In recent centuries the reliability of Scripture has been on trial as never before, and as followers of Christ, it is important we know how Jesus views Scripture. In this passage we get a very direct and candid look into the way Jesus views Scripture, the written word of God that in His day consisted of what we call the Old Testament.

Jesus is responding to a question from the Sadducees, and in verse 32 He quotes Exodus 3:6 where God speaks to Moses in the burning bush. God identifies Himself to Moses by saying, “I am the God…of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.”

In Matthew Jesus hangs his response to the Sadducees on the tense of the phrase “I AM.” Since God tells Moses that He is the God of these men who are already dead, then there must be life after their bodily death. Otherwise these men would no longer have a God and the phrase would have been “I was the God…”

The key thing here is that Jesus is confident that Scripture is authoritative and that things truly occurred just as Scripture records them….even down to the very tense of a specific word. If Exodus records God as saying “I am,” then that is truly what He said.

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In this message, we look at a person Jesus commends as having greater faith than everyone else in Israel! If that doesn’t get you interested, then perhaps nothing will. Nevertheless, we will see that the key element of this man’s “great faith” is his confidence in the overwhelming authority of Christ!

A couple of thoughts come to mind regarding this passage. First, since Jesus tells us to give that which bears Caesar’s image, the coin, to Caesar, it raises the question, “What do we give to God?” Obviously, the answer is that which bears God’s image, but what is that?

From Genesis 1: “Let us make man in our own image… in the image of God, male and female, he created them.” We bear God’s image, and thus it is our very selves that God expects of us.

Also, I find it particularly suitable that this passage, regarding our relationship to “Caesar”, falls this year on Independence Day in my church’s lectionary. We must always remember that our liberty is a gift from God, our Creator, not from our government. Caesar’s job is to protect and guard the liberty of his subjects; he is not its source. The same thing goes for morality. Caesar is not the ultimate arbiter of right and wrong—God is. When our government sets itself up as the determiner of morality, rather than its defender, whether through legislation, or courts, it is Caesar, back to his old tricks. Let us not give to Caesar that which belongs only to God.

BIG IDEA FOR THE DAY: What does giving to God what is God’s mean for you today?

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In this passage we are told that the kingdom of heaven is like a marriage feast, i.e., a big party. Many were invited, and all the likely candidates didn’t come. Some just made fun of the invite, others actually mistreated and abused the king’s messengers. So the king sent his messengers out to bring in whatever riff-raff they could find. This king was determined!

We may tend to think of the “kingdom of heaven”, as mentioned in this passage, as referring to some grand, cosmic, future reality, as in “I sure want to go to that feast in heaven when I die.” But Jesus, by his incarnation, death, resurrection, and sending of the Holy Spirit, came to bring the reality of the “kindgom of heaven” to the here and now.

The King is inviting us to his Son’s marriage feast each day. Today, when I get the invitation, what will I choose? Will I enter into his Presence, join his feast? Or will I scorn the invitation, and choose instead to feed sinful appetites? Or maybe I’ll just choose distractions–things that aren’t necessarily bad in themselves, but just fritter away my time and energy.

Lord, today I choose to come to the feast that you invite me to. Lord, I choose to receive from your hand, rather than the world, since I know that everything that comes from your hand is good.

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When I was a teen, my favorite job was babysitting for my piano teacher’s children. I’m not entirely sure letting me be responsible for her 3 little ones was necessarily the sanest choice, but the kids sure loved it. We had quite a few rowdy games that we played with great fervor, but none so much as “Rock-A-Bye-Baby.” Most people I know gently rock their children and then give them a little pretend-toss when they get to the line “down will come baby”, but that’s not how we played it. I would wrap one of them up snug in a blanket, rock them vigorously back and forth until they were giggling uncontrollably, and then, at the “down will come baby” climax, literally toss them 2 or 3 feet through the air onto their overstuffed couch. And they loved it. It never crossed their minds that I could very possibly lose my grip on them prematurely and drop them on the floor. And I’m sure they never thought I would ever miss the couch and send them flying into a less forgiving piece of furniture. Perhaps the craziest part of our game was the fact that they kept coming back for more. “Do it again! Do it again!”

So when Jesus says we should come to him like little children, I like to think of those 3. They trusted me completely – so much so that they literally put themselves into my hands. Do we trust Jesus that much? There will be times when my life is in so much chaos and motion that I have no control over it, but my response needs to be complete trust that He will not lose His grip on me. And in the moments when I feel as though I am hurtling through the air toward who-knows-what, He calls on me to rest in the assurance that He has, in His infinite love and wisdom, chosen the exact right place for me to land.

BIG IDEA FOR THE DAY: Would you let Jesus throw you on the couch? And then ask for more?