John Wesley Commentary on Luke Chapter 20

Luke, Chapter 20

1: (Mt 21:23,Mr 11:27).

9: A long time - It was a long time from the entrance of the Israelites into Canaan to the birth of Christ.(Mt 21:33,Mr 12:1).

16: He will destroy these husbandmen - Probably he pointed to the scribes, chief priests, and elders: who allowed, he will miserably destroy those wicked men,(Mt 21:41); but could not bear that this should be applied to themselves. They might also mean, God forbid that we should be guilty of such a crime as your parable seems to charge us with, namely, rejecting and killing the heir. Our Saviour answers, But yet will ye do it, as is prophesied of you.

17: He looked on them - To sharpen their attention.(Ps 118:22).

18: (Mt 21:45).

20: Just men - Men of a tender conscience. To take hold of his discourse - If he answered as they hoped he would.(Mt 22:16,Mr 12:12).

21: Thou speakest - In private, and teachest - In public.

24: Show me a penny - A Roman penny, which was the money that was usually paid on that occasion.

26: They could not take hold of his words before the people - As they did afterward before the sanhedrim, in the absence of the people, (Lu 22:67), &c.

27: (Mt 22:23,Mr 12:18).

28: (De 25:5).

34: The children of this world - The inhabitants of earth, marry and are given in marriage - As being all subject to the law of mortality; so that the species is in need of being continually repaired.

35: But they who obtain that world - Which they enter into, before the resurrection of the dead.

36: They are the children of God - In a more eminent sense when they rise again.

37: That the dead are raised, even Moses, as well as the other prophets showed, when he calleth - That is, when he recites the words which God spoke of himself, I am the God of Abraham. It cannot properly be said, that God is the God of any who are totally perished.(Ex 3:6).

38: He is not a God of the dead, or, there is no God of the dead - That is, tho term God implies such a relation, as cannot possibly subsist between him and the dead; who in the Sadducees' sense are extinguished spirits; who could neither worship him, nor receive good from him. So that all live to him - All who have him for their God, live to and enjoy him. This sentence is not an argument for what went before; but the proposition which was to be proved. And the consequence is apparently just. For as all the faithful are the children of Abraham, and the Divine promise of being a God to him and his seed is entailed upon them, it implies their continued existence and happiness in a future state as much as Abraham's. And as the body is an essential part of man, it implies both his resurrection and theirs; and so overthrows the entire scheme of the Sadducean doctrine.

40: They durst not ask him any question - The Sadducees durst not. One of the scribes did, presently after.

41: (Mt 22:41,Mr 12:35).

42: (Ps 110:1).

46: (Mt 23:5).

47: (Mt 23:14).

http://bible.christiansunite.com/wesindex.shtml