The Pulpit Commentary — Matthew — Volume 2 — Section 388

I. CHRIBT1B REPROACH. "Why tempt ye me, ye hypocrites?" Tl::ls must han annoyed them, and made them fear that they would do but little with him, Thm impressed the people, who were listening, and made them feel sure that he was more th1m a match for the entanglers. II. CIIRIBT's REQUEST. "Show me a penny." As it had to be a coin that tribute ~-0 Ca>sar could be paid in, and not a shekel with which payments in support of God's temple were made, it had to have the head of the reigning Caisar on it. Christ evidently examined it in view of the people, who were auxiously watching; and be made his questioners say distinctly whose image was on the coin. It was n~ God's temple ; it was CIBS&r. Ill. CHl!.IBT's REPLY~ "Cresar's is it? then it is nothing to me. I am the servant of God. I have nothing to say on such a matter. It is not in my province, If Cresar's head is on the coin, no donbt it belongs to him; then give it him if it is bis." Jesus had no authority to urge the claims of Cmsar; he came to urge the claims of God. And he meant to keep to his province. If they wanted to know anything about the Word and will of God, he was ready to explain and teach. But Cresar had better mind his own business, and be would mind bis. In our time, earnest effort is being made to obliterate the distinction between the " secular" and the "sacred." The distinction is real and abiding. Our Lord set his seal upon it. They may run in harmony, but they run, and they always must run, along distinct lines.-R. T. Ver. 23.-Deninl of resu."ection as a sign of mental mood. "The Sadducees, which say that there is no resurrection." It does not appear how their question helped the entanglement scheme. Possibly the design was to secure a statement that could be declared to oppose Moses' Law. This would discredit him with the people; and it might be made the ground of a formal condemnation by the Sanhedrin, which the temple officials would have to execute, and so Christ would be got rid of. The poin-t before us now is, that these Sadducees are described to us in one sentence. One thing suffices to reveal them to us. One opinion told the class of opinions they held. You may know the men by this," they say that there is no resurrection." And when you know that is their opinion, you see at once the hypocrisy of the question they ea.me asking Christ. I. THESE SADDUCEE& WERE CRITICAL, They wanted a reason for everything. They received nothing they could not understand. 'l'hey failed in receptivity. About everything they asked questions. Whatever was presented to view, they persisted in getting to look at it on the other side. Explain that the critical temperament and faculty are Divine gifts and endowments, but they are perilous because they so easily become masterful and absorbing, destructive of some of the finer and gentler qualities and faculties. Criticism, like fire, is a good servant, but a bad master. II. THESE SADDUCEEB WERE UNSPIDITUAL. We should call them "materialists." 'J:hey were not sensitive to anything that did not appeal to the five senses, They \\ere deficient in imagination. They were, in their way, scientific. Angels they could nut do with. for they had no substance. Resurrection they could not do with, for it was a dream, and had, and could have, no verification. There have always been such men. ·We may be sorry for them; for the unseen is the real, the Divine is the a biding, the spiritual is the true; and he only lives inde~d who can respond to the eu rironmrnt of the spiritual, the Divine, the eternal. III. T11a;E SADDUCEEB WEHE CONCEITED. Not in the common and familiar ways of conceit. 'l'bey were intellectually conceited, and that is the most hopeless kind of conceit, and, indeed, the most offendve kind. The "superior" man, who is always wker than e,·erybody, and smiles supercllioWI smiles, is the most aggravating of ruurtals.-R. T. Ver. 30.-17ie pure humanneu of marital relation,. The Badaucees rested their "denial of the resurrection on the ground that they found no mention of it in the Law, "hich they recognized as the only rule of faith." The mistake they made, which our Lor,\ at once brought to view, was this-" They could not conceive of any human fellowship in the life of the resurrection, except such as reproduced the relations and couclitions of this t:i.rthly life." Man's material for thought is mainly provided by the cu. xxu.1-46.] THE GOSPEL .ACCORDING TO ST, MATTHEW. 393