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If you’re not a Christian, or don’t have a lot of scripture experience, I hope this article will be helpful. Also if you’re a mature Christian and you value your worth as a witness, this article may help also. Aside from over a thousand prophecies that all come true in the Bible, this article is one of the better gleams of light of God’s existence. I think we can all think of quotes that talk about wise things. Some of these teachers are also ancient and say something known as timeless wisdom. Timeless wisdom is a type of wisdom that is universal in nature and not related to only the generation of the time. What makes Jesus’ timeless wisdom so remarkable is that his enemies expected him to be trapped in his words. When someone is trapped in their words where saying the only two obvious answers will get you imprisoned or mobbed, no one is expecting timeless wisdom to be the correct answer. Yet in many times, people thought they could trap Jesus, and Jesus escaped the fowler’s snare with words that would teach wisdom to people throughout the ages. We’ll explore some situations where Jesus’ enemies expected him to get trapped in his words and either say something the Romans or the Jews had against their laws. But instead of being trapped, he gets out of the situation by explaining timeless wisdom.
Matthew22:15 The Pharisees went off and made a plan to trap Jesus with questions. 16 Then they sent to him some of their disciples and some members of Herod’s party. “Teacher,” they said, “we know that you tell the truth. You teach the truth about God’s will for people, without worrying about what others think, because you pay no attention to anyone’s status. 17 Tell us, then, what do you think? Is it against our Law to pay taxes to the Roman Emperor, or not?” 18 Jesus, however, was aware of their evil plan, and so he said, “You hypocrites! Why are you trying to trap me? 19 Show me the coin for paying the tax!” They brought him the coin, 20 and he asked them, “Whose face and name are these?” 21 “The Emperor’s,” they answered. So Jesus said to them, “Well, then, pay to the Emperor what belongs to the Emperor, and pay to God what belongs to God.22 When they heard this, they were amazed; and they left him and went away. (GNT).
In the previous scripture of Matthew22:15-22, the Pharisees already decided before they questioned Jesus that they wanted to take him down. They don’t care if he is innocent or guilty, they want a way to get Jesus arrested. They figured to ask him a question about paying taxes to the Roman Emperor whom Israel was living under as oppressed people. If Jesus was to answer,”It is not right to pay taxes to the roman emperor”, he would have been arrested by Roman authorities. If Jesus was to answer,”It is fine to pay taxes to the roman emperor. The oppressed Jews would have been against him for the coin bears Ceaser’s likeness and alludes that he is a god himself.”
When Jesus asks the Pharisees to produce a coin, he already achieved a victory there. The Pharisees were temple leaders and should not have had coin on them that bore Caesar’s likeness. The victory is a timeless victory though because it points to the meaning of a man’s soul. “pay to the Emperor what belongs to the Emperor, and pay to God what belongs to God” What belongs to God are your soul, faith, love, and passion. What belongs to God is your reason for living. Even if an oppressive dictator ship asks for all your property, a Christian should have little problem relinquishing it. For when we go to the next life, we won’t have property anyway. When you die, you can’t take it with you. So if people in this life demand your property, it might not seem fair at the time, but give them it. If it wasn’t fair, God can make amends in this life or the next. It is timeless wisdom because you can always apply giving up your property to the Earthly king, and you can always apply giving up your core virtues to God.
Matthew 22:23 That same day some Sadducees came to Jesus and claimed that people will not rise from death. 24 “Teacher,” they said, “Moses said that if a man who has no children dies, his brother must marry the widow so that they can have children who will be considered the dead man’s children. 25 Now, there were seven brothers who used to live here. The oldest got married and died without having children, so he left his widow to his brother. 26 The same thing happened to the second brother, to the third, and finally to all seven. 27 Last of all, the woman died. 28 Now, on the day when the dead rise to life, whose wife will she be? All of them had married her.” 29 Jesus answered them, “How wrong you are! It is because you don’t know the Scriptures or God’s power. 30 For when the dead rise to life, they will be like the angels in heaven and will not marry. 31 Now, as for the dead rising to life: haven’t you ever read what God has told you? He said, 32 “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ He is the God of the living, not of the dead.” 33 When the crowds heard this, they were amazed at his teaching. (GNT).
Both the Pharisees and the Sadducees were temple leaders against Jesus. The primary difference is that the Sadducees didn’t believe in life after death. Since they can’t understand how a man can be rose from death and still fulfill his obligations he had on Earth, it is no surprise their question was worded as such (probably because it was a long standing problem they had). Their question was basically “If a man had multiple wives on Earth, who would he take as a wife in Heaven?” If Jesus would have picked a specific wife, they would have had problems against him for denying the other wives rights. If Jesus would have said,”The guy gets all seven wives”, the Sadducees would have had a case against him for promoting polygamy.
Jesus said that people in Heaven will not marry. Jesus doesn’t talk a lot about Heaven because he says ,John3:12″You do not believe me when I tell you about the things of this world; how will you ever believe me, then, when I tell you about the things of heaven? “ And it makes sense. It is more important for us to get to Heaven than have a working knowledge of what is up there. In this timeless wisdom he does give a glimpse of Heaven though in that we won’t marry, but we don’t know what else is there.
Jesus also explains God is the God of the living. So Abraham is alive, Isaac is alive, Jacob is alive right now in Heaven. There’s two theories of Heaven, neither of which matter to us. One says we sleep in death like an instant slumber and wake up in day 1 of the New Heavens and New Earth. The other one says we’ll go into a temporary heaven when we die to which we transfer to the new Heavens after Jesus returns to Earth. I tend to think it is the first, that when we die, we fast forward in time immediately to when Jesus raises the dead, but it isn’t worth arguing about because both versions have us ending up in Heaven (or the New Earth) as soon as we die. This is timeless wisdom because we can rest assured we never have to waylay in some sort of purgatory or world of the dead if we have Jesus.
Matthew 22:34 When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they came together, 35 and one of them, a teacher of the Law, tried to trap him with a question. 36 “Teacher,” he asked, “which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” 37 Jesus answered, ” “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the greatest and the most important commandment. 39 The second most important commandment is like it: “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.’ 40 The whole Law of Moses and the teachings of the prophets depend on these two commandments.” (GNT).
Again, the temple elite try and catch Jesus in his words. In their mind, maybe the commandments were all reliant on each other and could not be separated. If Jesus would have separated one commandment as most important, the temple elite might have had issue with him not weighing the other ones as heavily. So the question could have been less of,”Which commandment is most important” to “Which 9 commandments aren’t important” They could have had 9 more places to argue once he said one was important.
Jesus got out of this trap by espousing one of his greatest eternal wisdoms,”Love God with all you have, and love your neighbor as you love yourself.” By saying all the commandments fall under this, he didn’t say any of the ten commandments are less. In fact we know God is love. And everything God has ever done was done out of love. So even in the Old Testament when people were suffering, God was acting out of love. We don’t have the all knowing mind of God so we can’t know what is best to act in a situation, but we can know that in everything we do that we love others. If we love others all the days of our life, we’ll meet a good end where we go to Heaven and hang out with Jesus. We don’t necessarily get loved back for showing love, but sometimes it makes an impact nonetheless on others. Sure, other philosophies have the golden rule, but under Jesus, it has power. He espoused it at a moments notice where if he answered anything else, he would have been trouble with the authorities.
If you notice, those three traps happen back to back to back! That is three times in a row where they attempted to trap Jesus in his words. And that is three times in a row where Jesus answered with Eternal wisdom. This fourth one comes from Luke at possibly another time:
Luke10:25 A teacher of the Law came up and tried to trap Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to receive eternal life?” 26 Jesus answered him, “What do the Scriptures say? How do you interpret them?” 27 The man answered, ” “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind’; and “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.’ ” 28 “You are right,” Jesus replied; “do this and you will live.” 29 But the teacher of the Law wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?” 30 Jesus answered, “There was once a man who was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho when robbers attacked him, stripped him, and beat him up, leaving him half dead. 31 It so happened that a priest was going down that road; but when he saw the man, he walked on by on the other side. 32 In the same way a Levite also came there, went over and looked at the man, and then walked on by on the other side. 33 But a Samaritan who was traveling that way came upon the man, and when he saw him, his heart was filled with pity. 34 He went over to him, poured oil and wine on his wounds and bandaged them; then he put the man on his own animal and took him to an inn, where he took care of him. 35 The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. “Take care of him,’ he told the innkeeper, “and when I come back this way, I will pay you whatever else you spend on him.’ ” 36 And Jesus concluded, “In your opinion, which one of these three acted like a neighbor toward the man attacked by the robbers?” 37 The teacher of the Law answered, “The one who was kind to him.” Jesus replied, “You go, then, and do the same.” (GNT).
The man came asking for the bare minimum of what he has to do to get saved. I think this is a lazy thing people do to this day. Instead of seeking Jesus to the full extent and being a lifelong dedicated servant, they want to do the bare minimum to scrape by. You see things like,”Say the sinners prayer and get baptized, and you’re set” by some people. Other people say,”Accept Jesus as Lord and savior and promise to repent of sins and you’re set” by some other people. The key is that the walk with Jesus isn’t something you do and you’re done with. You have to keep walking with Jesus day in and day out. The deeper you walk with Jesus, the more you appreciate things in life, and the more you can help others. Sinning doesn’t hurt God, and sometimes it doesn’t hurt you, it hurts others. So when we avoid sin and help others, we end up helping people instead of hurting them.
So the man was in the wrong to start out with. No one should be thinking what the bare minimum they should do to be saved. It reminds me of Bart Simpson when he said,”I’m planing on a life of sin and debauchery with a death bed confession” It is most definitely a fools decision to do that. Even if Heaven was the same for everyone, how are you to be sure you don’t suddenly die before you repent. I believe Heaven will be different for different people. Sure your sins are forgiven, but your good deeds might be remembered! The Bible speaks about rewards of giving up our Earthly wealth to help others(even this scripture Jesus speaks about does Luke10-37). Remember Luke 13:30 GNT Then those who are now last will be first, and those who are now first will be last.” This means people with a bad hand on Earth, get a great reward in Heaven. People with a great hand on Earth, will be least in Heaven… unless they willingly sacrifice what they have to help others! By making oneself less by helping others with your time and wealth, you can become greater in Heaven is what I get from that scripture. Some people don’t look into eternal rewards and disagree with me. So lets just conclude, the guy is wrong, it is bad to be looking for doing the bare minimum to get Eternal Life.
Jesus even gets the guy to answer with Eternal wisdom “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind’; and “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.’ (GNT). When the man tried to justify himself, Jesus told him a parable. The parable explained that it doesn’t matter your rank or social status, but how you help others in need. The Levitical priest and a regular priest passed by a guy who was bad off and needed help on the road, but the Samaritan(a class of people looked down on) actually helped and gave of what he had to help people. This shows anyone in our sphere of influence is our neighbor(aka anyone on Earth).
Now this isn’t saying to become a super hero and walk the streets looking for people in need of help. This is telling us that when you identify an injustice to not hesitate to help. If you do want to be a super hero, there is one place of interest dear to my heart that wealth can go a long way to fixing. If you help the poor in third world countries, world hunger can be solved. People are dying for what thirty cents a day could save them. Disease research is good to help, but world hunger is still a problem that gets fixed incrementally based on how much money is thrown at it. The UN says about 10-30 billion a year would help accelerate removing the problem of world hunger from the Earth. This is about 5$/year from everyone on Earth. Not everyone on Earth can afford 5$/year, so we should give what we can. My big saying is,”Work a moral job, live a frugal life, and help the poor with your excess”
In this article we reviewed Jesus saying timeless wisdom at a moments notice. The traps were complex he was put in, and if he was anyone but the son of God, a normal person would likely stumble into a trap. But not only did he escape the trap, he gave us timeless wisdom. “Give unto the ruler of the country, that which is the rulers. And give to God that which belongs to God.” The Sadducees tried to trap Jesus to which Jesus replied that God is the God of the living, not of the dead. Our property can be rescinded, but our souls, heart and mind belong to God. Jesus says to love God to greatest degree you can love, and love your neighbor as yourself. Another person asks who is our neighbor, and Jesus explains that anyone we can influence is our neighbor. So I would hope that you see this wisdom is timeless, and that it is epic for Jesus to say it when he was under pressure to be trapped in his words. Jesus is the only wise man we know of in history to escape word traps by giving timeless wisdom. I think this gives clues to his divinity. Amen.