8 March - Luke 20

Today we are reading Luke 20 in the Tattoo Church Reading Plan. Here are a couple thoughts:

1. This chapter opens up with some religious leaders joining together and cornering Jesus. Isn’t it interesting they ask Jesus a question about his authority and he replies with a question to them, which they refused to answer.
2. Next, Jesus tells a story about a man who owned a vineyard and rented it out to some tenants. In this story the vineyard owner represents God, the tenants, humans, and the servants represent the prophets (the guys God used to speak to other people on his behalf before Jesus was born) and the son of the owner represents is Jesus. Go back and read the story with this in mind and you will see why he got such a rise of out the crowd in verve 16.
3. Jesus then talks about a stone that builders reject. This is a quote from the Old Testament that was written hundreds of years before Jesus was born and it foretold that the Jewish people would reject Jesus as the Messiah. This is why in verse 19 the religious leaders wanted to arrest Jesus immediately.
4. Then the religious leaders try to corner Jesus again with questions about paying taxes to the government. They were trying to get Jesus to speak against the Roman government so that he would be imprisoned.
5. At the end of this chapter Jesus warns his disciples of the religious leaders and told them that the religious leaders may appear really holy but they aren’t.

Luke 20 should be titled “Those Tricky Religious Leaders” because the whole thing is about questions the religious leaders tried to use to trap Jesus in his own words. However, since Jesus was a master of words and only spoke the truth he never was. The end of this chapter Jesus tells his disciples that the religious leaders who are fake would be severely punished by God. These religious leaders were always trying to trick Jesus with clever questions but they only used the questions to distract from really dealing with who Jesus was. Let’s be honest, we all still do that today. Instead of dealing with who Jesus really is, we try to sidestep the issues by our own clever questions or accusations. 

What questions do you use to sidetrack dealing with who Jesus is? Or what he is asking you to do that you don’t want to? What is the next step God is asking you to take in your spiritual journey? Maybe God is prompting you to get baptized and follow Jesus. Are you going to answer or sidestep the opportunity to obey?