LUKE CHAPTER 20

LUKE CHAPTER 20

SCRIPTURE

Today I will summarize Luke chapter 20 where Luke wrote about Jesus teaching another parable.  Where people questioned Jesus’s authority and tried to trick him and where Jesus taught about eternal life.    While Jesus was teaching in the temple the chief priests came up to him and asked who gave you the authority to teach and do miracles? Jesus answered and said I will answer you if you answer my questions first.  Did John’s right to baptize come from God or man? The chief priests and scribes discussed and argued among themselves because they knew they were trapped by Jesus’s question. 

They said,” If we say it was from God in heaven, he will ask us why we did not believe John’s words?”  If we say that it was from men, all the people will stone us to death right here because they are convinced that John was a prophet.  They gave a neutral reply to save their skin but they did not know.  Then Jesus replied, “If you are unable to answer I too will not tell you by what right I do these things.   Jesus looked at the crowd and started to teach with a parable.  He said,” let me tell you a story.”  There was a man who planted a vineyard.  He lent out the land to tenants and went on a long trip.  At the first harvest time, he sent a slave to the tenants to get a share of his harvest from the vineyard but the tenants saw the slave and refused, beat him, and sent him back without anything.  The owner sent another slave but the tenants repeated the same act.  The owner sent his third slave but they wounded him and threw him out of the vineyard without a thing.  The owner was troubled by this behaviour and act of the tenants. 

He thought to himself why they were behaving so indifferently and not giving him what they agreed on and what is due to him.  This time he sent his only son to them with the hope that they will respect him.  But when the tenants saw the owner’s son, the spirit of greed entered them and said,” come let us kill the son and have all the property.  So, they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him too.  He asked the people a question.  What do you think the owner will do after he founds what the tenants did?  He will come and kill all those men and hand the vineyard to other tenants.  When the people heard this they said,” May this never happen this way.  Jesus said,” it will happen this way.”  It is written, the stone which the builders rejected as worthless turned out to be the most important of all. 

Everyone who falls on that stone will be cut into pieces; if it falls on someone, it will crush him to dust.  The chief priests and scribes we that he just referenced them in this parable and they became enraged but they couldn’t do anything to Jesus because he was in the midst of the crowd and because people started believing him and liking him and they hung on his words.  They would protect him from arrest.  They came up with a plan.  They said,” let’s trick and trap Jesus into saying something that will get him arrested.  They discussed it among themselves and came up with a plan.  They gathered a group of men who thought that Rome was an enemy and that the Moses law forbade anyone from paying taxes to Caesar and they found a group of men who were tax enforcers who had the Roman army backing them up.  Both the groups pretended to be righteous and they asked Jesus a question. 

They said,” Jesus we know you speak the true words of God.  Is it lawful under Moses’s law to pay taxes to Caesar whom many people consider a God?  Jesus detected their trickery and said,” Show me a silver coin.”  Whose face and inscription are carved on this coin?  They answered Caesar’s.  Jesus flipped it back to them and said indeed, “Pay Caesar what belongs to him and pay God what belongs to God.”  The wicked men who pretended to be righteous heard this. They were shocked.   They could not believe their ears.  Jesus just escaped their most carefully crafted trap and they slithered away.  A little while later some Sadducees who say there is no such thing as a resurrection from the dead questioned Jesus.  

They said, “Moses wrote that if a man’s brother dies having a wife and he is childless.  His brother should marry his wife and raise children for his brother.   Now there were seven brothers and each obeyed this particular law but they all died childless.  In the resurrection which one’s wife shall she be?  Jesus answered and said,” You don’t understand the scriptures.   I will tell you what happens.  People marry in this world but those who are considered worthy to attain that age and be resurrected from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage.   They are like the angels in heaven because they do not marry either.   The righteous are sons of God and sons of the resurrection.  That is how all of this works.  Jesus continued,” You don’t believe in the resurrection?  Why not? Moses wrote in the passage about the burning bush that the Lord is the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.  

He is not the God of the dead but the Living.  We all live to him.  Jesus said,” You answer me a question.  How does everyone say that Christ the Messiah is David’s son?  Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit David himself wrote in the Psalms, the Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.  King David called him lord.  How could Christ be David’s Lord and still be his son?  The top lawyers had no answer and were speechless.  The scribes who were there said,” Teacher, you have spoken well because Jesus just silenced them with a question.  But Jesus never liked it when the scribes approved anything, he knew they did not understand much when they thought they knew everything.  So, Jesus said to his disciples in the presence of those scribes, “Beware of the scribes they like to walk around long roads and love respectful greetings in the marketplace.  They love the best seats in the synagogues and banquets.  They love to pray long prayers only to be seen.  Yet they show no mercy and they steal the widow’s houses.  The scribes will receive greater condemnation on the day of Judgement.

OBSERVATION

The thing I think the Lord wants us to understand after reading this chapter is that Jesus identified himself as the cornerstone that the builders rejected and everyone who stumbles over him will be broken and crushed.  God wants us to see that the best and the brightest people of the day tried to trap Jesus into saying something that would cause him to be arrested but instead of doing that Jesus said one of the most profound statements ever recorded in history.  God wants us to see that the resurrection from the dead is real.  In the afterlife, the righteous will never die again, will not be married to anyone, and are considered sons of God and are similar to the angels in the fact that they cannot do and do not marry.  Other scriptures reference state that the righteous will be judges of angels and will have higher authority than them.  The notion that peoples become angels after they die is incorrect.  God wants us to see that King David knew that even though the Messiah would be in his family line David would call the Messiah his Lord.  Like David do you call the Messiah your Lord?  Do you give to God what belongs to God? If not, there is still time to turn around and repent.

Prayer

Lord Jesus, Today I give you my body and my mind, my hopes and my fears, my work and my play, my relationships and my time alone.  I give you my love and my strength.  All that am, Lord, I give you today.  Be glorified and honoured in everything I do and say, in all of my thoughts and dreams.  All praise be to you, lord Jesus because I belong to you all that I am.  I make this prayer in your name.    Amen.