Matthew 17:24-27 A Vision for 2020

You're listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Mattawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsack takes us through his series on the book of Matthew called

Not Your Average Savior. Let's listen in. Well, good morning, everybody, and welcome to Recast Church.

As Dave said, I'm Don Filsack. I'm the lead pastor here. And I hope you had an excellent Christmas. Are you guys ready to close out 2019?

Are you ready? All right. Are you ready for 2020? Yeah? Okay, a couple of you.

A little mixed review on that one. But ready or not, here it comes, one way or the other. So let me remind everybody here that we're a church that follows simplicity as a core value.

And that means that we intentionally focus on things that will help us grow in our faith, grow in our community, and grow in service.

And that's really the bedrock of what it means to be a simple church. We really are trying to target those three things.

Faith, that is our relationship with God and how we relate to him through his word. Community, how we relate to one another, that we need relationships, we need others.

And then service, that all of us are given something by which we can bless the community at large or we can bless the church and all of us have an opportunity to serve and to be served within the body.

And I want to point out that this message this week is going to kind of follow on the heels of that idea of service.

But any pastor worth anything had to make a play on words with 2020, right?

Like, I mean, if you're worth your weight in salt, you're going to, you're going to, perfect vision, right? 2020 is perfect vision.

So if there isn't a sermon with the word vision in it here at the start of 2020, then

I think it's pastoral malpractice. And so I titled this message this morning, as we consider this coming year, a vision for 2020.

But the next text that we come across as we're kind of wrapping up this little mini series, going through just chapter 17 of Matthew over the holiday season, and we're going to be going back to Romans next week and wrapping up that big book series that we've been kind of taking off this whole last year.

But yeah, as we come across Matthew 17, it's a text that could be confusing at face value here, the latter half of chapter 17 that we're going to be reading.

And when I read it in a moment, you're going to realize that it requires some background to understand, to figure out what

Jesus wants us to do with it. What's his point? What's he trying to get at in this? And the real bottom line of this text is, as I said earlier, about service.

And I love how this text comes up at the start of a new year, because I would love for 2020 to be a year of us serving one another, growing in service here within the church, as well as outside the walls of this church, and to bless our communities, our neighborhoods,

Matawan, the community that you live in, and be a blessing to those around you in this next year, serving, serving, serving one another.

I think that would be a beautiful thing. And I think that that's what God is calling us to, to a large degree in this text, as we're going to see here in a moment.

Now, we're bombarded all the time with ways we can serve and ways that we can help out in the world, right?

And even within the church. We're bombarded by obligations that our culture thinks we ought to be engaged in.

And as fathers of Christ, we need not do any of those things to remain in His favor. That's according to Scripture.

It's nothing that we need to do to maintain His favor. We indeed are saved by our identity with Christ and His sacrifice,

His death, His burial, His resurrection on our behalf. So, we don't have to give to the children's hospital at the checkout line to be okay.

As children of the King, our acceptability is not measured by our performance. Is anybody glad for that?

Anybody grateful for that? Raise your hand if you're glad that your performance is not the main defining factor of your salvation.

But Jesus shows us a way to launch out into this next year with a willing heart to serve others, a willing heart to serve others, and a willingness to avoid giving offense by engaging at a deeper level in our community and culture.

And He further shows that a leaning on God to provide will be the pathway for His followers in this next year.

And so, we're going to find by the end of this confusing text that seems to be about paying taxes through fishing, what it really is is it's really a text about how we ought to roll in serving others around us.

And so, I think it's a perfect text to get our minds around here at the start of a new year, here at the start of 2020.

And I hope and pray that this is a year of growing in faith, growing in community, and growing in service together.

And so, let's turn, if you're not already there in your Bibles, to Matthew chapter 17. You can navigate in your device if you have a phone that has an app on it or whatever.

But Matthew 17, verses 24 through 27, we're wrapping up the very end of this chapter.

Four short and strange verses that I want to remind you are God's very word to us.

This is what He desires to communicate to us this morning recast, Matthew 17, 24 through 27.

When they came to Capernaum, the collectors of the two drachma tax went up to Peter and said,

Does your teacher not pay the tax? He said, Yes. And when he came into the house, Jesus spoke to him first, saying,

What do you think, Simon? From whom do kings of the earth take toll or tax?

From their sons or from others? And when he said, From others, Jesus said to him,

Then the sons are free. However, not to give offense to them, go to the sea and cast a hook and take the first fish that comes up.

And when you open its mouth, you will find a shekel. Take that and give it to them for me and for yourself.

Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for the privilege that it is to hear from your word, a strange text, a bizarre text, even as far as miracles go, a strange miracle.

But Father, I just thank you for the calling that you've placed on each and every one of us to grow in our trust in you, to grow in community and relationship with one another, and to grow in our service toward one another.

Father, I pray that that would be a reality here. And I even ask that, Father, in this message, that you would speak with accuracy, through me, the words that you desire to convey, that you would speak with clarity this morning through your word, that you would speak with zeal through your word, that we would leave here passionate and enthusiastic about what you desire us to be passionate and enthusiastic about.

Father, it's a privilege that we have to now sing songs together to you, and I ask that you would allow this to be worship from our hearts, that you are our great

King, you are the one who is worthy, and even as we contemplate and consider, still over this holiday season, still the idea, the thought, we're still within those 12 days of Christmas, and the idea of incarnation, that your

Son took on flesh and came to live among us. We celebrate that now in our singing, and we ask that you would press that deep into our hearts, the reality of the humility of the

Son of God sent to save us from our sins, in Jesus' name. Go ahead and be seated.

And let me just encourage you, especially those of you that haven't been around here for a while, I say this almost every week, but get comfortable, and if you need to get up and get more coffee or juice or donuts while supplies last back there, you're not going to distract me if you need to get up and stretch out.

If you need to use the restrooms, those are out the barn doors down the hallway on the left -hand side. But our goal is going to be to keep our attention on Matthew chapter 17, verses 24 through 27, for the remainder of our time.

So if you lost your place in your device or in your Bible, I encourage you to navigate back over to that, so that you can have that in front of you while I talk us through that passage that I read earlier.

At first glance, you might think, you know, we're talking about a passage that talks about taxes.

You might be tempted to think that God is going to get on us about something political this morning. Well, it's 2020, right?

So there might be some political notions about this next year anyways. But more than that, you might actually think he's going to hit us on the subject of particularly paying taxes, because again, that's particularly mentioned in Matthew chapter 17.

And just a few weeks ago, we were here in the message going through the book of Romans, and it just so happened that we were on Romans 13, which also equally tells us to pay taxes to whom taxes are due.

So it could just actually kind of feel like God is just whamming us, like left -righting us right now.

But I didn't plan on any of that. It's just going into Matthew chapter 17, picking up an old series that I was going through, and then marching through the book of Romans, and both of those just came up.

But I would suggest to you that as we look deeper into this text, and as we kind of take it apart and we consider what Jesus is trying to teach us, what he was teaching his disciples during that time,

Jesus is using something as mundane and routine as paying taxes to teach us a lesson about how we ought to serve, how we ought to serve in the world that is full of various and complex demands and relationships.

How many of you know that life gets pretty complicated? And there's all different kinds of demands that are placed on you, all the way from the government, to family, to other relationships, to employers, and all kinds of things that we need to know how to roll in terms of the service that we're called to in our community, to our families, to our employers, to our government, to all of these things.

It gets very complicated for many of us. What appears on the surface level here in this text to be about paying taxes proves to be a much deeper lesson as our

Master leads us, seeking to lead us into profound service. Jesus and his disciples here, to set the stage, they arrived back in Capernaum, which is the home base of operations for Jesus during the latter part of his ministry.

He was north in Galilee. The city of Capernaum sits on the north shore of the lake of the

Sea of Galilee, is what we often call it. It's actually a lake. It's roughly the size of Houghton Lake.

How many of you have ever been to Houghton Lake? I think it might be the largest inland lake in the lower peninsula.

It's about that size. The Sea of Galilee is more like a lake than it is like an ocean or like a sea.

They were on the north shore there in Capernaum. There's every indication that Peter may well have had a house there.

That was the base of operations during this time. Immediately we see that Peter was confronted there in that location, in the end of chapter 17, by a tax collector asking if Jesus intends to pay his annual tax, if Jesus pays tax.

Now, the specific tax being spoken of matters here a lot. One thing that's very interesting to consider, and I was thinking about it and some commentaries brought it up as well, is the author of this text is

Matthew. Matthew knew something about collecting taxes. Matthew was a tax collector by trade before he was called to be a disciple of Jesus.

He knew quite a bit about taxes, and he was literally sitting one day at his tax table there catching people along the way, trying to get money out of them when one of those people walked up to him named

Jesus and said, leave it all and follow me. Peter got it from his tax table and didn't collect taxes anymore and followed

Jesus. Matthew left what was known in that era, in that time, as a tritorious action against the

Jewish people because he was working as a Jew for the Romans against the Jews. Unless you think, oh, is collecting taxes a bad thing?

What you need to understand is the way that a tax collector made money in that time is say you owe $10 ,000, let's just throw a crazy number out there, say you owe $10 ,000 in taxes, so the tax collector's job was to get that $10 ,000 to the

Romans. But the issue was he made no money in that transaction unless he could extort more from you.

So his goal was to get $11 ,000 from you, to make you think that you owed the Romans $11 ,000 so he could walk away in pocket one.

Are you getting the picture? So that's the kind of person that Matthew was prior to coming to faith in Jesus Christ.

But the tax referred to in verse 24 matters a lot and it is not that type of tax. It was not a

Roman tax at all. But rather the two drachma tax is very well attested in ancient documents and all different kinds of people.

There's really not a divergent opinion about what that tax was. It was the Jewish temple tax that this tax collector was trying to collect.

In other words, this is a Jewish guy coming to a Jewish rabbi and saying, hey, you need to pony up for this religious tax that you owe.

It was a half shekel according to Hebrew money or two drachmas according to Greek money.

So there's a translation there. If you paid one shekel, you were paying for two people because it was a one shekel to four drachma conversion rate.

And so this was a tax instituted on every male. Back in the book of Deuteronomy, it was instituted on every male over 20 years of age.

And the purpose of this tax was a very noble purpose. It was for the upkeep of the temple, for maintaining that place that was the center of worship for the

Jews, that place that was the center of the sacrificial system for this entire religious structure that we see.

How many of you have ever read the Old Testament or read parts of the Old Testament or through the Old Testament? How many of you know that sacrifice is a pretty big deal?

How many of you know the temple is pretty central to that Old Testament, Old Covenant way of relating to God?

And so this was pretty much a no -brainer. Is your rabbi, is your guy who claims to be a

Jewish teacher, is he going to pay his temple tax a part of the central tenant of our faith?

Interestingly, the tax collector's way of asking this question in the Greek language, which is what it was originally recorded and translated into English, it implies the expectation of a positive response.

In other words, it's pretty clear that this was not one of those. We have a tendency to think that at every turn,

Jesus was being challenged, that he was being pushed, that everybody who asked him was trying to trick him or trap him, but not this guy.

This guy comes and says, he is going to pay the taxes, isn't he? I mean, it's just kind of like he expects him to say yes.

He expects Peter to answer yes. And by the way, it's likely that this guy approached Peter because in a shame -based culture, direct communication was not good.

So he didn't want to shame Jesus in public, and so that shows something of this guy's character because he's actually operating kind of according to cultural norms and kindness to not go straight to the rabbi and say, you didn't pay your tax yet, you owe it, and shame

Jesus. And so he's actually going in a roundabout way, which would have been very cultural in that time. There might be some other factors that would have led this guy to go to Peter instead of directly to Jesus.

Maybe the tax collector didn't want to be the center of some object lesson from this renowned rabbi who was known to do that to people.

Somebody comes with a routine question, and what did Jesus do? Often tied him into knots, like he was very wise, and he had kind of kicked questions back to them and stuff like that.

And Jesus had a reputation for tying religious leaders in knots, and it's quite likely that this guy had at least some notion of who this rabbi was that he was trying to get the taxes from, and therefore said, okay, hold on a second.

I'm not going to go directly to him either. But Peter, this is kind of interesting, too.

Peter was confident enough to give an answer on behalf of Jesus. Think about that. Peter was confident enough about the way that Jesus would respond to this question that he immediately answers, and he says, yeah, of course

Jesus would pay the temple tax. I think it's a little presumptuous on Peter's part, which is nothing new for Peter.

If you get to know Peter in the pages of Scripture, he's very quick to speak his mind. He's often quick to speak beyond his mind, like beyond his capacity and his capability.

And so Peter is kind of an interesting character. I encourage you to follow his life throughout the Gospels, and it's very intriguing to see who he is and the way that he rolled.

But when Peter came into the house after this discussion, so you have to picture this. This happens out in public somewhere, out in the street, out in the market someplace.

This tax collector has approached Peter. So he goes into the house, and the text makes an explicit point of telling us that Jesus is the first to speak in this interaction.

It wants us to know that Jesus is the one who addresses what's on Peter's heart. Not that Peter has to ask

Jesus a question. Oh, by the way, I had this encounter with this tax collector, and I wanted to know what your thought about it.

Jesus starts the conversation. That might be an allusion to the fact that, how many of you knew Jesus knows everything anyways?

So that might be an allusion to that. It's possible, or it just might simply mean that Jesus was standing by the window while this conversation was happening outside on the street, and he overheard it.

But either way, Jesus spoke first in verse 25. And this sets up the main teaching of Jesus that's going to take us into an outline for the remainder of our time.

So all of that was kind of the setup for these points that flow out of, four points that flow out of the remainder of the text.

In verses 25 through 26, here's the outline. We see identity. Identity, if you're taking notes.

25 through 26, identity. Knowing who we are must be the starting point.

And then in verse 26, we see freedom. Knowing our identity reminds us of our freedom, and Jesus wants to remind

Peter of his freedom in this context. And then verse 27, we see service.

Knowing our freedom opens us up to genuine service to others.

Not duty, not obligation to others, but service to others. And lastly, in verse 27, we see dependence.

As we serve others, God wants us to keep leaning on him for our provision, and even for the opportunities to serve one another.

So let's start off by looking at what Jesus says about our identity in this context, because he wants to start there.

It's intentional. Remember that the subject is paying a religious tax here. That's what he's going on about.

But that is mere fodder for the deeper life lesson that I'm encouraging everyone, and I believe

Jesus wants everyone to take with them in their service in 2020. This is just the subject matter that Jesus uses to teach us a deeper lesson here.

This is not a message about paying your taxes. It's a message about the way that you relate to the world around you.

You see, Peter comes into the house to talk to Jesus about the taxes that they owe, and Jesus heads him off the pass with a question.

The very first thing that Jesus says to Peter is a question. What do you think, Simon? That's an out -of -the -blue question.

What do you think, Simon? He goes on to ask, in a monarchy, in a kingdom where there's a king, who gets taxed?

Is it the princes and the princesses and the royal family? Is it the children of the king who pay the taxes?

Or is it the commoners? Do you guys have an answer? It's the commoners, of course.

The beauty in this is that Peter, how many of you know that if Jesus asked you a question and you were in Peter's shoes, watching all that you see in the

Gospels, how many of you would want to be quick with an answer? Be careful. I wouldn't want to be quick with an answer.

As a matter of fact, I might just be like, what do you think, Jesus? Kick it back to him. I don't know, where is this all going? Because I know I'm going to look like a fool by the end of this conversation.

How is this going to go? The beauty of this is that Jesus gives Peter at least a multiple choice. 50 -50.

How many of you would like a test with just multiple choice and two options? You're going 50 -50 on this thing.

I can probably maybe pass this. Princes and the royal family or commoners?

Who's taxed? Jesus had questions for Peter. Do you see that? Questions that met

Peter right where he was at. What his heart was thinking about.

What his heart was wrestling with. What was just pressed on him. That's the very thing that Jesus comes to talk to Peter about.

He came to talk with Jesus about taxes, and Jesus says, let me ask you some questions about taxes.

Jesus has some questions for you this year. Has some questions for you this year.

And you might have all kinds of things that are pressing on you right now. Questions that you want to ask, that you want to have a conversation with Jesus about.

How should I relate to my son who is wayward and struggling with addiction in 2020? How should I relate to him this year?

Or what am I supposed to do about this financial crisis I've gotten myself into? Buying Christmas presents, whatever it might be.

Or is this the right time? Is this the right year for me to launch that new business? Is this the right time for me to step out of this current role and do something different?

Is this the right time for me to move? Is this the right fill in the blank? Whatever it is for you. And Jesus wants to meet you here this morning with a question.

And look at the nature of the question, what it's driving for. The bottom line of what

Jesus teaches Peter isn't fundamentally about what he had on his mind.

It wasn't fundamentally about taxes. It wasn't fundamentally about the issues that were pressing in on him.

He starts with identifying something that's so significant. His question leads him to his identity.

Who are you Peter? Let's talk about that first. Let's get that down before we talk about all these things.

You see, Peter, let's start with who you are. Let's take a step back from the conversation about taxes for a second.

Let's take a step back for just a second about conversations of torn and strained relationships and financial duress and career choices.

And let's get down to starting 2020 by answering the question, who am

I? What am I? Let's get some identity first.

And here's where he's driving all of this conversation. Peter, you're a child of the king.

You see, taxes are collected from the commoners and not from the princes and the royal family of the king.

Now the lesson in this text is inferred. It's not explicit, but it's still very clear in verse 26.

Jesus identifies him and his disciples as part of the royal family.

They need not pay. He says, you need not pay this temple tax. Their identity is the foundation for an understanding about how to live and work and move in the world around them.

And that then leads to the direct conclusion and the second point. If we are indeed children of the king, then we are free.

And so that first point, identity, is really ultimately to determine, am I a child of the king?

Have I entered through faith in Jesus Christ? Am I trusting in him? Have I allowed him to bring me into the family of God?

Have I been adopted through Jesus Christ and his sacrifice for me? What is your identity?

And if your identity is in Christ, then we can move on to the second point, which is freedom. That second movement in the text is for Jesus to state directly at the end of verse 26, look at it, the end of verse 26, then the sons are free.

If you're a child or a daughter of the king, then this is not, I mean, he's talking about the taxes, but he's saying something that's deeper than that.

You're free. You see, Peter knew fully that taxes were levied from commoners and not from the royal family, and he answers

Jesus that way. And Jesus agreed with that logic fully. So the reason, by the way, that I'm so willing to apply this passage to all of us is the way that Jesus is bringing

Peter, as his disciple, along in this line of thinking. Jesus isn't saying, I am the son of God.

I don't have to pay taxes. He's talking to Peter about it. He's bringing Peter into this discussion.

You see, Jesus could have just skipped to the end of verse 27 and told Peter to go fishing for coins, right?

He didn't have to do all of this explaining and convincing him that he's free to do so or to not do so.

You're free to pay this religious tax, and it is very important. You could take some clips out of this message out of context and say,

Don told me not to pay my taxes. Don't do that. That's not what I'm saying at all. This is a specific religious tax here, and he's saying you are free from all of those religious hoops that people will place on you that are the assumption that you need to jump through this hoop and this hoop and this hoop to be okay.

It is in Christ and Christ alone. But you see, what Jesus is doing here, instead of just getting down to the point, the point wasn't the taxes because if it was, he would have said,

Go pay the tax. That would have been the end of the discussion. Yes, we're going to pay the tax. Go do it. And if he had to go get a fish involved in it and do that, then he would have just gone there.

But instead, he's engaging him in this discussion for the purpose of identifying. Well, let's start off first.

Who are you? You're a son of the king, and therefore you are not obligated in any of this. You're free.

Do you see what he's getting at here? You're free. He wants to go through, he's going through this conversation to teach

Peter that he need not pay anything before he's about to tell him to go pay.

You don't have to. Now go do it. In order to not cause offense, go do it.

See, Jesus wants Peter and those of us who are in Christ to know just how utterly free we are.

And it's important to remember that the context of this lesson from Jesus is a religious tax, a religious duty that gave many religious people a sense of brownie points, a sense of earning favor with God.

By supporting the temple, they thought they were pleasing him. But we know the rest of the story because we serve the one who identified his own body as the temple of God.

Even to the degree of saying, tear down this temple, and three days later

I will rebuild it. What was he talking about? His death, burial, and resurrection. He was talking about his body.

And they misunderstood it to be about the temple. Oh, he's against the temple, he's against the temple. No, he was using it as a metaphor for his own death and burial and resurrection.

You see, Jesus is the fulfillment of the Old Testament temple.

And at his death, glorious, glorious, beautiful thing that happened when Jesus died, the veil in the temple was torn in two.

What was the veil for? The veil was the separation from the holiness of God from the common person, from the priesthood.

And all of that priesthood and all of that symbolism and all of that depth and that separation of holiness was stripped away at the death of Christ so that we have access to the

Father through Jesus. He is our temple. He is the place that we go to meet with God.

So his followers need not pay that temple tax. And he's being serious about that. He's being serious.

You don't have to do this. Now, that might stir some things up, right? But you don't have to do this.

They are brought into a royal identity through Jesus. And in that identity they are truly and genuinely free.

And I want to be careful. I don't want to allow your mind to be fuzzy about the word free. You might think that I just have some generic opinions or thoughts about how free we are and oh, freedom to do this, freedom to do that.

Those who are in Christ are genuinely, hear me carefully, they are genuinely religiously free.

Genuinely religiously free. God has certainly laid down many principles to guide us into a life that is pleasing to him.

How many of you are glad for the principles that we see in scripture that help steer us in directions that are toward his holiness, towards his desire for us?

Some of you actually really want to take those principles and then return them to checklists, return them to a lack of freedom.

Oh yes, we're free, but, and now I'm going to make a list, and I'm going to make a list to make sure that I cross all my T's and dot all my

I's and you're back into law again. And you are not saved and sanctified by law. You are saved and sanctified by the

Holy Spirit who resides in you and guides you and directs you into truth. So we're no longer bound to an external legal code of conduct as followers of Christ, religiously speaking.

We are, however, constrained by his almighty spirit that dwells within us. We have received

Jesus Christ by faith as our king and savior. But hear me carefully. The real shift and the real difference for the follower of Christ, the one who has been saved and redeemed by his great love, poured out for us on the cross, is that we are now those who want to please him.

We want to. We desire his smile. We want him to be glad over the way that we live and the things that we do.

We are not those who are forced and duty -bound to obey. We obey out of a want and a desire to please

God. So Jesus reminded Peter of his identity. He said, you're a child of the king.

He reminded Peter of the outcome of that identity. You are indeed truly free.

The sons are free. You don't have to do this religious hoop any longer. And that freedom then takes a turn with the third movement of the text that starts at verse 27.

I'm gonna call it service. The third movement, service. Using the same situation of paying the temple tax,

Jesus told Peter, you're a child of the king. You are free to avoid the tax. However, to avoid offense, we're gonna pay it.

How many of you think that was a little bit of whiplash for Peter? You're totally in the category of people who do not have to pay this religious tax.

You don't have to jump through this hoop. You are okay with God. Your identity is in Christ. Now let's go pay that tax.

Peter must have just been like, what just happened here? I'm confused again. I thought I was getting it. I thought we were tracking with this.

I thought we were gonna, maybe this is the way you're gonna stick it to the Romans. Maybe this is the way you're gonna no more, we're gonna just change everything.

But the phrase here, not to give offense is a golden phrase. It shows the motivation of Jesus.

Why would he pay a tax he doesn't know? Why would he pay a tax? Why would he jump through some kind of hoop to look a certain religious way when he doesn't have to?

Not to give offense. Can you imagine that God in flesh chose to do something, anything, in order to not offend others?

Wow, that's a big deal. And that puts a little bit more on us to say, do we ever do that?

Do you ever just do something for someone else just to avoid the conflict, just to avoid, just to kind of do the noble thing, to do the right thing?

I think this is a golden phrase, not to give offense. I would love for this to become a key phrase for relationships here at Recast in 2020.

Can you see how this is coming together? I'm a child of the king. I am free of your demands.

However, to not give offense. Fill in the blank.

Do you see how we often end with the first two? I'm a child of the king.

I am free of your demands. End of discussion. And that's not what

Jesus does. That's not where Jesus goes with us. I'm a child of the king.

That is true. I am free of your demands. That is true. But I want to live in peace and harmony with you.

And therefore, in order to not give offense, we compromise and bend and flex to live together in community, right?

I hope that that's a reality in 2020. Jesus took time with Peter to build a strong case that they need not jump through this religious hoop, only to circle back around and say, now let's love some people by serving them.

I love the way that Martin Luther said this. Not Martin Luther King Jr., not the civil rights leader in the 60s, but Martin Luther, the reformer in the 1500s, said this.

This is a direct quote. A Christian is the most free Lord of all. This, by the way, was a commentary on this very passage that we're reading today,

Martin Luther's thoughts about this passage. A Christian is the most free Lord of all and subject to none.

I disagree with him on that opening sentence because I'd say subject to Jesus, subject to Christ, but yes,

I get what he's getting at. So at the end of the day, even for Christ, I mean, we are locked in by the blood of Jesus.

We are forgiven and we are set on a pathway of redemption. But a Christian is the most free Lord of all and subject to none, semicolon, which matters to about two of you.

A Christian is the most dutiful servant of all and subject to everyone.

Sounds like he's talking out of both sides of his mouth, but I think he gets it. Do you see what he's saying there?

You don't have to be subject to anybody. You're willingly subject to all.

You're willing to serve anybody who comes your way. There's nobody that would walk to you and say,

I have a need, I'm hungry, I'm thirsty, I need food, I need shelter, that you would turn away.

Because you would serve all, right? Everyone. Our service for one another can take a lot of different forms, can't it?

A lot of different forms. But our minds often only turn to using our gifts and talents to do stuff for others or to give stuff to others.

How many of you, when you think about serving one another, that's primarily your thought. Giving stuff to somebody or doing something for somebody.

But I want to shift our thinking a little bit about service here, especially in the church. You see, service in the body of Christ also looks like an attitude of seeking peace.

A heart attitude toward others that says this phrase, in order to not give offense.

It's willing to work gently and kindly with one another. To work in a way that seeks understanding.

We sometimes do something for the sole reason that we do not want to give offense.

Now I want to be careful to identify that this is not a call, some of you, your mind's already churning in the wrong direction.

This is not a call to be a people pleaser in 2020. We are not making this the year of watered down, everybody gets their way kind of thinking.

Instead I'm suggesting that we make this a year of confidence in our identity. Belief in our freedom.

And then robust service to each other. You see, without our identity and our freedom well established, the temple tax could only ever be a duty in this text that we're looking at.

There's only ever going to be a duty, an obligation, a responsibility, almost like a weight on your shoulders that you had to carry, oh

I gotta pay this tax too. It wasn't service at all for the majority of the people that paid it. But when we understand who we are in Christ, and we understand just how truly and utterly free we are, only then are we on a footing to actually serve one another.

You see, now when Peter goes and pays this tax, knowing that he doesn't have to, because of his identity and his freedom, knowing that makes it service.

Do you get it? Knowing that he need not do it, but doing it anyway, that is the definition of service.

That brings it into the category beyond duty, beyond obligation, beyond earning something.

See, think about it this way, an illustration. The beauty of the upper room, the night that Jesus was betrayed, he's there.

And what does he do? He takes a towel and a basin of water, and he gets down low on his knee, and he goes man to man to man around that room of disciples, and what does he do?

He washes their feet. Stinky, grimy, filthy feet. I don't like feet. I mean,

I got hair standing up on the back of my neck just talking about feet. Not a feet guy.

But you see, what makes that story beautiful, what makes it so powerful, is the identity of the one washing the feet, right?

Who is he? The Lord of the universe. The son of the living

God. The Messiah sent to save his people from their sins. The rightful king who will reign forever and ever and ever and ever, and he is the one who is washing their feet.

And beyond that, his identity is powerful. His freedom is powerful. What does he have as far as where he could be in that moment of time?

Does he have to be there in that room? He is free to be anywhere he wants to be, and instead, he is there.

The towel and the basin washing their feet. You see, his identity and his freedom defines the service.

Now picture it differently. Imagine that Jesus is there, and he's passing out the bread, and he's passing out the wine for communion and for that last supper, and they're eating together, and they're fellowshipping together, and he's like, oh, so we forgot to wash the feet.

Hey, servant boy, get over here. Wash these guys' feet. And the servant comes and does that.

The servant's doing it for what? Duty, responsibility, maybe even some wages, maybe some pay, maybe he gets to eat that day because he washed everybody's feet or something.

He's doing it for something. Do you see how that's different? That's a very different picture. Serving one another.

When we understand our identity, when we understand our freedom, and then we turn about to serve one another anyways, there's something that's gorgeous and beautiful about that kind of service instead of demanding our own way and our own rights.

This all calls for some honest discernment for each one of us. I'm not saying that there's never a time to put a foot down and defend something, but I believe that most of us in this room need to be corrected in the opposite direction anyways.

We have a natural bent towards abusing our identity and our freedom if we're honest. We are more prone to using our status to avoid serving others, or serving others even in a wrong mindset, thinking that we're earning our identity and freedom by serving.

But that is why Jesus started with Peter, who are you? You're talking about the sons, the sons of the king being free.

He talks about identity and freedom first before he gets to the service part, lest we think we serve so that we're brought into his family.

Only the one who is secure as a son or a daughter of the king, only one who has that freedom well in hand is able to go out and truly serve others with a heart given over to God and gratitude and thankfulness.

Everyone else is merely working for the attention of God, hoping and banking on wages and a payday that isn't coming.

The phrase in the text, give a fence, what he doesn't want to do, what he doesn't want to give is a picturesque word that's frequently used in scripture.

It's a Greek word, skandalon. I don't use a lot of Greek words, but it's one that's so frequent and so common and so important and so picturesque that it's worth mentioning.

It's worth you knowing that word, skandalon. From it, we get the word scandal in English. It's not an exact correlation, but in Greek, this word skandalon means a stone that is set in the pathway, a stumbling stone, a rock.

When they were making ancient roads, they didn't have bulldozers. They didn't have graders. They didn't have the means of a crane to move a large rock, and certainly, they would clear as much as they could, but occasionally, there would be a boulder that was too big.

They'd dig down, dig down, dig down, and they just couldn't get to the bottom of it, so they'd leave it there. They would call it a skandalon.

In the darkness, if you didn't have a torch and you were walking along the road, you would stumble regularly over these types of rocks.

They'd just be there, and there's nothing that they could do about it in the ancient world. Or they didn't have the time or the energy or the desire to do so, depending on the use of the road, and so they would leave it there.

In Greek, it's a stone of stumbling. The question that kind of comes from this idea of giving offense, when is the last time you did something you didn't need to do in order to keep someone else from stumbling?

Ask yourself, when is the last time I served someone else by giving up my freedom and my privileges as a child of the king?

In case this is getting murky, remember that the concrete example here in our text is paying a religious tax that they didn't have to pay.

In this church, this might look a variety of ways. It might look a whole host of ways different, but it might look like signing up to arrive early on a

Sunday morning to make the coffee. You need not serve in this way to be okay with God.

Did you know that? You don't have to serve here at Recast to get to heaven.

I just want to clarify that, in case anybody was confused. So, you're already a child of the king.

Why would you do that? You're completely free to sleep in a bit on Sunday morning if you want.

But in this way, when you start thinking about this identity and this freedom, then the call to serve anyways.

Any service that flows out of our identity and our freedom is an application of this text.

Many of you are serving now. Many of you serve down at the food pantry. Many of you serve here in the children's area.

Many of you serve greeting. You serve in so many different capacities here, and I'm so grateful for a church that genuinely takes seriously the call to serve.

But I know we have room to grow, don't we? Even those of us that are serving, we've got room to grow.

But now notice the last movement in the text. I'm calling this the fourth point. It's dependence. It's a funny account in the end here.

Jesus tells Peter that in order to avoid offense, in order to avoid stirring things up, go fishing. Some of you are going to cling to that text.

I expected to see a couple guys get up, maybe Jay, just get up and walk out at this point. I'm going to go apply this right now.

I know some of you just absolutely love getting a line wet, and that's what he tells him.

He says to Peter, go get a line wet, and the first fish you hook is going to have a shekel in its mouth.

What? I want to fish with Jesus. That's going to be enough to cover the temple tax for both of them.

By the way, that's about two days' wages, just in case you were curious about how much a half shekel is about a day's wage.

One shekel is two days' wages. It's enough. That shekel is enough to cover the temple tax for both

Peter and Jesus. Now, why would Jesus do this? How many of you know that Jesus has a lot of options to pay this tax?

A lot of different ways he could have done this. Some commentaries that I read this week, as a matter of fact, four out of the four commentaries that I read this week, it's very rare that I disagree with all of them, but all of them cast aspersions and doubts on whether this actually took place.

Most of those same commentaries are very eager to say Jesus cast out the demon last week and that he healed this kid with convulsions.

They believe in miracles. They just had a hard time bringing themselves to this one. Part of it is, there's a legitimate reason, because we don't have the actual we don't have the actual miracle recorded.

All we have is Jesus telling Peter to go do it. So they're saying, well, maybe he was just kind of alluding to some kind of a cultural reference that was kind of like a tongue -in -cheek, like, hey,

Peter, you're a fisherman, so go fish and you can make the money to pay this tax, or something like that. But I think there's a little bit more going on here.

Although we don't have Peter recorded doing it, I firmly believe that the entire teaching of Jesus here hinges on Peter and Jesus not giving offense to the religious establishment by paying the tax.

And then we have Jesus telling him how to go pay the tax. So I believe that Jesus was telling him how to go get the coin to pay the tax to not give offense.

The whole teaching crumbles if he doesn't pay the tax. If he doesn't go and do this thing, if he's disobedient to the

Lord and doesn't go and fish, which would be probably counter to Peter anyways, because probably if he told Peter to go fish, he was probably already at the lake.

I mean, that's his livelihood. That was his job. That's what he did. That's what he knew how to do. He's like, oh, fishing? Fishing's my favorite.

So he's like, I can go do that. Something I can do that the Lord's told me to. But here's all those aspersions aside.

Why wouldn't Jesus just say, go to Judas, Peter. Judas holds the money.

We know that from other accounts in scripture. He was the guy who held the money bags. And so, go to Judas, get a shackle, and go pay the temple tax.

That sound a little more simple? A little more straightforward? A little bit more logical? And I believe that the reason is to remind

Peter that even as a child of the king, with so much privilege, with our identity in Christ, and with the freedom that we've been given, as a very free man, and as a simple call to serve others without offense,

He can and indeed still must depend upon God in His service.

This is not, by the way, a call for everyone to go fishing to cover your income taxes this year. But it is a reminder here at the end of our text to lean into trusting

Him as we honor Him by serving one another this year. To lean on Him and depend on Him for the strength, for the energy, for the commitment to stick by the things that we've said we're going to do for one another this year.

So let me just ask you this. How are we going to apply this text to ourselves this year, even this week?

What should we go out from here and do different as a result of encountering this text today? And I've got four simple suggestions, and I would just say, first, start with your own identity.

Start by discerning and getting down to your identity. Are you indeed a child of the King? The only way to be brought into the royal family is by invitation of the

Son. You can't break your way in. You can't force your way in through a cellar door.

You're not going to come in the back door. You're not going to break a window and get in. The only way into the household of God is through His Son, Jesus Christ.

And anybody who is a friend of His Son, anyone with faith in the Son of God, God says, if you're friends of my

Son, you're my friend, too. Anybody who comes in with Jesus is welcome in that household.

And I would say kind of the same goes for, I've got a kid finally, and my first one's off in college, and I would say, if he brought somebody home with him from college, we've got a bed for him, too.

Right? I mean, that's just the way it works. You come with my Son, you're welcome in my house. You know, it's just,

I mean, well, hold on. Do they have an Ohio State sweatshirt on? That would be a question that I might want to...

Sorry for those of you who got hurt yesterday. That was a rough one. But anyways.

No, everybody's welcome, even Ohio State fans. It doesn't go that deep. Really, that would be really petty of me to rub that in.

But anybody who comes in through the Son is welcome into the

Father's house. And that's the main point. So just ask yourself, what is my hope for getting into that kingdom, into that family of God there in the end?

Where's my hope placed for that? And anything aside, anything that adds on top of Jesus is going in the wrong direction.

I've attended church, I've given to the poor, I've done all kinds of good things,

I'm pretty much a good father, I'm kind, I work good for my employer. Any of that is just not going to get you there.

That's like banging on the door, that's like knocking on the door saying, hey, I'm banging loud enough that I'm sure that God's going to let me in.

The only way in is through faith and trust in His Son. So we're going to take communion here in just a moment at the end of this service.

And if you're adopted into God's family by trust in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross for you, you've asked

Him to save you. You've asked Him to forgive you of your sins. You've acknowledged Him as the rightful

Lord and King of your life, then you're welcome to come to the tables and take the cup of juice to remember

His blood shed for us, and to take the cracker to remember His body broken for us, as He commanded us to do so in remembrance of His sacrifice.

But start, before you even get up in that line, and this sounds like a simple Don, how often do we have to do this, but I just encourage you,

I don't care if you've been a Christian for 50 years, take a moment, take a moment to just say, where's my identity?

And out of what have I been living my identity? Have I been living into that? And maybe have a little conversation with God before you get up and get in that line.

And that's not a reason to judge whoever gets up in line first either. But I do encourage you, take a moment, just take a moment to really talk to Him before you go back there and reflect on the great price that was paid to bring you into His family.

A second thing is deeply trust in your freedom in Christ. Those of you who can go back there and take that cracker and that juice, then you have freedom in Christ.

And those of you by the way, I didn't give you this, but those of you who really come to the conclusion that I'm not all in with Christ, I would love to personally talk with you.

I would drop everything to talk to you at the end of this service. I'm going to be standing out at the door, come and grab me. We can go back to my office and talk or whatever.

But if you're here and you're just like, I'm kind of confused about this whole relationship with Jesus. People talk about that, I don't know what it is.

I would love to take you there. But at the end of the day, I'd encourage you to skip communion because you can't remember what you don't believe happened.

So I'd encourage you to skip that and just take in the song during the communion time. But yeah, this deeply trust in your freedom in Christ.

If you can take communion, if you're there, and if you belong to Him and you are truly, then you are indeed truly free.

And many of us live our lives as people pleasers or even worse. We live under the ongoing burden of thinking we have to perform to keep

God liking us. But it's only when we truly understand how free we are, how free we are in Christ, that we can then launch out into a life of serving others.

When we understand our identity, when we understand our freedom, then we are actually free to help others.

Because the fact of the matter is, if you don't recognize your freedom, you are always working for your salvation. Everything that you're doing, even what appears on the outside to be the most humble of service, is still hope that God's paying attention to you.

Hope that you're getting better than others around you. The third thing, consider how you are called to serve in this next year.

And for some of us, it's a good starting point to think through the ways we have demanded our own rights.

We've demanded to have it our way. It might be a good step to adopt the phrase, in order to not give offense,

I will abstain from fill -in -the -blank, or in order to not give offense,

I will start fill -in -the -blank. That's something you have to wrestle with God about. Lastly, let's all lean into a dependence upon God and our serving one another this year.

The one who can orchestrate the whole coin -in -a -fish's -mouth thing can certainly provide for us what we need in our service to one another in this coming year.

My prayer is that this model of identity, freedom, service, and dependence would be a new vision cast for each one of us in 2020.

Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much that you care about the way that we interact with the world around us, the way that we interact with one another, that you have solved our identity crisis for us and have brought us into the family that really has hope and purpose.

Father, if there's anybody here that's not in that family yet, I pray that today would be a change of identity, of batting for King Humanity to coming over to Christ's side and joining

His team. Father, I thank you so much for the freedom that we have in Christ, and I pray that you would protect all of us, even in this message.

There's been a potential for us to abuse that freedom, but you do give us principles, you do give us your spirit, you give us the desire to please you, and I pray that you would help us to walk in that.

Father, I pray that you would be with our service to one another, help it to increase and to come more and more out of a desire to not give offense.

Let that thought and that attitude be planted in us, and then a dependence, Father, that we would depend and lean on you more and more this next year.

Thank you for the sacrifice of Jesus Christ that we now remember and reflect on as we come to the communion table.

Thank you for His body broken for us. Thank you for His blood shed for us. Father, we are all unworthy of that sacrifice, but we are deeply loved by you, in Jesus' name.