Our Obligation to God and Government
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2014 · 28 September 2014
Last Monday He rode on a donkey into Jerusalem and was hailed as the Messiah. Tuesday He cleaned the temple out of all the moneychangers and sellers and so forth. And now this is Wednesday in Matthew 22 of the last week of our Lord's life. Friday He will be crucified and on Sunday He will rise from the dead. Now He is back in the temple teaching on the kingdom, and He has collected by the magnetism by His personality and the dynamics of His teaching a massive crowd of people who are interested and fascinated by what He is saying.
Now this makes the religious leaders real irate. They resent Jesus Christ and so they stop Him in the process of teaching and they say to Him, "By what authority do You do these things and who gave You the authority?" His response to them is to tell them that they are under the judgment of God. And He tells them that in three parables.
The first was a parable of two sons. One son said, "I will not obey you father," and later did. The other son said, "I will obey you father," and never did. And Jesus said, "You're like that second son. You keep saying you're going to obey God but you never do. And you will be kept out of the kingdom. On the other hand tax collectors and harlots are like the first son who live a life that defies the father but in the end they repent and do obey." And He said, "Tax collectors and harlots will enter into the kingdom instead of you."
And then He gives them a second parable of the vineyard with the tenant farmers. The man that owned the vineyard is God. He leases it out to tenant farmers and they work the land and they produce the crop and then when the owner sends back his servants to collect what is due to him they beat up the servants and kill them and finally he has no servants left so he sends his son and they kill his son. And Jesus says, "You are the tenant farmers; you who kill the prophets; you who will kill the very Son of God. The kingdom will be taken from you and given to someone who is worthy of it."
And then Jesus gave them a third parable, which we looked at last week in Matthew 22, the parable of the royal wedding feast. And He likens them to people who were already invited but when the feast begins to celebrate the son they will not come, they will not honor the son, and they will have no part of the celebration. And so they are shut out. And again Jesus says, you are going to be kept out of the kingdom of God and others are going to come and take your place. Three parables of judgment.
Now they have to react to this because this is in the middle of the temple courtyard with many people around. And the Lord Jesus has just devastated them with three prophecies of their judgment put in parabolic form. And they knew exactly what He was saying. He attacks their unbelief and their rejection and calls down the judgment of God. And in their anger and fury, they were going to report Him and the Roman government will come down here to get Him and kill Him. That was their plan.
So now these three parables are followed by three questions and those questions take us through the rest of Chapter 22. This evening we are going to look at the first of those three, verse 15 to 22. Verse 15, “Then the Pharisees went and plotted how they might entangle Him in His talk.” The Pharisees want to trap and ensnare Jesus so they went off in the corner somewhere in the temple and they began to talk and figure out how to trap Him in a statement.
Instead of crying out for mercy, all they want to do is kill the one who brought them the warning and offers to save them. It is like the guy whose drowning who tries to drown the guy who is trying to save him. Now let us look at their approach, verse 16, "And they sent out to Him their disciples." Why do you think the Pharisees sent their disciples, why didn't they go themselves? Because they long ago had been revealed to be fake. There was no way they could go up to Jesus and pretend to really believe in Him.
They find a group who Jesus doesn't know as their followers, they brief them thoroughly and send them to masquerade as honest questioners. They are trying to fool Jesus. And it says, "It was the disciples with the Herodians." Luke doesn't even mention the Pharisees or the Herodians, he just calls all of them spies. All they want is to get Jesus to make an anti-Rome statement so they could report Him to the Romans where they would kill Him. They were spies masquerading as religious people interested in what He believed.
Why the Herodians, who are they? They were the ones following Herod. They were not religious; they were political. The Herodians were a dynasty of Edomites who ruled the land of Palestine. Herod the Great, Herod Antipas, Herod Archelaus were all of the Herodian family. In 6 A.D. Archelaus, who was the son ruling in the south was deposed and in his place the Romans put a governor and that's how we know Pilate as the Roman governor for the southern part of Palestine.
So here are the anti-Roman Pharisees and the pro-Roman Herodians getting together against Jesus Christ. Why? The Pharisees recruited the Herodians because when Jesus said his anti- Roman things they needed to have some pro-Roman witnesses, who would be believed by the governor because they were known as pro-Roman that this man is an insurrectionist leading an anti-Roman rebellion movement.
Well why did the Herodians cooperate? Because the Herodians didn't like Jesus either; in fact, Herod Antipas cut off the head of John the Baptist, because he confronted Herod about his wicked, wretched life. And they didn't like Jesus, who came after John, any better than they would have liked John. So they agree that they are against Jesus even though they can't agree on religion or politics, and that sets the stage.
Now look to verse 16, “Teacher, we know that you true, and teach the way of God in truth; nor do You care about anyone, for You do not regard the person of men.” Watch their approach: "Teacher”, the highest honor you could pay a man. The Talmud says the one who teaches the law shall gain a seat in the academy on high. And then they say, "We know that you are truthful.” You have integrity. Not only are you a truthful person, and you teach the way of God in truth, you have truthful information to give.
Not only that, they say, "nor do You care about anyone." They don't mean Jesus is indifferent to people with needs; they mean He is not swayed by other opinions. And then they add this: "for you do not regard the person of men." In other words you are not intimidated by anybody. Everything they said was true. You think they meant it? No, they didn't mean it. It was evil flattery, with only one thing in mind: setting you up to let you down. Build your ego up so high that you are stuck trying to live out your reputation.
Now they think where He now with so much integrity, so much truth, so much conviction, and so much courage that He has to answer them truthfully. He's going to have to live up to His reputation now. That leads to their attack. Watch this in verse 17, "Tell us, therefore, what do You think? Is it lawful to give tribute unto Caesar or not?" Simple, but very delicate! What is your opinion? Mark adds in his parallel account, "Shall we pay it or shall we not?"
The Romans counted all the people and this tax is called head money. In other words each year every individual had to pay this census tax. It was a personal tax and the amount was one denarius. A denarius was one day's wage, one day's wage for a Roman soldier, a fair wage for any worker. The Romans provided certain services to the people by officials, government, soldiers, and so forth, they had to have compensation and so they have various taxes.
Now this didn't sit well with the Jewish people. They saw themselves as a theocracy ruled by God. And when pagan Rome moves in, and imposes itself on them, starts taxing they have the feeling that they're giving what belongs to God to Rome. They felt that that head tax was the most offensive because they could understand the property tax, the income tax and the business tax as going to Rome since they rendered services, but as individuals they belong to God. And so the most galling of all their taxes was this census tax.
And so they were sure that the only thing Jesus could say to them was not to pay it. That's what they were hoping. Now watch verse 18, "But Jesus perceived their wickedness." Jesus knew because He knows everything. He is omniscient. John 2:25 says, "He had no need that anyone should testify of man for He knew what was in man." He knew the questions and their intention before they even asked. Verse 18 continues, “And said, "Why do you test me, you hypocrites?"
They were right, He was direct and not intimidated by anybody. And He called them exactly what they were: fakers and pretenders. You hypocrites. Jesus had never seen those people before. These guys walk up totally new, and flatter Him to the hilt and He says, "You phonies." Now here is the heart of the text. Verse 19, "Show Me the tax money. So they brought Him a denarius." So that tax would have to be paid in the Roman coinage of one denarius.
Jesus takes the coin in His hand. It was a silver coin minted by the emperor, because only the emperor could mint silver and gold. So any silver coin would reflect the image of the Caesar. It would not only have his image, but it would have some kind of writing identifying him. This was the common practice among kings, to hail their sovereignty they would mint coins with their pictures on it.
And every time a Jew reached in his little pouch and pulled out a denarius it offended him because it was a reminder of Roman oppression. And it was a graven image and they were offended by that. In Israel today there are places where you cannot take a photograph and if you try they will stone you because they still are offended at any kind of image.
And in verse 20 look what Jesus says. "Whose image and inscription is this? Verse 21, “they said to him, "Caesar's." And a denarius from the time of Tiberius, had on one side the image of Tiberius' face and on the other side it had him sitting up on his throne in high priestly robes, with a crown on his head. So the coinage was more than secular, it was religious. The emperors not only believed they were high priests, they believed that they were gods.
So the Roman emperor was always called the high priest. The appearance of a strange star in 17 B.C. had caused Augustus Caesar to inaugurate a 12-day feast what he called an advent celebration and the Roman College of Priests was called together that year and they voted to grant mass absolution from sins for all the people in the empire. Coins at that time hailed Augustus Caesar as the son of God, so the state offered salvation in addition to prosperity.
Listen to what Jesus says next in verse 21, "Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's." That is so profound that it is hard to communicate everything that is in that. First of all notice the word render, it is the word pay back or give back. It speaks of an obligation. Give back Jesus says, he minted it. It refers to something that doesn't even belong to you.
Now when they asked the question in verse 17 they didn't use that word. They said is it lawful to give as a gift? Their perspective was that they had a choice of giving or not giving. Jesus said, you're giving what belongs to him. What does the Lord say here? Pay your taxes! Even a blasphemous government, even a government about to be the executioner of the Son of God, even that kind of government has to be paid.
And the New Testament reaffirms this in Romans 13:1, "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." Government is an institution of God just like marriage, the family and the church, is a special institution of God. It's a sin not to pay your taxes. Verse 3, "For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to evil. Do you want to be unafraid of the authority? Do what is good and you will have praise of the same."
Don't be selective and pay the ones you want. You pay them all. Look at 1 Peter 2:13-15, "Therefore submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake whether the king is supreme 14 or to governors, as to those who are sent by him for the punishment of evil doers, and for the praise of them that do good. 15 For it's the will of God, that by doing good you may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men.”
God wants Christians to be models of virtue, models of integrity in the world so that we can be good examples. In 1 Timothy 2:1-2 Paul says, "That we should pray for all men and 2 for kings and all that are in authority, that we may lead a quiet peaceable life in all godliness and reference." You should live in the world in a godly and an honest and a peaceable way and you should render to those in authority exactly what those in authority call for.
Listen, everything you have you receive is from God. It is God that gives you the health to do your work well and He gives you the opportunity to work in that specific job and the brains to perform the job well. The Lord just says some of that I want you to give to society because I have ordained government so it can be leading to a peaceable, and happy and quiet life.
But it is the second half of Jesus’ answer in verse 21 that's so dynamic. He says, "And render to God the things that are God's." What was Caesar asking for that only God deserved? Worship. That's the issue. You can pay your tax to Caesar but don't you dare render to him your worship, that's what Jesus said.
Do you see the distinction? Give to Caesar what is Caesar's but you better reserve for God what is God's. And that is why this USA started out with a clear distinction between the church and the state because what belongs to government is owed to the government; and what belongs to God we need to give to God. But unfortunately that is changing more and more, and we are not giving to God what He deserves.
Romans 12:1 tells us what God deserves from us, Paul said, “I beseech you brothers, by the mercies of God that you present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.” These spies do not have a clue who they are trying to trap, the Son of the living God, and He gives them an answer that is absolutely astounding. Look at the aftermath in verse 22, "When they heard these words they marveled and left Him and went their way." They could not say anything else and so they left.
Well you know something, that's sad. Why do people do that? There are people in here this evening that don’t want to follow Jesus and instead of responding to God and give God what He deserves, they just leave. But I am literally in awe of Jesus Christ. This answer is again a revelation of the deity of Jesus and the incredible genius of God, Amen? Well let's bow in prayer.