| Luke 20:2 And spake unto him, saying, Tell us, by what authority doest thou these things? Or who is he that gave thee this authority?
If you're a parent, you probably have had a child who asked the same question incessantly until he got the answer he wanted. There's a difference between asking a question for an answer and asking a question for the answer. Adults also ask questions not because we want an answer but because we want something else, like an argument. A basic law of life and nature that we find in the Bible is that there are no answers for those who just want arguments. Those kinds of questions are what Jesus received from the religious leaders in Luke 20.
Luke 20:2 is probably the best question they had, and it's also the question that summarizes the essence of all the questions that follow. "They spake unto him, saying, Tell us, by what authority doest thou these things? Or who is he that gave thee this authority?" Now that's not an invalid question. It's just that those who are most concerned about their own authority are often the least submitted to God's. They were threatened by Jesus because they were not in submission to the Father who had sent Him.
In verse 22 they said, "Is it lawful for us to give tribute unto Caesar, or no?" Once again this question was valid, but the motive was argument. Oftentimes, instead of asking "How can I obey?" our question is "Against whom can I rebel?" Rebels are hyper-sensitive to conflict because they prefer conflict to obedience.
In verse 28, more religious leaders said to Him, "Master, Moses wrote unto us, If any man's brother die, having a wife, and he die without children, that his brother should take his wife, and raise up seed unto his brother." Then they gave him this long story about seven brothers who married the same lady. One brother died and the next brother married her and so on. It's a ridiculous, theoretical story born of rebellion.
There are no answers for those who want arguments. These men eventually stopped asking questions because they weren't getting the arguments they wanted to use as fodder against Jesus.
Submitting to Jesus Christ answers questions that nothing else can. There are some questions that cannot be answered by intellect or by argument, only by submission. When we submit to Christ, then all of a sudden life makes more sense. God never denies an answer to an open hand, an open heart, and an open mind, but He resists the proud.
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