Render To God The Things That Are God's

Now, I want us to observe at the very beginning of this passage that the Pharisees and the scribes and elders have changed their strategy in the way that they're approaching Jesus. They still want to kill him, but they've actually changed their strategy. Up to this point, what they have wanted to do is turn the crowds against Jesus and basically incite a riot where they could kill him. But at every turn, that didn't work. And so it says here that they watched him and they've changed. They sent spies in who pretended to be righteous so that they might catch him in some statement. And what are they going to do if they catch him in this statement? It says they're going to do all this so that they could deliver him to the rule and the authority of who? The governor. Now who's the governor? The governor is the Roman authority in the area.

And so instead of trying to get the crowds to turn on Jesus and to stop protecting him, because you remember the constant theme of Luke 18, 19, 20 is what prevented them from ever killing him. Time and again it said they feared the people. They feared the people. They feared the people. They wouldn't do anything because they feared the people. And so now what they're trying to do is get somebody else to do their dirty work. They're trying to get the government to do it. And so they're trying to get Jesus to, say something that's going to get him in trouble with the law. Not the Jewish law, but the Roman law. And so they watched him and they plotted together, is what Matthew says, that they could catch him in something that he would say. They're trying to get him to say something foolish so they can say, he said, you know, he said this. And they're going to have all these crowds be witnesses that say, yeah, he said that. So they can go and make their case to the governor to put him to death. Some of you may have had experience with people who,

who said about this kind of work. I think the person I talk to most about this sort of stuff is you, Daniel. Points of order. People having, well, you didn't follow the rules. Well, but the rule over here in this other place says you got to do it like this. But you didn't do it like this. So you're actually not doing it properly. Or if you watch sporting events, you'll have people who say, they pull out the rule book and they're like, well, back here in the rule, it says this and this. And technically, this is what they did. And so they broke the rules. And so that's a penalty. But whenever it comes to rules and laws, The letter of the law and there's the intent of the law. And for those who have the will to, they're able to take the law and say, well, that's not what it says. These words say this. And they ignore the rule, the principle, the spirit of the law. And so that's what the Pharisees and scribes are setting out to do. They're setting out to say, we're going to go and we're going to try to do something to get him in trouble with the government. He technically broke the rules. He actually said something that was wicked, that was unlawful.

We're going to get the Romans to kill him. This is their new strategy. If you remember when Jesus stood before Pilate, after they had gone and they had arrested him by night and they'd had their little trial, they take Jesus over to Roman governors. And in Matthew 27, it says this. Now, when morning came, all the chief priests and the elders of the people conferred together against Jesus to put him to death. So they had their court. They decided we need to put him to death. And so then what they did was not kill him. What they did was they bound him and they led him away and delivered him to Pilate, the governor. And so you see the governor here in Matthew 27, that that's the man that they end up delivering him to. And you see here that their intention is to deliver him over to the governor. They want the Romans to do their dirty work. They want the Romans to kill Jesus. If you skip down in Matthew 27, down to verse 24, it says, Now when Pilate saw that he was accomplishing nothing by reasoning with the Jews and saying, I don't see that anything...

I don't see that he's done anything wrong. Basically, the case that they've made doesn't hold water, so he's going to let them go. He says, now that he sees that he was accomplishing nothing, but rather that a riot was starting, he took water, washed his hands in front of the crowd, saying, I am innocent of this man's blood. See to that yourselves. Now, what is it that they're supposed to see to? They're supposed to see to killing him. And if you were to continue on reading in the passage, you'll see that the Roman cohort all gathered together, and they beat Jesus and mocked him, and they ended up going and crucifying him.

But he wouldn't order it. Pilate wouldn't order it. Now there's something in this change of strategy that's helpful for us to pay attention to. And it's this. What these, not Christians, but as God's people, what they did was go and get the unbelievers to do their dirty work. And it's too often the case that we as believers would have unbelievers do the hard work. the dirty work. What do I mean by that? Well, counseling, for instance. On more than one occasion, as I've talked to some of you or other people, I've met couples or people who need counseling. And the recurring theme of what's said to them is, the church doesn't do that. We send people out to the counselors, have counselors do that. Well, why don't churches do counseling? Have any of you guys ever been to counseling?

Had to talk about the difficulty, the hard, painful, private things that go on in your life. The church has said, we don't do that. We send that out to other people, to the professionals. Now, the professionals, the problem with the professionals is, one, you don't know what they're going to, we don't know what they're going to say. And our experience as a church has been that when we send people to counseling, the counselors don't want to work with us. They guard their territory, they have their counseling, they have their talking, and they won't work with us. They create an adversarial relationship. And the thing that's dangerous is not that we would send people ever to counseling. We do send people to counseling sometimes because there are people who are better equipped to handle things than we are, than I am. But when it becomes a principle that we send out our dirty work to other people to arbitrate, What happens when you get in trouble at work? One-on-one? What do you mean? Yeah. One of the things I'm thinking about is, let's say you get accused of lying, you get accused of stealing, you get accused of saying whatever it is. And it's going to be an argument and a fight. Who handles it? HR, yes, HR handles it. But who handles you? You're right. You're right, and you're making my point.

If I'm your pastor and you get accused of something at work, and it's going to be volatile. I could make, as multiple of you, I can use it as an example, but I'm not going to. You've got a problem at work and you're accused of lying, being abusive, stealing, whatever. Do I have any part in disciplining you? Or is that just their job? You're shaking your head yes to both of them, Luis. Yes, you do. And yes, it's their job. Okay. Yes. And so my whole point in saying, you know, so let's say you're in trouble at work. Should I, should the elders, should Daniel get involved in any way? It doesn't mean we have to come down and fight and argue, but should there be any involvement or is that dirty work for someone else to do? I'm convinced that we should be involved. I had a different situation a few, a few months ago, and a guy, another pastor, it was this difficult thing in this other church I was worried was going to, was concerned they were going to do something unfaithful. And this other pastor said to me, you need to call that pastor and tell him not to do that. And I thought, you know, do you think I wanted to? It's like, I don't want to call this strange man and tell him that he can't do, he shouldn't do this thing that's wrong. I want to let somebody else do it.

And so this is a long way around of me simply saying to you, the Pharisees decided to get somebody else to do their difficult work. And they cried out to Pilate at that point, let his blood be on our heads and on the heads of our children. But later on when Peter was preaching, what did these same men say to him? They said, you intend to bring this man's blood upon our heads. And he said, you killed him. You had him killed. And so if there's something difficult to do, Don't farm it out to other people to do as a Christian. And the places that you'll be most tempted to do that is when it's something wicked. You have little kids. Somebody wants cookies. They all know they can't have cookies. They conspire together about how to go get the cookies. And who ends up getting sent to go get the cookies? The youngest one. That's right. Because the youngest one doesn't have the sense that there's danger that's involved.

And so you see with little kids, even young children, that they have this temptation in them to get other people to do their dirty work. So if little kids do it, about cookies, and the scribes and elders are doing it about killing Jesus, can we acknowledge that we have a temptation in us to take the difficult hard work and get somebody else to do it? Your children are disobedient. Somebody else has got it. I hope the Sunday school teacher gets that taken care of. My husband's lazy. I hope the pastors step in. My wife, she's mouthy and she's rebellious. I sure hope that the women of the church... How easy is it for us to get somebody else to do the dirty work? You want them to come in and clean up the mess because we don't want to do it. And that's all the Pharisees were doing. They said, we can't do it, so we're going to get the unbelievers to do it for us. If there's something difficult that needs to be done, we ought not to farm it out to other people. So now we understand their strategy.

Now we come to their question. Is it lawful for us to pay taxes to Caesar or not? And it seems like a pretty benign question. It's just a yes or no question. But I want you to see that this question is meant to be, is really a question of where there's no right answer. Because if Jesus says, yeah, you've got to pay your taxes to Caesar, what he's done is put himself in the camp of The tax collectors, those people who were hated because the Romans were stealing their money, were taking their money, their taxes. But if he says, no, you shouldn't pay your money to the government, then what's the government going to have to say about that? What's that? They're going to come get him. And that's what they anticipated him saying. Now, I want to give you some background to their question. There was actually, in Exodus 30, which is our scripture lesson for next week, there's actually a section in there about,

about paying taxes. So I'm going to read this to you. Exodus 30, 11 through 16. This is the foundation of their question. This is where they've created the conflict. This is why they don't want to pay their taxes to the Romans. Exodus 30, 11 to 16 says, The Lord also spoke to Moses, saying, When you take a census of the sons of Israel to number them, then each one of them shall give a ransom for himself to the Lord when you number them, so that there will be no plague among them when you number them. This is what everyone who is numbered shall give, half a shekel according to the shekel of the sanctuary. The shekel is 20 geras, half a shekel as a contribution to the Lord. Everyone who is numbered from 20 years old and over shall give the contribution to the Lord. The rich shall not pay more, and the poor shall not pay less than half a shekel when you give the contribution to the Lord to make atonement for yourselves. You shall take the atonement money from the sons of Israel and shall give it

Now, there's a couple of things I want to draw out of this passage. The first is, every adult is supposed to pay it. Every man is supposed to pay it. 20 years and older, everybody pays it. The second thing I want to draw out is that it's money that they give, not animals. Most of what they do in service to God is offering sacrifices of this kind or that kind or the other. But here they give money. They're told to give money. And the third thing is everyone's going to pay it the same. The rich along with the poor. Everybody pays the same thing. Now some of you guys, just as an aside, when we talk about taxes and the government, there's a lot of people who think that a flat tax would be great. Just here is the standard tax rate no matter your income. And here's what you see. A standard tax rate for everybody, whether you're rich or you're poor. Everybody's paying the same. And so basically...

What you find in this passage is that all of the adults have to give money to support the work of the tabernacle for the buying of the utensils and the flour and the different things that are brought in to facilitate the worship of God. Everybody has to pay. And so we would call these things taxes or a tribute is what they're called in Scripture. It's a contribution or a tribute. It's money that's given over and beyond their offerings, their tithes, their sacrifices, all of that. a bit of their money for the service of the tabernacle. And you think, okay, well, that's a helpful little bit of information. What in the world does that have to do with our text? Well, the way the Jews understand it is that this money that they've been commanded in this passage we've just read to give for the service of the temple is being stolen by the Romans. That the taxes that they're supposed to be paying for worship is being taken by the Romans.

And that's why they have a big conflict, they have a big fight about it. There's a big disagreement about whether they should have to pay taxes. This is why the tax collectors were very unpopular people, because they were Jews who collected money for the Romans from the Jewish people, and all the Jews hated them, because they understood them to be stealing their money and giving it to the Romans. They were traitors. And more than that, what they were seeing as these tax collectors, if you were to make the best case against them, was that they were stealing from God. and giving it to unbelievers. They were taking the tribute that was paid and giving it to an unbeliever. Now you might think, well, why don't they just pay? They can pay their tithes and their offerings and they can pay their tributes and they can pay this government, pay to the Romans. Why don't they just pay everything? Well, is that how you feel about your own taxes? It's easy to say, well, why didn't they just pay and pay and pay and pay? But I say, well, okay, so are you happy when you got to pay and pay and pay?

Somebody comes and says, you're going to pay a little more? And you say, okay, yeah, I'll just reach a little further down in my back pocket and pay and pay and pay. At some point, you think what the Jews were saying was true. They're stealing. They're taking more than is appropriate. And they're taking money and misusing it. This money is supposed to be for one thing, and they're taking it and using it for another thing. And so this was the climate of what was going on when this question was asked. And that's why this question is such a loaded question. Because in Jesus' answer, he's either going to align himself with the Jewish people against the Romans with regard to this tax money, or he's going to align himself with the Romans against the Jews with this tax money. And so what he's going to do is make an enemy. Some way, somehow, somebody's going to be upset with him. This is the strategy of the Pharisees coming to him. They put a question to him that seems to have no answer that keeps him safe. It says,

Show me a denarius. It's a coin. Whose likeness as an inscription does it have? And we're left going, well, he didn't answer their question, right? You'd expect an answer to the question be, yes, you should pay the taxes, or no, you don't. And what his response was is, give me a coin. So they gave him a coin. Now, why did he ask for a coin? This is where we start to get into the inner workings of the question. Why does Jesus ask for a coin? And he asks, whose likeness as an inscription? is on it? Well, it's an interesting thing about money. You've got the Jews and you've got the Romans occupying them. And when he asks them for a coin, what kind of coin did they give him? A Roman coin. And whose likeness and inscription was on it? Well, they tell him it was Caesar's. So what's the significance of the coin having Caesar's, them giving him a coin with Caesar's picture on it? Well, you have to think about currency for a little while. What does currency,

Communicate. Power to exchange, yeah, yeah. And trade, yes. What does it communicate about me? If I were to give you a dollar, what do you know about me? You know I'm American. Money often communicates citizenship, where you're from, where your allegiance is. It also communicates authority. All currency communicates authority because we're not handing out lumps of gold anymore. that have intrinsic value in themselves. We hand out promissory notes that have an assigned value. The dollar bills that you have in your wallet aren't worth anything other than the fact that they are a promise of value. And so if you carry that money in your pocket, what you have agreed to is you've agreed to the system that that money exists in. All right?

And so you've communicated an implicit submission to the way that works. It shows our allegiance. Think of it this way. If you went to your job, and it just is a foregone conclusion that you're going to be paid in dollars, but let's just say you went to a job and they decided they were going to pay you in, we're getting there, pesos. Luis says, no. Now, let's just say that they'll pay you the equivalent. Whatever the exchange rate is, you earn 100 US dollars. They will pay you the equivalent of that in pesos. You happy to take it? Do you want it? No. Why? It doesn't work here. Exchange rate, you're going to lose some money. And most basically, it's not your currency. It does not carry the value here that it does in another place. Same thing would be true if they wanted to pay you in euros.

Or some other form of currency. What if they wanted to pay you in gold? I'm just going to weigh out some gold and pay you in gold. Nathan says, yeah, but it's... Tried going and paying. You can't even pay... There's places you can't even use cash anymore. You go in and want to pay for something, they won't take your cash. You can pay with your phone. You swipe your phone in front of something and that all works, but they won't take money. Okay? Currency has a lot... It communicates a lot about us. It communicates our allegiance and it communicates our affiliation. It communicates our citizenship. Now you come to, you know, these new currencies that are being rolled out. Abram mentioned Bitcoin, okay? What's Bitcoin?

It's just a mathematical equation that if you've been put money into people who have computers that search for these magic, these bitcoins, if you invest your money and they find it and you get a portion of a bitcoin, you have value now. They've given you, you've made money. And you're all sitting here like, uh, no. No. This new one, Q. Have you guys heard about Q? It's all over Facebook, right? You know, I've only got so many invites. You want to come and get yourself, you know, signed up for Q? Literally, the letter Q, that's what it's called. It's currency, supposedly. And we're all sitting here going, nah, not my currency. And I say, okay, fine, it's not your currency, so what is your currency? Your currency is American dollars. That's your currency. Because you're an American, because you've agreed that the way they value it is appropriate and right, it's yours. And so, I say all of this to say, Jesus asks for a coin.

And he says, whose coin is it? And they say without hesitation, Caesar's. What have they admitted when they say Caesar's coin? What they've said is, we're happy to operate under the Roman government because we use their currency. Did they have to use Roman currency? Well, it's like, yeah, I don't know. Well, what else? Did the Jews have money of their own? And it's like, yeah, they did. It's often measured out by weight. But were there inscriptions on it? Was there a likeness on it? Yeah. I couldn't find any pictures of stuff of what it would have looked like back in Exodus, like what their money would have looked like because they're told to pay a certain amount. I couldn't find anything. But what I want you to see is that because they use Roman currency, they've implicitly submitted themselves to the Roman tax. I'm going to read to you what Matthew Henry says and also what Calvin says about this point. Henry says, Why then, says Christ,

you should have first asked whether it was lawful to pay and receive Caesar's money among yourselves and to admit that it be the instrument of your commerce. So what he's saying is if you actually had a problem with paying the tax, you should have questioned whether you were going to use their currency because it's not your currency. But having granted this by a common consent that you're going to use their currency, you are concluded by your own act. And no doubt you ought to give tribute to him who furnished you with this convenience for your trade. He protects you in it. and lends you the sanction of his authority for the value of your money. So the money that you've chosen to use binds you to paying the tax that's required of using that money. Calvin says, if you think it's strange to pay tribute, be not subjects of the Roman Empire. You remember when the elections were going on and everyone was complaining, if Trump gets elected, I'm moving. And other people were like, oh, and other people were like, yeah, you know. But it's all just bluster because who left? Nobody left.

It's all just smoke and mirrors and a lie. Everyone wants to complain, but nobody wants to do anything about it. And it's the same thing Calvin's saying here about the Romans or the Jews. If you don't like paying the tribute, move. Move. You say, we can't move. And I say, well, then you're bound to live by the laws of the land that you're in. If you think it's strange to pay tribute, be not subject to the Roman Empire, but the money attests that Caesar rules over you. So that by your own silent consent, the liberty to which you lay claim is lost and gone. And so there's a lot in this little, this, you know, hey, give me a coin that Jesus asks for. And what he's revealing to them and to the crowds is, you've already pledged allegiance to pay this thing. You should only do what's required of you. But I'm not the one telling you to do it. I'm only pointing out the fact that you've already decided to do it. This is Jesus' answer to their question. Render to Caesar.

the things that are Caesar's. Romans 13, 7, Paul says, render to all what is due them, tax to whom taxes due, custom to custom, fear to whom fear is due, labor, honor to whom honor is due. Give people what's theirs. This is where we find our, you know, the touch point or the intersection of what is it to be a Christian and live under some civil government. What are you supposed to do? You're supposed to pay them their taxes. It's almost, you know, as I was studying this, I got really uncomfortable with what Jesus was saying because what he's saying borders on, it's like, he doesn't say, well, pay this and pay that. What he basically says is, give them what they require because you live underneath their care. And then they go, well, what about our tribute? And it's as if Jesus doesn't say anything about it. He's like, well, make sure you give them what they need, what they require.

It's almost like he says they don't have to give to the Lord. Almost like that. I don't think that's what he's saying. It's not the point of the passage. But when he says to them, give to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, he follows up and says to them then, and to God the things that are God's. And so you're supposed to give in both places. Now, do you give the same thing in both places? That's the question. It's very clear in this passage what they're supposed to give to Caesar is money. They're supposed to pay him. They're supposed to pay the tribute. Because it's what the civil magistrate requires of them. But what are they supposed to give to God? And the reason this is important is because the pretext of the question is, we can't give to God what's his because Caesar's requiring it from us. And Jesus says, we'll do both. Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and give to God the things that are God's. Now, what is it that they're supposed to give to God? And it should be important to them because they've come and asked the question. What is it that they're supposed to give to God?

Is it money that he's concerned about? It's not money. He's not concerned about whether they give him their money. He's concerned about whether or not they obey him. And you remember just before this, these men who were, you know, the spies, the men who sent the spies, what was going on in the temple when Jesus showed up? These who were so concerned about giving God what's his, were so concerned that the Romans were stealing from God. What was going on in the temple? They were exploiting God's people. They were money changers in the court of the temple, buying and selling and trading and turning a profit, monetizing God's worship. That's what was going on. And you see the sort of web that they've spun. The question presents as though it's a sincere question. What should we do? But it's asked with wicked intentions. These men simply love their money, and they don't want to give it to the Romans.

They also don't care about the worship of God or the temple would have never been in the state that it was in.