Amen, and please be seated. Now, if you have a Bible, let me invite you to turn with me to Matthew chapter 22 as we continue our study in God's holy word. Once again, we find another confrontation between Jesus and those who opposed Him. He's already revealed Himself to the King of Israel, riding into Jerusalem on the full of the donkey, receiving Hosanna to the Son of David.
And that just irritated the snot out of the religious leaders of His day. He's revealed Himself to be the true priest who cleansed the temple, and they could barely stand there. He's revealed Himself to be the true prophet who speaks the true word of God. And so they finally confront Him about all this.
They say, where do you get your authority? Who authorized you to do this stuff? And in response, we've seen over the last few weeks Jesus spoke three parables about them. You remember, oh, snippets of them anyway.
You remember the vineyard owner who, well, he sent his son to the tenants and the wicked tenants killed him. And you remember the last time we were together, perhaps, that the King was hosting a party for the marriage of his son, a feast to celebrate a banquet for his son who married himself a bride, God, Son, Jesus, marrying the church. And we're invited to the party, but Jesus notes, many said, no. They didn't want to come.
They offended the King. And so pointed was this, that the leadership was rattled and it only stoked their hatred of Him more. And we come now then to the first of actually four more interactions that run through the rest of the chapter. In the first three, they interrogate Jesus.
And the last one, Jesus puts a question to them about who is the Christ. This morning we're at verse 15. And here, we hear them try to trip Him up and we hear one of His very famous sayings. Let me invite you to hear then the word of God from Matthew 22 beginning at verse 15.
Then the Pharisees went and plotted how to entangle Him in His words. And they sent their disciples to Him, along with the Herodians saying, Teacher, we know that you are true and teach the way of God truthfully. And you do not care about anyone's opinion for you or not swayed by appearances. Tell us then, what you think.
Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not? But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, why put me to the test you hypocrites? Show me the coin for the tax. And they brought him into an area.
And Jesus said to them, whose likeness and inscription is this? They said, Caesars. Then He said to them, therefore, render to Caesar the things that are Caesars. And to God, the things that are gods.
But when they heard it, they marveled. And they left Him and went away. Amen, this is God's word. Make He cut our hearts with it.
Let's look at Him in prayer. Father, be our teacher and lift Jesus before us in all His glory and wisdom and grace and love. And so give us ears to hear and hearts to believe in His name I pray. Amen.
You perhaps have heard the sentiment or something like it. Don't talk about politics or religion or money in public. Jesus talks about all three in just one short passage right here. And in it we find His opponents have become, well, false friends who use false flattery and pose a false dilemma to sit to trip Him up.
And then when they fail, they give a false response. There's a bunch of falsehood going on here and it's not with Jesus. It's with the religious leaders. And let me think about this interaction this morning.
First, notice these false friends, verses 15 and 16. Then the Pharisees went and plotted how to entangle Him in His words and they sent their disciples to Him along with the Herodians. They want to trip Him up. They want to embarrass Him in public.
They want His hearers to be embarrassed by Him and turn away from Him. Or they want Him to say something that's going to so offend the government. The government will arrest Him. Luke says they sent spies who pretended to be sincere that they might catch Him in something so as to deliver Him up to the authority and jurisdiction of the governor.
And notice who they sent. Oh, they didn't go themselves. Now this time they sent their disciples. They sent others in their place.
Now why might that be? Well, maybe they thought Jesus would be more sympathetic to students coming with questions rather than seasoned rabbis. And so maybe they thought, well, Jesus might be more careless with His words and they could trap Him. Or maybe they thought Jesus would see these students as people who just love good theological debates like many a student does.
And maybe He would really welcome their inquiries and be a little more free in His conversation. And so they could trap Him. Or maybe they thought Jesus would think these younger students would be more likely to ask sincere questions. And so to trap Him.
And they would more easily catch Him off His guard. Or maybe they just had felt the sting of the parables He told them. And they didn't want themselves to get exposed by Him again. In any case, they sent their disciples, trainees.
And along with them, these Herodians, who are they? Well, like the Pharisees, the Herodians wanted political independence for the Jewish people. But unlike the Pharisees, who sought to restore the kingdom of David, looking for a Messiah to come, the Herodians wished to restore a member of the Herodian dynasty to the throne in Judea. And they agreed to a common cause.
And isn't it extraordinary how, as another poet, those who despise God can find the strangest of allies in the oddest of places. It's part of this darkness of the human heart, this wickedness in the human heart that we were animated with animosity against God. We'll even put aside our normal animosities against our natural enemies to join in common cause against God. Here these Herodians, as we said, they were followers of Herod, of Galilee.
He was a ruler under the supervision and control of the Roman Empire. And he ruled in Palestine, he ruled in Galilee. He was part of a line of kings who were Edomites, the descendants of Esau. You remember, he sold his birthright for a bowl of stew.
And down through that line of the Edomites came these Herod's. And this one had grown up among the Jews and adopted some of the lifestyle of the Jews. And he hoped to be their king. And the people who supported Herod and wanted him to be the king of the Jews were nicknamed Herodians.
Now they didn't ordinarily get along with the Pharisees because the Pharisees were the leaders of the common people. And they were oppressed by the Romans. And they hated Roman rule. And they didn't want Roman installing Herod as their king.
They didn't want a descendant of Esau to rule over them. They wanted a descendant of King David. They wanted the son of David, the Messiah to rule over them. Even though they rejected that son of David when he was standing right there in front of him.
And so the Pharisees were deeply troubled, not only by Roman rule, but by the Roman pole tax. That is, well you remember your Christmas readings in Luke 2. A decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. And so Mary and Joseph had to travel to their hometown to be registered.
Registered for a census. Why? So that they can impose a tax on every head, a yearly tax, to be paid with a denarius. So besides hating their oppressors and hating, they hated that they had to pay their oppressors for the privilege of being oppressed by them.
But they also opposed this pole tax for religious reasons because the Roman emperor was making blasphemous religious claims even on the coin that they were required to use to pay the pole tax. They couldn't just use any old coin. No, they had to use this denarius that was minted by Caesar. And so the Pharisees viewed the Herodians as compromises and brownnowsers and suck-ups to Herod and his puppet masters in Rome.
And the Herodians were against the hard-line conservative Pharisees who thought they just thought, you guys just won't come to terms with reality that Rome is too big to oppose. And Herod is the best choice we have to be our leader if we're all well allowed. And so these two groups, they opposed one another, but then they acted together under the principle, oh the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Now how did these false friends go about their effort to trap Jesus?
Well first by false flattery and then posing a false dilemma, but notice this false flattery in the middle verse 16. Teacher, they say to them, we know that you are true and teach the way of God truthfully. You do not care about anyone's opinion, but you're not swayed by appearances. I don't know if you can smell the stink of their smarmy attempts to butter him up.
I mean, well you know how flattery goes. And actually flattery often employs lies, deceit. Businessmen flatter their clients, not with the truth, but with compliments just to get them hooked. But here these guys are actually using the truth as a means of flattery.
They speak of the integrity of his character. We know that you are true, they say. They speak of the reliability of his teaching. You teach the way of God truthfully, they say.
And they speak of his impartiality and his relationships. You don't bend your teaching to suit your audience. You aren't swayed by appearances. You don't tell the rich and powerful one thing and the poor and marginalized another thing.
You're not like that. We know that about you, Jesus. All true things about this Messiah are trouble is these men didn't actually believe a word of it. They were utterly insincere.
They were in fact hypocrites. Jesus calls them that, not because he's being mean to them, but Jesus were 18 aware of their malice. Said, why do you put me to the test, you hypocrites? He's calling a spade of spade their hypocrites because they were pretending to be impressed by him and truly interested in his answer.
When really in malice of heart, they were hunting his head. And so their conduct, as Eric Alexander said, was not only dishonorable, but also blasphemous. They actually expected Jesus in the foolishness of their own heart. They expected Jesus to relish inwardly this false flattery.
They thought he'd be moved by it. How little they knew him. So then, after the false flattery, they posed to him a false dilemma. They asked him a question, verse 17.
What do you think? Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not? Should we pay the tax or shouldn't we? And the trap is well said, because if he says yes, pay the tax, then the Pharisees would have said, here's a guy who claims to be the Messiah of the Jewish people, but he actually is an enemy of the people.
I mean, who would support paying Roman tax? And if he said no, don't pay the tax, then they're the Herodians. Right there, ready to pounce. He's treasonous, they would have said, an enemy of the state, a threat to the rule of Caesar and insurrectionists.
So they sought to trap him. And by the way, they asked the question, is it lawful or not? They thought they had forced Jesus into answering with a simple yes or no. But Jesus sees right through them.
He knows their hypocrites and he knows they don't want an honest answer. But they wanted to say something, anything, that would discredit him with the common people or get him in trouble with the Roman overlord. So what does he do? Once again, in the brilliant wisdom of God in the flesh, he says to them, verse 19, show me the coin for the tax.
And they brought him the Daenerius. Now right there, he's already begun to expose them, because however much they might have complained about paying the tax, or complained about the coin itself being blasphemous, and I'll tell you about that in a moment. They actually had the coin in their possession to hold out to him, to see it. And it's tough to take the moral high ground when you yourself possess the offending object.
And Jesus said to them, now, let's look at this together. You tell me whose inscription, whose likeness is this? And they said, Caesar's. He's showing them, of course, both sides of the coin.
We know what this looks like. One side had the likeness of Tiberius Caesar Augustus, who had had the coins made. They were probably minted in Lyon, France, where he minted the poll tax coin, and they were used all over the empire. And there was an image on it, the image of the emperor, and on it the emperor claimed to be divine.
The inscription, Tiberius Caesar Augustus literally translated means son of the divine Augustus. In other words, it was a claim of the emperor to be the son of God. It was a claim to be a god. And then on the other side of the coin, it said Pontifex, Maximus, if that's how you pronounce it.
But it literally translates high priests, Pontife, Maximus, high priests. So the coin that was used to pay the poll tax itself claimed, and claimed by the emperor, that he not only had supreme political authority, but he had supreme religious authority. I'm god, and you come to God through me. Now, I mean, just, can I stir your angst here?
I mean, what if Joe Biden or Donald Trump, you take your pick? Have ever put their own face on one of our coins and had inscribed on it on one side that they were a god? And I know some of you think they have plans. And then on the other side that they were the high priest, you know Christians all over the United States would have been at minimum profoundly irritated with such arrogance and blasphemy, or more tempted to take up arms, and maybe to do so.
I mean, so you can maybe feel the distress of the Jews. This graded against them, this whole tax, and that it was required to be paid with that coin. So Jesus here asks them, whose likeness is it, whose inscription is it, and they have only one answer. It's Caesar's.
And what he's just done is to have them admit that the coin itself belongs to Caesar. He minted it, he distributed it, and therefore it is not fundamentally improper for him to require it back. He says, give to Caesar. What is Caesar's?
Now, he actually changes the verb. They had asked him, is it right to give to Caesar the tax? But Jesus doesn't use the word give. He doesn't think of it as a gift.
It's not a return on some generosity of Caesar. But he changes the verb to give back or return back. Because what he's saying is when you pay the pull tax, you aren't giving a gift to Caesar. Caesar has already done what?
Caesar has already built your roots. I mean, the Roman Empire was famous for the safety of their highways and the travel you could do all over the world because of them. He's already established a system of justice. He's already provided military protection for them.
He's already given them all kinds of civil benefits. And therefore, Jesus is saying to them, if you have a problem with Caesar's provisions, well, you shouldn't be protesting the pull tax. You should have already protested in the first place when he did all these other things. You use the roads, you use the courts, you enjoy the military's protection, and you pretend now to have religious scruples about paying him for what he did for you.
Pay back to Caesar. What you owe him, it belongs to him. And this actually, in just such a short phrase, becomes the new testament ethic of the Apostle Paul and the Apostle Peter. Paul in Romans 13 says, let every person be subject to the governing authorities, or there is no authority except God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.
So chapter 13, verse 6, because of this, you also pay taxes. Pay to all what is owed to them. Taxes to whom taxes are owed. Revenue to whom revenue is owed.
And Peter says something similar. First Peter to be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether it be the emperor, as supreme, or to governors, as sent by him, for this is the will of God. Says Peter, which is to say, we Christians should pay our taxes. Taxes are therefore not inherently theft, for if they were inherently theft, then God would be asking us to participate in sin.
But it's not inherently sinful for human government to require taxes so that their citizens will pay for government services. And every believer should be a good citizen obeying the law of the land where they live. Jesus doesn't qualify this by saying, you know, if you live in a good, honest democracy with respectable leaders who spend your money well, then go ahead and pay your taxes. He doesn't qualify it by saying, you know, provided you think they've made a good law about taxation, and it seems right to you, then you go ahead and do it.
This was a government, after all, the Romans that was pagan, blasphemous, and idolatrous. And it would be the government that would shortly crucify the Messiah. Now there is, of course, an exception to the rule about being a good citizen and doing what the law commands, and the exception is not if you disagree with the law, or how the money is spent. It is the exception is when Caesar demands the things that are gods.
Classic examples, Daniel, you remember, was commanded to worship an idol, and he was also forbidden to pray. And Daniel refused to worship the idol, and Daniel prayed to the God of Heaven, because the government doesn't have the right to forbid what God commands or command what God forbids. Another example is in Acts 5 when Peter, the apostle, had been preaching, and the governing authorities commanded him not to preach the gospel, and Peter said, we must obey God and not man. So Jesus here says, render to Caesar the things that are Caesars, but don't overlook what else he says.
Render to Caesar the things that are Caesars and to God the things that are gods. If the first half here was a rebuke to the Pharisees who wanted the benefits of human government without the responsibilities of citizenship, then the second half was a rebuke to the Herodians, who were only too happy to have a wicked man like Herod rule over them. Even if it meant abandoning their God-given hope of the son of David to come to rule over them. And Jesus says to them, don't worship Caesar, that worship belongs to God alone.
Don't trust in Caesar to be your spiritual leader in high priest. You don't have to believe what's written on the coin, to send it back to the guy who made it, but trust in the Messiah to be your spiritual leader and your great high priest. So this passage is a reminder to us of certainly the importance of dedicating all of our money, ultimately to God. He gave it to us.
He's in charge of it. We're a good stewards of it. We're accountable to him for how we use it. He's been so very generous to us to give us our daily bread.
And so generous to us to let us keep most of what we have in fact to provide for ourselves and our family, but we ought also to dedicate a significant portion to the work of his kingdom and the blessing of others. Some of what we have should go to the government. Some should go directly to God. All of it should be used for the glory of God.
But notice their response verse 22 when they heard it, they marveled, and they left him and went away. First they marveled, then, well, notice they marveled. They're amazed by him, right? They thought they had him trapped and he slipped out of the trap.
Their head hunting has failed. And they don't even know quite what happened, but they just know that he's escaped. Matthew Henry said, so you expect to read, they were amazed and submitted to him. But what you read is they were amazed and they left him and went away from him.
And in fact, some at least go on to live Adam. Luke tells us in his Gospel, chapter 23, at the trial of Jesus before Pilate, they accused Jesus and say, we found this man misleading our nation and forbidding us to give tribute to Caesar. Well, Jesus hadn't forbidden that. They've twisted his words.
They respond to him as false. False friends using false flattery and a false dilemma to try to destroy him. And they get exposed and their response to him is false. What about us?
Haven't we all been at one time or another on the wrong side of Jesus standing where the Pharisees and the Herodians stand? Approving when Jesus is disparaged or keeping silent as others say wicked things about him, all for the sake of getting along with others because we are man pleasers and not God-fears? Haven't we all at times told Jesus we believe the truth about you, Jesus, even singing it loudly in public worship? When, in fact, at times certainly we're half-hearted or mouthing truths that we don't really believe, and haven't we found ourselves testing Jesus to prove himself to us only to reject the evidence of his integrity and his reliability and his wisdom and his deity when it's not convenient for our narrative?
And aren't we among those who haven't marveled at him with a true and steadfast devotion? What could be done for us when we're as exposed as the Pharisees and the Herodians? Well, to close, would you notice three images in this story? What could be done for us?
Well, okay, so there's the image of Caesar on the coin. That's the first. The second image of the story. Don't forget what the Bible tells you.
It's the people there made in the image of God, the God who made us for himself. Even as sin has defaced the image of God in us, we still bear it and it's recognizable even though it's defiled. We think our problems are one thing or another. We think our problems are the government or taxes or other people.
But our real problem is our obligation to the God who made us in his own image and for himself and everything is his, and if we don't pay our taxes, sure, we're robbing the state. But if we don't give our life to God, we're robbing God. Our lives are not our own. But notice there was a third image that day.
There's an image of the coin. There's the image of God in them, but right in front of them was the beauty and the glory and the wisdom and love of God in the face of Jesus Christ, the image of the invisible God, the exact representation of his being and the radiance of the glory of God. And he is right in front of them telling them the truth because he loves and cares for their souls. And if their eyes had been opened, they would have bowed down before him and asked him to forgive them and trusted him to be their true Messiah King.
Oh, what about you? Well, you turn away from yourself and from finding hope for your soul in yourself or anyone else. Some religious leader, some political leader. Turn away from finding any ultimate hope for yourself in anyone other than the Messiah.
When you put your hope in him, then you'll find this, that with an unveiled face beholding the glory of the Lord, you are in fact being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. As you behold Jesus as he is in faith and trust. God by his spirit is transforming you after his likeness. And that is a great hope.
Put your hope in him. Let's pray. Father, we bless and thank you for the gift of your son, his patience with his opponents, his wisdom, its skill with words and knowledge and truth. Knowing always just the right thing to say and the right thing to do.
And so, for a good purpose to expose the wicked heart of man, and so be our Savior, Lord Jesus. In your name we pray, amen. Let's stand together and sing.