Matthew Chapter 22
Per the requirement of the religious law a sacrificial lamb needed to be inspected to confirm it had no spot or blemish before being offered. In the same manner, the Lord Jesus was inspected and they found no fault in him. They tried hard to find fault but were unable to do so.
The Lord Jesus told them the parable of the wedding. The master who sent out the invitation for his son's wedding is Father God. He gave an invitation to the nation of Israel by sending his Son to them. Through the gospel accounts we see how the religious leaders rejected the Lord Jesus even though the common people heard him gladly. As a whole Israel rejected their Messiah.
In the parable, the invited guests refused to come to the wedding supper, but instead killed the messengers. This parallels how Israel killed the prophets who were sent to her with God's message. Many times we read how God's prophets were rejected, persecuted, and killed, even up until John the Baptist who was the last of the old testament prophets.
As a result, the master of the wedding supper, the father of the Son, brought his wrath upon them. Also, this began a general invitation to bring in whoever heard the invitation. This reflects the gospel message going to all the world. The Lord Jesus told his disciples to preach the gospel in all the world and to every person after he ascended to heaven. This is what we see happening throughout the book of Acts and beyond.
However, just because a person heard the gospel and went to church does not make him a Christian. There was a man who came to the wedding but did not wear wedding clothes. This is someone who heard the word but did not receive the word into their life to the extent that it changed who they were. They knew about God, the Bible, and probably attended church, but none of this got into their heart or changed who they were. They had selfish interests in mingling among God's people. This man eventually was exposed by the Lord and put out of the fellowship of the true bride of Christ.
The enemies of the Lord Jesus asked him questions in an attempt to trap him. Their trap was to get him to side with Jews or the Romans but the Lord Jesus easily navigated their questions. He told them to give to Caesar what is Caesar's (the coin with Caesar's image on it), but unto God what was God's (man bears the image of God). In his response, no one could trap him and no one could say anything bad about the Lord Jesus. The Lord Jesus clearly showed believers that they were citizens of another place and our kingdom was not of this current world system. While we are here we submit to the governing authorities in place. This was also the same message the apostle Paul and the other apostles wrote in their letters. A good example is Romans chapter 13.
The Sadducees tried to trap the Lord Jesus with a question about marriage and resurrection. The irony here was that these men claimed not to believe in the resurrection or in angels. But the Lord Jesus, in his reply, proved the resurrection in a simple way by using scripture. Scripture calls Jehovah the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The scripture said this in the present tense which means that he is even now the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and therefore these men must be alive. God is not the God of the dead but of the living, therefore these men, even though they died, must be alive in the presence of God. This showed the importance of knowing even the verb tense of scriptures because sometimes a point can be made just by what tense a verb is used in scripture.
The Lord Jesus was asked what was the greatest commandment and he easily replied, "Love God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength. The second commandment is to love your neighbor as yourself."
Scripture assumes you already love yourself. Men are lovers of their own selves and that is why we must be told to love our neighbor as we already love ourselves.
Now the Lord Jesus asked them a question. Why does David, speaking by the Holy Spirit, call his son "Lord"? The implication was not only was the Messiah the Son of David, but that he was also the Son of God. They could not or would not answer this question from the Lord Jesus and left him alone.
