We know that you are true and teach the way of God truthfully. And you do not care about anyone's opinion for you are not swayed by appearances. Tell us then, what do you think? Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not? But Jesus, aware of their malice said, why put me to the test? You hypocrites, show me the coin for the tax. And they brought him a denarius. And Jesus said to them, whose likeness and inscription is this? They said, Caesar's. Then he said to them, therefore, render or give to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's. When they heard it, They marveled and they left him and went away. Let's pray. Father, we are here for your glory and for your glory alone. We ask God that you would be with us in this moment, that you would, by your spirit, fill and infuse our worship, that you might be honored. that your son would be exalted in our hearts, that we would desire to become more and more like him, that your spirit would conform us even more to his image this day. I pray that your word would hit its mark in the hearts of your people. In the name of our Lord, our Savior, we pray. Amen. Last week we covered Philippians because I was out sick. And so I wanted to give some of the context of Matthew before we dived into these verses this morning. If you recall, Jesus gives three parables leading up to this passage. And those three parables were aimed at the hearts of the Pharisees. Each parable was designed and intended for them to understand who they were in light of who he was. And it's astounding that Jesus would even give those parables to them because they had already decided that they were going to kill him. that they wanted to get rid of him. And so really, Jesus knows that there's nothing that he could say to these group of individuals that would change their minds and change their hearts, that they might decide, hey, you know what? He is who he claims to be. His miracles do attest to the reality that he is Messiah. They've already decided, we're gonna kill him. We're gonna get rid of him. And yet he still gives these parables to them. I wonder though how you might respond in a situation like this because the parables were in a certain sense kind of aggressive. He talks about what they're going to do to him and also what's going to happen to them if they continue to reject him. And so I wonder how you might respond when you have somebody tell you stories or parables that call you out in front of the masses. If there's one thing we understand about the Pharisees, they love the praise of men. And so standing there, hearing Jesus give these parables, and then after the second one, they realize he's talking about us. The crowds are enthralled with Jesus. They're loving and hanging on to all of his words, but the Pharisees are embarrassed. The Pharisees are exposed. And so we're going to see in this passage how they respond to that feeling of being embarrassed and to that feeling of being exposed. What we're also going to see is that the Pharisees refuse to give their hearts to God. They won't do it. And instead, they want to remove any traces of Jesus from their presence. That happens today. We refuse by nature to give our hearts to God, and we vainly try to remove any traces of God from his world. And so the answer that Jesus gives to this question that they raise is profound in that regard. So let's tackle this passage with three high-level points. First, I want us to see a trap devised. They're gonna devise a trap. And then second, I want us to see that they're gonna deliver this trap. So a trap delivered. And then finally, I want us to see how Jesus is gonna disarm this trap. Trap disarmed, or trap diffused. Let's look at 15 in the first part of verse 16. Then the Pharisees went and plotted how to entangle him in his words. And they sent their disciples to him along with the Herodians." Let's stop there. So remember, I've already said that the Pharisees felt embarrassed and they felt exposed. And so their response is retaliation. And not only do they retaliate, it's a measured retaliation. It says they went and they plotted. So they hear Jesus give these parables, they realize he's talking about us, that makes them angry, upset, so they go off together and they plot, devise a plan to how we might catch him, how we might trap him in his words. Here's a man, talking about Jesus, who speaks a lot, he's a teacher, He has a massive following. And so maybe we can use some of those words against him. This is measured retaliation. But the main problem that they face is that Jesus is really popular right now. In fact, this might be the height of his popularity. The masses are clinging to every word that he speaks. Remember when he enters Jerusalem, he has all the fanfare with him. The people truly are starting to believe that he is the Messiah. And so if the Pharisees want to get rid of him, they have to either depopularize him, I just made that word up, make him less popular by the masses so that the masses will say, you know what? You're right, Pharisees, let's kill him. Or they have to politicize him. get him to say something that sounds like he's against the Roman government. If they can do one of those two things, then they'll be able to rid themselves of Jesus. And so this is the trap that they devise. But also I want you to notice two other things in these first two verses. Notice that they send their disciples. This is going to be important in a second, but just take a note of that. They don't go themselves. The Pharisees don't go themselves. They send their disciples. And the second thing I want you to notice is that they also send the Herodians. If you're not familiar with the Herodians, let me give you a little backdrop of who they were. They were Jews who were loyal to Herod. And what they wanted the Romans to do was give the kingship back to Herod. Because since they wanted that, they didn't want to do anything that might cause the Romans to think that the Jews were causing any kind of stir. They wanted to play by the book, play by the rules and hopes that Caesar would say, you know what? Yeah, Herod can be king again. So the Pharisees send their disciples and they send the Herodians. But before we move on to something else here, remember this is retaliation, a response of retaliation. How should they have responded though? How should they have responded to hearing the three parables that Jesus gives, trying to draw their hearts to him? It should not have been retaliation. It should have been repentance. How often are you exposed, feel embarrassed by something that somebody says to you, rebuking you or correcting you, and your knee-jerk reaction is retaliation? Or maybe it's not knee-jerk. Maybe it's measured. Maybe you go off away from them and plot how you might get back at them instead of just repenting. That's what the Pharisees should have done, but they don't. And so now we see the trap has been devised. Now it has to be delivered. Look at the second part of verse 16 through verse 17. Teacher or rabbi, we know that you are true, and you teach the way of God truthfully. and you do not care about anyone's opinion for you are not swayed by appearances. Man, they're laying it on thick. Tell us then, what do you think? Is it lawful, key word, to pay taxes to Caesar or not? So the first step of this trap is deception by flattery. And this is why the Pharisees send their disciples. They don't think that Jesus is gonna be deceived or flattered by them. And so instead of going themselves, we'll send our young disciples. When they show up laying it on thick, that might work. That might get Jesus to let his guard down and say something that we might be able to use against him. I've got a former friend, a childhood friend of mine. He went to the Air Force. And you know you have to do basic training. They threw him out in the woods somewhere. And he had to survive, I think, for, I think it was like two weeks, maybe longer. And one thing he told me was, in order to survive, they had to find a rabbit. And you would take this rabbit. And if you love rabbits, I'm sorry. But this is an illustration that I think might be helpful. You would find a rabbit. And to eat it, you would soothe its neck. And when you soothe its neck, the rabbit calms down right before you kill it in order for you to obviously eat and survive. And so this is kind of like what they're doing here with this flattery. They're trying to soothe the neck of Jesus right before they seek to hurt him and harm him. The Herodians, these disciples, this is their plan, to harm Jesus. But notice the flattery. Notice the way they flatter Jesus or attempt to flatter Jesus. Teacher! Rabbi! You're brave! You're truthful! You're independent. You don't care what people say. You're not swayed by appearances. You're genuine. You're true. You speak the way of God truthfully. And the irony of all of this is they don't believe it. It's a trap. It's flattery. And not only do they set the trap that way, they also set the trap in a form of feigned dispute. This is why you have both groups show up. The disciples, the Pharisees, disciples and the Herodians, the Pharisees were not loyal to Rome, were not loyal to Herod. They hated the idea of being under Roman occupation. And so they didn't want to have to pay the tax. The Herodians on the other hand, they didn't mind paying the tax because they wanted Caesar to give the kingship to Herod. And so now they're showing up to Jesus saying essentially, hey Jesus, you're wise, you're smart, we so value your opinion. Please help us settle this dispute. It's feigned, the flattery, the dispute, it's all feigned, it's all fake. But not only that, what we find here is an example of a disjunction. If you're not familiar with logic, there's two forms of disjunctions. You have an inclusive disjunction, where you have an or statement between two propositions. And you can essentially do both, depending on the circumstance. Or you have an exclusive disjunction. And what that means is it has to be either this or that. It can't be both. And this is what they're asking Jesus to do. We're going to present an exclusive disjunction and you have to give us either A or B. That's the trap. Let me give you some illustrations of this from the Bible and some modern ones. Remember in John nine, verse three, when they come to Jesus, his disciples, and they asked him, who said this man or his parents that he was born blind? It has to be either this man sinned before he was born, or his parents sinned because he's blind. We already know it's one of the two Jesus, just tell us which one. And he responds, eh, neither. Another biblical illustration of this, and it's one of my favorites, is Joshua. Right? We have the messenger of the Lord, the army, the one who would lead in the Lord's army. He shows up. Joshua gets a vision of him. He sees him. He goes to him and he says, Hey, are you for us or are you for our enemies? Those have to be the only two options, right? We're in a battle here. We're about to go to war. Either you're for us or you're for our enemies. And this messenger, this warrior of the Lord says, no. I've been sent by God. I'm not for you. I'm not for your enemies. I'm for God. This is what's happening. And let me give you some modern illustrations. Science versus religion. You can't have both, they would say. If you're a scientist, you can't be religious. If you're religious, obviously you can't be a scientist. You can't believe in science. Not understanding that science found its bearings by those who were religious, who believed that the world was created with order and structure and with a purpose, with design and intelligence, and therefore they could conduct science. Another one. You might use this in your house or as you talk to people. Either you agree with me or you haven't understood the situation. Another one. The young folks will laugh at this one. If I don't check my phone right now, I'll miss something life changing. Examples, right? But not only do they give this kind of exclusive disjunction, the kind of trap they lay is political. It's political by nature. They're trying to catch him with a political trap. Notice where it says, is it lawful? And so what they're actually asking Jesus is, is it lawful for a faithful follower of God to pay taxes to the pagan Roman government? And this is what they're hoping, that he answers either in a way that would offend his Jewish followers or in a way that would get him in trouble with the Romans. Those who are loyal to Jesus, believing that he was the Messiah, They were hoping, or they might have been hoping, that he would say, listen, you don't have to pay taxes to Caesar. And that would have ignited the revolt against the Roman government. Or if you'd have said, you know what? Yeah, it is lawful to pay taxes to Caesar. Well, then this would have alienated the other second people who believed that you shouldn't. And so this is what they're aiming to do. This is the trap that they delivered to Jesus. And so the question that's being raised here underneath the surface is, will Jesus succumb to the trap? Will he alienate his followers by saying that you do have to pay taxes or will he give the Herodians grounds to go back to Caesar and say, listen, this man is the political enemy of yours. Let's see what Jesus does. Verses 18 through 22. But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, why put me to the test, you hypocrites? Show me the coin for the tax. And they brought him with Denarius. And Jesus said to them, whose likeness and inscription is this? They said, Caesar's. Then he said to them, therefore, render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's. When they heard it, they marveled, and they left him and went away. Now, if this were you, you would have fallen for the trap. You had me at rabbi. As soon as they came to you, Rabbi, teacher, you're true, you're genuine, all of this flattery, you would have fallen for it. How do I know? Because I would have fallen for it. But not so with Jesus. Jesus knew they were trying to trap him. He knew they were trying to inflict harm against him. That word for malice is this word that carries this idea of wickedness and evil. And in English, it carries this intent of inflicting harm. And so Jesus understood from the offset what they were trying to do. This was not a genuine question. They didn't genuinely want an answer from Jesus. They weren't racking their brains about what they should do to be able to still honor God while being in submission and subjection to the Roman government. And so, we should see that we can't fool Jesus. Listen, you can fool yourself. You can fool everybody around you, but the person that you cannot fool is Jesus. You may be a person here this morning who are still playing religious games, acting the part, fooling everybody around you, and maybe even fooling yourself. But Jesus can't be fooled. He knows you. He knows if you belong to Him. He knows if your deepest longings are for Him. He knows if your greatest desire is to give Him your heart, to give Him your life. And so the best thing we can do is to be honest and cry out to him in truth, because he is true. He is genuine. He does teach the way of God truthfully. And he can't be fooled. I also love what he does as he addresses them. He says, you hypocrites, how to win friends and influence people, right? He calls it like he sees it. That word is you actors, you pretenders. Again, they're not being genuine and he knows it. I love what he does there, but at the same time, he's also showing kindness to them. Because what he could have done was just stopped it right there. You hypocrites, you actors, you pretenders, why are you testing me and walking away? But he gives them an answer. Instead of just leaving it there, he shows his kindness to even those who are opposed to him by giving them an answer. And so they bring him this Roman silver denarius. And on one side of this denarius, you had the profile of Tiberius Caesar. And the inscription underneath his profile said this, Tiberius Caesar, son of the divine Augustus. And if you were to flip the coin over, on the other side, you have this Latin inscription with an image. But this image was the image of Pex, the Roman goddess of peace. And the words on this side of the coin was high priest. And so what Jesus does as they bring him this coin that was used for the tax is he rephrases the question. He's like, you're asking me the wrong question. The question you should be asking is, whose image is this? So they look at the coin. They understand that it's Caesar's image. They answer him. And then he replies, OK, now that we have that understanding, how about this? How about you give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and you give to God what belongs to God? What he says is directly in line with Romans 13. Study Romans 13, verses one through six, and you see there's a call to honor governments. There's a rightful place for governments in human society. And so Jesus says, listen, this is a false dilemma that you're presenting me with. You can honor and give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, but you should be more focused on honoring God and giving God what belongs to him. There is no dilemma here. Well, some people might object in our day, but they're not using the tax revenue on things that are godless. Seriously? Let me give you some of the things they were using the tax revenue on in first century Palestine, the Romans. You had some of the common things that we would all agree with, like military expenses, public infrastructure, diplomatic missions, but they also use the tax revenue on things like religious ceremonies, temples. and festivals. They would throw these religious festivals for their Greek goddess and goddesses. They had one for Saturnalia, called Saturnalia, for the god of Saturn. They had one for the goddess, Ceres. They also would use the tax revenue to fund imperial cult ceremonies. So around this time, they began to deify the emperors. And so they would use the tax revenue to have these celebrations to honor the emperors as if they were God. They would also use some of the tax revenue to honor other gods and goddesses. They would use it for the Roman games, as godless as those things were. And so Jesus could have said, well, first you have to figure out what they're going to use the tax revenue for before you give your taxes. If he would have said that everybody in here would have been like, phew, yes, perfect. I don't have to pay taxes now because our government, they're using our tax revenue on atrocities. They use, they use it to fund planned parenthood and evil. They use it, they send it abroad to fund the ideology of transgenderism. They use it in a million other godless ways. But if we had Jesus here telling us, you can render to Caesar what Caesar's, what he's saying is, you're not accountable. for how the government uses your tax money. They will be held accountable. Don't worry, they will be held accountable for using your tax revenue to slaughter babies, to promote and support that. And he's not saying you can't cry out against these things either. So you giving tax revenue to the American government, for example, is not you agreeing or embracing what they use that money for. Nor does it silence you from crying out against what they're using that money for. Now listen, we have the tax code and all these different things, right? You can try, according to the law, to reduce your taxes as much as possible. That's the name of the game, right? If we're being honest, you want to pay as little taxes as possible. There's nothing wrong with that. And for me personally, there's chatter going around now about getting rid of the property tax. Hallelujah, amen. Yes, let's do it quick, fast, and in a hurry. Bring me the petition. I'm signing my name. And I'm going to sign anybody else's name, too, if you let me. So that's not the point. Don't lose that in this, okay? But there's a bigger point that he's making when he says, and give to God the things that belongs to God. Remember, we have this coin. He asked them, whose image and inscription do you see? Well, the image on humanity is God's image. And this is why we had Genesis 1 read this morning. When God created the world, his magnum opus, The highlight of his creative genius was not the birds, not the fish, but man. Adam and Eve was God's magnum opus. And we know that because he says, I will make, let us make man in our image, in our likeness. Let us make man like us. And so Jesus drives home this profound truth that, listen, your ultimate allegiance is not to the Roman government. Their authority is territorial. It's not universal. Their authority is temporal. It will end one day, but God's is eternal. and what you owe to God is more profound and more important than what you owe to Caesar. You were made for more than just paying taxes. You were made for more than trying to figure out how you can avoid paying taxes. You were made for more than trying to figure out, hey, how can I save enough money to retire well? You were made for God. You were made in God's image. And really, that's where your ultimate value lies. And so, some of you here may be struggling with value and identity and dignity and worth. It's because you're putting on the scale all these things that pale in comparison to who you are by creation. You're putting on the scale things like, do my friends like me? Or how does my hair look today? Or am I good in school? Am I smart? All these things. And when they shift and they shake, you become uneasy. You have turmoil. But your true value, if you put this on a scale, would knock all the other things off the scale in a heartbeat. Your true value comes from being made in the image of God. You are valuable. You are important. Simply because you're created in the image of God. There's a quote I want you to hear. It helps us understand this. It talks about this idea of self-identity. I don't know who said it, but hear it. If the human being is defined fundamentally as one in the image of God, then our identity must be sought in relation to God. Much of the loss of self-identity in our day is due to our loss of God. In other words, we harm ourselves when we try to rid ourselves of God. So all the struggle people have with identity, who they are, is rooted in their lack of understanding who they are in relationship to God. So Jesus says, give to God what belongs to him, since you belong to him. He dismantles this false dilemma. And if you want a true dilemma before we track our way to the end, let me give you the Bible's true dilemma, Proverbs 17, 15. He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous are both alike an abomination to the Lord. You're like, where's the dilemma there? Will you, being made in God's image, come into this world with a bit away from God? And if God desires to save you, he must remain just. But Proverbs 17 says, if he justifies the wicked, which we are, and he condemns the righteous, that's an abomination. So how can God do that? Well, the answer of this true dilemma is God suffers that hardship on himself. When Jesus comes into the world, he comes as God in the form of man to redeem man. He comes to justify the wicked and he experiences the condemnation upon himself, although he is righteous. And what's even more profound, is that when God made man in his image, it was truly after the image of the son. And this is why when Jesus comes into the world, he's the right one to restore God's image in us. He's the right one to show up and say, listen, this is what it's supposed to look like to be a human imaging God in the world. You were patterned after me. And I'm here to restore God's image in you. Colossians 1 13 through 15, he has delivered us from the domain of darkness, talking about God, the father and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of our sins. He speaking of the son, speaking of Jesus is the image of the invisible God. 2 Corinthians 4, 3 and 4. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In their case, the God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of God. Jesus is the exact imprint of the nature of God. He shares in the triune nature of God. And so he comes into the world to save us and restore us to the proper understanding of what it means to be image bearers of God. I have a professor, he put it this way, speaking about humanity. He said, we are glorious ruins. We were created glorious in the image of God. And when we sinned and rebelled against God, we were ruined. The image is still there, but it's defaced. And so Jesus comes to restore the glorious ruins. This is your future, Saint. This is what God is doing in your life. Listen to Romans 8, 29, for those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son. That's your predestined destiny. Every situation, every circumstance, every hardship in your life, God is molding you and shaping you into a living, breathing replica And so Jesus says, this is a false dilemma. Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and give to God what belongs to God. You belong to God. So give him your heart. Let's pray. Lord, I thank you for this profound truth. I thank you for the reality that although they tried to lay a political trap for Jesus, he didn't fall for it. And yet he teaches us things that we so desperately need to learn. I pray God that you would draw us into a greater knowledge of who you are, that we might become more and more like you. In the name of your son, we pray, amen.