SPEAKER_00: Luke 20 44.
SPEAKER_00: Keep a close watch on him.
SPEAKER_00: They send spies who pretend to be sincere.
SPEAKER_00: They hope to catch Jesus in something he said so that they might hand him over to the power and authority of the governor.
SPEAKER_00: So the spies question him, teacher.
SPEAKER_00: We know that you speak and teach what is right, that you do not show partiality, but teach the way of God in accordance with the truth.
SPEAKER_00: Is it right for us to pay taxes to Caesar or not?
SPEAKER_00: He saw through their duplicity and said to them, Show me a denarius whose image and inscription are on it.
SPEAKER_00: Caesar's, they replied.
SPEAKER_00: He said to them, Then give it back to Caesar, what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's.
SPEAKER_00: Teacher, they said, Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies and leaves a wife but no children, the man must marry the widow and raise up offspring for his brother.
SPEAKER_00: Now there were seven brothers.
SPEAKER_00: The first one married a woman and died childless.
SPEAKER_00: The second and then the third married her, and in the same way, the seventh died, leaving no children.
SPEAKER_00: Finally, the woman died too.
SPEAKER_00: Now then, at the resurrection, whose wife will she be?
SPEAKER_00: Since the seven were married to her.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus replied, The people of this age marry and are given in marriage.
SPEAKER_00: But those who are considered worthy of taking part in the age to come and in the resurrection from the dead will neither murry nor be given to marriage.
SPEAKER_00: And they can no longer die, for they are like the angels.
SPEAKER_00: They are God's children, since they are children of the resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: But in the account of the burning bush, even Moses showed that the dead rise.
SPEAKER_00: For to him all are alive.
SPEAKER_00: Some of the teachers of the law responded, Well said, teacher.
SPEAKER_00: And no one dared to ask him any more questions.
SPEAKER_00: Then Jesus said to them, Why is it said that the Messiah is the son of David?
SPEAKER_00: David himself declares in the book of Psalms, the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool at your feet.
SPEAKER_00: David calls him, Lord, how then can he be his son?
unknown: Thank you.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, we uh thank you for your word.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for letting us have the whole book of Luke.
SPEAKER_01: As we've gone through it, Lord, we've encountered you in different ways.
SPEAKER_01: And as we look into this text, we ask that you'd speak to our life.
SPEAKER_01: And we pray these things in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: You may be seated.
SPEAKER_01: Oh man, I'll tell you, these guys should not have kept marrying that lady.
SPEAKER_01: Oh man.
SPEAKER_01: If you, you know, maybe after the first or second, but man, alive.
SPEAKER_01: I'll tell you what.
SPEAKER_01: What was she putting in the coffee in the morning?
SPEAKER_01: Well, the Lord, I think, has some stuff for us out of this text.
SPEAKER_01: And as we um look at it this morning, I'm sure and I'm I'm I'm with you, asking that the Lord would speak into our lives, knowing our stories, knowing what we've gone through this last year, where we're heading.
SPEAKER_01: He knows it from beginning, beginning to end.
SPEAKER_01: And so may he have his way with his word speaking into our life.
SPEAKER_01: Consider for a second just the context of this passage.
SPEAKER_01: In Luke 20, it's all about enemies challenging Jesus and Jesus talking to his enemies.
SPEAKER_01: The audience is opposing Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: That's who Jesus is interacting with.
SPEAKER_01: So when you're in that kind of setting, we're always we want to ask first, what is the meaning of the text?
SPEAKER_01: And then once we determine what it means, that's interpretation, then we want to apply it to our lives.
SPEAKER_01: But if we're watching Jesus interact with his enemies, and and many of us wouldn't look at ourselves and say, well, we're not the enemies of God, how do we apply these things to our life?
SPEAKER_01: And here's what I wrote.
SPEAKER_01: As we look at the bad guys of the Bible, we need to remember that the bad guys give expression to our own fallen condition.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible says that we were alienated and enemies in our mind through wicked works.
SPEAKER_01: We live with a part of our humanity that still opposes God and all that He wants for us in our life.
SPEAKER_01: In the core of our being is a desire to please ourselves and not God.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible calls this innate agenda, the flesh or the old man.
SPEAKER_01: When we surrender our lives to Christ, the grip and the authority of the flesh is shaken.
SPEAKER_01: God's spirit enters us and makes our spirit alive, and an internal war begins.
SPEAKER_01: Do you understand that?
SPEAKER_01: So when we talk about becoming a Christian, we're talking about an internal change that takes place in us.
SPEAKER_01: Before we come to Christ, before you become a Christian, your spirit is dead.
SPEAKER_01: You're unable to relate to God.
SPEAKER_01: But when you become a Christian, you become an alive person.
SPEAKER_01: God's spirit comes into you and has fellowship with your spirit.
SPEAKER_01: And this war begins.
SPEAKER_01: Your flesh no longer is the dominant trait in you.
SPEAKER_01: It does not have, Romans 6 says, it does not any longer have the same authority in you that it once had in you.
SPEAKER_01: When you were born, you're born into Adam, you had this dominant characteristic with self-interest.
SPEAKER_01: When you're born again, as Jesus talks about, when you give your life to Christ, there's an internal change that takes place, and the grip of that internal desire, the flesh, is no longer as powerful.
SPEAKER_01: It's still present, though.
SPEAKER_01: So the enemies of Jesus in this passage give voice to that internal rebellion inside of us.
SPEAKER_01: There is an opportunity for us to look in the mirror and allow the Spirit of God to expose our dark side.
SPEAKER_01: He wants to put to death these inklings.
SPEAKER_01: He wants to win in our lives, but we have to yield and surrender to him.
SPEAKER_01: Alright, so based on that premise, let's move through this text, understanding it and applying it to our lives.
SPEAKER_01: There are in this text three accounts.
SPEAKER_01: Let's see if my clicker works.
SPEAKER_01: It seems I forget when we do church on the stage, it doesn't work.
SPEAKER_01: Progress me there, Derek, to the next slide.
SPEAKER_01: These are the kind of the three scenes.
SPEAKER_01: The first is this question over paying taxes, which is verse 20 through 26.
SPEAKER_01: The second section is how could there, this is a question, how could there actually be a resurrection?
SPEAKER_01: That's verses 27 through 40.
SPEAKER_01: And then in verses 41 through 44, it's Jesus' turn to ask a question, and it's this how could the Messiah be David's son yet be called his Lord?
SPEAKER_01: So let's look at these three sections individually.
SPEAKER_01: The first being verses 20 through 26.
SPEAKER_01: The Pharisees, who we've seen from early on, you know, for our study going back almost a year into the book of Luke, we see the Pharisees who are opponents of Jesus sending spies as covert operatives.
SPEAKER_01: How do we know they're the Pharisees?
SPEAKER_01: Because it doesn't say that in Luke.
SPEAKER_01: How do we know that these are the Pharisees that are sending these spies?
SPEAKER_01: Because we have the account in the Gospel of Matthew, and we have this account in the Gospel of Mark.
SPEAKER_01: So you can look at this over in Matthew 22 as well as in Mark, but we know that the Pharisees are the ones that are sending these spies.
SPEAKER_01: They want Jesus to say something that will get him in hot water with Rome.
SPEAKER_01: So you recall from our previous studies that they're really plotting to kill Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: But they're thinking, how could we trap Jesus so that it's really the Roman government that destroys him?
SPEAKER_01: Because the Jewish leadership does not have the authority to just go and kill Jesus, because the government at this time is Rome.
SPEAKER_01: And so they're looking for a way through these spies to pit Jesus against the Roman government.
SPEAKER_01: This isn't anything new.
SPEAKER_01: Back in between 5 and 7 AD, a man named Judas, who we read about in the book of Acts, he did this very thing.
SPEAKER_01: He opposed the Roman government as a Jew.
SPEAKER_01: He tried to stir up sedition, and one of his big complaints was taxation.
SPEAKER_01: That we as Jews, we should be a free people, we shouldn't have to pay taxes.
SPEAKER_01: And so there's grounds, there's historic grounds for the Pharisees to send these spies in to try to trap Jesus with his words.
SPEAKER_01: And the crowd that would be following Jesus would be sympathetic with kind of a zealot position, probably.
SPEAKER_01: Probably a majority of Jesus' followers would favor, they would have a negative view of Rome and would want for Israel to be independent.
SPEAKER_01: And so Jesus may have felt the peer pressure to answer this question in a way that would have satisfied his crowd, but then there's also the pressure of Rome.
SPEAKER_01: So you see the trap that's laid.
SPEAKER_01: Reminds me of Star Wars.
SPEAKER_01: Is it like episode three?
SPEAKER_01: It's a trap, right?
SPEAKER_01: That's what this is.
SPEAKER_01: It's a trap.
SPEAKER_01: But Jesus sees through these efforts to entrap him.
SPEAKER_01: In verse 23, it says that he saw their duplicity.
SPEAKER_01: That's what it says in the NIV version.
SPEAKER_01: It may say something else in the version that you read, but he sees the cunning of these spies.
SPEAKER_01: Now, here, this passage is just thick with irony.
SPEAKER_01: The very presence of this outside government in Israel should have been an indicator that these Jewish leaders were under, that Israel itself was under God's discipline.
SPEAKER_01: Deuteronomy 29 tells them and tells us that the only reason they're subjugated under Caesar's rule because of national disobedience.
SPEAKER_01: God is judging Israel by allowing Rome to subjugate Israel.
SPEAKER_01: And then they're talking about currency.
SPEAKER_01: Currency lies at the heart of this government's authority.
SPEAKER_01: Government exercises its authority by issuing currency and through taxation.
SPEAKER_01: So we see the duplicity of these questioners, and we see the sad irony of Rome's authority by issuing currency and taxing the people.
SPEAKER_01: The state of Israel was dire.
SPEAKER_01: And these are the Jewish leaders that are interacting with Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: The point should have been here, we're wrong, right?
SPEAKER_01: There should have been this attitude of humility that was exemplified by the Jewish leaders, where they should have been desperate for God to work on their behalf.
SPEAKER_01: They should have been looking for God to send a deliverer.
SPEAKER_01: Because the pattern in Israel's history was that they would obey God for a season and then they would rebel, right?
SPEAKER_01: And they'd fall away, and then God would mercifully raise up a leader.
SPEAKER_01: He would raise up a leader who would draw people back to himself, and this would bring about a blessing.
SPEAKER_01: And that whole pattern fulfills itself in Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is, you know, all of those other times where that pattern's unfolding is foreshadowing the coming of the Messiah.
SPEAKER_01: And yet here's the Jewish leaders rejecting Jesus, rejecting Jesus, and they're, in a sense, using to their own benefit the local, the uh provisional government of Rome.
SPEAKER_01: So we see this duplicity of these questioners, we see the sad irony of Rome's occupation of Israel.
SPEAKER_01: Let's consider Jesus' answer to them.
SPEAKER_01: Let's consider the answer that Jesus gives.
SPEAKER_01: He says, give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and give to God what is God's.
SPEAKER_01: What is the significance of this answer?
SPEAKER_01: First of all, I would suggest to you that the significance of this answer is that the true king of the world is encouraging submission to civic authority.
SPEAKER_01: He is not threatened by Rome's rule.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus doesn't look at this coin.
SPEAKER_01: If you'll progress here to the next slide, I can show you what it looks like.
SPEAKER_01: This coin did not seem to intimidate Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: He knew who was in charge of the world.
SPEAKER_01: And he encourages his audience to submit to the Roman government, to give to Caesar what is Caesar's.
SPEAKER_01: And we see this theme continue in the New Testament.
SPEAKER_01: We don't have time for it now, but if you go to the next slide, you may want to write these verses down.
SPEAKER_01: Romans 13, 1 through 7, 1 Timothy 2, 1 through 2, Titus 3, 1 and 2, 1 Peter 2, 13 through 17, all give instruction.
SPEAKER_01: These verses are all instructions on how we as Christians should relate to the government.
SPEAKER_01: And what it teaches is that God puts in place government.
SPEAKER_01: God is the one who allows governors, mayors, presidents, kings.
SPEAKER_01: Whoever is in charge, he allows them to be in charge.
SPEAKER_01: They are to reflect his kingdom values on earth.
SPEAKER_01: And so Jesus here, given the opportunity, affirms the leadership of Rome at this time.
SPEAKER_01: He's not looking to lead some public political agenda against Rome.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus had incredible influence.
SPEAKER_01: If there was ever a moment for Israel to rebel against Roman authority, this would have been it.
SPEAKER_01: No one had greater influence than Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: No one had crowds like Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: No one had power like Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Here he is on the Temple Mount, and he could have decided to start a political revolution, and he didn't.
SPEAKER_01: He didn't.
SPEAKER_01: Instead, he says, give to Caesar what is Caesar's.
SPEAKER_01: But the next thing, I think the more significant thing maybe we could take from the answer that Jesus gives is this thing where he says, give to Caesar what is Caesar's, but give to God what is God's.
SPEAKER_01: And the natural next question should have been, well, what things belong to God that we need to give to him?
SPEAKER_01: And I think that the crowd intentionally, remember, the response to this is like, we're not going to ask any more questions, right?
SPEAKER_01: They're satisfied.
SPEAKER_01: But the truly curious person, the disciple, would have asked, well, what belongs to God?
SPEAKER_01: What does that mean for us to give to God what belongs to God?
SPEAKER_01: You see, if they would have asked that question, it would have been self-incriminating.
SPEAKER_01: And so rather than be trapped, we see Jesus giving answers that overcomes their evil intent.
SPEAKER_01: So how does this speak to our fallen condition?
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: Having in us the flesh that's an enemy of the work of God, I would say this.
SPEAKER_01: What does it look like for us to be duplicitous?
SPEAKER_01: That's the characters here, these spies are said to be double-minded or crafty.
SPEAKER_01: Well, again, our very nature is this having this these two aspects, the flesh and the spirit.
SPEAKER_01: We affirm, I would suggest that we want to affirm the kingdom from afar.
SPEAKER_01: We want to say, yes, God's justice, God's mercy, God's peace, God's love, people doing those things.
SPEAKER_01: Those are all great over there.
SPEAKER_01: But then it comes home.
SPEAKER_01: And the finger gets pointed back at us.
SPEAKER_01: It says there in the text, we know that you speak and teach what is right, right?
SPEAKER_01: This is the words of the spies.
SPEAKER_01: We know that you speak and teach what is right, that you do not show partiality, but you teach the way of God.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: They are affirming, they're affirming from afar who Jesus is.
SPEAKER_01: But once it becomes personal of give to God what is God's, it's like, ah, that's a little too close.
SPEAKER_01: Let's stop the conversation right there.
SPEAKER_01: When the kingdom creeps into our world and says that we're to seek justice for the vulnerable, that we're to be a merciful people, that we're to show love, that we're to walk in holiness, then there's a war inside of us between this inherent human desire of the flesh, the desires of the flesh, and the desires of God's Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: Galatians 5 talks about this, and again, there's a slide for this.
SPEAKER_01: Starting in Galatians 5, 16, you should, I'm sure, if you've if you've been walking with the Lord for a while, you're familiar with some of this passage, at least, because this is where the fruit of the spirit is talked about.
SPEAKER_01: But Paul explains how we are made up of these two warring entities, the flesh and the spirit.
SPEAKER_01: He says this, so I say, walk by the spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.
SPEAKER_01: Do you see that?
SPEAKER_01: Spirit and flesh.
SPEAKER_01: For the flesh desires what is contrary to the spirit, and the spirit what is contrary to the flesh.
SPEAKER_01: They're in conflict with each other, so that you are not able to do what you want.
SPEAKER_01: But if you are led by the spirit, you're not under the law.
SPEAKER_01: Go to the next slide.
SPEAKER_01: The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity, and debauchery, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions, and envy, drunkenness, orgies, and the like.
SPEAKER_01: I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_01: Go to the next slide.
SPEAKER_01: But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace.
SPEAKER_01: Read it with me.
SPEAKER_01: Love, joy, peace, forgiveness, kindness.
SPEAKER_01: Goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
SPEAKER_01: Against such things there is no law.
SPEAKER_01: Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
SPEAKER_01: It's very real that we have this warring, we have this warring natures within us.
SPEAKER_01: We are duplicitous.
SPEAKER_01: It is safe to keep things on a theoretical level.
SPEAKER_01: Let's talk about ideas that are over there.
SPEAKER_01: But Jesus becomes dangerous when he addresses us personally.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus came not just to silence the bad questions of the flesh.
SPEAKER_01: Get this.
SPEAKER_01: He didn't just come to silence the bad questions of the flesh.
SPEAKER_01: He came and died so that we could have his spirit, which crucifies our flesh.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: He puts to, he wants to help put to death the origin of those types of questions.
SPEAKER_01: Look at um Romans 8.12.
SPEAKER_01: I think I have a slide for this as well, so you don't have to turn there.
SPEAKER_01: Just look up at the screen.
SPEAKER_01: Romans 8.12 through 13.
SPEAKER_01: Again, this is another passage that explains the flesh and the spirit.
SPEAKER_01: If you want to go back and study all this, go to Galatians 5, go to Romans 8, go to Romans 6.
SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of material in those places.
SPEAKER_01: 1 Corinthians 2.
SPEAKER_01: Therefore, brothers and sisters, we have no obligation, but it is not to the flesh to live according to it.
SPEAKER_01: For if you live according to the flesh, you will die.
SPEAKER_01: But if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: It's by God's Spirit that we're able to put to death the works of the body, the works of the flesh.
SPEAKER_01: Let's go to the next section, verse 27 through 40.
SPEAKER_01: The Sadducees hope, the Sadducees hope to philosophically eliminate the afterlife by asking a question.
SPEAKER_01: Their question is based on Deuteronomy 25.
SPEAKER_01: This is called the Levereite marriage.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, this is a really important concept within Judaism.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: Why is it important?
SPEAKER_01: Why is this an important uh detail?
SPEAKER_01: If you go back to Deuteronomy 25, what you see is that, look, if if a son marries a woman and then he dies, it's the obligation of his brother to marry his sister-in-law to carry on his brother's name.
SPEAKER_01: That's weird, right?
SPEAKER_01: That's weird.
SPEAKER_01: Why is that so important?
SPEAKER_01: Where'd that come from?
SPEAKER_01: This is a Jewish.
SPEAKER_01: Well, uh, it's important for Israel because of their inheritance was tied to lineage.
SPEAKER_01: You remember the story of Israel is that you get what God has, his blessing for you, it comes through your lineage.
SPEAKER_01: So your property comes through lineage, royalty comes through lineage, role in your nation comes through lineage, the blessings.
SPEAKER_01: Remember um Jacob blessing his sons, blessing his 12 sons?
SPEAKER_01: You recall that?
SPEAKER_01: He blesses them, right, on his deathbed.
SPEAKER_01: And he's not just blessing them, he's blessing their lineage, right?
SPEAKER_01: So lineage is really important if you're Jewish.
SPEAKER_01: It's not very important if you're Gentile.
SPEAKER_01: At least I don't see that in scripture.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, Paul has to say, look, don't get caught up up in genealogies, right?
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't seem to be, it doesn't seem to carry the same weight.
SPEAKER_01: And ultimately, lineage is important because it's the Messiah, right?
SPEAKER_01: We can trace the messianic line through sons, right?
SPEAKER_01: So it's a Jewish priority, it doesn't carry over to the nations.
SPEAKER_01: Gentile lineage does not share the same significance as Jewish lineage.
SPEAKER_01: So how does Jesus respond, right, to this question, right?
SPEAKER_01: This crazy scenario.
SPEAKER_01: If you go over to Matthew 22, 29, what Luke doesn't include is that Jesus says to this crowd, you are mistaken, right?
SPEAKER_01: That's the very nice English translation of it.
SPEAKER_01: Really, it's kind of like you're stupid.
SPEAKER_01: You're stupid.
SPEAKER_01: How who comes up with these like scenarios, you know, like how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
SPEAKER_01: Can God make a rock bigger than himself?
SPEAKER_01: Like Jesus' response is this is dumb, right?
SPEAKER_01: This is a dumb question.
SPEAKER_01: Because who would keep marrying the lady, right?
SPEAKER_01: Like, what's going on here?
SPEAKER_01: This is not right.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus tells them that they're deceived because they don't know the scripture and they don't know the power of God.
SPEAKER_01: Here in Luke, Jesus tells them what is not the case with the age to come.
SPEAKER_01: He says there's no marriage or being given in marriage in the age to come.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, like some of you are like waiting.
SPEAKER_01: You've been waiting and waiting to get married, right?
SPEAKER_01: And here's Jesus saying, Yeah, there's no marriage in heaven.
SPEAKER_01: It's like, what?
SPEAKER_01: How could heaven be such a great place?
SPEAKER_01: And others, you've been married for a while and you're like, thank God there's no marriage in heaven, right?
SPEAKER_01: Here's the thing, right?
SPEAKER_01: Here's the thing.
SPEAKER_01: Um, this seems like so.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is just saying to them, like, you're you're operating in this age, right?
SPEAKER_01: You Sadducees.
SPEAKER_01: The Sadducees were like an elite sect, wealthy.
SPEAKER_01: They um had the priest, they they held the office of the priest, they're probably placed in their role through their connections with the Roman government.
SPEAKER_01: Um we don't know a ton about them, but it's kind of similar to, I liked one guy that I was listening to this week.
SPEAKER_01: He said, it's kind of like um uh what's what's Tom Hanks, not Tom Cruise.
SPEAKER_01: What's he part of Scientology, right?
SPEAKER_01: It's kind of like Scientology.
SPEAKER_01: It's a small crowd, but it's like a lot of wealthy people that are in it.
SPEAKER_01: That's kind of what Scientology, or that's what the Sadducees were like.
SPEAKER_01: Um, and it was to their benefit to not believe in the resurrection or really kind of a change, cultural change, because they held this position of authority.
SPEAKER_01: And so um they only believed in the first five books of what we call the Bible.
SPEAKER_01: They believed in the Torah.
SPEAKER_01: And so Jesus, as he interacts with the Sadducees, he's only quoting from the Torah to their benefit.
SPEAKER_01: Um, Deuteronomy 25 is where they're getting stuff from.
SPEAKER_01: He's interacting with them based off Exodus 3.
SPEAKER_01: In just a second, we'll look at that.
SPEAKER_01: But here is here's the idea.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, can you have you seen those charts where it goes through the growth cycles of a baby that's in its mother's womb?
SPEAKER_01: Have you ever looked at the like how weird like a baby in week like 10 looks?
SPEAKER_01: Looks like an alien, right?
SPEAKER_01: It's like something out of Star Wars.
SPEAKER_01: That thing is weird looking.
SPEAKER_01: We were all that, right?
SPEAKER_01: Every one of us looked like that, right?
SPEAKER_01: If you if you took that fetus and you said to it, hey, pizza's awesome, that fetus is gonna be like, I have no idea what you're talking about.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, how does the lungs work?
SPEAKER_01: How does it get its nourishment?
SPEAKER_01: Like in the womb, the lungs are breathing in and out.
SPEAKER_01: It's exercising, breathing in and out fluids, right?
SPEAKER_01: If you did that today, you'd die.
SPEAKER_01: You drowned, right?
SPEAKER_01: Where's it getting its nourishment from?
SPEAKER_01: It's this like thing going into the belly of the baby, right?
SPEAKER_01: That is so weird, and yet that's who you were.
SPEAKER_01: Why is it so far outside of our imagination that possibly the age to come is different from the age now?
SPEAKER_01: That we are not given in marriage, and that we are not marrying in heaven.
SPEAKER_01: The reality of the age to come, it shouldn't be too strange for us to imagine that what's to come could be very different from what is now if you just imagine you in the womb and how different you are today from who you were in the womb, right?
SPEAKER_01: Amen?
SPEAKER_01: You're a different person than who you were in your mother's womb.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus is scolding them for not having this understanding of the scriptures or the power of God that the age to come is different.
SPEAKER_01: Marriage as an institution serves a earthly purpose, a good purpose.
SPEAKER_01: It's blessed by God.
SPEAKER_01: We see it in the garden that it was created, but it serves a purpose in this age.
SPEAKER_01: And the plan of God for the future is that there's no marriage, right?
SPEAKER_01: If that's hard for you, maybe that's hard to swallow.
SPEAKER_01: I think it's probably hard to swallow.
SPEAKER_01: Do we have anybody under 13?
SPEAKER_01: It's hard to swallow because we like sex a lot, right?
SPEAKER_01: As a culture.
SPEAKER_01: And so it's it's hard to imagine like um the like how could heaven be great without sex?
SPEAKER_01: Now, we live in a very like sexualized culture where that's an idol, but I tend to trust that like the God who created sex can make like eternity better.
SPEAKER_01: Is that logical?
SPEAKER_01: Are we okay with that?
SPEAKER_01: Okay, I know.
SPEAKER_01: It's like you have to die.
SPEAKER_01: That there's an idol there that has to die.
SPEAKER_01: Um, but uh just kind of telling it how it is.
SPEAKER_01: Um, okay, so the fallen condition of these men is that they don't understand the age to come.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus tells them, look, you don't understand scripture, you don't understand the power of God, and this leads to these hypothetical questions that are stupid.
SPEAKER_01: Now, for your own entertainment, you should go and enter um Google or you go on YouTube and look up Josh Taransky.
SPEAKER_01: Because my job before I got here was that I was a radio host, and I would, I would, for an hour, I would take calls for a program called Pastor's Perspective.
SPEAKER_01: People would call with their Bible questions, I would see the questions from the call screener would come up on the screen in front of me, and I was this guy.
SPEAKER_01: You can watch the video of me doing it on YouTube.
SPEAKER_01: I did probably 350 episodes.
SPEAKER_01: And we would take twenty fifteen to twenty questions an hour, and it was my job to kind of find the best questions that came up on the screen and then go to those people and then try to like extract the best questions.
SPEAKER_01: So I love this whole passage about questions because it reminds me of doing the radio program.
SPEAKER_01: But let me tell you, there are definitely stupid questions.
SPEAKER_01: Like if anybody's told you like there's no dumb question, I just want you to know they're dumb questions.
SPEAKER_01: And there's some questions that are so dumb they don't make it on the air, right?
SPEAKER_01: I see them come up, and then I tap into the screen to the call screen, and I was like, you can hang up on that guy.
SPEAKER_01: We're not gonna take that question, right?
SPEAKER_01: And then we would get some, but here's the thing, like, here's the thing.
SPEAKER_01: Like, I know they they probably here's what's a dumb question.
SPEAKER_01: It's the ones that are like just like nerdy and wonkish, and we answer them every single week.
SPEAKER_01: Like, what's the difference between cremation and burial?
SPEAKER_01: I got that two times a week, and I would let it go through once, and then after that one time, I was just like, yeah, go go listen to an archive of the program, because we're not answering the question again.
SPEAKER_01: Or how much should I tithe to my church, you know?
SPEAKER_01: Or the other one was like baptism, you know, do you have to be baptized to be saved?
SPEAKER_01: Oh my goodness.
SPEAKER_01: But but which are good questions.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not saying those are the dumb questions, I'm just we'd answer those a lot.
SPEAKER_01: There were some that were just like like it was Hitler the Antichrist, or things that just they don't affect the heart.
SPEAKER_01: Like they don't deal with like today, how can I love Jesus?
SPEAKER_01: Like, how can I be a better neighbor?
SPEAKER_01: How can I like love God with all my heart, right?
SPEAKER_01: It's it and and when people would ask questions where it just seems so heady and not like from the heart, I would I would reply back to them.
SPEAKER_01: I would be like, so how does this gonna impact?
SPEAKER_01: When we give you this answer, how are you gonna live this answer out?
unknown: Right?
SPEAKER_01: So you put put put them on the on the spot for a second, make them a little bit uncomfortable.
SPEAKER_01: This is the thing.
SPEAKER_01: There are good questions and there are dumb questions.
SPEAKER_01: And these these men, because they just don't understand God or the power of his word, they're just asking these dumb, hypothetical questions.
SPEAKER_01: Because we're sinful, we tend to ask wrong questions as well.
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes we ask questions to keep the focus off of us, other times we sincerely ask the wrong questions.
SPEAKER_01: Have you ever heard the saying, to ask the right question is a problem half-solved.
SPEAKER_01: Have you heard that saying?
SPEAKER_01: If you ask the right question, it's it's solving like half the problem.
SPEAKER_01: It's a matter of really asking the right question.
SPEAKER_01: And this is the work of the Holy Spirit in us.
SPEAKER_01: You know, when I when we were trying to move here to Baltimore, I struggled for two years not knowing where I was supposed to go.
SPEAKER_01: As so much anxiety and angst and just like hating life, and and then all of a sudden God's like, one day when I'm reading my Bible, he's like, you're asking the wrong question.
SPEAKER_01: You shouldn't be asking where you're supposed to go and then be so mad about life that you don't know that.
SPEAKER_01: It wasn't mad, but it was just like frustrating.
SPEAKER_01: He's like, you should be asking yourself the question, what do you know?
SPEAKER_01: That seems like a dumb like inversion.
SPEAKER_01: But that was it.
SPEAKER_01: God used asking that question rather than the other question to kind of ultimately kind of paint this picture from the edge of the paper down to where it's like, oh, all I I really know actually a lot.
SPEAKER_01: I just don't know this, these two things, like where and when I'm supposed to go.
SPEAKER_01: And it became less intimidating.
SPEAKER_01: The point is this is that God wants to lead us into asking the right questions, not dumb questions like the Sadducees.
SPEAKER_01: Prayer is how we ask God questions, and we should be asking God lots of questions when we pray, right?
SPEAKER_01: Not just telling God what we need, not just asking him for stuff, but ask him questions.
SPEAKER_01: Be curious.
SPEAKER_01: That is like that is fertile soil for the direction of God in your life.
SPEAKER_01: Ask him to show you what questions you should be asking.
SPEAKER_01: Can I give you for a second um one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine?
SPEAKER_01: Nine questions I ask at the end of every year.
SPEAKER_01: Hopefully, these are a good instrument for you.
SPEAKER_01: These are the first few.
SPEAKER_01: So that I do an end-of-the-year review.
SPEAKER_01: You can take a picture of this or you can sign up and get our um emails.
SPEAKER_01: I'll send this out uh tonight or tomorrow by email.
SPEAKER_01: But this is kind of, it shouldn't say 2017, it should be 2018 on there.
SPEAKER_01: But these are the questions I ask myself at the end of the year, and I pray through these.
SPEAKER_01: I'm evaluating these things personally just to kind of and I go through my journal, and uh, so what was most satisfying in 2018?
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: If the last year were a movie of your life, what would the John genre be?
SPEAKER_01: I asked this of Don.
SPEAKER_01: This guy, man, he blessed me this week.
SPEAKER_01: He and I we went to go pick up the food on Friday, and I said, What would it be?
SPEAKER_01: You know what?
SPEAKER_01: He's I mean, I felt so convicted when he said this.
SPEAKER_01: He said it was a romance.
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, Don, how is it a romance?
SPEAKER_01: You don't have a girl in your life.
SPEAKER_01: He's like, because God just showed me so much love, and I discovered the grace of God.
SPEAKER_01: I was like, well, I gotta go, I gotta go back to I gotta go back to my paper, you know?
SPEAKER_01: The third question: what were the two or three major themes that kept occurring?
SPEAKER_01: What did you accomplish this past year that you're most proud of?
SPEAKER_01: What did you feel you should have been acknowledged for but weren't?
SPEAKER_01: Go to the next slide.
SPEAKER_01: What disappointments or regrets did you experience this past year?
SPEAKER_01: What was missing from the last year as you look back?
SPEAKER_01: What were the major life lessons you learned this past year?
SPEAKER_01: Um, what do I know at the end of 2018 that I didn't know at the beginning?
SPEAKER_01: Um so again, asking questions, sitting with the Lord, sitting with the Lord quietly, with your phone upside down, or like in the other room, and just asking these questions and letting him bring to mind these types of things can be really helpful as you're just looking, because this sets the stage for God speaking to me about the next year.
SPEAKER_01: As I'm I'm thinking, like, what did I regret?
SPEAKER_01: What was missing?
SPEAKER_01: Those things that that really becomes like a sense of like, oh, this is what's next.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, we got to finish.
SPEAKER_01: We're way over time here.
SPEAKER_01: Go to the next slide.
SPEAKER_01: This is um the this next section, 41 through 44, Jesus turns the tables and asks this question of um those that are standing in the temple listening to this dialogue.
SPEAKER_01: He he asks this question about how can David, how come David can call the Messiah Lord?
SPEAKER_01: And one commentator says this Jesus' question does not deny the Davidic descent of the Messiah, which was well established.
SPEAKER_01: His answer, however, suggests that the Son of David is not adequate as a category for understanding God's Messiah.
SPEAKER_01: He's not David's junior, he is more than a mere human deliverer and king.
SPEAKER_01: So at this time, it it would seem that the view of who the Messiah would be was inadequate.
SPEAKER_01: It was viewed as kind of possibly David's junior, like, well, this is the great grandson of David.
SPEAKER_01: You know, nothing's gonna come close to the Davidic kingdom, but this will be the Messiah.
SPEAKER_01: And so Jesus seems to be kind of like poking at them, poking at their view of the Messiah, saying, No, David in Psalm 110 called the Messiah.
SPEAKER_01: He called the Messiah, his Lord.
SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, he's the son of David.
SPEAKER_01: He fulfills the promise, which is a beautiful covenant promise that God has with his people.
SPEAKER_01: But David, the Messiah, like we were talking about last year, he's the eternal God, right?
SPEAKER_01: He's existed from eternity, he was incarnate in the lineage of David, took on flesh, but that speaks to his humanity.
SPEAKER_01: The Messiah is so much more.
SPEAKER_01: So, in conclusion, here's what I wrote.
SPEAKER_01: I wrote for the for the conclusion this morning, I wrote just a kind of a prayer.
SPEAKER_01: It says this, Come, Lord Jesus, and save us from our duplicity.
SPEAKER_01: Where we are double-minded, where we affirm you and yet seek to destroy your work, please forgive us.
SPEAKER_01: God, lift our eyes to the horizon of the coming age.
SPEAKER_01: We get caught up in this age as if there was no future.
SPEAKER_01: We live for today when there is eternity to account for.
SPEAKER_01: Help us to live in such a way that embraces a future age where you we are your children.
SPEAKER_01: And thank you for being more than the Son of David, the eternal king.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for taking on flesh to dwell among us, yet being author of everything.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, we um we are grateful that there's a day that is coming where there's a new reality, a future age, and Lord, you give us the down payment of your spirit today, anticipating that future age.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we we ask dumb questions sometimes.
SPEAKER_01: Man, we can get it so wrong sometimes, God.
SPEAKER_01: But you give us your spirit.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, I pray, I pray that you would be the God that just answers our questions.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, for those here that just are just struggling or wrestling with something, Lord, be the God that answers, answer their questions in a supernatural way.
SPEAKER_01: We pray this in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: All right, you ready to sing one last song?
SPEAKER_01: Let's stand together.
SPEAKER_01: Let's stand up.