ESCAPING THE TRAP
Mark 12:13-27
INTRO:
Pitch the hamster – feeling trapped. A hum-drum existence, punctuated by brief moments of excitement. Eat the food. Run on the wheel. Over and over again. Not able to be all a hamster could be. You could tell it was getting to her – more urgent climbing and chewing. Desperate for a break out. Well, it finally happened. More than a week ago, pitch escaped her trap.
Ever feel trapped? Not going anywhere? A treadmill? Frustrated by lack of accomplishment, purpose, meaning?
Trapped by a job? Relationship? Obligations? Life? Religion?
Some of us feel this way. Others don’t. Others of us need to know about traps – that they are out there. Pitch the hamster is free now, apparently running amok in our unfinished storage room. But what Pitch doesn’t know is that there are mouse traps in there…
If you’re not careful, you’ll get trapped.
PREV:
How do we escape the traps of life, religion, etc? How do we get out, how do we keep out? Today we will discover the keys as we see some religious leaders try to trap Jesus.
Let’s watch the 1st trap get set as we read vv. 13-15a.
A. They try to trap Jesus with a question of allegiance
Pharisees & Herodians – strange allies: Republicans and Democrats. Broncos and Chiefs fans.
“Catch” = to trap an animal; they wanted to snare him.
Question carefully devised to discredit or imperil Jesus.
They tried to close off any path of evasion to this difficult and painful question.
Question surrounds the payment of the annual tax to Rome, started in 6 AD.
Highly emotional issue – people resented it greatly.
They wanted to force him into a compromising position:
“Yes” would discredit him in the eyes of the people
“No” would incur the retribution of Rome.
How will Jesus respond? Cornered, how will he react? Let’s see his answer as I read vv. 15b-16.
B. Jesus answers the question of allegiance
Jesus sees through them: “Why are you trying to trap me?”
Jesus calls for a denarius –Roman coin used to pay tax.
“Whose portrait?” – The emporer’s, Caesar Tiberius.
“Whose inscription?” – “Tiberius Caesar Augustus, Son of the Divine Augustus on one side. “Pontifex Maximus” (chief priest) on the other…
These are a reflection of the “imperial cult” and were a claim to divine honors.
So what did Jesus say? Let’s read v. 17.
Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s.
What is Caesar’s?
The coin, stamped with Caesar’s image.
Since the coin belonged to him, it was right to give it back to him – he had legal claim to it.
We have a moral obligation to obey authority (Ro. 13:1-7)
We must give proper allegiance to civil authorities.
Give to God what is God’s.
What is God’s?
Illus: 3 men who had their own way of deciding what belonged to God. Drew a circle: whatever landed inside was God’s; whatever landed outside was God’s; whatever stayed up in the air was God’s…
We’re not going to answer it that way.
What belongs to God?
If the coin, bearing Caesar’s image belongs to him,
What bears God’s image? We do!
We should completely give ourselves to God.
We should not give to man what is due only to God (as Caesar wanted)
We must give complete allegiance to God.
It turns out these guys were trapped because their allegiance was misplaced. One group worshiped the state; the other worshiped their religious system.
When you give your allegiance to something besides God, your are trapped!
Who are you pledging allegiance to?
• A belief system, worldview?
• A habit
• A pleasure – the Broncos? - worship
• A lifestyle, way of life - time
• A job –sense of worth. Your boss has the right to your effort, hard work, commitment, but not to your soul.
• A relationship - intimacy
We feel trapped because these things can’t deliver in accordance to what we put into them.
That’s what a trap is – something that looks good but doesn’t deliver; something that keeps us from everything God has for us.
This is our first step, our first safeguard to avoiding the religion trap. We will avoid the trap of religion if we
I. GIVE COMPLETE ALLEGIANCE TO GOD
Give it all to God! Give God what belongs to him – all of you!
Experience the goodness that comes when you give it all to him.
Who or what wants from you what only God should get?
Transition: The end of v. 17 says they were amazed at him. They were amazed because he avoided the trap, and was not himself trapped by a mere religion. But his opponents weren’t done with him. Another party of leaders, represented on the Sanhedrin approaches Jesus with their own question, their own trap. Let’s look at it as I read vv. 18-23.
Mark gives us some important background on this group. They are experts in Scripture interpretation, but they did not believe in resurrection, in afterlife, in heaven. They also only considered the Torah as Scripture.
So the point of their question is to ridicule Jesus for believing in such things.
Illus: Like someone who sneeringly asks you who Cain’s wife was. Or like the soap commercial I saw this week that actually referred to “all that Adam and Eve nonsense.”
In other words, smart, educated, intelligent people don’t believe this nonsense. But since you do, tell us…
They refer to Levirate marriage – prescribed in Dt. 25:5-10.
If a man dies without a male heir, his brother was to marry his widow. Their first son was considered the dead man’s son, and so the family name and inheritance remained.
These guys make up a wild story, to point out the absurdity.
How do you think Jesus will respond to that? In his response, Jesus will actually give us the next to steps, safeguards to avoiding the religion trap, because he will point out their problems. As I read v. 24, notice what Jesus says their errors are.
A. They were in error because they did not know the Scriptures.
First Jesus makes it clear that they are wrong, dead wrong.
One reason for their error is their failure to know Scripture.
Now, this would be like telling a judge he doesn’t know the law, or a professor that he doesn’t know his subject.
Illus: I corrected Dr. Etue once in a history class.
Let’s read the rest of vv. 25-27 to hear Jesus point out how they were wrong.
They had the whole resurrection thing wrong, because they were thinking in human terms.
Jesus corrects their impression of heaven (and ours!)
It won’t simply be an extension of this life. It will be comparable to the angel’s: it will center on worshiping God
Sometimes people ask me about the emphasis we put on worship – in our services, budget, etc. This is why: we’re practicing for heaven! Throughout the Bible, what do angels in heaven do? They worship God!
So when people don’t like it, I tell them “Then you’re not going to like heaven much, either.”
The Sadduccees only held the Torah as authoritative, and didn’t think Torah taught resurrection. Jesus shows them otherwise, from Exodus 3:1-6, the burning bush account.
2 things happening here:
He emphatically still is the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob.
“God of …” = helper, savior, protector, provider of redemption.
He is not the helper, protector of the dead, but of living.
God’s faithfulness implies resurrection.
What’s the point of protecting Abe, Isaac, Jacob during the course of their life, but failing to deliver them from death?
They were badly mistaken!
B. We must know the Scriptures to avoid the same error.
Obviously, we need to know the Scripture if we are going to avoid the same mistake they made.
We’re not talking about basic ignorance – the Sadduccees probably had the entire Torah memorized.
We’re talking about understanding.
They were so committed to their presuppositions, that they misread the Scriptures.
They assumed their was no supernatural, etc. This impacted their reading.
We do the same. We get trapped by our religion when we become so committed to an ideology, a method, a pet topic, what someone important to us said, that we misread.
Illus: Recognizing the need for this in my own life, I have set out to study certain things this year.
If we are going to avoid being trapped by our religion, we must
II. KNOW THE SCRIPTURES
Reading them is the first step. You simply cannot know them if you don’t read them. If you don’t have a Bible, you can have one of ours. Seriously. Or come up to me afterward…
The next step is studying. Jesus’ answer to these guys was not right on the surface. It required thinking. The Scriptures are such that God rewards those who diligently look into them. Make use of opportunities such as small groups.
Transition: Jesus said they made two error, didn’t he? What was their other error? It leads us to our third step, safeguard.
A. They were in error because they did not know the power of God.
Jesus said they didn’t know the power of God.
In regards to resurrection, they didn’t know God’s power. They didn’t recognize the fact that God has the kind of power necessary to raise people from the dead.
But this says more about their religion: It was about knowledge, facts, men. It was without power. Their God was perhaps a cultural icon, but he had no power. That’s religion, and that will trap you.
B. We must know the power of God to avoid the same error.
If we don’t want to be like them (and we don’t!), we have to know the power of God. What does this mean?
Partly it means having an understanding, a concept of God that includes this kind of power.
The Bible has a lot to say about God’s power:
Displayed in creation – Rom. 1:20
Demonstrated in the resurrection – 1 Cor. 6:14
Changes us – Phil. 3:21
Is in us as believers – Eph. 1:18-20
Results in us knowing Christ’s love and seeing incredible happen
Results in us accomplishing every good deed and desire of God – 2 Thess. 1:11
Results in ability to patiently endure everything with
joy – Col. 1:11
Results in overcoming fear – 2 Tim. 1:7
Results in us not being ashamed of Jesus, able to endure suffering – 2 Tim. 1:8
Do you know the power of God?
Illus: My friend Patty: God showed her their house ahead of time.
Can your God do this?
When you hear a story like this, can you believe it? Or do you automatically rationalize it away, assume there is some other explanation to it?
But we can’t leave this in the intellectual realm, it isn’t just about intellectually believing that God has power.
Jesus said they didn’t “know” God’s power, and he was speaking to people with a thoroughly Jewish understanding of “to know” – which has more to do with experience than intellect.
You do not know the power of God, you have never experienced his life changing power simply because you have never opened yourself to it. Is that possible?
In order to avoid the trap of religion, we must
III. KNOW THE POWER OF GOD
