Giving To Cesar

Please turn your Bible to Luke chapter 20. We're gonna be looking at verses 19 through 26. That can be found on page 879 if you're using the Pew Bible in front of you. Luke chapter 20, beginning in verse 19.

Please stand when you have that for the reading of God's word. The scribes and the chief priests sought to lay hands on him at that very hour, for they perceived that he had told this parable against them, but they feared the people.

So they watched him and sent spies who pretended to be sincere, that they might catch him in something he said, so as to deliver him up to the authority and jurisdiction of the governor. So they asked him, teacher, we know that you speak and teach rightly and show no partiality, but truly teach the way of God.

Is it lawful for us to give tribute to Caesar or not? But he perceived their craftiness and said to them, show me a denarius, whose likeness and inscription does it have? They said, Caesar's. He said to them, then render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God, the things that are God's.

And they were not able in the presence of the people to catch him in what he said, but marveling at his answer, they became silent.

Amen.

You may be seated. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you this day for this opportunity to have your word presented to us. Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.

And we thank you for these words from Jesus Christ himself. All of scripture is his word, but these in a particular way are his word, as we see a recounting of what he and his earthly ministry spoke. Pray that you would help us to understand this difficult passage, to apply it to our lives and to be filled with a greater love and appreciation of Jesus Christ, our savior.

In Jesus' name, amen. Well, this is a difficult passage and it's a difficult passage for a number of reasons. And one of those reasons is simply that it is difficult to disentangle primary points from secondary points.

A lot of times people will just focus on a primary point, a passage, a passage and skip over the secondary points. And sometimes that's perfectly reasonable to do, but here we have a passage where the secondary point is so intertwined with that primary point that it would be hard to just step past this.

Jesus' purpose here is not to give a theology of taxes, but he does say something about taxes and it would be a real shame to miss things that he is saying. However, at the same time, we don't want to miss the forest for the trees and we do want to look at the main point, which is that we should render to God the things that are God's.

And likewise, we also want to see the instruction that comes from Christ and how he handles his opponents, just as we have seen throughout this whole chapter, that is the unifying theme of this whole chapter.

The chapter divisions themselves are not something inspired by the Spirit, but those who came afterward who wrote these chapter divisions were reading the text and observing the units that are present for us.

The thing that unifies all these together is Jesus is handling his opponents in clever ways. And I believe it's important for us to apply that as well. So there's a lot of secondary points here beyond simply the command to render to God the things that are God's.

I would like us to consider all of those things. Just looking at verse 19 here, the scribes and the chief priests sought to lay hands on him at that very hour, for they perceived that he had told this parable against them, but they feared the people.

I recall the parable that he had told was the parable of the wicked tenants, that the chief priests and the elders who were in charge of the people had not been willing to give God the fruit of the vineyard.

The sun had come, the sun demanded those things that the people, the tenants of the vineyard had been entrusted with, the people. But the leaders are not willing to hand the people over to Jesus. They are jealous for the people, for the people's honor, for the people's loyalty, et cetera, and they are not willing to.

They recognize that this has been said against them, and so they do not want Jesus to have any kind of honor. They want him to be restrained from speaking so that he cannot speak against them. Ironically, Jesus, in telling them that they are willing to kill God's own son has made them even more resolved to do so.

But they fear the people. So it says in verse 20, so they watched him and sent spies who pretended to be sincere that they might catch him in something he said so as to deliver him up to the authority and jurisdiction of the governor.

So they asked him, teacher, we know that you speak and teach rightly and show no partiality, but truly teach the way of God. So here they have sent spies not willing to do their dirty deeds themselves.

They send others in order to put Rome at odds with Jesus Christ. The idea is that if they can get him to say something against Rome, if they can flatter him and trick him into being more candid than he should otherwise be, that they can get him to say something that would get him in trouble with the authorities that exist.

But he recognizes what they are doing. They say, is it lawful for us to give tribute to Caesar or not? But he perceived their craftiness and said to them, show me a denarius whose likeness and inscription does it have?

They said, Caesar's. He said to them, then render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God, the things that are God, the things that are God's. Now, hopefully it is obvious at this point why they think this question would trap him.

He has come into Jerusalem as a king. If he is coming into Jerusalem as a king, then certainly he would want tribute rather than that tribute going to Caesar. So they have misunderstood the purpose of his kingdom.

They have conflated the kingdoms and they do not realize that his kingdom is not of this world. And so they think this is going to be an easy setup. He's almost certainly going to say no, that it's wrong to give to Caesar.

And then they can get him in trouble with Caesar. But in the off chance he says, yes, it's right to give to Caesar, then they can show the hypocrisy of him as a king. And so they aren't expecting him to say both and, they are expecting him to answer either or.

But he sees through this and he answers both and. And he does it in a clever way where he presents to them a coin, a denarius, which is a day's wage and a standard tribute at that time, a standard tax amount.

And he shows them that they have already established the obligation by demonstrating the dominion that they are under using this currency. Now, a denarius is not like a US dollar where it only has value by virtue of the government.

A denarius would actually have been a real metal that would have had an inherent value. So the point is not that this is completely owned by the king, but that the use of this currency and having the image of Caesar demonstrates that they are under the dominion of Caesar.

And so they have already established this obligation. But then he adds to that, and not only that, but you still have an obligation to God that you must surrender to God what is his. Now, I don't believe his point is simply that you should give to God what is God's in a general sense that everyone might agree with.

Although that is part of the point and certainly the extended application for us today. But I believe he is directly taking them back to that same parable that they were trying to capture him because he had told it, right?

He had told them that they are tenants over God's vineyard and they aren't willing to render the tribute to the owner of the vineyard who has come back for his fruit. And so when he tells them to render to God the things that are God's, he's not dropping the point, but going back to it, reinforcing the statement that he had made in that parable, that they have refused to give to God the things that are God's.

And they were not able in the presence of the people to catch him in what he said, but marveling at his answer, they became silent. So clearly this is a good answer. This is not an answer that traps him because he has not said yes or no, but he has given a good answer that can't be refuted and can't put him at odds with the governor.

So just considering the various issues here, and like I said, there are many secondary issues intertwined with that one main issue that was presented in the parable before, which is that the tenants owe the fruit of the vineyard to the Lord.

It's the nature of taxes. So once again, to set expectations, Jesus is not giving a full theology of taxation here. So if that's what you're looking for, which is what a lot of people do come to this passage looking for, you are going to be very disappointed.

Or worse than that, you won't be disappointed and you'll take more from it than you really should take. But there are four things that I think we can say, well, that I believe strongly, not just think, we can say that Jesus is not saying.

First of all, he is not being absolutely silent on the matter. If you recall, earlier on, they had asked him where he got his authority from and he chose not to answer their question. Okay, Jesus could have chosen to not answer the question.

This is something that he has done before, but he doesn't choose that option this time. He's not perfectly silent. He does answer the question. So this is not a non-answer. There are many people who tell you, Jesus, he's not really answering the question and there's nothing that you can take about taxes from this passage.

Okay, that's not the case. He does give an answer. Secondly, he is not prohibiting paying taxes. Pilate, later on in Luke 23, in examining Jesus, because this is one of the charges against him, determines that he's not telling people not to pay taxes.

So this is also not what Jesus is saying. He's not telling people not to pay taxes. Secondly, he is not prohibiting governing authorities from requiring taxes. He says that they should render to Caesars the things that are Caesar's.

There is an idea here that something is actually owed to Caesar. And so he's not absolutely prohibiting governing authorities from requiring taxes. But he is also not giving a 100 unqualified affirmation of paying taxes.

Recall, this is how they're trying to trap him. The worst that could happen if he says yes is they might say that he's a hypocritical king. But I don't believe that he's just using this for the sake of illustration.

It is the case that loyalty to God comes before loyalty to man. Duty to God comes before any kind of supposed duty to man, certainly. And so Jesus is not giving an unqualified affirmation of all taxes.

If he were, why wouldn't he just say yes and get them out of his hair? Those are several things that he's not saying. What he's saying is that there is a duty that is owed to man and a duty that is owed to God that is mutually compatible if understood rightly.

They're taking the tables of the law. If you think of the tables of the law as being the first four commandments, your duties to God, the second half, the six commandments, your duties to man, and they're putting them at odds with one another.

Jesus is saying, actually, you can have all the 10 commandments. You don't have to pick four or six. You can implement your duty to man and also your duty to God. Once you understand that Jesus' kingdom is not of this world.

So there is a real duty to man. Governing authorities are God's minister of vengeance, as it says in Romans 13. We have other passages that are the more clear passages that interpret passages like this about how we should think about governing authorities.

They are ministers of vengeance. God has put them in place to wield the sword against evildoers in order to uphold justice. And because of that, we are to, as it says in Romans 13, owe no man anything.

We are to pay those things that are owed in order for that continuation of justice. But it is also the case that people have a duty to God. They owe him their whole lives, first of all. A lot of people will point at this image and they'll say, look, because he has pointed at the coin, the coin has the image of the king.

We have the image of God, and so you should give your whole life. I think that is a valid application. And you even see earlier in Luke 15 where the woman is looking for a coin. So there have been times where coins have been compared to people.

But I don't believe it's the most direct thing that he is saying here. He is pointing to the image of the king as their own admission that they have a duty to the king, the fact that they're using this currency.

And given that they have statuses as chief priests and elders, et cetera, in the temple of God, they have already expressed an obligation likewise to God to render the fruit, to welcome the son of God when he comes for the fruit.

So yes, we are to give of our own lives, but then also, this is a statement to the rulers that they are to be stewarding not only their own life, but also the life of others. And so you have the duty to God in both ways.

And as much as you are a spiritual leader over others, if you are a husband or a mother over your children and you are stewarding spiritual lives, you have a duty not to just be over them for your own sake, but rather for God's sake, as well as, of course, owing your own life to God.

So he talks about these different duties. Now, these duties are mutually compatible. At the same time, there are times when they would conflict. The reason why Jesus isn't just giving an unqualified yes, the reason why people continue to accuse him of teaching that people should not give taxes is not just an absolute slander that has no basis in reality.

Now, it is slander, but it has a basis in reality in that Jesus has indeed claimed to be king. And there may be times where loyalty to the King of Heaven requires disobeying the King of Earth. There may be times when that happens.

And so Jesus does not walk us through every single one of those times, but he is giving us a framework. He's giving us a framework that there's duty to man and duty to God. Naturally, duty to God is higher, and so we must live in light of that.

So you can consider these three categories of paying taxes. One, those taxes that you must pay. That would be for a legitimate authority, for legitimate activity, for having wielded the sword in vengeance.

It is important that justice continue. Genesis 9, 6 says, whoever sheds blood by man, his blood should be shed, for in the image of God, he made man. In order to uphold that system of justice, in order that the land would be atoned for, as it says in Leviticus, there must be a rendering of payment to those to whom payment is due.

That is something that must happen. Then there are also those taxes that may happen. So these are times when you would have freedom to decide whether or not you would render taxes. So this would be a case where it is to either an illegitimate authority or for an illegitimate activity, right?

You can think of an example of where you have a mobster who's going around taking extortion, saying, you know, this is a protection fee for you, and you know what's really going on, that this is an illegitimate authority.

We have an actual government that's in place. But you may decide for your best interest that you would pay that extortion fee to avoid the damages that would happen to you. Also, there's all kinds of illegitimate activity that taxes end up getting raised for in a mixed way where it's partially paying for system of justice and partially paying for other things, and this is something that you may pay, right?

And if you think about our own taxes, our own taxes go to all sorts of socialist programs that are not part of the government's authorization in Romans 13 or in Genesis 9, 6 or any of those passages. Yet, these are things that you may pay.

Now, we see a really good example of this when Jesus is asked about the temple tax. Peter asks him whether or not they should pay the temple tax. Jesus asks him whether or not kings raise tribute from their sons or from others.

Of course, kings do not raise tribute from their sons. They raise tribute from others, so the sons are free. His point is that they don't actually owe the temple tax, but he decides so as not to cause offense that he goes ahead and pays the temple tax, and he does this in the miraculous way, giving the coin from the fish, if you recall the narrative.

So there's times when taxes aren't actually owed, but they may be paid. Now, the implication of this passage, too, if we have these two duties, that if they ever absolutely conflict, then you must render your duty to God rather than your duty to man, or rather than your supposed duty to man.

They never actually conflict, but people may claim that they conflict. So an example for that would be for a tax whose sole purpose is for something evil. This is not something that is ostensibly for the sake of justice, but for example, let's say, or even for something neutral, but for something evil.

Let's say that there were, you know, government just decided that we're requiring $1 ,000 from every citizen to go sponsor abortions, right? That would be a tax that you should not pay, that you must not pay.

That would just be wrong. Also, if the government ever raised a 100 tax, that would be an example of where you would no longer be able to fulfill your obligations to God. He has called for you to give to him.

He has called for you to also provide for your family. The one who does not provide for his family is worse than an unbeliever. And so this is not a time where you could do both this supposed duty to man and also obey God.

So in summary, there are three categories. There's times when you must pay, times where you may pay, and times where you must not pay. And they are determined by your obligations to God over your obligation to man.

And ultimately, this is talking about something greater. This is talking about kingdoms. Jesus has come to Jerusalem as king. He is in charge, and his kingdom is not of this world. Of course, this is what has confused people.

Under the old covenant, you have a marriage between the king and the priesthood, between the kingship and the priesthood. You have a marriage between the civil government and the religious government in such a way that it seems that these could not be different.

And at times, God would place them under other authorities, but if there were a new king to come to Jerusalem, then certainly he would have to take over in a civil manner. So you see, for example, Zedekiah had made an oath to the king of Babylon, and God actually enforces that when he tries to break his oath, that Zedekiah should remain loyal to Babylon, but if God is going to send a Messiah, they would expect that that would mean casting off the emperor that's above them.

But this is not the case, because this is not God's purpose in the new covenant, is to have a kingdom that is not of this world, not to continue the old covenant kingdom that is of this world. There were several good quotes I liked about this, but there's one I put on the, well, actually, I have a different version of the bulletin that doesn't have it, but I believe on the back of your bulletin, I put a quote.

I'd encourage you to read that afterwards, just a short thing if you haven't read it already, but maybe don't distract yourself with it now. So this is what's going on. Now, these things are mutually compatible, but sometimes they may be at odds.

Sometimes they may be at odds. God has called for us to render to him all obedience, and sometimes man may require us to do things that are not in accord with that obedience.

Excuse me.

Now, there are several ways that people continue to conflate kingdoms. So one is there's Erastian taxes. I don't know if you're familiar with Erastianism. Erastianism is the idea that you have the king over the church.

So this is what you had in Anglicanism in England, and I guess it still exists in some measure, but there would be such a marriage between the church and the state that the church, that the state is enforcing, enforcing obedience to the other kingdom in a way that it has not been authorized to do.

There's also theonomic propositions. So theonomy is the idea that God's word should so dictate how government works that any king that is a pagan king that is not actually a Christian king would not be a legitimate king.

So that would be, now I'm not saying every theonomist believes that, but many have tended in that direction. So that would be another example of conflating these kingdoms, such that they are considered one rather than understanding that they are distinct and mutually compatible.

Now, people may understand that they are not one in the same, but then overplay that card so that you have a separation between church and state that says the state has no permission to promote true religion or that the church has no permission to call the government to repentance.

Well, certainly the government should, or the church should call the government to repentance on frequent occasions. It should have quote unquote political positions and as much as political matters are things that have to do with morality.

Of course, that is going to be the case. You saw that John the Baptist was willing to call Herod to repentance about his marriage. When you see marriage undermined in the United States, it's right for the church to have a position on that.

And it's right for the government in whatever capacity that would be a matter of justice to enforce things for the good of the church, though not necessarily establishing a church. Now, all these things together give you an idea of how those should go together and how they're mutually compatible, that the church and the government, they are not, there's a kingdom that is not of this world, there's a kingdom that is of this world.

Now, the second thing that I'd have you to see from this is not just taxes and kingdoms, but also rhetoric. The nature of Jesus' rhetoric here is something that we should learn from and the tactics that are used against him.

Now, one of those tactics is this false sincerity. These people have come to Jesus with a false sincerity. They have attempted to flatter him, trying to get him to say more than he ought to say. And they have done so in such a way where they are, consider their own position, they're not happy about having Caesar as king, but they're willing to double down on this and even later saying we have no king but Caesar as a way of getting at Jesus.

So it is interesting how the false sincerity works that way, but they flatter. You will be flattered from time to time. People will try to get on your good side to get things out of you and you should be ready to not care about that.

You need to be happy not having the approval of others. It's a very important thing for Christians to be willing to serve God and not be swayed by the approval of others. Now, with Jesus, they were trying to get him to say more than he should say, but many times people will try to get you to say less than you should say by flattery.

Plenty of times I've had people tell me, now, you're a reasonable person. You wouldn't say blah, blah, blah, would you? And I'll say yes, yes, I would actually. Depending on the situation, depending on whether or not there's an authority at play that they are trying to get you in trouble with, they'll have you say more.

Other times, they will use flattery to have you say less. So be on guard for flattery. There's also false dichotomies. Now, there's two kinds of false dichotomies. One of them is an absolute false dichotomy like the one you have here.

You could either serve the king or serve the emperor, Caesar, or you can serve Jesus. You really only have two options. And it's gotta be either or, can't be both and. Now, there are a number of times where people will do that.

A lot of times, people would see some obligations they have here among their family, et cetera, and they will pit mission work or something like that against it and say, well, should I serve the Lord or should I serve man?

And it really doesn't have to be like that. Many of you know that I end up speaking a lot on ministry fundraising and on teaching freely, and people will pit that against paying people, right? They'll say, well, should you teach freely or should you make sure that the worker receives his wages?

Well, you know, these are not mutually incompatible. You can teach freely while by the generosity of God's people, ensuring that people are paid well. So these things don't have to be at odds. There's a second kind of dichotomy that is incredibly common, and you will see this often if you are watching out for it.

Frequently, when it comes to ethics, when it comes to how we should behave, people will make things a matter of balance. So not an absolute this or that, but rather a matter of balance where you can only have this one thing if you reduce this other thing.

Consider how people talk about law or grace. You know, they ask whether or not we should have, whether or not we should be speaking of law or speaking of grace, or in approaching our life, trying to obey God's law.

If someone's really trying hard to obey God's law, they'll identify that as legalism and not living under grace, right? Because they see these as being in a balance. The more you have of this thing, the less you have of the other.

The less you have of this thing, the more you have of the other, et cetera. And that is not the way that you should see it. We should fully obey God's law. We should fully embrace the grace that he has offered in Jesus Christ.

These are things that are mutually compatible. People do this with children too. They'll say, well, I should love my child and show grace, but I should also discipline them. And so a lot of times when I've read parenting books, I will see inconsistency promoted as a virtue, that you don't actually discipline them in a consistent way because you show grace.

Every now and then.

And what they're doing is, what they're essentially promoting is a teaching of children that is inconsistent, that would not give them what they really need to understand. It's not a cautious understanding of the child's situation that I'm talking about, because I know every child is different.

They're gonna need different kind of instruction. But a lot of times inconsistency will be directly promoted as a way of throwing grace in there every now and then.

This is not wise.

This is one of those things where you're making a false dichotomy, putting grace and law in a balance, putting love and discipline in a balance. A lot of times people will pit knowledge against things.

Very frequently, people will pit having good theology against other things. Do we wanna focus more on knowing God through theology or knowing him and experience and love? Well, you really can't have one out of the other, and you should grow in both of those.

Those are not things that need to be pitted against each other and talked about in a balance. I would encourage you to be on guard for that. The kind of false dichotomies that are happening here are not only absolute ones, but they're also relative ones that make things a matter of balance, where you can only have more of one if you decrease the other.

Identify that and respond to it. Call people out on that. The other thing that you should be aware of as far as tactics is that people will be willing to appeal to authority. Why do they appeal to authority?

There's several reasons. One, because the authority has power that they don't have, and they want to wield it against you. Elders and the chief priests did not have the power of the sword. They wanted to bring the power of the sword against Jesus.

It's also easy because a loyalty to a higher power is not something that many people understand. It is also evidence of their own cowardice. They do this because they are too cowardly to handle the matter themselves.

This is why they have spies come in. This is why they want Caesar or the governor to handle this matter. So there's several reasons why people do this, for those various reasons. Now, there's two ways that this happens.

One is by ascribing an incorrect claim to Christians, to Jesus here, for example, claiming that Jesus is teaching against paying taxes. So ascribing an incorrect claim to Christians. The other is taking an incorrect claim on the authority that someone else would have.

So, for example, later on, even when it's found out that Jesus isn't forbidding people to pay taxes, they say, well, he's still calling himself a king, and we understand he's not calling himself a king in that way, but that's still bad.

And so what happens is not that an incorrect claim is being ascribed to him at that point, but rather an incorrect claim of authority is being given to the authority. So both of those will happen. And a lot of times they happen together.

For example, you have in the cake baker case, right, this is a time when government authority is being used against a Christian to make him, if you remember what I'm talking about, the Supreme Court case where the man had to bake the cake that was celebrating a homosexual wedding.

And he, what's happening here is both those things. First of all, there's the ascription of hate to Christians that the only reasons why Christians wouldn't bake this cake is because they hate. And then secondly, a claim of authority that is not a real claim of authority that the government can decide who gets to celebrate what and how they celebrate, et cetera.

So there are situations like that. There are also situations like you saw during the pandemic where Christians were being accused of things that weren't exactly true. Different churches were called super spreader events just because in a church of 500 or something like that, there were one or two cases of COVID the next week.

And these were being identified as super spreader events. So you have these false claims being made on churches and also false claims of authority being given to the government that they should have the right to decide who gathers based on outsized health concerns.

So these will be combined frequently. But then looking not just at their tactics, but at the rhetoric Jesus uses in response, I don't believe that this is just here for us to look at and be impressed by.

That's often what happens is that people will look at this passage and say, wow, Jesus was really smart. Or Jesus was really led by God and led by the Spirit. You should be led by God and led by the Spirit.

You should be as wise as serpents and as gentle as doves. I believe we should learn from what Jesus has done here. First observation is that he does not draw the point that he is making. He takes their unrelated question and uses it to reinforce what he has just stated in the parable.

He stated that they have not rendered to God the things that are God's by not giving him the fruit of the vineyard. They do not care about the son that God has sent. And so when they ask him this unrelated question, he turns it around to reinforce the point that he was just making.

Yes, you should give to Caesar what Caesar's and give to God the things that are God's. I think this is an important thing because people will not, when you are interacting with an unbeliever, they will not want to talk about the point that you are making.

They will always want to jump to other topics. They will always want to jump to things that are on the offensive against you. It is important to keep things on topic. One way you can do it is the way that Jesus has done, is by showing the relation, and because God is one, all things are interconnected in him, there's always a relation that you can make to show the point that is the main point.

For example, if you were talking to someone who says, you know, why don't Christians believe in science? You could say something like, well, Christians do believe in science. We simply also believe that there are immaterial things in the world too.

You think of science as being just about material things. We think of knowledge as being also about immaterial things. Knowledge itself is something immaterial, and if you claim to really care about knowledge, you would care about the one who gives all knowledge, and you can return it back to their obligation to their maker to believe in Jesus Christ.

If you're talking to a Jehovah's Witness, Jehovah's Witness says, why would you believe that Jesus is God? If he died, God can't die. Once again, a false dichotomy. Jesus is either man or God. He cannot be both man and God.

We believe he is both man and that he is God, and this is why it's important that you worship him. Right, and so you bring it back around to the main point again. So do not drop the offensive. This is what I was pointing out at the first paragraph in here about how the authority of Jesus was challenged.

He didn't remain on the defensive. He goes on the offensive as a way of responding to them. So do not take up a defensive posture. The gates of Hades will not prevail against the church. Have you ever thought about what that means?

The gates of Hades will not prevail. Gates are a defensive structure. That means the church is supposed to have an offensive position. It's supposed to be breaking down the gates of Hades. This is how your mindset should be as you have these interactions with unbelievers, is that you should maintain an offensive position.

Maintaining a defensive position is not the position. Now, you can offer a defense, but you must maintain an offensive position in order to promote the truth. Otherwise, you're only defending the truth and you're not actually moving it forward.

You must be promoting the truth. So there are these, so first of all, don't drop the point that you are making. Second, you can identify obligations that people have before God. Jesus has used this coin as an illustration to show them the obligation that they have already expressed towards Caesar using the currency that he has put in place.