EPISODE 153 GOSPEL OF MARK CHAPTER 12 "Questions and answers"

Welcome to Share the Word. In this episode of Mark chapter 12, the primary focus is on Jesus's confrontation with the religious leaders in the temple, essentially showcasing Jesus's wisdom and authority against their attempts to try and trap him with tricky questions. Mark chapter 12: Questions and Answers. The Jews by the first century had developed a practice of teaching and learning through questions and answers. No one knows when that started exactly, but long before Jesus' time. Rabbis trained their disciples through asking questions, hearing their answers, asking more questions about their answers, and so on, getting their students to think while sharing with them ideas learned from rabbis of the past.

A lot of this was written down after Jesus' time in a collection known as the Midrash. It's a collection of questions and answers, stories and parables interpreting the Old Testament. They had a well-established dialogue-based teaching technique to educate and pass on their traditional beliefs. This is still carried on today in places like Yeshiva University, where Orthodox Jewish rabbis are trained, and simple examples are seen among all observant Jews, for example, in the way they celebrate the Passover Seder. Questions and answers are exchanged throughout that meal. How is this night different from all other nights?

Why do we eat bitter herbs on this night and eat all vegetables on other nights? Questions are asked, answers are given, traditional beliefs are passed on. In Mark chapter 11 and 12, we're shown a series of questions posed to Jesus and hear his answers. The questions and answers are interesting in and of themselves, but also they show us how Jesus responded to different people who came to him with questions. Let's consider a couple of them in this episode, maybe three. Remember where we were on the timeline.

Jesus, to messianic shouts of welcome, has made his way formally into Jerusalem on Sunday of what we call the Passion Week. The shouts and chants of palm-waving crowds infuriated the Pharisees, who had urged him to tell his followers to be quiet. And once in the city, he went to the temple, we learn, and once again, as he had three years earlier at the outset of his ministry, he chased vendors and money changers out of God's house, and that infuriated the Sadducees who ran the show there. The Sadducees, the Pharisees and scribes, and the Herodians, all the power bases in Israel at that time, hated Jesus for their own reasons and were all working together, actually, to try to find a way to kill him. To make matters worse, at the outset of chapter 12, you can read a parable Jesus told early that week at the temple publicly, often called the Parable of the Vineyard.

The religious leaders clearly understood its point, that it indicted them as actual enemies of God. He ended the story by saying that although the religious leaders rejected him and would kill him, he was in fact the cornerstone of something new God was going to do that would replace them and their religion and their temple. It was almost like Jesus was deliberately poking these guys in the eye, provoking them publicly to stoke anger at him. I think he may have well been doing that because he wanted them to act against him this week. Wanted them to might be the wrong way to put it, but you know what I mean. He needed them to.

Yet still, with all the tension during that week, the last week of his natural life, Jesus went up daily to the temple courts with his disciples and openly taught large crowds of people there. The Gospels say no one laid a hand on him because the common people were perceived to be with him. To move against Jesus in the daylight, his enemies would likely have caused a riot or even a worse reaction. So to try and lessen Jesus' sway over these multitudes of people, it seems Jerusalem was packed during the Passover week. These different groups that opposed him sent to him representatives as he was teaching, asking questions, hoping they could trip him up or put him in a bad light publicly.

Remember, the Pharisees had done this before with a question about divorce, hoping Jesus would disappoint men who liked Israel's lenient divorce practices or maybe even get him jailed for insulting King Herod, who had recently been wrongly divorced and remarried. As I said a moment ago, the culture then was rabbis would answer questions in dialogue with those they were teaching. All the Synoptic Gospels describe several question-and-answer exchanges at the temple that week. I'll tell you later why I think they do. Here's question number one the way Mark describes it. And they sent to him, that is Jesus, some of the Pharisees and some of the Herodians to trap him in his talk.

And they said to him, Teacher, we know that you are true and do not care about anyone's opinion, you are not swayed by appearances, but truly teach the way of God. So, is it lawful for us to pay taxes to Caesar or not? Should we pay them or should we not? Notice the flattery they came with, the fake deferential approach. Luke, describing the scene, calls these guys spies who came with this question. Matthew's account specifies they were disciples of the Pharisees, like junior Pharisees, along with some of the Herodians.

So, not the obvious leaders in their white robes and big turbans. No, those guys sent some people they expected Jesus would not recognize. So Mark goes on, knowing their hypocrisy, Jesus said to them, Why are you trying to test me? Bring me a denarius and let me look at it. And they brought one. And he said to them, Whose likeness and inscription is this?

Can you see Jesus holding up this common silver coin as if his listeners had never seen one before? They answered him, Caesar's. He then said to them, Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's. The Herodians were a secular party that supported the Herod dynasty in Israel. Currently, that was Herod Antipas, the puppet king the Romans allowed some authority in the land. The idea that Jesus might be looking to set up a new Jewish theocracy as Messiah certainly threatened the Herodians and their king.

The Pharisees, on the other hand, a strict religious sect, considered Jesus a false Messiah and were very jealous of his influence over so many people. The two groups had really nothing in common except they feared and hated Jesus. But their trap question was designed here to get him to speak out against Roman taxation. They must have figured he certainly will. He's claiming to be the Messiah, and he's come to Jerusalem intending to start a rebellion against Roman occupation. He has to speak out against the Romans.

But even if he didn't come out against the Romans publicly here, if instead he sounded like he was in favor of paying this tribute tax to the Romans. That would go against the prevailing resentment of the common people, and that too would lessen his sway over them. The denarius, it was a silver coin, the value of which was roughly equivalent to a typical laborer's daily wage, so not an insignificant amount. The tax referred to here was an annual head tax that was paid directly to the Roman imperial treasury. Annually, every Jew was required to pay this tax of around, we would say in our money, $150 to $200 per person in their household, which could be difficult to the lower classes, especially if a family had several children. But even for those who could afford it, it still represented Roman oppression because the tax went directly into the Roman emperor's coffers.

When Jesus asked for a denarius coin and held it up and said, Whose face and inscription is on this? the obvious answer they gave him was, Caesar's. You can see and buy a denarius coin for yourself, the exact coin that Jesus would have held up on eBay, by the way. Tiberius Caesar's face is in profile on the front of that coin with his legal title inscribed. On the reverse, he is seated, and the inscription there is his religious title, Pontif Maximus, meaning chief priest. In the Roman world, Caesar was both the legal head of the empire as well as high priest of Rome's official pagan religion.

So many Jews saw even this coin itself as an example of idolatry. Surprisingly, Jesus' point was that Tiberius Caesar minted these coins, and he, as the government of Rome's leader, imposed this tax, and Jesus did not find that as unacceptable or particularly offensive. He said, Give back to Caesar what is Caesar's, meaning pay taxes. It's legitimate. Why? Well, because governments keep the peace, pave the roads, and so on.

Jesus was not a political revolutionary, those who tell you that he was are wrong. My kingdom is not of this world, he later assured the Roman procurator Pontius Pilate. So give to Caesar what is due him, but also give to God what is due him. There's no conflict between your obligations to human government and to God. Questioners marveled at that answer. I'm sure they expected and hoped Jesus would side with a prevailing attitude against Roman taxation.

And if Jesus said anything to stoke that resentment, he would instantly be on the Roman authorities' radar. But he didn't. He affirmed that taxes collected even by evil governments, by civil authorities, are not violating anything about God's kingdom. That's the general rule in the New Testament, by the way. We saw that in our discussion of Romans 13. Question number two came from a different angle and a different group who opposed Jesus, the Sadducees.

They were a smaller but powerful aristocratic party that dominated the Sanhedrin and ran the temple in Jerusalem. The high priests of Israel were all Sadducees. This group claimed to believe and to adhere to the law of Moses, the first five books of the Old Testament. But they didn't consider anything else in the Old Testament to be God's word. And they rejected all the Pharisees' traditions and their additional codes of conduct and so on. Theologically, I guess you could say the Sadducees were kind of the liberals of their day.

They didn't believe in anything supernatural, did not even believe there was such a thing as the afterlife. When you died, that was the end of the story, the Sadducees thought. Some of them approached Jesus as he was teaching in the temple courtyard and posed a very cynical question. They thought they were being very clever with this one. Listen, beginning at verse 18. Some Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to Jesus and began questioning him like this: Teacher, Moses said that if a man's brother dies and leaves a wife behind but no children, his brother should marry the widow and raise up seed for his dead brother.

By seed they meant descendants, children. They continued, So, there were seven brothers, and the first married a wife and died, leaving no seed. The second one then married her, but he also died, leaving no seed. And the third one likewise, and all seven likewise. Last of all, the woman herself died. So, in the resurrection, when they rise again, whose wife will she be?

Oh boy, how smart. Their scoffing attitude was apparent in this ridiculous question. They were referring to an Old Testament law that provided for a deceased man's wife to maintain his property and his place in society, to keep the family name alive, we'd say, by having children with his brother. Those children would then be considered legally the sons of the man who had died, and so his family would live on. Sounds strange to us, but that was the law. It's spelled out in Deuteronomy chapter 25.

These Sadducees thought they had a perfect gotcha question here to make Jesus' teaching about the resurrection, about the afterlife, look foolish. In their hypothetical, all the brothers fulfilled their obligations under the law by marrying their dead brother's widow, but none of them had any children with her. So, in the afterlife you believe in, teacher, whose wife will she be? When Jesus got this insincere question, questions like this from these false religious teachers, he could sometimes be sharp, to the point of almost being vicious in his responses. As we've seen elsewhere, he didn't have any respect for false religious teachers who led people astray. His response to these guys was, Your mistake is that you don't know the Scripture, and you don't know the power of God.

For when the dead are raised, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage. In this respect, they will be like the angels in heaven, that is, non-sexual. But now, as to whether the dead will be raised, haven't you ever read in the writings of Moses the story of the burning bush? Long after Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had died, God said to Moses, I am the God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob. Jesus said, He is the God of the living, not the God of the dead, so you were in serious error. Literally, he is not the God of corpses.

Jesus' point was that God identified himself to Moses when he called him to lead Israel at the burning bush, I am, not I used to be. I am the God of the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, meaning, presently, those patriarchs are very alive in heaven. Your assumption that I teach there will be marriage and sexuality in heaven is wrong, and your teaching that there is no resurrection from the dead and afterlife is a grave error. Next, ouch. I get asked a lot of questions as a teacher too. One thing I learned from Jesus is to listen for people's underlying assumptions and try and sense their motive for the questions they pose.

If they are sincere, I certainly want to try and answer them as respectfully and as accurately as I can, whether the question is from a believer or an unbeliever. If it's sincere, I welcome that, as Jesus did. Question and answer kind of dialogue is a great way to teach and to share our faith. But if questions seem insincere, I may try and answer it accurately if others are listening in or reading my reply in an online forum somewhere. But if someone is just trying to bait me and is scoffing at Christianity or just wants to argue with me, as Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, Don't give what is holy to dogs. Do not cast your pearls before swine.

Talk about being sharp. There's no point in wasting time answering mockers unless there are others listening who might benefit from hearing the truth. But insincere mockers, they deserve nothing. For the sincere questioner, though, people looking for truth, we should always do our best to answer them accurately and respectfully. One of my favorite verses in the New Testament is 1 Peter 3:15, where we're told, Always be ready to give an answer to those who inquire about the hope that you have, and do it with gentleness and respect. We need to be able to explain what we believe, Peter was saying, and why we believe it, and to do it without arguing or being disrespectful to people.

Jesus shows us the gentleness and respect part when another questioner approached him on this occasion. This is at verse 28 and following. Listen to the difference in tone here. One of the teachers of the religious law was standing there and listening to these debates. They weren't all bad guys. He realized that Jesus had answered well, so he asked, Of all the commandments, which is the most important?

And remember, the Jews counted 600 and some commandments in the Old Testament. Jesus replied, The most important commandment is this: Listen, O Israel. The Lord our God is one and only Lord, and you must love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your strength. The second is equally important: Love your neighbor as yourself. No other commandment is greater than those. The religious teacher said, Well said.

You've spoken the truth that there's only one God and no other, and I know it's important to love Him with all my heart and all my understanding and all my strength, and to love my neighbor as myself, more important than offering all the burnt offerings and sacrifices required in the law. Realizing how much this man understood, Jesus said to him, You are not far from the kingdom of God. That was a sincere question, wasn't it? And as you can see, Jesus' response was in kind. This man, who studied the Old Testament law, could see through the religious show around him at the temple to the heart of what God was looking for: to really loving Him and loving others. And Jesus said, My friend, you're close to the kingdom of God, which sounds like both a compliment and also like there's a little bit more for you to discover.

Your question, What is that, Paul? My answer: who Jesus really was. Which brings us to one more question. But this time, it's the teacher turning the tables on his audience, and Jesus asked the question. This is still in chapter 12, beginning at verse 35. Listen, and you can see here Jesus following a line of reasoning in these verses that he posed that day.

Later, as Jesus was still teaching people in the temple, and must have been teaching there all day, he asked, Why do the teachers of the religious law claim that the Messiah is the Son of David? Son of David was a common messianic title at the time. Jesus continued, David himself, speaking under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, said, and this is a quotation from the 110th Psalm, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, Sit in the place of honor at my right hand until I humble your enemies beneath your feet.’ Now here's the key question. Since David himself called the Messiah my Lord, how can the Messiah be his son? Hmm.

The Jews recognized this Psalm 110 as a messianic psalm. There David, its author, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit wrote, ‘The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit at my right hand till I humble your enemies beneath your feet.’ The essence of Jesus' question is clearer if you could hear it in the language he was speaking that day. In our English translation, two different names for God in that Psalm are each translated with the word Lord. But the two names are, in the language Jesus was speaking, Jehovah or Yahweh and Adonai, both frequently used titles for God in the Old Testament, or names for God. So Jesus asked, How is it that David, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, wrote, ‘Jehovah said to Adonai, Sit here on my right hand till I make your enemies your footstool’?

How could the Messiah be both David's son and Adonai, or God? Good question. Jesus was pushing their minds to a new place in understanding who the Messiah really was, that he was more than a man like King David, that he was really David's God and therefore should be their God too. This passage from the Psalms is quoted five times in the New Testament to demonstrate that Jesus, who ascended to heaven after his death and resurrection and is now at God the Father's right hand, is not only Israel's Messiah but himself Adonai, the Lord God. That realization is the final step the man needed to make toward Jesus, the man to whom he had said, You're getting close to the kingdom of God. I hope that makes sense.

It made enough sense to his listeners that day that Mark says they were delighted when Jesus posed this question and stumped his opponents. The bottom line of this exchange is that Jesus not only claimed to be Israel's Messiah, but Adonai, their God. I said at the outset today, all the Synoptic Gospels describe these exchanges at the temple that week, and I'll tell you why I think that is later. Well, now is later. Here's why I think we see these several questions and answers in Mark 12. We can see how differently Jesus responded to those who were sincere from those who were not, and how deftly he handled the Scripture.

Yes, but I think there's something more than that. I like what a pastor named Mark Sims has written on this point. I'm paraphrasing him. Jesus' responses shouldn't surprise us because this is what the Old Testament taught the Messiah would be like. As the prophet Isaiah wrote of him, The Spirit of the Lord God will rest on him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. That's from Isaiah chapter 11.

Jesus was the embodiment of the wisdom of God. He was filled with the spirit of wisdom and understanding. In these encounters, we see him cut to the heart of issues, refuse to engage in pointless debates, at times use silence, at other times speak sharply to those who deserved it, while to the sincere, he responded gently, respectfully, and with unusual insight. He knew when to speak, how to speak, and what to speak in every situation. Jesus was a master of words because he was the very wisdom of God personified. This is Paul for Share the Word.

Thanks, Paul. Can you believe that after 2,000 years, like the Pharisees and Sadducees, there are still so many people on this earth that continue to question Jesus's authority as God, and why? To get him out of the way so that they can continue being their own gods, worshiping their money and so many other things. Do you see the point that Paul made in this episode? What are your thoughts on it? As always, we'd love to hear them.

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