Luke 20 Round Two: Jesus Can Shut a Fool Up

Power walks into a trap and trips over the truth. We open Luke 20 and move through a series of high-stakes confrontations where Jesus refuses to answer bad-faith questions on their terms and instead reframes reality around God’s kingdom. The leaders demand to know his authority; he points them back to John and exposes their evasions. Then he tells the parable of the tenant farmers, a sobering sweep of Israel’s resistance to God’s messengers and the murder of the beloved Son, anchoring it with the psalm of the rejected stone becoming the cornerstone.

From there, the coin shines in the light. We explore what “Render to Caesar, and to God” actually demands—ordered allegiance, clear consciences, and a life marked by the image we bear. It’s not a dodge; it’s a radical alignment that honors lawful duty without surrendering ultimate loyalty. When the Sadducees try to make the resurrection look absurd, Jesus corrects the category: the age to come isn’t a copy of this one. There, we are children of God, alive in a life that outlasts death, and our deepest bonds find their fulfillment in union with Christ. Hope becomes solid when grounded in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—the God of the living.

We close with Jesus’ own question about David’s Lord and a warning about religious showmanship—robes, greetings, and seats of honor that mask injustice. Together, we practice a simple way to engage Scripture (SOAP) so the Word moves from page to heart: write the passage, note what you observe, name your next faithful step, and pray it in. If questions about authority, allegiance, or the afterlife are swirling in you, this conversation aims to steady your steps on the cornerstone.

If this helped you see Jesus more clearly, follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a quick review to help others find the Bible Breakdown. What part of Luke 20 challenged you most today?

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The More We Dig. The More We Find.

Scripture quotations taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation (NLT).
Copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation.
Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Chapters

• 0:00 Framing Luke’s Investigation
• 0:28 Jesus’ Authority Challenged
• 2:59 Parable of the Wicked Tenants
• 6:29 The Cornerstone Confronts Leaders
• 6:59 Trap on Taxes and Allegiance
• 10:06 Sadducees and the Resurrection
• 13:22 David’s Lord and Hypocrisy Exposed
• 14:28 Prayer and Closing Blessing

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Welcome to the Bible Breakdown Podcast. Every day, we take one chapter of the Bible, dig deeper, and discover that the more we dig, the more we find. You can find out more at the Biblebreakdown.com. Now let's grow in God's word together. Well, hello, hello. Welcome back to the Bible Breakdown where we are just going through God's Word one chapter at a time and letting Him just change us from the inside out. Man, the more we dig, the more we find, and that is definitely true today. Today is Luke chapter 20. And I'm gonna tell you, if I were to give this a title, it would be Jesus Knows How to Shut a Fool Up. He absolutely does. Well, we're gonna jump into God's Word, and don't forget this is the Gospel of Luke. So it is the investigative journalistic approach for the first century. Like the trained doctor Luke was commissioned by a guy named Theopolis. We know that Theopolis may have asked him to do it, but really this was all done by the Holy Spirit. It's inspired by the Holy Spirit, it's the authoritative word of God, and he goes into the Judea countryside and he investigates the claims about Jesus and writes back the truth of who Jesus is. And today I would love to know who Luke sat down with to come up with this because Jesus is just he ain't messing around. He goes and he is his authority is going to get questioned, and so he is going to shut up these detractors. He's going to tell a parable about some evil farmers, he is going to talk about paying taxes, which is gonna be really interesting, and then he's gonna do it, have a discussion about resurrection. There's just some really interesting stuff going on here. So, once again, the format of this is we're gonna read a passage, stop and talk about it, and then just keep going. And the mental image I have is you and I sitting across from each other and us just digging into God's word together. So here we go. Got your Bibles with me. Let's get ready to go. Chapter 30, or excuse me, 20, verse 1 says, One day, as Jesus was teaching the people and preaching the good news in the temple, the leading priests and the teachers of religious law and the elders came up to him. They demanded, By what authority are you doing these things? Who gave you the right? Let me ask you a question first, he replied. Did John's authority to baptize come from heaven or merely human? They talked it over amongst themselves. If we say it was from heaven, he will ask us why we didn't believe John. But if we say it was merely human, the people will stone us because they are convinced John was a prophet. So they finally replied that they didn't know. Jesus replied or responded, then I won't tell you by what authority I do these things. So Jesus just basically told them to shut up. They know that, or he knows rather, that they are just a bunch of frauds, that they just don't like that he is messing up their religious order and everything that's going on. So they're trying to kind of catch Jesus and he knows what they're up to. So he just says, Hey, look, answer me this question, and then I'll go there. So he just just told them to be quiet. I mean, just go away. And they did. All right. Now he's going to tell a parable. Don't forget, a parable is a complex spiritual principle in the form of a story to help us understand it. And so Jesus says in verse 9, now Jesus turned to the people again and told them this story. A man planted a vineyard, leased it to tenant farmers, and moved to another country to live for several years. At the time of the grape harvest, he sent one of his servants to collect his share of the crop. But the farmers attacked the servant, beat him up, and sent him back empty-handed. So when the owner sent another servant, but they also insulted him. They beat him up, and they sent him away empty-handed. A third man was sent, so they wounded him and chased him away. What will I do? the owner asked himself. I know. I'll send my cherished son. Surely they'll respect him. But when the tenant farmers saw his son, they said to each other, Here comes the heir to his to this estate. Let's kill him and get the estate for ourselves. So they dragged him out of the vineyard and murdered him. What do you suppose the owner of the vineyard will do to them? I tell you, he will come and he will kill those farmers and lease the vineyard to others. How terrible that such a thing should ever happen, his listeners protested. And Jesus looked at them and said, Then what does the scriptures mean when it says the stone that the builders rejected has now become the cornerstone? Everyone who stumbles over that stone will be broken into pieces, and it will crush everyone it falls on. The teachers of religious law and the leading priest wanted to arrest Jesus immediately because they realized that he was telling the story against them, and they were the wicked farmers, but they were afraid of the people's reaction. So what Jesus just did was is he's talking about that over the generations, God would raise up a prophet that would go to the nation of Israel and we'd say, Hey, nation of Israel, you need to turn back to God. You're going the wrong way. God wants freedom for us, he wants goodness for us, but we got to do it his way. Let's turn back to him. And what would happen again and again and again is a lot of time the religious leaders would cast them away, cast them aside, kill them. And we get to the book of Jeremiah one day, we're going to see all the horrible things they did to Jeremiah. But they would constantly do that. And so finally, you know, the Bible said, or Jesus tells this parable, finally, the Son came himself and said, I got this, I'm going to take care of this. And they're not going to receive him either. And I love the idea of Jesus saying, I am like a you know, a stone that if you hit me, you're going to break into pieces. If I land on you, I'm going to crush you. Other words, you can't do anything with me because I'm the man. And of course, religious leaders, they hear this, they know what's up. They know that scripture he just quoted was a messianic scripture that was speaking of the king that was coming. They know exactly what he's doing. That's why they want to arrest him, but they can't. Because Jesus knows what he's doing, right? All right, verse 20 says this. Watching for their opportunity, the leaders sent spies pretending to be honest men. They tried to get Jesus to say something that could be reported to the Roman governor so that he could arrest Jesus. Teacher, they said, we know that you speak and teach what is right and are not influenced by what others think. You teach the way of God truthfully. Now tell us, is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not? He saw through their trickery and said, Show me a Roman coin. Whose picture is entitled, or as the title is stamped on it? Caesar's, they replied. Well then, give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and give to God what belongs to God. And so they failed to trap him by what they said, what he said in front of the people. Instead, they were actually amazed by his answer, and they became silent. So what Jesus is doing here is here is this catch 22, and that is that the Jewish people were known to be troublemakers among the Romans. As a matter of fact, in the intertestamental time, which is the between Malachi and Matthew, there have actually been some uprisings that if you ever get a hold of a Catholic Bible, it's the Apocryphus, the non-canonized books that are called the Maccabees, and this time when they actually rose up the Jewish people and tried to you know get their freedom from Rome. And so there was, you know, they were they were defeated, by the way. And so there's this constant thing of I don't want to be faithful to the Romans, I just want to be Jewish. But if I'm not faithful to the Romans, they're gonna destroy us. And it's always going back and forth, who should my ultimate allegiance be? Should it be to God or should it be to the Romans? And that even became a religious situation. Should I be faithful to the Romans? Well, Romans are paganistic worshippers, so therefore should I engage in that? So it's just all this kind of thing. And so they're putting this catch 22 in front of Jesus. And so what Jesus says is you absolutely should obey God, and you should also obey the laws of the land with the um the things of that the land requires. In other words, you don't, you know, you don't go to a store nowadays and just say, God bless you, and walk out with your groceries, you're gonna get arrested. You pay for groceries with money, and you pay with money because that's part of the American currency. If you live in the United States, whatever country you live in, that would be that. So he's saying, when you're dealing with the things of the state, deal with the things of the state. But if you deal with the things of God, you deal with the things of God. Now, let's finish this up. Verse 27, Jesus is going to talk about discussion about resurrection. Then Jesus approached some of the Sadducees, religious leaders, who say there is no resurrection from the dead. They posed this question Teacher, Moses gave us a law that if a man dies, leaving a wife but no children, his brother should marry a widow and have a child who will carry on his brother's name. Well, suppose there were seven brothers. The oldest one married and then died without children. So the second brother married the widow, but he died also. Then the third brother married her, and this continued with all seven of them who died without children. Finally, the woman also died. So tell us, whose wife will she be in the resurrection? For all seven were married to her. Jesus replied, Marriage is for people here on earth, but in the age to come, those worthy of being raised from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage, and they will never die again. In this respect, they will be like angels. They will be called children of God and the children of the resurrection. But now, as to whether the dead will be raised, even Moses proved this when he wrote about the burning bush. Long after Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had died, he referred to the Lord as the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. So he is the God of the living, not the dead, for they were all alive to him. Well said, teacher, remarked some of the teachers of religious law who were standing there. And then no one dared ask him any more questions. So what Jesus just did is he just talked about that, yes, in the kingdom of God, the people of God will live eternally. But there is no such thing as marriage in heaven because we will be married in a sense as far as in joined together to our bridegroom, who is Jesus. Now, this is a spiritual thing, not a physical thing, but that will be the only marriage, the only covenant there in heaven. And so when you get to heaven one day, if you're single right now, well, you'll still be single. If you get when you get to heaven one day and you're married now, you will still know your spouse, but you will not be married to them in the sense that you are now. Now, or then rather, you will know them as a companion and as a close connection, but all of our love, all of our um desire will be toward God, and that's that's how the relationship will work. And then the second part he talks about how when God approached Moses, he didn't say the God uh the God who was with Abraham or was with Isaac, but he was he used the term in present tense. That's where God is saying that God didn't see Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as dead now as far as eternally dead, but dead physically, but with him in eternity. Alright, let's finish this up. Verse 41. Then Jesus presented them with a question. Why is it, he asked, that the son or that the Messiah is said to be the son of David? For David himself wrote in the book of Psalms, the Lord said to my Lord, sit at the right at the place of honor at my right hand until I humble your enemies, making them a footstool under your feet. Since David called the Messiah Lord, how can he be Messiah or be the Son? Let me say that again. Since David called the Messiah Lord, how can the Messiah be his son? Then the crowds listening turned to the disciples and said, Then the crowd listening, I don't know if you can hear, there's lightning happening outside right now, and it's really distracting. So let's finish this quickly. Then, with the crowds listening, he turned to his disciples and said, Beware of these teachers of religious law, for they like to parade around in flowing robes, and they love to receive respectful greetings as they walk in the marketplaces. And how they love to sit in seats of honor and in the synagogues and the head of tables and banquets. Yet they shamelessly cheat widows out of their property, and then pretend to be pious by making long prayers in public. Because of this, they will be severely punished. So basically, what Jesus is saying is be so very careful around these teachers of religious law, because they don't really know what they're talking about. They put on a show, but they don't really know what's going on because he asked the question and they didn't have an answer. So I want to know what stood out to you. As we talked about in the show notes, there is a way that you can look up and see how to soap through God's word. And I would like for you to take some time when we're done with this today, and I want you to write out what scripture meant something to you today. Then I want you to maybe write down the observation. What was it that stood out to you? Then write down the application. What are you going to do about God's word today? And then seal it in your heart with a prayer. There's so much in this that I would really encourage you with, especially the two things I want to talk to you about for just a moment, is the idea of really the one thing is the idea of what happens after death. I know so many people who struggle with the afterlife, not because they don't believe in it, but because they know people that are already there. They know people who have already entered into eternity and passed through that veil. I know someone just recently who lost a very precious loved one. And can I tell you that studying about the afterlife is beautiful and it's wonderful. But the Bible doesn't speak too much about the time that is to come because it's more focused on getting us there. But if you would like to, you can look in the show notes and look in some uh on my blog. And I've got some books that I have read that were really great talking about the life that is to come. One of them is by a guy named Randy Alcorn that he did a very deep dive on the idea of heaven. And there's also a scholar named Dr. Gary Habermath, and he is one of the foremost scholars on the resurrection and also NDE, near death experiences, where people claim to see things and they come back and report them to us. I just encourage you, if you've been struggling lately with the idea of death and what lies on the other side and what all else is going on, I would encourage you to look up some of that because God's word is rich and it is powerful. And also when we study God's word, there's a lot that is there. But I will also caution you that God's word is intended with helping us get to heaven, not necessarily always explaining what happens once we're there. But the more you dig, the more you find. Okay? I love you so much. I'm gonna pray for us and then we'll be done for today. Father, thank you for your goodness, your kindness, your mercy. Thank you that your word is quick and it is powerful, it's constantly speaking to us and moving us. I pray, God, that as we look further into your word, the more we'll see you. And that as we see you, we will grow in you and we'll experience your freedom and everything we do. In Jesus' name, we pray.

unknown: 14:33

Amen.