A Dialogue with Deceivers, Part 1

Today Chuck Swindoll continues her study in Matthew's Gospel Jesus were master deceivers amounts their motives conspired to find a way to get him on now by verse study of the gospel according to Matt this brand-new comprehensive study is titled the King of Kings arriving today in chapter 22 beginning to feel the tension Jesus growing hilarity was met with strong opposition. Religious leaders not only resisted but resent today on Insight for living will observe the sinister way in which his priors attempted to sabotage Jesus notoriety will begin by reading the passage together, titled his message of dialogue with 22nd chapter of Matthew. Matthew 22 were the last week of Jesus ministry on this earth. And though it is just one week of time. Matthew takes chapters to describe the events as they took place. They were events marked by argumentation, confrontation, ugly moments, sharp words, all because there were those who discard one thing, not just to silence him but to arrest him, put them through the mockery of a trial and then they live on across. This is called when we reach that point, the passion of Jesus.

So we would expect the stories to have a point to them that would be rather a firm and unforgiving.

If you will, because the enemies are set to DC of the others around them and to bring them to a place where he would trick himself and they could arrest him and then follow through with their plans to put them on the cross.

Don't know if you've ever thought about being in a situation like that where your every word is is being watch heard where your actions are all being viewed with suspicion. That is his lot.

During this time and we see that coming through even the stories he tells reading from the new living translation.

I'll read excerpts from this link. The passage of 22 verses out of Matthew 22 Jesus also told him other parables, he said the kingdom of heaven can be illustrated by the story of a king who prepared a great wedding feast for his son.

When the banquet was ready, he sent his servants to notify those who were being invited, but they all refused to come. Verse eight and he said to his servants, the wedding feast is ready and the guests.

I invited art worthy of the honor not go out to the street corners and invite everyone you see, so the servants brought in everyone they could find good and bad alike in the banquet hall was filled with guest.

When the king came in to meet the guests, he noticed a man who wasn't wearing the proper clothes for a wedding. He asked how is it that you were here without wedding close demanded no reply. Then the king said to his aides bind his hands and feet and throw them into the outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. For many are called but few are chosen. Then the Pharisees met together to plot how to trap Jesus into saying something for which he could be arrested.

They sent some of their disciples along with the supporters of Herod to meet with him teacher. They said oh what we know how honest you are.

You teach the way of God. Truthfully you are impartial and you don't play favorites. Now tell us what you think about this. Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not. But Jesus knew their evil motives. You hypocrites. He said why are you trying to trap me here so with the client used for the tax when they handed him a Roman coin. He asked whose picture in title, or stamped on it seasons. They replied well then he said give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and give to God what belongs to God's reply amazed them and they went away Insight for living to study the book of Matthew with Chuck Swindoll sure to download his searching the Scripture studies by going to insight world.org/studies and now the message from Chuck that he titled a dialogue with deceivers young a sham is the name of the museum in Jerusalem that has been built to remind everyone of the Holocaust is a dark and grim place by design. Even the architecture with its asymmetrical style is flat charcoal pate its stark ruins and plain pathway, where you walk all these and so much more are reminders of the horror, the Jewish people endured under the boot of the Nazis who hated them. As you walk through. You have to catch your breath, and there are a number of exits for those who cannot make it all the way through. You will watch film clips that will make you look away as you observe mass murders, individual acts of brutality, hangings, mistreatment the atrocities that were afflicted are almost beyond description.

If you go to Jerusalem you must go to Yahoo a sham and don't talk just walk and stop and look and think and cry while standing in front of one of the enclosed Plexiglas areas. I look carefully to read assignment that was off to the side that had been originally, of course, in German, but had been translated into my language so that we could read it in English and it is told it all. Perhaps it hung in one of the offices of the German high command, perhaps along the hallway were the Nazis walked I'm never forget it. It read. Remember we are to deceive them all the way to the end. A chill went up my back as I thought about that when the Nazis built the ghettos and wall them in. They deceive the Jews into thinking this will be your own community.

It will be like your own neighborhood, never telling them of the starvation in the sewage those who would dine the streets in the disease that would attack little children, young and old alike, and when they packed them into railway cars is really cattle cars at the railway station and slammed the door shut. C. Primitive thinking were going to take you to a better place where you will truly be able to be together as families. They do not tell them how long the journey would be, or how horrible inside those cattle cars. When I finally stopped at the destination of the death camps and the doors were rolled open son fell out, did others were pushed out and then again notified the sick from the strong in the and the men from the women in the boys from the man the mothers from the children.

They deceive him into thinking businesses just our way of getting things organized, rather than knowing that it would be the end of many of their lives. And of course when they lined up along that brick building with its tall smokestack.

They deceive them into thinking it's in this these rooms you will have good medical treatment. No one was told he will be going in there to be gassed to death.

Horrible. Deceive them all the way to the end.

I must pause and give a little side story that happened was in one of our trips. One of our tours of Israel.

A lady we did not know getting up in years asked one of our men leading one of our groups.

If she could go with us. She spoke in broken English and and we've course of said absolutely she took his arm immediately and he was gracious to leader slowly through a sham and she came to a room where there was a stack of children choose an women's hair so many terrible things.

She leaned against the Plexiglas and a leader saw on her wrist. The tattooed number. She was a Holocaust victim. Nothing else needed to be said. She had been there. This was no museum to her.

This was her history, Webster defines deceive to ensnare to give a false impression to cause something to be accepted as true and valid that is in fact false and invalid deceivers obscure the truth, they mislead, they deliberately delude Nazis or master deceivers, hard-core, shameless hypocrites who deceive them all the way to the I sometimes sit alone in our family room. Having watched a documentary on some of this because I am intrigued by how all of the as I sit and think.

I try to imagine what it must've felt like to have been a soldier. That was a part of the liberation team and walked upon one of the many death camp to see the victim that had been kept from us. We have not known over the years of World War II that was happening I could. Even the soldiers be surprised we were fighting the Nazis.

It was a masterful work of deception. Perhaps you find the lead to great to make but I I I want to make it. Nevertheless, those who stood against Jesus were master deceivers. They didn't tip their hands they think they didn't announce their motives. They just conspired to find a way to get him on that cross took Kelly to shut him up. You see, there were many followers and as time passed, the followers gained a number and this worked against these who were involved in the deceptive conspiracy to finish him off.

They now had the mobs or what would've been the mobs against them so they really had to play their cards right, stop and imagine a team of 12 men who live together, eat together sleep alongside one another.

Walk together, talk together, not even knowing that the trader was among them to the last night of the last supper. No one figured Judas when he walked even that night. The plan was to deceive all the way to the until you see this in that light you find yourself yawning through stories in Matthew's gospel, you will see the point you won't feel that they're all that interesting because you're not one of the deceivers. Trust me every Barb in every story hit like a sphere which caused them not to repent, but to grow increasingly stronger in their hatred and more determined than ever to get him nailed to the cross. That's the work of the depraved human heart.

If you're the kind of individual who thinks depravity isn't reality you've had your head in the sand long enough.

Study the Holocaust study the judgment at Nuremberg. Study the Pharisees. Jesus faced off and was not afraid to call a spade a spade. And I'll tell you when you look at it as it really was your admiration for him is off the chart.

No one else would call this Pharisee a hypocrite.

They're afraid of Pharisees. No one else would say hero like a whitewash to install. Your life is full of dead men's bones.

One would say that. But Jesus and he said in our admiration for him. Peaks every time we read something as we will today. Why does he tell stories.

I'll tell you why it will be just as amazing as the other things I absorb some of the things I've said already the patience of God is long-suffering may look at your life along God is put up with you as you. Perhaps it cultivated a cynicism toward spiritual things or as you've allowed things to linger in your life that you know what not be there at your you're still with us. He hasn't removed you so before we close our tongs and others.

Let's remember hypocrisy runs in the family of humanity must take us much as we can rather personally I do that every time I study the Scriptures.

I will look for someone else to point a finger at. I find the finger pointing at me. So when I read through the stories. I realize how the took guts to tell that story to people who were ready to pounce. This first story is about a feast is a banquet verse two tells us that the kingdom of heaven can be illustrated by the story of a king that would be God.

Since stories are all symbols of a deeper truth. The king is God.

Read on. He's preparing a great wedding feast for his son who would that be God's son is Jesus. You don't need a seminary education to figure that out.

This is about God the father and God the son, offering a plan of salvation to a body of people his own nation the nation of the Jews as they would hear the invitation, not read what happens when the banquet was ready.

Salvation was made available with the story of eternal life was made clear in the sun was there available for them to see and hear. He said his service to notify those who were invited and and they refuse to come. Jesus came among them, and they didn't want to come member. This member, the verse John 111 he came to his own, but what is on not receive him, came into his own things that he had created the familiar. The creative thing and is only once did not want to get him out. He's not, Messiah everyone on the stallion with both guns blazing, or in those days both spheres sharp, taking on the role been overthrowing the government did getting us back in charge. But Jesus didn't come like that came to die is the amazing part of the story to the bank was made available. Salvation is open any sentence other service to tell members for the feast has been prepared and the bulls are ready in the fattening tab cattle have been killed and it's already for the guests who would been invited, but the sub ignored it and some went their own way to do work on their own farm and in their own business and and others had the audacity to seize the messengers verse six and insulting and even kill them. That would be a reference to the killing of the prophets, prophets came in prophets with proper spoke truth in prophets.

Recitals what more shall I say Hebrew time would fail me to tell of Gideon Bracken Sampson injected David. Also inside the prophets, who through faith subdued kingdoms about righteousness and stop the mouths of lions acquits the Bauman supplier, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight and turned to flight the armies of the aliens.

Women received their dead raised to life. Others were tortured and sewn into Ridge Roman read Hebrews 11 the kill him. They think the kill. So the Lord says of those those servants are worthy of coming to my feast over the door and everybody look at verse eight.

He said it was servants, the wedding feast is ready. The guests I've invited aren't worthy of honor. So now go out of the street corners and invited everyone to you have everyone you see in the servants brought in everyone they can find good and bad alike in the banquet hall was filled with guests you don't see their I see the door of salvation opening to the Gentiles.

I see Romans 1111 Romans 1115 check in for yourself where that message is now open to the Gentiles. And because we have heard the message of the gospel.

We feel this room with our worship. Most of us Gentile because of the grace of God, the gracious of God, to invite, let's keep in so unworthy is called grace. Grace. It's like my favorite answer when somebody is how you doing my favorite answers better now deserve and mean it. That's what grace is all about. I deserve an invitation to the banquet but God offered it to me and I took it now is willing to calm and I'm so grateful banquet hall was filled with guests is not one of them and so are you. If you know the Savior is a little vignette is a story within the story. I don't want you to miss begins in verse 11. Look and remember we got deceivers listening we got those who hate him listening to their illustrated in this intruder.

He came on his own accord and desired to where would he wondered where the king came in to meet the guessing notice a man who wasn't wearing the proper clothing for wedding, so he asked how is it that you got here without wedding clothes and the man had no reply begins is around here. He describes weeping and gnashing of teeth for go further, let me say here that this is in fact the symbol of salvation.

I think it is not believe the clothing for this wedding is imputed righteousness. The only way we come to God's bank to come his way, is a puzzling statement from Jesus that requires context listening to Insight for living in the Bible teaching of Chuck Swindoll were looking at Matthew chapter 22. I'm pleased to say that Chuck is much more he liked to say about Jesus teaching so please keep listening. Chuck titled his message a dialogue with deceivers and to learn more about the variety of resources we have available on today's topic, please visit us online@insideworld.org. I'd like to draw your attention to an exceptional book that addresses pressing issues in our day over and over in Scripture we see that our God is just, he's fair and he's compassionate and yet nothing stirs his wrath quite like injustice while in light of growing tension in our culture over fairness. Chuck is highly recommended new book from a fellow pastor Bodie Baucom has written a thought-provoking book titled faultlines that helps Christians understand the nuances of the social justice movement like a fault line. These matters threaten to divide us and whether you are a layperson who is trying to engage in grace filled conversations on race or pastor who wants to address these important cultural issues with the compassion of Jesus want to read faultlines. You can purchase a copy right now by going to Insight.org/off, let me add that when you give a donation to Insight for living your gift is channeled directly toward reaching other people with trucks Bible teaching so they can benefit from life lessons just as you have in your gifts are truly making a difference in your fellow listeners left this comment said, I've been going through a difficult time and I find myself strengthened as I was bless you for making this ministry available.

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