Jesus Makes Difficult Questions Simple -- the amazing exchanges of Matthew 22:15-40
- mww
- Apr 29
- 18 min read
Updated: Apr 30
God's truth cannot be trapped; nor is it ever a trap.
Bible Study Ideas and Commentary for Matthew 22:15-40
The Jewish authorities failed to intimidate Jesus, so now they try to trick Him with loaded questions. But that never works with God's truth. Instead, Jesus used those very questions to teach fundamental truths about government, heaven, and how to understand the Bible. These very truths will show up throughout the rest of the New Testament.
Why are you testing me, hypocrites? (22:18)
Getting Started: Things to Think About
In this week's passage, Jewish leaders try to undermine Jesus by asking Him questions that they think will trick Him into saying something unpopular or are so difficult that they don't even know the answer. So, several of my ideas for an opening discussion relate to that.
The Hardest Test You Ever Took
What's the hardest test you ever took, and what made it so hard? For me, it was a second-year mechanical engineering final. The test was one question, and it was a word problem. And I just didn't understand it. I filled pages with numbers, hoping that something would be right or the grader would give up. (Nope.)
What Are the Hardest Questions You Can Think Of?
Another approach you might take is to ask for the hardest questions anyone in your group can think of. They can certainly be classics:
What is the meaning of life?
Where did the universe come from?
What is consciousness?
You can learn a lot about your group from the kinds of questions they think are really hard. This would be the fun follow up -- see if anyone in your group thinks they can find answers to any of the questions. Give them a week, and bring this up again next Sunday!
What Are the Questions You Want to Ask God?
To me, this is a different list than what would have been shared above. I know that the meaning of life is found in God and that He created the universe. So, even if I don't know the details, I don't feel the need to ask Him those questions. What are those questions? Classics include
Why do bad things happen to good people?
Why is evil allowed in the world?
But to be sure, I really don't think that I'm going to be worried about things like that in heaven. For me, those questions are probably more like
What did Eden look like?
How many animals were on the ark?
What happened to the dinosaurs?
What's a quasar?
Why are there mosquitos?
Trick Questions!
If you look up "trick questions" online, you'll get lists of riddles, like
What are two things you can never eat for breakfast?
What is always coming but never arrives?
What gets wetter the more it dries?
Those are fun! But not quite what I'm looking for. So then you might look up "brain teasers", and you'll find even more fun things, like
If you had only one match and entered a room with an oil lamp, wood stove, and candle, what would you light first?
If you are in a race and you pass the person in second place, what place are you in?
Some months have 30 days, others have 31. How many have 28?
And your group might enjoy trying to answer some of those (there are no shortages of lists online). Bring a list with you and try to stump your group.
But the Jewish leaders weren't trying to fool Jesus or amuse everyone with clever wordplay -- they were trying to trap Him. That's a different kind of question. I ended up searching for "philosophical trap questions" and "trap thought experiments". And wow, there are some tough ones out there. For example:
If you can kill one person to save five, do you?
If you replace every plank on a ship, is it still the same ship?
If you could plug into a machine that gives you a perfectly happy life, but that life is not real, would you do it?
If your future is already determined by prior causes, are you truly responsible for your actions?
Should a tolerant society tolerate intolerant individuals, or will that lead to the destruction of tolerance itself?
If doing something good for others makes you feel good, can there ever be such a thing as pure altruism?
At what precise point does bread stop being bread and become toast?
Can you experience anything objectively?
Now we're talking. Bring a few of those with you and madden your group. These are some questions where every answer seems to have a problem. This is what the Jews thought they were bringing to Jesus. But no, Jesus can make any question seem elementary.
Questions Used to Ridicule Christians
There are questions out there that people use with the specific intent to make fun of Christians (many of them come from the Christian tradition of Scholasticism, fyi). You might look up and bring in some of these with the intent that your group talk about how you would handle a question like it. Jesus wasn't flummoxed by mean-spirited questions, so neither should we be.
Can God make a rock so heavy that He can't lift it?
How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
Where does the human soul come from?
Coin Collecting
If none of those appeals to you, just swap to coin collecting. Some Jews thought to trap Jesus with a coin, so bring in some of your cooler collected coins and what they mean.
Topics like this are exactly why Wikipedia exists:
This is a great excuse to share a funny Nate Bargatze skit (he describes the dollar):
The information on a coin tells you everything you need to know about it. And that is exactly Jesus' point.
Government Authority
In this week's passage, some Jews ask Jesus if they should respect Rome's authority, thinking they can trap Him into saying something negative about Rome or something that will make the people upset. I used a government-related topic last week (pointing out that America's opinion of Congress is almost comically low right now), and the news hasn't gotten any better this week (see next topic), so I'm going to encourage us not to use politic-related topics and instead focus on what Jesus was getting at: God's people should be characterized by love. More about this below.
Illustration: Political Violence
America has been through political violence before -- let no one forget that four presidents have been assassinated. Some would argue that what's happening in our country right now is not as dangerous as what happened in the 60s, but I think that's quite beside the point. Narrowly defined, there have only been a few dozen acts of political violence in our country over the last 5 years. But in that same time frame, there have been some 10,000 religious hate crimes and more than 25,000 racial hate crimes. Regardless of how this compares with previous eras, that's thousands of uses of violence to express hatred in our country.
Is that okay? I'm assuming that you will say it is not.
This isn't a topic for discussion so much as an illustration that you may find a use for. Jesus' enemies in Jerusalem's leadership were so afraid of and angry with Him that they decided the right, godly (!) thing to do was to have Him killed.
I doubt those Jewish leaders ever thought they would resort to assassination. I'll admit that I've gotten numb to the news, and I think that's dangerous. I can't get numb to the wrongness of the use of violence to express anger or "settle" differences. If this topic comes up, just make sure to use it as an opportunity to ask your group to remember what Jesus has taught us about how to treat other people. And He says an amazing thing about "love" this week that ties it all together.
This Week's Big Idea: Love
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and most important command. The second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets depend on these two commands.”
Let's just pre-summarize that "love" is the most important topic in the entire Bible.
In the commentary below, we are going to explore what Jesus means by "depend on". But for now, let's make sure we understand what "love" means.
We've talked about this more times than I can count because it comes up in more Bible verses than I can count. Here's a brief recap of what you want your group to remember.
For starters, there are several different words translated as "love". You can use these pages if you want more details about them. Both uses of "love" in our passage are "agape".
Summary: agape is unmerited, self-giving love.
Let's back up. God is love (1 John 4). This means that love is a part of God's nature. We only know what love is because God has revealed it to us. And love permeates everything God does. When God creates, He creates in love. When He judges, He judges in love. The fact that sinful humans have been unable to understand this is the driving reason why we are often so confused about "love".
And because God loves us, we also are supposed to love God and one another (1 John 4, again). By His Holy Spirit, we have the capacity to love (Gal 5), and by His Word, we have a description of what that means (1 Cor 13). From this week's passage, we are to love God, and we are to love one another. This means:
Love our neighbor (Luke 10, Rom 13) -- this means everyone around us.
Love Christians (John 13-15, Gal 6) -- this means all Christians, especially our fellow church members.
Love our family (Col 3, Eph 5) -- the emphasis is on your natural family.
Love our enemies (Matt 5, Luke 6) -- Jesus wants this to be clear.
Here's a summary paragraph from the Evangelical Dictionary of Theology:
God in his very essence is love; hence, love is expressed toward the undeserving. John 3:16 states this unforgettably: though people have repudiated him, God loves the world, and the extent of his love was the sacrifice of his own Son, Jesus Christ, who was willing to lay down his life. On the basis of God's love believers are enjoined to love God, who is deserving, and to love others and even their enemies, who are not deserving. God's love is not only basic but it continually extends to the underserving and unloving, as seen in his continuing love toward the undeserving, and this is the basis of God's command for humankind's love. Therefore, God's love is seeking the highest good in the one loved, and people are enjoined to seek the highest good or the will of God in the one loved.
That is what Jesus expects of all of us.
Bonus Idea: Using Theology as a Weapon
I have heard from several of you that the Jehovah's Witnesses have been knocking on doors around here. A couple of summers ago, I had several visits from some Mormons. Some of you have expressed concern about such a visit, believing that the people knocking on your door are better able to weaponize the Bible than you are.
I want to clarify some things. Yes, according to the Armor of God (Eph 6), the Bible is the only offensive weapon we have -- the "sword of the Spirit". But the way the Bible is used by Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons on your doorstep is as a "Gotcha!" They're not using the Bible to "judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart" (Heb 4) but to confuse, trick, or even trap. In other words, they're trying to do to you what the Jewish leaders were trying to do to Jesus.
That's not what "the sword of the Spirit" means. The author of Hebrews explains that using the Bible rightly will help a person see and understand truth -- that they will realize the error of their thoughts and repent. That's what the Bible as an offensive weapon means.
Using the Bible to score debate points? That's disappointingly base.
If/when we get into a discussion or debate about biblical truth, our goal had better be that God's truth is better understood so that God's people can live more like He wants us to live ("a worker approved by God") (2 Tim 2).
The Jews in this week's passage tried to use what they thought was God's truth as a weapon to hurt Jesus and score points with the crowd. Jesus used God's truth to teach the crowd what God wanted of them. Let's use the Bible like Jesus did.
Don't worry if you can't answer every Gotcha! question. Just keep the Greatest Commandments in mind at all times, and you will be able to sense when someone is not using the Bible the way God wants it used.
Where We Are in Matthew
We're right on the heels of last week's passage (Actions Speak Louder Than Words -- Jesus' warning to the Jewish authorities in Matthew 21:23-31). Many Bible scholars believe that Matthew 22-25 all take place on Tuesday of Holy Week.
In last week's passage, the Jewish authorities tried to confront Jesus directly about His authority, and that didn't go so well. So now they try to discredit Jesus by asking Him "hard questions", thinking they can trick Him into saying something wrong.
How do you think that is going to go?
Part 1: Say Something Unpopular about the Government (Matthew 22:15-22)
15 Then the Pharisees went and plotted how to trap him by what he said. 16 So they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians. “Teacher,” they said, “we know that you are truthful and teach truthfully the way of God. You don’t care what anyone thinks nor do you show partiality. 17 Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not?” 18 Perceiving their malicious intent, Jesus said, “Why are you testing me, hypocrites? 19 Show me the coin used for the tax.” They brought him a denarius. 20 “Whose image and inscription is this?” he asked them. 21 “Caesar’s,” they said to him. Then he said to them, “Give, then, to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” 22 When they heard this, they were amazed. So they left him and went away.
The first Jewish "trap" was pretty simple. Make it where Jesus would have to say something negative about the Romans or something positive about them.
If Jesus said something negative about the Romans, they could accuse Him of sedition (or the like, which they did anyway).
If Jesus said something positive about the Romans, that wouldn't go over well with the crowd, none of which liked the Romans.
This is a "politics makes strange bedfellows" circumstance. The Herodians were a small and isolated political group. To make a long story short, they were pro-Herod, which meant they were pro-Rome (Augustus Caesar had appointed Herod the Great a generation before; A King, Three Kings(?), and The King - Matthew 2:1-12). Most likely, the Pharisees wanted the Herodians there because they expected Jesus to say something anti-Rome, and the Herodians could report that directly.
Verse 16 is meaningless flattery.
Don't miss the little detail in verse 19 -- Jesus didn't even have a coin of His own to show. Maybe everybody gave every coin to Judas (the common purse), or maybe this is a reminder that Jesus lived in poverty.
The common understanding of what Jesus says relates to Daniel 2: all governments owe their existence to God, so God's people should respect the authority of whatever government under which they live. That's not wrong! But Jesus' bigger point was actually the second part -- "and to God what is God's". To this point in history, God's people had thought of themselves as a political nation (now under the subjugation of foreign rule). But that was about to change. With the arrival of Pentecost, God's people were no longer biological but spiritual -- spreading throughout the entire world to live under every government instituted by men. Their identity would no longer be their nationality but their relationship with God in Jesus -- Christian. In this, the Lifeway material says well, "Caesar could claim their money, but God held a higher claim on their lives."
The Pharisees failed in their trap because they misunderstood the relationship God expected them to have with all people, even foreign invaders.
Part 1b: Say Something Confusing about Heaven (Matthew 22:23-33)
23 That same day some Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came up to him and questioned him: 24 “Teacher, Moses said, if a man dies, having no children, his brother is to marry his wife and raise up offspring for his brother. 25 Now there were seven brothers among us. The first got married and died. Having no offspring, he left his wife to his brother. 26 The same thing happened to the second also, and the third, and so on to all seven. 27 Last of all, the woman died. 28 In the resurrection, then, whose wife will she be of the seven? For they all had married her.” 29 Jesus answered them, “You are mistaken, because you don’t know the Scriptures or the power of God. 30 For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage but are like angels in heaven. 31 Now concerning the resurrection of the dead, haven’t you read what was spoken to you by God: 32 I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob? He is not the God of the dead, but of the living.” 33 And when the crowds heard this, they were astonished at his teaching.
The Lifeway material skips this passage. I kinda understand -- it's a bit confusing -- but I'm sad. This is a pertinent topic that lots of Christians have questions about, mainly because many Christians have been married more than once (following a divorce or a widowhood). (Without getting into the huge debate about divorce statistics -- What is the Actual Divorce Rate? - Focus on the Family -- around 30% of American adults have been divorced at least once.) The Sadducees might have been using this question to mock Jesus, but a lot of people today legitimately have this kind of question.
The Sadducees, who don't believe in the resurrection or the afterlife or really anything spiritual at all (which is why they are sad, you see?), confront Jesus with what the Old Testament calls levirate marriage (see Deut 25). To protect a widow and to preserve a family line, younger brothers would have an obligation to marry that widow. As far as we know, this wasn't really observed, so it became a theoretical playground for Sadducees to have their "thought experiments" and "brain teasers".
Here's what the Sadducees were getting at; it's simple, really, and it has plenty of implications for today. If a woman has had more than one husband, who will she be married to in the afterlife? The purpose behind the question is to make the afterlife seem absurd.
Either in heaven the woman will be married to multiple men at the same time, which is incestuous or immoral, or
the woman will be arbitrarily given to one of the brothers. If so, which one and how? What will the other brothers think?
In other words, the Sadducees were using one of their beliefs as a "gotcha" weapon. Jesus will not stand for this, and His answer is actually critical for helping us understand what heaven is.
First, Jesus puts one misconception to bed. Life in heaven is not exactly like life on earth. That should only make sense. On earth, there is death and sorrow and sin and struggle. None of those things exist in heaven. Why do you think it would be important for Jesus to clarify that life in heaven is not exactly like life on earth?
Jesus does not explain this in full. He only gives one illustration: marriage. In heaven, God's people will finally be able to love one another fully, as God loves us now. There will no longer be a need for the institution of marriage, which has two primary purposes:
to be the human foundation for raising children, and
to be the human illustration of God's love for all people.
Neither of those things will be needed in heaven, therefore marriage does not exist in heaven as it does on earth.
This almost always sparks debate or concern -- imagine the couple who has been married 70 years and is that example of human love that all of us admire. They aren't going to be married in heaven? Isn't that bad?
Okay. Slow down and think about what you just wondered. Do you really think that something in heaven will be lesser than it is on earth? Of course not.
We simply don't have the capacity to imagine a world in which all of our relationships with all other people are perfect. I think that divorce is actually a very good example to help us understand why this must be the case. Imagine two people who were married, then divorced, then remarried someone else and all of them were Christians. In heaven, do you think there is going to be jealousy? Or envy? Or regret? No! Those things exist on earth, but not in heaven. That means that life in heaven is different than life on earth. In an infinitely better way.
The Sadducees' tricky question was silly because they had no concept of what the afterlife could possibly be like (and they didn't believe in it anyway).
But second, Jesus' comment about that is almost a throwaway because He is clearly more interested in the bigger lie in the Sadducee's question: by denying the afterlife, the Sadducees reveal that they have no idea who God truly is.
Here's an incredible summary from Howard Marshall: "God will raise the dead because He cannot fail to keep His promises to them that He will be their God."
The fact that Jesus is able to explain such fundamental truth in such concise (and inarguable) terms has become shocking, and probably even a bit frightening, to the crowd.
[And maybe Lifeway didn't want to get into the bizarre world of people asking about angels and sex. Angels don't procreate. Don't think about it too hard.]
Part 2: Answer This Really Difficult Question (Matthew 22:34-40)
34 When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they came together. 35 And one of them, an expert in the law, asked a question to test him: 36 “Teacher, which command in the law is the greatest?” 37 He said to him, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. 38 This is the greatest and most important command. 39 The second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. 40 All the Law and the Prophets depend on these two commands.”
I like to think that this guy wasn't really trying to trap Jesus anymore. He simply had a tough question that he'd always wanted a good answer for.
[Aside: Luke gives a similar story in chapter 10, where Jesus is asked a similar question, but He turns it back on the man who asks. And Jesus uses it as the basis for the Parable of the Good Samaritan. There are enough differences between the two events that I think they are two different encounters. It should only make sense that this would be a common question Jesus would be asked.]
Pharisees were all teachers of the law, and many of them were experts. This was the sort of question they debated all the time. If there were any trap in this question, it was probably a shot in the dark that Jesus would give some off-the-wall answer they could use to discredit Him. But the Old Testament itself gives this answer, so there was little chance of that.
Jesus first cites the Shema (Deut 6) --
Listen, Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.
which every Jew would acknowledge is the foundation of Jewish life. We are not supposed to quibble about what "heart" and "soul" and "strength" mean; it just means "everything about you". We studied this before:
"In summary, this means to love God with
what you think
who you are
what you do
In other words, your person and your personality."
Then Jesus cites Leviticus 19:18 --
Do not take revenge or bear a grudge against members of your community, but love your neighbor as yourself; I am the Lord.
Note that the "expert" only asked for the "greatest" (most important?) commandment in the Bible. And Jesus gave him the expected answer. What nobody expected was that there is a second greatest commandment. Both commandments use the same verb for "love", which Jesus rightly points out means that we should love our neighbor in the same way that we love God. (And you can go to the Parable of the Good Samaritan for an explanation of who one's neighbor is. Neighbors - The Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37))
John explains why these two commands must be held together:
1 John 4:19 We love because he first loved us. 20 If anyone says, “I love God,” and yet hates his brother or sister, he is a liar. For the person who does not love his brother or sister whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. 21 And we have this command from him: The one who loves God must also love his brother and sister.
But Jesus goes beyond even that! These aren't just the two most important commands. The entire law "depends" (or "hangs") on them! Lots of debate over what this means --
Can we "deduce" the entire law from "love"? (Possibly, but how are you "deducing" the Prophets?)
Can we "abolish" the law and just obey these two commands? (Definitely not -- Jesus spoke against this idea in the Sermon on the Mount.)
[Note: "the Law and the Prophets" is a fairly common phrase that refers to everything we think of as the Old Testament.]
That leaves one possibility: we can only understand the Law and the Prophets if we read them within God's love. D. A Carson says, "Without these two commandments, the Bible is sterile." And he's right.
Think about the "complaints" people have with the Old Testament and the so-called "god of wrath". How do those complaints change when we discover that everything God did and said was out of love? If you save enough time, lead your group through a discussion of such "complaints" from the perspective of God's love. We're supposed to assume that God's love is everywhere throughout the Old Testament (because according to Jesus, it is). How does that love show up in controversial parts of the Old Testament?
In these three passages, the events of which took place on the same day, Jesus fundamentally fixes:
God's people's view of human government,
God's people's view of eternity in heaven, and
God's people's view of what's really important in life.
This is the Man the Jewish authorities want to kill.