Luke 20:1-47

This chapter records the remarkable happenings gathered around our Lord's entrance into the Temple. By a parable He revealed the awful sin and failure of the Hebrew nation, culminating in His own rejection, showing, moreover, that that sin must result ultimately in the breaking into pieces of the sinning people.

The closing conflicts between the rulers and Jesus constitute the saddest revelation of the depravity of the human heart. Jesus' teaching had driven them into a comer from which there was no escape. They would have laid hands on Him forthwith had they not feared the people. So they sent spies to endeavor to take hold of His speech. Here, as in all cases, man's sin serves only as a dark background to throw into brighter relief the glory of the Saviour. All the rulers' attempts were futile. He answered with infinite wisdom and terrific force all the quibbles they raised, and then uttered in the hearing of all the people the solemn warning and the scathing denunciation of the scribes. These answers of His were not the sharp retorts of smartness, but the final utterances of a wisdom which revealed the ignorance of the questions.