Page:A Brief Bible History (Boyd and Machen, 1922).djvu/94

88 Herodians, the latter being the partisans of the Herodian dynasty, with their adroit question about giving tribute to Cæsar, Matt. 22:15–22, and parallels; then the Sadducees, the worldly aristocracy, who did not believe in the resurrection, with their attempt to make the doctrine of the resurrection ridiculous, vs. 23–33, and parallels; then an individual Pharisee with his question about the greatest commandment in the law. Vs. 24–40, and parallels. Jesus had a wonderful, profound answer for them all. But only the last inquirer seems to have been at all willing to learn. "Thou art not far," Jesus said to him, "from the kingdom of God." Mark 12:34.

Then, after all the questions which had been put to him, our Lord put one question in turn. "David himself," he said in effect, "calls the Messiah Lord; how is the Messiah, then, David's son?" In this way Jesus was presenting to the people a higher conception of Messiahship than that which they had been accustomed to hold. The Messiah was indeed David's Son, but he was not only David's Son. Matt. 22:41–46, and parallels.

Apparently on the same day, our Lord called attention to the poor widow who was casting her mite into the collection box. A gift, he said, is measured in the estimation of God not by its amount, but by the sacrifice which it means to the giver. Mark 12:41–44, and parallel.

Finally, on the same memorable Tuesday, our Lord denounced openly the formalism and hypocrisy of the scribes and Pharisees. Matt., ch. 23. It was also perhaps on the same day that certain Greeks desired to see Jesus, John 12:20, 21—a foretaste of that entrance of Gentiles into the Church which was to come after the resurrection. We are not told exactly how Jesus received the Greeks, but the importance of the moment was marked by a voice from heaven which came as a divine confirmation of Jesus' message.

When Jesus, on the same day, had gone out of the Temple and had ascended to the Mount of Olives, a hill which lay on the way to Bethany, he taught his disciples about the coming destruction of the Temple