Apologia Radio talking about Taxes

Taxation, Caesar, and the Question of Justice

Non-rockabodas must stop. I don't want to rock the boat. I want to sink it.

Are you gonna bark all day little doggie, or are you gonna bite?

Delusional is okay in your worldview. I'm an animal. You don't chastise chickens for being delusional. You don't chastise pigs for being delusional. So you calling me delusional using your worldview is perfectly.

Okay, it doesn't really hurt.

Desperate times call for faithful men and not for careful men. The careful men come later and write the biographies of the faithful men lauding them for their courage.

Go into all the world and make disciples not going to the world make buddies not to make grosses, right? Don't go in the world make homies.

Disciples, I got a bit of a jiggle Nick.

That's a joke. When we have the real message of truth We cannot let somebody say they're speaking truth when they're not.

Then the Pharisees went and plotted how to entangle him in his words. And they send their disciples to him along with the Herodians saying teacher We know that you are true and teach the way of God truthfully and you do not care about anyone's opinion for you are not swayed by Appearances.

I like that flattery. Tell us then what do you think is is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not? But Jesus aware of their malice said why put me to the test you hypocrites? Show me the coin for the tax and they brought him a denarius and Jesus said to them whose likeness and inscription is this they said?

Caesars then he said to them therefore render to Caesar the things that are Caesars and to God the things that are gods. When they heard it they marveled and they left him and went away. What's up guys?

Welcome back to the gospel heard around the world. You guys can get us an apology of studios .com a p o l o g i a studios .com. That's where you to go get to get all of the past radio shows podcast episodes you get television shows and you can sign up for all access and partner with our ministry and make everything that we're doing possible as you communicate the gospel all around the world in so many different areas whether it is in the area of abortion whether it's in the area of atheism Mormonism the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society whether it's with feminism whether it's with socialism Marxism you name it.

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Biblical Law, the Civil Magistrate, and Limited Taxation

We're gonna talk about Taxes today. Yeah, that is Luke the bear the man the myth Oh the legend pastor Luke Pearson and hey, you know We're here today. She's the two of us. We're gonna talk about something that's near and dear to our hearts and that is the law of God.

And we're gonna talk about the issue of taxes. Yes Taxation y 'all the sorts of things that people threw tea into into.

Water. Could you have done that? Oh. If you were in that position and they were like we're throwing your bow in the bay.

Would you have done would not have done it? I didn't think so. I would have just I would have maybe like thrown it into a boat like overboard and be like see it's going over it's. Sound like it's you can't throw that you can't throw that you can't throw that away.

That's crazy. And the crazy thing is is what was the number? I think it was like 2 or less taxes on. They were like, how dare you you tyrant try to tax this product at that level of taxation you're going down.

They saw a taxation on a product a Product of tea those Brits in their tea. They're like you ain't taxing my team. Yo, they love their team. I do love their. John Sampson loves his tea.

He does he always needs to have. Like remember when he saw his one is like PG tips or something. Literally like a crate because it was on clearance. You tips. Yeah. Yep. That's right.

That's what they do and they love their tea and so you can see all the descendants of the of the British coming over and Loving Jesus and loving God's law and justice. They were like say what? King George the tyrant says what?

Yeah, what and taxation 2 or less or whatever whatever it was. So we're gonna talk about that today and a biblical taxation. Well, how do we respond to the the question? The full of malice And hypocrisy that they were asking of Jesus trying to Entrap him.

How do we respond to that? And does the Bible have anything to say about just taxation and so we have one of our heroes one of our friends one of our mentors Uncle Gary Gary DeMar from American vision.

You can get him in American vision org and calm I believe go get their stuff. It is all delicious and Some of you guys may have recently seen the theology bites episode that we did with Gary DeMar That was also very delicious.

We had a lot of fun doing that and We've done tons of stuff with Gary over the years so just look look search Apologia Studios look for uncle Gary and you guys are gonna get some good good stuff and a Recommendation I'll make for you guys ahead of time as you guys think about what can I get from Gary is get wars and rumors Of wars by Gary DeMar and you get that an American vision.

So welcome to the show. Once again, uncle Gary Gary DeMar Good to be here. All right, brother. So we're seeing and hearing a lot from each other lately. Yeah.

Was being interviewed by Chris Ornson last night. It was a two-hour show, but about an hour and 50 minutes of commercials. I Think there's one commercial that goes from 20 minutes 10 minutes. No kidding.

Yeah. And I told Chris I said, you know while your commercial was going on my wife and I went out to eat dinner. But I mentioned you guys because Talking about eschatology a little bit and I said when I first got into all this and started talking on eschatology Ken Gentry and I and a couple of other people were about the only ones who were talking about it and interviewing and debating it and When I first started I found that you know, all the phone calls we would get I'd be attacked.

We'd be at 90 to 10 of the people just attacking me and in fact, I did a California Interview show over three nights. It was nine hours three night three hours each each night. We now in fact, we just offered it today called Gary DeMar under fire.

We're just people were just asking questions regarding eschatology, but I went on to say look, but today. Now we've got all these young guys out there and I mentioned apologia and you and Luke and and of course James White.

Who's a little older guy, but a lot of young there are a lot of young guys now who are who have grasped the comprehensiveness of The Christian worldview began beginning to apply to every area of life seeing the interconnectedness of things like law and worldview and eschatology and journalism and video and film production.

All of this all this fits together. So it's really a brand new world and you know things have changed dramatically and think about what we're doing right here. Here I am and Marietta George you guys are in Arizona and You're doing this all over the world because of the changes in technology and we should be encouraged by this.

I always seem to think that you know, the unbelievers are the ones are Taking advantage of all this but you know Christians have understood this as well. Yeah.

Absolutely. Amen. Yeah, so we should talk about it. Just lay some foundations. Thank you guys everybody who's joining us on the episode today live and there's everyone who's listening to it. Later by download and streaming.

I want to start with the foundations. Let's get into what is an area of special a special area of expertise and experience for you Gary and that is the issue of God's law. You've talked a lot about God's law and in your series got the God and government series.

You talk a lot about the history of the West and biblical foundations. That were there in terms of justice and standards of righteousness and society and law. So we okay, let's start this way. So people are coming here today and they see the title that says apology or radio talking about taxes and ooh.

That sounds interesting like into what degree and and we're supposed to just you know. Obey the government and and if they say pay this level of taxes. We just do that sort of a thing and so people always will quote Romans 13 submit to the governing authorities they always miss that part where it says that the governing authorities are God's deacon.

God's a servant to Essentially uphold justice and to punish the wicked and to protect the righteous. So people miss that in terms of the definition of God's deacon. What's he supposed to be up to but the issue of taxation you have people today Gary in?

America wealthy people who have worked hard to build businesses and create jobs. They pay people and creates the things Donald Trump. Yeah. Well, not well Donald Trump's a guy. And build businesses, but you know.

We say things like today like we have like the coveting tax today where we say like you you're really wealthy. You've made a lot of money. You've produced a lot of things in the world. You've made a lot of jobs.

You've got a really big house. You've got great cars and the trophy wife. And so that means That we're gonna tax you at 65 percent. Maybe we like to get around 90 95 somewhere around there. And so we just say like well, that's just how it is.

It's a coveting tax. You just have to pay it because why because well, you're really doing well, I want that stuff. Yeah, and so we say even for the average American citizen today. We have something called income tax.

Not just tax on products not just tax on services or something like that. But we have taxation on income and so we just assume it now and we don't know where it came from and we assume that's. Just that's just how we're supposed to be.

Yeah, and now here's the thing. We live in a society and culture. We can't do anything about it. You just have to yield to it or you're gonna get busted up. But we have to ask the question. Is it just and does God's law speak to the issue of taxation?

So maybe we start there Gary does God's law speak to this. Do we actually have biblical standards to point to and help us get into it by talking that direction?

Well, the Bible has a great deal to say about all this. We're always back to this by what standard are you going to determine what what sort of taxation we ought to have. But that's you can't even start there.

You've got to go back and say when we talk about governments and I outlined this in my my book God in government. That the Bible addresses multiple governments family church and state. The the civil government if it very very limited in its scope very very limited in its jurisdiction.

And therefore any taxes any taxes that are Accumulated should only be only go towards those things which the Bible says it specifically has jurisdiction over. But what's happened in our culture today?

We turn more and more jurisdiction over to the civil magistrate good examples the area of education. The Department Federal Department of Education didn't didn't start until Jimmy Carter's administration.

We didn't have a Federal Department of Education. We there are literally tens of billions of dollars that are taken from taxpayers that go up to the federal government. Then the federal federal government disperses those Back to the back to the states and therefore controls the curriculum the way things ought to go.

Well, the not only doesn't the the Bible give direction and jurisdiction to the civil magistrate on education. But neither does the Constitution you will not find the word education anywhere in the Constitution.

Hmm, and since the Constitution is a document of enumerated powers that is unless a Power is actually listed in the Constitution. The federal government doesn't have any jurisdiction over it, right? So when you start talking about taxation, you have to talk about what should so what the civil government do?

What is the duty of the civil magistrate? Then you can start lopping off all kinds of things at the civil civil magistrate should not be involved in and that that then there fits with the Amount of taxation you have right?

Everything is taxed and almost everything is controlled by the federal government. We turn things over to the federal government and if you look at the ninth and tenth amendments to the Constitution. These things should reside with the states and if the states don't have that authority they should reside with with the people that's right and Unfortunately, you mentioned this the covenant the covetous tax people say yeah tax those rich people tax those rich people and when the when the think it's the 16th amendment the income tax amendment was voted on the people were promised that.

This was going to be a tax on the richest of the rich and it was supposed to be a very very small tax. And so the majority of people said well, I'm not the super-rich. It's not going to affect me. So I'm gonna vote for this and I'm gonna benefit by taxing these really rich people.

But what they didn't figure on is that the government lies and they always lie and they always increase their Increase their ability to tax people. Yeah, and so With inflation and so we we have inflation where the government can't even get enough money in terms of taxes.

So what they do, they literally print it now. They just add a couple of zeros and you make digital currency. We've got this exuberance of the Fed another institution that the Constitution. It doesn't give power to they just print money.

Just give it, you know, give it away which dilutes the the the value of your of your money. And so what happens is, you know when my parents first bought their their house. It was in the neighborhood of maybe nine thousand nine thousand dollars.

Those homes now where I grew up when they bought in 1955. Those houses are selling for a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. So what's happened is when that the income tax amendment was was first implemented.

The only the rich were were paying it, but now we're the rich. We're the ones making forty fifty sixty seventy thousand eighty thousand hundred thousand hundred twenty thousand dollars a year. But that's only because the government has inflated the currency.

That is it has diluted the value of the currency. We've been bumped up into higher tax brackets. That's right. So this this all is this isn't just about taxing the church. This is about the very spectrum of what it means.

So for the government to control our lives and then to finance that control of our lives. Using envy and covetousness in order to control people. That's powerful. And there's.

Gary there's there's a actually an excellent portion of Scripture to look at. Is it first or second Samuel in chapter 8. I'm losing that right now. First first first first Samuel 8 and this is where Basically Israel wants to be like all the other nations and wants to have a king.

Now God actually Punishes them because he says I'm your king right? They were supposed to be ruled under God. And so he says fine you want a king like all the other nations? You'll get one and here's what he's gonna do.

He's gonna take your sons to war and he's gonna tax you at 10 So what's interesting is it was seen as a judgment of God a Judgment of God to be taxed at 10 In other words.

So, right some some states have.

Sales tax close to 10 No kidding. And so what's interesting is you have a it's definitional in God's law. This is judgment. The state will become so wicked and think that it's God and that it's worthy of the tithe 10 it's so corrupt and wicked.

It actually thinks it can take God's money. Yeah, the tithe God's level of giving 10 and so that is clearly wicked. To take 10 taxes is a punishment on people and we are way beyond that now. Yeah, and we even have and this is so great.

Is what I've learned from you Gary about history in terms of where we've come from this is powerful in terms of God's law has has a very focused attention an eye on personal property. Justice those sorts of things.

So there's rules in God's law about boundary markers like you don't move your boundary marker. Like you don't steal land from another person why. Because personal property matters. You've got laws against theft and the requirement to repay when you've stolen.

God even has different standards in terms of you've stolen something for a business. The the repayment is different because it was for a business. So personal property is a big deal to God. God preserves that and then you've got the issue of like wealth in a family.

Wealth building in a family that's meant to pass down to the next generation to bless the next generation so like there's this there's this whole system in God's law where they're supposed to be like this growing of Wealth and prosperity because of personal property labor.

They're all those great things that happen in somebody's life that then gets passed down to the family. So now the family gets a boost in the next generation to build businesses to establish, you know.

It's good for society. Like it's good for everybody talk about like, you know, what's good for the society around us. I'd say, you know that the family there's establishing of wealth. But what's amazing is God's law says like what's got to go this way when the person dies.

God's law doesn't suggest that it goes to the state. Well, now the government's got to get their portion of like your personal property as though they owned it. They don't in God's law. That's yours. That's just straight away that belongs to you and it goes to your family distributed to your family.

Whereas and now we have like high sales tax you have income tax you have death tax. You've got now the money not going to the firstborn of your family now. The firstborn is the state right? Right and here's another thing too.

And this is a sad situation. It's nothing to laugh about. It's very very serious. Now when you buy a house in the United States of America, I was gonna mention that you you don't you bought your house recently.

Yeah, you're never gonna own it, right? That's that's very disturbing and unjust you buy a house. You pay that house off, but you are renting. From the government permanently how property taxation. So now like you can't just own a house and land and property now.

We have property tax where guess what if you don't pay your property taxes. You're not keeping that land. Yeah, and and you think about like what's the property tax for? Well, it's to pay for all these things over here and over here and you go.

But I don't want to have anything to do with those things doesn't matter pay it or I take your stuff so you have essentially the threat now of I will take your property. Via force if you don't pay me this money now.

That sounds to me like something that robbers do the difference is is robbers usually use a deadly weapon. To cause fear. Yeah, whereas in this case, it's it's judges wearing black robes with fancy pens.

Yeah, and they threaten you with incarceration or the removal of your property and all the rest.

Public Schools, Social Security, and the Expansion of Government

Yeah, I was gonna say it's funny because the property taxes go for something that Gary doesn't believe in and that's public schools and.

We've been taxed on public schools ever since we've owned our house. Even when you rent by the way, a lot of people don't realize this. When you're renting you're still paying the property tax because your rent is Part of what you're the owner of the property has he has to pay that he's just added it to To your to your rental price, but yeah, we had to and you guys the same thing we had to pay the property tax.

When our children were going to we homeschool for a while, but we also send the private school. So we were paying a double tax right. In essence we're having to pay for other people's children to go to school for free and then we had to pay for our children to go to Private schools that we paid out of our own pocket and we we we went without things.

In order, you know to do that today. Public education is not free public. Someone's paying for it and you and people Don't realize it. But there it's being paid for at a discount for them because other people are being forced to have to pay tax.

In order to educate for the educational system to work. We even just had in Gilbert. They just had a vote to raise The funds for the school system. We're like no. You know, but I think a lot of the problem is a lot of Christians like they're like, okay, yeah, sure.

No problem because they're sending their kids to public schools, but like, you know, they're like, oh, yeah. It's not that big of an increase, you know. And so my my property taxes have increased a little bit in the two years I've owned my house and you know, it's not much but when you start to add that up, you know, it's it's theft.

It's it's not fair, right? It's not fair. It's not just because you're not you're not asking to pay. It's not a voluntary tax, right? So I guess let's let's do that real fast and the more I have you answer that question Gary about the question asked of Jesus Is is there such a thing as a righteous tax like can we do this?

Can we do this in a way that's pleasing? Can we do it in a way that's pleasing to God is the question I have like we have to be able to fund The government to be the servant of God to execute justice.

They need we need a court system. We need to be able to distribute punishments all those sorts of things. You need to be able to pay for that. So is there a way and that's really that's what the government's for all these other social programs.

That's not what the government's for the government should not be funding those things taking money for those things. But they do need to receive money to be able to function, right? So yeah.

That's that's what you have to determine. You have to determine. What is the the legitimate? Jurisdictional power of a civil government at the federal level at the state level and at the county level and.

Once you do that you say this is what we collect taxes for. And so education that's not that's not the domain of the government. And so there you want to you would get education you pay for your child's own education and people say well, we can't afford that.

Well, I guarantee you if everybody had to pay for their own child's education The cost of education would come down right now. You would also see that there would be a shorter day. You don't need to be in classes.

Anybody who's homeschooled knows this. Yes. You don't have to be in classes six to seven hours a day. It wouldn't be driving them to school there wouldn't be any school buses all of these all of these things would change that the the The actual cost of something would would go down.

And but a lot of people just they want the big football team. They want the band. They weren't cheerleading. They want prestige for their school and so forth. And so they're they're willing to send their children to Essentially a corrupt system and and but they're getting it at a discount because they're not pulling.

Paying the full freight when we send our kids to a Christian school. My wife taught there help pay for it. No one no one was sent away because they couldn't afford it. There was always a way in order to make to accommodate people who didn't have the money for it.

And if churches got involved and quit spending their money on the Facilities and use some of that money to like we at our church. We have a Christian school. And they think about churches churches use the big churches use Sunday school classes.

How many hours a week? To. So the rest of the week those classrooms are vacant. That school that the church is vacant and what we've done it at our church is those Sunday school classes are. Are used for the Christian school?

Yeah. And so here you are. You're paying you're paying your tithe to the church and that then is used to help educate your own children. And what we what do we end up doing? We end up, you know sending missionaries overseas and and the irony here is that we end up sending missionaries and money overseas for schools.

You know to teach to teach these these young people these these families and they to start schools and yet we won't do it in our own in our own country because we you know it's we just think it's more prestigious to send our children to a school with a big big name and a big big band and The football team and the stadium and all those types of things so all of these these factors fit into.

What is necessary for for what the civil government should be doing education is a big one take that out you change things dramatically. We never should have had Social Security. We met Medicare and all those all those things as well.

And people say well, how could we ever live without? Social Security save your own money. Invest your own money. Yeah, you keep it and and I studies have been done. I know there was a County in Texas that there was a time where you could drop out of the Social Security system.

In fact public school teachers had a choice of either being in or out of the Social Security system. That's all changed now. Did you know that congressmen? Senators and federal workers were not part of the Social Security system until about 1983 or 1985.

That means the people the men and women who voted in Social Security were not in the system themselves. They had their own private So-called Social Security system funded by their own pay and also funded by additional monies taken from us to give to them.

That was later later changed. Churches, by the way, we're not involved in Christian schools. I remember the first time we taught at a Christian school and non-profit organizations. They were not in the Social Security system.

And the study was done in Texas with a school system where the teachers had opted out and They had more money saved up as a result of privately funding their own retirement system. Then they would have gotten with Social Security, of course.

Yes. So you just go down the list with all these different programs and they say well, how could we live without them? Well, we're for the longest time. We did live without. Yeah. Yeah, and We you people just need to be disciplined to you know.

Take care of there are lots of people today who don't have saved much saved up for for retirement because they're dependent now. They think Social Security is going to take care of them. Yeah, they're in for a rude awakening to find out how little they're actually going to get in Social Security now.

They haven't saved on their own. It's it's they're gonna be in big trouble and watch the federal government come in here and tax us even more in order to help.

People who can't afford to retire. That's right. That's that's happening in my own dad right now. I've been talking to him. He's his health is his back's real bad. He's not able to work until he's going on Social Security.

No, it's not. It's peanuts. He's like.

The government says oh so so Social Security you go you go back and study the history of Social Security and You will find it with Otto von Bismarck Who was the leader of Germany before the rise of Adolf Hitler and Adolf Hitler? actually modeled his version of Social Security after Otto von Bismarck and so did FDR.

I have a book that says the whole history of all this on. It's it's promoting Social Security and I think it was it was written before the before Hitler came to power and the example They use is Otto von Bismarck and it sounds just like our own Social Security system today.

So it was birthed in pre-nazi Germany Weimar Republic so the history of this is Enormous in the way that the government has just controlled every aspect of our lives and make things more expensive for us.

Matthew 22, Caesar's Coin, and the Limits of Civil Authority

Yes, and so we're gonna get just take a commercial break here in a minute. And then we're gonna come back and really addressed address the passage where Jesus is challenged by the people who obviously had malice and Who were hypocrites according to Jesus who are trying to challenge him on the issue of taxation?

We're gonna examine that that's used a lot in terms of I mean, I even sell someone a thread here. It's just like who who's on our money. That's our government. You got to pay taxes to whom they're due.

Really? How about if they ask for 99 How about that? You can still gonna say pay to whom's due or is there actually an issue of justice involved? Or was Jesus really giving carte blanche is just saying Olly olly oxen-free.

Every government can take whatever they want from you and you just got to pay it because hey their image is on that thing. Is that really what Jesus was saying? Is that what he was saying? What we're arguing here is actually that Jesus is King He's Lord over all his law is good and we ask these questions when we face society by what standard?

Should we actually face this down and address this and we say the law of God? So for example right here. Oh See that that's a that's a that's a six-hour p2 to six mark 25. That's the Navy SEAL. That was the Navy SEAL issue at nine millimeter.

And what do you got? What do you got show short ears? I got a Kimber. There you go. Nine. There you go. That's yes. That's a little that's a sweet little thing. We put a big hurtin, but why why are we?

We were saying actually there were a lot of good things that happened early on in America. Because of the Christian worldview in the atmosphere. So for example the freedom of religion freedom of speech.

The right to keep and bear arms the right to defend yourself. It's all right self-defense there the right against Warrantless searches and seizures biblical law is behind that the right against self-incrimination.

That's biblical law all over that. So what we're actually saying is not, you know Republicans and Libertarians and Ron Paul's my homeboy. Although although Ron Paul is my homeboy Although is my homeboy, but that's not that's not the point here.

We're not arguing from that kind of political platform standpoint. We're arguing from a Christian perspective that the law of God produces fruit and blessing in a society. And when you get away from God's law, there's corruption.

There's injustice. There's pain. There's destruction. There's misery on a number of levels. But why do we you know, why do we have things like this? Why do we why are we believers in the Second Amendment?

I would argue it's because of God's law and why are we opposed to unjust Taxation in these ways it's because God's law exactly God's law speaks to personal property. It speaks to the issue of taxation it tells you what even judgment taxation is gives you a standard for what that would look like and I think any any Nation that wants to obey Jesus needs to consider that God's already said, you know.

If you're the kind of wicked nation or king that believes that you can take 10 you're in sin. Yeah, because that's judgment from God. He said so so that's we. I think we need to gauge it like that. We need to say like if we love our neighbor.

Here's the final thing I say here if we love our neighbor and that's what it comes down to people forget that in this whole Discussion like just pay it the ollie ollie oxen free pay the taxes like if they say it pay it pay it pay it.

It's like no if you love your neighbor. Which were commanded to do. You'll actually care that they're being stolen from. Take yourself out of the picture for a second and care and talk about justice for your neighbor if your neighbors are being stolen from.

Does Jesus command you in the New Covenant to care about that right? Why'd he says love your enemies and to love your neighbor as you love yourself. So love for my neighbor requires me to care when injustice is perpetrated upon them.

Is it unjust to have these sorts of taxation or tax codes imposed upon people? The answer is yes by what standard by the law of God standard. He's revealed from his own mouth. This is unjust. This is wicked.

This is sinful. So we should say love for neighbor requires me to care about that not love for Ron Paul. Not love for libertarianism not love for Republican Party. But love for the law of God, why should we care about the Second Amendment being attacked because God's law?

Yeah. Did you know that that there's actually the biblical case in terms of weapons and being able to defend yourself all those things? Why should care about the Second Amendment because God's law why should we care about the First Amendment because God's law?

Why should we care about the Fourth Amendment because God's law. Fifth Amendment because God's law. God's law was underneath that. So we're gonna take a quick commercial break. We'll come back more with uncle Gary talking about taxation.

We're gonna get right into Matthew 22 and ask Gary the question that was asked of Jesus. Does that mean unlimited taxation you just have to obey or what actually was being asked there? And what did Jesus respond with?