Mark 11:27-12:27 - WWE-JD and 7 Brothers for 1 Bride

Well, I hope you're ready today for a showdown, a duking it out episode of Tabernacle Talk, and I'm not talking about me and some other person. I'm not fighting you or anyone else today.

Today, we are seeing Jesus go head to head with the Pharisees and with the scribes and with the Sadducees. He's going after everyone.

This is that final week of Jesus' life, and here He's engaging with those that have fancied themselves, the leaders, the rulers of Israel, even though they have been in direct defiance against God through their actions, their words, their thoughts,

their teachings, and though they have opposed Jesus, here I think the first time we saw their opposition was maybe 11 chapters ago, going all the way back to chapter 2. And now Jesus is going just head to head with them.

So we saw Jesus' triumphant entry into Jerusalem. We saw Him interact with the temple. Then we saw Him cleanse the temple.

And we saw at the end of last episode, Jesus basically telling the disciples that though God had used this particular religious system and this particular nation in the past, that God was going to do a new thing.

And that the fruitless tree of Israel, it was going to come to an end. And now there was going to be a different way that God was going to work. We would know as we look at the rest of scripture that that would be the church.

That then those here, all of the Jewish believers and all the Gentile believers that would eventually come, they would be part of that new tree of the church that God would have his people in. Verse number 27. They came again to Jerusalem.

As he was walking in the temple, the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders came and asked him, by what authority are you doing these things? Who gave you this authority to do these things? Verse 29.

Jesus said to them, I will ask you one question, then answer me and I will tell you by what authority I do these things. Okay, so here's the question that they're asking him. They worked on the basis of other people's authorities.

So they would say, Rabbi Shammai or Rabbi Hillel or Rabbi Nicodemus or Rabbi Gamaliel. These are the ones that said these things. And so this is why I'm putting forward this argument.

I'm saying this. I'm doing this on the basis of what was spoken by Rabbi So-and-so. And Jesus, obviously, we know his authority didn't come from men.

It came from God himself. It came from who he was as the son of God. And so he tells them this.

Okay, you answer this one question that I've got, and then I'll tell you by whose authority I'm doing this. He says, verse 30, was John's baptism from heaven or of human origin? Answer me.

So he says, okay, what John the Baptist did, was it because God sent him, or was it because of humans wanting him to do this? Verse 31, they disgusted among themselves. If we say from heaven, he will say, then why didn't you believe him?

But if we say of human origin, they were afraid of the crowd because everyone thought that John was truly a prophet. So they answered Jesus, we don't know. They knew what they thought.

They thought it was from human origin. They did not think he was sent from heaven, but they knew Jesus and all of the people, they think John was a prophet. And so they just say, we don't know.

Here, human fear, a fear of what people will say or what people will think or what people will do, it cripples you. I think of Proverbs 29, 25. The fear of man brings a snare, a trap.

It says, but whoever puts their trust in Yahweh will be safe. So Jesus' response to them going, oh, we don't know on whose authority John did this. And Jesus said to them, neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things.

He began to speak to them in parables. A man planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug out a pit for a winepress and built a watchtower. Then he leased it to tenant farmers and went away.

This would be a fairly common thing for richer people to do. He did all the work, built up this vineyard, the winepress, all of it, and then hired a guy to say, hey, would you take care of this, grow this, grow the crop?

Verse 2, at harvest time, he sent a servant to the farmers to collect some of the fruit of the vineyard from them. But they took him, beat him, and sent him away empty handed. What in the world?

Everyone here would be justifiably outraged. They would say that vineyard doesn't belong to these tenant farmers. It belongs to the Lord.

It belongs to this master that sent a servant who was beaten and sent away empty handed. It says again, he sent another servant to them, and they hit him on the head and treated him shamefully. Then he sent another, and they killed that one.

He also sent many others. Some they beat and others they killed. Okay, everyone would be going, what in the world are these tenant farmers thinking?

Verse 6, he still had one to send, a beloved son. Finally, he sent him to them, saying, they will respect my son. But those tenant farmers said to one another, this is the heir, come, let's kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.

So they seized him, killed him, and threw him out of the vineyard. What then will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and kill the farmers and give the vineyard to others.

Haven't you read this scripture? The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This came about from the Lord, and it is wonderful in our eyes.

They are quoting again from Psalm 118, the same chapter that we looked at yesterday when Jesus was making his way into Jerusalem, and everyone was claiming out, you know, crying out, Hoseanna, blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.

Jesus continues in that Psalm. Verse 12, They were looking for a way to arrest him, but feared the crowd because they knew he had spoken this parable against them. So they left him and went away.

Here, Jesus makes it clear. You guys are not the heroes of this story. You are not the guardians of the truth of God's word.

He says you were tenant farmers. All you were supposed to do was take care of what God had already put together and done and orchestrated. And yet, whenever God sent people to let you know what you needed to do, you beat them and you killed them.

He says, this is what you did to John. John was one of those people. And he makes it clear, I am the son of God.

I am the son of the owner. And I have come to you. And I know that you're going to beat me and kill me, but God is going to bring justice onto you.

Man, what a challenge. I think for so many people perhaps in Christian ministry that there ought to always be a realization, this is not my church. These are not my people.

These are God's. If I try and take the ownership of Tabernacle in a way that says, hey, this is my thing, you're going to do what I say, and it doesn't matter what God's word says, I think this, and so we're going to do this.

Man, I don't want to be one of those tenant farmers that then the owner sends in and says, hey, they're going to be killed and they're going to be thrown out because they did not treat the vineyard as being mine.

They tried to claim it for themselves. And even the verse in Psalm 118, the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.

The cornerstone would be the very first stone that you would lay down for a building, and it would determine everything else about the building. It would determine where the building was built.

It would determine how the building would be built, the direction that it would face. All of it would be as a result of the cornerstone. And here, Jesus is saying, quoting from Psalm 118, that He is the cornerstone.

He is the direction setter. He is the one that defines what the building is and where it is and where it's going. And it says that the builders, they didn't want it.

They disliked it, the old word for it. They disallowed it. They rejected it.

But God is the one that put Jesus there. And you don't get to reject how God said that he wants his church, his world, his new creation to be built. And the Pharisees, again, they were scared of people and it affected their actions.

Here it was in somewhat of a good way. It's a good thing that we fear doing bad things. But I think sometimes on the flip side of it, we can often be fearful of doing good things because of people.

And here Jesus doesn't have that fear. He says, whether you kill me and beat me or whether you, you know, run away at this time, He says, I'm still going to tell you exactly what God thinks in this situation.

And let's not have a fear to proclaim the truth of God to a world that desperately needs it. Verse number 13, Then they sent some of the Pharisees and the Herodians to Jesus to trap him in his words. So here the Pharisees, very familiar with them.

Don't really have to recap that. The Herodians are religious leaders that were identified with Rome and with the kind of Roman governor over the Galilean section Herod.

So these would not have been particularly popular people with the crowds at large. No one was like, yeah, Rome, we just love Rome so much.

So these were people that at the expense of fellow Israelites were trying to amass power and favor from the ruling classes in Israel that were Roman. So these are the people that come to Jesus, to trap him in his words.

When they came, they said to him, Teacher, we know you are truthful and don't care what anyone thinks, nor do you show partiality, but teach the way of God truthfully. If they actually believed that, they would be his followers.

They're just trying to really kind of butter him up. They're trying to set him up for failure here. They say, is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not?

Should we pay or shouldn't we? The one line of thinking would say, no, like Caesar doesn't deserve your money.

You're going to pay someone that would then be, as you look back at Roman history, be a murderer, be someone that would be incredibly sexually immoral with at times men and women, someone that would use those funds to worship false gods and build

temples and statues and all of those things. So they would say, no, no, you can't pay taxes to Caesar. That would be a wrong and immoral thing to do. Or the flip side would say, hey, he's our leader.

We live in the Empire of Rome, and so we have a responsibility to pay our taxes. And so they're trying to trap him.

If he says, yeah, you should pay taxes to Rome, well, then the people are going to be very upset and go, but listen, they're not godly. They're not our real rulers. They're just occupying our land.

How could you be in favor of the oppressors and say that you should pay taxes, not just that you have to, because otherwise they'll kill you, but you should pay taxes.

Or on the flip side, if he said, no, you don't have to pay taxes, well, then they could get the Romans involved and say, hey, this person's trying to, you know, format revolution against Rome.

Verse 15, but knowing their hypocrisy, he said to them, why are you testing me? Bring me a denarius to look at. That's kind of what you would get paid in one day.

They brought a coin. Whose image and inscription is this? He asked them, whose face is on the coin?

Caesar's, they replied. Jesus told them, give to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's. And they were utterly amazed at him.

Here, no one could argue with what he was saying. It was, oh yeah, I guess his face is on it. So I guess it belongs to him.

Here, I love the implication. He says, whose image and inscription is this? To say that the coins, the denarius belong to Caesar.

But then that begs the question, OK, what is God's? Well, what has God's image and God's inscription? We do, humans.

We are those made in the image of God. So we are to give ourselves entirely to God. We are to give the us tax to God.

What are you doing to serve the Lord? How do you give yourself to him? How will you give of yourself to the Lord today?

That doesn't just look like Bible reading, by the way. It doesn't just look like prayer, though certainly we should never do anything less than pursuing God in reading His Word and in praying.

It might be that God wants you to share the Gospel with someone today. God might want you to do an act of kindness and give them a Gospel tract.

If you're one of the people here at Tabernacle, we've actually got some Gospel tracts that I think they're supposed to be here this week, but just really, really easy Gospel tracts that I'd encourage you, like grab some of them and it'd be a great

way to have a conversation with someone. You can just read the things that are on the card and kind of walk someone through who God is, who they are, and what God's design is for their life. So they're amazed at His answer, that it's a great answer.

Of course, it's God Himself. He gives the best answers. So then another group comes in to tempt him.

Sadducees, verse 18, who say that there is no resurrection came to him and questioned him.

Teacher Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies, leaving a wife behind, but no child, that man should take the wife and raise up offspring for his brother.

This is the Levi Wright marriage that we talked about over and over again in Leviticus and in the Book of Ruth. They give this fictitious story. So they say, okay, we know about Levi Wright marriage.

They say there were seven brothers. The first married a woman and dying, left no offspring. The second also took her and he died, leaving no offspring.

And the third, likewise, none of the seven left offspring. Last of all, the woman died too. In the resurrection, when they rise, whose wife will she be since the seven had married her?

So they're trying to say like, this whole resurrection thing is kind of ridiculous. The Sadducees only believed in the first five books of the Old Testament, the Torah, as being, if you will, inspired. These are the only things that God really said.

They didn't really believe much in the supernatural, in angels or demons, miracles, that kind of stuff. They were more concerned about just the here and now. And so they're trying to trap him into saying, okay, she belongs to the seventh man.

Okay, but the law says that that person was supposed to be raising up offspring for the first brother. Okay, well, does it just mean like the brother before him? So then would it be the sixth?

So they're just trying to say this whole thing is ridiculous. Verse 24, Jesus spoke to them. Isn't this the reason why you're mistaken?

You don't know the scriptures or the power of God for when they rise from the dead. He doesn't say if. He says when, the resurrection is something emphatic.

He says, when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.

And as for the dead being raised, haven't you read in the Book of Moses, in the passage about the burning bush, how God said to him, I am 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.

You are badly mistaken. Man, what a great answer here from Jesus. That they're trying to ridicule the resurrection and they're trying to say, well, then that wouldn't really make sense.

Who, when they rise, whose wife is she going to be? Jesus says, that's not how it works. When we have our resurrected bodies, we no longer are concerned with procreating or anything like that.

And so marriage is done. At that point, we have one spouse. We are the bride of Christ.

And so here he says that in the resurrection, we do not marry and we are not given in marriage. That we have none of those connections anymore.

This runs counter to what the Mormon Church teaches in that they say that your marriage will last forever and ever and ever and ever. No, no, no. Earthly marriage is a picture of our relationship with Christ.

And when that reality of Christ happens, when we are reunited with him, then we don't need the picture. We don't need the shadow anymore.

I do want to note here, because it has been mentioned by some people before, they say, OK, the angels in heaven don't marry and they're not given in marriage.

Therefore, even as we looked back at Genesis 6, as we looked at 2 Peter chapter 2, as you look at the book of Jude, there's a statement made that says, OK, angels can never procreate. They can never marry.

So therefore, even though Genesis 6 seems to say this and 2 Peter 2 seems to confirm this, and the book of Jude seems to confirm this, this can't be. But notice here it says that the angels in heaven do not marry or are given in marriage.

It does not say anything about the demons on earth or the angels that, as Peter or Jude put it, left, abandoned their post, their first dwelling place and went and committed immorality.

So I just want to throw that in there as well, as that's been an objection before. And I love that Jesus gets to the real point.

So first he says, okay, you guys don't understand the resurrection, but it's because you don't believe in the resurrection, even though in only the books of scripture that you do believe in, the first five, the second book in there, God tells Moses

that he is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob because he's the God of the living, that even at that time, they were alive. Even as we look at... I forget if...

I think it's in Luke that the story of the rich man in Lazarus and the story of Abraham's bosom, paradise, as Jesus would tell the thief on the cross, and as 1 Peter chapter 3 also talks about. So here he goes. You guys, you don't get it.

You're just missing the point.

So Jesus has battled the chief priests and elders, the Pharisees and the Herodians, the Sadducees, and next episode we're going to look at the remainder of chapter 12 when Jesus says, you guys are all concerned about trying to entrap, and you guys

are missing God's actual design for your life. And here are one of these scribes, one of the lawyers, one of the people whose jobs it was to know the Old Testament inside and out, that he's going to talk with Jesus, and Jesus is going to have the

heart of the matter, that all of these religious leaders were just completely missing. So looking forward to that today. Some thoughts for you. Don't fear people.

Fear God. Want what he wants in each and every situation. Realize that your life is not yours.

That if you have a place of service, that it is not yours. It belongs to God. And so you need to always be pursuing, okay, what does the Bible say I need to be doing in this?

What does God want me to do? Realize it's not yours. Pay your taxes and realize that God has placed his image in you.

And so you have a responsibility to act how God would want you to act, to say what God would want you to say, to think what God would want you to think.

Because just as we pay our taxes, because it's got George Washington's face on it, it says United States of America, God has written his name on you. And so you have a responsibility to give yourself to him.

Realize there is a resurrection that's coming, and that the promise of God raising us from the dead is something that we should hold on to and love dearly. Thanks for tuning in, and see you next episode.