Matthew: Kingdom Collision

Text: Matthew 22:15-46
Title: Kingdom Collision 
Reading: Matthew 22:15-46

“The Pharisees were nationalistic, loyal to Israel. Whereas the Herodians had sold themselves out to the Romans and served as their stooges. The Pharisees represented narrow, conservative Judaism, and the Herodians were liberal and syncretistic in their convictions. The Pharisees were right-wingers; the Herodians were left-wingers. The Pharisees represented resistance to Rome, the Herodians accommodation.” 
-R. Kent Hughes

“inspired the Reformation doctrine of differing spheres of authority for government and religion and proved foundational for the American constitutional separation of church and state. It would be anachronistic, however, to claim that Jesus’ words support modern democratic forms of government as opposed to the imperial or monarchichal forms of his day. One can give God his proper due under a monarchy as well as in a democracy, just as authorities, sadly, can usurp prerogatives reserved for God in either system.”
-Craig Blomberg

“the problem with the question is that the Sadducees are assuming resurrection bodies to be exactly as bodies are now, which includes the capacity for sexual intercourse.” 
-Craig Blomberg

“Jesus sees two errors in their logic, one regarding their specific question about this woman and the other related to their more fundamental, underlying concerns about resurrection in general. These errors deal, respectively, with their understanding of Torah and of God’s power. Concerning the latter, God is able to transform us into creatures who do not engage in sexual relations or procreate. A model for such a being already exists, namely, the angels (cf. the rabbinic tradition in b. Hag. 16a, in which, interestingly, demons, in contrast to angels, are believed to copulate). Since the Sadducees also do not believe in angels (cf. Acts 23:8), Jesus is probably deliberately inserting this jibe. Lack of sex or marriage does not in any way diminish heavenly bliss. In the life to come, all interpersonal relationships will no doubt far surpass the most intimate and pleasurable of human intercourse as we now know it. Neither jealousy nor exclusivism will mar human interaction in any way.”
-Craig Blomberg

“when God raises people to new life they will have passed into a new world order in which death itself has been left behind. (otherwise, resurrection will simply collapse into reincarnation, an endless cycle of death and rebirth.) But this will mean a whole new kind of life, which at present we can only guess at. Our present bodies are decaying all the time; it's very hard to think what a non-decaying body would be like. (Paul faces the same question in 1 Corinthians 15.) Similarly, there will be no need to propagate the species, and hence no need for sexual activity. Again, most humans find it very hard to think of a non-sexual world, but that's what Jesus probably means when he says that resurrected people will be ‘like angels’. (if you grumble that this makes God a killjoy, remember what C.S. Lewis said: asking if there will be sexual activity in the future world is like the child who, on being told that sex was the greatest pleasure known to humans, assumed that people eat chocolates at the same time.)”
-N.T. Wright

“we will, with the angels, have a life with God and one another where there is no aloneness to be overcome. Jesus does not say that we will or will not have some memory of our marriages in the resurrection, but our histories will no doubt be radically transformed. Yet we know that the way we have lived will not be irrelevant to our resurrected life precisely because the very names of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob matter to God.”
-Stanley Hauerwas 

“In this psalm, written by David, the king of Israel makes reference to two Lords. In the original Hebrew of the psalm, the first “Lord” translates the Hebrew word Yahweh, God’s covenant name. The second “Lord” translates the Hebrew word Adonai, a title usually given to Yahweh in the Old Testament. Jesus is pointing out that the Messiah, who is one of the sons of David, is also much more.”
-R.C. Sproul

 “Christ is both David’s Son, and David’s Lord: David’s Lord always, David’s Son in time: David’s Lord, born of the substance of His Father, David’s Son, born of the Virgin Mary, conceived by the Holy Ghost. . . . Unless our Lord Jesus Christ had vouchsafed to become man, man had perished. He was made that which He made, that what He made might not perish. Very Man, Very God; God and man, the whole Christ.”
-Augustine