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| OUT TO GET JESUS |
| Jesus confronts his enemies. |
| When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard Jesus' parables, they knew he was talking about them. They looked for a way to arrest him, but they were afraid of the crowd. 21:45-46 |
| The mere birth of Jesus had threatened King Herod so much that he had ordered a bloody slaughter of boy babies. The patterns of opposition continued. Early on, Jesus openly predicted his own death. Beginning in chapter 19, Matthew explains some of the escalating tensions between Jesus and the groups who resisted him. Enemies followed him from town to town, setting traps. Even so, Jesus neither tempered his words nor tried to hide. Instead, he used the occasions of conflict to warn his disciples and the watching crowds against those enemies, whose fury only increased. Chapter 22 shows Jesus confronting three different groups of enemies on the same day: two religious sects, the Pharisees and the Sadducees, as well as the political Herodians. Jesus easily avoided their carefully devised verbal traps. In fact, he succeeded so brilliantly that Matthew concludes, "From that day on no one dared to ask him any more questions" (22:46). What Did Jesus Have Against the Pharisees? Students of history have often puzzled over why Jesus lashed out so strongly at one Jewish sect, the Pharisees - a group the New Testament mentions 100 times. At first glance, they seem like people Jesus should have liked. They were the most religious people of the day. More than any other group, they strove to follow the letter of the Old Testament law. Their very name, meaning "separatists," hinted at their desire to rise above normal behavior. Pharisees were legalists: besides unduly focusing on minute details of the law, the embellished it with their own |