One Bride for Seven Brothers

Now let me give you a bit of context as we come to this passage, and this will be a review of where we've been the last few weeks.

But as the Sadducees confront Jesus in the temple here, this is on day three of our Lord's Passion Week.

That is the final week of His earthly ministry.

It culminates in the crucifixion and the resurrection on Friday, and then the following Sunday.

This is day three.

It's either Tuesday or Wednesday of Passion Week, depending on whether or not you see the triumphal entry as taking place on a Sunday or, as some scholars assert, on Monday.

That first day, the triumphal entry, is recorded in Mark 11:1-11, when Jesus rides into Jerusalem on the colt of a donkey, being hailed by the crowds, who are quoting Psalm 118, "Hosanna.

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord." And then day two of Passion Week, recorded in Mark 11:12-19, finds our Lord going into the temple and driving out those who were selling animals and exchanging coinage, and He condemns the religious leaders for turning God's house of prayer into a den of robbers.

Day three of Passion Week begins in verse 20 of Mark chapter 11, and as Jesus comes back into the temple in verse 27, we find that He is immediately confronted by the religious leaders.

This would've been the chief priests and the scribes.

That would've been the leading Sadducees and the leading Pharisees, those religious leaders who comprise the Sanhedrin, the ruling body in Jerusalem, and they would have undoubtedly been accompanied by the temple guard, because their intention was to try to arrest Jesus on the spot.

They ask Him, "By what authority do you do these things?" And our Lord responds with a question of His own, referencing the ministry of John the Baptist, "Was John's ministry from God or from men, from heaven or from men?" And the religious leaders know that they can't answer the question, not with all the crowds present, because the crowds regard, and rightly so, John to be a true prophet of God, and if John is a true prophet of God, then the one to whom John pointed, namely Jesus, is also from God.

But the religious leaders refuse to acknowledge that.

And then in Mark 12:1-12, as that conversation continues, our Lord tells a parable, a parable about a vineyard, and the vineyard represents Israel, and the owner is God, and He sends His servants, the prophets, but the vine growers, the tenant farmers who were entrusted with caring for the vineyard, that's the religious leaders, they mistreat the prophets.

They ignore the prophets.

They kill the prophets.

And then the story culminates with God sending His own Son.

The owner sends his beloved son, and the vine growers kill even the son.

And verse 12 of Mark 12 tells us that the religious leaders understood that the parable was aimed at them.

And if we go back to Mark 11:18, the day before, they had been plotting how to destroy Jesus, and now verse 12 of Mark chapter 12, here on day three, they continue to conspire against Christ.

They can't seize Him in the moment, because the crowds consider Jesus to at least be a prophet.

Many of them recognize that He's the Messiah, so they have to wait for the right opportune moment.

So they leave, but they leave seething and plotting how they might trap Jesus and how they might destroy Him.

And that brings us then to our passage in verses 18 to 27.

Now, the religious leaders, having gone away and having conspired how they might plot against our Lord, they send some delegations, some delegations of spies, as it were, to go and try and trap Jesus.