Hello again. My name is Stan Peppenhorst, one of the elders, and I have the honor and privilege of continuing to read in God's holy word today. We are in the New Testament still. We're in the book of Mark, Chapter 12, reading from the NIV, the New International Version. "Later, they sent some of the Pharisees and Herodians to Jesus to catch him in his words. They came to him and said, "Teacher, we know that you are a man of integrity.
You aren't swayed by others because you pay no attention to who they are, but you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. Is it right to pay the imperial tax to Caesar or not? Should we pay or shouldn't we?" But Jesus knew their hypocrisy. "Why are you trying to trap me? Bring me a Denarius and let me look at it." They brought the coin and he asked them, "Whose image is this, and whose inscription?" "Caesar's," they replied.
Then Jesus said to them, "Give back to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's." And they were amazed at him. And God bless the reading of his word.
Good morning. Jesus addresses a question as relevant today as it was then. It's in some form a political question, but it's a question we all wrestle with. One way of phrasing the question , I'd just put like this: what do Christians owe to Caesar? If you are a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ, if he is your savior and your Lord, what do you owe to Caesar? Now, Caesar, of course in that time, was the Roman emperor, Tiberius Caesar Augustus.
But when Jesus speaks something like this, he's speaking not just to the people that he's in front of; he's speaking to people of all times in all places. So who is Caesar for you and who is Caesar for me? Caesar is whatever government official, whatever government unit that we're under. Caesar is our President. Cesar is our Congress. Cesar is our state legislature. Our governor, Caesar is our city council .
So when you put it in that context, and you think about, what do you as a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ, what do you owe ? What are you obligated towards, in other words, in relationship to whatever governmental figures and authorities are over you? That's a question that Jesus speaks to us today, and it raises to me a lot of related questions. For instance, what if I don't like Caesar ? What if Caesar is not the man or the woman that I voted for?
What if the Caesar that I am speaking of, or thinking of, is from a different political party like me? What do I owe that kind of Caesar in those circumstances? Which certainly speaks to a lot of us. Or what do we owe to Caesar when we see that when we pay taxes to Caesar, Caesar, that government official or officials, that governmental unit, are using our tax dollars to fund things that we don't agree with?
What if you believe that government should not be involved in going to war against other people and other nations? Is it what do we owe to Cesar, paying taxes, when we know that at least some of those tax dollars are being used to fund that war? What if Caesar uses our funds for something that violates our conscience, like supporting Planned Parenthood with their activities supporting abortion? What do we owe to Caesar , to our governmental units, when they use our tax dollars in those ways?
You can see how what Jesus speaks to, right at the time there, is very, very relevant today in how he answers that. What do we as followers of Jesus Christ owe to Caesar, to whatever governmental unit is over us? Now in the immediate circumstances that Jesus is speaking here, he is speaking about paying taxes, and specifically he's speaking about paying poll taxes. The word there for "taxes" in the Greek there, it's the word that we get our English word "census" from.
This is the tax that, if you think back to the Christmas story in Luke Chapter Two, why was it that Joseph and Mary had to travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem on the night that she ended up giving birth to the Lord Jesus Christ? Because the Roman Empire took a census, and they required you to go to your hometown to register for that census and pay this poll tax. That's the same tax that's being referenced here.
The Roman Empire imposed this tax on anybody, any nation that they had control over, and the Roman Empire had taken control over Israel. And so in 6 A.D., they imposed this poll tax. And if you were a man between the ages of 14 and 65, if you are a woman between the ages of 12 and 65, don't ask me to explain that difference. I don't know. But if you were within those ages, you had on a regular basis, to pay this poll tax.
This poll tax was simply for the privilege of living under a Roman-controlled government. Whether you wanted that or not, you had to pay the tax. That poll tax went directly to Caesar , the Emperor, so it was a greatly resented tax. You think you don't like paying taxes; imagine if a tax was imposed by a government that came in and forcibly took control over the United States, and we had to pay taxes to that government that we didn't want over us.
That's the kind of sentiment that was stirred up by people, or in people, when they think about paying this poll tax. It was a Denarius. That is a coin. You see a picture of that coin up on the screen. It represented, probably, an average daily wage in Palestine at that time. The coin had a picture of the Roman Emperor on it, and this was so hated by the Jews that there were several attempts to overthrow this.
In Acts 5:37, we read about a man named Judas, the Galilean who appeared in the days of the census, we read in Acts, and led a band of people in revolt. What was he revolting against? He was revolting against the imposition of this poll tax. The same poll tax stirred up a group called the Zealots. Zealots were Jewish people who hated the Roman Empire so much in their control over Israel that they made all kinds of attempts to overthrow the Roman government.
And this poll tax continually reminded them that they were under Roman subjugation. And so in 66 A.D., the Zealots led a revolt known as the Zealot Revolt against Rome, trying to overthrow Rome. That's the history that Masada gets wrapped up into. That is the revolution or the revolt that ultimately led to the Roman Empire coming in in 70 A.D., surrounding Jerusalem, knocking down its walls, destroying its temple. It had disastrous consequences. That all began partially because of this poll tax.
So this was the perfect way, they thought, to test Jesus, to try and trap Jesus. And there were two groups that came together to try and trap Jesus with this question about this government-imposed, this Roman-imposed, poll tax. The Pharisees and the Herodians-- and you could not get two parties more on opposite ends of the spectrum-- they normally hated each other. I guess it's kind of one of those situations, like you've heard that phrase, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."
That's the situation here. They thought, "Maybe we can come together and we can trap Jesus." The Pharisees, first of all. The Pharisees, you know as Jewish religious leaders. The Pharisees, you may or may not know, they were also freedom-loving nationalists.
They hated the fact that the nation of God, the nation of Israel, was under the control of the Roman Empire, and they hoped and prayed that God would send a Messiah, not in their minds, the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ, but a political figure, a military figure, who would overthrow the Roman control over Israel.
They hated the fact that they were continually reminded when they had to pay this poll tax, that that coin, the Denarius, not only had a picture of the Roman Emperor on it, but it had the words inscribed around the circumference of that coin, that Caesar , that the Roman Emperor, was divine, that he was the son of God. That was highly offensive to any religious Jew, as you might imagine. So they doubly hated the poll tax and what it reminded them of.
They hoped that by asking Jesus this question, that they could trap him. They knew that the people did not like paying this poll tax. So they reasoned in their mind that if Jesus answered, "Yes, it's lawful. You should pay this tax," that would alienate the people, that the people who despise the poll tax, that would bring an end to Jesus' popularity with these people and maybe even end his ministry. Well, what is the thinking of the Pharisees that may even be relevant today?
There's an error, the Pharisaic error, that I think comes forward throughout history. That's a way of thinking about the relationship between religion and government that existed not only at this time, but existed all throughout history.
And if I had to boil down how the Pharisees thought about the relationship of government and the relationship of, you know , what we think of as the Church, Christianity or religion, the Pharisees would basically say this: religion should take over the role of the state. In other words, the Pharisees believed this is why they didn't want Roman control. This is why they wanted the old nation of Israel.
They believed that religion should control the state, should control the government, that religious figures should dictate what governmental decisions need to be made, that religious leaders should have the ultimate influence, that governments should be used as a tool to control, to shape, what people think about religious things, to shape what people believe religiously. We see that today in different parts of the world.
We see extreme Islamic movements that, when they gain control of a country, of a nation, what do they seek to do? They abolish the civil government that's in place there, and they seek to put everything under the control of their religious leaders and enforce their religion through the arms of government, through the laws of the government.
We see this throughout history, even in the Church, the Roman Catholic Church at various times in history, the papacy, the power of the Pope, has risen at times to a point where the Pope actually was able to influence what kings and other rulers of other nations, what they decided on certain decisions. So we've seen that kind of influence in different parts of church history.
We see it even today: there are believers today, there are people who follow Jesus Christ, the title or the name that they go under is theonomous. And they believe that the Old Testament laws should be brought back in in such effect that all of the Old Testament laws, at least the moral laws, should be mandatory, and everybody should be made to obey them, and that is the goal that they work for.
We see that whenever, throughout history, that the Church has been able to gain influence over the state, ultimately it is the church, it is Christianity, that has been compromised. Ultimately, it is the Gospel that has been watered down. Whenever the state, whenever the government, is controlled by the Church, the Gospel loses out. And so we want to avoid the Pharisaic error. With the Pharisaic error even comes into that belief that America is a Christian nation.
While there is truth in the roots of that, that God has blessed the United States in ways that he's blessed no other nation in its founding, that men and women who were part of the founding of the United States loved the Lord Jesus Christ, that many of the principles that our country was founded upon, that our laws were built upon come from the Bible. We can never say, nor should we ever say, that America is a Christian nation.
That is to commit the same error of the Pharisees, that in some way the Church should gain control over government. And as we'll see, Jesus avoids that error. Jesus points out that error. On the opposite end of the spectrum is the Herodians, and the Herodians were not a religious sect like the Pharisees. They were not even really a political party. They were Jews, but they were Jews who backed Herod, who backed the Herodian Dynasty .
At that time, Herod Antipas was one of the rulers that was a puppet of Rome. And even though Herod was a puppet of Rome, he profited greatly from that. And so if you are a Jew who aligned yourself and collaborated with Herod , you could get personally rich as well. You'd profit financially from that. And so these were individuals, Jewish individuals, who said, you know, "I am Jewish, but really, what's in my wallet is more important than my religion."
And so basically, they were religious only in the very surface-y, secular sense. Really, their religion was how much they profited, was their prosperity and their influence. The Herodians, around the other end of trying to trap Jesus, that if the Pharisees thought that they could trap Jesus, if Jesus said that, "Yes, you should pay that tax," the Herodians were ready to trap him.
If Jesus answered that, "No, it's not lawful to pay the poll tax to Caesar," because the Herodians know if Jesus said, that he'd be siding himself with the Zealots. He'd be taking the position of people that Rome considered to be insurrectionists. And so the Herodians knew all they had to do was report that to the Roman authorities, and Jesus would be arrested and probably executed. And that would be an end to his ministry. Well, there's a Herodian error.
There's a way of thinking about the relationship of religion or Christianity and government that's on the opposite end of the spectrum of the Pharisees, and it's the error of the Herodians. And it's this: it's the state should actually have control over the church. If the Pharisees wanted to make the church or religion gain control over government, the Herodians wanted government, the state, Caesar, to have control over religion.
The Herodian error is to use the church, to use religion, to use Christianity, as a tool to accomplish the goals of government, as a tool to control what people think and how they behave and what they believe. And again, we see that throughout history as well. If you study World War II history and what was going on in Nazi Germany, the Nazi party, when it gained control, they didn't wipe out the church in Germany. They co-opted it.
They removed the leaders of the churches in Germany that wouldn't cooperate with them, and they began to shape the church. They began to demand absolute loyalty first to the Nazi party, over and above any loyalty to the Lord Jesus Christ or to God. And then they began to work through the churches, telling them what they could teach, what they had to preach. And they ultimately used the church, under the Nazi government, as a tool to spread the Nazi beliefs.
We see this today in totalitarian governments like North Korea, where you have leaders who want to raise themselves up to the status of being divine , who suppress any Christian Church because that would compete with the people worshiping them. You see it even in fiction.
If you read in a common book in high school, in 1984 by George Orwell, that's the whole picture of Big Brother, a governmental system that takes absolute control, that wants to control not only what you do, but what you say and even what you believe. That is the Herodian error: that the church should be used by the government to accomplish its goals.
And the Herodian error can be seen today, even in our country, in the growing tide of secularism and the attempts to push Christianity and any thought of Christian morals and Christians' beliefs influencing our behavior, to push that out of the public square. The Herodian error can be seen today in all of those who've turned completely away from Christianity, and they look for their salvation in their political party.
They look for salvation in a man or woman that they believe is their political messiah. That's the Herodian error. Well, how do we avoid both these errors of the Pharisees and the errors of the Herodians when we think about the relationship between government and our faith, the relationship between Caesar and God in following Jesus Christ. How do we avoid those errors and make sense of our relationship? I want to give you just four brief principles here.
They are shaped a lot by a man named David McKenna who has helped me understand this passage. He was, for many years, the president of Asbury Seminary, over in the neighboring state of Kentucky. And when we look at what Jesus says in verse 17, we see these four principles.
There's probably no more wise words that have ever been spoken about the separation of church and state, about the relationship of politics and religion, than what Jesus says in verse 17: "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar and to God the things that are God." Jesus first of all says-- here's the first principle in this. He says, "Caesar has a legitimate claim over you."
In other words, whatever government you are under, whether it's a government you like, whether it's a government that is run by people you voted for or not, even if it's a government that you are persecuted by, Jesus is saying that that Caesar, that government, has a legitimate claim over you. Even the Pharisees and the Herodians: the fact that they used a Roman coin, the Denarius, shows that they accepted the Roman economic system.
They accepted that the hated Roman government was the one that used those coins to really fuel the commerce system. You couldn't buy or sell without Roman coins. They accepted that Roman tax money was used to build roads and set up public safety and sanitation systems.
So government had a legitimate function represented even by the fact that they decided, they willingly used, the coinage of Rome And Jesus here-- it goes further than that-- Jesus acknowledges that there are legitimate functions of government, of secular government, whether you like that government or not. Government, he acknowledges, is there to provide for public safety. Government is there to keep the peace, to maintain order, to foster commerce. The apostles say this as well.
Peter says, "For the Lord's sake, submit to all human authority, whether to the Emperor as the supreme authority or to governors." Why? Because they are sent to punish those who do wrong. Peter is acknowledging that it is a legitimate function of government, in God's eyes, to maintain order, to maintain public safety. Paul says, "The one in authority--" Romans 13-- "the one in authority is actually God's servant for your good," that it is a role of government to ensure the public good.
He goes on: "They are God's servants, sent for the very purpose of punishing those who do wrong," of protecting you, of establishing order. So Jesus here, by saying that, "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar," he is affirming that there are functions, there are duties, that God has delegated to human government. And, really, in response to that, he's acknowledging there are legitimate demands that government can make upon you and me, whether we voted for that government or not.
One of those is the obvious one that we're talking about here, paying taxes. I don't like paying taxes any more than any of you. I look for every way to pay the least amount of tax that I absolutely have to, but at the end of the day, I write that check or I have that money withheld. Why? Because Jesus has said that that is a legitimate obligation that I have to the government that God has installed, or God has allowed to raise up, and that he has providentially placed me and you under.
Romans 13:7 says this very clearly: "Pay your taxes to those who collect them, and give respect and honor to those who are in authority." We owe Caesar. We owe him the taxes that Caesar says we have to pay, and I don't even get a voice. And whether the amount that they're asking for is the amount I want to pay or not, we owe Caesar . We owe the government respect. We owe Caesar honor. Paul even writes to Timothy in 1 Timothy 2: "Pray for your leaders."
We owe Caesar our prayers, whether Cesar , the men and women who make up the governmental units or not, acknowledge Caesar or not, we are to pray for them. All of that, Jesus is acknowledging that we owe Caesar . And you notice that neither Jesus nor the apostles make any exceptions for government that I think is bad, for governmental leaders that I didn't vote for, for governmental leaders who implement policies and impose taxes and spend tax dollars for things that I disapprove of.
Jesus allows no exception. He doesn't allow Christians to go off and form a commune out in the desert or live all on their own, separate outside of the reach of secular government. Well, that's government's claim. That is Caesar's claim, but Jesus doesn't stop there, does he? He doesn't just answer their question, that yes, you render to Caesar what is owed to Caesar; he goes on, and he expands on that and says, "and render to God the things that are God." And that's the second principle.
God has a legitimate claim on us. It is not just secular government that has a claim on us. In fact, if secular government's claim is represented by a very small circle, God's claim is the huge, all-encompassing circle that surrounds it. Government can make a claim for taxes, the payment of taxes, the payment of money. God's claim upon the follower of Jesus Christ is so much greater.
Stan said it earlier, and we'll see this a little later in Chapter 12, when Jesus speaks about God's claim upon us, that it is to love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. God's claim is so much greater than Caesar's claim upon us.
And that is why, at the end of the day, I, and we, have to hold any political party affiliation so loosely, because ultimately our loyalty is not to a political party that is doing what we hope they will do. Ultimately, our loyalty is to the Lord God. Ultimately, what we owe to God dwarfs and, really, in some cases, cancels out what we owe to Caesar . That leads to the third point. Don't confuse these two realms, Jesus has said. Notice he speaks about these separately.
Yes, we render to Caesar what is due to Caesar , but we render to God what is due to God. And whenever we try to blend those together, the error of the Pharisees and the error of the Herodians , the Church loses, Christianity loses. So he is saying here that the church should not try to run the state. We're not trying to set up a theocracy. One day, and when the Lord Jesus Christ returns, the Lord Jesus Christ will reign over everything.
But until the Lord Jesus returns, there's no place for a theocracy. The church should not try to rule over the state, but at the same time, he says, the state, the government, should not try to run or stifle or eliminate or somehow replace the church. We need to guard against both of those errors. And normally it's quite possible to live giving what is due to Caesar at the same time that we give what is due to God.
And for many years, we've been blessed to live in a nation where what Caesar, what your government, requires of you has not contradicted with what we owe to the Lord Jesus Christ as followers of Jesus Christ. It's been very possible to render under Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God the things that are God. But that is changing, and in many places of the world, it's been changed for a long time. Again, I gave you examples of this already.
In Nazi Germany, if you were a Christian, what Caesar was demanding of you, the ultimate loyalty that the Nazi party demanded of you, directly contradicted with what it meant to pay to God, to render to God, the things that are God, to love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your strength.
If you're a Christian living today in North Korea or places like China, the claims of Caesar directly contradict and conflict with the claims of the Lord Jesus Christ upon you.
And even in our country, we're seeing more and more these days laws being advocated-- in some cases, laws being passed-- that that are making it increasingly illegal to be able to preach the Gospel, to be able to share who Jesus Christ is and the truth of Scripture, and when those kinds of laws directly contradict with Jesus's call, the Great Commission, to spread the Gospel, to lead people to become followers of Jesus Christ, We have that kind of conflict that is what I'm talking about here,
when these realms conflict. Any laws that would say that God's word and speaking God's word and teaching God's word and preaching God's word, that those are hate speech: those those laws again are a case of Cesar , the claims of Caesar, trying to set themselves up over the claims that God has upon the follower of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so, last point: whenever these realms conflict, the believer has no option.
Whenever these two realms conflict, whenever Caesar, whenever government demands something of you and me as a follower of Jesus Christ that conflicts with what God requires of us, God rules over Caesar. That has to be the operating assumption of a follower of Jesus Christ. Paul says in Romans 13:1, "All authority comes from God, and those in positions of authority have been placed there by God." What is he saying? He's saying that actually, God is Caesar's Lord.
God is-- you think of whatever political figure that comes to your mind-- God is his or her Lord, whether they acknowledge that's true or not. The most unbelieving, atheistic governmental leader who's in a position of control is still under the lordship of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, Caesar , the government that we're under, has a limited authority over us. It can require certain legitimate things. We have to pay taxes.
We can be restricted from acting in ways that harm other people, that endanger public safety. The government can even seek to influence our behavior and our choices in some appropriate ways. But Caesar , the government, cannot dictate who we worship. Caesar , the government, cannot dictate how we worship.
Government exceeds its authority when it infringes or restricts on how our conscience directs us to live out that first Commandment, to love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your strength. Government violates the rule of God over us when it seeks to restrict us from loving our neighbor as ourself.
And that is why you have people like Jack Phillips, a baker in Colorado, who you may or may not agree with his choice, but he is a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ. He made decisions that honored his conscience of what it meant to follow the Lord Jesus faithfully, and that, the state of Colorado said, violated their laws. And even though it could have cost him everything-- it has cost him a great amount-- he took that stand. Why?
Because he realized that even though government has a legitimate claim, when the claim of government conflicts with the claim of God, when it violates our conscience as a follower of Jesus Christ, we have to be willing to place God as Lord over that. That is why a florist by the name of Barronelle Stutzman, in the state of Washington, again took a similar stand, not out of hate, but actually out of love, out of love for her neighbor.
You may or may not agree with her choice, but her conscience in following the Lord Jesus Christ, in seeking to discern what does it mean to render to God the things that are God, made her make certain business decisions that the State of Washington said violated the claims of Caesar , the beliefs that government had about how she should behave in her business, and she's had to pay as well.
But again, she, they both model, and many other believers like her, what it means for us to place the claims of God over the claims of Caesar. There are signs that what we read about in Revelation 18 and 19, the rise of Babylon is coming. The rise of Babylon is not the old city in Persia that was a capital of Persia at one point. Babylon in Revelation 18 and 19 is, I believe, a one-world government that we will see come about in the end-times, before the Lord Jesus Christ returns.
And as you read those chapters, what do you see? You see that the signs of Babylon is it becomes an all-encompassing governmental power that demands everyone's loyalty, that doesn't just want your taxes and doesn't just want you to behave in certain ways, but wants to shape and actually control what you think, wants to shape and control what you believe. And we see signs, I think, even in our nation and certainly throughout the world, that Babylon even now may be rising.
So what does it mean as a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ to live this out? It means that you may be tested as Babylon grows and becomes more and more powerful. And what are we to do when Babylon, when Caesar , when government, demands not just the things that are due to Caesar, but Babylon, but government, but Caesar, demands additionally the things that only belong to God?
We must say, as the Apostle said in Acts 5:29, when the law was put on them, "You shall not talk about the Lord Jesus Christ." And they said, "We must obey God rather than men." And that's what it'll mean for you and me, increasingly in the society around us, in the direction of our culture, until the Lord Jesus comes. That's what it means to place the claims of God over the claims of Caesar: to be willing to say when they conflict, "We must obey God rather than men." Let me close with this.
I don't know if you share my angst in political matters. I really realized how great my angst was about just all that happens in our political realm when, this week, I lost some of my cable stations. It was one of those deals where I had a cable package that the promotional part of it came to an end, and they want to upsell at that point. And then of course, if you can pay an additional amount, you can get the same channels that you've had or even more channels.
And I just made a simple decision: give me the absolute cheapest package that you can, not realizing that I was going to lose half my stations. And in the stations that I lost, I lost all the cable news networks. And you know what? I've never had a more peaceful week. And you know, I don't know that I would've made that decision willingly, but I am so glad that decision has been made for me. Why? Because the concerns of Caesar can rise and become too great.
The thoughts of Caesar , the thoughts of government and what it means to live in a world that is run by a secular government, a government that does have followers of Jesus Christ in it, but not enough. Those thoughts can be so consuming, and to be free from that helps me to remember that the claims of the Lord Jesus Christ are the most important.
It helps me remember, as Revelation 11 tells us, that there will come this day when the Lord Jesus Christ returns, when the kingdoms of this world will become the Kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ. And that is the day we hope for. That is the day we pray for. Let's pray. Oh Lord Jesus, verse 17 ends there, Lord, with a statement by Mark that they were amazed by you as you taught these things, and we are amazed, too, Lord.
There's never been a more succinct statement about the separation of church and state, about the relationship of government and Christianity, and it is so simple and yet so profound. Jesus, we want to walk in it. Would you give us wisdom? You did not go into detail in telling them how to apply it; you left the application up to them. That's why there are people like Jack Phillips and Baronelle Stutzman, who is-- they seek to apply it.
Their decisions may or may not be the same decisions that any of us would make. Give us wisdom, Lord God, to apply this powerful teaching. Give us wisdom, Lord, to know what it means to render under Caesar, to government, what is due to government, but to have that all in the bigger picture of rendering under you, of paying to you what is justly due you. You are due. You are owed. You are worthy of all of our worship.
You are worthy of all of our praise and all of our thanksgiving, all our energy, all our emotion, all our love, all that we have. We offer it to you, Lord Jesus. We pray in your name. Amen.