren’t going to work and neither will the Sadducees. Their question is super ridiculous.

Next up are the Sadducees who don’t believe in the resurrection. And here I have to tell a joke that one of my professors in college always told. The Sadducees don’t believe in the resurrection—that’s why they are sad…you see.

Here they come to Jesus with the intention of showing that the resurrection is a dumb idea. They’ve got a great scenario to prove it. In the Mosaic law if a man’s brother dies and leaves her without a child then this man must take the widow and raise up offspring for his brother.” Sounds like a strange law for us but it was a way to preserve culture and to keep the Jewish people from intermarrying.

They come up with their own version of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers…in their instance it is One Bride for Seven Brothers. Now you’ve got to wonder why these guys aren’t getting a bit suspicious as their brothers are dropping off like flies. But this whole illustration is meant to be ludicrous. The idea that a woman would have seven husbands in heaven is just ridiculous.

So their conclusion is that the idea of a resurrection is faulty. It doesn’t make sense. But they are missing a few key things and Jesus calls them on it. They don’t know the Scriptures and they don’t know the power of God. Which of course is a stunning indictment. Here they are in the center of the temple. These men make their living on this. It’s what they do. And Jesus says they know nothing of the Scriptures. That’d be like saying to a doctor, “you know nothing of medicine” or a mechanic “you don’t even know how to start a car”.

But indeed they did not. First, their premise is faulty. They assumed there was total continuity between how things are in the here and now and how they are in the resurrection. They also miss the fact that God is the God of the living and not the God of the dead.

The scribes are digging this answer because they disagree with the Sadducees on resurrection. They’ll say that Jesus “spoke well” when he affirms their beliefs. But they aren’t about to listen to him. But as we see in verse 40 they don’t ask him any more questions. They know they can’t win that battle.

In verse 41 Jesus turns the tables on them. He is going to ask questions of them. So…in Psalm 110…they would have known what was happening here. This was a huge passage it held the promise of Messiah coming to rule…just like David ruled…he’d be in the line of David.

But Jesus says, how is the Christ David’s son? Doesn’t David himself say that the Messiah will be his lord? If Messiah is David’s Lord rather than his “son,” (v. 44), then Messiah is the Son of God and transcendent Lord who sits at the right hand of God.

And that’s really the crux of everyone of these questions and probably the crux of yours as well. Is Jesus the Lord or is He not? Is Jesus who he claimed to be?

There are all kinds of questions that we might have. And some are legitimate. And asking questions isn’t wrong. Wanting to know isn’t wrong. There is even a type of doubt that can be good and helpful…it’s a doubt that digs deeper.

But there is also a type of questioning, a type of doubting, that is a doubt that doesn’t want to actually believe. That is what we are confronted with here in this text.

If you don’t actually want to believe you can come up with any number of questions. You’ll keep saying that God didn’t satisfy your questions or your curiosity. He didn’t give you enough evidence. And you keep coming up with questions…but it’s a red herring.

But in reality are we actually responding positively to what God HAS revealed. You do that and you’re still going to have plenty of questions but you hold them differently. It’s not prove this and then I’ll believe in you…it’s an honest wrestling. Lord, I believe help my unbelief.

Is Jesus who he says he is, or is he not. That is what we must do business with. I’m reminded here of what happens in Job. The whole thing of Job is that he really wants an audience with God. He has suffered, and he believes unjustly, and so he wants to take his case to God. His questioning through most of it is a humble questioning…there does seem to come a point when he kind of crosses a line and is no longer lamenting but is accusing God of being wicked…but even still…it’s an honest and humble question.

But even still Job would have God to be on the docket…he would have God to be the one who has to answer to Job. But then in Job 38-41 we are hit with a barrage of questions. It’s God asking Job questions…do you know the answer to this? What about this hole in your logic, Job? What about this…what about that…?

And that, I believe is something similar to what Jesus is doing here. He is turning the tables. Have you ever considered that maybe Messiah is more than just a political ruler? Have you really wrestled with Psalm 110?

Who is Jesus to you? Do you follow him when he fits your agenda? Do you twist him to meet your worldview? Do you have things that you just know are absolutely true, and unchanging, and unquestioning, and Jesus has to match up to those things?

Or are you willing to follow Jesus wherever he goes?

Are you focusing on wild-speculation and calling things truth that do not have their basis in Jesus Christ and him crucified? Are you giving your lives over to what might be called disputable matters?

Are you willing to follow Jesus in the stuff that really matters? And if he hasn’t spoken, are you able to say, you know I really don’t know for sure. I have opinions, I have thoughts, but here is what I do know and this is what I’m going to spend my life upon? Because THIS is what my Lord has said…THIS is what He has said is the message. Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. God saves sinners. That’s where I’m going to hang my hat.

Or maybe you still have a million questions. What kind of questions are they? Are you willing this morning to say, “I don’t know all the answers…but I trust you. Wherever that takes me. I want your worldview!”