Chapter 3: The Questions They Could Not Answer

He came back to the Temple on Tuesday, and this time the religious leaders were ready.

The chief priests and elders approached him directly and demanded to know by what authority he had cleansed the Temple the day before. It was a calculated trap. If he claimed divine authority, they could charge him with blasphemy. If he admitted he had none, his credibility with the crowd would collapse.

Jesus answered with a question of his own. He asked them whether John's baptism had come from God or from men.

They pulled together quietly. If they said from God, he would ask why they had not believed John. If they said from men, the crowd would turn on them because the people held John to be a prophet. Either answer destroyed them publicly.

CHIEF PRIESTS“We do not know.”— Matthew 21:27

JESUS“Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things.”— Matthew 21:27

The Pharisees tried next with a political trap. They came alongside members of the Herodian party and asked whether it was lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not. If Jesus said yes, he would lose the crowd who resented Roman taxation. If he said no, he could be reported to Rome as a rebel.

Jesus asked for a Roman coin. Someone handed him a denarius.

JESUS“Whose image is this? And whose inscription?”— Matthew 22:20

Caesar's, they told him.

JESUS“Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's.”— Matthew 22:21

Then came the Sadducees — Temple priests who rejected resurrection entirely. They presented a hypothetical about a woman who had married seven brothers in succession, each dying without children, demanding to know whose wife she would be in the resurrection. Jesus answered that the next life runs by different rules than this one, and then turned their own Scripture against them: "God told Moses: 'I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob'" — present tense, centuries after all three had died. He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. The crowd was astonished.

One more challenger stepped forward — a scribe who asked which commandment was the greatest. Jesus answered without hesitation. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. And love your neighbor as yourself. Everything in the law and the prophets hangs on these two.

The scribe agreed — loving God and neighbor was worth more than all the burnt offerings in the Temple. Jesus looked at him.

JESUS“You are not far from the kingdom of God.”— Mark 12:34

Then Jesus turned to the crowd and spoke directly about the scribes and Pharisees — not in riddles, not in questions, but in open condemnation.

JESUS“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites. You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people's faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to.”— Matthew 23:13

He condemned them for demanding tithes of mint and dill while neglecting justice, mercy, and faithfulness. For cleaning the outside of the cup while the inside was full of greed and self-indulgence.

JESUS“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites. You are like whitewashed tombs — beautiful on the outside, but on the inside full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean.”— Matthew 23:27

Seven times he said it. Seven woes, in the same Temple courts where they had just tried to trap him.

Then his voice changed.

JESUS“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you. How often I have longed to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. Look, your house is left to you desolate.”— Matthew 23:37-38

After that, no one asked him another question. Three groups had come with their sharpest challenges — and all three had run out of traps.