Matthew 17:22-27

Matthew 17, we'll look at verses 22 to 27.

Verse 22 to 27, it's going to be a fun text to be able to look at, and hopefully it'll be practical in your own life as you're kind of figuring out kind of where to land on different things that come up in your life.

There are these two extremes as you do life.

On the one hand, you can be very principled, and on the other hand, you can be pragmatic.

Principled and pragmatic.

And some of you are on that spectrum.

You're like more on the principled side.

Of like, well, these are my principles.

I'm sticking with it.

This is, you know, life's just black and white.

And then some of you are more pragmatic of like, you know, well, this seems to be the quickest route there, and things are a little bit more negotiable.

Well, what does it mean to follow Jesus?

To be a follower of Jesus, to have him giving you principles, but then navigating life where things are not explicitly spelled out in Scripture.

And Jesus faced one of those types of situations.

You face these things when you're at work or you're navigating relationships, you're just doing life, interacting with people who maybe are not following Jesus.

And it's just like, well, you know, how do you how do we do this?

So that's kind of what we're going to encounter as we go through Matthew 17.

Matthew 17, verses 22 through 27.

Matthew 17:22–27

Let me read the text to you.

We'll pray and then we'll begin to unpack it.

As they were gathering together in Galilee, Jesus told them, the Son of Man is about to be betrayed into the hands of men.

They will kill him, and on the third day he will be raised up, and they were deeply distressed.

When they came to Capernaum, those who collected the temple tax approached Peter and said, Doesn't your teacher pay the temple tax?

Yes, he said.

When he went into the house, Jesus spoke to him first.

What do you think, Simon?

From whom do earthly kings collect tariffs or taxes?

From their sons or from strangers?

From strangers, he said.

Then the sons are free, Jesus told him.

But so we won't offend them, go to the sea, cast in a fish hook, and take the first fish that you catch.

When you open its mouth, you'll find a coin.

Take it and give it to them for me and for you.

Let's pray.

Lord, we come before you, and Lord, would it be the state of our hearts that we are willing to submit to your word, that your word is authoritative over our life, and we take up a posture of humility and obedience and readiness to say yes to what your spirit shows us this morning as we're going through this text.

We we recognize that you know our story even better than we can recall our own story, and you have a plan.

And we ask God that you would graft us again into your good plan by your spirit.

Speak to us, Lord, we pray this morning in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

So as we're going through Matthew, which is just a biography about Jesus, right?

It's an early record of what Jesus did and what he taught.

We come to this story in Matthew.

Now, there are two parts here that we have combined together.

We're looking at the second prediction that Jesus gives about his death in Jerusalem that's coming.

And then the bulk of the text is about this idea of the uh the bulk of the text is about this idea of paying taxes.

And so we're gonna look at both separately, but we'll spend most of our time in this second question.

Now, if you go to Mark, Luke, or John, you will not get this second section.

Only Matthew records for us this interaction over the temple tax.

This is gonna be our thesis statement as we move forward.

Jesus provides a pattern for Christian cultural engagement, maintaining our identity as God's free children while responding, responsibly navigating cultural obligations for the sake of our witness.

Again, navigating cultural obligations for the sake of our witness.

So we've read through the text.

Let's look first at this section, um, verses twenty-two and twenty-three.

It says that as they gather together in Galilee, Jesus told them, the Son of Man is about to be betrayed into the hands of men.

They will kill him, and on the third day he will be raised up.

So this is the second time.

Just a few weeks ago, we saw the first time that Jesus predicted his death.

And so, again, for those of us who have chosen to follow Jesus, what can we learn from this?

One of the things that we have been seeing is that Jesus is not opposed to giving his disciples a heads up on what's coming.

One of the benefits of walking with Jesus, listening to the Holy Spirit, reading your Bible, and developing, cultivating your relationship with God is that God oftentimes speaks in advance about what's going to happen.

So we see this with Abraham, right?

God says to Abraham, before he gives Abraham a miraculous child, he says, Abraham, this is what I'm going to do for you.

Right?

We see this in the life of Joseph.

When Joseph is a young man, he has these dreams that basically predict his future, that taps him into this is God's plan worldwide.

He has this vision of all of his siblings bowing down to him.

And then what do we see with Pharaoh and the dream, and then his interpretation?

We see that God is giving to his people this insight into what is about to happen.

The way, one of the ways this has worked out in my own personal life, like as I went into this year, there was a passage of scripture that God I felt was just like the Holy Spirit highlighter was pointing me to, just saying, Hey, this is for you this year.

And it became like just a way to frame up my thinking about the year.

And so, look, it is not a strange experience for Christians to have a sense of direction and anticipation about what's coming, to be prepared.

I remember, I remember um before um 9-11 happened.

Some of you are old enough to be alive when 9-11 happened.

I had a dream about this horrible accident, this bloody situation where people were being carried out on cots, and um they were triaging this whole scene.

And there was this, in the in the background of my dream, there was this um, there was the Manhattan landscape.

Um and I I saw it, I woke up, there was this sense of like something's gonna happen.

And it was only a few weeks later that 9-11 happened, and I forgot, I forgot that the about the dream.

But then after 9-11, about five or six months later, they were doing these like all kinds of remember how Time magazine used to do like commemorative editions where it was just like a photo display of like crazy pictures.

And I turned to one page in this Time magazine thing, I think I still have it, and it was literally the image from my dream.

It was like the picture, the triage picture.

They're carrying this woman who was all bloodied, and it said in the description, like, hey, this is you know, this is a woman being carried in the triage section.

That's not special.

That can be a normative experience, at least as we look at Christians, godly people, as we go through Old and New Testament, we see it as a familiar experience that God is giving a heads up to his people.

And so, what does that mean for us practically?

It means that we are we want to have a tender heart and be listening, being those people who are can be entrusted with that heads up.

Like, why would I give you a heads up if you're forgetful, you don't write stuff down, you're kind of flippant with what's going on.

No, those things are things to be stewarded over.

And so here we see Jesus telling his disciples, this is what's gonna happen.

Now, you would think, okay, well, well, what if they mess it up?

Like, what if they step in and they try to thwart what's gonna what's gonna occur?

Jesus isn't afraid of that.

Jesus is fine with just saying, here's what's gonna occur, and their response is they they were deeply distressed.

Well, that's not very loving.

That's not very loving.

Why would Jesus say something to them that would cause them to be deeply distressed?

It seems like, it seems like it just makes sense that Jesus is okay with giving his closest followers, his future leaders, a heads up about something that would cause a deep sense of stress.

Yeah, smiley.

Yeah, um, does it mean that he's also preparing them for what's to come?

Yeah, I think so.

I think this is an opportunity for them to prepare their hearts for something that's tragic.

Now, their response is kind of messy, kind of messy, but they um they're able to look back on it and see, like, wow, look at look at how Jesus He warned us about this thing that was going to occur.

That's a good observation.

Thank you for that.

So let's keep going.

Let's look at um this second section, starting in verse 24.

It says that when they came to Capernaum, and and what we already saw there in Galilee, and you'll you'll remember, like Galilee is really important in the book of Matthew, because a lot of the ministry that Matthew explains to us about Jesus, it's happening in this northern area around the Sea of Galilee.

So there's all these small towns, and one of them is Capernaum.

And those who collected the temple tax approached Peter and said, Doesn't your teacher pay the temple tax?

And the response that Peter gives is yes.

Now we'll go on into the rest of verse 25 in a second, but let's just look at what this temple tax is.

Like what is what's the cultural context?

Why are they asking this question?

So in Exodus chapter 30, Exodus 30, 13 through 16, it says, everyone who is registered must pay a half shekel according to the sanctuary shekel, 20 garas to the shekel.

Exodus 30 · chapter mention

This half shekel is a contribution to the Lord.

So when we go back to Exodus, what we're looking at is when God gave instructions to Moses about setting up the tabernacle, excuse me, the tabernacle worship.

And so he says this half shekel is to be paid as a contribution to the Lord.

Each man who is registered, 25 years old or more, or 20 years old or more, must give this contribution to the Lord.

The wealthy may not give more, and the poor may not give less than half a shekel when giving the contribution to the Lord to atone for your lives.

Take the atonement price from the Israelites and use it for the service of the tent of meaning.

It will serve as a reminder for the Israelites before the Lord to atone for your lives.

So there's a couple different purposes for this tax.

It's a flat tax.

Doesn't matter if you're poor or you're um poor or rich.

It is everybody pays just the half shekel.

Uh, and it would be used in the future to get a count on how many men were 20 years old or older.

It was an instrument for almost a census in a sense.

It was used to help keep, you know, it's the community taking care of their worship space together, but then it also has this spiritual reminder of atonement of being bought back.

Um, so there's this spiritual engagement that's going on.

So this has been a part of the culture, uh, the Jewish culture for years, all the way up until the time of Jesus.

And um the question that is posed, those who collect this temple tax ask Peter, well, you know, does your master, does your teacher pay the temple tax?

This could have been a trap to test Jesus' loyalty to the Jewish tradition.

Um or it could have just been just a simple question of, like, well, do you pay?

Um and Peter, without really talking to Jesus, he just jumps out there and he says, Yeah, this is what happens.

So let's that sets the stage.

Let's look at this next section, part three, the first principle.

It's the sons are free.

So we get into verse 25.

Peter's already said yes, and then in your version, uh it should say something like this.

When Peter went into the house, Jesus spoke to him first, and he just asks this question: What do you think, Simon?

From whom do earthly kings collect tariffs or taxes?

From their sons or from strangers?

So Jesus is going to use the example of earthly kings to teach a principle about the heavenly kingdom.

Okay, so he's saying, Peter, in the world that you know of, in the culture, who is it that kings are taxing and levying tariffs to?

Is it their kin?

Is it their kids, or is it to those who are strangers?

And Peter's response is that it's from strangers.

And so Jesus then says, um, the sons, then the sons are free.

So he's again using this example that's like Roman Empire, you know, historically, who gets taxed?

And then he's layering on to that and he's saying, good, so we have this working idea that the kids of the king, they don't pay taxes, they're free, they're exempt from that tax.

What Jesus is doing is he's establishing what we call a first principle.

He's establishing this idea that is um applies to himself.

There is um not just the idea of a, there's not just the idea of um Jesus being the Son of God and therefore free from paying the tax on his father's house.

Right?

So um, that's why we're saying father's house, by the way.

So um there is not just that sense of freedom, but there is this bleed over into the idea that when you become a follower of Jesus, your and my life is seated in Christ.

The book of Ephesians talks about this at length.

It is this idea that we become co-heirs, we become identified with Christ.

So what Jesus gets in terms of being a son of the Father, we get that identity too.

So there is this establishing of a first principle, this freedom, this privileged position as a son of the king.

So that's the underlying principle.

And by implication, you would think, like, well, because I'm a son, then I'm free.

I don't have to pay the tax.

But there is this practical concession that we see in verse 27.

And here's how Jesus explains it.

He says, but so we won't offend them.

Go to the sea, cast in a fish hook, and take the first fish that you catch.

When you open its mouth, you'll find a coin, take it and give it to them for you and me.

So the coin is enough for it's a full shekel, so you've got a payment for two people that is going to be found.

Um, but what I want you to notice is that Jesus gives a reason for the concession.

So he says, it's so that we won't offend them.

I want you to pay the tax.

And then there's this crazy part where a miracle is done.

There's a miraculous provision of the tax money to pay it, right?

Which we'll talk about in just a minute.

But I want to spend uh a minute just looking at this this um what we would call like a paradigm.

Because the early church, the and this this um, as I was studying this this week, I was appreciating the way that this is laid out, and I would call it what we call like an interpretive key.

Um or you remember when back in the day when we used to take tests and we'd fill in the dots, you fill in the dots, and then the teacher would have like the you would lay like the key, the answer key over the dots, and and it would tell you like okay what questions you got right.

This is kind of like that in that Jesus is not just teaching in the moment, but he's providing an interpretive key for how to how do we handle first principles that may be in tension with the cultural realities.

These things pop up all the time as we're as we're doing life.

And I'm gonna give you some examples of of this from other places in the New Testament.

In 1 Peter chapter 2, 1 Peter chapter 2, we have um uh this idea of this is 216.

1 Peter 2 · chapter mention 1 Peter 2 · chapter mention

Peter tells these Christians to live as free people, very similar to Jesus' teaching live as a free person, but then he calls upon them to submit to the authorities for the Lord's sake.

So he establishes that look, you are a free people.

He tells this to slaves.

He tells this to Roman citizens.

He says, listen, your true identity is that you are a person that is free.

No one lays claim to your life.

But because we are a people on a mission, we live in this disposition where God is bringing the good news of his kingdom to people all around us.

Like we were talking about Jimmy earlier.

God's carrying the message, the good message of his kingdom through us to people all around us.

And if we just start standing on our principles, our identity, we're going to take off a bunch of people and offend a bunch of people unnecessarily.

Does that make sense?

And so if these slaves were to just say, listen, I, you know, I follow Jesus now, so you know, screw you, I'm not going to follow you, master, anymore, that would get in the way of that master receiving the kingdom message.

So Jesus, it's subversive.

What Jesus is doing, and what then Paul and Peter teach is a message that upholds human dignity, where you give it enough time, and the Christian message, the kingdom message, infects the world enough that slavery becomes untenable to a culture that embraces even just the basic idea of human dignity.

And so, but it is it is tactful of the Christian to say, like Jesus, we don't want to offend in this moment.

We're not looking to unnecessarily offend, even though there is a first principle that gives us an excuse for not paying the tax.

Now, there is this temptation as we engage life and we learn about who Jesus is and what he's done for us.

You can abuse that liberty, that freedom.

And you can say, Well, I'm at liberty, I have my freedom.

Like, forget everybody else.

And all of a sudden, you start having interactions with others that are offensive in the name of now my life's changed, I'm a follower of Jesus.

And it becomes this upside-down, backward sense of following Jesus.

It's not recognizing, no, wait, Jesus saved you so that this mission can be carried on through your life.

There's another example of this in the early church in Rome.

The early church in Rome was a mixture of many Gentiles, some Jews, who were becoming followers of Jesus, and there were some in that church, many in the church, who had come out of paganism.

And a part of the paganism was taking and offering your meat to idols.

Um, and just kind of in the process of acquiring your meat, it would go through an offering to pagan idols process.

And so there were Christians who were becoming followers of Jesus, and they were like, wow, I don't want to have anything to do with paganism or meat sacrifice to idols.

And so they would just decide, I'm gonna be a vegetarian.

I cannot culturally have anything to do with meat sacrifice to idols.

And there became this dispute, there was a fight in the church over this stuff.

Because there are other people who are like, no, let's go back to first principles.

Like, if we if we understand who God is and what those idols are, they're nothing.

They are not gods at all.

They are just statues that have no meaning.

And so them being offered meat being offered to an idol and then being sold at a discount rate in the marketplace, that's just a good deal on meat, and it has no spiritual significance.

So you have this fight between people who, in their conscience, they didn't want to eat the meat because of what it had gone through, and you had other people who were like, no, I'm free in Christ.

Well, Paul says to the people who are exercising their liberty and eating meat, he says, hold on.

Those, you're strong in your faith.

You you're theologically, you're right that those idols are nothing, and eating meat does not separate you from God.

You've got the theology right, but the way you're treating your vegetarian brothers and sisters is absolutely wrong.

And you're getting in the way of them feeling close to God, and you're bringing this meat to the barbecue, and it's interrupting the fellowship that's going on amongst the church.

And so Paul says, for the sake of not offending your brother, stop, don't eat meat, because I care about the person more than my barbecue.

Okay?

I care about the person more than my barbecue.

This comes up in 1 Corinthians 8 through 10.

The same thing is there.

In 1 Corinthians 9, there are people who are accusing, um they're slandering Paul for uh being financially supported, and they're saying it's less spiritual to be financially supported by being a church planter and a pastor.

And um, and Paul has to defend himself there in 1 Corinthians 9, and he says, wait, don't I have the right, that's the first principle, don't I have the right, like Peter, and others, to lead about a wife?

In other words, to get married.

Don't I, it's not unspiritual if I wanted to be married.

Don't I have the right to be paid for uh being a pastor?

And the obvious answer is yes, you have the first principal right to those things.

He can you could back it up with Scripture until your face is blue.

But then Paul says, but I've decided, I've decided to not take a salary because I don't want to get in the way of you receiving the gospel.

Now that was a specific decision he made with the church in Corinth.

Now, when he was imprisoned and he was working with the church in Philippi, he took, he gladly took support.

But in that season of life, he opted out of financial support because he knew it would mess with his message.

And the gospel message is more important than standing on your rights.

Now, listen, we as Americans have this long history of like, I'm gonna stand for my rights.

Doggone it.

I'm gonna stand for my rights, my liberty, you know?

But the follower of Jesus has a story that they understand they're a part of.

They see God at work, and they make a conscious decision sometimes to put their rights aside for the sake of not offending, because it's, hey, I want to see you come into the kingdom.

This also comes up in the household codes, or as we look at like gender roles, um, we see that Paul explains gender roles within the framing of culture so as not to give an offense.

And unfortunately, some of Paul's passages on gender have been abused throughout the years as like, no, see, Paul said, you know, women should just keep silent in the church.

Well, if he said that, then why a few verses earlier did he have women praying and prophesying in the church, you know?

But this is the thing.

Paul gave guidance that was targeted into the culture because the culture sometimes is broken.

And sometimes people's hearts are broken, people's conscience, like the vegetarians in Rome, not vegetarians today, but the vegetarians in Rome, their theology was kind of broken.

But that was okay.

It was more important to set those rights aside because I want to love my brother and I want to strive for the unity of the church.

So let's just, in the last couple minutes here, let's just kind of bring this home in some practical ways.

There's a number of different areas where there's the first principle, there's the theology piece, and then there is the okay, but then there's what's going to offend.

This idea of um your kingdom identity and understanding um your position in Christ is taught throughout the New Testament.

And there is this underlying idea that we want to be a people that are holding intention both what is true about our identity, our freedom in Christ, our the fact that we're forgiven, the fact that God's gonna take care of us and provide for us, right?

There's that reality, but then there's our human engagement.

So one example is this idea of we live in an urban context.

Many of you live in this urban context.

Um, some of you struggle with poverty.

You may go into like a social security office, and you know, you know that, hey, the Bible says that I have dignity, that I am created in the image of God, and that means that I should I hold a position of honor.

Not only that, but as a follower of Jesus, then I'm forgiven, I'm a son of God.

But the person across from you, behind the plexiglass there, is rude and demeaning.

And you've got a decision to make.

Am I gonna stand on the principles that I know, or am I willing to be mistreated in the moment because being pounding somebody over the head with my Bible is probably gonna keep me from the check that I need, but it also may get in the way of a future witness to this person, an opportunity for a conversation about the gospel.

We want to engage.

Um, there are times where you may feel like your rights, it may be Christian rights, you maybe feel like your American rights are being trampled.

As Christians, we can engage in that conversation, not as like I'm gonna stand for my rights, but I'm going to stand for the mission of the kingdom, the message of the kingdom.

And we want to see people through this lens of what's going to get you closer to God.

So when it comes to like Christian liberties, um, you know, there there may be somebody, let's say that after church today, there's six or seven of us who are like, you know, let's go out for lunch.

But somebody's new in our group, and they may come out of a um, let's say a setting, like Eastern religion setting, and uh Buddhism, and they may be like, Look, I can't go and eat at that Chinese food restaurant because there's a little Buddha back there, and they're offering sacrifices in that place, and and they may feel like, look, that's that's I can't do that.

That's that's gonna violate my conscience.

Well, the the Bible informs the rest of us to not be like, oh, you know, come on, grow up.

No, the Bible teaches the rest of us as a group to love that person and to be like, okay, we can find another place to go and eat at.

We can go and eat at Ekibin or something like that, which would be which would be my choice.

100%.

Um the same thing comes up comes up with like content.

Let's say we're all gonna go out for a movie, but but somebody in our group feels like, look, you know, I have this conviction about the kind of movies that I watch.

And so rather than demeaning that person, we want to um we want to care for that person.

The two principles that underlie this is I don't want to take Christians that I'm around and do stuff that makes them feel like they're further away from God.

Does that make sense?

I I don't want to do stuff that keeps people feeling like they've now all of a sudden been separated from God.

I want people around me to feel closer to God.

The second principle is there's people around me that don't know God yet.

And so I want to not do anything in my life that's gonna keep those people from knowing God, anything that's gonna disrupt my witness to them.

The beautiful thing in this section is that one, you understand your kingdom identity.

The second is that you consider the gospel witness, but this is the third awesome thing about this story is trust in God's provision.

You know when you put your when you put your rights aside, you take the hit.

You decide that you're not gonna stand up for your rights.

The temptation is in that moment to feel like you're gonna be the one poorer in the moment.

You're gonna be the one that gets ripped off, you're gonna be the one that gets the short end of the stick.

But what we see in this story is that Jesus miraculously provides the temple tax.

And as you're making these decisions of like, you know what?

I'm willing to take the loss strategically so that the gospel can move forward.

I'm gonna hold on to verse 27.

That God can just stick a coin in a fish's mouth.

Right?

God can take care of the temple tax.

The painful thing in this setting was for Jesus, would have been like, dude, that's my house.

Like, why am I paying taxes on my own house?

You know?

That's my father's house.

And Jesus didn't think, no, I don't want to offend him.

Just go fishing.

Pull the coin that's over there, and then fish is now done.

How much is a shekel?

I don't know.

It's small, it's like a small amount.

I don't know.

Can I look it up and get back to you?

I'll look it up.

The currency in Israel is still a shekel, but it would be different.

I know.

I would imagine if God's telling both the poor people and the rich people to give half a shekel, they'd be a small amount.

But uh yeah, could you look it up and let us all know?

All right.

Okay, so I don't know, I don't know what the Holy Spirit's speaking to you through this text.

But there is a sense of let's trust in God, let's put others first, right?

Let's understand better and better.

What are those first principles?

What's our identity?

Like, how beautiful to all of a sudden see taxes through this lens of like, I'm the son of the father.

That's awesome.

And then from that position, to operate in differentiation and say, I'm still, though, even though I have the right to not pay the tax, I'm still gonna do it.

Just beautiful the way that it's laid out.

Let's pray.

Lord, we um we love being able to sit and just sit in your word for a few minutes.

There's wisdom here, this is interpretive key.

You're giving us guidance on how to do life.

And um, it's it's not a rule, but it's it's some guardrails, it's some principles to follow.

And I pray, Lord, that you would just embed these types of things, these wisdom principles in our life, that we could honor you, Lord Jesus.

Make yourself known in and through our lives, we pray.

And we ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.