"Why We Don't Worship Government" Matthew 22:15-22 Sunday Evening Worship Service

Well, certainly one of the most significant events of world history happened in 410 AD when raiding armies from Europe took control of Rome, marking the end of the Roman Empire, really, as it had been known for centuries before that.

The Roman Empire had ruled the earth for over 600 years.

And that's just an incredible number to think about in comparison with our own empires that we think so highly of, even our own nation's history being 200 plus years old.

And the Lord, of course, has used the United States in wonderful ways, sending missionaries around the world and increasing wealth and freedom for so many people.

That's over a history of 200 years.

So contemplate in your minds the effect the Roman Empire had on uniting diverse parts of the world for six centuries.

The Roman Empire extended into what is now known as Asia.

Parts of India fell under the control of the Roman Empire.

The Middle East in almost its entirety fell under the control of the Roman Empire, the Mediterranean Basin, the North Africa, Ethiopia, much of Europe.

There was even Roman outposts all the way up in modern day England.

It extended through Spain.

I mean, they ruled the known world.

The size waxed and waned depending upon the century, but they brought a cohesive culture, a cohesive language, a cohesive government laws, a taxation system, an army, law enforcement.

They put their print on the world in really an unrivaled way.

And in 410, it came to a screeching halt when Rome fell to invaders.

And this fall sent shockwaves to the rest of Africa, Asia, civilized Europe.

And people were pretty much united in who was to blame for the fall of Rome.

Certainly it was the Christians' fault.

While Rome was certainly not a democracy, it had many of the tendencies of democracy, and one of those tendencies was to blame or accept praise or blame difficulty on the will of some segment of the population.

That if only these people had backed the government in this way, then we would be fine.

And you saw that in the Roman Empire, not so much with elections, but you saw it in the Roman Empire more with their gods.

If only we had still worshipped the old Roman gods.

Rome inherited its glory from the Greek gods, and yet the Greek gods had been discarded as of late.

And many people assumed that is why Rome fell.

And said, in fact, this became the narrative in the Roman Empire.

It was the difficulty was that the Christians had stopped worshiping the Roman gods, had stopped worshiping the Greek gods.

And so they were to blame for the downfall of Rome.

There were not a lot of people who were willing to defend Christians in this regard.

In fact, this had been an easy label, an easy accusation for Christians to receive over the centuries.

It was Nero who had accused Christians of setting Rome on fire.

It was easy to blame Christians for the downfall of Rome or difficulty in Rome, even all the way back then.

This hadn't changed.

But what had changed recently is when Emperor Constantine had allegedly or ostensibly been converted to Christianity.

Christianity had become legalized and more than legalized, it is in many respects become the religion of the Roman Empire.

When the Emperor himself is following it and calling church councils and wading into church disputes about the deity of Christ and which books are canonized, then certainly the emperor is putting his own prince on the Christianity.

And so when Christianity became perceived as the religion of the Roman Empire, it was then that its downfall was right around the corner.

And so you didn't have to get a master's degree in history to understand that Rome had prospered until it became Christian and then it fell.

The problem is obviously they didn't worship the Roman gods.

This prompted Augustine from his outpost in North Africa to write what really is the his main work that he has left us, his book, The City of God.

And I say it's a book, it's a collection of books.

It's massive.

They're not really chapters.

Even the most of the English translations of it divide the sections of it into book one, book two, book three, all the way up through, I think, book twelve or thirteen.

This is the city of God.

And if you have not read the city of God, I'm not necessarily suggesting it to you.

It would take probably a year of dedicated reading to work your way through it in its entirety.

I did read it back when I was in college and had newly come to faith in Christ.

And because it was captivating to me about how Augustine took a polemic to the Roman gods.

So Augustine did not act defensive at the beginning of this book.

He doesn't wade in and try to give you an apology for, you know, we're so sorry Rome fell.

Apologies from the Christians.

We'll try to do better next time.

He didn't respond that way.

Augustine responded through the first ten books of the City of God, or ten chapters, whatever you call them, he responded by really going after the ridiculousness of worshiping idols.

He names the Roman gods.

He shows you how the priests of the Roman gods throughout the centuries had taught contradictory things.

They had contradicted themselves.

So how can you listen to them when they speak about what is good for a nation or what is good for a country when their own gods can't even get their story straight?

He shows that the success of Rome is not connected to the religiosity of Rome and at different periods of Roman Empire when new temples were being built and religion was at its zenith, its prosperity was not necessarily at its zenith.

And Augustine argues somewhat persuasively that there is not a real connection between the religion of Rome and its success or its failures.

And that's not necessarily controversial, but what Augustine goes to next is controversial.

Augustine then argues that that is true of every nation in world history.

He says that there is no such thing as a nation who rises or falls based upon the influence of Christianity.

He's writing in the fifth century here.

And he says that this is true not just in the New Testament era, but globally around the world, with the possible exception of the nation of Israel.

He argues that nations rise and fall because of God's common grace in the world and how they check evil on each other.

Certainly God is at work in the nations of the world to control evil and reign it in, but it is a mistake to think that nations rise or fall based upon their connection to religion.

That's Augustine's argument.

And the last part of the book, he lays out a better vision for people to embrace.

His better vision is to view the world as split between two cities, the city of man and the city of God.

And he makes the argument that God's people dwell in both cities, but they cannot listen to this carefully.

God's people dwell in both cities.

You are citizens of the United States, and you are citizens of the kingdom of heaven.

Every believer in the world has that dual identity.

They're citizen of their own nation and of the same nation as us in heaven.

And yet, Augustine says, Christians cannot be blamed for the success or the failure of either one of those two cities.

And that's the key part.

That when nations rise or fall, it's not because Christians came in or out of power there.

It's because nations rise and fall.

And when the kingdom of God advances, it advances based upon the sovereign will of God, brought about through the new birth as the gospel goes forward.

And when there seems to be a lack of success in the advancement of the gospel, that also is not on the Christians.

It is part of God's sovereign plan.

And then he ends his book by arguing that heaven will always be victorious and earth will always fail, regardless.

So think very carefully about where you put your hope in this world.

Now, this book, after Augustine's death, sparked one of the most consequential theological debates in world history.

The fall of Rome was one of the most consequential events.

This debate was one of the most consequential theological debates, and it was not a theological in terms of like the Christology or the two natures of Christ or about God's sovereignty over salvation, but I mean consequential in terms of the practical nature of it.

Many people interpreted Augustine's City of God as arguing that these two cities should be under one person's control.

That the problem with Rome is that Constantine, who had promoted himself in charge of the church, had moved out of Rome to Istanbul, which he humbly named after himself, demonstrating the Christian fruit of humility with his conversion.

And now you have it split where the city of man from Rome was no longer in charge of the church.

This is not what Augustine was saying, but this is how many people interpreted him, as believing that the problem with the downfall of Rome is that one person was no longer controlling both cities.

And so this is what the Catholic Church and this is what the Orthodox Church did this day.

They had taken from Augustine the argument that both cities should fall under one kingdom and both cities should have one unified voice leading them.

This is what you run into in the Middle Ages through Europe with the Holy Roman Empire.

You've heard it joked, I'm sure, that it was not holy, it was not Roman, and it was not an empire any longer.

But the point of it was that they were in charge.

The Holy Roman Empire was in charge through the emperor and the pope of both the political and the ecclesiological aspects.

The church fell under the authority of the Pope, the Emperor fell under the authority of the Pope.

You had one person reigning over both places.

This is their vision.

Their vision of mankind connected to two cities.

This is known in the Catholic Church as the doctrine of two swords.

It's the Catholic doctrine that one person needs to wield authority over both, that both kingdoms, both cities, have their own sword.

The city of man goes forward at the threat of the sword through law enforcement and the power of taxation, the government and the armies, and the city of God goes forward under the sword of the sacraments.

This is why knights often had the crest with two swords on it, demonstrating that one office of the knight was to enforce laws, and another office of the knight was to go on crusades, so to speak, and advance the kingdom of God.

They worked for both kingdoms under the authority of the Pope.

The army would bear one sword for law and war and one sword for the church.

This became the image of this time period.

It designates the two swords.

You'll see the two-headed eagle.

He has a sword in both, well, a sword in one hand, the smaller sword is the church in the other hand, but it certainly operates as a sword.

This was the crest of many of the popes in the Russian Orthodox Church.

They took this as the legal authority for the leader of the Orthodox Church, their own pope, to persecute people that didn't fall in line with the teaching of the Russian Orthodox Church to appoint the different leaders of Russia.

The same thing was played out in the Greek Orthodox Church, the same thing played out obviously, and more prominently for us in the Roman Church.

The same doctrine is alive and well today, by the way, in the Anglican Church.

The Queen, even though it's mostly symbolic, the Queen to this very moment, the Queen of England, is the head of the Anglican Church.

Two swords, two kingdoms, one person.

Now I think that's a wrong understanding of the way Scripture lays this out.

I don't believe the New Testament ethic is for one person to have control over both the government and the church.

I believe the New Testament example and model for us is to have these two kingdoms that exist side by side.

There's a separation between the two, and they do not rule each other.

There is certainly an overlap between the two, in as much as we find ourselves as citizens of both.

And that overlap is experienced in various ways.

The main way it's experienced by us is that we are citizens of the United States and we are citizens of heaven.

We are under the authority of the government of our country, and we are under the authority of Scripture and God's word.

We are under both sets of authority.

And those authorities regulate different parts of our life.

Of course, only God is supreme.

He regulates every personal area of our life, but the scripture does not lay out the political conduct of our country or what kind of laws we should have in our country or tax codes or whatnot.

It gives principles that godly governments should follow.

It gives principles of godliness and justice and righteousness that can be applied to government, but it does not mandate that they are so.

I think our country has been blessed through the years because there were people that took godly principles and did apply them into shaping our country and the kind of laws we have in our country, but that is a blessing.

It is not the design of how every nation should work on earth.

And on top of that, the reverse is also true.

The government does not have, and we've looked at this last few weeks, the government does not have authority to regulate the church.

That is outside of its authority.

The government does not bear the sword in telling the Christian church when they can worship, how they can worship, the content of their worship, the frequency of their worship.

That is outside of their domain.

The kingdoms are separated.

I've often said this: the church is an embassy.

We come here to worship.

We retreat from this world and we come here to gather and worship with co-citizens of heaven, and then we scatter back into the world to do the work of the ministry.

There's never a place where we're not under any authority.

God has two streams of authority, though.

He has these two kingdoms operating in the world.

He rules the kingdom of man through providence and conscience.

His providence determines who sits on the throne.

Our consciences reveal natural law given to us by God that restrains sin.

Even those people that do not know the Lord, that do not know the Bible, have their sins somewhat restrained by the existence of conscience.

And God rules the kingdom of man that way.

And nations rise and nations fall.

That's what they do.

On the other hand, God rules his church through his word.

He rules his church through the preaching of his word, through the conversion of people, who come to faith in Christ, who bow the knee to Christ, not Caesar, and who worship Him.

Now, Christians also intersect with the government of the world in a second way.

The first way we intersect with them is that we're citizens of both places.

But the second way these kingdoms overlap is because if sin is restrained in the world through natural law and the existence of conscience, Christians have something better than conscience.

We have the revealed word of God that says very clearly what sin is.

And so we speak out against injustices in the world.

We can say that the injustices, think of the major ones through world history, such as slavery or the Holocaust of abortion, we can speak out against those and say, this is sinful.

This is wrong because God's word declares this to be wrong.

God's word commands us to speak up for the innocent, to protect those who cannot protect themselves.

And so we condemn abortion and we draw attention to the Holocaust that is experiencing, our nation is experiencing right now in front of us.

We draw attention to that because we have the word of God on that issue.

And so we can confront unjust and immoral laws in our society.

This is the way, this is the way John the Baptist exercised this authority.

John the Baptist did not appoint Herod, he did not appoint the rulers of Rome, he didn't appoint the rulers of Israel, he didn't appoint the kings that sat in Tiberias over the northern, the northeast part of Israel.

John the Baptist didn't appoint those people, yet he could confront them for their immorality.

He could say it's not right for you to marry your brother's wife.

That is sinful and wrong.

God designed marriage and you are wrong and you are in sin.

I don't care if you're the king, you are wrong.

And he was executed for it.

He wouldn't, he's confronting leaders in their sinfulness.

He's not exercising the authority of God's word over the political domain.

That's not what he's doing.

He's calling out sin as he confronts it.

And that is what Christians do everywhere.

But you have to be able to understand we're called to do that without implying that government is under the authority of the church, because it is not.

Governments check each other.

And Christians are, I think, more powerful at their exposing of immorality and their confronting of the immorality in the world, such as slavery and such as abortion, because we understand that there is God and there is truth and there is right and wrong.

You see this in our own country's history.

It's hard to say, it is self-evident that all men are created equal if you don't believe that all men are created.

Do you understand that?

If you don't believe in God, you're not going to be a powerful force for to right wrongs.

You're not going to be a powerful force exposing immorality in the world.

You can't say a basic thing like people are created equal if you don't believe in creation.

So essential to the doctrine of two kingdoms, which we'll look at more from Jesus in a minute here, essential to this doctrine of two kingdoms is this basic idea that the kingdom of God can indeed advance on earth.

Nations advance on earth, nations rise and fall.

The kingdom of God also advances on earth.

But the kingdom of God, unlike the kingdom of man, the kingdom of God only advances freely.

Kingdoms advance by annexing other areas, by subjugating other people, by taxing them and forcing compliance.

That's not how the kingdom of God advances.

The kingdom of God advances freely through conversions.

The kingdom of man can be strengthened on earth, but only really by advancing freedoms and checking evil.

But the kingdom of God will go forward on earth when people are converted freely.

And what I mean by that is you can't compel somebody to faith in Christ against their will.

Only God can change their will.

The kingdom of God grows one person at a time, and it grows when a person is freely converted.

When the Spirit of God works on their heart and changes their will so they come to Christ willingly.

You cannot make somebody put their faith in Christ.

Believe me, Constantine tried.

He marched people through the waters of baptism, commanding them.

But the point of the sword, literally the point of the sword, forcing them to be baptized to grow the kingdom of God.

In his mind, he grows the kingdom of God, he grows his own kingdom.

But the model in the New Testament is that those two kingdoms are distinct.

They are distinct.

And there's a very practical application of this before we look at Jesus' words in Matthew 22.

God is only redeeming one of those two kingdoms.

God is only redeeming the church.

God is bringing the gospel forward into the earth through the church.

He's redeeming people by their conversion to faith in Christ.

God is not redeeming kingdoms of this world.

Kingdoms of this world rise and fall.

Only the church is redeemed.

This is why Jesus did not die for nations.

This is why I think it's misguided to say there is such a thing as a Christian nation.

A nation can't be baptized.

I'm barely okay with the phrase Christian music.

You can't baptize music.

Does that music get saved?

I don't think so.

You have good music and bad music, and hopefully that overlaps with biblical principles and not biblical principles, but music like government, it's hit and miss.

What are you talking about?

Workplaces aren't redeemed.

The culture is not redeemed.

People are redeemed.

And as people scatter into the world, they act as salt in an ungodly environment, they expose other people's sin.

There's conformity to the image of Christ.

And that conformity comes as the kingdom of God advances by conversions, not by a cultural takeover.

That's just a practical application for free.

Let's get into a couple lessons here from Matthew 22.

This is right after the uh a parable of a wedding feast where Jesus is talking about the basically the point of it is the Pharisees weren't ready for him to come.

The uh King, Matthew 22, verse 7, was angry in Jesus' parable, sent his troops, and they destroyed the murderers and burned their city.

Matthew 22:7

Jesus is telling this parable, along with a series of other parables, against the Jews.

This is at the end of his life.

This is the week that he's going to the cross.

He's going to die this week.

And he's telling the Jews a series of parables that they're the villains in all of them.

He told them the parable of the vineyard, where the landowner leased the vineyard to the Jews.

He sent people to get the rent from them.

They wouldn't pay.

They beat up the messengers.

Finally, the landowner sent his son.

They murdered the son.

The landowner is going to destroy them.

That's what he just told the Jews.

He follows that with a different parable of the wedding feast that also has a king coming and slaughtering all of the Jewish leaders.

So his point here is not very ambiguous.

Jesus has given up on tact.

You guys are all going down, is what he's telling them.

So the situation has come to a head, and the religious leaders have decided they cannot tolerate Jesus anymore.

He has already cleansed the temple during the Passover week.

This is the week where all the sacrifices are happening at the temple.

This is the biggest week of the year at the temple for their business, and it is certainly a business.

I've mentioned before that his cleansing the temple in Passover week would be like shutting down malls on Black Friday.

And that's what Jesus did.

He brought the whole economic hub of Jerusalem to a halt by invading the temple, turning over their tables, sending them all out, and then telling them stories from the now empty temple about how God's going to slaughter them all.

So they decide this cannot stand, and they are going to trap Jesus.

They've tried different tactics before.

Their new trap in Matthew 22, it's also described in Mark 12, is to come at him with this series of questions, three questions, three different groups of people.

They have crafted this out, they have plotted this.

You know that because Matthew 22, verse 15, the Pharisees plotted how to entangle them in his words.

Matthew 22:15

These are the wisest people in Israel, the religious leaders, they get together and they strategize on how to bring Jesus down.

And they come up with kind of the three questions that they don't think he'll possibly be able to answer in a way that will he'll get away with his life.

All three of these are designed to show that he's not of God by saying something that contradicts the Torah or to show that he's a threat to Rome by getting into the Roman Empire to intervene and arrest him and kill him themselves.

They have some different ideas that are out here on the table.

They have come up with their three best ones.

And so before we we're going to look at one of them today, it would be a fun series to go through all three of them, but we're only look at one tonight.

And it's just, to me, it's fascinating to think about these are the smartest people in Israel, and they've come up with three questions that they think will end the ministry of Christ.

He will not be able to get away.

He won't be able to get around these.

This is their frontal attack on him.

They're going to attack him with words.

And obviously, we know how the story goes, it doesn't work.

So they end up bribing one of his friends to betray him and arrest him at night and murder him.

But this was their first plan to entangle him with his words, verse 15 says.

So they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians.

This is a group of Jews that were loyal to Herod, saying, Teacher, we know that you are true and teach the way of God truthfully.

You can pause there, and I'm just going to give you three points as we get through this little narrative tonight.

The first point is not that one.

That one's coming.

The first point is fear the hypocrite.

Fear the hypocrite.

These people are liars, these Herodians are liars.

They address Jesus as teacher.

We know that you are true.

If that was a true statement, would they be trying to trap him in his words?

Teacher.

They all huddle up first.

They all huddle up.

You know, we hate this guy so much, let's kill him.

Yes.

A break.

Teacher, we love you so much.

We'll do whatever you say.

Just a quick question.

Just a quick question.

It's funny to me.

It's like the question in the hallway.

Hey, Pastor, just a quick question.

Can you explain the difference between predestination and free will for me?

A quick question.

I know, I know, I know you're busy.

Just 30 seconds.

Teacher, quick question.

We know, we know that you are true and you teach the way of God truthfully, and you don't care about anyone's opinion.

This is they're setting him up.

And you see this even on the political debates on TV, you know, when the moderator flatters someone, you know, the moderator might ask the candidate a question, you know, what's your plan for this or that?

And the person says, Oh, I'm not going to answer that.

And the moderator will follow.

It's the oldest moderator trick in the book.

The moderator follows with, oh, we know that you don't care what people think.

And you're just going to tell us the truth because you want everybody to know the truth.

And so, yeah, let me ask you that question a second time.

How do you get out of it the second time?

Actually, you're wrong.

I don't care about the truth.

That's what the that's what they try here.

We know that you don't, we know that you don't care what other people think.

You only care about the truth, Jesus.

You're not swayed by appearances.

So tell us then.

Quick question.

What you think?

Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not?

So that's their question.

They stayed up all night in a strategy session after the cleansing of the temple, and this is what they came up with.

This is, as I mentioned, a series of traps.

These three questions are clever, complicated, and in a sense, all three of them are timeless.

In God's providence, He lets them ask them.

They're recorded for us because all three of them transcend this exchange and apply to us today.

The first is about the relationship of the church and government.

The second is about the relationship to the church and marriage and government.

And the third is about why do good people go to heaven even if they reject, or why don't good people go to heaven if they reject Jesus Christ?

All three of those are timeless questions, aren't they?

How do believers relate to government?

What is, how should marriage function in society?

And why do some so-called good people not go to heaven when they die?

Those are the questions they have come up with.

They asked Jesus the first one.

Should we pay taxes to Caesar?

This is a big-time problem question.

The Herodians hate Jesus because if he is the Messiah, he will overthrow Roman rule, and they don't want that.

They are loyal to Rome.

They just saw Jesus cleanse the temple.

They are very much thinking Jesus is putting us at risk here of Rome thinking we're revolting.

We don't want to revolt, so Jesus must be stopped.

That's their question.

They're going to catch him.

Now, as I said, this is a loaded question because the Jews had to pay this tax to Caesar.

They had to pay it using a particular coin.

The coin had an image of Caesar on it, and Jews had a problem using that coin because they said that Caesar was a god and his image was on it.

The Jews rejected, making images of people and of gods, of course.

They had a second commandment issue with this.

In their mind, the coin is logically illegitimate because if Caesar really is a god, you can't have his image.

Does that make sense?

If Caesar is just a man, they would probably, they wouldn't appreciate his image, but they would probably use the coin.

But once you say that he is a god and here's an image and you have to use his image, that is a violation of the second commandment.

If he does dwell in heaven, his face certainly shouldn't be on a coin.

But the problem with the coin is more than the image.

The problem is what is printed on the coin.

This is the language on the side of the coin.

And says Tiberius Caesar Augustus, son of the divine Augustus.

It's elevating him to the status of divinity.

And then he's called Pontifix Maximus, the high priest.

And it will never stop being funny to me that when the Pope chose his Twitter handle, that's what he chose on Twitter.

The Pope is Pontifix on Twitter.

So the Two Swords Doctrine lives on in the Catholic Church, by the way.

The Catholic Church may not have its own army anymore, but the Pope has a Twitter handle that claims it.

So this is the coin.

Should the Jews use this coin?

That's the question.

And if Jesus says no, don't pay your tax, then that would be an open rebellion against Rome.

And if Jesus says yes, do use it, do pay the tax, then that would him be, that would be Jesus saying, it is okay to use idol worship as long as it helps you fit in in your country.

That's how the Jews had polarized the debate.

This is why they hated the tax collectors, one of the many reasons they hated the tax collectors, because they viewed the tax collectors as saying, basically arguing that it's okay to pay taxes, it's okay to worship idols because that's what society expects of you, and we have to make certain compromises in this world.

By the way, you know who wouldn't say that?

A Herodian.

A Herodian has no problem paying taxes.

No problem.

They're loyal to Rome.

That's why it's a Herodian that asks the question.

The point here is to trap Jesus.

And if the crowd hears Jesus say, you know what, idol worship's not a big deal, his stint as Messiah would also be over.

And as I mentioned, it's even more complicated than that.

The Roman Empire had put down a rebellion in Israel, and Herod the Great had got Israel to cooperate with Roman rule by building them their temple.

They were allowed to have their own currency for their temple.

They were allowed to have their own Roman worship, I mean their own Jewish worship in their temple with their own currency and their own sacrifices, but they had to use the Roman coins for the Roman tax.

That was the trade-off.

So Jesus is putting all the temple worship at risk, as he already did when he cleansed the temple earlier.

That's, you see how complicated this question is.

Jews from Galilee, by the way, did not have to pay this tax because they didn't fall under Pilate's authority in Rome.

So Jesus, because he was a citizen of Galilee, did not have to pay this tax.

So now he's walked into Jerusalem.

This is a question you wouldn't have been faced with back in Galilee.

It's only those that are under Pilate that have to pay it.

And as I mentioned, the Jews had revolted over this earlier, and that had been put down.

I mean, this is a very delicate question.

And so Jesus wants to expose their hypocrisy.

Notice what he says.

To then, verse 16, Jesus, aware of their malice, said, Why do you put me to the test, you hypocrites?

Yeah, it's recognized that people are hypocrites.

People are always hypocrites.

They're hypocrites about so many different things.

As part of what it means to be a person is to put on pretenses in front of one person and act differently in front of the other people.

That's just the normal way people operate, but that's not okay.

Just because people operate like that, it doesn't mean the Christians should be okay with it.

We should not be okay with it.

We should believe in integrity.

We should believe that facts matter.

We should believe that truth matters.

That should be part of our worldview.

And Jesus exposes that it's not part of the Herodian worldview.

He says, Why do you put me to the test, you hypocrites?

Show me the coin for the tax.

See what he's doing there?

You won't touch that coin because it's got the image of Caesar on it?

Jesus is playing dumb here.

Why are you testing me?

Help jog my memory.

What's wrong with the coin?

Can you hand me one?

And lo and behold, they have one.

Oh, those hypocrites.

Those hypocrites.

Fear the heart of the hypocrite.

Hypocrites are out to betray you.

Hypocrites are not pursuing the truth.

They don't care about integrity.

Be afraid of them.

And so Jesus starts by rebuking them and saying, Oh my goodness, you guys.

He sees right through their tests remarkable.

They sit up all night planning this, and Jesus sees right through it.

Oh, you hypocrites.

I'm sure they weren't prepared for that answer.

So they bring him the coin.

This is going to lead to our second point.

You fear the hypocrite, but you live in the city of man.

Despite the fact that the city of man is run by hypocrites, we have to live there.

So Jesus says, Whose image and likeness and inscription is this, verse 20.

So we ask them the question, who's on this?

And they say, Well, of course, Caesar's.

Of course, Caesar's.

And Jesus says, render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's.

Jesus declares that it is right for them and lawful for them to give the coin back to Caesar.

Notice the way that he words it.

If it's idolatry for you to possess it and it belongs to him, give it back to him then.

It's literally got his picture on it.

It belongs to him.

You can go ahead and give it to him.

This is a very deft way to navigate that question.

He does not embrace idolatry.

He does not excuse idolatry.

He doesn't say the second commandment doesn't apply to currency.

Instead, he charts you a course here to navigate life as a citizen of heaven, but also as a citizen of your kingdom on earth.

There are some things that belong to the earthly worlds, Jesus says.

And for those things, you can go ahead and participate in the earthly system because the system is self-contained.

There are some things that belong to the government.

You can go ahead and give them to the government.

The government made them give it back to the government.

It doesn't give them a spiritual significance, it doesn't give them an eternal significance.

It just merely is how we function as citizens of heaven in a fallen world.

And there's a list of things in the New Testament that fall under this category.

I'll put it on the screen for you.

Obedience belongs to government.

That's Romans 13.1.

Submission belongs to government, Romans 13.

Taxes belong to government, Romans 13.6.

Honor to them, 13 7, you honor your political leaders.

You love them, Romans 13.8, you pray for them.

1 Timothy 2, verse 1.

1 Timothy 2:1

You give thanksgiving for them.

1 Timothy 2, verse 1 repeats that.

1 Timothy 2:1

If you're not doing the things in that list, you're sinning.

If you're unable to give thanks to God for the country you live in, then you are sinning.

And it's easier as an American, it's harder as some other countries in this world.

But God designed all countries to check evil.

All countries have a purpose on this earth of checking evil and promoting good.

Every citizen can be thankful for their country.

Every citizen should be submissive to the laws of their country.

Every citizen should pay taxes in their country and should honor the leaders of their country.

If you're avoiding paying taxes that you lawfully owe, you're sinning.

If you're cheating on your taxes, you should be ashamed of yourself and you should repent.

If Jesus could command the Jews to pay taxes to Rome, then you shouldn't try to get out of taxes you owe.

And I recognize the American tax code is pretty complex.

It's not an easy question to know how much tax you owe.

If there's lawful ways to get out of, to get out of taxes, if there's lawful ways to get out of taxes, if they're built into the tax code, by all means avail yourself of every opportunity you have to lower what you owe in taxes, as long as they're legitimate legal opportunities.

But you don't try to get out of paying taxes by doing illegitimate things.

You don't claim you're a conscientious objector to Social Security to get out of paying Social Security tax.

You don't claim that your, you know, your rental property is actually your second residence to get some kind of deduction for that.

You don't claim that the car that you don't use for work is your work car, so you pay a different tax on it.

I mean, those are all examples of sinning to avoid paying taxes to the government.

You don't lie on your taxes, you don't cheat on your taxes.

It's a basic Christian principle.

And that's because your money belongs to government.

Even though our money says in God we trust, underneath that it says United States currency.

It belongs to your government.

Go ahead and give it back to them when they ask for it.

Now, God gives money in this world to be used to advance the gospel in this world.

Of course, you can use treasure that God gives you to send missionaries into the world to advance the gospel in the world to provide for your family.

You work hard, you sell what you make, or you get paid for your effort, you put food on the table, and you use what is left over to do good for other people and advance the gospel in the world.

That's the way money is supposed to work.

But that doesn't mean that doesn't mean that it doesn't belong to your country.

And when they ask for it, you gotta give it back.

Certainly there's a point where taxation becomes theft, and Jesus doesn't wait into that, but the denarius clearly doesn't reach that threshold.

So let me reiterate: if you're avoiding paying taxes that you lawfully owe, you're sinning and you should repent.

But at the same time, take from this the active principle that things that belong to God, things that belong to your government on earth, you should give your government on earth.

Not everything belongs to your government on earth.

As we looked, as we went through Romans 13 somewhat deliberately a few weeks ago, we saw that worship does not belong to your government on earth.

The government is not owed worship.

That falls into our second category, our third category.

You worship in the city of God.

You fear the hypocrite, you live in the city of man and you worship in the city of God.

Jesus finishes his statement off here, render the Caesar to the things that are Caesar's and to God, the things that are God's.

And when they heard that, they marveled.

I mean, they got swatted to the cheap seats, is what happened there.

They thought that they had boxed Jesus in and he got out of their grip, and they don't even know what happened.

This answer is going to appeal to the crowd, to the crowd, because it has a certain truth to it, because it is true.

The crowd understands the coin does belong to Rome.

Give it back to them.

Who cares?

And they left, really ashamed.

Mark adds, they left and went away.

There's going to be a few other questions, but I want, I don't want to glance over how Jesus finished his answer.

He said, There are some things that do belong to God.

Jesus doesn't stop with the question asked of him.

He doesn't stop with the currency.

He goes beyond that.

The government can keep your money, but God is owed something else by you.

And so now it's going to make you ask the obvious question.

The Herodians didn't ask, the Pharisees didn't ask, the Sadducees aren't going to ask it.

The obvious question is what is owed to God?

If government is owed your taxes and your civic loyalty and your thankfulness and your prayers, what is owed to God?

What do you have that He that belongs to him?

And the answer to this, I believe, is your affections, your heart, your worship.

Of course, everything you have belongs to God.

He made all things your steward of your possessions.

But I think particularly what he has in mind here is your heart.

The Lord doesn't need your sacrifices, he demands your heart.

The Lord wants contrite obedience.

This is exactly what the Jews would not give him.

Those lawyers couldn't find a loophole in Jesus' answer, so they just got out of the question.

They walked off into the sunset.

But Jesus lets.

I love that he asks, answers a question that they didn't even ask.

What exactly do you owe God?

The Herodians pretended like the problem was rendering what they should render to Caesar.

The real problem was that not what they gave Caesar.

The real problem is that they refused to give God what was owed him.

They refused to give him their love, their honor, and their respect that he is owed.

The greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

The Herodians went away.

By the way, do you remember what Jesus was charged with at his trial?

When they finally landed on the charge?

They charged him with saying that you shouldn't pay taxes to Caesar.

It's amazing, isn't it?

The one charge they could find two witnesses to agree on, and the witnesses didn't even agree, but the one charge they came up with is he said not to pay taxes to Caesar.

And then you come across this and he said, pay taxes to Caesar.

I'm sorry, we heard a knot in there.

Well, Jesus certainly represents a change between the Old Testament and the New Testament here.

If the Jews thought Jesus was going to overthrow Rome, they were sadly mistaken.

Not only is he not going to overthrow it, he validates their authority in this world.

This was just crushed the spirits of some of the Jewish leaders.

They thought that the Savior, the disciples, were crushed by this.

This is where Judas decides to betray Jesus.

Judas believed that Jesus would liberate Israel from Rome.

Instead, he shows up in the temple and says, Go ahead and pay them your taxes.

That's about as far away from liberation as you can get.

You know, there's the two extremes.

Lead a revolt, and on the other extreme, pay your taxes.

Jesus comes in all the way over there.

How sad it is how far Israel has fallen.

They didn't have a grid to understand how these two kingdoms would operate together.

They were about to lose their religious element of their kingdom.

It would be taken from them.

Jesus, in a few chapters, is going to describe in Matthew 24 the temple will be destroyed.

Israel will lose their religious oversight.

Their temple they love will be destroyed brick by brick.

The one built by Herod the Great is going to be torn down.

By Tiberius.

There isn't.

Forget two kingdoms for the Jews.

They're going to lose both of their kingdoms, their nation and their religion.

Instead, God will launch his church in Acts chapter 2 and send believers out into the world who will be citizens of all kinds of different nations.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

He does so by calling people to repent and believe the gospel.

He bids the proud Pharisee not to refuse his dues to Caesar.

He bids the worldly Herodian not to refuse his dues to God.

The Pharisees need to humble themselves and pay their taxes.

The Herodians need to humble themselves and get converted to faith.

Instead of setting loyalty to God and loyalty to Caesar in opposition, the straightforward reading of Jesus' words, listen carefully.

The straightforward reading of Jesus' words is that you can be loyal to God and government at the same time.

You can live in a world a citizen of two kingdoms.

We say that death and taxes are ultimate.

They said God and Caesar.

Notice that Jesus speaks over the authority of death and taxes and God and Caesar.

He covers it all.

He is the one with absolute authority.

Christianity was never meant to interfere with man's obedience to civil power.

So much so that Jesus, when he's arrested, can tell Pilate, listen, you would have no authority if God didn't give it to you.

Nevertheless, Jesus submits to Pilate's authority.

You today are part of two kingdoms.

And those two kingdoms do not have responsibility for each other.

The government does not order the church around, the church does not order the government around.

The two kingdoms have to be able to coexist because they, that's how Jesus designed them.

One should not be a threat to the other.

Yes, obviously, if the government tells you to sin, then you disobey man and honor God.

If the government forbids you from doing something the Bible commands, you disobey the government and you honor God.

If the government interferes with how the church should worship, you disobey government and honor God.

But those are all radically rare exceptions.

The normal experience, even in the Roman Empire, is submission to both kingdoms.

We recognize that the future kingdom of God is not revealed on earth yet.

When that does happen, when Jesus does return, the two kingdoms will become one, they'll be conflated into one, and in the meantime, we wait for Jesus to return.

We're citizens of heaven, we're citizens of the United States.

One of those citizenships is eternal, one is not.

Because Scripture makes it clear that we live between these two ages.

We live in the here and now when the two are existing, not in the future when there is only one kingdom.

We realize that not everything we do is advancing the kingdom of God, but everything we do is obedient to the Lord of both kingdoms.

The only way the spiritual kingdom advances in this world is through the proclamation of the truth, by making disciples of all nations, and by winning converts one person at a time.

So, brothers and sisters, let me just practically challenge you.

Don't look to the government for your sense of security in this world.

Don't look to the government for your sense of direction and purpose in this world.

Don't put your hope in government.

That doesn't belong to them.

That's not one of the things that they're owed.

If you're hoping in government, you're hoping in the wrong place.

Nations rise and nations fall.

That's the way the world works.

On the other hand, there's some of you might be hoping in government.

On the other hand, there might be some of you that are refusing to honor government.

Or perhaps, you know, the leader of the country is not a person you personally would have liked or voted for.

And I love that word, an interim time right now, so that applies to everybody equally, you know.

You either like or don't like our current president, or you either like or don't like our next president.

And the Venn diagram there is very small.

Very small.

You know, it's not up to you.

The Lord is sovereign over the rise and fall of nations.

You're supposed to be a loyal citizen, regardless of who is in authority on earth.

You're supposed to pay your taxes.

One of the great ironies, I'm sure, of our rich American cultures that they're probably those who sin in both places, who put their hope in government yet at the same time try to dodge out of their taxes.

So it's a remarkable feature of wealth.

Yes, I love my government.

I put so much hope in government, but I'm not going to pay my taxes.

That person's sinning on both sides.

Confess your sin of hoping in government too much.

Confess your sin of trying to get out of taxes.

Instead, give to the country the things that belong to the country.

But leave your worship for God alone.

Lord, we're thankful that you are the Lord of heaven and the Lord of earth.

People have often accused Christians of trying to overthrow the government.

May that never be an accusation lobbed against us.

We desire to lead peaceful and quiet lives, working with our hands, raising our families, advancing the gospel in this world.

Help us to continue to fly under the radar.

Help us to lead peaceful and quiet lives that don't draw attention except in areas where you would draw attention.

Lord, we submit to you.

You are the one in supreme authority.

Help us discern what belongs to our government and render it accordingly.

Help us discern how to better serve you with our hearts.

We know that you don't demand sacrifices, that Christ was the final sacrifice.

So instead, we surrender to you our praise, we surrender to you our lives, we give you our affections.

We're thankful, Lord Jesus, that you came to earth as a man, as God in human flesh.

With your two natures, you balanced them in your life, you portrayed them both fully in your life as we looked at this morning.

And with your wisdom, you set us on a course to navigate two kingdoms that through so much of world history have just been in open opposition towards each other.

So would you pray for wisdom how to serve as citizens of our own country and yet how to worship you and serve you with unbridled affections?

We pray that you would give us that wisdom in the name of Christ.

Amen.

And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us today.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to meet you personally at Emmanuel Bible Church.

Our service times and other church information is on our website at ibc.church.

If you want information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to tms.edu.

I hope this resource has been an encouragement to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel of Jesus Christ with boldness.

May the Lord bless you.