Message preached Sunday,November 6, 2016 from Mark 12:13-17
Theme: As Jesus’ followers, we are obligated to give what is proper to both the kingdom of God and the kingdom of men.
(Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture references are taken from The Holy Bible, New King James Version; copyright 1982, Thomas Nelson, Inc.)
We continue in our study this morning of the Gospel of Mark. And personally, I don’t think it’s mere coincidence that, just two days before the national election, we come to a passage that contains the Lord Jesus’ clearest statement—in all the four Gospels—about the relationship we as His followers are to have toward the governments of men.
This passage is found in Mark 12:13-17. And it’s not just an informative passage, by the way. I happen to believe it’s also a rather entertaining one! It’s a story of how hard-hearted men tried to outsmart our Lord and set a trap for Him—and that ended up proving that whenever someone tries to battle wits with Jesus, they always show up poorly-armed.
Mark writes;
Then they sent to Him some of the Pharisees and the Herodians, to catch Him in His words. When they had come, they said to Him, “Teacher, we know that You are true, and care about no one; for You do not regard the person of men, but teach the way of God in truth. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not? Shall we pay, or shall we not pay?” But He, knowing their hypocrisy, said to them, “Why do you test Me? Bring Me a denarius that I may see it.” So they brought it. And He said to them, “Whose image and inscription is this?” They said to Him, “Caesar’s.” And Jesus answered and said to them, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” And they marveled at Him (Mark 12:13-17).
Don’t you just love it when Jesus wins? (Which, by the way, happens every time!) And what powerful words He spoke! “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” I hope it isn’t irreverent for me to put it this way; but aren’t those words brilliant? Wasn’t His answer perfectly balanced?
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Now; the reason I believe that this passage is so timely is because it comes right at election time; and it reminds us that, as Jesus’ faithful followers on earth, we hold dual citizenships. We are, by God’s grace, citizens of a heavenly kingdom. As the apostle Paul puts it in Philippians 3:20;
For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ … (Philippians 3:20).
We, of course, know that. As Jesus’ followers, we tend to put that heavenly citizenship first in our heart’s devotion—and rightly so. Hopefully we also do so in our actions. It is where our true homeland is—were we will dwell eternally.
But as this morning’s passage reminds us, we have another, far more temporary citizenship that we are obligated to—certainly not obligated in a way that holds the first place in our hearts that our heavenly citizenship should have; but a citizenship to which, kept in its proper place, we are every bit as obligated. And that obligation is to the earthly human government under which God has called us to live.
It’s not that we hold devotion to one kingdom in such a way as to exclude or minimize the other. That’s a mistake that many professing Christians make. They are either so overly-devoted to the kingdom of men that they ignore or disregard their duty to the kingdom of God, or put it in second place; or are so repulsed by the evil that we see in human government that they refuse to have any part in it and see themselves as devoted only to the kingdom of God. But Jesus’ words suggest to us that a proper devotion to one is inclusive of and complimentary to the other. There isn’t any moral or theological contradiction involved in being duly faithful in our obligations to both at the same time before God.
In the command that Jesus has given to us in this passage—that is, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s”—I would like to suggest to you that a very important word for our consideration is the word “and”. It’s not “or”; as if we must make a choice to either render to human government what it requires or to the kingdom of God what it requires. It is “and”. In fact, if I may go so far as to say so, it is a necessary “and”. You cannot be said to be properly giving to God what truly is God’s unless you are also—at the same time and by necessity—rendering to Caesar what truly is Caesar’s; and you cannot be properly rendering to Caesar what truly is Caesar’s unless you are also—at the same time and by necessity—rendering to God what truly is God’s.
So; what wonderful and amazing and powerful words these are! They come to us with the highest possible authority. And while they may not tell us everything we would like to know about how best to fulfill our proper roles in these two kingdoms; these words do make it very clear to us that, as followers of Jesus, we have a genuine obligation before God to both kingdoms.
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So; let’s take a closer look at this passage, and see how this is unfolded to us.
Now; the way this important lesson was given to us was through the story of how some hard-hearted people had crafted a plot against our Lord. Let’s first, then, consider …
1. THE PLOT THAT WAS CRAFTED.
Verse 13 tells us, “Then they sent to Him some of the Pharisees and the Herodians, to catch Him in His words.”
Who are the “they” in this verse? If we trace the story backward, we find that it’s the members of the Sanhedrin—the ruling body of the people of Israel that we read about way back in Mark 11. It was the week before Jesus was crucified; and He and His disciples had just come into the temple in Jerusalem for the third time. Just the day before, He had come into the temple and cast out the money-changers and merchants. And as He came in again on this day, Mark 11:27-28 tells us;
the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders came to Him. And they said to Him, “By what authority are You doing these things? And who gave You this authority to do these things?” (Mark 11:27-28).
Jesus responded to them in a way that forced them to acknowledge that they were rebelling against the work of God. In fact, He even told them a parable that showed how terribly rebellious they were being. It angered them so much that they wanted to lay hands on Him; but they were unable to do so because they feared the crowed. And so, instead of a direct confrontation, they crafted a deceitful scheme by which to catch Him in His words. This, then, is the “they” of this verse—the chief priests, Scribes and elders who were opposing Jesus.
And look at how they did this. We’re told that “they sent to Him some of the Pharisees and the Herodians, to catch Him in His words.” The Pharisees, of course, we already know. They were a lay-community of Jewish men who were thoroughly devoted to the Old Testament law of Moses. They were so devoted to that law, in fact, that they designed a large body of additional, man-made rules and regulations that were intended to keep anyone from coming anywhere near breaking the law of God. But who are the Herodians? They were a group of Jews who were devoted to the reign of the kings of the family of Herod. Herod the Great and his sons were not Jewish; and yet, the Herodian family ruled over the Jewish people under the auspices of the Roman government. The Herodians were the ardent supporters of the Herodian family’s rule.
And by the way; you couldn’t find two groups of people more politically opposed to one another than the Pharisees and the Herodians. The Pharisees were fiercely devoted to the idea of Jewish independence. They would have thought that it was an absolutely appalling thing that they had to pay taxes to an ungodly Gentile occupier like the Roman empire. The Herodians, on the other hand, knew that the benefits they drew from the Roman empire came to them because of the rule of the family of the Herods. In contrast to the Pharisees, they would have thought that it was absolutely essential and beneficial to pay taxes to Caesar.
The leaders of Israel brought these two, radically different, diametrically opposed political groups ‘across the aisle’ to one another in a common effort to oppose and trap Jesus. As someone said, they hated each other—but they hated Jesus more than each other.
Now; as Mark makes clear, they were brought together to “catch” Jesus “in His words”. The way that the Gospel writer Luke puts it shows us just how treacherous their plan was. He wrote;
So they watched Him, and sent spies who pretended to be righteous, that they might seize on His words, in order to deliver Him to the power and the authority of the governor (Luke 20:20).
So, they thus came to Jesus with this evil plan in mind. And now, notice what Mark tells us about …
2. THE FLATTERY THAT WAS USED.
It’s really remarkable to consider the things that they said in verse 14, because you and I would have to agree that everything they said was true!
First, they came to Jesus and said, “Teacher …” That’s a title of honor. And it’s a true one; wouldn’t you say? Jesus is the Master-Teacher. We would agree with them in calling Jesus by that name! They would have been speaking like Nicodemus did to Jesus on that night long before; “Rabbi, we know that You are a teacher come from God …” (John 3:2); except that ol’ Nicodemus meant it. They didn’t mean it at all.
Then, they went on to say, “Teacher, we know that You are true …” The one word in the original language that is translated “we know” is put in the perfect tense of the verb—as if to say, “We know completely—without a shadow of doubt—that You, Jesus, are true.” And of course He is true. He is the way, the truth, and the life. He was absolutely true and faithful in declaring to us everything that God the Father wanted us to know. But these men were lying when they said that they were certain of it; because if they actually were convinced that He was true, they wouldn’t have been trying to trap Him.
They went on to say, “and care about no one; for You do not regard the person of men …” That, of course, didn’t mean that Jesus was unconcerned about people or that He was indifferent to their needs. It simply meant that He was not influenced in His teaching, in any way, by the outward appearances of greatness that so often end up impressing us—wealth, or fame, or power. And again; wouldn’t you agree with these Pharisees and Herodians that what they said really was the truth? Jesus never adjusted His teaching to fit in with what people wanted to hear; and He never sought the favor of powerful men.
And they conclude, “but teach the way of God in truth.” They were pretending to acknowledge that Jesus truly was a prophet from God; and that whatever opinion He gave on a matter would be a true and reliable word of divine authority. And once again, we would all agree with that—although they didn’t really mean a bit of it.
Boy! They were really smearing the grease on thick; weren’t they? And may I just offer an aside? Beware of such talk. Many a follower of Jesus has been swayed off the path of the truth by paying too much attention to flattery they receive from ungodly people. It happens to pastors a lot. I hope you know that I sincerely appreciate it when I receive complements. But when I start to hear someone (especially someone I don’t know) pouring on a little too much talk about ‘what a great preacher I am’, or ‘how hard it must be to be man of God’, or how I get told that ‘nobody is preaching the Bible anymore like I do’ (and especially since I know good and well that it isn’t true), I begin to put my guard up.
We should remember what Jesus said in Luke 6:26;
Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for so did their fathers to the false prophets (Luke 6:26).
I heard once about a pastor who, after the Sunday sermon, someone came up to and said, “I think you are the finest preacher in the world.” He responded by saying, “You’re too late. The devil already told me that.”
Well; all of this buttering-up was designed to throw Jesus off guard; and it led to …
3. THE QUESTION THAT WAS POSED.
In verses 14 to 15, they say, “Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not? Shall we pay, or shall we not pay?” And I hope you can see that this question had the faint semblance of being a sincere debate of the day. People actually did struggle with that question at the time. It was a genuine controversy—one that came around every tax season.
But I hope you also understand that it was a question that was, in this case, very cleverly selected and crafted in order to trap our Lord. You see; if Jesus had gotten thrown off by the flattery and said, “I will offer you My wisdom. It is right and proper, My fellow Jewish people, to pay taxes to Caesar”, then He would have instantly alienated Himself from many of those who were following Him, and would have divided the people against Himself—possibly allowing them to call the Romans down on Him for causing a disturbance. But if, on the other hand, He had said, “Absolutely not! It is not lawful for any Jewish person to pay taxes to a heathen king!”; then they could just take His words—just as they had been spoken before witnesses—and go right to the governor Pilate and file a report; bringing the authority of the Roman government down upon Him for sedition.
Again, may I offer an aside, dear brothers and sisters? I believe we ought to learn a lesson from this, and be very careful about flinging our opinions on controversial issues out upon the world too carelessly. In some rare cases, it may be necessary for us to do so; and in such cases, I believe we really do our very best to simply and graciously declare what the Bible says. But most of the time, we’re just blathering on Facebook—and we’re certainly not as wise and clever as we think we are. Let’s be careful that we don’t hurt our Savior’s cause by recklessly offering opinions that we’re not qualified to make on things that don’t really matter. And let’s be very cautious about allowing the people of this world to bait us into such unprofitable and controversial debates—and thus spoiling our testimony for Christ.
Now; we’re not so wise; but our Lord is. He always knows how to give a right answer! And this leads us to consider …
4. THE ANSWER THAT WAS GIVEN.
I love the way Mark tells us that He began His response. In verse 15, we’re told, “But He, knowing their hypocrisy, said to them, “Why do you test Me?’” And don’t you love that? In John 2:24-25, we’re told that “He knew all men, and had no need that anyone should testify of man, for He knew what was in man.” No one ever pulls anything over on Him! You and I—poor, helpless people that we are—get fooled all the time. But He never gets fooled by anyone!
And then, look at what He says. “Bring Me a denarius that I may see it.” A denarius was a Roman coin. It was worth about one day’s wage. And you know; I used to think that He asked one of His opponent for the coin because He Himself didn’t have one. That may be the case. But I have since then grown to agree with others who have said that it was actually a strategic move. If one of them reached into their bag and pulled out a Roman denarius, then it proved that they themselves were already making use of Roman coinage—and were already showing themselves to have been the beneficiaries of earthly Roman government.
Mark tells us, “So they brought it. And He said to them, ‘Whose image and inscription is this?’” (v. 16). I believe He even held it up for all to see. And the answer was obvious. “They said to Him, ‘Caesar’s.’” It had Caesar’s face and name on it. The coin they used obviously belonged to him.
And verse 17 tells us, as perhaps He flipped the coin in the air back to the one who gave it to Him—with every eye on Him, and every ear listening to Him—“Jesus answered and said to them, ‘Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.’” That was their answer. It wasn’t one or the other. It was “and”! Don’t render what is due to one without rendering what is due to the other. Not only did He foil the trap they set for Him by responding with perfect balance; and not only did He expose their rebelliousness against God by the fact that they would not receive Him as their Messiah; but He also, for all time, gave us as His followers the perfect expression of our obligation to both the kingdom of God and the kingdom of men.
And I can’t leave without pointing you to …
5. THE REACTION THAT WAS DISPLAYED.
We’re told in verse 17, “And they marveled at Him.” In some Greek texts, it says that they “greatly marveled”. I like how the Gospel writer Luke puts it;
But they could not catch Him in His words in the presence of the people. And they marveled at His answer and kept silent (Luke 20:26).
Their mouths were shut. That means that He gave an answer with which they could not find any fault. By their very response, they passively admitted—and in front of all the witnesses—that He gave the answer that was true.
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There was an important milestone that occurred in my early years. I became a Christian when I was only sixteen. Before then, I—like many sixteen-year-olds—was inwardly rebellious against my parents’ authority. I thought that I was way smarter than them, and that they didn’t know what they were talking about; and I didn’t have any intention of doing everything they said. But when, at the age of sixteen, I put my faith in Jesus Christ and became one of His followers, I came into a whole new situation. I now had a Lord and Master whom I loved and trusted.
That important milestone in my life didn’t come right away. It came a little bit later, as I grew in my new faith. But one day, I felt as if the Lord challenged me to make Him my Master completely. And to the best of my ability, I tried to do so. And then it was as if He asked me, “Am I now your Lord and Master?” And I said, “Yes, Lord—to the best of my ability.”
“Will you now do as I command?”
“Yes, Lord. I will try.”
And I felt as if He said, “Good. Now then; in obedience to Me, submit to your parents’ authority.” And what else could I do? That became a great moment of change in my attitude toward the authority of my parents. They didn’t necessarily understand my new faith, nor did they necessarily approve of it. But in submitting to God, I then became obligated to submit to the parental authority He had placed over me.
I suggest that our Lord and Master does the same thing with you and me in relation to the governing authorities that He places over us. He says, “Am I your ultimate Lord and Master?” And if we answer, “Yes”; then He says, “Submit to the governing authorities I place over you. Give to them what is due to them, just as You give to Me what is due to Me. Submit to Me by being submissive to them.” The apostle Paul put it this way:
Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. Therefore whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves. 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 from the same. For he is God’s minister to you for good. But if you do evil, be afraid; for he does not bear the sword in vain; for he is God’s minister, an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil. Therefore you must be subject, not only because of wrath but also for conscience’ sake. For because of this you also pay taxes, for they are God’s ministers attending continually to this very thing. Render therefore to all their due: taxes to whom taxes are due, customs to whom customs, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor (Romans 13:1-7).
And I remind you that Paul said this about a government that—just a few years later—had him executed for his faith in Christ.
We obviously are not to obey the governing authorities when they command us directly to disobey a command of God or to deny what He said in His word. We must, in that case, follow the example of Peter in Acts 5:29 and say, “We ought to obey God rather than men.” But in all other cases, we are to faithfully and submissively obey the governing authorities. We must not only obey this command when we think the government is good, but rather, always obey as long as we are still in conformity to God’s word; because the governing authorities exist under God’s authority.
May it always be, then, that we are always faithful to render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s. Let’s be sure that we fulfill our obligation to God’s kingdom by fulfilling our obligation to the kingdom of men.