Everything Bears God's Image

Transcript

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[0:00] Now let's go to the sermon. And we're going to do a slightly different today. I'm not going to read the whole sermon text first and then preach on it. We're going to sort of read it as we go, one verse at a time and preach through it that way. So it's a bit more of a text study type of sermon today. And I think that's good because we want to be deeper in the word from time to time.

[0:22] Well, so just an introduction. Our reading is Matthew 22, 15 through 22. We're continuing now. We've been in this for a few weeks now. In Matthew, during the Passion Week, and Jesus has entered into Jerusalem. He's begun this week-long conflict. Conflict is really the key word here. Jesus has begun a conflict with the religious leaders, starting with his disruption of the temple. So he went into the temple court. He turned over a bunch of tables. He didn't like what he saw. I'm just going to scoot this way a little bit. There we go. I think that's better.

[0:56] And that was very... Very inflammatory. You know, he's going into the temple, turning things over. And there's this question then that hangs over this whole section of Matthew, chapters 22 through... Actually, 21 through about 26. And the religious leaders ask it. They see how popular Jesus is. They see how many people have cheered for him as he came into town. It's possible even the crowd cheered for him as he was overturning these tables in the temple because that was sort of a source of...

[1:28] Conflict. And they thought maybe hypocrisy and corruption. And so the people weren't happy about what was happening at the temple. And so maybe the crowd approved of him going into the temple courts. And so in that moment, I think the religious leaders lacked the ability to get rid of Jesus in that moment because they saw that the crowd loved him. They saw that the crowd was rallying around him and they feared for themselves. And so instead, they had to ask him a question. And the question that hangs over all of this is, by what authority are you doing these things? Who, in essence, who do you think you are that you can come in here and do this? Who do you think you are that you can march into town with all these people following behind you? Who do you think you are that you can say all these things against us? And so Jesus answers that question by telling a series of parables, including the parable about the two sons, one who's obedient, one who's not. The parable about the workers in the vineyard. The parable about the wedding feast. And those who were invited to it didn't come to it and were destroyed. And they understood that all of those parables were spoken against them. They ended up being the bad guy in every single one of those parables.

[2:38] They didn't like it, right? And so they were mad and they were looking for a less public or a less overtly violent way to get rid of Jesus. And so they're not done yet. They're not done asking questions and they're not done challenging Jesus. They're trying to find a way for somebody else to get rid of Jesus first. That's always the easiest thing to do. Like if you have a chore, it's just easier to ask somebody else to do it, you know? So they'd love to get rid of Jesus, but they think maybe somebody more powerful, somebody with more authority in this region, somebody who's a lot more violent than we normally are. Maybe they can get rid of Jesus. So let's see if we can get Jesus to say something that will get these other people to get rid of him, get rid of him for us. So that's that's today's reading. They are hoping to trick Jesus into saying, something that will get him in trouble with the Roman Empire. And then somebody more powerful than them can do their dirty work for them. And so we'll go to the reading and we'll read it verse by verse because it's short enough. And we're going to see how rich even a short passage of scripture can be in these passages. So we'll go to the first verse.

[3:46] And it goes like this. Verse 15, Then the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap him in what he said. And so again, after this last parable where Jesus compares the religious leaders to people who are who refuse an invitation to God's feast and they're destroyed, then they're pretty mad. They're like, Is that going to happen to us? Is he talking about us? Is he talking about us? Is he talking? He's talking about us. I think he's talking about us. We have to do something about it. So they're like, Let's find a way to trap him with his own words or entrap him. Right. Entrapment. Right. You can get somebody to do something wrong, tempt them into doing something wrong. And be there to witness it so that you can tell other people about it. So let's go to verse 16.

[4:32] So they sent their disciples to him along with the Herodians. We're going to get to that along with the Herodians saying, Teacher, we know that you are sincere and teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. You can kind of laying it on thick here because that's what they're doing. They're kind of trying to butter him up first. Teach the way of God in accordance with truth and show deference. Teach the way of God in accordance with truth and show deference to no one. For you do not regard people with partiality. It's kind of like trying to disarm him a little bit by giving him a compliment. And now he's going to say now that his guard's down, he's going to say something foolish and get himself into trouble. Now, they don't know who they're dealing with. That's the thing. He's the creator, part of the creator of the universe. They're not going to really best him in an intellectual debate, but they try. They try. So the first thing you want to notice, and I mentioned it, is who they are teaming up with. The Pharisees. The Pharisees are here cooperating with a group called the Herodians. And these are two groups that really could not stand each other. On any other given day of the week, they would have absolutely nothing to do with each other.

[5:36] Right? The Pharisees wanted Israel to be independent from Rome. And the Herodians, these were the supporters of King Herod and the royal family in Israel, who weren't really even Jewish completely themselves and who had completely sold out to the Roman Empire. Actually, it was the... They were in a patronage relationship with the emperor.

[5:57] These Herodians, who were supporters of the royal family, knew that their survival depended on the protection of Rome. So one group that hates Rome and one group that loves Rome. And they would never have anything to do with each other. Right? They couldn't be more different. Because the Pharisees, the Herodians, were traitors. And to the Herodians, the Pharisees were like revolutionary religious fanatics that were going to bring the whole house down. And they did not like them. They wanted to destroy everything. Right? So we can conclude that they saw in Jesus a common enemy. And the old saying is true no matter what culture it's from. The enemy of my enemy is my friend until that enemy is gone and then we can be enemies again. So that's what they said to each other. Right? At least as long as it takes to get rid of that common enemy. And one theme emerges throughout the New Testament is that Jesus always... Is a... Is a catalyst for conflict. He always calls people to decision. He says, I've come to bring fire to the earth and how I wish it was already kindled. People are not going to get... When I come into a situation, people are not really going to get along with each other. Nobody's able to stay neutral or uninterested when he's around.

[7:10] And so God's adversaries band together for just long enough to defeat Jesus. At least that's what they think. And so Jesus's presence actually drives two parties together. Who mortally hate each other. That's how sort of... That's how powerful the presence of Jesus is in the world. Let's go to verse 17. They're still speaking. They say this to Jesus after they've tried to butter him up and it doesn't really work. Tell us then what you think. Like the idle question. Just, oh, I just was wondering this the other day. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor or not? Just a random sort of innocent off the cuff question. You know.

[7:52] And so here I want to point out just a couple of the words in this sentence. The word here lawful could also mean obligatory or right or required. Is this an obligation that we have as people? And the word for taxes is a special word. It's kensos, which is actually a loan word from Latin into Greek. And it's the same root word as our word census. Do you hear it? Kensos, census. Same word. And what is a census? It's when you count people up. But governments don't count people up just to count them, do they? They count them up to tax them. There's no other reason to count people. That's right. And so the Romans counted people. They called it a census. And you count people and you tax them based on how many people there are. So it was sometimes called a poll tax or a person tax or a census. So it's not a temple. It's not a temple tax or a sales tax.

[8:58] Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. was high, but it was a sign that their money was going to a foreign occupying power and they didn't like it. And that's how empires work, right? We're going to conquer you. We're going to count you. We're going to figure out what resources your country has, and we're going to extract it all bit by bit to keep you weak and compliant. And so we see this here and we've seen it countless times since. This is how the world works. This is what is amazing about the Bible is it's not divorced from reality or history at all, but it's talking about real things that happened then. The census was universally hated and it was a sign of how empires work, and that's true. If you look at human history, that's how all empires have worked through taxation, through extraction of its colonies. That's how it works. You know, you can think about the American Revolution, right? It's kind of funny. We think the American Revolution is noble, and maybe it is. You know, they're like, oh they're charging us for stamps they're charging us a tax on playing cards okay they're charging us a tax on tea okay then they're like now we're gonna tax your beer oh it's on let's let's fight

[10:29] now you know it's on so was it noble yeah it was i mean sorry if there's any british people here but you know it's like once the beer got taxed well that's a different story we have to fight there's it's all it's more complex than that but that's the point that was what britain was doing to the americas let's tax tax tax tax take as much as we can for as long as we can and eventually people get tired of it so the question is to him in a weird weird way to jesus if we were to paraphrase their question they should be jesus do you think we should be paying this tax that's designed to destroy us you put it that way right a tax that's universally despised for its high amount and also for what it represents and of course we can see what they are up to because what happens now what does jesus have a choice you can say no or you can say yes so if you say no that's popular with the people because they hate the tax but if you do say no then they can report that to the romans who said oh this guy says he is teaching people not to pay taxes well that would get him in trouble with the romans and that was their goal let's get the romans to take care of jesus that's much easier for us let's let's ensure that they're not going to pay taxes

[11:42] we don't want it's like let's let somebody else do it but if you say yes then he's safe from the romans but all these people these adoring people that are surrounding him right now that we're kind of afraid of they'll kind of wander off then because they don't really like him and so they put they think they put jesus into this impossible bind say yes and you're in trouble say no and you're in trouble so it's brilliant isn't it right but they're dealing with jesus so let's go to verse jesus it says but jesus aware of their malice said why are you putting me to the test you hypocrites so first off he doesn't answer the question he asks them a question but he doesn't wait for them to answer it we'll find out why are you putting me to the test you hypocrites and this is a really interesting thing about jesus the gospels tell us that at times jesus is able to see into people's hearts and figure out what their motives are he just seems to know what people are thinking about him and he's not going to answer that question he's going to answer it he just he just need supernatural powers to figure out what's going on. I think, you know, this is not, Jesus could be being supernatural here, but Jesus could just be being human here going, you guys are

[13:22] trying to get me into trouble. Nice try. You know, I'm not going to fall for this. But actually he does kind of fall for it. He'll show you in a great way, right? It's clear they want to trap him, both from the conflict they're in and the question that they ask. He knows, he's not buttered up by their compliments earlier on. He's not taken off guard in any particular way at all. And then he calls them hypocrites. And actually there could be three reasons for why they are being called hypocrites. Two of them are apparent to us right now. The first one is that here's two groups that hate each other, seem to be banding together. I thought you guys didn't like each other. Why are you together right now? Are you being hypocritical that way? Or is it because they pay taxes themselves, which they have to, because otherwise they're not going to be able to do anything. They'd go to jail. If they're not, if they're walking around free, it means they've been paying the tax themselves. So they're asking about this tax, which they themselves have paid. So which is the hypocrisy? And I would say maybe both. We don't know, but he thinks they're hypocrites for asking the question in this way. Now let's look at verses 19 and 20. Jesus says,

[14:29] show me the coin used for the tax. And they brought him a denarius, which is a day's wages, right? And then he said to them, whose head is this? And whose title? So we're talking about this coin right now. He's asked for the coin, they bring it to him, and he shows it back to them. He shows them the coin that they bring him. And so he uses this opportunity instead of, he could have said to them, well, what do you think? Should we pay the taxes or not? You answer me first. You can always do that in a debate. You can say, oh, you're asking me a question? Well, why don't you answer it first? And see if they get themselves in trouble. And they could have say, oh, we don't know. You know more than us. Maybe you should tell us. And they could go back and forth like that all day. But he doesn't even engage in that. Although sometimes he does. He does say, you answer first. In this case, he starts to answer their question, right? But he uses it as an opportunity to teach something. And that's what Jesus is like. He's always teaching. And even a hypocritical and a cynical question can lead to some gospel truth coming out. This is the beauty of what Jesus is like. Even bad motives, he can turn into a teaching about the nature of the kingdom of God.

[15:46] So that's Jesus's power. So they brought him a coin. It had a face on it, evidently. And it had an inscription naming the emperor. And that makes sense because the coin used for the Roman census tax is a coin with a picture of the Roman emperor on it. You have to use their money to pay their tax, okay? And perhaps another reason he called them hypocrites is that the Pharisees for sure would try very hard. They wouldn't always succeed, but they would try very hard never to actually have a coin like this in their pocket. They would not want to touch this coin at all. That's how they felt about it. Why? Because it had a picture of a person on it. And that's a graven image. That's idolatry. You can't own things like that. They were pretty serious about that stuff. They didn't have artwork that had pictures of people. And this is true. So, why are you being a hypocrite? You just gave me the coin that you yourself don't want to touch. Are you being a hypocrite about it? Maybe. Now, maybe one of the Herodians brought the coin. They didn't have any trouble with that because they needed that money. I mean, they loved that money. So, but again, the Herodians and the Pharisees joining together in any kind of

[16:59] enterprise was deeply hypocritical and cynical. So, now let's go to verse 21. Jesus asked them a question. And I think they think, oh, we're about to put the final nail in the coffin here. They're like, oh, we'll play along. Verse 21, they answered, oh, it's the emperors. They said to him, the emperors. Yeah, what are you going to do? Are you going to say we shouldn't pay the tax to the emperor? And then Jesus' answer, so simple, so clear. Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor's. And they probably were like, all right, we did it. He said, we have to pay the tax. All these people who are following him, are probably just going to wander off because they don't like the tax. But Jesus isn't done. He says, and to God, the things that are God's. Pastor Victoria always does such a good job of preaching my sermon for me. She already did it. So, I'm done. There's a walk on away. No, I'm not done. But really, that's the whole thing right there. That's the whole thing. Yes, the money belongs to Caesar. It's got his face on it. It belongs to him. The tax goes to him. He might do some things for you. He's going to keep most of it, but he might build a few roads, and there's some safety that comes. You're not going to get attacked by foreign countries while

[18:16] the Romans are there. There were some benefits. You got a little bit of what you paid for, but mostly it was a scam. But you have to pay it. Because if you don't pay it, you're going to go to jail or worse, right? You have to pay it. Jesus wasn't about to start an armed revolution. That wasn't his way, as we understand. This is what Jesus is like. He doesn't think that this change comes about with violence. He thinks this change comes about with a change of the heart of each and every person in the land, and that sort of the subversive witness changes things from the bottom to the top instead of from the top down. So they admit what everyone can see. The coin has a picture of the emperor on it, and if it's the emperor's, give it to the emperor. And give to God the things that have God's image. Now, I'm paraphrasing a little bit here, but this is really the point. I'm not going to go into all the details. This is really kind of the same thing. If the emperor's image is on it, it's the emperor's. If God's image is on it, then it's God's. Right? So you owe the emperor the coin, but what do you owe to God? All of that plus everything else. What has the image of God on it? What has the image of God on it? Right? What carries the inscription and name of God? And I'm looking at it

[19:33] right now. I'm looking at you. You are the image bearers of God. All of us are in this world. And so, we're created in God's image. So we're like a coin, like a big walking coin. But we're not coins. We're not money. We're not just reduced to simple sort of capitalistic things. We are the image bearers of God. His imprint is on us. His inscription is on us. His word is written in our hearts. And thus, we belong to God. So we give to God. Yes, we give the emperor a little bit of tax, but we give to God everything. Because we belong to God. We have his image written all over us. Right? And I think, in a way, if we were to kind of rewind a little bit to some of the parables he's telling, they all kind of fit together. Think about the parable of the vineyard. The vineyard belongs to God. The workers or the tenants are in it. They're leasing it. And their payment to God is part of the yield of the vineyard. I think we need to look at all of our resources kind of more like that. Like, you think you own your house and you think you own your bank account. And you do. You do. I'm not saying you don't. You know, in the system of laws that we have in our country, you own that stuff. And there's all sorts of

[20:51] rights associated with owning all those things. Right? And it's very hard for other people to take them away from you. Thank God. Otherwise, we'd be like spending all our time trying to protect them. But maybe we should think of our house and our bank account and anything else we think we own, like our car, our car, our car. And then we can think about the other things that we own. And then we can see that we own homes, homes homes homes homes sorry, you know, and I love capitalism because it kind of does make the world go around, but this is God's economy. Everything belongs to him. Everything you have belongs to him. It's on loan or on lease for now, but he comes and he expects some return on it. It's a blessing that he gives you, not for the sake of itself or not to let you live in comfort. It's a blessing that he gives you so that you can bless the world with it, so that you can bring other people to know. And so you become like the messenger in the next parable that goes out into the highways and byways and pulls people into the kingdom and asks them to come to the wedding feast. This is your work, right? Okay, verse 22, we're almost done. When they heard this, they were amazed and they left him and went away. So Jesus escapes this

[22:21] trap and he teaches at the same time. And you can make the thing go away now, Andre. If you want, they will have to find another opportunity to get him and they'll do it at night when nobody is watching. They're worried about the crowds. So after, and what they eventually do at the end of the week, right? Good Friday, they find him when nobody's watching in the dark of night. And after they have him and they're asking the Romans to kill him, they actually falsely claim, and you can read this in Luke chapter 23, that Jesus indeed told the crowd that they shouldn't pay taxes. To Rome, which is a lie. He just said you should, but they said later on that he, he said you shouldn't pay taxes and thus the Romans. So what happens? The truth doesn't matter when you're trying to destroy somebody. They told a lie about him even at the end.

[23:12] Now, so we've gone through this, this rich text, isn't it? There's a lot going on in here. We're learning a lot. What does it mean for all of us? What does it mean for us? So I would say for one, as long as it lasts and as long as it is not commanding, us to stop worshiping God and sharing the gospel, like Victoria said, we need to pay taxes to the country that we're citizens of. If you're a citizen of another country, please pay taxes to that country. You know, absolutely do that. We should pay and we should pay our fair share. Our witness also depends on us being honest with our finances and not cheating the government out of any taxes. Absolutely hire an accountant, get every deduction you're entitled to. That's not, that's all totally legal, but pay your fair share of taxes. That's your Christian witness in this world. And that's a duty that you owe because the government provides you services. You drove here on a road, you know, the water runs in your faucet. All sorts of things come about because you pay taxes. That's the simple part, right? So we pay taxes. And, and I like that this is an and and not a but, and for us, we are to yield everything that has the image of God.

[24:25] To God, we have to yield everything that has the image of God to God. And so this is a simpler, but it's a harder way of life. Simpler because I don't have to keep track of everything in a way, right? I don't have to say, oh, this is all my stuff. And this is all God's stuff. Because if I were to do that, this would always grow and this would always shrink. It's simpler if I just say, this is all is and always has been, always will be all of God's stuff. And he's just loaning it to me for a season. And he's expecting me to do something with it. Now that's simpler, but it's harder. It's harder because where's my security? Where's my sense of owning it? Where's my sense of accomplishment that I earned it? Those I have to let them die in a way. I have to die to the self, right? I have to decide it's all God's. And he's going to give me a way to do it. And I have to let him die in a way. And I have to let him die in a way. And I have to let him die in a way. And I have to let him die in a way. And he's just letting me have it for a season. And it's not just money. We're kind of talking about money, but there's more to it than this. There's a whole of your life. So it's my time, which, you know, as you get older, I'm 53, I'll be 54 in November. As you get older, you realize how much less you

[25:44] have of that. So my time is becoming far more valuable to me than my money, just in my own internal calculus in my brain. So it's my time and my energy. Which is also something that you have to budget. And my intellect, as feeble as it may be at times, and my emotions, and my words to measure each word, and my actions, all of those rightly belong in God's domain as things that he owns. It all bears God's image, and it all belongs to him. And so it's a harder way of life because God may ask me to give a lot of it away for the sake of the kingdom. He may ask for my time, my energy, or my power, or my power, or my wealth, or all of those things, and more. He may ask for my life. I love what Joel said.

[26:31] Joel, that was so great. He said, how can you give your life to God? And he said, I could die. And that was out of the mouths of babes. It's so true. You know, you could, you may be called in some way, and I don't think this will happen, but I don't know, that we may have to offer up our own life at some point for the sake of the kingdom. And I hope it doesn't come to that. And I hope God would protect us, but we have to be willing to, because countless Christian martyrs have gone before us in that way, including Jesus, right? So I want to get to the point where I can look at giving away things for the sake of the kingdom with joy. I'm not there yet. This is a discipleship growth thing. Like, does it make us happy to give things away? Or do we do it grudgingly? Do we look at it as a calculation and a loss and a zero-sum game? Or when we open up, and I'm not talking about giving to the church, church right now at all. Don't worry about the church. I'm talking about giving to God, doing things with what God's blessed you with to bless the world. And it doesn't even have to be money. It could be, like I said, your time or your energy. Can we do that with joy so that when we do it, we're energized, we're enthused, we're excited about actually giving away, we're looking for

[27:46] opportunities to give it away? That would be amazing, right? So that's my discipleship path, I tell you now, to grow and to get to the point where giving is a joyful exercise. Where giving is something that energizes me and excites me, and I want to work on that. So finally, now at the end of this story, and we're kind of pointing ahead, and we're ending the liturgical year. We're getting very close to Advent, which is the beginning of the liturgical year. So at the end of the liturgical year, we're reading a lot of these passages that kind of belong around Easter time. But we're reading them now because we're kind of getting through all the Gospels. And at the end of the story, the religious leaders do get their way. They lie about this very encounter, and the Romans send Jesus to his death. So that's how this encounter ends up, right? And even Jesus does what he says. This is the thing about Jesus. He doesn't ask us to do something that he's not willing to do himself, right? So he gives to God what belongs to God as an act of obedience, because it will bring about the things that God wants to happen, and that's salvation for the world. Jesus said, on the cross, he says, into your hands I commit my spirit. And he's speaking to the Father, and he's

[29:00] saying, I am giving to you what belongs to you, my very life. And I ask if we can do the same. Let's pray. Father, thank you again for your word, for this great word, for the example of Jesus. Father, this week, put in our hearts the one way, this one way, that we can do the same. And I ask you to do the same. And I ask you to do the same. This week, in which we can give to you that which has your image on it. Amen.