The Pharisees had evil intentions towards Jesus. In their hatred for Him, they planned to entrap Him in the answers He gave to their loaded questions. One such question was, “Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?” If He answered that it was right to pay taxes to Caesar, He would be siding with the Romans against Israel and He would be considered a traitor. If however, He said taxes should not be paid to Rome, He could be accused of being a rebel to the authority of Rome. He asked them to give Him a coin used to pay the tax (a Roman denarius, which bore image of Caesar). With the coin in His hand, He answered. “Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” The very fact that Israel was occupied By Roman forces, indicated the nation had been unfaithful towards their God and had failed to give God His rightful dues!
While in Caesarea, Paul had been told by Agabus the prophet (Acts 21:10), that he
was to be arrested in Jerusalem and handed over to the Romans. This pronouncement
caused the Christians to appeal to Paul, “Not to go up to Jerusalem.” This appeal
fell on deaf ears! In the following chapter, the Jewish crowds in Jerusalem seized
Paul and ‘sought to kill him’ but he was rescued by the Roman commander, who allowed
him to address the frenzied crowd. Paul related his blinding encounter with the risen
Christ on the road to Damascus and his subsequent meeting with the disciple Ananias,
who said, “And now why are you waiting? Arise and be baptized!” Many today, for whatever
reason, struggle with the truth of baptism. The waters have been muddied by the man-
“And now why are you waiting?” -
It was a godly saint from a past generation, Robert Cleaver Chapman, who said in
a letter to a friend, “We should never be frightened to ask Christ for anything.
We might get more than we ask for.” When the Jewish high priest asked Jesus, “Are
You the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?”, he got more than he asked for. Christ answered,
“I am”, then added, “You will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the
Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven.” This is a reference to Daniel ch.7,
and the high priest would know it goes onto to speak of Messiah’s coming kingdom
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“Are You the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?” -
The journey from captivity in Egypt to the promised land, should have taken just
weeks, but as we know it took 40 years! Rather than thinking of the land to which
they were going, the people were thinking of the land they had escaped. Their hearts
were hankering for the food of Egypt! “We remember the fish which we ate freely in
Egypt, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic.” They were
dissatisfied with God’s daily provision for them, i.e. the manna. With tear-
“Who will give us flesh to eat?” -
God had said through the prophet Jeremiah that the Israelites, because of their constant disobedience to the Lord’s commandments, were to be ‘carried away to Babylon’, for seventy years. In the psalm before us, the exiles are sat by ‘the rivers of Babylon’ and wept as they remembered their homeland. Their grief was compounded when their captors asked them to sing one of Zion’s songs. Their reply to this request was, “How shall we sing the LORD’S song in a strange land?” Their heaviness of heart meant they had no desire to sing. How different to the Son of God, who, on the eve of His death, in the ‘strange land’ of planet earth, and with the shadow of the cross looming large, “sung a hymn [and] went out to the Mount of Olives.”
‘How shall we sing the LORD’S song in a strange land?’ -
‘‘Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence, and given to the poor?”
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Anyone looking at this week’s question out of context would think that the asker of the question had genuine concern for the welfare of the poor. Out of gratitude for what the Lord had done for their brother Lazarus, Martha and Mary made a supper for Him at Bethany. Mary has some understanding that the Lord’s death was imminent, and decided to anoint His body in preparation for burial, with pure, costly nard. The sight of this act of devotion caused Judas to ask his question. It belittled the sacrifice that Mary had made, and gave the impression to onlookers, that he was deeply concerned about the poor. He was in fact the arch master of masquerade, and fooled all except the Saviour. All was not what it seemed! He was ‘a thief’.
Jesus said to them, “Whose image and inscription is this?” -
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