When Jesus faced questions, he cited Scripture

Even in antiquity, the wisdom of the past was the best hedge against modern-day foolishness.

Genesis 1:27: “God created man in his own image; in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”

Before there was an apple or a serpent or a Fall, there was God’s vision for creation.

Male and female, he created them. If people are “assigned” a sex, it’s understood God made that assignment. You are who God made you, and that’s a blessing.

Last week the question that gripped America was: “What is a woman?”

For this, we were told to consult a biologist.

That no easy answer came was stunning.

There’s what we know, and what we can say and survive politically. The simplest of questions laid bare the conflict between the two.

The world will take the tongue from our mouth, if we let it.

Jesus faced similar questions from the Pharisees. All the time. Seemingly at every turn.

We are supposed to think of the Pharisees as bad guys; what else could someone be, who challenges The Reason For The Season?

But in their questions, they were more like gadflies. Their peppering of skepticism made Jesus better, and offered him a forum. Their dramatic presence gave Jesus a foil to contrast against, and built sympathy for his character.

Questions and answers. ‘Haven’t you read?’

“Questions and answers are the sound of thought happening.” — Ward Farnsworth, “The Socratic Method: A Practitioner’s Handbook”

Questions move us and challenge us in ways opinions do not.

As Farnsworth writes, “People routinely say things that they don’t really believe, or wouldn’t believe if they thought longer about it.”

“A large share of the Socratic struggle,” he continues, “is to separate claims from rooting interests.”

Matthew 19:3 tells us that “some Pharisees came to test” Jesus when he visited Judea.

“Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?” the Pharisees asked.

Jesus responds: “Haven’t you read that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh?’ So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.”

“Haven’t you read?” is Jesus flipping the question to his accusers.

Because if they had read, they’d know God’s vision for union, as laid out in the Creation story. Nothing — not a serpent, an eviction, or the murder of one child by another — could drive Adam and Eve apart.

The Creation vision is that our relationships be similarly anti-fragile.

Reality doesn’t always comply. The devils asks ask: Well, then why did Moses allow for divorce? (Editor’s note: the original version mistakenly quoted the Pharisees).

In Matthew 4:8, Jesus responds: “…because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning.”

He says that outside of a divorce for “marital unfaithfulness,” a person who divorced and remarries has committed adultery.

The Seventh Commandment, from Exodus 20:14, rings out so loud Jesus doesn’t even feel a need to cite it.

“Haven’t you read?” had another value. It was Jesus testing whether they were talking about the same thing.

Because if we’re not, and it’s not a Biblical worldview you’re after, maybe we shouldn’t be talking. Jesus was putting a price on his attention, and challenging the Pharisees’ intentions.

Today we call Genesis part of the Old Testament. Jesus knew it as Scripture. And when pressed, it was Scripture he looked to for answers.

Not himself. Not contemporary “experts,” so as to outsource his thinking. But the wisdom of the ancients. Even in antiquity, the wisdom of the past was the best hedge against modern-day foolishness.

The Pharisees weren’t just testing Jesus’s grasp of the word, but his relation to it.

Would he take their bait, out of foolish pride? In Matthew 4:6, the Pharisees dare Jesus to throw himself down from the highest point in the Temple.

If he is what he claimed to be, then angels would save him.

Jesus again cites Scripture, this time Deuteronomy 8:3: “Do not put the Lord to the test.”

Creating boulders too heavy to lift, all to satisfy man’s bored curiosity, was not the best use of God’s gift, or his time.

This week we rediscovered the power of the question. What will you do with this information?

What answers do you seek, and who has them?