19 – Taxes, Resurrection, and the Greatest Commandment

Mark–the Right Now Gospel
Chapter 12
Pt 19
“Taxes, Resurrection, and the Greatest Commandment”
Mark 12: 13-17 “Later they sent some of the Pharisees and Herodians to Jesus to catch him in his words. 14 They came to him and said, “Teacher, we know that you are a man of integrity. You aren’t swayed by others, because you pay no attention to who they are; but you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. Is it right to pay the imperial tax to Caesar or not? 15 Should we pay or shouldn’t we?”
“But Jesus knew their hypocrisy. ‘Why are you trying to trap me?’ he asked. ‘Bring me a denarius and let me look at it.’ 16 They brought the coin, and he asked them, “Whose image is this? And whose inscription?”
“Caesar’s,” they replied.
17 Then Jesus said to them, “Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.”
And they were amazed at him.”
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In this second half of Mark’s gospel, we will see that Jesus is approached by four groups of people–the Pharisees, the Herodians, the Sadducees, and the Scribes. All of them are trying to trap him with theological questions so that might accuse him of heresy or some other transgression.
The first to approach are the Pharisees and Herodians. Now, the Pharisees were an influential religious sect within Judaism in the time of Christ and the early church. The word Pharisee comes from a Hebrew word meaning “separated” and they were known for their emphasis on personal holiness, their embrace of oral tradition in addition to the written Law, and their teaching that all Jews should observe all 600-plus laws in the Torah.
But they were hypocrites to the core. Jesus castigated and rebuked them like no one else, warning of them saying, “They crush people with unbearable religious demands and never lift a finger to ease the burden” (Matt 23:4).
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Then the Herodians were a political party that supported King Herod Antipas, who ruled over the land of the Jews from 4 B.C. to A.D. 39. The Herodians were all about submitting to Herod, and therefore to Rome itself.
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So the Pharisees and Herodians teamed up to trap Jesus with a doctrinal/political question–“Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?”
Luke’s gospel puts it, “So they watched Him, and sent spies who pretended to be righteous, that they might seize on His words, in order to deliver Him to the power and the authority of the governor.”–20:20
If Jesus had answered wrongly, they could have had him arrested for treason and sedition against Rome.
But Jesus, “knowing their hypocrisy,” said, “give me a coin,” then asked them whose likeness was imprinted on it. “They said, Caesar’s.”
Jesus in his infinite wisdom replied, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s!”
It says, “They marveled at him,” NOT over the truth of his response, but at how skillfully he had extricated himself from the net in which they had hoped to entangle him.
The early church father Tertullian interpreted Jesus’s response to mean, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s;’ that is, give to Caesar his image stamped upon his coin, and give to God his own image stamped upon you; so that while you render to Caesar the coin which is his due, you may render your own self to God.”
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Then next came the Sadducees with another question intended to trap Him:
18 “Then the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him with a question. 19 “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. 20 Now there were seven brothers. The first one married and died without leaving any children. 21 The second one married the widow, but he also died, leaving no child. It was the same with the third. 22 In fact, none of the seven left any children. Last of all, the woman died too. 23 At the resurrection whose wife will she be, since the seven were married to her?”
Now, the Sadducees were the scoffers and infidels of Jesus’s day. They not only denied a future resurrection from the dead for believers, they also denied that there were angels and spirits, and the immortality of the soul altogether, and taught that there was no future state!
So in their question to Jesus they lay out a hypothetical scenario designed to show what was to them the absurdity of the resurrection from the dead. You have seven brothers. The first brother marries a particular woman. And as fate would have it, he dies. Then, according to Moses’s law that said the man’s brother should take her as his wife to maintain the family lineage, the next brother in line marries her. Then he too dies. There happen to be 7 brothers in all, and one after another dies in succession, each one having taken her as his wife. The trap question then was, “Whose wife would she be in the resurrection?” In heaven who would she be with!
And Jesus blows their trap question out of the water:
24 Jesus replied, “Are you not in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God? 25 When the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven.”
So according to Jesus there is no marriage in heaven, so the hypothetical case they brought was irrelevant! But Jesus didn’t stop there. He went on to set them straight about the certainty of a coming resurrection:
26 “Now about the dead rising—have you not read in the Book of Moses, in the account of the burning bush, how God said to him, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? 27 He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. You are badly mistaken!”
Luke’s gospel adds an important ending to the verse: “He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.”–Luke 20:38
At the burning bush, God spoke of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as those that were alive. So rest assured, there will be a resurrection of the dead when Christ returns–of believers first, and afterward of all unbelievers that have died in their sins.
John 6:40 “For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.”
Rev 20:11-15 “11 Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. The earth and the heavens fled from his presence, and there was no place for them. 12 And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. 13 The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what they had done. 14 Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. 15 Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.”
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The Greatest Commandment
28 One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”
29 “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31 The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”
32 “Well said, teacher,” the man replied. “You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. 33 To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.”
34 When Jesus saw that he had answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And from then on no one dared ask him any more questions.”
This scribe was on the borderlands of the kingdom. His nearness to salvation was revealed by his grasp and embrace of the kingdom value of agape love–both for God and man. But he yet needed to turn by faith to Christ for forgiveness of his sins. He was CLOSE but not quite there!
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Then in verse 35, Jesus confronts the Pharisees with a huge question:
35 “While Jesus was teaching in the temple courts, he asked, “Why do the teachers of the law say that the Messiah is the son of David? 36 David himself, speaking by the Holy Spirit, declared: “‘The Lord said to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet.”’ 37 David himself calls him ‘Lord.’ How then can he be his son?” And the common people heard him gladly.”
Now, at issue here is the divinity of Christ Jesus. Jesus quotes Ps 110:1 to them, which was a psalm of David. Notice the first 6 words, “The Lord said to my Lord.” So we have “the Lord (Yahweh, the most common OT designation for God), saying to my Lord (adonai, a reference to Messiah), sit at my right hand (the one and only exclusive place for God the Son) until I make your enemies your footstool. In the direct Hebrew it would read, “Jehovah said to my Lord.”
So the case Jesus is making is simple. It was accurate to say he was a son of David, for the Messiah was prophesied to come from the lineage of David. But that wasn’t the end all. He was more than that. David calling Messiah ‘Lord’ spoke of the dual nature of Christ. On the earthly plane he was a descendant of David. But on the heavenly plane he was the very Son of God! Divinity! And THAT is what Jesus wanted the Pharisees to get. He had not been wrong in calling himself the Son of God!
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Jesus proceeds to warn against the Pharisees:
38 As he taught, Jesus said, “Watch out for the teachers of the law. They like to walk around in flowing robes and be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, 39 and have the most important seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at banquets. 40 They devour widows’ houses and for a show make lengthy prayers. These men will be punished most severely.”
I would suggest here that we also live in a day when certain people claiming to be Christian preachers and teachers devour widow’s houses by manipulating them with false teaching and false promises regarding giving. “Send your gift to me and God will supernaturally bless you with double for the rest of the year!” And stuff like that.
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Then Jesus gives a real life example:
41 “Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts. 42 But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a few cents.”
One commentator writes, “This widow was one of the helpless class which Jesus had just described as devoured by the extortion of the Scribes and Pharisees.”
So while it was noble and noteworthy that the poor woman emptied her pocket to give to the treasury, it is also an indictment on the Pharisees for wresting it from her.
43 Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. 44 They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything—all she had to live on.”