A Dialogue with Deceivers, Part 1

Today, Chuck Swindoll continues her study in Matthew's Gospel. Those who stood against Jesus were master deceivers. They didn't tip their hands.

They didn't denounce their motives. They just conspired to find a way to get him on that cross, to kill him, to shut him up. From early January until now, Chuck Swindoll has been guiding us through a verse-by-verse study in the Gospel according to Matthew.

This brand new comprehensive study is titled The King of Kings. Arriving today at chapter 22, we're beginning to feel the tension mounting. Jesus' growing popularity was met with strong opposition. The religious leaders not only resisted Jesus' teaching, they resented his fame. Today on Insight for Living, we'll observe the sinister way in which his decriers attempted to sabotage Jesus' notoriety. We'll begin by reading the passage together.

Chuck titled his message, A Dialogue with Deceivers. Turn please to the 22nd chapter of Matthew. Matthew 22. We're 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 desired one thing, not just to silence him, but to arrest him, put him through the mockery of a trial, and then nail him on a cross. 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 firm and unforgiving, if you will, because the enemies are set to deceive the others around them and to bring him to a place where he would trip himself up and they could arrest him and then follow through with their plans to put him on a cross.

I don't know if you've ever thought about being in a situation like that, where your every word is being watched, heard, where your actions are all being viewed with suspicion, but that is his lot during this time and we see that coming through, even in the stories he tells. I'm reading from the New Living Translation. I'll read excerpts from this lengthy passage of 22 verses out of Matthew 22.

Jesus also told them 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 8, and he said to his servants, the wedding feast is ready and the guests I invited aren't worthy of the honor.

Now go out to the street corners and invite everyone you see. So the servants brought in everyone they could find good and bad alike and the banquet hall was filled with guests. But 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 are here without wedding clothes?

The man had no reply. Then the king said to his aides, bind his hands and feet and throw him 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, 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, show me the coin used for the tax. When they handed him a Roman coin, he asked, whose picture and title are stamped on it? Caesar's, they replied. Well then, he said, give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and give to God what belongs to God. His reply amazed them and they went away. You're listening to Insight for Living.

To study the book of Matthew with Chuck Swindoll, be sure to download his Searching the Scripture Studies by going to insightworld.org slash studies. And now the message from Chuck that he titled A Dialogue with Deceivers. Yad Vashem is the name of the museum in Jerusalem that has been built to remind everyone of the Holocaust. It is a dark and grim place by design. Even the architecture with its asymmetrical style, its flat charcoal paint, its stark rooms and plain pathway where you walk, all these and so much more are reminders of the horror that 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 Yad Vashem and don't talk.

Just walk and stop and look and think and cry. While standing in front of one of the enclosed plexiglass areas, I looked carefully to read a sign 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 told it all. Perhaps it hung in one of the offices of the German high command or perhaps along the hallway where the Nazis walked. I'll 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 walled them in, they deceived the Jews into thinking this will be your own community. It will be like your own neighborhood, never telling them of the starvation and the sewage and those who would die in the streets and the disease that would attack little children, young and older alike. And when they packed them into railway cars, really cattle cars, at the railway station and slammed the door shut, they deceived them into thinking we're going to take you to a better place where you will truly be able to be together as families. They did not tell them how long the journey would be or how horrible inside those cattle cars. And when they finally stopped at the destination of the death camps and the doors were rolled open and some fell out dead, others were pushed out.

And they began to defy the sick from the strong and the men from the women and the boys from the men and the mothers from the children. They deceived them into thinking this is 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 smokestacks, they deceived them into thinking it's in these rooms you will have good medical treatment. No one was told you'll be going in there to be gassed to death.

Horrible. Deceived them all the way to the end. I must pause and give a little side story that happened to us 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 we of course have said absolutely.

She took his arm immediately and he was gracious to lead her slowly through Yad Vashem. And she came to a room where there was a stack of children's shoes and women's hair. So many terrible things. And she leaned against the plexiglass and our 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.

Hardcore shameless hypocrites who deceive them all the way to the end. I sometimes sit alone in our family room having watched a documentary on some of this because I am intrigued by how all of that could have happened. And as I sit and think, I try to imagine what it must have felt like to have been a soldier that was a part of the liberation team and walked upon one of the many death camps to see the victims. How could all of that have been kept from us? How could we have not known over the years of World War II that was happening? How could even the soldiers be surprised who were fighting the Nazis? It was a masterful work of deception.

Perhaps you find the leap too great to make but I want to make it nevertheless. Those who stood against Jesus were master deceivers. They didn't tip their hands. They didn't announce their motives. They just conspired to find a way to get him on that cross, to kill him, to shut him up. You see there were many followers and as time passed the followers gained in 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 have been the mobs against them so they really had to play their cards right. Stop and imagine a team of 12 men who lived together, eat together, sleep alongside one another, walk together, talk together, not even knowing that the traitor was among them. And even to the last night of the Last Supper no one fingered Judas when he walked out.

During that night the plan was to deceive all the way to the end. Until you see this in that light you'll find yourself yawning through stories in Matthew's Gospel. You won't 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 spear which caused them not to repent but to grow increasingly stronger in their hatred and more determined than ever to get him nailed to that cross. That's the work of the depraved human heart and 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 you're all you're like a whitewashed tombstone. Your life is full of dead man's bones. No one would say that but Jesus and he said it and our admiration for him peaks every time we read something as we will today. Why does he tell stories?

I'll tell you why and it will be as amazing as the other things I've or some of the things I've said already. The patience of God is long suffering. I mean look at your life. Look how long God has put up with you as you perhaps have cultivated a cynicism towards spiritual things or as you've allowed things to linger in your life that you know ought not be there and you're still with us.

He hasn't removed you. So before we cluck our tongues at others let's remember hypocrisy runs in the family of humanity. Let's take this as much as we can rather personally. I do that every time I study the scriptures. I don't look for someone else to point a finger at.

I find the finger pointing at me. So when I read through these stories I realize oh it took guts to tell that story to people who were ready to pounce. His first story is about a feast. It's a banquet. Verse 2 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 come.

Now read what happens. When the banquet was ready, salvation was made available. When the story of eternal life was made clear and the son was there available for them to see and hear, he sent his servants to notify those who were invited and they refused to come. Jesus came among them and they didn't want to come.

Remember the verse? John 1-11, he came to his own, but what? His own did not receive him. Came unto his own things that he had created, the familiar, the creative thing, and his own ones did not want him, get him out. He's not our kind of messiah.

We're looking for one on a stallion with both guns blazing, or in those days both spears sharp, taking on Rome and overthrowing the government and getting us back in charge. But Jesus didn't come like that. He came to die.

That's the amazing part of the story. So the banquet's made available, salvation is open, and he sent his other servants to tell them, verse 4, and the feast has been prepared and the bulls are ready and the fattened calf, cattle, have been killed and it's all ready for the guests who have been invited, but some ignored it. And some went their own way to do work on their own farm and in their own business and others had the audacity to seize the messengers, verse 6, and insult him and even kill them. That would be a reference to the killing of the prophets. Prophets came and prophets left. Prophets spoke truth and prophets were silenced. What more shall I say, says Hebrew, the time had failed me to tell of Gideon, Barak, and Samson and Jephthah, David also, and Samuel and the prophets, who through faith subdued kingdoms and wrought righteousness and stuffed the mouths of lions and quenched the violence of fire and escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong and waxed valiant in fight and turned to flight the armies of the aliens.

Women received their dead, raised alive. Others were tortured and sawn in two, reads Romans, reads Hebrews 11. They killed him.

They killed him. So the Lord says, those servants aren't worthy of coming to my feast. Open the door to everybody. Look at verse 8. He said to his servants, the wedding feast is ready.

The guests I've invited aren't worthy of honor. So now go out to the street corners and invite everyone to you, everyone you see. And the servants brought in everyone they could find, good and bad alike.

And the banquet hall was filled with guests. You know what I see there? I see the door of salvation opening to the Gentiles. I see Romans 11, 11, Romans 11, 15, check it for yourself, where that message is now open to the Gentiles. And because we have heard the message of the Gospel, we fill this room with our worship, most of us Gentile, because of the grace of God. How gracious of God to invite us heathen in. So unworthy. It's called grace, grace.

It's like my favorite answer when somebody asks, how are you doing? My favorite answer is, better not deserve. And I mean it. That's what grace is all about. I didn't deserve an invitation to the banquet, but God offered it to me and I took it. And I was willing to come and I'm so grateful. The banquet hall is filled with guests and I'm one of them and so are you if you know the Savior. But then there's a little vignette. There's a story within the story I don't want you to miss. It begins at verse 11. Look, and remember, we've got deceivers listening.

We've got those who hate him listening. So they're illustrated in this intruder. He came on his own accord and desired to wear what he wanted to wear. When the king came in to meet the guests, he noticed a man who wasn't wearing the proper clothing for a wedding. So he asked, how is it that you got here without wedding clothes?

And the man had no reply. The king says you're out of here. And he describes weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Before I go further, let me let me say here that if this is in fact the symbol of salvation, I think it is, then I believe the clothing for this wedding is imputed righteousness. The only way we come to God's banquet is to come his way. This is a puzzling statement from Jesus that requires context. You're listening to Insight for Living and the Bible teaching of Chuck Swindoll. We're looking at Matthew chapter 22, and I'm pleased to say that Chuck has much more he'd like 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 at insightworld.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. Well, in light of growing tension in our culture over fairness, Chuck is highly recommending a new book from a fellow pastor. Vody Baucom has written a thought-provoking book titled Fault Lines that helps Christians understand the nuances of the social justice movement. Like a fault line, these matters threaten to divide us. And whether you're a lay person who's trying to engage in grace-filled conversations on race, or a pastor who wants to address these important cultural issues with the compassion of Jesus, you want to read fault lines.

You can purchase a copy right now by going to insight.org. And let me add that when you give a donation to Insight for Living, your gift is channeled directly toward reaching other people with Chuck's Bible teaching so they can benefit from life lessons just as you have. And your gifts are truly making a difference. One of your fellow listeners left this comment that said, I've been going through a difficult time and I find myself strengthened as I listen. Bless you for making this ministry available. Well, these moments are sponsored by all those who give. And to contribute right now, here's the number to call. If you're listening in the United States, call 800-772-8888 or give a donation online today by simply visiting insight.org. I'm Wayne Shepard, sitting in for Dave Spiker, inviting you to join us again tomorrow to hear the Bible teaching of Chuck Swindoll on Insight for Living. The preceding message, A Dialogue with Deceivers, was copyrighted in 2017 and 2021, and the sound recording was copyrighted in 2021 by Charles R. Swindoll, Inc. All rights are reserved worldwide. Duplication of copyrighted material for commercial use is strictly prohibited.