Leading Questions

The Pharisees were out to get Jesus. They figure if they could get him to say something against the Romans, they would have a lever in which to remove Jesus. So they go to him and ask him a question involving the payment of taxes to Caesar. If he said no, well the Romans might be after him.

But notice how they speak to Jesus before they ask that question. In Matthew 22:16 they say, “Teacher, we know that You are truthful and teach the way of God in truth, and defer to no one; for You are not partial to any”. You can see what they are doing. They are trying to rile him up with compliments. Imply he is the type of guy who won’t cave to pressure and then ask him a question to prove just that. Challenge him to show that he is a truthful teacher not afraid of giving the “right” answer.

Jesus didn’t take the bait.

His answer was brilliant. It took the issue out of the trap and back into the real world. He never violates who he is but doesn’t allow the malicious to control the context.

We should take note of this. How often do we get suckered into useless arguments and verbal traps by those that throw out similar traps? “Only real Christians” will do this or “if you love God you will XYZ. Some will take issues of opinion and make them a test of faithfulness. Many will piggyback political content as church doctrine.

Don’t take the bait. We need to render unto Caesar what’s his and God what is God’s. We can give answers without getting pulled into the fray.

Comments

I Know All Those Words, But That Sentence Makes No Sense To Me

Let’s say you travel back in time six hundred years or so. Luckily, you happen across a fellow that speaks English. Upon hearing your tale, he describes you as nice, smart, and handsome. Wouldn’t you feel good? You shouldn’t. As Sol Steinmetz in his book, Semantics Antics , explains; Nice originally meant someone who was foolish, ignorant, senseless, or absurd (middle English 1300). Smart for the first 300 years of its use meant causing pain, sharp, cutting, or severe, a sense that survives in the idiom "smart as a whip.” Handsome wasn’t complimentary. When coined around 1425, it just meant easily handled; it didn’t have its current positive connotation until 1590. You might think he said you were a kind, intelligent, good looking bloke, when in reality he said you were a foolish pain easily dealt with. Words have an annoying habit of changing meaning over time in the same language and it becomes even more compli...

Master Your Self

In a contest for the toughest president of the United States, it would be hard to go against Theodore Roosevelt. He was known for his “manly” pursuits hunting big game, climbing the Matterhorn, participating in boxing match while president. (These weren’t play fights, he lost the vision on one eye because of them!) Once before he was about to give a speech an assassin shot him in the chest. Roosevelt refused to go to a hospital and insisted on giving his speech, still wearing his blood-soaked shirt! Teddy might have become tough but he wasn’t born that way. He was a sickly child that suffered from severe asthma that almost proved fatal. As was a young boy, doctors discovered that he had a weak heart, and advised him to get a desk job and not strain himself. He was homeschooled because of his many illnesses and spent most of his time indoors. But then as a teen his father, whom Teddy Roosevelt revered, told his son, “ ...

Why Does A Lion Tamer Use a Chair?

Ok, I know you have seen the image. A lion tamer enters in the cage of the beast and forces it to obey his commands using a whip, a gun and a chair. Now you can see how the whip and gun could come in handy but you might be wondering why a chair would intimidate an animal as powerful as a lion? Clyde Beatty taming a lion with a chair It's not that the lion is afraid of the chair -- it's that the lion is confused by the chair. Cats are single-minded, and the points of the chair's four legs bobbing around confuse the lion enough that it loses its train of thought. Casually put, the chair distracts the lion from wanting to claw the lion tamer's face off. The powerful creature could destroy the chair in moment’s notice but instead it is distracted into submission. It’s not too much different than how Satan controls us today. By the power of God we could overcome anything that he would use to subdue us. We can overcome the evil one (1 st John 2:13-14). ...

Ecclesiastes 12:10

Search This Blog