Good to see you. I want to encourage you to open your Bible this morning to Mark chapter 12, verse 13. Mark chapter 12, verse 13. I think when you have your Bible open, you will immediately see that the story that we're going to look at is part of a set of three. You should be able to see that right away. We're going to look at Mark 12, verse 13 to 17. And you'll see that. It'll probably be set out in your Bible as a separate paragraph. And right at the top, you'll see the words, And they sent to him some of the Pharisees and some of the Herodians. So that's an odd pairing, but those are some people who launch an attack, as it were, or initiate a confrontation with Jesus. Then look at the next story. Maybe your Bible gives it, like mine, the heading, The Sadducees Ask About the Resurrection. You'll notice that story begins with the words, Sadducees came to him, so that's another group that come to him, initiating a confrontation. And then you'll see a third story, starting in verse 28, which begins with the words, and one of the scribes came up to him. So these are three consecutive conflict stories. All the leaders of the Jewish people have come together in a bizarre coalition in order to thwart the rise of Jesus. This story takes place during Holy Week. It takes place after the triumphal entry that we've been talking about this morning on Palm Sunday. It happens after all the religious leaders have heard this huge throng of Galilean pilgrims singing to Jesus as if he were the king of the Jews. And so the leaders in Jerusalem, they don't like the sound of that at all. And so this forces them together into this unholy alliance to try to oppose Jesus. And in wave after wave, they come to him. Now, at the end of this section, if you still have your Bibles open, at the end of this section, look at how this section ends, okay, the last half of verse 34. After these three waves, it says this, and after that, No one dared to ask him any more questions, right? Wave after wave of people trying to trap Jesus. They had two ambitions. They wanted to discredit Jesus with the crowd, and they wanted to gather information that they could use in their eventual prosecution of Jesus before the Romans. That was the goal. And so they kept asking him these questions, but time after time, Jesus answered them in ways they could not withstand. And they learned an important lesson. At the very least, they learned don't play gotcha games with Jesus. Amen? Right? Don't ask questions. You're not prepared to deal with the answer. But that's what they were trying to do. They were trying to catch Jesus. They wanted to discredit him in the eyes of the crowd, so they got him to speak on controversial issues of the day. And then they were also hoping to gather some evidence they could use against the Romans. But it didn't work. Now, the meaning of this passage really isn't that hard to discern. The meaning is fairly straightforward. But the implications of this passage are almost past finding out. Think you could make an argument that in terms of politics and culture, this might be one of the most frequently referenced sayings of Jesus. Meaning, it's not necessarily the passage that has had the most impact on your life as a believer in terms of your day-to-day experiences, but this verse and the implications of this teaching, the climactic verse and the implications of the teaching as a whole, have been worked into Western culture Western political philosophy like yeast into so much dough. The church has been wrestling with the implications of this passage for 2,000 years. So we're going to wrestle with it. We're going to try to understand it. We're going to try to work out the implications. Here now the reading of Holy Scripture from Mark 12, 13 to 17. And they sent to him some of the Pharisees and some of the Herodians to trap him in his talk. And they came and said to him, Teacher, we know that you are true and do not care about anyone's opinion. For you are not swayed by appearances, but truly teach the way of God. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not? Should we pay them or should we not? But knowing their hypocrisy, he said to them, why put me to the test? Bring me a denarius, and let me look at it. And they brought one. And he said to them, whose likeness and inscription is this? They said to him, Caesar's. Jesus said to them, render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's. And they marveled at him. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Now, as I mentioned, this passage isn't terribly hard to understand. Jesus is in Jerusalem, as I mentioned. This is after the triumphal entry, but before his arrest. This is a Holy Week story, and it shows the Pharisees trying to discredit Jesus in the eyes of the crowd and gather information for a prosecution with the Romans. The Sanhedrin, which is the ruling authority in Jerusalem, the Sanhedrin did not have the authority to execute people, to execute capital punishment, without Roman oversight. And therefore the authorities know that if they want to get rid of Jesus, if they want to kill Him and get away with it, then they have to come up with a charge that the Romans will be interested in. The Romans, by and large, are not interested in theological intricacies. They're not terribly invested in whether Jesus is the Jewish Messiah or not. They are, however, interested in politics. And so the Pharisees try to trap Jesus into wading into a very charged political issue at the time, which was the issue of taxation. Judea was governed differently than Galilee. Judea was under direct Roman rule, which meant that the taxes you paid as a Jew living in Judea, living in Jerusalem, went directly to Caesar. Not only that, you had to pay those taxes in Judea with a particular coin. And so the Jews in Judea found this entire taxation issue to be doubly irksome. It was irksome, first of all, because it would be like if we paid taxes, and instead of them going down to Ottawa, they went to Washington. You'd find that annoying, wouldn't you? Taxation without representation, you don't get to vote, but you've got to pay for things, and it would be very vexing. It was also vexing, it was doubly irksome because the coin that the tax had to be paid in was considered by many Jews to be blasphemous in and of itself. It was a coin that had the face of Tiberius Caesar engraved upon it, and right away Jews don't like that. You're not supposed to make any graven images. Now you've got a coin with a graven image on it, and then you've got this inscription that said on the coin, Tiberius Caesar Augustus, son of the divine Augustus. That would cause problems for a Jew. And then on the back of the coin, if it wasn't already bad enough, There was a picture of Tiberius' mother, Livia, along with the inscription Pontifex Maximus, which means in Latin, High Priest. So this was just not a coin that a lot of Jews wanted to have anything to do with. It was a bad tax. It was a bad coin. And it had already been the cause of a fairly serious insurrection one generation ago. In A.D. 6, right, so remember this story is happening near the end of Jesus' life, obviously. So, you know, depending on what date you prefer for the crucifixion, you're somewhere between A.D. 27 and A.D. 33, we'll say. But back in A.D. 6, a fellow by the name of Judas the Galilean started a protest group that eventually became known as the Zealots. And the Zealots were a political action group. And Josephus tells us about this Judas that he called his countrymen cowards for being willing to pay tribute, that is taxes, to the Romans and for putting up with mortal masters in place of God. So there was already a political movement that said, if you pay this tax, you're a coward. You've betrayed Judaism. You've betrayed God. because you're accepting these Romans as your masters as if they were God. That was the political environment and the zealot movement gained momentum over the years and in fact... In A.D. 66, so that's after the death and resurrection of Christ, in A.D. 66, they started the insurrection that eventually led to a war with Rome that eventually led to the complete and utter destruction of the temple and the scattering of the Jewish people. That was the issue that the Pharisees tried to drag Jesus into. If he said, as they suspected he would, that you should not pay the tax, that it was blasphemous to even have the coin in your pocket, if he said that, then they could take that charge to the Romans and get Jesus executed on the charge of sedition. But if he said, no, no, no, go ahead and pay the tax, then Jesus would immediately be discredited in the eyes of the Jerusalem crowd. Because the Jerusalem crowd did not want to pay the tax. So they figured either way we win. Either way we win. That was the plan. But the answer that Jesus gave was far wiser, far loftier, far more insightful than they had anticipated. It was beyond the sort of wisdom that you would expect from a mere human teacher. And that, of course, is the point. Mark has been trying ever since chapter one to convince us that Jesus is more than a mere human teacher. Jesus is the Son of God. Now what he says is that people should render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's. In other words, he says that there are multiple spheres to which every individual belongs and therefore mutual obligations that must be attended to and that are not in and of themselves contradictory. R.T. France summarizes usefully here. He says, instead of setting loyalty to God and loyalty to Caesar in opposition to each other, the straightforward meaning of Jesus' words is that both may be maintained at the same time. So to put this in contemporary terms, Jesus is saying you can be a Christian and a Canadian. There's no essential conflict there. You can be a good Christian, you can be a good Canadian. You can worship God and pay your taxes. That's what the text is saying. But as I mentioned, the church has been wrestling with the implications of this teaching for nearly 2,000 years. So let me tease some of those out for you, starting with the one that is foundational to all the others. First one I'm gonna mention, is this, the New Covenant community will exist inside various other legitimate political entities. That's what Jesus is signaling here. He's obviously steering a different course than the zealots. That's the issue they wanted to get Jesus to declare on, and he took a completely different road. The zealots were trying to restore the theocracy to Israel. Theocracy is when the church and the state are one and the same. Theocracy is when the high priest is also the prime minister, right? That's what the zealots were after. They wanted to restore the theocracy. You see, in the Old Testament, church and state were one and the same. That's a theocracy. And the zealots wanted that back. And they assumed that God wanted it back. But Jesus does not appear to share that view. And this is one of the things people didn't get about Jesus. We've talked about this before. Do you remember when In John, or actually all the Gospels tell the story, but in John particularly, we're told that when Jesus did the feeding of the 5,000, and the crowds began to connect the dots, they began to think, you know what? This is the Messiah, because the Messiah is supposed to feed the people of God. The Messiah is supposed to provide food and drink without cost. Jesus has just fed 5,000 people. All the lights started going on in people's brains. And the Bible actually says that they wanted to come and make Jesus king by force. Do you remember that? John 6.15 though says Jesus didn't want to have anything to do with that. Perceiving then that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself. Jesus was not interested in theocracy. Right? That was not his game. That's not why he came. That's not what he was fighting for. He said that to Pilate, remember? He said, my kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting that I might not be delivered over to the Jews, but my kingdom is not from the world. Jesus did not come to restore the theocracy to Israel, or to the United States, by the way, or to Canada. Jesus came to begin building a kingdom that would draw its citizens from every tribe, tongue, and nation on planet Earth, and that would exist for a season inside every tribe, tongue, and nation on planet Earth. That is the change that Jesus is signaling. D.A. Carson puts it this way. He says, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that Jesus is announcing a fundamental change This is one of the main differences between the Old Testament and the New Testament. And I would say this, one of the most important things for you to wrestle with as a Christian is the relationship of the Old Testament to the New Testament, because there's a thousand different ways to get this wrong, and this is one of the most important issues right here. Hard to avoid the conclusion that Jesus is announcing a fundamental change in the administration of the covenant community. The locus of the community is no longer a theocratic kingdom. It is now an assembly of churches from around the world living under many kings and Caesars and offering worship to none of them. And that is why many Christians around the world trace the history of the non-establishment of a particular religion to this utterance of the Lord Jesus himself. This is so incredibly important, so historically significant. And this is why we have to be careful how we interpret and apply some of the laws in the Old Testament. The Old Testament assumed a theocracy. That's a different context. Meaning, again, in the Old Testament, church and state were one and the same. That changes how you do things. So, for example, in the Old Testament, having sex with your father's wife was punishable by death. That was a capital crime. It was a form of incest. Leviticus 20 verse 11 says, If a man lies with his father's wife, he has uncovered his father's nakedness, both of them shall be put to death, their blood is upon them. But then, in the New Testament, in 1 Corinthians 5, when this exact situation comes up, do you remember this? Remember in 1 Corinthians chapter 5? Paul says, there's a man among you who is having his father's wife. Now obviously what happened is the man's biological mother had passed, his father married a younger woman, and the son has seduced his father's new wife. Paul says, this is happening in your church. And you remember what Paul said? Did he say, you need to take this brother outside and stone him? Is that what he says? No, he doesn't say that. Because the church and the state are not one and the same anymore. The church does not have the power of the sword anymore. So he doesn't say that. But by the way, notice what he also doesn't say. He doesn't say, hey listen, in the New Testament it's all grace. God doesn't care about that kind of stuff anymore. No, he doesn't say that either. The principle remains in effect. God's holy, He hasn't changed. If He found something to be displeasing 4,000 years ago, you understand He finds it displeasing today because He has not changed. But the punishment is different. Listen to what Paul actually does say, 1 Corinthians 5, 4-5. He says, When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus, and my spirit is present with the power of our Lord Jesus, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord. Do you hear that? He says, Next time you get together, you kick this brother out of the church. You excommunicate him. with the hope that he would understand what that means, that he would be humbled and frightened by the rebuke of the community, that he would repent, seek the Lord, and be restored. But you excommunicate the brother. Do you see how things are different? Execution has become excommunication. But the same things are pleasing and displeasing to God, because we're not a theocracy anymore, so we do things differently. The church is a gathering now of people from every tribe, tongue, and nation on planet earth under various administrations and legislations, operating inside all of those various administrations. So obviously, necessarily, some of the rules and parameters of our communal life have been adjusted. That is one of the most foundational truths in the New Testament. And it's the foundational implication of this text and the next four that I'm going to mention flow logically out of it. If that's true, then here we go with some others. The second of those further four implications is this. Therefore, there is no essential clash between the legitimate claims of government and the claims of God upon the believer. Obviously, the key word there is legitimate. William Lane says usefully here, he says, there is always inherent in civil authority a tendency to reach beyond its appointed function. A tendency which leads to self-transcendence. How true that is, right? How true that is. Government has a tendency to overreach. If you live in the province of Ontario, this is not news. Right? Government has a tendency to overreach. Government always wants to be more than it is. Government wants to be the church. Government wants to be the family. Government wants to be your nanny. And government wants to be your God. Interestingly, when I was a boy, the school system used to warn us about this tendency in government. When I was a boy, Brave New World, Animal Farm, and 1984 were all required reading. Now, the school system is the Brave New World. They are the voices whispering into the minds of our sleeping children. And if it doesn't terrify you, you're not paying attention. We live in an era of massive government overreach. The Ontario government wants to replace the family, repress the church, and retire God. But thankfully, in this country, we have elections every five years. Hallelujah. That's all I'm gonna say about that. During which, the governed have their say." So you can give the government more power, or you can apply the breaks. That is the blessing of living in a democracy, and we should be very thankful for it. Nevertheless, and it's important to mention, government does have legitimate claims upon its citizens. The Apostle Paul speaks about those in Romans 13. He says, whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed. Let's read that again. Whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed. And those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good. You know what's interesting? If you abide by the speed limit, If you put the red color sticker on your license plate, if you stay in your lane and don't flip anyone the bird at intersections, you'll almost never have to speak to a police officer through the window of your car. We're just throwing that out for free. You will receive his approval. For he is God's servant. By the way, how many did you know that? Do you know that the police officers who, you know, sometimes we've semi-closed the balcony for February and March. It's still open to parents with little fussy ones and whatnot. But you know what's interesting? When I'm in here, every once in a while I see police officers. Because there's several police officers in our church and they pop in and out when they're on their routes or whatever they call it. And sometimes I'll see them just pop in, they're wearing full riot gear, they got their, whatever that is, I was gonna say chest protector, but that's hockey. Whatever this thing is, and these things, clearly I'm not a police officer, but they come in, they sit in the back row, and they pop out. Sometimes the car's sitting out there when I go out to go down to RCC. How many of you know that they are God's servants? This is what it says right here. He is God's servant, meaning He's every much a minister as I am. He's God's servant. He is ordained to a function just like a pastor or a missionary or anybody is ordained to a particular function for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid. I like that one. You know what? If you're going to speed, if you're going to mouth off, and you get tasered, good on you. And don't call me. If you were sinning, I'll be cheering if he tasers you. I may ask to help. I'm just throwing that out. For he does not bear the taser in vain, the Bible says. Sword in vain anyway. For he is the servant of God, an avenger. An avenger. Did you know that God gives government the right to punish, not just to re-educate. You get to be re-educated after you get tasered. That's what the Bible says. Who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore, one must be in subjection. Not only to avoid God's wrath, but also for the sake of conscience. For because of this, you also pay taxes. That's one of those indicative imperatives. Like your mother says, we don't chew gum in the house. Meaning maybe you do, but you shouldn't. Here, for because of this you also pay taxes. Meaning maybe you don't, but you shouldn't. For the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing. So, to state the obvious, the Apostle Paul was obviously very familiar with the teaching of Jesus on this matter. And under the influence of the Holy Spirit, he begins to flesh out the implications. He says that God appoints the authorities, human government. And by the way, some people will say, yeah, yeah, but he only means godly government. Yeah, keep in mind, when the Apostle Paul wrote this, Nero was Caesar of Rome. Maybe the most ungodly government in human history. So that doesn't quite work. And he says we're not to fight against the government. There is no biblical argument for Christian sedition. There just isn't. He says the government's there for a reason. He lists two reasons. To resist the evildoer and to commend or approve that which is good. So he's supposed to resist evil. He's supposed to encourage good. And towards this end he's been given certain rights. The right to lethal force. The king does not bear the sword in vain. Do you understand that? Because sometimes people say, well, the Bible says thou shalt not murder. So how come it's right for police or soldiers? Listen, you understand that just like in your home, mom and dad did not give you all the same authorities they took to themselves, mom and dad get to spank your little brother and sister. You ever try doing that? What do you quickly learn? Hey, that authority is not shared. So there are certain authorities that God gives to some and not to others. He gives the government the power of the sword. He gives to the government the power of taxation. We need to respect that. Therefore, the government can collect taxes towards the end of maintaining a just society. That extends to things like building schools, hospitals, roads, bridges, anything that contributes to human flourishing. The government can hire police officers and judges and prison wardens and soldiers to punish and restrain evildoers. Those are legitimate claims. And they don't in any way conflict with your responsibility to God. Logically then, by extension, a born-again Christian can be a police officer. and can, if required, exercise deadly force in the restraining of evil. A police officer is the sword of the king. And if the king is authorized to bear it, then by extension you are authorized to be it, if you are so chosen and appointed. You can be a police officer. And of course, all of us should respect police officers. A Christian does not abuse the police verbally or physically or via social media under any circumstances. He or she is God's minister for your good. And likewise, of course, a believer can serve in the military. You can be an agent of the king, or in our case, the queen, in the process of restraining evil and protecting good in the world. It is no sin to serve as a soldier. It is no sin to serve as a magistrate. These obligations in terms of service to the state in no way contradict your essential commitment to God. Third implication, Christians are not morally responsible for the decisions that the government makes about their tax dollars. You're not morally responsible. Now I get asked this all the time. People will say to me, Pastor, is it immoral to pay taxes in Canada when we know full well that some of that money is going to go to fund abortion? Some of that money is going to go to fund a curriculum in Ontario that teaches a destructive view of human sexuality. Is it moral or is it immoral? I get asked all the time. Isn't it immoral? to pay taxes to such a government? And the simple answer is no. It is not immoral to pay taxes to a sinful government. On the contrary, the Bible says it is immoral not to. Jesus said, render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's. Give him the coin, Jesus says. Paul says the same thing. Pay to all what is owed to them. Taxes to whom taxes are owed. Revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed. And to state the obvious, Jesus and Paul both said that in the context of sinful government. When Jesus said it, Tiberius was persecuting Jews. When Paul said it, Nero was persecuting Christians. It would have been very easy for them to make the argument and say, hey listen, since these governments are doing sinful and wicked things, we should not pay taxes. It would have been very easy for them to say that. Neither of them did. They said the opposite. Right? And so, to state the obvious, there is no argument to be found in Scripture against paying taxes. Now, In a democracy, you are responsible for who you vote into office. But then those leaders make decisions about how they will spend the revenues of the state, and they will be held accountable to God for those decisions. But you are not morally culpable for the decisions of elected leaders. Therefore, and this is the only voting advice I'm going to give you, right? By and large, I don't think pastors should stand in the pulpit and tell you who to vote for. You should know, by the way, that's not illegal to do in Canada. It is illegal to do, it's not illegal. In the United States, you can jeopardize your tax status, because there's something called the Johnson Amendment. There is no Johnson Amendment in Canada. In Canada, you can lose your tax status if you spend more than 10% of your church budget in pursuit of overtly political aims, okay? It's a totally different system. It wouldn't be illegal for me to tell you who to vote for in Canada, but I'm not gonna do it. Here's what I'm gonna tell you. You should vote for whichever candidate you believe will do the best job of restraining evil and promoting good in our province, in our country, in our city, whatever election you're allowed to participate in. Then you should go home, pay your taxes, and sleep like a baby. You are not morally culpable for the decisions made by wicked leaders. If you were, then Jesus wouldn't have said what he said. Fourth, Christians will only rarely be forced into acts of civil disobedience. The Bible isn't saying that you will never have to choose between obeying God and obeying the government. It's not saying that. The Bible is just saying that obeying the government is not per se, in and of itself, disloyal to God. The Bible is just saying there are legitimate claims. Those are not necessarily contradictory, but in some rare cases, they may be. It is conceivable, it is possible that you will have to choose between obeying God and obeying the government. We know that. It happened in the Bible. Acts 4, verse 19, you remember the Sanhedrin calls Peter and John, tells them they've got to stop preaching in the name of Jesus, and they reply, listen to this, Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge. That's your job. For we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard. So Peter and John disobeyed the government in order to continue preaching in the name of Christ. And then they were subsequently rearrested and punished. Chapter 5. The text says this. Chapter 5, verses 40 to 42. They beat them, so they were rearrested. They beat them and charged them not to speak in the name of Jesus and let them go. Then they left the presence of the council rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name. And every day in the temple and from house to house, they did not cease teaching and preaching that the Christ is Jesus. That's how you do it, right? So there is a place for civil disobedience. If the government ever tells you to stop worshiping Jesus as God, if the government ever tells you to stop preaching in the name of Jesus, then you go ahead and you defy your government. but you better be willing to pay the price. Notice that. The disciples did not leave the council, they didn't huff and puff and stamp their feet and say, who do those people think they are? No, no, they said, hey, listen, you gotta do what you gotta do. And we gotta do what we gotta do. And if us doing what we need to do and you doing what you need to do results in you needing to arrest us every week and beat the snot out of us with rods, do you know what the Jewish synagogue beating was? Paul says he got it a bunch of times, right? They bent you over a stone pillar but waist high, and they beat you on the back of the legs with a cane. And so the disciples say, hey, listen, here's how this is gonna go. You gotta do what you gotta do. We gotta do what we gotta do. So if the price for what we gotta do is we gotta come here every week and you gotta beat us with a cane, so be it. They made their decision, they paid the price, they did their thing. I think that's a good example for us as Christians. Maybe a little less whining and a little more soul winning would be helpful. Civil disobedience should be rare. The government does not often tell us that we can't preach in the name of Jesus. It does happen from time to time. But that kind of direct opposition is rare. Usually they just threaten to remove privileges. Usually they just marginalize us, close off certain optional segments of the economy. But this kind of direct opposition is rare. So overt civil disobedience should be correspondingly rare. Most of the time, Christians should be known as the best citizens in the realm. But if the government ever tells you not to worship, if the government ever tells us that we can't preach Christ in this place, then I say prepare yourself to suffer. Because day after day, week after week, we will do that very thing. And we will pay whatever price is deemed necessary. So help us God. Fifthly, lastly, and relatedly, we note that a Christian's ultimate hope is in the soon coming kingdom of God. Jesus says that the claims of Caesar and the claims of God are not necessarily contradictory, but he does not say that they are roughly equivalent or corresponding. He asks for the coin. And he says, whose likeness and inscription is this? He uses the Greek word eikon, which means image, as in God created male and female in the image of God, he created them. Then he says this, render then to Caesar the things, give Caesar his eikons, and to God the things that are God's. Give Caesar his acorns, and give God his acorns. Give Caesar the coins. But understand this, the people belong to God. That's a very good answer. And that's a good reminder of the disparity that exists between the claims of government and the claims of God. It's a good reminder of the disparity that exists between the significance of government and the significance of God. Caesar can have his grubby little coins, can't he? But God has a claim on everything you are. I love what the French commentator A.F. Loyzis says here. He says, Jesus emphasized the lawfulness of political power and of tribute, taxation, much less than the insignificance of these things in comparison with the kingdom of heaven. Let the things of this world be esteemed according to the smallness of their value. And let these duties be discharged as necessity may arise. But let men know above all that the greatest thing lies elsewhere in fidelity to the heavenly Father. Do you hear that? That is excellent counsel. That's the message, actually, that the church in North America needs to hear right there. Discharge your duties to the state as necessary. Pay your taxes, right? Sit on the jury if you are called. Pull over when the flashing lights are behind you. Serve in the military if you are drafted. Run for public office if you so wish. Participate to the extent that you are obligated and permitted within the system of government that you have. But, for crying out loud, keep things in perspective. The government is not the answer. And here's a free tip. Most of the time, the government's not the problem either. Most of the time, the government is a relatively insignificant good. So treat it as such. Do not hope in political figures, and brother and sister Canadians, do not despair either. And tell you something, Donald Trump is not the devil, and he is not the Messiah. Kathleen Wynne is not Jezebel, and Doug Ford is not Jesus. Please write that down somewhere. Okay? These are people, people serving as ministers in a rapidly fading culture. They deserve a measure of our respect because of the office that they hold. They have the right to make certain claims upon you, but they do not have the right to our worship. They do not have absolute authority over us. We ought never to look upon them as if they were our savior. They are not. Jesus Christ is the hope of the world. Amen? It is through his life, his death, his resurrection, his present intercession that all people may be saved. And I'll tell you this, until he returns and reigns personally over all people, over every man, woman, and child from every tribe, tongue, and nation on the earth, until that day, all government will be a mixed blessing. They will do some helpful things. And they will inevitably overreach. But they can be checked by political action. There will be progress and improvement followed, no doubt, by apathy and regression. Sometimes there will even be formal persecution. So will it be until the end. And therefore, my friends, do not put your trust in princes, in human beings who cannot save. When their spirits depart, they return to the ground. On that very day, their plans come to nothing. I would say, when they're voted out, on that very day, their plans come to nothing. Blessed rather are those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord their God. Amen? Even still, come Lord Jesus. Let's pray together. Our Heavenly Father, we live in a confusing world filled with fallen people. We do thank you for the gift of government. Lord, we live in the best country in the world as far as I can see. Lord, this morning our fire alarm went off and within minutes two giant expensive fire trucks were here to check on things. Lord, that doesn't happen everywhere in the world, but it happened here today. Today we are reminded that there are ministers of God for our good serving in this community and they deserve our respect. And we give it. And we give you thanks for them, for the police officers, for the fire department, for the ambulance, for the magistrate, Lord, for the government that you've put over us. We give you thanks. Nevertheless, Lord, we also repent of the times when we have put more hope in them than they warrant. And Lord, we are reminded this morning to put our hope in Christ alone. And so we end by saying, Lord, thy kingdom come. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Come, Lord Jesus, we pray. Amen.