After several challenges by his enemies, Jesus earned the right to ask his question because he submitted to the inquiries from the Herodians, Pharisees, and Sadducees. The encounters are bookended by two verses, Matthew 22:15 “Then the Pharisees went and plotted how to entangle him in his words.” and Matthew 22:46 “And no one was able to answer him a word, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.” This question by Jesus was the final question of all questions about him. It is the question that ends all of our questions about his Sovereignty, his Lordship, his Sonship, and his role as our Savior. It is important to notice that at the end of this passage, all attempts to challenge HIM stopped

because Jesus posed THE question of all questions. ‘What do you think about the Christ? Whose son he?”

This podcast feed hosts the public teaching ministry of Dr. Bryant K. Owens. I am an independent scholar exploring Christian Studies in today’s secular world. I believe that thoughtful Christianity can bring meaningful change in our churches, classrooms, homes, and communities. With years of experience as both a pastor and educator, I am passionate about the historical Christian worldview and the classical, Socratic approach to learning. My work draws from theology, philosophy, ethics, and the humanities, always with a heart for making faith thoughtful and life-giving.

https://bryantowens.substack.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/drbryantowens/

The tension in this ONE Question from the representative of the Pharisees reveals the tension between the Law and the Gospel but Jesus shows us that there is no tension. The Law and the Gospel hold up the TRUTH of God’s LOVE. The Law of Love is at the center of the Gospel.

This is Jesus’ authority and Jesus’ power to speak it and to insist upon it.

We try to focus our attention on Grace over obedience to the Law but without the Mosaic Law, we cannot understand Grace. God’s Law is sweet. It is HIS Law.

Of all these laws, of all this sin, the Question posed to Jesus is which is the GREATEST of all these Laws. Jesus refers to The Shema [Deut 6:5] … might, strength. But Jesus cites the words slightly from might, or strength, to ‘mind’. I think this is because the lawyer of the Mosaic law confronts Jesus, our LORD emphasizes this Greatest Command to a man who lived by his mind. This Scribe/Lawer was a great intellect. He knew things. He knew the details and arguments that surrounded the 613 laws. His mind was his strength. His mind was his might. His mind was his identity. His mind was who he was. His mind was the single greatest aspect of his being evidenced by his years of training the mind and using his mind to argue and to teach and enforce the Law of God.

The word used for ‘mind’ here in verse 37 is διάνοια (dianoia) is translated as either mind or thoughts or understanding. So Jesus is using the idea of one’s thoughts being the avenue of expressing one’s complete love for God.

This lawyer/scribe used his mind.

If this Scribe/Lawyer truly loved God with all of his soul, then his mind would be filled with EVERYTHING THAT GOD LOVED. HIS MIND WOULD BE FILLED WITH ADORATION AND LOVE OF GOD. How much more would this man have mastered God’s Word, HIS LAW, if this state of complete heart love for God were true? Instead, his mind was busy gathering wool about a host of other things. His mind was fixed on ideas that had little or nothing to do with God, or HIS Law.

It is amazing the length that some people go to in their minds to justify a clearly false idea. This is the basis of troubling ideology. An ideology is a set of beliefs that are so ingrained in a person or a group that no one can counter those beliefs. This is a dangerous place to be in a religion or a culture.

We find here the Sadducees now posing a question to Jesus with the hopes of entrapping him in a religious quandary. But I think also the Sadducees do this in hopes of elevating themselves in the eyes of the public and in their own self-glorification. Their hermeneutical error was an ideology … a belief in the Mosaic Law that could never be challenged. Their hermeneutic developed a doctrine that interpreted the Pentateuch with a materialistic worldview.

The problem with man’s own philosophy is that we develop a worldview through logic alone and avoid Divine Wisdom altogether. The problem with the marriage dilemma posed by the Sadducees is that they were mistaken about what Moses actually decreed about marriage. They were mistaken about what Moses taught about resurrection. I find it ironic that the Sadducees, who were so smart, failed to see that they questioned the ONE who knew Moses the best. Jesus is the WORD after all so he would understand most of all what God spoke through Moses in the LAW.

The doctrine of the Sadducees argued against resurrection whereas the Pharisees did argue for resurrection. The doctrine of resurrection involves the eschatology of judgment. An end-time event where the ungodly are delivered over to judgment and the godly receive eternal life. The challenge by these Sadducees to Jesus over the question of resurrection no doubt came partly because Jesus had a reputation for miraculous resuscitation of recently deceased persons.

Yet resuscitation from the dead is not the same as resurrection from the dead. Those whom Jesus restored to life from the dead would die again someday. Jesus himself is the only man who ever was raised from the dead and never died again.

God’s faithfulness to HIS covenant with Abraham demanded that resurrection be real.

If God is their God after death, death is not the finality for them as the Sadducees taught.

This phrase from Ex. 3:6 “I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” was a common Jewish prayer reciting God’s faithfulness to the patriarchs as evidence of God’s faithfulness to the Jews in their time.

Notice at the end of verse 32b

“He is not God of the dead, but of the living.”

Another way to think of this statement is that God is not the God of corpses but of living and active bodies. Therefore, HIS created, will not remain corpses. HIS created will exist in living bodies, both now and after the resurrection.

This phrase drives home Jesus’ answer to the ludicrous question from the Sadducees.

This podcast feed hosts the public teaching ministry of Dr. Bryant K. Owens. I am an independent scholar exploring Christian Studies in today’s secular world. I believe that thoughtful Christianity can bring meaningful change in our churches, classrooms, homes, and communities. With years of experience as both a pastor and educator, I am passionate about the historical Christian worldview and the classical, Socratic approach to learning. My work draws from theology, philosophy, ethics, and the humanities, always with a heart for making faith thoughtful and life-giving.

https://bryantowens.substack.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/drbryantowens/

What stands out in Jesus’ rebuttal is the ‘malice’ or ‘craftiness’ or the ‘testing’ that these disciples of the Pharisees and the Herodians pose to Jesus. I think the comparison in these words of Jesus can clearly be made against the words our LORD uses against Satan during his wilderness temptations. In Matthew 4.

So if Jesus speaks against these hypocrites with the same language he used against Satan in the wilderness, can we then conclude that these men were minions of Satan? Then can we also go so far as to conclude that Jesus is practicing what men failed to do in the Edenic encounter with the Serpent?

Jesus is portrayed in these encounters as both the New Adam and the GREAT Authority that only the Son of God can possess. What man failed to do in standing up against the temptations of the Serpent in the Garden, Jesus succeeded in doing in encounters like these with Satan.

This podcast feed hosts the public teaching ministry of Dr. Bryant K. Owens. I am an independent scholar exploring Christian Studies in today’s secular world. I believe that thoughtful Christianity can bring meaningful change in our churches, classrooms, homes, and communities. With years of experience as both a pastor and educator, I am passionate about the historical Christian worldview and the classical, Socratic approach to learning. My work draws from theology, philosophy, ethics, and the humanities, always with a heart for making faith thoughtful and life-giving.

https://bryantowens.substack.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/drbryantowens/

Sovereign Grace Baptist Church is located in Cookeville, TN. Our desire is to honor Christ by loving the fallen world as Christ loved us. We learn how to love the world from God's Word by studying, growing, and applying God's Word in our lives and in our worship. We firmly believe that hearing God's Word is the path to understanding and experiencing salvation in Christ alone.

Sovereign Grace Baptist Church

2523 Hwy 111 North

Cookeville, TN 38506

sovereigngracebaptist.org

This final parable taught in Matthew's scene in the Jerusalem temple is one that describes the Kingdom of Heaven as a GRAND wedding feast given by the king. This time, it is not a master of a house and vineyard at the center of the story. Now we have a king. While this narrative is compelling, its message is very clear in Matthew 22:14.

"For many are called, but few are chosen." [Matthew 22:14]

Amos's visions reveal that God is slow to anger and merciful. The visions of locusts, fire, and a plumbline reveal that the Day of the Lord is to be feared by the sinful heart, but in the midst of that is God's mercy.