The Lord’s Day Morning
June 26, 2011
“Rendering to Caesar and God”
Luke 20:19-26
The Reverend Dr. J. Ligon Duncan III
If you have your
Bibles, I’d invite you to turn with me to Luke chapter 20 as we continue our way
through the gospel of Luke together.
The last time we were together we looked at the parable of the wicked tenants.
The event that we’re studying today happens on Tuesday or Wednesday
perhaps, of the final week of Jesus’ earthly ministry before His crucifixion on
Friday. In the passage, as you see,
the religious leaders of Israel, those associated with the leadership of the
temple, are desiring to ambush Jesus.
They want to get to Him. They
know that they cannot get Him in such a way that would infuriate the people,
who, at this point, are favorable towards Him and respectful towards Him, so
they’ve got to find a way to trap Him and this passage records an encounter in
which they attempt to trap Him.
There are two parts
to the passage. If you look at
verses 19 to 22, you have the record of the attempt to entrap Jesus by the
scribes and the chief priests. Then,
in verses 23 to 26, the second half of the story is Jesus’ response.
Now in this response, Jesus has to simultaneously avoid the trap that
they’ve laid and give a vitally important authoritative word to edify and
instruct His people in an area in which we are all going to live, no matter
where we are, and have in fact lived since Jesus was here.
And that is — How do you live in this world under a government, sometimes
a government which is opposed to the interests of Christ and which often seeks
to supplant His rule by its own design?
How do you relate to that government as a believer?
How do you relate to God? And
Jesus does both of these things in response to the question that is put to Him.
Let’s read. Before we read,
let’s pray to the Lord to ask Him to help us understand His Word.
Heavenly
Father, this is Your Word.
Your Word is inspired, God-breathed, Your very words, profitable, it’s
given for our instruction, for our reproof and correction and training in
righteousness that we might be equipped for every good work.
We need Your Word, Lord.
We need it even more than we need food because we do not live by bread
alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. So teach us from
Your Word and grant that we would not just hear the Word but that we would
respond to it in faith and that we would embrace it in our lives.
We ask this in Jesus’ name.
Amen.
This is God’s Word.
Hear it:
“The scribes and chief priests sought to lay hands on Him at that very hour, for
they perceived that He had told this parable against them, but they feared the
people. So they watched Him and sent
spies, who pretended to be sincere, that they might catch Him in something He
said, so as to deliver Him up to the authority and jurisdiction of the governor.
So they asked Him, ‘Teacher, we know that You speak and teach rightly,
and show no partiality, but truly teach the way of God.
Is it lawful for us to give tribute to Caesar, or not?’
But He perceived their craftiness, and said to them, ‘Show me a denarius.
Whose likeness and inscription does it have?’
They said, ‘Caesar’s.’ He
said to them, ‘Then render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God
the things that are God’s.’ And they
were not able in the presence of the people to catch Him in what He said, but
marveling at His answer they became silent.”
Amen, and thus ends
this reading of God’s holy, inspired, and inerrant Word.
May He write its eternal truth upon all our hearts.
An attempt to entrap Jesus by the scribes and the
chief priests
Perhaps you have
heard of the book recently published by Jonathan Kay, a journalist who immersed
himself into the conspiracy culture of the United States over a period of two
years, posing at conventions as a fellow conspiracy theorist, lurking in chat
rooms and on blogs, and engaging with people involved in a variety of conspiracy
theories which are perpetuated in this urban and virtual world that we live in.
And by posing as a conspiracy theorist amongst conspiracy theorists, he
sought to expose some of the mindset and the outlook of that particular part of
the culture in his book, “Among the Truthers:
A Journey Through America’s Growing Conspiracists Underground.”
This is not the first
time that someone has done this. A
few years ago, an atheist named Gina Welch went undercover for two years.
She joined a Christian mega-church — she made a profession faith and she
was baptized and she even went on mission trips with that mega-church and she
wrote a story, a book about her experience called, “In the Land of Believers:
An Outsider’s Extraordinary Journey into the Heart of the Evangelical
Church.”
More darkly and more
recently, you may have heard of Kevin Roose’s book.
He was a student at Brown University, one of the Ivy League schools with
a very liberal reputation, who transferred to Liberty University in Virginia,
the school that Jerry Falwell founded, and he too immersed himself in the
culture of Liberty University. He even
went on evangelistic trips with fellow students, all the while planning to write
a book, which he did, recently published, called, “The Unlikely Disciple:
A Sinner’s Semester at America’s Holiest University.”
Now his point, of course, was by posing as an evangelical Christian to
seek to expose the embarrassing weaknesses of evangelical Christianity.
You understand that
something like that is happening in the passage before us.
The chief priests and scribes know that they cannot take a frontal
assault against Jesus at this particular moment.
They risk enraging the people, the crowds, against themselves because
they obviously saw the respect that many of the people had for Jesus.
And so, their strategy is to pose as if they respect Jesus, to pose as if
they are sincere followers of Jesus, and to send spies into His circle while He
teaches to ask Him leading questions that might potentially embarrass Him, get
Him in trouble with the Roman government, or cause Him to lose favor amongst the
people. And that is exactly what
happens in this passage. The chief
priests and scribes choose a question that relates to one of the burning
controversies in Israel in their day — What is the proper response to the Roman
occupation? Should we be paying
tribute to Caesar? Is that in some
way a failure to give all honor and glory to God if we’re paying tribute to
Caesar who, after all, claims to be divine himself?
Should we rebel against Caesar?
Should we foment revolution as the way to be a true follower of God, a
true Jewish believer? Is it to rebel
against the authority of the occupying Romans, or should we accommodate
ourselves to them? And this was a
burning political question and theological question in Jesus and their day.
And they seek to use it to entrap Jesus.
Strategy reveals hearts
Well in this
entrapment, we learn many things, but I want to point to three of them for just
a few moments today. And the first
one is this — As we look at the attempt at entrapment, in verses 19 through 22,
we learn that strategy reveals hearts.
There’s the first thing I want you to see.
As the chief priests and scribes come to Jesus, the strategy that they
adopt is to lie. It is a strategy of
insincerity and deception and the strategy itself reveals their hearts.
They claim to love God, they claim to love the Word, they claim to be
concerned about the fact that Jesus is blaspheming God – that’s why they want to
catch Him, they say — and yet in the strategy that they adopt to get Him, they
show that their hearts are wrong and Luke wants you to see that.
Look at the passage before us.
We’re told, first off, in verse 19, that “they wanted to lay hands on
Him.” That was their goal, “but they
feared the people,” so they couldn’t take a strategy of just going up to Him and
grabbing Him and carrying Him off to the governor’s house.
They had to find some way to get Him to incriminate Himself.
And so, verse 20, “they watched Him and sent spies, and pretended to be
sincere, in order that they might catch Him and deliver Him into the
jurisdiction of the government.” And
so they ask Him a question that is designed to embarrass Him or endanger Him in
relation to the Roman government. In
other words, they acted in an insincere, duplicitous, deceptive way.
It’s a wonderful way for a believer to act, right?
The very strategy, the means that they adopted, reveal that their hearts
were wrong.
But my friends,
there’s a message for us in that.
Our strategy reveals our hearts.
It’s not what we say we believe, it’s whether we live what we say we believe.
Do we live out what we say we believe to be the Word of God?
The language of Christianity is very easy for someone to claim, but it is
the fruit of the life that shows the state of the heart.
And in the very strategy that these chief priests and scribes take, they
show the state of their own heart.
And it’s interesting, the passage emphasizes that Jesus perceives that.
He perceives exactly what they’re doing by the strategy that they take.
Their attempt at entrapment reveals their hearts but our strategies in
our relationships reveal ours. If we
believe God, if we believe His Word, if we’re concerned about the wellbeing of
His people, how does that lead us to behave to one another in the context of
families or work or in the church?
Do we live up, in our behavior, to the things that we claim to believe with our
lips?
I was having a
wonderful conversation with a dear friend who’s a member of this church just
this week, and in the course of that conversation, he said this to me.
He said, “I know so much more than I do.”
And he was sharing that with me as a real frustration, that he had been
blessed to grow up in churches where the Bible was preached and he knew the
truth and he had heard it taught all his life and he was frustrated with the
fact that so often he didn’t live up in his behavior to what he knew and had
been taught in pulpit and in classroom and in home.
Do we do what we say we believe or do we just make lip-service claims to
being followers of Christ? Well, the
strategy, the behavior of these chief priests and scribes, reveals the state of
their hearts. What does our behavior
reveal about the state of our hearts?
Do we live out what we claim to believe?
That’s the first thing that I want you to see in this passage.
An ignored perception
The second thing is
this — and you can almost pass over it, but it’s emphasized, I think, in the
very first verse and the last verse of the passage before us, but especially
look at verse 19. There is not only
an attempt here at entrapping Jesus, there is an ignored perception.
It’s interesting that we are told that the chief priests and scribes
fully understood that Jesus was directing the parable that He just told to them.
Do you remember I told you last week that verse 19 said something about
that and we’d get to that this week?
Well, here we are. In verse 19 we
read these words — “They perceived that He had told this parable against them.”
In other words, they knew that Jesus was speaking directly to them.
They knew that He said what He said and meant it for them, and yet they
did not listen. They did not
believe. They did not pay heed to
His word. They did not pay attention
in their hearts to the word that He had for them.
Can you imagine being
someone on the last day standing before God who Jesus said something to,
specifically and directly, and you ignored it?
Well, God has given us His Word and every time we hear His Word read and
rightly proclaimed, we are hearing Him speak a word directly and specifically
for us. Now these Jewish leaders
knew that Jesus was speaking directly to them but they ignored His message and
many of us do the very same thing.
Do you remember what Jeremy just read in Hebrews 3 this morning?
It’s repeated not only in Hebrews 3 but again in Hebrews 4.
Over and over, the author of Hebrews keeps driving this one message home
that he draws out of Psalm 95. And
what is it? “Today, if you heed His
voice, do not harden your hearts.”
If God is speaking to you in His Word, and He is, don’t harden your hearts to
it. And that is exactly what these
religious leaders did.
And you see them do
it again at the end of the passage.
Look down at verse 26. After Jesus
responses with this amazing response, we’re told, “They were not able in the
presence of the people to catch Him in what He said, but marveling at His answer
they became silent.” They were
dumb-struck by His answer but they still didn’t believe Him.
They were stunned into silence.
His answer was so brilliant, so pastoral, so godly, so profound, but they
didn’t believe Him. Do you sit here
or somewhere else under the Word of God, day by day, week by week, Sunday by
Sunday, and hear the Word of God in your ears, but you don’t listen to it, you
don’t believe it, you don’t embrace it?
If we do that friends, we are in the same seat with these chief priests
and scribes. They ignored a word
from God, from the lips of Jesus, meant for them.
Oh my friends, let’s not do that with the Word of God.
When the Word of God calls you to acknowledge that you’re a sinner in
need of His grace, listen! When the
Word of God calls you to trust in the Lord Jesus Christ alone for salvation as
He’s offered in the Gospel, listen!
When the Word of God calls you to die to self and live for righteousness, to
take up your cross and follow Him, to grow in your sanctification depending on
the work of the Lord in you, listen to the Word.
Don’t sit in the seat of the chief priests and the scribes who heard
Jesus speak a word directly meant for them and then proceeded to ignore it.
I love what J.C. Ryle
says about this. He says, “The chief
priests and elders perceived that this parable was spoken against them, but they
were too proud to repent and too hardened to turn from their sins.
Let us beware of doing likewise.”
That is a word in season for all of us.
Jesus’ response
Wisdom for living under secular civil authority
There’s one last, one
marvelous thing that I want you to see in this passage today and it’s the wise
pronouncement of the Lord Jesus Christ.
You understand what’s going on here.
The chief priests and the scribes know that there is a tremendous divide
in Israel as to how to respond to Roman occupation.
Some people in Israel want revolution.
There are some people who think that they way to honor God, the way to
honor God’s Word, the way to get back to the way things used to be in the Golden
Age of Israel, is to foment rebellion against Caesar, kick the Romans out of
Palestine, and establish God as King again.
And in fact, when Jesus was just a little boy, somewhere maybe between 6
and 10 years old, there was a huge tax revolt- sound familiar? — there was a
huge tax revolt in Palestine against the Romans.
And the Romans brutally suppressed that revolt, but there were still
people around in Jesus’ day who thought the way to really honor God was to
reject the rule of Caesar, attempt to kick the Romans out, and reestablish the
rule of the Davidic line. In fact,
Jesus had at least one man amongst His inner circle of disciples that was from
that particular party. Do you
remember the one who was called Simon the Zealot?
Well the Zealots were some of these people who wanted to kick the bums
out, get the Romans out of Palestine, and reestablish the rule of God.
Now the chief priests
and scribes knew that if Jesus said in answer to their question, “No, it’s wrong
to pay tribute to Caesar, that they could immediately clasp Him in irons and
take Him to the Roman ruler and accuse Him of treason, of fomenting rebellion.
And they half suspected Him of this anyway.
He clearly was opposed to their running of the temple.
He had just cleansed the temple a few hours beforehand, right?
See, He was no friend to their rule of the temple, and of course they
were a part of the Accomodationists Party in Israel in their day.
They had cozied up to the Romans, they held many of their positions and
privileges because they had cozied up to the Romans.
And so they thought, “If we can get Him to deny that it’s right to give
tribute to Rome, we can get Him thrown in prison.”
Or, they thought, “If He won’t say outright, ‘No, you shouldn’t give
tribute to Caesar,’ if He won’t say that; if He says, ‘Yes, you should give
tribute to Caesar,’ then He’ll lose popular support,” because they suspected
that among His followers were those people that tended towards the idea of
revolution. And so they were putting Him in what they thought was the perfect
catch-22. They were going to ask Him
a question that He could not give a right answer to.
This was like the proverbial lawyer putting you on the stand and saying,
“Have you stopped beating your wife?”
And if you say, “Yes,” or if you say, “No,” you’re in trouble either way.
And so they thought they had Him.
So here’s Jesus.
He’s got to answer in such a way that He doesn’t fall into the trap. But
Jesus is never seeking simply to use this speech to avoid trap.
He uses His words to edify His people and glorify God.
So Jesus is going to answer in such a way that He not only sidesteps the
trap, but in such a way that glorifies God and edifies His people.
And so He says to the chief priests and the scribes, “Well, just show Me
a denarius.” Now the silver and gold
coins, the denarius, were not made in Palestine, but they were brought into
Palestine and they were circulated.
And many of them had a picture of the emperor and an inscription.
Now you remember, the Romans thought the emperor was divine and the
inscription indicated that. And this
was very, very offensive to Jews who did not believe in making images and of
course who only believed that God was God.
And so Jesus says, “Well, show Me one of those coins.
Who’s image and who’s inscription is on it?”
And they respond, “Caesar’s.”
And Jesus looks at them and He says, “Well then, give to Caesar what belongs to
Caesar and give to God what belongs to God.”
Now this was the great political struggle of Jesus’ day and what has
Jesus done? He has just risen above
it all and He has pointed to a far more profound truth than was contemplated in
this petty, entrapping, captious question that the scribes and the chief priests
were asking Him.
You see what Jesus is
doing. He’s giving instruction to
His people on how to live in a secular society even under duress and opposition
and persecution from the ruling authorities in that word.
The words that Jesus spoke there are simply worked out by the apostle
Paul in Romans 13, and they provided the guidance that the early Christians
would need for four hundred years under persecution, and to this day have helped
believers know, “How can we be in the world and not of it?
How can we show appropriate respect to secular civil political authority,
while showing ultimate allegiance to God?”
Because in Jesus’ words, He simply says this — “Did Caesar build your
roads? Does he provide your system
of administration and justice? Well
then give him the tribute that he deserves, but render to God what belongs to
Him.”
Now think of it for a
minute. The coin has Caesar’s image
on it. Where is God’s image?
We are God’s image. Every
human being is created in the image of God, so if you’re going to render back to
God what He deserves, what are you going to render?
Yourself. You see what Jesus
is saying? “Oh, it’s appropriate to
show respect to secular civil authority and to give it it’s due, but your
ultimate allegiance is to the One in whose image you are created.
Give to Him what belongs to Him, which is the whole of who you are,
because He gave you all you are and all you have.
You are made in His image.”
You see, Jesus is showing us how we’re not to love the world ultimately, we’re
to love God ultimately. We’re not to use God and love the world, we’re to love
God and use the world for His glory and other’s and our good.
He’s, in this answer, explaining the ultimate allegiance of Christians as
they live in the world. It’s a
Biblical answer, a profound answer, and it’s given guidance to countless
millions of Christians over the last two millennium.
Doesn’t it just take
your breath away how Jesus can do that?
Doesn’t it just make you love Him more?
How, in a situation where people are trying to use and abuse and trap
Him, He comes out not only with a response which is equal to and greater than
their own question, but He comes out with a word of edification to help you put
your priorities where they ought to be — with God, who made us.
Our ultimate allegiance, Jesus is teaching, belongs to God.
That doesn’t preclude us showing appropriate respect for government
authority, but ultimately our allegiance belongs to God.
That is a reality which we need to drink in, in our own time, because we
are entering in to a stage of our experience in this culture where we may expect
more and more overt opposition to God and to His Word in our culture.
And in that context we must learn to “render to Caesar that which is
Caesar’s but to God that which belongs to God.”
May the Lord bless
His Word. Let’s pray.
Our
heavenly Father, we thank You for the Lord Jesus Christ and we pray that we
would take heed to His Word and find salvation in Him by grace alone as He has
offered it to us in His Gospel.
We also pray that You would grant us the grace to walk in the way that
He has taught us. And we thank You for the teaching that He has given to us
here. Help us,
O Lord, to examine our hearts.
Help us, O Lord, to heed Your Word.
Help us, O Lord, to love You most of all and to trust in Jesus with
all our hearts, leaning not on our own understanding.
We ask these things in Jesus’ name.
Amen.
If you’ll take you
hymnals with me and turn to number 648, we will sing our ultimate allegiance to
the Lord Jesus.
And now, because of
the love of God in giving His own Son who submitted Himself to the wicked Roman
government even unto excruciating death that He might redeem us from our sins,
God gives us this blessing by His blood.
Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus
Christ. Amen.