Immanuel Sermon Audio
Luke 20:19-21:4
Take your Bible out this morning. If you don't have a Bible, there should be one in front of you underneath the seat and encourage you to use that this morning if you didn't bring yours with you. If you don't have a Bible at home, take that one. Take it home with you. But this morning, I want you to find Luke 20 and Luke 21. There's an outline in the bulletin if you want to follow along there. You're spent two months away from the Gospel of Luke, and so this morning it's kind of like coming back to a good friend. And we're going to see what Dr. Luke has to say. We're going to be in Luke for the home stretch here leading up to Easter. We're going to talk about the resurrection of Jesus on Easter Sunday. And this morning our passage is Luke 20, beginning in verse 19, and then we're going to read the first all the way through the first four verses in Luke 21. As you find the passage, as you get your notes out, you get situated, let me just remind you that the theme verse of the Gospel of Luke is Luke 19, 10. It says, "The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost, and everything that we've talked about in the Gospel of Luke falls under that umbrella of Jesus coming to this earth on a rescue mission to seek us and to save us when we were lost in our sins." A few weeks back, it's been a couple of months now, we looked at Luke 951, and you don't have to turn to Luke 951. But if you haven't been with us, you might just jot it down, because in Luke 951, we read a statement that Jesus set his face to go to Jerusalem. And so up to this point, he's been teaching, and he's been preaching, and he's been performing miracles, and he's got the disciples with him. They've been doing lots of different things. But in Luke 951, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. That's Jesus reaching the point in his life and his ministry where he says, "Everything else comes behind me, and I'm marching to Jerusalem for the last time." And he didn't take a straight route. He sort of went in a roundabout way, but this is the last trip to Jerusalem. When he gets to Jerusalem, he's going to seek and to save the lost. He's going to accomplish the mission that he came to accomplish, which means when we get to our passage in Luke 20 and 21, just to remind you, Jesus has arrived in Jerusalem. He set his face to go there. He's arrived, and it's the last week of his life. And so here's the events as they unfold the last week of Jesus' life. Sunday, he enters Jerusalem. We call this the triumphal entry, and we talked about this passage a few months back. On Monday, he clears the temple. This is the second time he had done this. He did it earlier in his ministry. We read about that in the Gospel of John two or three years earlier. Now he does it again. He clears the temple. On Tuesday, he's teaching. That's the day we're on right now in Luke 20 and 21. On Wednesday, we don't know what happened. On Thursday, he celebrates a Passover with the disciples. He prays in Gethsemane. He's arrested, and on Friday, there are trials. There's the crucifixion in the burial. Saturday is quiet, and then Sunday, the resurrection, which means we're here on Tuesday. We are coming down to the nitty-gritty, the very end of his life in Luke 20 and Luke 21. Now before I give you the big idea, look in the text. Look at Luke 20, verse 19. It says, "The scribes and the chief priests sought to lay hands on him that very hour. They were ready on Tuesday to put their hands on him and to be done with him. Why were they so ready?" Luke says they perceived that he had told this parable against them, but they feared the people. And so just to remind you where we've left off, this parable that Jesus told was the parable of the tenants. And it was, most certainly, directed towards the religious leaders in Jerusalem. It exposed their hypocrisy, it exposed their heart-heartedness, it exposed their sin, it exposed their plot to murder Jesus, all of these things. And Jesus tells that parable, the parable of the tenants, in the temple complex with all the pilgrims who are there in Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover. Everybody's listening, and Jesus publicly tells this story that makes the religious leaders look really, really bad. And they're outraged, they're embarrassed, their egos are wounded, and Luke says they are ready to lay hands on Jesus at that very hour because they knew that he had told this parable against them. That brings us to our passage this morning, okay? You know the setting, we're all brought up to speed. Here's the big idea of the verses we're looking at. The Son of Man came to offer grace and truth, both, together. A lot of churches today do a good job talking about the grace stuff, and a lot of other churches do a good job talking about the truth stuff. Jesus came to bring both. And as a church that claims to follow Jesus Christ, we have to be concerned with both. And you see both of these things on display in the verses we're about to read. So we're going to begin in Luke 20, 19. And the verses we're going to read are sort of like a four-act play, right? Four different scenes that we're going to move through, but we're going to read them all together and see what they say in their entirety. So look at Luke 20, 19. 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 they 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. We know the governor was Pontius Pilate, verse 21. 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, "Cesars." He said to them, "Then render to Caesar the things that are Caesars and to God the things that are gods." 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. Then 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. In the second and the third took her and likewise, all seven left no children and died. Underward, the woman also died in the resurrection, therefore. Whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had her his 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. And 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's not the God of the dead, but of the living, for all lived to him. Then some of the scribes answered, "Teacher, you have spoken well for they no longer dared to ask him any question." But he said to them, "How can they say that? That the Christ is David's son. For David himself says in the book of Psalms, "The Lord said to my Lord, 'Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.'" David thus calls him Lord, so how is he, his son? And in the hearing of all the people, he said to the disciples, "Beware the scribes who like to walk around in long robes and love greetings in the marketplaces and the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at feasts. They devour widows' houses and for a pretense make long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation." Jesus looked up. He saw the rich putting their gifts in the offering box, and he saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins. He said, "Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them, for they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty put in all that she had to live on." Let's pray. Father, we're grateful that Jesus came to seek us and to save us. As we think about these different episodes in this last week of Jesus' life, we pray that you would open our mind to understand what Jesus is saying and why He's saying it. That you would help us to see the wonder that He is saying anything at all. Help us to see grace and help us to see truth. Father, help us to run to Jesus for life and salvation. We ask it all in Jesus' name, amen. So this morning, we're going to look at these four scenes. We could easily spend one Sunday on each of these episodes, talk about exactly what Jesus means, break all of the statements down and the grammar down and the vocabulary down. But when you do that, sometimes you miss the forest for the trees. Sometimes you miss the big picture of the play just to focus on one scene. And so we're going to look at all four of these stories. I'm going to talk about them and I want to make sure you understand what's happening and what Jesus is saying and why He's saying it. But then I want to back up and make sure that we see the big picture. So scene one is the tax trap, this attempt to trap Jesus on the question of taxes. To understand what's going on here, you need to know a little bit about ancient geography in Palestine. And so just by way of reminder or refresher, I'm sure you guys know this. Up in the north, in Jesus' day, in that circle up top, is an area called Galilee. Jesus was from Nazareth, Nazareth is up in the north in Galilee, where this story takes place is down in the south in an area called Judea in Jerusalem is actually right inside that circle down there in Judea. So you got Galilee, Nazareth in the north, where Jesus is from. Down south you have Judea where Jerusalem was. And when these guys come to Jesus with this question about taxes, partly they are buttering Jesus up. Right? Luke tells us that. Just putting on a show and they say, "We know you're this great teacher, we know you teach God's Word, everything you say is true." But then they throw in this word about you're impartial. Here's what they mean when they say Jesus is impartial. If you lived in Judea in Jerusalem, that's where you were a resident, you had to pay a tax every year to the emperor. It was called tribute. If you lived in this area and you paid it directly to the emperor because Judea in Jesus' day was ruled directly by Rome. Galilee up in the north was not quite as important of an area. There wasn't as much going on there. And so the Romans ruled Galilee indirectly. They had other people up there that ran things and took care of business matters, government matters, things like that. But down south you had to pay this tribute, which means Jesus from Nazareth didn't have to pay this tax. This is not anything that he had ever paid. But if you actually lived down in Judea and you're part of this region, you pay this tribute tax every single year. It was a denarius and a denarius looked something like that. You can get online and you can buy them. I priced them this week. They're about 1,500 bucks a piece if you want to buy an ancient Roman denarius. But on the one side of the coin and the backside they have emperor Tiberius Caesar. Around the coin in Latin it says Caesar the son of divine Augustus, meaning Caesar the emperor is the son of God. That's on the coin. And if you were an adult male or adult female who lived in Judea, you had to pay this tribute every single year and you had to use this coin to pay for it. Now it wasn't really a burdensome thing. This is about what you get paid for one day of work in Jesus day, a denarius. Average common laborers would get paid one denarius for a day's work. So you had to pay this tax. And they come to Jesus trying to trap him because there was a debate among people who lived down in Judea about this tax. On the one hand you had the Sadducees, we're going to talk more about them in a minute. The Sadducees had sort of saddled up close to the Romans and they were really good friends and the Sadducees said, "Look, just pay the tax. What's the big deal? Just pay it. Be a good citizen and give the coin to the officials." The Pharisees on the other hand said, "We don't want to pay a tribute tax to any king that's not the one true king, God. We don't want to use this coin to pay a tax to somebody that claims to be divine, claims to be the son of God." There's blasphemy on that coin. There's blasphemy in paying tribute to a king like that. Sadducees over on this side, just pay it. What's the big deal? Pharisees over on this side, bowing up, refusing to pay. And they come to Jesus and they say, "Look, we know you're impartial. You don't have a dog in this fight. You don't have to pay it or worry about this question, but settle this for us. Should we pay it or not?" And they know if he says, "Pay it," the Sadducees start clapping and say, "You idiots, we told you that was the right answer." And the Pharisees would say, "Well, you're guilty of paying tribute to a king who claims to be God." But if he says, "Don't pay it," the Pharisees clap their hands and wag their finger at the Sadducees, "either way he loses." There's all these people around and it's pressure packed and they say, "Should we pay it or should we not pay it?" And what is the first thing that Jesus says? Why don't you just give me one? Let me see it. Presumably, one of these guys pulls the coin out of his pocket, which is sort of hypocritical, right? You feel conviction enough that you won't pay a tax with a coin that has blasphemy stamped on it, but you'll buy your lunch with it. Show me the coin. They pull one out, they show it to him, he says, "It looks like Caesar's face on there to me. Why don't you just give to Caesar what's his and give to God what's his?" And they walk away with their heads hanging and they fail, scene one. Scene two, the marriage trap begins in verse 27 to 40. This one is sprung by the Sadducees, okay? Let me tell you a little bit more about the Sadducees. In verse 27, this is important. Luke says, "They do not believe that there is a resurrection." You understand that? They believe when you die, that's it. These were the guys who invented Yolo. You only live once. That's it. This is Sadducees. You didn't know they started that. It was them. You only live once. Then when you're dead, you're dead. This is your only go-around. You can also look up later in Acts 23.8, Luke wrote Acts 23 also, by the way. And Luke says that the Sadducees do not believe in angels or demons or miracles. They don't believe in anything supernatural. They only believe in what you can see, okay? If you wanted to translate these guys to the modern day, this would be the academic realm in many "prestigious Bible universities, Christian universities, theology departments, divinity departments at places like Harvard, Duke, Yale, Columbia, et cetera, et cetera. Where they say, "We want to be good people in this life, but when you die, that's it." You're here. This is all you can see. There's no such thing as miracles. There's no such thing as the resurrection. No such thing as supernatural things. Just a very naturalistic worldview. These are the guys collaborating with the Romans, I told you, saddling up close to the Romans so that they could have political and religious power. And here's how it worked. There was a whole bunch of Pharisees. There were not many Sadducees. And the Sadducees made a calculated decision and said, "Look, if we get in tight with the Romans, we can rule over the Pharisees. Even though there's more of us, even though they have more real world power than us, the Romans will let us rule over them." So the Sadducees saddled up close to the Romans and the Romans said, "Okay, Sadducees, the temple complex is yours to run. I'm leaving you in charge of the temple and you are in charge of the priesthood." So all of the high priests, the most influential religious leaders at this day, were from this Sadducee party in Jerusalem at the temple complex. And these guys come to Jesus. These sellouts. They've sold their soul to Rome in exchange for political power. They're theologically liberal. They come to Jesus and they say, "Hey, Jesus, we want to ask you about Deuteronomy 25.5." We have a question. You can look that verse up later. It's a verse where God tells the Israelites, "If your brother dies and leaves a widow, we need to raise up kids with that widow to protect her so that she's not left on her own and to keep the promised land." This is not just any land, but the promised land in the right family. It's in Deuteronomy 25.5. And they come with acute, smirk, something they think is really funny and they say to Jesus, "Hey, just sort this out for us." You remember Luke says they don't believe in the resurrection. There's this guy and he's married and he dies and the brother comes in, seven brothers in a row. In the resurrection, they don't believe in the resurrection. In the resurrection, who's she going to be married to? And then they just sort of step back with a smirk on their face. They think it's cute. They think it's funny. They think they've got him. They remind me of one of my college English professors. It came for a summer class, it was an English elective, and it was studying religious sacred texts from around the world. And this guy's favorite part of the class was not so much teaching us about other religious sacred texts as it was making fun of Christianity. And every day he would stand up in front of the class and he would ask this question. Every day he asked this question. Can the God of the Bible make a mountain so big that even he can't move it? And then he would just step back and smirk. And he would say, "I used to ask my Sunday school teachers that question when I was a kid. Little sweet old ladies taught my Sunday school class, they had no answer. Can God make a mountain so big that even he couldn't move it?" Yes or no? And he feels like he's got you either way, right? If you say yes, he can make that mountain, then he can't move it. He says, "Well, he's not omnipotent. He can't move it." And if you say, "No, he can't make that mountain," then he'd say, "Well, then he's not omnipotent." Ha! And he thinks it's cute. And he used to sit in that English class, listen to this professor, ask this question every day, and he used to think about my high school English teacher, Deney Davis. She was mean, man. And every now and then, I had her two years in a row, my junior and my senior year. Every now and then in English class, somebody would raise their hand and ask Ms. Davis a question, and it would not be the best question ever to ask. And you know, some teachers have the little poster on their wall. There is no stupid question. That was not Ms. Davis. She would just look at you and say, "That's a stupid question." And she wouldn't try to answer it. She wouldn't engage on it. She'd just move on. And he used to sit in that English class under that professor and say, "Man, I wish Ms. Davis was here." I just wanted to raise my hand and say, "Sir, with all due respect, that is the stupidest thing that I have ever heard, and I don't see why you think it's so cute or so funny." He was giving me a grade, so I tried to be a little more diplomatic than that. Look, these guys come to Jesus with a stupid question. It's stupid. It's ridiculous. They're playing games. They're trying to be funny. Jesus, in no way, answers their question. He just ignores it. What he does do is correct their bad theology. And he says a couple of different things to these Sadducees. First of all, he says, "Resurrection life is different than life now, and you guys are foolish not to understand that." This is the sort of idea you see in 1 Corinthians 2 and 9. We have no idea what God has prepared for us then, what it's going to be like, how great it's going to be. And the first mistake you're making is to assume that life now is going to be exactly like life then. It's not going to be like that, Jesus says. And the second thing he says, this is kind of technical but really important. He says, "You remember the story about the burning bush in Exodus 3.6? You guys who don't believe in miracles, you don't believe in the afterlife, you think as soon as you're dead, then that's it. You cease to exist." Would you remember the story in Exodus 3.6 and the Sadducees would have said, "Yeah, we remember that story." He says, "Do you remember how God introduced Himself to Moses?" He said, "I am right now presently today in this moment, I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob." You say, "What's the big deal about that?" Those guys have been dead for hundreds of years. God did not say, "Hey, I used to be the God of Abraham when he was alive." And then after Him I was the God of Isaac and then after Him I was the God of Jacob. He says, "I am right now, they're God." Jesus says, "God's not the God of the dead, but of the living. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are still very much with us, even though they're not with us." And He's saying to these Sadducees in front of all these people, "You're more concerned about a stupid question to trick me and trap me and make yourself look good than understanding the plain truth of God's word. You've missed it. You've completely missed it. So trap one about taxes, trap two about marriage, now it's time for a counter punch. And this counter punch hits some square on the jaw. Jesus brings up Psalm 10. And if you look in the text in Luke 20, verse 42, you see 42 and 43, there's this little part where Jesus quotes from the book of Psalms. And it says, "The Lord said to my Lord, 'Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.'" In the Greek, you don't see clearly the point that Jesus is trying to make here with this passage. If you flip back to Psalm 10.1, you can do it later, you'll notice that it's not exactly like the text you see here in Luke 20. When you flip back to Psalm 1.10, verse 1, that first Lord, the Lord, it's capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D. You know that David wrote the Psalm, so he is the "my" in the passage. And you've got this first Lord, all caps, referring to Yahweh. And you've got David listening into a conversation, and Yahweh is talking to this other Lord, the Messiah, capital L, lower case R, lower case R, lower case D. David's listening in. And Yahweh says to the Messiah, "I'm going to make your enemies your footstool." They're going to bow down and acknowledge you for who you truly are. They're not going to do it willingly, but they are going to do it. Yahweh, talking to the Messiah, and David is listening. And Jesus' question in this whole thing, as he brings up Psalm 1.10 is 1, is you guys explain this to me? How can the Messiah be David's son, there's lots of passages in the Old Testament that say that the Messiah is going to be the son of David. How can he be his son, and David calls him Lord? Because in Jewish culture, a parent would never call their child Lord. So Jesus says, "Explain this to me." The Old Testament says that the Messiah is going to be the son of David, but then David's going to turn around and call him Lord. How does that work? Did you notice the answer that they gave? Nothing. They had nothing to say. They knew what Jesus was saying and they didn't like it. What Jesus is saying is, "You can go back a few chapters in Luke. You heard them call me the son of David. You heard that. You heard them call me the Messiah when I marched into this city on a donkey. You know that's what the Messiah is going to do according to Zechariah. You know I'm the son of David. You know I'm the Messiah. That means I've come from David's line, but that also means that I am David's God. I'm both. I'm his son, humanly, and I'm his creator from the other side of the coin. And here's where it really ticks him off. He quotes this verse that says, "One day your enemies are going to be your footstool." Meaning, not only am I the son of David and the creator of David, but you're my enemies and one day you're going to bow before me even though you don't want to do it. You're going to lick the dust off of my feet and beg for mercy. You will acknowledge me for who I am. You will acknowledge that I'm the Messiah, that I'm the son of David, and that I'm David's God. You will submit one day and admit that. How do you think that went over? About like a pregnant pole vaulter. It didn't. Hey, they were mad. These were the guys seeking to lay hands on Jesus in that moment. They were ready to kill him and they try to trick him and they try to trap him and they fail twice and Jesus makes them look stupid and then Jesus has the gumption to turn around and look these guys in the eyeball and say, "Just so we're all clear and we're all on the same page, I am the Messiah, I am the son of David, and you are going to bow before me one of these days." And then he takes this insult and he adds a little bit of injury to it. Here's the final test. He just exposes these guys for who they are. He's given us a contrast, starting in 2045 down to 214. Two stories, they don't seem like they go together, but trust me, they go together. Don't worry about the fact that translators have divided the chapter here. Luke didn't write it that way. It all goes together, starting in 2045 down to 214. This is all one unit. And Jesus is laying out a contrast and he's saying, "Look, on the one side you have showy spirituality and on the other side you have genuine spirituality." In our day, we would say there is such a thing as cultural Christianity. You go around Odessa, Texas and you ask people if they're a Christian, they're going to say, "Yes, I'm a Christian," and there's real Christianity, meaning not all those people who say, "Yes, I'm a Christian," really are a Christian. There's a difference. There's a difference in somebody who comes to church and puts in an appearance just to be here because they think that that's what they ought to do and somebody who comes to church to worship and to learn about God and to serve His people. There's a difference and He's setting up this contrast and it goes like this. On the one hand, you have the scribes. They're all show. They're all show. They look good. They wear the right clothing. They say the right things. They impress people with these long prayers that they offer and people think, "Oh, I could never pray like those guys. I could never be as good as those guys." People pat them on the back. People give them the seat of honor at this party or that party. They get all this recognition for being really great, moral, spiritual guys. Jesus says, "They're all a bunch of fakes." Then He says, "By contrast, look at that widow over there." You want to see the real deal? Look at her. He's in the temple complex teaching. This is what the temple complex looks like. This is a model. Temples right there in the middle. This big area all around it is called the Court of the Gentiles. Anybody who was a God-fear could go in there, but you had to be Jewish to get into this little sort of intersection and that purple arrow is pointing to a door and right inside that door is something called the Court of the Women. Right inside in this area called the Court of the Women, at the Passover, there were 13 offering boxes set up. I read about them all week. I've never read this. They were shaped like trumpets. I don't know how an offering box is shaped like a trumpet, but I read it over and over and over again. Shaped like a trumpet. The narrow wind is at the top and the big end is at the bottom and they had a sign on them. Each 13, this offering box is going to be used for this. This offering box we're going to use for this is like how you designate your gift back then. All 13 of them and Jesus says, "Look, all these rich people are coming in here, chuck in their money in." Giving their gift, right? It's the Passover. All these pilgrims have come and so a lot of these guys have saved their giving up for this one time when they come to Jerusalem during the year and they're chucking their money in. They're making a big show about it and they're wearing the right clothes and they're making sure everybody knows how much money's going in and everybody's patting them on on the back and saying, "Man, we're glad you showed up for the Passover this year. We couldn't have made it without your contribution." Here comes a widow, Jesus says, with two coins. In the original language, we know the coin that this woman is using is called a lepta and it looks like that. It's just a small little coin. It's a Jewish coin. Literally what it means is the thin one. It was the smallest physically, the smallest Jewish coin and the coin of the smallest value. It was about one one hundredth of a denarius. It's worth one one hundredth of one denarius and she has two of them and she brings them in and there's not a lot of fanfare and she drops them in and she goes on her way and Jesus says, "That's the real deal. You guys don't even see that. You don't acknowledge that. You're all about the show. You're all about the appearances. You missed it. There's a difference between showy spirituality and real spirituality. There's a difference between cultural Christianity and real Christianity. There's a difference between coming to church to put in an appearance and coming to church to worship God and Jesus is laying out this contrast in front of all the pilgrims in this temple complex. The men who want to murder him. They've tried to trap him and Jesus says, "Look, let me ask you some questions. Psalm 110, you know that means that one day you're going to bow before me, right? You realize that. I mean, you've read it. You know what it says. You're going to bow before me and you're all just a bunch of fakes. You're a bunch of phonies. You're going through all the right motions and it's not real." Those are the four scenes, okay? Back up. Here's the lessons that I want you to take away. Number one, beware of people who love to debate controversial issues. Pharisees and the Sadducees are so busy arguing about taxes and marriage. They miss the Messiah. I hope you see the tragedy in that. The Son of Man who came to seek and save the lost is standing within arm's reach of them. And all they care about doing is arguing about taxes and marriage. They are worried about the most meaningless, trivial, pointless things. And Jesus, the Son of God and human flesh is standing right in front of them and they miss it. And I'll just be honest with you, people make this same mistake today. Talk to people all the time and they want to argue about this. They want to argue about that. They want to debate this. Look, I'm always up for a good Bible debate, Bible argument. But most of the time when people want to do that, I just think, "This is about the dumbest thing. Who cares? This is so silly. I don't have time to argue about this. I don't have time to think about this. If you want to argue, let's argue about something of importance. So beware of people who love to debate controversial issues. All says in the New Testament you should avoid those people, people who are quarrelsome, people who love to fight, people who love to take a small thing and turn it into a big thing. He says, "Stay away from those people." Secondly, don't try to manipulate God's word for your own agenda. That was the Sadducees. They had already made up their mind about what they believed. But then what they thought was really cute is that they would go to the Word of God and twist it in some way to make somebody else look stupid. If taking God's word and instead of submitting to it, they're trying to manipulate it for their own agenda. I think there's a good lesson in there for Christians in the United States of America coming into a presidential election year when a lot of different people are trying to convince you that they're the right one. They're making a lot of promises about what they can do, what they will do. And they're saying it with all the right vocabulary. And I'm talking about no one in particular, trust me. I'm an equal opportunity offender when it comes to politics. I'm just saying, be careful about people who manipulate God's word for their own agenda. Number three, this is the big one. Grace and truth have come for sinners in the person of Jesus. And this is where I really want you to back up and see these stories as a whole. We can argue about what does he mean by the coin? What does he mean about the marriage deal? What does he mean about all these details in Psalm 110? Let's back up for a second and think about what's happening. We're in the last week of Jesus' life. He is hours away from being betrayed and beaten and crucified. And the guys who are talking to Him are the ones who are going to do it. Jesus knows that. He's standing in this crowd of people and these guys come and they want to debate. They want to trick Jesus. When you understand, it's not that they're really looking for truth. They just want to make Jesus look stupid. They want a reason to lay their hands on Him. You know, later in just a few days, somebody's going to ask Jesus some questions and He's just going to look at them and not say a word. Herod's going to want to ask Jesus some questions and want Jesus to do some things and Jesus just going to stare at Him and not say a thing. He could have done that here. He could have looked at these Pharisees and Sadducees and scribes with their stupid questions and He could have just stared at them and shook His head. He was under no obligation to talk to them about what the Bible says and what it means. He could have just called down fire on the whole lot of them. He could have just turned everyone in the crowd to salt. I mean, pick your Old Testament judgment. He could have pulled it out right here and just said, "You know what? You are so wicked. I owe you nothing but judgment." And He could have just done it right then. And what does He do instead? He talks to Him. Maybe He doesn't answer the questions the way they would like Him to be answered, but He opens up the Bible and He's saying to them, "Som 110, Psalm 110, how plain can it be? I'm right in front of you. The Son of David, the Messiah, wake up." The very fact that Jesus is engaging in conversation with them is grace. It's something they don't deserve. And the words that are coming out of His mouth in their direction are truth. The fact that you today sit in a church auditorium with a Bible in front of you that you can read and understand and have a preacher or a Sunday school teacher explaining God's word to you in a language you can understand is God's grace to you. You don't deserve that and you haven't earned it. You're a sinner. The Bible says the only thing that God owes you is death, instant, immediate, and eternal death. That's what He owes you. And you're sitting here today reading the Word of God, singing about the Word of God, listening to the Word of God, it's an act of grace that you have not deserved or earned. And God's Word is truth. Jesus came to bring these things for people like you and me. He came to seek and to save the lost. That's true. That's grace. Here's the last lesson. We've talked about this before in Luke. You can fool people but God knows your heart. I'll be honest with you, I'm not particularly bright and it's pretty easy to fool me with showy spirituality. I'm just telling you, you can fool me. You can say the right things, show up at the right times, do the right stuff, and you can trick me. Easy. You can trick your Sunday school teacher, you can trick your family. I know you can. Easy people do it all the time. You're not fooling God. The Pharisees and the Sadducees and the scribes and they're going around and they look so great and they've got everybody fooled. I think they got the wool pulled over everybody's eyes and Jesus says, "Come on, guys." You're playing games. You think this is a game? You think it's a joke? I think you're just going to come and pretend like you're serious about this stuff. You're going to use God, you're going to use His Word, you're going to use church to your own advantage. Look, you can fool the preacher, you can fool the staff, you can fool the people sitting around you, but they're the only ones you're fooling. You're not fooling God. Yes, Jesus came to bring grace and truth, but don't miss the warning in this passage that you can fool me, you can fool a lot of folks that you cannot fool God. This morning, my plea for you is that whether it's for the very first time, whether it's for the hundredth time, whether it's for the thousandth time, that you would run to Jesus and ask for grace and ask for truth. Confess your sin to Jesus. Call it for what it is. Admit it. Don't make excuses for it. Don't play games with it. Confess your sin, turn from it, and run to the one who came to seek you and to save you. Let me pray for you. Father, we read these stories from the last week of Jesus' life, and there's such a weight to them. There's such a seriousness to them. There's so much tension in them, and we're amazed that even down to the last few moments of his life, Jesus is giving people grace, he's giving them things that they don't deserve, he's giving them the opposite of what they really deserve. Father, let us not today, as we have been together with your people and heard your word and sung your praises, let us not leave presuming on your grace, but let us leave grateful and thankful celebrating that grace and truth has come for us in Jesus Christ. Father, forgive us when we make small things, big things, and we miss Jesus in the process. Father, I pray for those who are here who may be all their life, all their church life has been nothing but showy spirituality. It's a fake, it's a farce, it's a joke, and I pray that today you would convict them of that, I pray that you would move people in this room from cultural Christianity to genuine Christianity. I know that I am powerless to do that, but we believe that you can change hearts, that you can change lives, that you can give new life, and so we pray that you would do that today. Father, as we lift our voices in worship, we pray that as we respond through song and through silent prayers, through meditation, that you would be honored and you would receive glory, that you rightly deserve, and we pray in your name, amen.