How do evil leaders deceive us?
Text: Matthew 22
Hosts:
J. Kent Edwards
Vicki Hitzges
Nathan Norman
Narrator: Brian French
The CrossTalk Podcast is a production of CrossTalk Global, equipping biblical communicators, so every culture hears God’s voice. To find out more, or to support the work of this ministry please visit www.crosstalkglobal.org
Produced by Nathan James Norman/Untold Podcast Production
© 2025 CrossTalk Global
Brian: Betrayal can come in many forms. Infidelity, deception, broken promises, abandonment, disloyalty, manipulation, theft. The list may be endless, but one of the most painful forms of betrayal is spiritual. When you discover that a leader of God's people, a person you trusted to take you toward the God who loves you, is subtly taking you away from him, that hurts. That wounds your soul. Don't think it can happen to you. Leaders have betrayed God's people throughout the ages, even during Christ's time. That's why I invite you to join Nathan Norman, Vicki Hitchkiss, and Kent Edwards as they Discover in Matthew 22 the subtle strategies evil leaders use to try to take you away from Jesus. Welcome to CrossTalk, a Christian podcast whose goal is for us to encourage each other to not only increase our knowledge of the Bible, but to take the next step beyond information into transformation. Our goal is to bring the Bible to life, into all our lives. I'm Brian French. Today, Dr. Kent Edwards, Vicki Hitskiss, and Nathan Norman continue their discussion through the Gospel of Matthew. If you have a Bible handy, turn to Matthew chapter 22 as we join their discussion.
Kent: Nathan, Vicki, have you ever seen people hurt through betrayal?
Vicki: I've been hurt through betrayal. It's awful. My marriage broke up. Betrayal. That was the worst thing I ever went through. Then I had a really precious friend that I loved and she lied to me over and over about just stupid stuff. And yeah, it really hurts.
Nathan: Yeah, yeah, I've seen. I've experienced betrayal, and I've seen it too. You know, you have, as Brian mentioned earlier, kind of that betrayal of abandonment. And you'll see someone whose father or mother wasn't around as much or at all, and man, they grow up and they are so cynical about them. I know one guy, he is so cynical about a family that's got a mom and a dad because he was missing one of them for his whole life. And it hurts. It is horrendous.
Kent: Betrayal makes you not want to trust anyone because you found people to be untrustworthy to you. It hurts. It's a deep wound. We see this element of betrayal in the context of Matthew 21. In our previous podcast, Jesus was very clear that the Jewish religious leaders consistent refusal to heed John the Baptist's call to repent, well, that disqualified them from leadership. We saw holiness as a fundamental requirement of the leaders of God's people. And we also, when we come to chapter 22, see Grace, because Jesus gives these people one last chance to repent. In the parable of the wedding banquet, Jesus offers this olive branch to them.
Vicki: It says, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son. He sent his servants to those who had been invited to the banquet, telling them come, but they refused. Then he sent more servants, and while some paid no attention, others seized his servants, mistreated them, and killed them. Wow, that's pretty strong. The king was enraged. He sent his army, destroyed those murderers and burned their city.
Kent: Who is Jesus talking to here?
Nathan: Well, he's talking about Israel. So he is saying that God was preparing a wedding banquet for his son, Jesus, and he sent his servants, and those would be the prophets who had been sent to come. So some refused to come, some just ignored the servants, and others were just horrible. They murdered the prophets.
Kent: Yeah. And he is speaking to Israel. And more specifically, I think, as we see in chapter 21, verse 45, that he's talking to the chief priests and the Pharisees. He's speaking to the leaders of Israel, and he's saying, because you have rejected him, he will reject you. And then he continues in this parable with the second scene.
Vicki: It says, the parable continues. Then the king said to his servants, the wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited did not deserve to come. So go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you can find. So the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find. And the wedding hall was filled with guests.
Kent: So why did Jesus tell this parable to the chief priests and Pharisees? What was his purpose?
Nathan: Well, I think they had a mentality of God has to bless us. God has to work through us. We are God's chosen people. We are the ones that he made a covenant through Abraham. So it's us or nothing. And Jesus is saying, no, no, he can get other people and he will. Yeah, yeah. So repent. Turn around. Turn around. Because he doesn't need you, you need him.
Kent: This is a harsh parable. I mean, Vicki, as you read that, I mean, he's talking about, you know, he was enraged. He sat at his armors and destroyed those murderers and burned their cities. I mean, that's harsh language.
Vicki: That's harsh language.
Kent: But it's also grace. Why? It's grace because they heard it as a warning. The judgment had not yet fallen. This is one last chance for them to repent. Did it work? Well, look what we read in verse 15.
Vicki: I say it did not work. It says, then the Pharisees went out and laid plans to trap him in his words.
Kent: Oh, just think about that. The leaders of God's people, realizing that Jesus was confronting them with their sin, decided to go and destroy Jesus to try and end his ministry. They were betraying the people of Israel. As they turned against Christ, they were given a chance, and they decided that Jesus was their enemy. So what I find fascinating in the rest of this chapter are the various strategies that they used to try and stop Jesus ministry. We read about the first strategy, starting in verse 16.
Vicki: He said they sent their disciples to him along with the Herodians Teacher. They said, we know that you are a man of integrity and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. You aren't swayed by others because you pay no attention to who they are. Tell us then, what is your opinion? Is it right to pay the imperial tax to Caesar or not?
Kent: Oh, don't you love the flattery? Look at how they begin that discussion.
Vicki: This may be too old a reference, but they're very much like Eddie Haskell.
Kent: That's even old for me.
Vicki: Thank you. Thank you.
Kent: Flesh that out for us, Vicki.
Vicki: Well, he's acting. They're acting like they're being kind and gracious, but they're not. They're being jerks. Their intentions are evil, but they're acting like they're being gracious.
Nathan: Butter them up. Throw them candy. Throw them. And then once their defenses are down. Oh, hey, this is a friend, right? You talk more freely with friends, right?
Kent: And they're saying that correctly, so that Jesus is a man of integrity and he does teach the way of God in accordance with the truth, and it was not swayed by others. So then they come with this question because they want to put him in a situation where he hurts his own reputation, where he destroys his own cause. They ask him, is it right to pay the imperial tax to Caesar or not? Well, paying taxes to Caesar was a hot debate at the time, right?
Vicki: Tell us about that.
Nathan: Well, sure. I mean, there was a few things. One is his image is on the coin, right? So you could make an argument it's idolatry. I mean, they were okay receiving it, but giving it, became this whole thing could be a form of idolatry. But truthfully, it could be a form of idolatry, too, because you are paying it to Caesar, the son of God, which was a title, right? So that's a problem. Also, this is God's promised land. We are his chosen people. So we shouldn't have to pay taxes to a foreign invader. Absolutely not. Furthermore, they would use local people, Jewish people, in this context, to collect the taxes. So you're encouraging our people to basically turn us in if we're not paying taxes. So you're a betrayer of your own people if you are going along with the taxes. In fact, it was so bad that there were many rabbis during this time that said it was a moral good, not morally permissible. It was a moral good to deceive the tax person and pay a lesser tax.
Kent: Oh, that resonates with some practices I see today, but we don't go with it right then. But was. I mean, the Roman government, was it a good godly moral government?
Nathan: No.
Kent: Why? How did they treat children? Where do they stand on abortion? Where do they stand on homosexuality? Where do they stand on some of the hot topics we face today?
Nathan: Well, if you were a citizen, you had a lot of protections. If you were not a citizen, which was the majority of the people in the Roman Empire, you could just be serially abused your whole life, enslaved. Child abuse, adult abuse, over and over and over again. They just were absolutely evil and completely corrupt in their minds.
Kent: They advocated homosexuality. They treated people as if they had no value. As you mentioned, they were a very ungodly government. We can agree with that. Right. So to pay taxes to that sounded like you're supporting the enemies of God and therefore we should not do that. And Israel's bad leaders were deliberately stirring up this debate. Why? What do they want Jesus to do?
Vicki: Well, they want him to say, you're absolutely right, we don't support that.
Kent: They want him to become political, right?
Vicki: Yeah, yeah.
Nathan: They want him to slip up so they can either alienate him from his own base or turn him into the Roman government for sedition.
Kent: Yeah. So they wanted Jesus to take a political stand against the government of his day, which he had not done previously. Right. We see that today, don't we?
Nathan: Boy, howdy, do we ever. Oh, sure, yeah. I have a lot of different group of friends, and I've heard it both said no Christian could ever vote Republican. No Christian could ever vote Democrat. Right. Because they're saying they're falsely equating the kingdom of God with the kingdom of man. So you have a lot of that kind of thing. I grew up under the moral majority, which tried to use politics to legislate morality now that it doesn't have the same. The moral majority isn't really a thing anymore. But the teachings are still very present in the church. The best way to transform a society is through changing the laws, which as Christians, we know is absolutely not true. The best way to change a Society is through a heart transformation which results in a radical. From a radical encounter with Jesus. Yeah.
Kent: I mean, just look back at history. What happened when we made alcohol illegal? Prohibition. Yeah.
Nathan: You couldn't find a drink anywhere.
Kent: That's when the mob was created. That's when the speakeasies took over. I mean, it.
Nathan: Well, if you look at. Right, you mentioned the abortion issue. And so Roe v. Wade's turned over and the preliminary numbers coming out have shown that abortion rates have risen now that it's illegal.
Kent: Right, right.
Nathan: And yeah. Could you imagine, like the billions of dollars of money Christians spend on politics if we invested those billions of dollars in evangelism? Can you imagine?
Kent: But this is how the religious leaders of the day tried to get hurt Jesus ministry, they want him to put it in a situation where he would begin to endorse political movement of the church. But how does Jesus answer in verse 18 and following?
Vicki: Well, he said he knew their evil intent. And he said, you hypocrites, why are you trying to trap me? Show me the coin used for paying the tax. And they brought him a denarius and he asked them, whose image is this and whose inscription? Caesar's, they replied. And then he said to them, so give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's.
Kent: Wow. So what is Caesar saying here?
Vicki: I bet that surprised him. Yeah, I bet it did. I think he's saying, if Caesar wants to tax with Caesar's money, pay him. And when God says give to God, give to God.
Kent: Because governments are not wrong. Governments are necessary. In fact, governments are a gift of God. Right.
Vicki: They are.
Kent: Even bad governments are helpful.
Vicki: Yeah, they can be.
Nathan: Hold on, Vicki. You said that a little wrong. You should have said they are.
Vicki: Well, it feels like that sometimes, but they are. Otherwise we'd have anarchy.
Kent: Yeah, because what's worse than a bad government?
Vicki: None at all.
Kent: Yeah. Then, as you're right, we have nothing but anarchy. So we are to support our governments. And doesn't Paul make that clear in Romans 13? And Peter in 1st Peter? 2.
Nathan: Two apostles saying the same thing. Nah, you can't get away from it. And Jesus.
Kent: Nah. And Jesus does tell us, remember back in the Sermon on the Mount? We are to seek first what? The kingdom of what?
Vicki: Heaven?
Kent: Not the kingdoms of this world. Our focus is to bring people in right relationship with God. Nathan, as you mentioned earlier, it's the gospel, stupid. That is what we offer the world. We focus on what we can focus on and the way we can make our maximum impact on our society. Is by inviting people to find a right relationship with God, to trust Jesus alone for their salvation, and he will transform them. We transform societies from the inside out, not from the outside in. That's what makes us unique. And the first strategy of these bad leaders was to try and get Jesus to focus on politics. They did it then, they do it today. But then they turn to a second strategy, trying to derail Jesus ministry. And that begins in verse 23.
Vicki: It says that same day the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him.
Kent: They claimed there is no resurrection. What are the implications if death is final? There is no life after death. How would that change your life, Vicki?
Vicki: Wow. You know, that's an interesting question. I am so bound to what I believe, I'd almost like to embrace it, even if I didn't think it was true. But I'll tell you what, I'd make different decisions.
Kent: Sure.
Vicki: How I give my money, how I live my life. If I really thought there was no God, there was no. Well, I think they thought there was a God, but the rules wouldn't apply. I'd be different.
Kent: Sure. Eat, drink and be merry. Right.
Vicki: Eat, drink and be merry.
Kent: I'm not going to give my money away. Spend it on me. Why would I leave it for somebody else? Why would I be faithful? Why would I make the moral decisions that I have made? If life is only for today, go crazy. Be selfish. And that's one of the things that the enemy of God's people will use against us to have us focus on today. All that matters is what we're experiencing now. Forget tomorrow, Pay attention to our life now. We see people use that strategy to attack God's people even today, don't we?
Nathan: Yeah, we sure do. You have the health and wealth doctrine, or as I've heard some call it, the blabbit and grab it. Gimme, gimme. My name is Jimmy. Kind of prayers that go on. Absolutely. God wants you healthy and wealthy now in this life, which is an affront to everything. Jesus said, take up your cross daily and follow me. Deny yourself in this world, you will have trouble. But take heart. I've overcome the world that flies in the face of. Of him and that flies in the face of Jesus. If we're following after him, our lives are probably going to have similar trajectories to his. And that means we enter into pain, we enter into suffering in the hopes of the future resurrection.
Kent: Yeah, I mean, that's what Paul said to the Philippians, that Jesus laid down his life right became a servant, and even submitted even unto death. And when he did what happened to him, God did what to him? He exalted him in the highest heavens. Jesus lived his life with a vision not of today, but of the tomorrow to come. And God's people are always encouraged in Scripture to have the same perspective. So when the Sadducees came, who thought there was no resurrection, that life is only in the here and now, Jesus replied in verse 29.
Vicki: He said, you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God. Have you not read what God said to Moses in Exodus 3.
Kent: 6?
Vicki: He said, I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob. He is not the God of the dead, but of the living.
Kent: Which means that when we think of life, we have to be thinking of life eternally. Not only life in this world, but in what is to come. Wise people live their life in eternity. That's why, like Paul, we are to pour out our lives like a drink offering for him. And that's a wise investment, because this world is not our home. And Jesus has gone to prepare a place for us where we will dwell with him forever. A common strategy of false teachers is to convince us that we should live our lives as if we are dead when we die. And we are not.
Nathan: It's important to note, too, that the Sadducees, they only believed in the Torah, the first five books of Moses. They did not accept anything else. None of the prophets, none of the psalms or the poetry as anything authoritative in their lives. And so Jesus. And they would make the argument, well, there's no indication of a resurrection, there's no indication of an afterlife in the Torah, which is why they said, we don't believe in it. So Jesus goes to the Torah in Exodus 3. 6, and it's brilliant. I remember reading this as a teenager, going like, I don't get it. You know, Jesus drops the mic after he says this and shuts him up. And I didn't understand it because he says, well, he says, well, haven't you read what God said? I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. He's not the God of the dead, but of the living. I'm like, okay, I don't see the point. Jesus point grammatically. He says, God didn't say, I was the God of Abraham, the God. I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. They existed then and they exist now, even after they died.
Vicki: They are the living.
Kent: Yes, they are living today. All people live for all eternity. The Question is where? Okay, so we've seen false teachers try to derail ministry by trying to get Jesus to focus on politics. We've seen them derail their ministry by getting them to focus just on today, living for today, not in light of eternity. And then we come to the third strategy, having failed twice. We read in verse 34 and following.
Vicki: It says the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together one of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law.
Kent: So to your point, Nathan, we don't really fully appreciate in our context this weight and the point of this question, but it was a huge argument at the time. I mean, which is the most important law in the Bible? The Sadducees, as you already mentioned, were very conservative, and they only accepted the first five books of the Bible as scripture. But there are a lot of laws there. Do you remember how many?
Vicki: I've heard there's over 600. Do you know the exact number?
Kent: Yeah. 613 laws. Okay, so that's a lot.
Vicki: That's a lot.
Kent: I mean, I'm not very good at memory work, but remembering 613 is a lot. But it gets worse because that's what the Sadducees believed. But the Pharisees went further. They accepted Moses laws as scripture, but they also followed the Babylonian Talmud. A massive document. A massive document. In fact, I printed it off one time. I found a PDF of this as a visual aid to my congregation. I printed off the whole thing. I think it was like 2 inches thick. I think I destroyed our printing budget for the year, printing that off on a photocopier because it contains two things. First of all, it has the Mishnah, which are 63 chapters, if you will, where ancient Jewish scholars discussed Moses laws. And then the second part is even larger. It's called the Gemara. It's a massive collection that provides various legal interpretations of Moses law by different scholars, debates among rabbis, case studies of how the law should be interpreted. It's huge. Think of somebody trying to understand the American legal system or the British legal system, or any legal system. There are massive number of books that speak on it. So when you ask which of those laws, of all of those laws and all of those interpretations, which is the most important? That's a complex theological question that will tie the scholars into knots. They're asking Jesus to try and be an expert on everything every Jewish theologian has said throughout all of Israel's existence. That's huge. And how does Jesus answer Well, he.
Vicki: Does something really clever. This is something. Forgive me for comparing him to my mother, but this is what my mother would have said. I can hear her do this. She would say, well, Vicki, this is what I think. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it, Love your neighbor as yourself. All the law and the prophets hang on those two commandments. And he's right. If you love somebody the way you love yourself, and you won't, because we're selfish, and you do it with all your soul and all your mind, and you love your neighbor as yourself, which is pretty much saying the same thing, then you will obey God and you will show your love for God.
Kent: What impresses you with Jesus. Answer.
Vicki: Because it's like my mother. She would take something really complicated and she would make it very simple. Not because she was brilliant, but because she just funneled things down and made them simple so that she could understand it. And in the process, she took something profound and made it brilliant. And. And Jesus did that. You love others the way you love yourself and you'll fulfill my law and.
Kent: Love God with all your heart.
Vicki: Yes, yes.
Kent: I've often said in crosstalk classes, any idiot can be complicated. It takes genius to be simple.
Vicki: And it does.
Kent: And these people that came to Jesus trying to get him off mission wanted him to focus on theological trivia. Let's look at what other theologians. Let's look at what other scholars have said. Let's spend most of our time on the most minuscule parts of the Bible. Let's forget. Let's not make the main thing the main thing. Let's spend our time arguing about the insignificant. Have you guys ever found yourself listening to a preacher so interested in minutiae of a passage that you can't figure out the main point of what they're trying to say?
Vicki: Oh, yeah, I can't give you an example because I blanked them out.
Nathan: So traumatized.
Vicki: Yeah.
Nathan: So there was a church I was involved with at one point, and when I had moved, I found out that there was a guy, a guest preacher, who was preaching a series through Genesis chapter one. Now, how long should it take us to go through Genesis chapter one, Kent?
Kent: It should take one sermon.
Nathan: One sermon. Right. So. But there's seven days of creation, of course. So. Of course. How many weeks do you think he took?
Vicki: No.
Kent: Seven? Seven? Ten?
Nathan: You're wrong. Well, Vicki, you're wrong, Kent. You're more in the Ballpark, it took eight because, you know, he needed an extra week just to get all that, that in there. And yeah, it just so complex. And I remember I was just like, you know, once in a while you just want to listen to. It's like a bad movie. You're like, I gotta see how this thing goes, right? So you watch it. And I remember listening to it and I was just like, oh my word. I mean, I couldn't even get through the first 10 minutes of the thing. And they were all, I don't know, 50 minute long sermons, just, just so boring and dull.
Kent: Yeah.
Nathan: Yep, I've lived through it.
Kent: Lots of detail. No relevance. Focusing on the minutiae. And Jesus responds to their attempt to get him to focusing on the minutiae. I wonder if this is why Paul said to Timothy in 2 Timothy chapter.
Nathan: 2, he said, warn God's people against quarreling about words. It is of no value and only ruins those who listen. Avoid godless chatter because those who indulge in it will become more and more ungodly. Their teaching will spread like gangrene.
Kent: Because what happens if you focus on the minutiae? You miss the main point. And Vicki, if there's one thing that your father contributed that was most valuable to the church was state the big idea. What is the main thing that God is saying? Don't get distracted by chasing squirrels. Focus on the main thing that God wanted to say to the people of God. Because if we don't say the main thing, we're mainly wrong and we're very unhelpful to God's people. And Jesus will not let them get away with it. He summarizes it all and keeps their focus on what is most important. And then Jesus takes command of the situation and asks them a much more significant question. In verse 41, he says, While the.
Vicki: Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, what do you think about the Messiah? Whose son is he?
Kent: Yeah. Because now he wants them to understand the real big idea of the Bible, the Messiah. And let's talk about that important question. Who is the Messiah? How did they respond?
Nathan: Well, the Son of David.
Kent: Yeah.
Nathan: By that they meant that he's literally a physical descendant of King David.
Kent: And Jesus responds to them in verse 43.
Nathan: And following, he said to them, how is it then that David, speaking by the spirit in Psalm 110, calls him Lord? For he says, the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet. If then David calls him Lord, how can he be his Son.
Kent: This is perhaps the Messianic passage that is used most by all the Gospel writers in the New Testament. Because here David is saying that the Messiah is actually his Lord. The Messiah is God. And in verse 46 we read no one could say a word in reply. And from that day on, no one dared ask him any more questions. Jesus is saying to them, the Messiah is the Son of God. The Messiah is God. I am the Messiah. And as I've been telling you, I am God. Notice he didn't say spend all your time arguing about what different scholars think about minor issues. Major on the majors, and when we do, we major on Christ. Look around at the mess the world is in today. I think it needs a Savior. Who was that savior? In Psalm 110, David tells us that the Messiah we need is God. And as all Jerusalem cried out during the triumphal entry to Jerusalem, when they cried out hosanna to the Son of David, Jesus was saying, I am the Son of David. I am God in the flesh, the only hope of humanity. Bad leaders focus on the insignificant. Good leaders focus on Jesus and the good news of the Gospel. Because the solution to the world is the Gospel, the leaders we follow have a dramatic impact on our spiritual life. We need to be careful who we follow, and if we don't want to be betrayed, we'll be on the lookout for behavior that these false leaders will consistently demonstrate. They all want us to focus on politics, focus on life today, and distract us, perhaps with theological trivia. Let's be careful to follow only those who make the main thing the main thing.
Brian: How do sinful leaders try to lead us astray? They encourage us to be political, to focus on the world today. And they distract us by focusing on theology instead of focusing on Jesus. I trust that today's discussion of God's Word has been helpful and served as an encouragement to not just be hearers of the Word, but doers. Together, let's bring God's Word to life, to our lives. This week, the Cross Talk Podcast is a production of crosstalk Global, equipping biblical communicators so every culture hears God's voice. To find out more or to support the work of this Ministry, please visit www.crosstalkglobal.org. help us train the next generation of biblical communicators. All you have to do is click, donate in the show notes and make a donation of any size. You can also support this show by sharing it on social media and telling your friends. Tune in next Friday as we continue our discussion through the Gospel of Matthew. Be sure to join us.
Kent: If life is only for today. Go crazy. Be selfish.
Nathan: You know, secondary implication on all of this is that that John Lennon song, Imagine would be true and real. Imagine there's no heaven. Can't stand can't stand that song.