I want to give a description of the Christian life to you just as we begin. It's a one-word description. It is the word amphibian. If you are a Christ follow, you are an amphibian. I don't mean that you're a salamander, literally. I hope you're not a salamander. I don't mean that you have, you know, fins and gills. What I mean by is this, you know, amphibians live in two different environments, right? The amphibians of nature, they live in water and on land. But you are to live, if you follow Christ, you have to live, right now in this present time, you have to live in two environments. You know what those environments are. It's the old age, the old ways, the dying and passing away time that is the world age. It's the age of the kingdoms of men. It's the age of sickness and death and sin. This world is passing away, our Bibles teach, and we live in this age. But also, the thing that is great for us who follow Christ, for you who follow Christ, who have been redeemed by his blood, is that Jesus has made you born again and brought you into a new age. Not new age in terms of the weird spirituality, I'm not talking about that. I mean the time to come, the age to come, the eternal kingdom age. So all at once, here you are following Christ. You have to follow Christ living in heaven while walking upon the world that's passing away along with all of its desires. You see what I'm saying, right? Amen? You know this is true. For the unbeliever, the one who has rejected Christ, or is living in rebellion against His rule and His reign, has not received Him as Savior, everything about your life is dying and dead. The world that you put your hopes into is dying and dead. It is a perishing world. And all the ways that you might try and be fixing your soul, or trying to make yourself better, all of these things are dying and dead. You could build all the Tower of Babels that you want, all the kingdoms, all the governments, have all the entertainments, all the spiritualities, all the medications, therapies, all those things, programs, all of it. If it's part of this world, right, it doesn't mean that I'm necessarily calling it all evil per se, but if it's all man-made, all this stuff man-constructed, it's all dying and dead. It cannot fix your soul. You have to have, you have to be shown the way that leads to everlasting life. And the thing is, God has been so good and gracious in that he sent forth his own son. who is a savior who will bring you out of this present passing away world into the eternal kingdom. This is what Jesus says when he comes upon the earth. He says, the time has come. The time has been fulfilled. Repent and believe the good news. Repent and believe the good news of the kingdom. We are brought forth out of the old ways, the days that are dying, and brought forth into the ages to come, the blessed age to come, the age of eternal days. But here's the thing about all this, why I'm saying all this, is because you have to live in both of these ages right now. We say the Kingdom of God is already, and not yet. It's not final. By the way, don't hear me say that, like, you should have this dualistic view that eternal things, or that if it's spiritual, it's good. If it's, like, not spiritual, it's evil. That's not what I'm saying. That's a heresy. What I'm saying is that all the... Well, let me put it to you this way. Heaven transforms things, right? Heaven is coming into this world, it's breaking into this world, and it transforms everything so that the world is becoming new, right? It's becoming new. The old ways are going, the new ways are coming in because of heaven. So, but while we live in this world that's passing away, while we live, you know, focused on God, there's something that Jesus wants you to know as you follow him. Because you have been granted this access, this kingdom to live in, he knows that you are going to run into things while we live in this world that's passing away that are troublesome, burdensome, annoying, inconvenient, just things you have to do, right? And what he wants you as a follower to know is you don't have to walk through life with a burn all the ships mentality. You don't have to walk through life thinking that if it's not all perfect just the way you want it, then then you can just offend whoever you want and take no quarter with anybody. And because, you know, that's just going to Jesus knows that that's just going to be a scandal to people and be a hindrance to them coming to the gospel. He's saying, look, you have a responsibility to live in this life. You have a responsibility to walk this world in a world of unbelief, a world of sin, a world of, you know, self-righteousness, all this stuff. You have a responsibility to walk in this world so as not to be looking for ways to just drive people nuts or be offensive. This is a very important lesson that he needed Peter to learn, because if you remember, After Jesus dies and is resurrected, and he leaves the keys to the kingdom in the hands of the early church, he appoints Peter to lead this early church along with all the other apostles. And he knows that he's sending Peter and the apostles out to confront the world of darkness. And he knows that the message they bring is going to be offensive. It's going to rub people the wrong way, especially the Jews. It's going to rub people the wrong way. And Jesus is saying, hey, the message that you preach, the life that you live is going to confront people. Don't add to the offense by being offensive. The message is offensive, you don't be the offense. Let the people be confused if they need to be about it, but don't do things to add to the offense. This is one of the things Jesus is saying here. One of the points he's making. And here's the reason. That's actually the secondary point that Jesus is trying to make. The main thing that Jesus wants you to know is really the main point for the sermon. The reason you can you can endure the ill, the reason you can not make a stink about everything and not be offensive or a thorn or a bone to choke on for everybody. The reason you can do all that is because Jesus has afforded you everything. Here's the main thing. Jesus affords you everything good from his eternal kingdom. Therefore, you can afford the losses of this world that is passing away. Do you see what I'm saying? If you have the eternal kingdom and all that it affords, if you've got to endure something you don't want to do for the day, hey, let me tell you something, it's going to be okay. You're going to be fine. You're going to be fine. And we'll talk about this matter of offense in just a few moments. But we need to know this, believers, I mean, sometimes I think we can we can say if the world is not all of it, all it should be, then, you know, we've got to speak out against every little thing, pick at every little thing, all of that. And, you know, that can confuse people. And it can cause people to take an unnecessary offense. Offense is going to happen. Offense is going to happen. But we don't want to be unnecessarily offensive. Now, let's look at this in three parts. So number one, Jesus predicts his death and resurrection for the second time. This is what this first these first couple of verses are about. Jesus has been Jesus has been teaching his disciples all of this, all of these words that you see Jesus doing and teaching, all of this is in a context of extreme focus for his disciples. He's calling them to himself after every single object lesson and explaining things because Jesus is coming to the end of his days on earth. He's about to set his face to Jerusalem where he'll go to Passover for the last time and die. And Jesus predicts his suffering, death, and resurrection three times for his disciples in the Gospels. The first time, we've already covered, it's in Matthew chapter 16. And in that time, Jesus declares that this suffering and death is going to be necessary. This is the necessary task of the Messiah, of the Son of Man. And now, he makes things more certain. I mean, the characteristic of this prediction, in verses 22 through 23, is the certainty of it. It's certain. The Son of Man is about to be delivered, and they will kill him, and he will be raised on the third day. Jesus is giving this certainty here. But the other characteristic about this prediction is that it's especially distressing. We know the first prediction distressed Peter. He pulled Jesus aside to rebuke him and say, not so, Lord. And that's when Jesus said, get behind me, Satan. But this is especially distressing to the apostles, these disciples. Why is it? Because in this prediction, Jesus uses the word, the Son of Man is about to be delivered into the hands of man. This word is also the word that means betrayed. It's also the word that means handed over. So Jesus is telling his disciples that this suffering and death is going to be kicked off by a treachery, some sort of treachery. And so the disciples are thinking, oh no, this has to mean something about us, our group here. We are going to, we're going to be treacherous. You get the sense, you get the same feeling of Joseph and his brothers. Remember, Joseph and his brothers handed over, they betrayed Joseph. Betrayed Joseph by selling him off into slavery. Judas is going to betray Jesus. He's going to be handed over, delivered through an act of treachery. It's very distressing. But this is very important because This is very important because of what follows. Jesus is talking about his death and resurrection. And then you go into a section that revolves around a tax that must be paid. And I'll go ahead and hint at it. The tax that must be paid is a temple tax. It's called the atonement price. So Jesus is saying with certainty that he's going to suffer and die and rise. And then in the next, very next paragraph, he's talking about the atonement tax. Well, what does all this have to do with each other? He is saying Jesus is saying that this death and suffering resurrection is going to pay the redemption price for the children of God. So that's why this this prediction is so important here. It's very it's the only way. for all the temple to realize and the worshipers who worship in the temple to realize that the fulfillment of all the Jewish religion is found in the one who suffered and died and was raised to life. So secondly, the second thing I want you to see is that Jesus proclaims that the temple belongs to him. And there's some technical things in this passage that we've got to look at here. As I mentioned, this was a temple toll or a temple tax. When you read this passage about the two drachma collector, he is not collecting taxes for the Roman government, the Roman enterprise or the Roman roads or Pontius Pilate's living expenses. He's not doing that. This collector is hanging around Capernaum because Jesus is bringing his disciples back to their headquarters, likely Peter's house, which is by the sea. And this tax collector is a temple tax collector, and he's collecting a census tax that's to be paid by any male 20 years old or over. And this census tax is for the upkeep and maintenance of the temple in Jerusalem. And so those are some of the technicalities, I'll give you a few more. The Temple tax to Drachma wasn't that expensive. It's not a huge tax. It's a day's wage, a day or so wage, or maybe up to three days wages. This is like maybe 1,300th of a working man's salary. It's not something that the Jews were really opposed to paying. Not only that, but there's some views as to how this tax developed over history. We know that it was a lawful tax. Exodus chapter 30 teaches that this tax is a requirement in the census. But by the time of Jesus, there's some difference about how this tax was collected. Was it collected once a year or three times a year? And maybe Jesus had missed the other two times and this tax collector for this year comes and and wants to know, Peter, why doesn't Jesus pay the tax? And in any case, supposed to be a once a year tax that is paid around two drachma per person. Over for men over the age of 20 years old, this just goes to fund the upkeep and maintenance of the temple in Jerusalem. All well and good. And this man, this tax collector, approaches Peter, maybe because Peter was like the spokesman of the disciples, and says, doesn't your rabbi, does not your rabbi pay the tax? And Peter answers correctly, he does. It's probably that Jesus just walked by the tax collector and was like, I don't have to do this right now, the tax collector is going to be around for a few days, I can pay him later. But he just walks by the tax collector. Peter stopped by him and says, yes, he does. Part of the thing is about Jesus is you have to know that Jesus was a lawful Jew. He did everything right according to the law. He said he came to fulfill every act of righteousness, everything he did in accordance with the law. Where we see Jesus getting the confrontation over the law was when he was keeping the law and the Pharisees and the Sadducees, or really the Pharisees and the scribes, We're saying, you've got to do things extra, like, you know, wash, you got to wash your hands before, before, before eating. Or you've got to, you can't pick heads of grain on the Sabbath. And you say, Jesus being like, look, I'm not breaking any law. My disciples aren't breaking any law. You are making the Sabbath a burden, right? And so, by the way, all these things really do offend the religious leaders. But Jesus is lawful. Peter knows he's lawful. Peter's been with Jesus now for three years. And likely, Peter's seen Jesus pay this two drachma tax over and over. So Peter just says yes. Well, then Jesus pulls Peter aside and teaches him something. And this is, like I said, this is unique to Matthew's gospel, which is really an interesting thing to think about. Because Matthew was a tax collector at one point. And Matthew was also a Jewish man. And Matthew's audience, when he wrote the Gospel of Matthew, he had a Jewish audience as his target people. So he wants them to see something that's very, very special about what Jesus is claiming. And for us too. Jesus pulls Peter aside and gives him something to think about, something to consider. Peter, let's talk about the taxes. When the kings of the earth tax, when their administrations need to be funded, who do they demand the tax from? Who do they toll? Do they toll their own children, or do they toll strangers, citizens? Peter needs kind of a softball over the plate at this point. He's been messing up quite a bit. So he gets this easy question and Peter says, well, from the citizens of course, right? Of course that's the case. The political administrators don't tax their own children because their children are part of the administration. I think that's one thing, you know, we realize as taxpayers. Jesus is not, by the way, Jesus is not saying, you know, He's not making a statement on whether or not public officials should pay taxes. He's just saying something, saying the reality, right? You are totally content to pay taxes knowing that if your governor or your president has kids at home, that the kids are beneficiaries of the money you pay into it. That's fine. You don't have a problem with that, right? The president, the governor, the king's not going to tax his own children. He's not going to do that. They're part of the administration. And so so Jesus says something. And then ends the illustration that leaves us to draw the conclusion, he says, then the sons are free. If you're in the king's house, if you're part of the administration, you are exempt from paying taxes, you're exempt. What's the conclusion? What's the point? What are we supposed to learn from that? Take this out to the temple. This is what's going on, right? Take this out to the temple. Does the Lord of the temple, the one that all the people come to for worship, the one that people give their tithes to, give their tolls to, does the Lord have to pay taxes or is the Lord exempt? Right? That's what Jesus is saying. That's the illustration. No, the one whom the temple is for, the one whom the temple belongs to, he doesn't pay taxes on the temple. Or you could take it out this way, the lord of the temple. Does his son have to pay taxes? No, the son is free. The son's exempt. The son doesn't have to pay taxes. Jesus is saying, Peter, this two drachma tax, let me tell you about it. And Matthew's telling the Jews. Let me tell you about this tax that everyone's collecting. Look, I don't have to pay this tax. It's pointless to pay this tax. Why? Why don't I have to pay this tax? Because I'm the Lord of the temple. I'm the one that all the temple is about. All the worship, all the rituals, all the sacrifices, all the vessels, all those things are fulfilled in me. I don't have to pay the price. I don't have to pay that. I don't have to do it. It's kind of an obsolete, useless, pointless thing to do. Not only that, but by extension, this is what's an awesome thing. When you follow Christ, when you are blessed to be in the Beloved, you become a child of God. You become a child of the King, a son or daughter of the King of Kings. And the great thing is that Jesus has paid the atonement price, the redemption price. Now the temple requirements have been fulfilled. There's no more need to fund the temple. Not only that, but here's something that's interesting. A few, maybe weeks after Jesus teaches this to Peter, a few weeks after, Jesus tells the disciples that this temple, this whole mount, this whole structure, this whole Jewish religion. Is coming to an end in this generation. It's going to be laid waste. No stone on top of itself will remain. It's all going to be demolished. Everything, so just take this all together, everything about this tax is really kind of useless. It's pointless. It's a little bit of money to throw into a coffer to fund a dying, dead, passing away religion that's going to fall on its head and be crushed forever and never to be resurrected again. And so Jesus says, so does Jesus say, hey, well then, because of all that, we don't need to pay it. No, he says, this is the wildest thing. He says, go to the sea, cast a hook out, and the fish that you drop is going to have a shekel in its mouth, right? When we're gonna pay this price so as not to give an offense, right? This tax is useless. It's pointless. But you know what? We're not going to think about it much. We're just going to pay it in a shekel. So let me go to this third part. Jesus pays the redemption price perfectly. So Jesus predicts his death and resurrection. He proclaims that the temple belongs to him. And finally, Jesus pays the redemption price perfectly. He pays it all perfectly. And why? Why say that it's it was called the redemption price or the atonement price. But why I say perfectly is because a shekel, the weight of the shekel was the equality of four drachmas. So Jesus knew that when Peter pulled up this fish, there would be a coin in there that would pay for both him and Peter, the two drachma, the two drachma tax for the temple. Jesus says, go and do it and let's be done with it. Let's make an end of this discussion and let's move on. We'll suffer the loss and we'll just not be an offense to anyone and keep on keeping on. So let me talk about this just a little bit, this idea of offensiveness. Because we live in a culture that just loves offensiveness. We love the people who are the most offensive, you know, who walk into a room and just throw everybody into absolute offense. or the people, the political people who are the most offensive. And then also because of such a thing, because this is the condition that we're in, we are also very easily offended people. Amen. Right. Everyone's so easily offended. Right. We love to give offenses and we love to take offenses. And remember what I said at the beginning. Jesus wants us to know we live in this this two-part existence where we have to consider where we are currently, the time in which we live, in the light of eternity that we live in. Jesus has given us all good things. We cannot lose in this life. We cannot lose our salvation. We cannot lose the blessings of God. We cannot lose the friendship of God. We cannot lose these things. Right? We have all these good things from God. And so Jesus says, in light of that, think about your daily living. Is it necessary to always give an offense? Is it necessary to always, like I said, burn the ships? No. What is Jesus' encouragement to his disciples? You've got to be wise as serpents, innocent as lambs. You don't always have to give an offense. You don't have to do it. There are great encouragements from this in the Apostles. You think of the Apostle Paul. Everywhere he went, people would just go crazy over his presence and his message. And the thing he said about himself and about all the church, about all the proclaimers of the gospel, is we are a stench to the world. We are we are refuse to the world. We're like the stuff that people step in and want to wipe off their shoes. That's what we are. But he says, remember what Paul says, he says to the Jew, I became a Jew to the Gentile, to the Greek, I became a Greek, I became all things to all people. So as I might win some to Christ, I don't put stumbling blocks in front of people. I want to win people to Christ, and so I don't put stumbling blocks. And what stumbling blocks means are those things that are fleshly in us, whether that's bitterness, rage, behavior, integrity issues, all those things, we remove all those things so as not to have a charge of offensiveness brought against us. We remove those things. Jesus is saying, don't be purposefully offensive. In fact, do everything you can, to prove yourselves innocent. The message is going to be offensive enough. Jesus, by the way, may you might be able to say this is such an interesting thing for Jesus to say. He does this so as not to give an offense. Right. But everything, Jesus was an offense from the moment he showed up in the world. Herod wanted to kill him. The first preaching he does, Luke chapter 4, reads the Isaiah scroll and says, today this prophecy has been fulfilled in your hearing. And everybody in Nazareth, they get all riled up and they drag Jesus out to try and throw him off a cliff. I mean, it's this fast. Jesus says to the Pharisees, you all think you're sons of Abraham, but I'll tell you before Abraham was, I am. And the Pharisees grab up stones to try and stone Jesus to death. It's over and over and over, Jesus does these things, but there was no. Just like what the Bible says, there's no guile or offense in Jesus. It was all his message. And the Bible says when he the gospels say that when he preached or when he spoke or when he did these things, it says, and they took offense at him. They took offense at Jesus. And so it's very awesome and remarkable that Jesus is saying. At this point, right. Look. We're going to Jerusalem. We're heading towards Mount Calvary. I'm heading towards Mount Calvary. I am I am the Lord of the temple. I am the one, the son of God. I am the one that all the I am the lifeblood of all true worship. I am the redemption price. If I have to pay a little tax over here, then you know what? I'll suffer the tax. It's not a big deal. It's not going to be it. Paul does this. You know, it's a wisdom thing. It's a discretion thing. It's an understanding thing, knowing when to give the offense and when to not. But here's and again, this is what I what I brought up, because Jesus affords you with the good things of the kingdom, everything good from the kingdom, you can afford these things. Jesus has made a way, right? He paid the final redemption price. He's given us all good things and blessed us in the heavenlies with every grace, everything we could have. We can afford the losses of this world. We can afford them. But also I want you to think about this. It's not just about giving offense, it's about the transformation of your mind to have the right mindset about life. You know how lightly Jesus takes this tax? This tax comes and he's like, Peter, go throw a hook in the sea and bring out a coin and that'll be that. That's it. We don't have to think anymore about this. And I think one of the things that should encourage you, Christian, or should convict you, challenge you, is how much is heaven, how much is eternity, how much of true spirituality is on your heart and mind and on your mouth? I think one of the things we struggle with, we think about, or we don't think about enough is we are so consumed and focused on the things of this world. We're so easily, our attention is so easily wrapped up in them. You walk into a conversation with people, and people start talking, and all of a sudden, right off the bat, it's like 10 minutes in, you're going all the way down to everything that's wrong with the government, right? You're going all the way down to how high the taxes are in our land. You go all the way down with kids these days, or all that's wrong in our society, and we just go right down this path so quickly. And Jesus is like, listen, Christians, believers, you followers of Christ, Elevate your minds. Get them up. Get them out of this. Think about what you have gained in the kingdom. Think about what Jesus has won for you. Don't dote so much about these things, because what do they do? What do all the cares and the struggles of this world ultimately make us do, right? They make us complainers. They make us grumblers. They make us bitter people. And one of the things this betrays about us is our confidence in the spiritual life that God has given us, right? When we're always complaining, when you're grumbling, when you're always thinking with your nose to the ground and just snorting up the dust of the earth and the problems therein and all that, what's going on? Right? It's showing. It's showing this imbalance. that you are not living by the light of the kingdom of grace that God has given you, your true home. That's why Jesus offers this. He says, you know what, you got this concern in this world, you got this issue that's a booger, that's a bug, that you don't want to deal with, hey, deal with it and move on. You have heaven, you walk in heaven, you walk by the light of life. You walk by grace. The things of this world are seen and temporal and transient and passing away. But the things that are unseen are eternal. Paul teaches. Don't you know it, believer? Don't you know this? Know this, people, don't be don't be. So focused on the inconveniences. Look. When you measure offenses, it's really easy. When to give an offense, when to step out, when to burn the ships. The biblical criteria is this. When someone tells you to disobey God or to not worship God how he wants to be worshipped, hey, just like Peter would say to the Sanhedrin in his day, Should we obey God or should we obey men? You decide, but I'll obey God, right? That's when you know. That's when there's no compromise. That's when you do the offense, all of that. But if it's some matter that's not offensive to your soul, that's not harming the soul, that's not causing you to disobey God, right? Jesus says, hey, think about this. Think about this. You ready? Think about this. I have paid the price for your redemption. I have ended all of the law's demands. I am the fulfillment of everything you have to pay for. I am the one who's made a way, and because I have, because you are joined to me through my death and resurrection, because you are joined to me, you have heaven to walk through. You have a task that is spiritual and eternal and things to do that go way beyond the scope of this world. Don't worry about the little things. Don't worry. You lose them, guess what? That's okay. That's okay. Remember I, Jesus, and the Lord of the temple who is one heaven for you. Here's the thing. If you are not, if you are not a believer in Jesus, then one thing is still left unpaid, and that is the price for your redemption. And I mean that there is a day of collection coming. There's a day where the collector, God, names it. The day where your very soul is required of you. And if Jesus hasn't paid the redemption price for you, if you have not believed on him, put your faith in him, the payment's going to be made, people. It's either going to be made by the blood of Jesus as He died on the cross and was raised to everlasting life, or it will be made by your very own soul suffering eternal punishment in hell forever. It will be collected upon. And that is the great truth of the gospel, is that Jesus stood in the place of those who were dying in a world that was passing away. And Jesus comes in and offers an everlasting life of redemption. A life that is atoned for fully by His grace and His blood. So that now, those who believe in Him can have that spiritual life, that life that is not set With its mind on the flesh, but a mind that is set on the spirit, a mind that is set on the truth, a mind that is set and given an eternal and glorious existence. So take heart, people, take heart and know. that God has given you everything in Jesus Christ. There's nothing that he's withheld from you. There's nothing that he won't give. If God, Romans 8 says, has given you his son, how will he not also with him graciously give you all things? He will. He will. You got to deal with the matters of the mundane, the inconveniences, the taxes, the life, the boss that you don't want to listen to or whatever it is. Hey, you know what? Don't cause an offense. You have heaven. You have a greater thing to focus on. You have a greater Savior. He is the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.