Controversy in the Temple
Reading: Matthew 22:15-22
“Then the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap him in what he said.”
Tuesday was a day spent openly teaching in the Temple. By this time in his ministry, Jesus was the center of controversy. The Pharisees and Sadducees were angered by Jesus’ threat to their authority. They would like to have arrested him immediately, but feared his popularity with the crowds would create a riot. Needing to discredit Jesus publicly, they came with a series of trick questions.
Pharisees and Herodians, strange bedfellows, came to raise the issue of paying taxes to the Emperor. If Jesus supported the payment, the Jewish population would desert him, because the Messiah was supposed to overthrow Roman oppression. Disapproval of the tax would make him a traitor to the Romans, and guilty of treason.
Jesus went beyond their petty arguments to two greater principles:
1) We owe certain things in exchange for the services of civil government. Taxes are one of those things. Using the coin made by the Roman government implied acceptance of its services, and therefore an obligation to it.
2) The Sovereign God rules over all history and all governments. Everything we have and everything we are belongs first to God. The best citizen of any nation is the person who first recognized God’s supremacy in all of life.
For Reflection: What question would you have asked Jesus?
Prayer Seed:
The love divine hath led us in the past;
In this free land by Thee our lot is cast;
Be Too our ruler, guardian, guide, and stay;
Thy word our law, Thy paths our chosen way.
Daniel Crane Roberts, 1876
