Community Bible Study -- LUKE

Text of Luke 20:9-21:4 Presentation, Lesson 19

Click Here for Lesson 19 Photos -- Click Here to return to Luke Home Page

Defining Messiah: Jesus' "Holy Week" Teachings in the Temple

The Messiah's Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem was the highlight of last week's lesson. Jesus rode a donkey's colt - as prophesied for the Messiah by the prophet Zechariah - and he was welcomed by the people like a Jewish king. Then - to establish his authority over the Jewish religion - Jesus chased out of the temple the merchants franchised by the chief priests to change money and to sell animals for sacrifice.

This made Jesus very popular with the Jewish religious leaders. They plot to kill him . . . but hold back because they fear a riot by the crowd. Therefore, they merely challenge Jesus' authority to teach as he did . . . but they have to pull back on this when Jesus ties his authority to the authority of John the Baptist. The Jewish leaders did not accept John, but they are reluctant to challenge him because of his popularity. This leaves Jesus free to continue preaching without direct opposition to his authority by the Jewish leaders.

So what does Jesus do now? He turns the tables on the Jewish religious leaders with a parable which challenges their authority. This seems a gutsy move . . . but Jesus' objective is to antagonize the Jewish leaders so they insist on his crucifixion!

Jesus' parable is presented in a way 1st century Jews understand very easily. The Jews were occupied by the Greeks 200 years before, and have been occupied by the Romans for the last 100 years; they are familiar with foreign absentee landowners, who hire tenants to farm their estates for a share of the crops. It's like after the Civil War, when Yankee "carpetbaggers" confiscated plantations in the south, and turned the farming over to "sharecroppers." These absentee landowners were intensely disliked by the people.

In Jesus' parable, the absentee landowner plants a vineyard and leaves it with tenant farmers. Jesus may have chosen a vineyard - rather than another crop - because it of his "I am the Vine" discourse in John 15 . . . or he may have used it because it takes a long time for a vineyard to produce good wine. Hence for many years in the beginning there would be no "crop" to share, and the tenant farmers might "forget" they owe the landowner a share of the crop. This seems to be the point of both the parable and the situation it illustrates.

When the vineyard in the parable produces a good crop, the landowner sends a servant to collect his share . . . "but the tenants beat him and sent him away empty-handed" (20:10). This happens two more times with two more servants (20:11-12). Then the landowner - who now begins to seem more like God than a rich foreign investor - decides to make one last attempt to collect his share of the crop: he sends his son, whom he loves; "Perhaps they will respect him," he says (20:13). But the tenants have a different point of view: they reason that if they kill the son, the landowner will be without an heir, and if the landowner dies, the tenants could claim the vineyard for themselves. "So they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him" (20:15).

This probably is how 1st century Jewish tenant farmers would like to act with a foreign landowner . . . but they don't because they know the consequences. Jesus asks: "What then will the owner of the vineyard do to (the tenant farmers)? He will come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others" (20:15-16). This is reality; absentee landowners had money and power and influence and sometimes even private armies. One would think the tenants in the parable would realize the power of the landowner and behave differently. But Jesus' point is that since the landowner is far, far away and hasn't been there for years, the tenants try to ignore him . . . then convince themselves that they can ignore their debt to him and get away with it. But they lose in the end.

What's the deeper meaning of the parable? That meaning may seem obscure to us, but Jesus' audience recognized it immediately. They realize Jesus is talking about them (20:19), and the death of the son in the parable refers to the death of the Messiah; "May this never be!" (20:16), they say. But Jesus quotes Old Testament Messianic prophesy from Ps 118 to remind them that the Messiah will be rejected by those he comes to save. Jesus asks them: "Then what is the meaning of that which is written, 'The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone'" (20:17). The salvation of mankind depends totally and completely on the Messiah; the Messiah is like the "capstone" of a stone arch . . . the stone at the top that supports the weight of the other stones. Without the capstone the arch will collapse. Without the Messiah, there is no salvation. But - according to prophesy - the Messiah will be rejected and persecuted . . . and only after that will he take his place as the "capstone" of salvation.

So lets fill in the blanks for our interpretation of this parable? The landowner is God. The tenant farmers are the Jews collectively, and the Jewish religious leaders in particular. God has given the Jews a fertile land in the middle of the arid Middle East, and God has protected them from annihilation. God asks only that they acknowledge Him as Lord by worshiping him properly. But because of time and distance, the Jews are always forgetting and fall away from Him. So from time to time God sends prophets to straighten them out. But they don't listen to the prophets . . . and even abuse them. God finally tries to make His point by sending His only son, the Messiah . . . but the Messiah is rejected and killed. So what will happen to the Jews who kill him? The people can imagine God's wrath! . . . "May this never be!" (20:16); they say.

The Jewish religious leaders also get the message . . . but their reaction is different. They "looked for a way to arrest (Jesus) immediately, because they knew he had spoken this parable against them" (20:19). Why do they need to "look for a way to arrest Jesus"? . . . he's teaching in public in the temple courts. It's because "they were afraid of the people" (20:19); the people believe Jesus is the Messiah!

Since the Jewish Religious leaders don't want to arrest Jesus now, how do they respond to his rhetorical attack? They resume their old tactics: trying to trick Jesus into saying something they can use against him. This technique hasn't worked in the past . . . but since they failed in their attempt to challenge Jesus' authority, what else can they do? And here in Jerusalem, Jesus will face major league pitching from the "best and the brightest" of the Jewish religious teachers; surely they'll succeed this time!

The first salvo comes from some who pretend to be Jesus' followers . . . asking a legitimate question about paying taxes - something no doubt on the minds of many Jews. They begin by flattering Jesus: "Teacher, we know that you speak and teach what is right, and that you . . . teach the way of God in accordance with the truth" (20:21). This is indeed the reason so many are following Jesus . . . but their question is a setup. They ask: "Is it right for us to pay taxes to Caesar or not?" (20:22). Talk about a question designed for entrapment! If Jesus answers "Yes," he will upset his Jewish supporters; they hate paying taxes to the Roman occupation government. But if Jesus answers "No," he will be guilty of sedition - and the Jewish leaders would love to have the Roman authorities arrest Jesus and solve their problem for them (20:20)!

But Jesus knows what these deceivers are trying to do . . . so he gives the right answer in an indirect fashion. He asks someone to pull out a coin - a denarius like the one shown on the web site, with the head of Tiberius Caesar. He asks them: "Whose portrait and inscription are on it?" (20:24). They confirm it is Caesar's. So Jesus says: "Then give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's" (20:25).

Jesus successfully slips out of the trap . . . but what does his answer mean? We get a clue from what Paul says in his letter to the Romans:

Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. . . . He who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong Rom 13:13:1-3).

In other words: pay taxes to Caesar as a good citizen. But what does he mean to "give . . . to God what is God's"? Just as Caesar's image is on the coin, man is in the image of God; we owe to God our heart's devotion . . . and in fact our entire selves.

Other gospels include additional dialogues not recorded by Luke, but the bottom line is that Jesus' opponents "were unable to trap him in what he had said there in public. And . . . they became silent" (20:26). Returning to the baseball analogy . . . Jesus' verbal home runs chased the best Jewish teachers off the mound.

This brings the pompous, arrogant Sadducees to the mound as relief pitchers. They have been lurking in the background, observing the dialog about paying taxes to Caesar. The Sadducees are the principal Roman collaborators among the Jewish leaders, and they would have loved to run to the Fortress Antonio - the Roman garrison adjoining the temple - as witnesses against Jesus if he had uttered a word of sedition. Moreover, the Sadducees reject many Jewish values and accept much of the Greco-Roman culture; for instance they ridicule the Jewish idea of a resurrection of the dead. And being very clever, they evolved a question which - in their minds - disproves the resurrection. (It's a trick question like the one modern atheists like to ask Christians: "How can there be a God when there is evil and suffering in the world, because a loving God wouldn't allow evil and suffering to exist.")

To understand their question, we need to know the Jewish law, as God told it to Moses in Deuteronomy 25:

If brothers are living together and one of them dies without a son, his widow (and) her husband's brother (must marry). . . . The first son she bears shall carry on the name of the dead brother (Deut 25:5-6).

This is the context of the Sadducees trick question for Jesus:

There were seven brothers. The first one married a woman and died childless. The second and then the third married her, and in the same way the seven died, leaving no children. Finally, the woman died too. Now then, at the resurrection whose wife will she be, since the seven were married to her?" (20:29-33)

Jesus' answer is brilliant. "What makes you think," he says, "that life in the resurrection is the same as life on earth"? (cf 20:34-35). He's right: nothing in the bible says that; we make it up ourselves! Instead, Jesus says, after the resurrection, people will be "like the angels. They are God's children, since they are children of the resurrection" (20:36). Notice Jesus does not say people become angels when they are resurrected; that's something else man has made up. Jesus only says they are "like the angels." And notice the only familial relationship Jesus speaks is our relationship to God ad His children.

Then Jesus gives his own argument to prove the resurrection: "In the account of the (burning) bush," he says, "Moses showed that the dead rise, for he calls the Lord 'the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.' He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive." (20:37-38). The Sadducees claim to believe in the Pentateuch, so this should be convincing proof to them of the resurrection . . . but we find out in Acts 23 that it goes right over their heads!

But the Pharisees are impressed! They have been lurking in the background now listening to Jesus debate the Sadducees. Pharisees believe in the resurrection (Acts 23:8), and one of them steps forward to give Jesus an "attaboy": "Well said, teacher!" (20:39). (Maybe he means: "Why didn't we think of that.")

The net result is that "no one dared to ask (Jesus) any more questions" (20:40). The Jewish religious leaders have never met an opponent like Jesus before. They are the "best and the brightest," and they usually succeed in running rhetorical rings around anyone who challenges them. But Jesus has hit all their pitches out of the ball park!

Now Jesus takes the mound. The Jews know the Messiah is a king and a descendant of David, Israel's greatest king; but they think he is like David in the sense of being a military leader who will establish a physical kingdom, as David did. But Jesus explains to them from prophesy about the divinity of the Messiah. The Messiah is not just the Son of David; he is also the Son of God. Jesus' argument proceeds like this:

How is it that they say the Messiah is the Son of David? David himself declares in the Book of Psalms: "The Lord said to my Lord: 'Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.'" David calls him "Lord." How then can he be his son? (20:41-44)

The Jewish religious leaders - careful students of Old Testament prophesy - have missed a critical attribute of the Messiah: his divinity as the Son of God. Very important point, it means much of the traditional Jewish concept of the Messiah needs to be rethought.

And Jesus takes this a step further. If the Jewish religious leaders are wrong on such a critical attribute of the Messiah, are they misleading the people in other ways as well? Is their smug, know-it-all attitude and pious self-righteousness just a show? Jesus says: "Beware of the teachers of the law. They like to walk around in flowing robes and love to be greeted in the marketplaces and have the most important seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at banquets. They devour widows' houses and for a show make lengthy prayers. Such men will be punished most severely" (20:46-47).

Reminds me of some Christians I know . . . acting so knowledgeable and pious and self-righteous . . . believing long public prayers will show their piety . . . spending a lot of time convincing rich widows to contribute to ministries which give them princely salaries and/or perks. Jesus is talking about these people, too . . . not just 1st century Pharisees.

And Jesus goes on to say: "Such men will be punished most severely" (20:47). This, too, applies to modern Christians who follow the same pattern of behavior.

After Jesus finishes this dialogue, he "looked up" (21:1) and observed people bringing their offerings in the temple area. He "saw the rich putting their gifts into the temple treasury. He also saw a poor widow put in two very small copper coins. . . . He said, 'this poor widow has put in more than all the others. All these people gave their gifts out of their wealth; but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on'" (21:1-4).

How does Jesus know how much the rich were giving to the temple treasury? Wealthy Jews literally trumpeted their giving to be seen and praised by men (Matt 6:2). But Jesus says, the rich are giving from their wealth, knowing there is plenty back home to pay for future lavish expenses. And Jesus says in Matthew that such people "have received their reward in full" (Matt 6:2).

But the widow . . . by giving the temple "all she had to live on" (21:4), the widow shows she trusts God completely to provide for all her needs. What faith she has! What a contrast with the wealthy! And what a contrast to the Jewish religious leaders Jesus has just criticized again for hypocrisy (cf 11:37-12:1) . . . seeking honor and money rather than trusting God and doing what's right.

The point is: it's not how much we give God, but the attitude with which we give it. Again Jesus is redefining the proper attitude about wealth. The Jews believe wealth is a sign of God's blessing, and that the rich with their lavish gifts to the temple are returning God's blessing. On the other hand, they believe the poverty of the widow is a curse for sin, and her small offering insignificant. But Jesus says they have it wrong: rich or poor, it's what's in the heart that really counts with God. Coming back to Jesus' point with the denarius: God wants us to give ourselves over to Him in total trust (cf 12:22-34).

Next week - as we conclude Jesus' "Holy Week" discourses - we'll discuss something fairly unusual: Jesus' apocryphal prophesy. He talks about the coming judgment of the Jews with the destruction of the temple and of Jerusalem in AD 70. And Jesus talks again about his 2nd coming.