The following sermon was presented by the Reverend John W. Howe, Rector of Truro Episcopal Church in Fairfax, Virginia, on November 6, 1983. The title is, Who's Catching Whom? And the scripture reference is Matthew 22, verses 23 through 33. 

The Holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Matthew. I'm reading from the 22nd chapter beginning at the 23rd verse. The same day Sadducees came to Jesus, who say that there is no resurrection.

And they asked him a question, saying, Teacher, Moses said if a man dies having no children, his brother must marry the widow and raise up children for his brother. Now, there were seven brothers among us. The first married and died, and having no children, left his wife to his brother.

So too the second and third, down to the seventh. After them all, the woman died. In the resurrection, therefore, to which of the seven will she be wife?

For they all had her. But Jesus answered them, You are wrong because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.

And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God? I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. He is not God of the dead, but of the living.

And when the crowd heard it, they were astonished at his teaching. The Gospel of the Lord. I want to try to set that Gospel reading into a little bit larger context.

It begins with the words, the same day. And you have to ask, the same day as what? Well, I'd like you to take a look at it with me for just a moment.

I think you'll find the passage on page 857 of the Bibles in your pews. Matthew 22, starting with verse 23. The same day, the same day the Sadducees came to Jesus with the obvious intention of trying to trap Him.

the same day that the Pharisees had just done exactly the same thing. I don't know if you've ever been in a conversation, perhaps about the Lord or perhaps about something else, that was important to you, and somebody began asking questions, and it became very quickly apparent that they weren't really looking for answers. As soon as you begin to answer one question, up pops another.

As soon as you begin to answer that one, up pops another. I've found this with college students all the time. you begin to sense that they're not really looking for answers.

They're looking for excuses why not to believe. If they can stump you on one of them, then they don't have to believe, you see. That sort of thing happened to Jesus all the time.

And this particular day, it was one such encounter after another. What makes it particularly difficult is that He's got two radically different groups. with radically different concerns and totally different worldview, who are both coming at him.

It's kind of like a presidential news conference, you know. I mean, the liberals are out to get you from that side, and the conservatives are out to get you from that side, and you don't know what's coming next. That's what was going on.

And we could spend a fair amount of time on each one of these episodes, but what I'd like to do for a few minutes is just quickly sketch the day for you. Because I want to see how Jesus dealt with that and then draw some conclusions from it. John Stott a few years ago wrote a book called Christ the Controversialist.

A wonderful book. It doesn't mean that he simply was controversial, which he was, but it means he entered into controversy. He took on the tough questions.

And whenever folks tried to entrap him, it's amazing to see what happened to them. So we begin with verse 15. The Pharisees went and took counsel how to entangle Him in His talk.

And they sent their disciples to Him along with the Herodians saying, Teacher, we know that You are true. Get the flattery here. Teacher, we know that You are true and teach the way of God truthfully and care for no man.

For You do not regard the position of men. Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not?

It's an interesting question. You need to know where the Pharisees were coming from. They were the conservatives.

They were theologically conservative. They were politically conservative. And as you know, they majored in keeping the law.

They were punctilious in their observance of the law. And yet, somehow, Jesus' harshest words were consistently directed toward them. Because He said that while you've done a good job on the externals, your hearts are altogether wrong.

Rather than doing this out of love of God and in gratitude for His mercy, you're doing it out of pride and arrogance and trying to justify yourself. You've cleansed the outer side of the cup, but the inside is filthy. yet the Pharisees were in a position of tremendous power and influence except for one thing the common people were universally agreed that they had completely sold out with regard to paying very high tribute to Caesar and what had happened was in fact they had bought their freedom to exercise their religion throughout the Roman Empire you had to bow down to images of Caesar.

The Pharisees never did that. They were free not to, but they paid very heavy tribute. And the common people thought they were utterly compromised because of it.

So they took counsel because folks are gathering around Jesus and seeing Him as a hero and contrasting His genuine high standards with their apparent ones. And Jesus is becoming a tremendous threat. He tends to do that.

And they asked him a trick question. You need to see, that's what it was. It was a trick question.

They weren't looking for information. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar? They knew perfectly well.

Or at least they thought they did. Of course it's lawful to pay taxes to Caesar. But if Jesus agrees with that, You see, he's endorsed the Pharisaic position and undercut any threat of opposition.

On the other hand, if he says no, he's guilty of sedition. Gotcha. Either way, gotcha.

And you know Jesus' answer. He said, give me a coin. Held it up.

Whose picture is this? Whose image is on this coin? Obviously, Caesar's face was stamped on every coin throughout the realm.

He says, well then, render to Caesar what is his, and to God what is his. Trick answer. Because which is which?

Jesus had no problem in giving the money back to Caesar. But it's interesting that the thing that made it his, was the fact that his image was impressed upon it. If we render back to Caesar that which has his image impressed upon it, what do you suppose we're to render back to God?

That which has his image stamped upon it. And that's us, made in the image of God. Give Caesar his money.

Give God yourself. Billy Hutchison always gets very nervous when I get to this point because I invariably want to add that unless God has you He really doesn't want your money we're coming up to stewardship time in a couple of weeks and I remind you of that unless God has you He really doesn't want your money if he has you he's got your money anyway render to God that which has his image stamped upon it yourself the same day the Sadducees came up Pharisees tried to trap Jesus and were utterly foiled so the Sadducees say it's our turn now Well, what you need to know about the Sadducees is that they were the liberals, theologically and politically. The Sadducees didn't even accept all of the Old Testament as being authoritative.

They accepted the first five books, the books of Moses. They said the rest of it is not authoritative. And the Sadducees specifically disbelieved in an overruling providence of God, in the immortality of the soul, in the reality of heaven, and in the resurrection of the dead.

They didn't believe in angels. They didn't really believe in the supernatural. And so they said, we also have a question for you, Jesus.

We've been thinking about this for quite a long time. You believe in the resurrection. Obviously, that is totally nonsense.

And we're going to demonstrate that to you. It says in Deuteronomy 25 that if a man dies without having fathered any children, it's the responsibility of his next older brother to take his widow and bear children by her that that dead man's name would continue in Israel. Now there were seven brothers.

First one died, no children. So the second brother took his widow. But he died with no children.

So the third one came along and he took her. no children. Fourth, fifth, sixth, seven of them died with no children.

And finally the woman died as well she might. Now here's the question. When she goes to heaven, whose wife is she going to be?

it's a trick question because if Jesus says that she's the wife of any one of them then she's being unfaithful to all the others and if he says she's the wife of all of them simultaneously she's guilty of adultery and incest you're wrong Jesus either way you answer let me suggest to you that when you think that you've trapped Jesus you better look out who's catching who Jesus says no you are wrong you are completely wrong the question is wrong because you are wrong and the reason is that you know neither the power of God nor the scriptures those two things go together friends they always go together where the church is sick and anemic and compromised and little better than a chameleon for its culture, it's because it knows neither the power of God nor the Scriptures. And the Sadducees knew neither one of them. Jesus says, you know nothing about the power of God because you're trying to project into heaven an earthly view of things that will always fail you.

Don't you think that the power of God is going to transform life as we experience it? In heaven, there are no marriages. Now, I need to mention that I came across that verse just about the time that I was discovering girls.

And I really wasn't altogether sure I wanted to be there. But you see, I was doing the same thing the Sadducees were doing. I was projecting into the heavenlies my understanding of life based on this world.

Jesus is not saying that in heaven we will have less than marriage. He's saying that in heaven we'll have infinitely more than marriage. Here, our deepest intimacy is very much restricted by our physical relationship.

in heaven that restriction is gone. I can't fully imagine what I'm saying, but this is the thrust of what Jesus' teaching is all about. That in heaven there's an intimacy.

You're not going to be less close to your spouse. You're going to be infinitely more close, but not only to that one, to all the other members of the body of Christ as well. And that's because corporately we are the bride of Christ And that's where the intimacy starts.

You know, nothing of the power of God if you think about heaven in earthly terms. But let me tell you something, Sadducees, you also don't know the Scriptures. I'll take you on your own ground.

I'll stick to the books of Moses. How does God present Himself in the books of Moses? Consistently, I am.

Moses says, who shall I say has sent me? I am. I am who I am.

And then he goes on to say, I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob. I am. Present tense.

The God of Abraham. Not, I was. I am right now.

Though Abraham died generations ago, I am right now his God. And Jesus said, He's not the God of the dead. He's the God of the living.

Abraham lives because he's related to this living God. Notice what happens. Verse 33, when the crowd heard it, they were astonished at His teaching.

They tried to trap Jesus. He wouldn't be trapped. The Pharisees tried one more time.

They came up and a lawyer asked Him, which is the greatest commandment? And again, a trick question. They believed there were 613 commandments, all equally great.

And again, if Jesus agreed with that, He'd be endorsing their position. If He picked any one of them, He'd be in trouble. He said, yeah, they're all important, but you know what?

They have a focus. Love God. Love neighbor.

Love neighbor. Look what happened there. Verse 41, while the Pharisees were gathered together, pondering three times at bat, three times they've struck out, Jesus says, now it's my turn.

And I also have a question for you. Jesus said, what do you think of the Christ, the Messiah? Whose son is He?

Whose son will He be? And they gave the standard answer, the answer that anybody would have given. Messiah is going to be a descendant of David.

He's the son of David. And Jesus says, but then how is it that David, inspired by the Spirit, calls him Lord? And he quotes from Psalm 110.

The Lord, God, said to my Lord, Messiah, sit at my right hand till I put thy enemies under thy feet. How is it that David, inspired by the Spirit, said to Messiah, You are my Lord. You see, the Jewish perspective was, and is, that no matter how great a man or a woman ever becomes, they will never become greater than their parents.

We've lost that somewhere along the way. No matter how many achievements are yours, no matter how many honors, no matter what status you attain in the rest of society, you will never be greater than your parents or your grandparents or your great-grandparents. You honor them.

So David could in no way call Messiah my Lord if he's merely the human descendant of David himself. And what Jesus is implying is transparently clear to everybody. The Messiah has to be infinitely more than David's Son.

He has to be in fact the Son of God. Verse 46, And no one was able to answer Him a word, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask Him any more questions. I've run through the whole day's controversies in order to draw a couple of conclusions for us.

It could be that even here this morning among us, there are some folks who have been raising questions about Jesus. It could be that rather than honestly seeking an answer, you're raising some of those questions as barriers so you don't have to believe. Let me warn you not to try to trap Jesus.

You'll never do it. You'll never entrap Jesus. You may be able to run circles around me intellectually, but the fact that I can't answer you doesn't mean that He can't. don't get confused by competing allegiances we do have obligations to Caesar to the government to our employer to various other people we have obligations but we have one obligation above all else render unto God what is His yourself I would urge you not to play the game any longer of intellectual ping pong, of theological game playing.

But face up. God made you for Himself and He has a claim upon your life. Render unto God what is His.

What's the most important commandment? Love God. and if you've still got questions there may be important questions but there's one more important put your questions aside and face up to Jesus' question for you what do you think of the Christ?

What do you think of this Jesus Christ? Is He in fact who He claims to be? To which all the prophets bear witness?

And if so, your Lord. And will you receive Him as such? Some of you need to make that decision today.

and I invite you to do it. Let's bow our heads together. Amen.

are any among us, or even in our families, who have been throwing one question up after another, seeking excuses not to believe, we ask You this morning to cut through all of that and cause us to consider You, to look You full in the face this morning. And we ask You to give such a sense of conviction about the truth of Your claims that they'll become inescapable. And Lord, it would be our desire to have everyone in this room this morning come to the place of knowing You and receiving You as Lord.

We ask that it might be so. for your own namesake Amen