I'll please return to Mark's Gospel. I want to really now just expound this section in Mark's Gospel in Mark 12 verse 13 to 17. This second assault on Jesus, this second trap laid for him in the last week of his life. Last Sunday evening we really just focused on verse 13 and how what was going on in terms of the way the devil through these men was seeking to lay a trap for Christ, we saw that it was paradigmatic, it was illustrative of the way the devil seeks to ensnare God's people. A servant is not above his master and so we can learn from the life of Christ, particularly this last week of his life, what we need to be aware of, what we need to watch over Because the devil's attacks will always not be obvious. They always come in ways we don't expect. As a church, as officers, as individuals. But now we're going to really understand, I made references obviously to the whole context, but really what is going on here is so important. It's a very important issue for the 21st century. So let's read Mark 12 verse 13 to 17 remembering that these are not the words of men but the words of God that holy men wrote and spoke as they were carried by the Holy Spirit. Mark 12 verse 13. Then they sent to him some of the Pharisees and 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? And they said to him, Caesars. 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 to him. That word render could mean translated pay. Pay to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's. Let's pray once more. Please Father we pray for your spirit to be given now to the preacher and the congregation make this word a blessing to our souls. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen. Here we are on Wednesday. Two days from now the Son of God will be nailed to a tree, hanging there in the noonday sun, bearing the wrath of God for our sins. But he was given no rest. This last week was a week full of trial for the Son of God. Here he is being prayed on by predators, by evil men. We know they're evil men from other accounts in Matthew and Luke. We are told that Jesus saw the evil of their hearts. He saw their hypocrisy. He saw what they were doing. This was a sinister attack against the Son of God. They were seeking to find a way to be rid of Christ. Now this is actually one of the arguments The fact that they want to be rid of him is one of the arguments for who he is. Because I'm telling you now, there is no human justification to want to be rid of Christ. There was no one like him. He was so pure, pure in heart, pure indeed. He did nothing that could be considered unkind, unjust. When he was stood before Pilate, even Pilate, when Pilate interviewed him, you remember Pilate was bewildered about this whole situation. He stood before the Jewish people and said, What do you want me to do with him? They said, Crucify him! And Pilate says, Why? What evil has he done? There was no evil in Christ at all. That not even a godless man like Pilate who worshipped idols could look at this man and say there really is no moral violation in his life. Not even Herod could find anything of that nature. In fact they had to make up charges against him. He only went about doing good, the scriptures said. Why would you kill someone who heals people and comforts people and saves people and speaks cheer to people's souls? What would there be to hate about one who says, I bruise, read, I won't break. I'm really gentle with gentle souls and fragile people. I smoke in flats, I will not quench. I'm not so demanding that when I see imperfect faith, when I see people who mean well, but they're not quite doing it well enough, that I just snuff it out and go, you're not good enough. What is there to dislike in the son of God? They want to kill him. Now dear friends, that is evidence of who he is. He's God. Because that is exactly what the heart of man does with God all the time. The Bible says sin is enmity. It's an old word. It just simply means hostility. Sin is hostility. It's war with God. It is that desire of, I do not want to be accountable to God. I do not want to be under his authority. I want to be my own authority. In fact, one of the things they said of Christ is, we will not have this man, what comes next? To reign over us. Well, that is the cry of the United Kingdom today. We don't want Islam. We want cultural Christianity, but we don't want Christ. We will not have this man to reign over us. God forbid that he should challenge something in my life. God forbid that I should have to forsake something in my life. No, I want his benefits but I don't want him. And this is a textbook case, what we have here. This attack that we see set for Christ is an old trick. And it's actually one that many professing Christians fall into. Because what they're doing is they're trying to force Christ to pick a side. They're trying to force Christ to choose one or the other when actually they've forgotten the third option, the third way, because there's often a third way, which is they both complement one another. You see, the trap they set for him was, you've got to choose Christ, God, or Caesar. Because it never occurred to them that it's possible to choose God and to obey Caesar. It is possible to honour God and to honour Caesar. That was not an option that was on their radar. That just shows you they're not God, they're not who they thought they were, they're not as clever as they thought they were, they didn't know the Scriptures, they were thinking only along human reasoning. And people do that today, don't they? Professing Christians do that today. Let me give you an example. Well, you know, I either have to commit to the church or I have to choose my family. So the same law, the moral law, which says you should have neither gods before me and also says honour your mother and your father. In other words, God is saying it's possible to do both. To fulfil your family obligations and to fulfil your obligations to God. Clever clogs, and ultimately this reveals a heart that wants to evade obligation. It's actually often a smoke screen. I need to choose my family over the church. No, really what you're looking for is an excuse to evade your obligations to the church. Or another one. You've either got to choose sovereignty of God, either sovereign in salvation, but you deny free will and the reality of human beings genuinely making a choice of their own desire. Now, of course, we know the theology of this and I've preached that another time about how that works. But what I'm saying is people often imply, well, if God's sovereign then humans have no responsibility. You see that in churches all around the country. I can't do anything about my salvation because God's sovereign. I'm not responsible to believe. I'm not responsible to repent. Or people so emphasise human responsibility that they ultimately lose a suffering God. Or they say, well you know, you say your God is good, but God is either good, but then there's evil in the world, and there's sin in the world, and therefore I don't see how these two things can be true. Pick one. And you see people are doing this all the time. Or church discipline, or loving empathy. You see that one? Well, if you go down the path of church discipline with an individual, it means you're not being loving and showing empathy to the individual, as if somehow you can't do both, as if somehow you can't honour the Scriptures, uphold His law and holiness in the church whilst also loving an individual. Rather, actually, the discipline may be the function of loving empathy. I don't want this soul to live in sin, I don't want this soul to suffer, I don't want this soul to go to hell eternally. And so they need to understand. You see people are very clever. It's all a devil's handprint. The devil loves to use truth against truth. He loves to play truth against truth because he doesn't understand nor know how truth fits together in perfect harmony. Or one of the last sort of hundred years, it's been a big one and it's led many young people to leave the church. You've got to choose believing in a literal creation in six days or science. And what's the presupposition there? That you can't believe in a literal six-day creation and also be a respectable scientist. And we know, if you have any interest to know, there are scientists out there who have as many letters next to their name as unbelieving atheistic scientists who believe in evolution, and are just as qualified, just as intellectual, just as well-studied. They've read all the papers, they've read all Darwin's work, they've read it all, and yet they still embrace the historicity of Genesis 1-3. because they do not see any contradiction between these things. But of course it's convenient to look for a contradiction because then you don't have to obey God. Because if you can deny there's a creator then you're no longer accountable to God, are you? A lot of these worldviews that have been permeated in our schools like evolution, all of these things, they're just code word for saying an excuse not to believe in God. Because once we remove creator we remove the need to be subject to the creator. Or another one, which I've been thinking about with some of our young men, is you've got to pick and choose. Christ is either fully God, therefore he's not fully human. Or he's fully human, therefore he's not fully God. Or there's a third option, he's fully God and fully human. Well, I don't understand that. Doesn't matter really, does it? If the scriptures reveal that, then we receive it and live in the mystery of it all, in the wonder of it all. There's a presupposition today that obedience to the law of God must always be legalistic and burdensome. The idea that you can be holy and happy is just not possible. So I've either got to pick freedom to live how I want or miserable to obey what God wants. Or obey what God wants and be happy. But no one ever considered that as a possibility, that blessed is the man whose meditation is in the law of the God day and night, who does not take his seat among the scoffers, happy is he whose God is the Lord. Or people that suggest self-control over your lusts and passions is opposed to freedom. Okay so the only way I can be truly free is to do whatever I want but that's actually to be slavery isn't it, that's to be a slave to your lust, I just am a slave to whatever I want. True freedom is found in actually being born again by the Spirit of God, receiving new desires and saying I don't have to be a slave to my lust, I'm free. I'm free to choose righteousness, that's freedom, that's not slavery. Do you see what I'm saying? I hope by giving these examples I'm setting the context for the issue here because this issue though has a particularly tight application to the issue of civil disobedience and belief in God and obedience to God and how these two things relate. I want you to see that among this trap are lots of other traps that Christians fall into. There's a principle here and you're seeing Satan's devices forcing you to pick a side when you don't need to pick a side. that actually truth holds together in perfect harmony. So firstly to me, the savage attack. I was discussing with someone recently the saying, he whose enemy is my enemy is my friend. You heard that saying before? He whose enemy is my enemy is my friend. And this is a saying that really summarises what happens when you have what's called unholy alliances. And here you have an unholy alliance. Two groups of people who hated Jesus because Jesus offended them both. You have the Pharisees. They claim to be the men serious about God, holiness and righteousness. No loyalty to anyone but the Lord. You shall have no other gods but the Lord. Caesar seeks to usurp the authority of God. Therefore, we in obedience to the law of God, we defy Caesar. There was lots of Jewish rebellions against Rome. one led by a man called Judas Maccabeus in AD 6. And the Pharisees' fingers were all over these rebellions and uprisings. They'd stir up the people and then the people would would uprise and rebel and fight Rome. They saw Rome then as an enemy. They saw human authority as a threat. They were what you call purists. They were separatists. They were anti-the world. They were anti-Greek culture. They were legalists of the highest order and they resisted taxes because they believed that only God should have our resources. Now this can sound like some, not all, some Reform Christians, you know, ultra-separatists, ultra-loyal to the gods, the law of God, the word of God, the doctrines of God. But there's a question mark. What does that God say about other areas? Because to be really loyal to that God actually means obeying him in all the areas he's told you to obey him. That is the true test actually of your loyalty to God. So that was the Pharisees. Then you have the Herodians. They were the secular Jews. They loved Greek culture. I noticed that one of our churches in Eastbourne last Sunday in their worship service, they didn't have a sermon, but they decided to have the person in worship was blowing bubbles up and down the service whilst they were singing in the frenzy doing lots of actions. The Herodians would have gone to that church. The Herodians cling to a little bit of Judaism, but it was worldly Judaism. They were desperate to go out with the old and with the new. Let's Hellenize our worship. Let's make our worship services as comfortable as possible for modern man. That's what they were like. And they loved being under Roman rule, because it was great. You had the two... Sorry, I made a mistake last week. My wife went, I said, a thousand-year Pax Romana. It was a 200-year Pax Romana of peace, and the Roman Empire lasted for a thousand years. But they were living in the Pax Romana, a time of peace. It was much better. I mean, the Romans get a lot of bashing, but it was a lot better to live in a situation where barbarian hordes were invading your land every five, ten years. and pillaging and raping. The Romans did establish then conditions that were far more desirable, and I say that with the awareness that they had the Colosseums and there was a lot that was bad, but they built roads, they built infrastructure, they allowed free trade. People were more prosperous on their own than they were before. And so they said, well, we should be loyal to Caesar. And for them, pleasing Caesar mattered more than the finer details. Those Pharisees, those Reformed, they're just too serious about the word of God. Oh, they're killjoys. We have Christian liberty, they would say, if they were to the life today. We have freedom, regulative principle, Our worship being restricted by what God has positively required of us. No, we want to be inventive and creative. This sounds like modern evangelicalism, doesn't it? Today. And yet, these two sides, which wouldn't have been seen in a bar together, well, the Raphaelites wouldn't have even gone to a bar, of course, but they found common ground here, they couldn't stand Christ. You say, well, how is it that Christ could upset what seems to be people on two opposite sides of the spectrum? Well, actually, we know how, and they tell us how, even though they don't mean it. They don't mean it, but they don't realise that what they're saying that they don't mean is actually true. Verse 14, "'Teacher, we know that you are true, care about no one.' He doesn't care about what man thinks, does he? He only cares about what God thinks. For you do not regard the person of men, you're not intimidated by men. So when he's preaching a sermon, he's not thinking, oh, that person who gives a lot of money to the church, they might leave. He's not being swayed by status, by those kind of things that often human beings can be swayed by. Rather, he teaches the way of God in truth. All he cares is that people know the truth because the truth alone sets free. And you see, because he told the truth, the truth exposed them both. You often find this, that two extremes in doctrinal error are different sides of the same coin. Take legalism, which is that desire that I've got to please God by the law. I've got to make laws and please God. I've got to be really careful. And take antinomianism, It doesn't matter how I live. Sinclair Ferguson wrote a really good book on this called The Whole Christ and what he does is he shows you these are non-identical twins. Both of them view the law as burdensome. Both of them view the law as heavy and oppressive. And so the legalist says but I'm going to try anyway. Never feeling like I quite arrive. The antinomian says, yeah, that's really burdensome, I'm not going to bother, I'm going to go and be free. You see? And then the truth comes and both sides will get convicted. The law is not burdensome, antinomian. It's wonderful. It's his moral character. It's holiness. Holiness is beautiful. This is what you were made to be. And he'll give you the spirit to help you obey him when you're saved. Legalist, you can't be saved by keeping the law. Christ kept it for you. You see the gospel comes right in. But now you've been saved and received the spirit. I'm calling you to walk in my statues. The truth cuts to both extremes. And here, Christ offended both groups. The Pharisees were proud, self-righteous. They saw holiness as about just being good, being outwardly good. I've always been kind, I've always been respectful, I've always bowed before authority, I've always opened the door for an old person, I helped an old person cross the road, I've paid my taxes, I've always been that kind of person. That's the Pharisees. Therefore, what God could ever condemn a man like me or a woman like me? But they were just as idolatrous as those like the Herodians who worshipped worldly materialism because the God they worshipped was their own image, their own holiness, their own righteousness. So they would make their prayers before people and use mighty long words, they would let everyone know that they're praying, they were trying to draw attention to themselves, they'd take the best seats at the feasts. And Christ comes to these Pharisees and he cuts right through the sham of their dead religion. Unless you're born again, you cannot see the kingdom of heaven. Your heart, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your, we've never committed adultery, we've always been faithful to our spouses. If you look at a woman to lust, you've committed adultery. We have never murdered anyone if you've had anger in your heart to anyone. and that fume in your heart that would be quite pleased that that person didn't exist, you've committed murder. You see, Christ comes and he cuts through to these Pharisees and says, Your self-righteousness will not survive the gaze of the Holy God. Man looks on the outward appearance, oh indeed, and they praise you for your good deeds. But when you stand before God naked and exposed, and you are confronted with the whole record of your life, thoughts, desires and deeds, you will cry out, hide me from the wrath of God. You will not be able to stand before the bar of his justice because all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Even you Pharisees, the most externally and outwardly righteous people in Israel, you are guilty. You need a saviour. You cannot be justified by good works. You need me to save you. You're sick and dying. You need atoning. You need an atonement. You need someone to pay for your sin. And more than that, Nicodemus, you must be born again. The flesh profits nothing. That which is born of a woman is a woman, is flesh. We're all born in sin. You need a new heart. You need to cry out to God, change me. I can't change myself. Well, you can see what an offence that was to self-righteous people, just as it is today in the United Kingdom and in Britain. And that's going to be the problem, you see. There's going to be a moment when the cultural Christian warriors that march in our cities, and I have sympathy with their calls in many respects, I really do, and how they feel. But when they are confronted with Christ, when they realise that you can't stand up and hold a cross in London whilst blaspheming at the same time, that you need Christ to save you from your sin. It's not just the lot over there which are chanting death to Israel, death to the IDF. You also need saving. You're not morally superior to that side. Suddenly you will see people will go, oh hang on, I'm not sure I like this. Maybe Christianity isn't something I want to harm, it's after all. If it convicts me of sin, and they would turn on it. And then there was obviously the Herodians, they were lawless. They only obeyed God if it advanced their worldly interests. God won't mind. They worshipped the god of mammon, which is really the worship of self too. Why do you live for riches and money? Because riches and money procure what you want to satisfy your lusts, whether that be women, whether that be pleasure, whether that be ecstasy, whatever it is. And they heard Christ say, if any man would come after me Let him forsake all. Let him deny himself. Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Make an about turn. Your life is heading to destruction. You need to make a complete U-turn. You're sick and you're dying. You cannot serve God and mammon. You cannot serve God and the world. What good is it to gain the whole world and then what, lose your soul? One thing is certain in this life, we all die and naked we came into this world and naked we leave this world. What good will it be to have accumulated all the stamps from the last 300 years of the British Empire? What good would it have been to have your car collection on your driveway? ' And so they agreed that whilst we don't agree on anything, we agree on this. He needs to go. We'll deal with ourselves after, we'll go back to fighting after. Let's just form a temporary peace to kill Christ and then we can get back to warring with each other. Now you can be sure both sides thought that whatever side Christ fell on in this would be in their interest because the Pharisees thought, well if we can get him to side with the Herodians then we can, by getting Christ crucified, we can also finish off the Herodians. And the Herodians thought to themselves, this is great, if we can get him to side, to be guilty of blasphemy, we can also attack the Pharisees and accuse them of their own hypocrisy as well. Now they bring hypocritical praise, we've seen that in verse 14 and they want to catch him in his words, they've come up with a plan, they've hatched a plan and this plan is humanly very good. I think in one sense you have to admire it, it's quite clever, that is true. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not? Shall we pay or shall we not pay? We want a yes or no. Now, what is the tax they are referring to? Well, in particular, this context, they're referring to an annual tax that was levied by the Roman emperor. This tax had been in existence since about 86, when there was a Jewish rebellion against Rome, and as a result of that rebellion, once it was crushed as punishment, and to keep them in their place, they levied this annual tax on the Jewish people. And the Jewish really, really resented it, as you can understand. But furthermore, the coin itself. The coin itself had Caesar's head on the front of the coin. But it also had text in Latin which said, quote, Augustus Tiberius Caesar, son of the divine God. And on the other side of the coin was written, High Priest and Son of God. You can see why this was a master trap. Because this coin demanded idolatry. Yet it also demanded you pay your taxes. And so the Jews felt able to resist this tax because they felt that in paying this tax they were in essence guilty of making a carved or graven image of God and worshipping idols. You can see the trap here. It was very unacceptable to the Jew. but you see, secondly, Christ's shocking answer. Christ's shocking answer. Firstly, you see Christ's omniscience in verse 15. He, knowing their hypocrisy, says, why do you test me? He knows when our questions come from a genuine place of wanting to know the answer, a teachability, and when our questions are a smokescreen for finding an excuse to resist and to not believe the truth. It's been one of my griefs as a pastor in my tenth year now of ministry and in my experience I've found so often when people come to me with a question about a matter of theology or practice or a decision they want to make, they've already made their mind up. They're just looking for me to confirm them in what they think. And when I don't do that, you suddenly realise they had no interest in what I had to say in the first place. They're going to do it anyway. They're looking. They've already decided what they want to hear. These men don't want to hear. They don't want to know. They know what they think. They just want to trap him. What was Christ's response? Verse 16. We've seen his omniscience, his response. Bring me a denarius. Now I find that quite interesting. I don't know this, and I am going beyond the scripture here in terms of I don't know this, but it's sort of like I wonder, was it the Pharisees that brought out the denarius? That would have been funny, wouldn't it? Because, you see, just asking the Pharisees to bring out the denarius would have already exposed the hypocrisy to their question. Because clearly they were quite happy to use the coinage in buying and selling. despite the fact that there was this image of Caesar and the words, Son of God, Priest of the Most High. So, just by saying, they're actually going, oh yeah, oh yeah, we do use this coin. And furthermore, in bringing it to him and asking him to look at the coin, whose head do you see on it? He's drawing their attention to the fact of all the blessings you're currently knowing in your lives, the roads that you travel on, The army that protects you from marauding barbarians. Who pays for them? Who pays for the law and order that you currently enjoy? Who pays for the Pax Romana? Who pays for all of these things? Caesar. Caesar. Caesar pays. Caesar pays for the infrastructure. Caesar pays for the army that protects you. Caesar pays for the police. Caesar pays for the roads. Caesar pays for the courts. Caesar. And they answer the question. They can't ignore it. Caesar. They know. And Jesus says, Render to Caesar the things of the Caesars. Pay to Caesar what is Caesar's. Now, if he'd stopped there, the Pharisees would have gone, Yes! We've got him. He's a blasphemer. He's saying that we should worship Caesar. He's saying that we should render homage to Caesar and not to God. But he doesn't stop there. And he says, render to God the things that are God's. There are certain things you owe Caesar. God, you might not like it, we might not like our current government. We might not like it, but God in his sovereign right has the right to decide at any given moment who rules over us in history to fulfil his purposes. Because God can draw straight lines with crooked sticks. God can bring about his purposes through evil men. But he's saying, look, you haven't got to like Caesar, you haven't got to agree with all of his policies, you haven't even got to like how he spends your taxes. But you owe him your taxes. But there is a limit to what you owe Caesar. And so now he's also taking issue with the coin. We have to use these coins because they're the only coins we have. But I disagree vehemently with what the coin says. It's ironic actually that he who is the son of God, who is the priest of the most high God, our prophet, priest and king, he who is the only indisputable ruler of the world, he who is the true Caesar of the world, is holding this coin where this person claims to be these things And he says, render to God. What is God? You see how he exposes the blindness of both men in both parties? Herodians, you thought you could live your life without any reference to God. You thought you could ignore the need of your soul and your heart. You thought it didn't matter how you lived, it didn't matter what you desired, it didn't matter what you thought. You thought that life could be merely lived on the human level and that it would all be well with you. You have failed to render to God what is God's. And the day will come when God will call you to an account and say, what have you done with the life I gave you? How have you used the eyes and the mouth and the hands and the feet and the instruments and the gifts and the mind? How have you used those things to serve sin? To rebel against me? You've taken my good gifts to wage your war on me? Herodias, you're guilty of forfeiting God's rights over your soul. Pharisees. Who institutes the governments? Who is the king over all the kings of the earth? Who causes kings to rise and kings to fall? Empires to rise and empires to fall. Who is the one exercising his will over all human authority? God. And therefore, who puts Caesar where he is? God. You don't honour me and respect me. if you don't pay your taxes to the ruler that is there to do what I have called him to do. Oh, but he doesn't do it well. That's his problem. If Caesar doesn't do what he's called to do, he will be accountable to me for that, and he will pay. But I'm asking you to pay your taxes to Caesar, and you haven't been doing that. You see, they came to set a trap for Jesus, and what's Jesus now done? He set a trap for them. He's not only evaded the trap, he's exposed them. We see this teaching expanded on in Romans 13, don't we? We know these verses. Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities, says the Apostle Paul. We're not to be lawless. We're not to desire anarchy in our societies. Why? Why are we to be subject to governing authorities? For there is no authority except from God. God has established authority in the world. Parents, teachers, policemen, soldiers, rulers, governments. They are appointed by God. Therefore, whoever resists the authority, whoever opposes that authority that God has put there, will bring judgement on themselves. Because actually you're saying, I don't care about God's authority. Because they're actually meant to be, if they're doing it rightly, which most of them don't, but they're meant to be using their authority to establish the will of God. Because it goes on, four, because rulers are not a terror to good work. Rulers aren't meant to be discouraging good work. I read this week, in light of the budget. And this is not being political, this is a fact, this is wrong, this is morally wrong. A family of four or five children now that aren't working can earn more money on the benefits system than two men, a couple with children who are both working minimum wage. That is wrong. And that is disregarding the importance of hard work and it's rewarding laziness and punishing hard work. And so the magistrate, our government, are not doing this. They're not doing what they're meant to do under God. Rather than being a terror to evil, they're being a terror to good work. They're basically persuading people it's not worth your while working. And work is good. God made us to work. It's a noble thing to work. So there'll be a sermon for another time to think about, to expound this passage and show how our governments and Caesar would have failed in their role. But that doesn't change the fact that they still had authority by God to do their role. Do you want to be, it says, afraid of the authority? Do what is good and you will have praise from the same. For the authority is God's minister, his servant, to you for good. So a government that is really behaving as God's servant is going to say, we need to have a strong military because our first duty is to protect our citizens from foreign threats. So we invest money from the tax system into the military. We need to have good infrastructure because good economies will thrive when there is good freedom of movement and travel. And so we fix the potholes. In fact, we just put new roads down. Governments will spend the taxes wisely because they're seeking to to cultivate a society that will lead to human flourishing. We need to have policemen on the streets around the clock and we need to also make sure that people get just punishments. We are being a terror to evil and we are being a positive enforcer of what is good. And when a magistrate does that they will receive praise and commendation from God. But notice when Paul wrote these words, because this can be the wiggle out, ah yeah but okay but what if the government's not doing those things? Who was Caesar when Paul wrote these words? Most people suggest Nero. If you know anything about Nero, Nero unleashed the most ferocious persecution on Christians that has ever been seen. It was Nero who had them burning as lamps for his parties and his events. It was Nero that had women and children from the church rounded up and fed to the lions for the entertainment of the Coliseum and the rock watchers. This is the man that Paul says be subject to the governing authorities. Or Peter, and remember Peter's writing to Christians that have been dispersed, who have been scattered because of persecution, they've lost their homes, they've been moved from place to place. Look at 1 Peter 2 verse 13, therefore submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake. You respect your government out of a respect for God. I don't like you because I love my God and he's put you there. I don't know why he's put you there but he has. I'm going to respect you but it's for the Lord's sake not for your sake. Whether to the king as supreme or to governors as to those who are sent by him. Here it is again, this is the purpose of government for the punishment of evildoers and the praise of those who do good. For this is the will of good, that by doing good you put to silence the ignorance of foolish men. The idea being there is when governments want to accuse Christians of being insurrectionists, You can say, look at my life. I've paid my taxes. I've been honest in my dealings. I've respected authorities. I was preaching in the streets and the policeman wanted to arrest me unjustly, but I didn't fight with him. I didn't argue with him. I offered myself. I said, if you need to do this, then do this. I don't think it's just. I commend, but do what you will. like Christ, you're meek and you're humble, I am not a threat to your society, I pray for your society, I'm a patriot in the true sense of the word, I love my nation and my country, I pray for the king, I pray for the magistrate, I pray for the citizens, I am not your enemy. And you put to silence then, Christians will put to silence the false accusations of unjust rulers. but you're to be ultimately subject to the things of God. Now this is where it gets messy and it'll be a sermon for another time. There is a case for civil disobedience that's done respectfully, discreetly and carefully when the government would demand that you do evil. You must disobey the government. When the government clash, because a lot of people quote this, render to Caesar the things of the Caesar's in the church and they forget the last bit and to God the things of the God. Only God shall be worshipped. Only God demands your heart and your soul and your mind and your strength. It is God's law that ultimately you are accountable to obey. When Caesar's laws clash with God's laws, you obey God's laws. So let me ask you a question. Suppose we're under the occupation of a government like the Nazis were in France, for example, that are executing and hanging innocent people and are slaughtering people. Would it be a sin for a Christian living in France in Nazi Germany to have joined the French resistance? I would propose to you, we were living in that kind of scenario, that would be the right and the just thing to do. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was right to seek to have Hitler assassinated. Because the moral law of God says, thou shalt not murder. In other words, positively, you must do all you can to protect innocent life. And if that means taking the head off the snake, then I must do that. And you see, that is why the Puritans, our forefathers, our Christian forefathers, they engaged in a civil war against King Charles. John Owen was the chaplain to Oliver Cromwell. Christians have forgot the case for a just war. Were the Americans right to have a war of independence? Well, we can make jokes with them and say, well, you know, you disobeyed the king, Romans 13, or Peter says, you know, honour the emperor. But we were taxing them beyond what was just. And they were, when they had bad harvest, when they had bad crops, their taxation was literally crippling them. to the point where people were suffering and even dying. And there came a point where they broke as a country, as a people group. And they said, we can't do this anymore. And I'm of the view that there was a just cause to effectively say, we are taxed, but we have no representation. We are taxed, but we have no influence. We are taxed, but we can't influence a taxation policy. We want to have our own taxation policy. And notice, what was the first thing they did? after that war was won. They formed a constitution. They set up authority. And in fact, the way they set up authority in America was to provide, you might say, checks and balances on authority, was to limit the central power of the state. They're not anti-authority, they were pro-authority, but they were pro-biblical authority. And so I'm not trying to open up a cat of worms here, I'm trying to show you that Christians often are guilty of the same thing here. We either render to Caesar what is Caesar's, but we neglect what is God's. Or we render to God what is God's, but we forget what we owe Caesar. And so allow me to close further and last with searching application. Let me ask you this question. Which of you are more like? Are you more like a Herodian, or are you more like a Pharisee? Because depending on our bent, we'll be one or the other. Are you more inclined to be solely concerned with this life? You never give thought to what you need to give up? What you need to forsake? What God calls you to lose, to repent of? God forbid you lose some lust and pleasure. God forbid you lose some profit. Keeping the laws they holy, is profit more important to you than holiness? The Herodians forsook the claims of God when they clashed with their worldly ambitions. Are you a Herodian? Or are you tempted parents to, and this will come if you've got young children, to skip church because of the children's party, because of the Sunday league football. Are you refusing to repent of sin in any area of your life because it's incompatible with your worldly ambitions? Are there areas of your life where they can't be challenged? Have you rendered to God what is God's? That's an important question. But are you a Pharisee? Are you like the Pharisees, claiming to respect God's authority? Why defying it? Do you play around with your tax returns? They say their spouse gets paid when they're not doing any work to lower their tax bracket. Do you understand? Hey, they overtax us anyway. I mean, come on. We're taxed too high anyway. We pay tax on fuel duty. We pay tax on this and pay tax on that and pay tax on that. It's justified. No, it wouldn't be justified. It would be lying. Because I would say Kat's being paid for something she's not doing. And I am not rendering to Caesar what is Caesar's. Do you do this? Do you fiddle? There's a difference between taking advantage of lawful and legitimate loopholes. That's different. I would actually argue that the unbelievers are more shrewd than we often are. If there are legitimate and lawful loopholes that you can take advantage of, take them, while you can, before they close them. That's not illegal, that's not denying Caesar what is Caesar's, that's common sense. But do you cheat? Do you watch live TV and don't pay a TV licence? Oh, come on pastor, you know that a TV licence is wrong. Yes, for the life of me, I don't understand why I can't watch ITV live when I'm not paying a tax to the BBC. It doesn't make sense, but it's the law. It's the law. Do you break the speed limit? Yeah, but the 20 mile an hour speed limit is ridiculous. It is, and it drives me crazy. But you haven't got to like it, it's the law. And what witness are you doing for Christ when you just fragrantly break the speed limit? What happens if you kill someone driving over the speed limit? You go to prison. Do you see? Christians can also be guilty of these things. Oh well I'm rendering to God what is God's. I go to church twice on the Lord's Day. I go to the prayer meeting. But are you fragrantly just ignoring all the other commandments about the obligations you have elsewhere? Wives. Now, if I said this in the world, I'd get shot at because they don't understand what I'm saying. But you wax lyrical about, oh, what a lovely, what a lovely head Christ is, head of the church, oh, and it's a joy to submit to Christ. Oh, it's a joy to obey his commandments and to follow him and to do his will. Do you disregard the authority of your husband? Do you seek to usurp his authority in your life? and rather than be led you want to lead him. You say well I know the scripture is better than him, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter, you still have to let him lead you. I can't provide every caveat, you know that doesn't mean you obey him if he wants you to sin. you can't give your input. If he's a good husband he will listen to your thoughts and he'll take that account and sometimes you might prevail with changing his mind because you're wise and God's given you gifts that he hasn't got. But are you saying on the one hand I submit to Christ but I won't submit to my husband? I have seen Christian marriages in reformed churches where the wife was not willing to say the vow, submit to my husband. Do you see the hypocrisy of that? just like a Pharisee. You're not respecting the fact that Christ has put the husband over you. And if he's going to be a loving husband, if he's going to do it properly, it will be the best thing in the world because you've just got this husband who's looking to say, basically, if husbands are to love their wives as Christ loved the church, you've got the better end of the deal, sisters. They have got the rubbish part. No, they have. They have got the worst deal. Because Christ loved the church by pouring out his soul, even unto death. He lost sleep, his health took its toll, and his health, his mental health, he broke under loving his church. He was crucified, he died. You know, that is why historically it's always been acceptable that, you know, when the Titanic's going down, men stay behind. Because it permeated our culture that men's job is to give themselves for the women and children. The husband, and I fall short of this, I really do, but that is my calling and that is your calling, husband, but wise, do you make it hard for your husband to do that? We say we love the scriptures and we love the word of God, but we have a take it or leave it approach to the sermons that we hear. What did Christ say to his disciples? He who rejects you rejects me. Now we're not talking about when you raise a question about a matter of interpretation and whether I've handled the scriptures rightly, that's different. But when you cannot bring scriptural objection, you are to obey those in authority in the church, without exception. I'm going to close with this application on Christ though, because if you think this is hard, right, This is hard. I really don't want to obey Kirstein, I don't like him. Or, you know, I'm yet to be persuaded about God's will being good. Wherever you are on the spectrum, you're like, this is hard. Consider him. Who perfectly embodied this principle? Christ. He rendered to God what was God's, his life. What did God ask of him? Give me thy life for my people. I love my people and this is my will for your life that you give yourself for them. Are you willing to do that, my son? I am. I am. And his baptism was his embracing that mission. I've come to do thy will. I must be about my father's business. He loves his people, I love this people. And so he loved God with all of his heart, soul, mind and strength. He rendered worship to him even when it was hard, even when it was costly, even when it made him cry and break and collapse and say, oh God, please let this cup depart from me. He always obeyed God rather than man. Even his own humanity that would say, I don't want to suffer, there's nothing sinful about that. He said, not my will, I'm not rendering to myself what is to be rendered to God. He asked me of my life for his people and my people, therefore he has it. But he also rendered respect and honour for the human authorities. Never was a man called to obey such an unjust regime and such an unrighteous trial. False charges, false accusations, and yet he offered his back to the Roman soldiers. He carried the cross on his shoulders up to Golgotha's hill. He allowed his arms to be stretched out and nailed to a wooden cross. He spoke respectfully to Pilate, though he also challenged him. Pilate says, do you not know that I have authority to kill you or to set you free? You would not have authority unless my father had given it to you. And for that reason, because I obey my father and he's put you here, I'm in your hands. Do with me as you see fit. There you see. a man who had every reason to not render to God what is God's, nor to Caesar what is Caesar's, and yet he perfectly offered God what was God's, and man what was man's, without neglecting any obligation to either one or the other, and he was crucified for it. That is your master, that is your king, that is your lord, and that is your savior, and he asked the same of you and me. And now as I said, that doesn't mean there aren't sometimes a case for just wars and lawful, a lawful way of overthrowing regimes if they're necessary. But again, you don't take matters into your own hands in that situation. You don't sort of, you're a Christian, but when things are developing politically and nationally, we can't avoid the fact that we're part of a country and when things are happening, we may have to choose a side in those situations. But this must be our instinct first and foremost. And God forbid there be a civil war in this nation. God forbid there be something where there's bloodshed on our streets. And we must trust God for the wisdom and grace to know what we should do in those moments when it comes. But it must always be for the Christian the absolute last resort. Christians must never be accused of being insurrectionists, trying to plot the downfall of government from within. We must be meek as a lamb. We must be innocent as doves. People need to see of Christians that if we start getting thrown in jails, if we start getting fined, if we start getting a hard time, the culture around us can say, I know this man. He was my neighbour. Or Christian parents get their children taken from them because they believe in moderate use of smacking. to deal with extreme cases of bad behaviour. But I know them, they're good parents. I saw them in the garden with their kids. They're loving, caring parents and their children love them. This is not just. We need to live in such a way that the world around us, when we are called to suffer, can say he or she suffers unjustly. They are good people. That's the call. It is a great calling. I can't do it in my strength, can you do it in your strength? But by God's grace, in him we can. Let's pray.