Trying Not to Offend (Sermon)

Let's once again open up to the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 17.

Matthew chapter 17, and the title of this morning's message is Trying Not to Offend.

Okay, trying not to offend. Now as Christians who believe the

Bible, if we talk about our faith, if we share our faith, no doubt about it, people will be offended at times.

Have you ever offended somebody just by bringing up the name of Jesus? Probably.

So when we talk about trying not to offend, because in this passage, Jesus takes this approach where he says, listen, you know,

I could do this, but that would offend them. So as not to offend, we're going to go this other direction.

So Jesus used wisdom and didn't want to offend people on this one occasion.

Here's what we're not talking about this morning. We're not talking about compromising.

We're not talking about watering down the message to get people, you know, more comfortable with things.

You know, we don't want to compromise. We don't want to do that. But at the same time, Christianity itself, just the

Gospel message itself can be offensive to some people. Just our sense of morality based on the

Ten Commandments can be offensive because it's so out of step with the world. So the reality is, you know, we're going to offend at times anyways.

We don't want to try and offend people. You know, if we can avoid at times offending people, we want to make sure that we avoid it if at all possible.

So we're going to learn some principles here about Jesus. In last week's message, remember, there was a bunch of people around Christ and he made a statement about that being an unfaithful and perverse generation.

He probably offended a few people, but here they ask him if he's going to, or they asked

Peter, does your master pay the temple tax? And Jesus knew if he didn't pay the tax, he would end up offending many of the

Jews. So Jesus didn't want to offend. This wasn't worth it. You know, it's really about picking your battles,

I think. So let's try to see what we can learn from this passage, Matthew 17, 24 through 27.

It says, when they had come to Capernaum, those who received the temple tax came to Peter and said, does your teacher not pay the temple tax and notice how they're framing this.

You know, does he not pay it? So there's like something built into the question. And Peter says, yes.

We're not even sure that Peter knows. He's just saying, yes, he pays. And when he had come into the house,

Jesus anticipated him saying, what do you think, Simon? For whom did the kings of the earth take customs or taxes from their own sons or from strangers?

You know, do kings tax their own children or do they tax their subjects? And Peter said to him, their subjects, they tax, take the tax from strangers.

And Jesus said to him, then the sons are free. Nevertheless, lest we offend them, go to the sea, cast in a hook and take the fish that comes up first.

And when you have opened its mouth, you will find a piece of money and take that and give it to them for me and for you.

So you see Jesus performs this miracle where they pay the tax. It's not even really coming out of their own pocket.

But why did Jesus do that? So as not to offend, what was the goal of Jesus and the disciples?

I mean, what did they really want? Most of all, ideally, they wanted people to believe on Jesus as the

Messiah. And if they're going around offending people over tax issues,

I mean, that's just not really helping the cause. So again, trying to find out when we want to take a stand, when it's not worth it, pick your battles.

And we'll talk about that more in a moment. Let's just start with verse 24 and go through some of these verses.

See what we can get from this. It says that Jesus and his disciples came to Capernaum.

This is located on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee. Capernaum was known as the town of Jesus.

Back in Matthew chapter nine, verse one, it's referred to as his own city.

Now when you think of Jesus's own city, what do you think of? Yeah, you probably would think of Nazareth.

He was born in Bethlehem, but he grew up in Nazareth. He was called a

Nazarene, but during his three and a half year ministry, he spent so much time in the

Galilee region, so much time in Capernaum that was considered his home. Now as for this temple tax, all

Jewish males over the age of 20 were expected to pay half a shekel once a year.

And that was the equivalent of about two days pay. So this would help to fund the upkeep and the service of the temple.

And it's like, you know, with the church, you give money for the ministry of the church and obviously for paying the bills and the upkeep.

And it's the same with the temple. So the Jews would pay this temple tax for all the things going on in the temple.

Basically, it says it's a tax, but it's questionable whether or not it was absolutely mandatory.

From what I understand, it was based on an Old Testament concept, but you know how the

Pharisees and the Jewish leaders were, they kind of added traditions. So it wasn't what it was originally meant to be.

So what it started out as, it kind of developed into something to where now, in order to be seen as a faithful Jew, in order to be seen as a faithful Jewish man, you needed to pay the tax, even though technically it wasn't binding under the law of Moses, if you wanted to be technical about it.

So the idea is that Jesus would pay. Otherwise, if he didn't pay, you know, he's questionable.

Is he really, you know, is he patriotic? Is he, is he really a true

Jew if he won't pay the tax? That's basically why they come to him and frame it that way. Do you know, does he really not pay?

Is that, is that how they said it? They made it sound like it was in question. So the people coming to Jesus probably are trying to make him look bad or, you know, questioning

Peter, putting them on the spot as they often did. So to be, again, to be seen as a loyal Jew, you were expected to pay this tax.

You know, it got me thinking, are there any things today that in order to be a faithful Christian, you know, traditions have developed that in order to be a faithful believer, you need to do this, or you need to do that.

Does anyone come up with an example? A tradition, something that's developed that in order to be a seen as a faithful believer, you need to do something, even though technically it's not commanded in the word of God.

Does anyone have any examples? Don't judge. Don't judge. Okay, that's, that's, that's true.

I'm sure we have these types of things as well, but just to spend a moment on this idea of giving and giving to the temple and the temple tax.

I mean, rarely do I preach about money and giving, but, you know, since it's brought up here and since we're doing a

Sunday school series about finances, honoring God and your finances, I figure this would be a good time as any.

Basically, the situation here is there's a, there's a difference between new

Testament giving and old Testament giving. Are they under the old covenant at this point, or are they under the new covenant?

Technically they're still under the old covenant right now. So in Israel, church and state at this point, in a sense, were connected.

And this was true in old, old Testament, Israel, the offerings, certainly the tithe that was part of the law.

So that was part of the law of Moses. It was the law of the land. Do you remember that verse in Malachi about robbing

God Malachi three, eight says, will a man rob God yet you have robbed me, but you say in what way have we robbed you well in tithes and offerings.

So if an old Testament believer was not paying their tithe, they were violating the law and they were, that was seen as robbing

God. Now, how much is a tithe? Yeah, you probably heard about the church that in order to try to get more people to come, the pastor decided we're going to lower the tithe to 9%.

And that kind of boosted attendance. And then the church down the road heard about it. The pastor said, yeah, we're going to lower our tithe to 7%.

And then more people started going, well, you know, I don't think that really happened because a tithe is 10%.

You can't lower the tithe, but it was seen as mandatory. And even though this temple tax technically wasn't mandatory under the law, it had basically become that.

That's how it was seen today. We're not under the old covenant, are we? We're not under the law.

There is no temple to pay a temple tax. So today, because we're living, especially because we're living not only in the

New Testament, we're living in a land where the church and the state are separate.

People today sometimes have the mindset that yes, giving was mandatory back then, but giving today is optional.

I talked to a woman one time who grew up Catholic, and she said that growing up, church attendance and giving, even giving the tithe, she said it was seen as a sin to neglect this.

If you didn't go to mass and if you didn't pay your tithe, I mean, they really held you accountable. And she said, but for us as Protestants, she said, it's all optional.

I'm like, well, I don't know if it's quite like that, but that's the idea some people have.

But taxes in our society are mandatory, right? What would happen if you didn't pay your taxes?

You'd get a fine. I don't know. Thankfully, you'd get a fine, I think. It starts with a fine.

And then, of course, if some people owe too much money, they end up going to prison. So because the weight of the government is not behind giving with the church,

I mean, sometimes people think, well, we can sort of get away with it. From God's perspective, that's not the way it is, right?

What does the Bible say about the New Testament? I don't want this to be a whole sermon on giving.

So I'll just say one thing about it. 2 Corinthians 9, 6 through 7 says, he who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly.

And he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. So let each one give as he purposes in his heart, not grudgingly or of necessity.

For God loves a cheerful giver. And even that was more of a one -time love offering, as we would call it, more than weekly giving, because Paul, speaking to the

Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 16, 2, tells the church members to lay up something aside on the first day of the week.

We know that that's Sunday. So all that to say this, there's a big difference between Old Testament giving and New Testament giving.

But if they didn't give to the temple, what would happen? Temple might fall into disrepair.

Things would go bad in Israel. Would God bless them if they weren't giving to the service of God?

No, he wouldn't. And I think that same principle applies today. If we don't give to the Lord's work, we can't expect him to bless us either.

But back to the text here, verse 25, they come to Jesus asking him, or they asked

Peter. Verse 25 says that Peter, when he had come into the house, Jesus anticipates him.

Because I think Peter just answered without really knowing. Um, they, they're trying to trap him maybe.

And Peter just wants to protect Jesus. And he says, okay, of course, Jesus pays the temple tax.

And then he's going to go into the house and say, I was right, right? You do pay the tax, don't you? I mean, that's the impression that I get.

So it says when he had come into the house, Jesus anticipated him saying, what do you think,

Simon? Jesus doesn't even really address this, but he's, he gets into this other conversation from who do the kings of the earth take customs or taxes from their sons or from strangers?

Now, why is Jesus asking this question? Well, it's based on the fact that the temple is whose house?

Yeah, we could say that the temple is the house of God, the father, and Jesus is the father's son.

So the question about kings collecting taxes, they don't collect taxes from their own children.

Therefore, does Jesus really have to pay the temple tax to his own father's house?

No, uh, one commentator puts it this way. Technically Jesus as God's son was exempt from the tax, but to avoid offense, he paid it on behalf of himself and Peter.

And the way Jesus does it is nothing less than miraculous.

In verse 27, Jesus tells Peter to go fishing. This is the only example in the

Bible. I was listening to someone yesterday talking about this. This is the only example. There's a lot of fishing in the

Bible. Usually they're fishing with nets. This is the one example where a hook was used, you know, for the fishermen out there.

And they, they, he catches a fish right away and the fish comes up and has this coin in its mouth.

And so if a half shekel is two days pay, so this is what four days pay. Let's just call it four or $500.

I'm assuming the fishermen here, you've never caught any fish with something like this in its mouth or its stomach.

Just imagine, yeah, you find a gold coin. But what does this miracle display?

I mean, it proves the absolute sovereignty of God. Just think of all the different things that would have to line up perfectly in order for this to happen.

I don't know if it's the most complex miracle, but it seems like it's, it's one of them. However, the coin got tossed into the sea, then the fish coming along at just the right moment, having the coin lodged in the fish's mouth.

And then, you know, Peter throws in the hook just at the right time. And the fish just so happens to bite.

And of course it's, it's God controlling all of it. And that really does tell you something about the

Lord. He, when we say he's in control of all things, right? And our prayers that you hear that come out of our mouth a lot.

Well, this is why we say that because he really is in control of everything. And this just proves it.

And to me, that's a great comfort for me. Like no matter what happens in this world, just the direction a fish is swimming in a lake somewhere, like God is sovereign even over that.

But as God incarnate, the point being as God incarnate, he was not obligated to pay the temple tax.

The temple is his house. You know, it's his father's house. Now, on the other hand, the men who are running the temple, would they view it that way?

Let's say Jesus approaches the temple and this is my father's house. I'm God's son.

So I don't have to pay the tax. How would that have gone over? You see, they didn't believe that.

The men in charge of the temple, they didn't believe that Jesus was the Messiah. So if he tried to exercise this privilege, it would have created an offense.

It would have created a controversy. And Jesus, knowing that, he doesn't feel that this is the time to take a stand.

There will be times and there have been times where Jesus does speak up. There are times where the apostles take a stand, but he decides this is not the moment.

It's not worth the $400. It's not worth the shekel.

It's not worth it. So we need to learn from this and determine, okay, there's some times where I need to take a stand.

I need to exercise my rights. Like as Americans, we love our rights.

I hope you love your rights because if you don't love your rights, you're going to lose them and we're losing them.

And that's another sermon for another day. But sometimes we want to exercise our rights, but there's a time where maybe it's not wise to do that.

And this is kind of a difficult subject to determine when is the right time and when not to.

Jesus could have exercised his divine right, but then accusations would have been made. He's not a faithful Jew.

He's whatever, you know, they could come up with all sorts of different things. This could have led Jesus's followers to decide, hey,

Jesus doesn't pay the tax. What would that tell his disciples? We don't have to pay our taxes either.

So all sorts of things could have come from this. Simply was not worth it.

So Peter, hey, do this, go fishing, get the coin, pay the tax, let's not cause an offense.

So when we look at a story like this, we have to ask ourselves, what's the point of the story?

What's the takeaway? Where do I draw from this? This is admittedly, this is not a prescriptive passage.

I've explained this before and it's good that everybody knows the difference. When reading the

Bible, it's good to know the difference between a descriptive passage and a prescriptive passage.

A prescriptive passage is when Jesus is teaching his followers, do this, don't do that.

He's, he's teaching them. This isn't really that it's more just describing, you know, descriptive.

It's describing what happened, but there's still things we can learn even from descriptive passages.

Let's turn to Romans chapter 13 for a moment. Just as far as paying the temple tax, is

Jesus teaching his disciples that they need to pay their taxes? Let's see if you're paying attention.

Is this, is the point of this passage, Jesus teaching his disciples, you need to pay your taxes.

Is that the point? That is not the point. Now, does the Bible say that, that we need to pay our taxes?

Okay. I'm hearing conflicting things here. Some of you wish it said you didn't have to do that, but technically, you know, what kind of Bible teacher would

I be if I just told you what you wanted to hear? But Romans 13, this is kind of that key passage on the subject.

Romans 13, starting in verse one, the apostle Paul says, let every soul be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God.

And the authorities that exist are appointed by God. Therefore, whoever resists the authority, resists the ordinance of God.

And those who resist will bring judgment on themselves. So we see here that Christians are basically instructed to be good law abiding citizens.

Throughout history, the heathen have always tried to smear Christians.

In the early days in the Roman Empire, the heathens would say about believers that they were cannibals.

Why would they say that? Well, because Christians ate flesh and drank blood.

Of course, they're totally distorting communion to make Christians look bad. They tell lies.

And there's lies that are being told about Christians today to make us look bad. And you probably know some of those lies.

So we need to be careful. We want to be good law abiding citizens not to cause offense.

The offense is going to be there one way or the other. We don't want to add to it. So we need to be good citizens.

And yes, we even need to pay our taxes. Verse seven, Paul says, render therefore to all their due taxes to whom taxes are due customs to whom customs fear to whom fear honor to whom honor.

So as Christ followers, the example that Jesus gave, he did pay his tax.

And we are told that we should do it here. Okay, so we do see that Paul is actually teaching.

This is prescriptive. Paul is teaching Christians. They have to pay their tax. And you can say, yeah, what if the taxes went up to like 90 %?

Would we still have to pay them? I'd be sympathetic to people arguing against that. But that's not the case.

Do all people think taxes are too high? Every country people say that. Are they too high?

Probably. But still, that doesn't give us an excuse. Because if we don't pay, it's going to create problems, right?

If let's say we'll move into some of the application for this. Let's say a

Christian is a United States citizen. And they see what where their tax money is going. It's funding maybe a war that I don't agree with.

Or maybe it's funding certain policies that Planned Parenthood is funded by the federal.

You can create a whole list of things that I don't agree with how my tax money is being spent.

Therefore, and there have been a few believers throughout history who have said, I'm not paying.

And I don't blame them. That's between them and God and the government. But guess what?

If you don't pay, what's going to happen? You're going to be thrown in prison. And you have to ask the question, is that really worth it?

Well, I think based on everything we see here, in my estimation, I don't think that's worth it.

This is not a place to take a stand. So as your pastor, I would recommend paying your taxes.

Are there times to take a stand where someone might be offended?

If you don't do what they want you to do, they might be offended. Here's another example where maybe a little civil disobedience would be the right thing to do.

And again, I realize not everyone will disagree with me on this. But we have to sort of figure out the application.

When's the right time? What battle should I fight? Back in 2020, when churches were told to shut down for two or three weeks, we didn't shut down.

Most people stayed home. That was fine. I can understand how people weren't really sure how this was going to work out.

Even for the first several months, if people stayed home or a church shut down for the first month,

I think that is understandable. However, when it became clear that things were just being pushed forward and forward, if you were really following the government, you would have had to shut down for basically like two years.

I mean, the only way to really follow every command that they were or dictate, it would have been like two years.

Is that a time that was worth saying no? In my opinion, that was worth taking a stand and say, hey, listen, if you want to stay home, stay home.

But we're going to meet. We're going to assemble. Why? Because Jesus tells us to assemble. So where does he tell us that?

Well, anytime he talked about the church, because the church is the assembly. And of course,

Hebrews 10, 25 says, do not forsake the assembly. Now, does that mean it's wrong to not go for a week or two?

That's not what it's talking about. But when you stop going for years, you know, if you didn't go to church for three years or five years,

I mean, who knows what might happen in the future? I think that was a time where you ran the risk of offending people by opening up, but it was worth it.

So you kind of have to decide, you know, when do you want to risk offense?

When do you not want to risk offense? Let me just say this. I never intentionally try to offend anyone.

Now, have I offended somebody in my preaching? Don't, don't answer that. No, but I realize,

I realize I've, I wouldn't be surprised if I've offended every person in the room.

Honestly, have I ever tried to do that? Have I ever set out

Sunday morning and say, okay, I'm just going to, no, I've never done that.

And let me just say this. If I've ever offended anybody in this church or just an attendee, someone's watching online, you only been here once and you got offended and you never came back.

I've never intentionally offended someone and I am sincerely sorry if I have, but at the same time,

I do realize that I've preached things that like, this is what the Bible says and it's offensive in our culture.

Am I sorry? I preached that. No, I'm not. Okay. The gospel is to the

Jew, what a stumbling block to the Greek it's foolishness. So preaching the gospel, there's something called old fashioned term, the offense of the cross.

Am I, am I bothered by if someone's offended because I'm preaching the gospel? No, but I apologize for that.

No, but there are some things, let's face it. There are some things that you can preach and technically what you're saying is right, but the spirit in which you do it is not right.

You see, I could say something that's technically true, but maybe my demeanor, my tone of voice, how it's come across or why

I'm doing that, that it can offend people. We don't want to offend people. There are some people out there.

I don't think it's anything that we deal with here, but there are some people that they're, they're, they're a jerk.

There are some Christians who, you know, they exercise their right and technically they are correct in some of the things that they say, but the way they come across, they act like a jerk and I'll just say it.

This has been the way it is in some fundamentalist circles in time past.

And that's the one reason why I might not, so I'm going to risk offending fundamentalists.

Actually, I would say the fundamentalists, I'm probably more sympathetic to the fundamentalist than I am a lot of the mainstream denominations, but I'm just saying we don't want to offend people if we can, if we can avoid it.

One last point, the last person that I want to offend, the last person, what's the title of the message?

Trying not to offend. Who's the one person we never want to offend? God, we don't, we never want to offend

Christ. And this is something that's been a burden on my heart for years. Just the way some people do church, just the way some worship services are, the sermon, it's all man centered and they're trying so hard because there's extremes you can go to on both sides.

I'm almost done, but you can go to one extreme and be that jerk for Jesus, you know, and just be rude and confrontational.

And that is an extreme on the other extreme. You're so worried about offending people.

You're compromising, you're watering down the message. There's some things that there's some passages in the

Bible you will never preach from because you just don't want to offend anyone. And in the process, you end up offending

God because you compromise his word. And that is happening in a lot of churches.

And it's something that we personally can do because we're, we're, we're, this is the term we have the fear of man and we don't want to risk offending someone.

So we have to balance that out. And I would just say this, read this passage again for yourself, pray, ask yourself, what are those circumstances where I need to take a stand and I can exercise my rights.

And then those circumstances where, you know what? It's just not worth it. Yes, I could speak up right now and I could say something, this person was wrong and I could put them in their place and tell them how foolish the thing they just said about the

Bible was. But you know what? Is that going to win them over? Probably not. So do

I have the perfect explanation for every situation? No, but I do know that our goal, just like with Christ and his disciples is to win people over.

And that's what we want to do. So let's try not to offend. Let's pray.

And heavenly father, I do ask forgiveness. If I've ever said something with the wrong spirit for the wrong reason, even if technically it was true.

If I ever did that, Lord, I believe I have gone and would go to the person to ask for forgiveness.

But Lord, I do ask for your forgiveness. Lord, help your people to have wisdom.

Give us knowledge to know when to speak up, when to remain silent, when to take a stand and when to be like Jesus here and say, you know,

I really don't have to pay this tax. But so that we don't offend,

I'll pay it. Lord, give us this wisdom. And as always, if there's someone here who has never placed their trust in Jesus, I pray today would be the day that they would seek not only salvation and forgiveness, but also wisdom for life because your word is full of wisdom.