How do Jesus’s answers address the challenges put to him in the temple?

Jesus teaches the people and preaches the gospel in the temple. Chief priests, scribes and elders ask by what authority he acts and who gave it. Jesus first asks whether John’s baptism came from heaven or from men. They reason that a heavenly origin would raise the question of their unbelief, while a human origin would expose them to stoning by people convinced that John was a prophet. They answer that they do not know. Jesus likewise declines to state his authority.

He tells the people about a vineyard owner who leases it to husbandmen and goes abroad for a long time. A servant sent for its fruit is beaten and sent away empty. A second is beaten and treated shamefully; a third is wounded and expelled. The owner decides to send his beloved son, saying that perhaps they will respect him. The tenants plan to kill the heir for his inheritance, cast him out and kill him. Jesus says the owner will destroy them and give the vineyard to others. The hearers respond, God forbid. He cites the rejected stone becoming the cornerstone and warns that falling on it brings bruising, while its falling on someone grinds that person to powder. The priests and scribes recognize that the parable concerns them and want to seize Jesus that hour, but fear the people.

They watch and send spies pretending to be just, intending to catch his words and deliver him to the governor’s authority. The spies praise his truthful teaching and lack of favoritism, then ask whether tribute to Caesar is lawful. Jesus perceives their deceit and asks why they tempt him. He requests a penny and asks whose image and inscription it bears. They answer Caesar’s. He tells them to render Caesar’s things to Caesar and God’s things to God. Unable to challenge his words publicly, they marvel and fall silent.

Sadducees, who deny resurrection, quote Moses’s provision for a brother to marry a childless widow and raise offspring for his deceased brother. Their example has seven brothers successively marrying one woman and dying childless, followed by her death. They ask whose wife she would be at the resurrection. Jesus distinguishes marriage in this world from the life of those counted worthy of the world to come and resurrection. They neither marry nor take wives and cannot die again, being equal to angels and children of God through resurrection. He cites Moses at the bush naming the Lord as God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob: God is God of the living, and all live to him. Some scribes commend the answer; afterward they dare ask no more questions.

Jesus asks how Christ is called David’s son when David in the Psalms calls him Lord and speaks of sitting at God’s right hand until his enemies become his footstool. He leaves the relationship as a question here. In everyone’s hearing, he warns his disciples about scribes who desire long robes, marketplace greetings, first synagogue seats and principal places at feasts. They devour widows’ houses while pretending through long prayer, and will receive greater condemnation.