Unshaken: Chapter a Day

Luke 20 Discussion

• Pastor Plek

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Power without accountability crumbles, and Luke 20 shows it in real time. We trace how Jesus faces entrapment with questions that reveal hearts, expose hollow authority, and point to a kingdom built on truth. From the temple courts to a coin in the palm of his hand, every move reframes our assumptions about status, money, and the afterlife, while revealing who the Messiah truly is.

We start with a challenge to Jesus’ credentials and watch him redirect the conversation to God’s authority through John’s baptism. The parable of the tenants sharpens the point: stewardship is not ownership, and rejecting the son has consequences. When the trap shifts to taxes, the image on the denarius becomes a mirror—Caesar’s image marks the coin, but God’s image marks every person. Instead of a tidy church-state split, Jesus calls rulers and citizens alike to live under God’s rule with integrity, paying dues without surrendering devotion.

Then comes the Sadducees’ riddle about seven brothers and one wife. Jesus cuts through it by teaching that resurrection life is different: no marriage, no death, and joy anchored in the God of the living. Finally, he asks how the Messiah can be both David’s son and David’s Lord, revealing his full humanity and full divinity—the cornerstone that some reject and others build upon. We end with practical takeaways: render to God what bears his image, bear fruit that matches repentance, resist performative spirituality, and hold hope in the resurrection that reshapes how we work, love, and lead.

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Pastor Plek:

And welcome back to a chapter a day.

Pastor Holland:

Keeps the devil away.

Pastor Plek:

I'm Pastor Pleck, along with Pastor Holland. We're talking Luke chapter 20. What we're gonna do is we're gonna outline it. We are gonna get some observations. We're gonna get into some interpretation and finally lay in the plan and some application. All right, we're gonna start off verses one through eight. The authority of Jesus is questioned. In the temple courts, chief priests, teachers of law, and elders demand Jesus' credentials for teaching and cleansing the temple. And he counters with question about John's baptism origin and then puts them in silence. Okay, then in verses nine through 19, we got the parable of the tenants. Jesus tells of a vineyard owner sending servants and finally his own beloved son. And the owner destroys those that kill his son and reassigns the vineyard, fulfilling Psalm 118's rejected stone as the cornerstone. Then you got verses 20 through 26 about paying taxes to Caesar. The spies get in there to trap Jesus, but he is just too daggum smart. Give back to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God, silencing them in awe. Then verses 27 through 40, the Sadducees who deny the afterlife, they kind of get into a question about the Levitical marriage or Leveret marriage, sorry, and uh how there's seven brothers with one woman, and Jesus refutes them. Uh, resurrection people neither marry nor are given to marriage, nor die. Uh they're like the angels and God's children, and he cites Exodus 3, affirming that God is God of the living, not of the dead. Everyone, including everyone listening, just thinks this is awesome. Verses 41 through 44, then Jesus flips it and he turns the tables. He says, Whose son is the Messiah? How can David call him him Lord if he's actually his son? And then finally he lands the plane or with a couple things here. He warns against the teachers of the law, verses 45 through 47. And uh to the disciples say, Don't try and be like them, where you get greeted in the marketplaces and everyone thinks you're awesome. Um and really across this, you've got the cornerstone crush, verses 17, 18, and 44, echoing the parable and the psalm, the rejected stone breaks or crushes, symbolizing the judgmental dual edge for the people who reject Jesus. Okay. Holland. Let's get into what did you observe?

Pastor Holland:

I observed people asking Jesus lots of questions, and uh Jesus stumping them many times with his answers or giving an answer they didn't expect, leaving them speechless or marveling. Common feature of Jesus' answers that I aspire to.

Pastor Plek:

I love that. Yeah. Um, I love that Jesus is constantly turning the tables. He's able, when they ask him a question to make him look foolish, he makes them look dumb. When they um when they are finally silenced, he then flips it and he starts asking them questions. And of course, they they don't they are so obviously he's infinitely wise. And so everything that points to slightly unfair advantage. It is an unfair advantage. It's like, you know, the great debater going to a bunch of kindergartners and trying to get them to, you know, debate with him. So he he is just such a master of uh the question and asking the dialogue uh between people. Okay. Um what else did you see here?

Pastor Holland:

Um in verse 18, he is, you know, he's the stone, but it says people who fall on the stone will be broken, and when it falls on anyone, it will crush him. You don't hear Jesus talked about as a stone that crushes um or that people trip over and are broken to pieces, but it's related to the last chapter about him saying that like he's like a sword, he divides. Right at the same time, those who reject him will be crushed by him in the judgment. But isn't Jesus supposed to be all loving?

Pastor Plek:

I don't understand that. Justice is love. That's right. Um, speaking of that, like let's go about like Jesus' tax thing, uh, where you've got he separates civic duty from divine allegiance, or does he? That's the question. It feels like there's like this empire built on exploitation through the taxes, and then it like is he aren't you kind of propping up Caesar by paying the taxes? Shouldn't you avoid all that?

Pastor Holland:

Okay, but look what else he does. Okay, so interesting. Yeah. You know, whose whose image is on the coin? Caesar's Caesar's now. What does Genesis 1 say about whose image is on every human being? Uh God's image. We are made in God's image. And so Jesus is actually this is a um, this is a a word to Caesar here of saying, you know, render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and render to God what is God's. Caesar belongs to God. Caesar, he's he's actually calling out Caesar here, saying, You are supposed to rule as someone under God over the people for their good, as someone who serves God and glorifies God with your rule. And so it's actually a critique um and a rebuke of Caesar for ruling unjustly.

Pastor Plek:

And okay, and also also watch this. Um, Caesar, he he minted all of his wealth. Like that was his money. Yeah, like literally from the reason why it has his face on it, it was his. Yeah, and then he sends it out to pay for different things, and it was it was to be respected throughout the kingdom or empire. Yeah. Uh, and that was like kind of like here's here's how great I am. My glory is my image is being put all over the Roman Empire. Yeah, you would see his image everywhere in the same way. Human beings are the image of God, and we are dispersed throughout the the earth to show who rules this planet. Yeah. So anyway, I thought that was kind of fun to sort of look at. Um, what else did you see observation-wise here?

Pastor Holland:

Um, you know, uh, the whose son is the Christ. Yeah. It's very interesting. Um, it's it gets at the idea of uh the humanity and divinity of Jesus. So I don't know if we save this for the interpretation time, but um, it it is is really cool how Jesus used an old testament scripture to prove the human and divine nature of himself. It's wild. I love that.

Pastor Plek:

It is so cool. Yeah, I I think he he does a great job at that. How about let's just get into the afterlife. Um, Leverett marriage in the Old Testament, it was prescribed that if you got married and you didn't have children and you had a brother, your brother had to marry your wife to um propagate your line. Yeah, and it would be technically his child, even though you provided uh the sperm. And so that was a part of it, which when we saw that with um uh Judah and Tamar, remember uh Onan didn't want to propagate Ur's line through Tamar, and so he didn't impregnate her. Uh and and then so then Tamar secretly dresses a prostitute and got Judah, her father-in-law, to impregnate her, which is a wild story. Right. Anyway, so that gets back into there was something about this Leverett marriage that once you were you married her, even if you had another wife, whose wife would she be? In this case, you know, all seven of the guys die, and the wife then also dies, whose wife is she in heaven? And he's like, You guys are missing the whole deal. You you aren't given in marriage, or um, but you're gonna be more like the angels in heaven, which is sort of wild. And God's children. I like how he says you're gonna be like the angels in heaven and the sons of God. What do you make of that?

Pastor Holland:

There's a lot there. I think one, you have the reality of like, what is you know, what is marriage for? Um, in the beginning, you know, God says, be fruitful and multiply. Right. Marriage is part of solving the problem of the earth is uninhabited. And isn't carrying his image. Right. And and so to fill the earth with image bearers and worshipers, you need um to have children. And how what is God's design for children to be raised? In a family. Um, marriage is the context for um the raising of children and the populating of the earth. So in the uh, and and also like you die. So um, you know, you can't fill the earth. If everyone dies, um, you know, the earth is no longer filled, so you have to keep marrying and keep having children. Well, eventually, when Jesus comes back and we're in the resurrection, um, everyone's resurrected, nobody dies. You no longer need marriage to pop up populate the earth and raise children, like the earth is filled, right? And so marriage no longer has its purpose um in the age to come.

Pastor Plek:

And there's joy eternal, which is sort of wild to even wrap your head again. All right, let's get into some um uh uh interpretation. What do you got about the nature of man? Nature of man.

Pastor Holland:

Um, we tend to um abuse authority or misunderstand authority. Um I think I'm thinking of Caesar again and how you know Caesar's role was to serve God as a governor. He be bearing the image of God as a ruler, he was supposed to serve God. And what he was doing instead was um, you know, really seeking his own glory. And so we have there's a human tendency and temptation to instead of using authority to serve God and glorify him, um, we can use authority just for our own agendas.

Pastor Plek:

Yeah, that's good. Okay, here's one for me is that we tend to deny God what he demands. So I'm looking at verse uh 10. When the time this is about the parable of the guy planted a vineyard, when the time came, he sent a servant to the tenants so that they would give him some of the fruit of the vineyard. But the tenants beat him and sent him away empty-handed. They did not want to give up the fruit. In other words, you know, this whole thing of the vineyard is Israel, right? It's it's like his people, and they he wanted to see their righteous deeds and acts. And instead of giving him the fruit, they beat the servant who was the prophet that came to kind of call them to repent and produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And so I think that's one of the things that just we have this general tendency to not to produce fruit in keeping with pred with repentance. And we have a tendency to kill those or you know, minimal minimize those who would call us to repentance and just kind of think of them as judgmental jerks.

Pastor Holland:

Yeah. Good. Um character of God, or what does this teach us about God? I go back to um whose son is the Christ, verse 41 to 44. And um this is so cool because David says, the Lord, so the Lord, Yahweh, says to my Lord, the Messiah, um, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool. And it says David thus calls him Lord. So he's saying, David is calling the Messiah Lord, but he hasn't been born yet.

Pastor Plek:

Right.

Pastor Holland:

So how can he call someone who hasn't been born, who's gonna come from him one day? How does he call him Lord unless he already existed at the time that David wrote that psalm?

Pastor Plek:

Right.

Pastor Holland:

And so this teaches Jesus is the son of David and the Lord of David. Yeah, and that's where he's a human, you know, um uh descendant of David, and yet also he is the divine creator of David.

Pastor Plek:

I mean it's crazy. Could if David have known that too? It's like, or did he know what he was writing? I wish I could like eventually we'll probably talk to David and be like, so what were you thinking?

Pastor Holland:

Yeah, in this way, David is a prophet.

Pastor Plek:

Yeah, he's totally a prophet. And it's wild how he's able to, like, so many psalms are so mysterious like that, um, where you just go, that is how else can that be read other than after looking at Jesus, so clear that it is God? And and clearly um God was putting his Jesus was putting his fingerprints all over the old testament just to make sure when you look back, you're like, here I am. Um I know I'm going back to uh nature of man, but uh, whenever uh Jesus tells the parable of the tenants against uh the Pharisees, and he he ends with this line, he will come, destroy those tenants, and give the vineyard to others. When they, the Pharisees scribes, heard this, they said, Surely not. Meaning they knew he was saying that God would never give the kingdom to the Gentiles. Right, or to anyone other than them, kind of going into this assumption that we're the good people, why would God give the take from the good people to the dark, wicked people? Those people are bad. Yeah.

Pastor Holland:

Yeah. And and you know, and then he follows it up with um, the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. And it's going, look, it's not about your nationality, your ethnic heritage. It's not, it's never been about that. It's always been do you have faith in God and his promised Messiah, the savior and redeemer of the world? And um, the Jews rejecting him here, Jesus is foretelling, okay, well, it's gonna go out to the Gentiles then. It's gonna go out to the whole world. Um, and that was the plan from the beginning, though, you know, that uh be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth. The plan from the very beginning was always the entire earth filled with worshipers. Awesome.

Pastor Plek:

Okay, let's get into uh some application. Uh, sin to avoid, a promise to claim, example to follow, command to obey, and knowledge to believe. What you got?

Pastor Holland:

Sin to avoid. Um, don't fall on the stone and be broken to pieces. Nice, nice. Receive Jesus Christ and believe who he is. He is the Son of David and the Lord of David. He is God in the flesh, the redeemer and savior of mankind.

Pastor Plek:

Okay, how about uh command obey? Obey the command to render under unto God his due, um, the authority that he all obviously has, his allegiance, and uh just his, he's in complete control of everyone.

Pastor Holland:

Yeah, uh another command to obey, render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's.

Pastor Plek:

Yeah, good. Uh pay your taxes, pay your taxes. Uh okay. How about uh knowledge to believe uh that God is the owner of the vineyard and he's looking for his people to produce fruit. And that's just a general truth that we need to understand that we don't get to hang out in the vineyard and not produce fruit.

Pastor Holland:

Yeah, I love that. Um I love in verse 21, teacher, we know that you speak and teach rightly and show no partiality, but truly teach the way of God. Um it says they sent spies though, verse 20, who pretended to be sincere. So, like you read verse, you know, if you just read verse 21, you'd be like, that I mean that really sounds sincere. Yeah. Um, and so I I take this as a you know a warning here of um don't fake sincerity. Um you should go to Jesus knowing that he teaches rightly, knowing that he, you know, shows no partiality. Um don't fake it. Don't if you're living a fake Christian life to look a certain way, fit in with a certain group, whatever, um, you one day the stone will crush you. That's right. Um repent and sincerely turn to Jesus.

Pastor Plek:

I don't know, better way to end than that. All right. So hey, we'll see you next time on a chapter a day.

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