3 February

Matthew 22:15-46

Jesus’ opponents interrogate Jesus with three questions: a trap question, a trick question and a test question (vv.17,23,35). Each time, he is victorious and gives an answer that not only amazes (v.22) and astonishes (v.33), but also influences the whole of human history. What can we learn from Jesus’ answers? 

• Don’t divide your life into sacred and secular
  The Pharisees planned to trap Jesus with his words. They said to Jesus, ‘Tell us then, what is your opinion? Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not?’ (v.17). The taxes they referred to were extremely unpopular. If Jesus had said ‘Yes’, he would have been discredited in the eyes of the people. Everyone would have hated him and seen him as a traitor wanting to help the Romans.
  
  Yet if he had said, ‘No’, he would have been guilty of sedition and been liable to arrest and execution.
  
  Jesus, in his unique wisdom, did not lay down rules and regulations but expounded principles that are timeless. He gives an amazing answer: ‘Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s’ (v.21).
  
  Every follower of Jesus has a double citizenship. You have a responsibility to play your part as a good citizen involved in the structures of your society on earth.
  
  You are also a citizen of heaven with a responsibility to God. In principle, the two – Caesar and God – need not be in conflict. You are called to be a good citizen of both. Get involved in the life of your society, don’t withdraw from it.
  
  It is not that God is in charge of the ‘sacred’ area of your life and the government is in charge of the ‘secular’ area of your life. Rather, your whole life is under God’s authority. Part of your commitment to God is to honour and obey the demands that the government legitimately makes on you. In the same way that a coin would have born Caesar’s image, you bear God’s image (Genesis 1:26). God wants you to give him the whole of your life.  

• Know that there is life after death
  Next, the Sadducees come along with a trickquestion about a man with seven wives. Because the Sadducees didn’t believe in the resurrection they designed a complicated trick question to show how absurd it was (Matthew 22:23–28).
  ,
  Jesus replies, ‘You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God’ (v.29). Jesus uses the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible – which are the only ones the Sadducees trusted) to show that God is ‘not the God of the dead but of the living’ (v.32b).
  
  He does this by quoting God’s words to Moses at the burning bush in Exodus 3:6: ‘I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob’ (Matthew 22:32a). When Moses heard those words, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had been dead for hundreds of years. God did not say ‘I was their God’ but ‘I am their God.’ They are still alive.
  
  Jesus is showing that this life is not all there is. Furthermore, there will be continuity between this life and the life to come. There is a physicalresurrection. Yet, there is discontinuity too for we ‘will be like the angels in heaven’ (v.30). Above all, the Scriptures show that there will be a resurrection and if God is all-powerful, why shouldn’t there be?

• Prioritise love for God and others
  Then, the Pharisees come up with a test question to which Jesus gives a brilliant answer, which goes to the heart of the whole of the Old Testament: love God (‘with all your passion and prayer and intelligence’, v.37, MSG) and love people (‘love others as well as you love yourself’, v.39, MSG). Everything else is a detailed working out of these two commands (vv.34–40).

Having silenced his critics, Jesus then asks them a question. It is a question about his identity. He shows from the Scriptures that the Christ is not just David’s son – he is David’s Lord (vv.41–46). He demonstrates that the Messiah is far more than simply a great human king. This not only challenges their assumptions about the Messiah, it is also a veiled indication to them of Jesus’ identity.

This is a moment of victory for Jesus: ‘That stumped them, literalists that they were. Unwilling to risk losing face again in one of these public verbal exchanges, they quit asking questions for good’ (v.46, MSG).

Job 30-32

Job’s life was an example, an inspiration and a challenge. This is a wonderful picture of holy and righteous living.

• Keep yourself pure
  He said, ‘I made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully at a girl’ (v.1). He was not enticed (v.9) in his heart into adultery. He realised that ‘adultery is a fire that burns the house down’ (v.12, MSG).

• Avoid materialism
  He did not put his trust in riches (v.24) in spite of the great wealth he had. Nor did he put his hope in pure gold by saying, ‘You are my security’ (v.24). Again, his heart had not been ‘secretly enticed’ (v.27).

• Love your enemy
  He had resisted the temptation to hate his enemies. He didn’t gloat when his enemies were in trouble (v.29b) – which is such a powerful temptation. There is a great temptation to speak words of anger, but Job did not allow his ‘mouth to sin by invoking a curse’ (v.30) against his enemies.

• Be generous
  It was not just in his personal life that he avoided sin. He was fair to his employees (v.13). He did not deny ‘the desires of the poor’ (v.16a). His ‘door was always open to the traveller’ (v.32).