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I would now like to welcome our friend and our brother, Dr. Bill Edgar, to the pulpit. For those who don't know, Dr. Edgar is the professor of apologetics at Westminster Theological Seminary. Bill, may God bless you as you share his word. Well, as I say every time I come to this pulpit, we are so blessed to be a part of Lansdale Presbyterian Church. Oozing with talent, solid Bible teaching, imaginative children's sermons. I'm going to get one of those Band-Aids when I finish. Gorgeous music, amazing talent. But most of all, the fellowship here, the community. It's matchless. It's a joy to have so many friends, and God is good to give us this. So thank you. If you have your Bibles, will you open them to Mark chapter 12. And I'll be reading from verses 13 to 17, very familiar passage. Mark 12, 13 to 17. And they sent 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 opinions. 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? And 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. There's a medieval account of the corrupt abbot of Blasholm. And he is explaining to his friends that he needs a lot of money to deal with his enemies. And he goes to his chaplain, Brother Martin, who's a godly man, and he explains why he needs more money to fight his foes. Filthy lucre, the root of all evil, says the chaplain. That's a common view. And there's some biblical precedent for this view. We use the word filthy lucre coming from the King James even till today. Gregory Ross wrote a book on environmental corruption in the Pacific entitled Forest, Fish, and Filthy Lucre. And a recent book on capitalism by Joseph Heath is titled Filthy Lucre, Economics for People Who Hate Capitalism. And we maybe don't use that word anymore, but a lot of us do think that money is kind of dirty. Even the expression money laundering suggests that there's something to clean up about it. And in a strange confirmation of this view, physical money actually is dirty. Now I look this up. Pathogens live on 94% of all dollar bills. Viruses and bacteria, including live flu virus, can live on bills much longer than other environments, some for up to 17 days. Now, Paul does use the expression filthy lucre, and it does mean money gained through greed. But the way Paul treats money is altogether much broader. Actually, Brother Martin, and many others, misquote 1 Timothy 6.10. What it really says is, for the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. It doesn't say that lucre or money is the root of evil. More deeply, where does this notion come from? Well, for you history buffs, the first time that it seems that people considered money to be dirty was in the 13th century. It was a time of prosperity and of growth in Europe and in culture. And a lot of the Christian monks got worried about this. So they formed mendicant orders, begging monks who were a visual reminder to people that you don't want money. And they even created a code of ethics for the few people who do have money about how they have to be really, really careful with it, and especially how they have to give it away, guess where, to monks. Now, the theological root of this, and forgive the technical jargon, is that they and we often have fallen into a sacred-secular dichotomy. In other words, life is divided into two realms. The sacred, where we pray, go to church, read our Bibles. And the secular, life goes on. You've got to work. Money is necessary, but it isn't clean. Now, our passage seems to confirm this notion. Here, Jesus was constantly being put to the test. And notice they sent to him some of the Pharisees and some of the Herodians. It was so hard to confuse Jesus that people sent experts to try to confuse him. The Pharisees, of course, we know cared deeply about the law. And it made their whole identity based on the law. Whereas Jesus always tied the law to a living relationship with the Lord. He fought their legalism. Now, the Herodians were this group that backed Herod and favored cooperation with Rome. Now, both had a stake in the issue of taxation. If Jesus said, yes, it's legal to pay taxes, he was caving in. If he said no, well, he's a revolutionary. In some ways, we still have the problem. When is it right to be in but not of the world? Now, we know his remarkable answer based on an object lesson. He was the Will Legal of the day. Does it not seal the argument? We need money to live. The church needs money for its programs. But the real issue is the sacred, prayer, evangelism, personal piety, Money is kind of a necessary evil. I'm preaching on it today because pastors don't like to preach on it because it sounds like they're begging. Of course, our pastor wouldn't do that. But it is a subject you don't hear a lot about in church. But let's take a closer look. Would Jesus really be saying some areas belong to God and then others to Caesar? Wouldn't he have said, Go and make disciples, teaching them to observe the spiritual areas, but don't worry about material things. He didn't say that, did he? And many of Jesus' sayings actually revolve around money. He knew about economics, the pearl of great price, the unscrupulous servant. Even in the Sermon on the Mount, where he encourages us to seek first the kingdom, He does say, well, God knows you need these things. He's not indifferent to it. And it's the same with Paul. Paul doesn't say money corrupts. It's the inordinate love of money that corrupts. And as you know, Paul expended a lot of energy collecting money for different causes. One of the major ones was the Jerusalem offering, which he tied into Old Testament prophecy. And he appealed. to the Corinthians in probably the greatest fundraising letter ever written by saying, just as Jesus, who was rich, made himself poor, so you have become rich. Why don't you be generous with your riches? So what's going on here? Well, back to the coin. Whose face is on it? Whose inscription? The Greek word is icon. Whose image? And it is Caesar's. So where does Caesar get his authority? From the necessary evil of government? From a ruthless power that escapes God's control? Or from just pragmatic necessity? You've got to have a referee, an umpire to organize people? No. The Bible throughout tells us that all legitimate authority is from God. Look at Romans 13. Every institution, every person who is functioning as institutions should, has been appointed by God. Even those corrupt institutions, think who Caesar was at the time, are somehow under the sovereignty of God. The fundamental problem is not government. Taxes are legitimate. The fundamental problem is, how do we live in the world where government is part of reality. Now, the Bible has a message for dealing with corruption, including governmental corruption. We're blessed to be in a democracy where the people have more power than in many other countries. But even in democracies, there's a lot of work to be done. Now, that's not our subject today. Our subject is, what does he mean by render to God the things that are God's? What are they? Are they just spiritual things? Let's put the question this way. If Caesar's face is on the coin, where is God's face? I think if you put it that way, we begin to get it. Is God's face on the other side of the coin? That's an absurd idea. Where is God's face? Well, it's everywhere. And it's especially on us, his image bearers. And it is supremely in Jesus Christ, who is the true likeness of God. A very interesting aside about this passage, when they came to trick Jesus, they tried to flatter him in saying, they said, he follows the truth and has no regard for appearances. The Greek actually says he has no regard for people's faces. When the image of the people looking at you is distorted and corrupt, Jesus has no regard for that. But when the image is truly a reflection of who he is, then God is being honored and glorified. God's faith is in the creation. It's in every legitimate human institution. God's image legitimizes what goes on on earth. Indeed, Caesar would have no power at all were it not given to him from above." My hero and former boss, Pierre Courtial, who was the dean of the seminary in Aix-en-Provence, where I used to serve, he used to say, there is no sacred secular dichotomy because everything is sacred. Whatever we do. Whether we eat or drink, all we do can be done to the glory of God. So what's the problem with money? Well, it's not money, but it's idolizing it. And that's true of every good created thing. Work, sex, beauty, human reason, music, all of those are good, but when idolized, turn into terrible, corrupting forces. Idolatry, you'll know, is a basic subject throughout scripture. It's found throughout. Why is the Bible so concerned about it? Because it's so close to something good, and it's so desperately wrong as it leads us away from God. I've been in my own reading looking at a very difficult book of the Bible, the book of Judges. And it puzzles many of us. To begin with, why did God permit the Israelites to go into a land that isn't theirs and conquer it, and then live under some pretty dicey leaders? Was it ethnic cleansing? No. Rahab actually was allowed to live there. Was it imperialistic conquest? No, of course not. If you look carefully, the purpose of the conquest was to rid the country of idols, make it a safe place for godly people to live. Now, throughout the book of Judges, as you know, they go back over and over again to these idols. And they're given over to corruption, and then they cry out to the Lord in their need, and God sends them a judge, and the cycle repeats itself over and over. But what's the idolatry of idols? It's usually not that the idolater says, I reject the biblical God. I reject Jehovah. Here's a better one. It's usually, yeah, we like Jehovah. He's done a lot of great things. Just to make sure that you know who he is and have access to him, here's this statue. Idolatry isn't stupid enough to say, you know, God isn't there. But it says, sure, God's there, but look at the aids he's given us. Look at the way he's made things easier to grasp. And that's exactly what often we fall into when we idolize anything. Here is what Tim Keller says in his commentary on this book. The basic teaching is that God wants lordship over every area of our lives, not just some of them. God wanted to clear the whole land of Canaan so that his people would not end up living with idols as well as with him. Now this is not easy because it is so tempting to fall into making God more accessible. So you can do that through money. And we all have heard of the prosperity gospel. God doesn't want you to be sick. He doesn't want you to be poor. He'll give you signs of his presence, money. And there's so many other kinds of idolizing gospels. Well, tax paying, then, is legitimate, even when to a corrupt government. How would Jesus legitimize a corrupt government? He doesn't legitimize corruption per se. He calls on us to reform it. But because we're in a fallen world, he doesn't say, wait till everything is cleaned up. Then you'll be comfortable. He gives us a way to live in an unclean world and yet still recognize the legitimacy of those institutions. And money is a challenge for us, isn't it? How much to give away? How much do we save? Should I take that vacation? Does my family come first or does the church come first? We often think we need to choose between giving everything up or having too much. Paul says, There's a middle way. The Proverbs say there's a middle way. Don't make me rich, I'll forget you. Don't make me poor, I'll resent you. Money is one of God's great gifts. And Caesar's face is rightly on the coin of our debt to that legitimate institution. But if we find that it drags us into idolatry, then We're corrupting ourselves and not just the institutions. One apocryphal story that's helped me get some of this straight. So again in the Middle Ages, there was a meeting of two groups of monks, the Dominicans and the Franciscans. And they met together for several days, and they worshiped in the regular canonical hours, the Benedictine rite. You get up in the morning. You have matins. You have a noonday service and so forth, vespers before going to bed. The most difficult service of all is at 3 in the morning. I've done this, actually, with some students. We went to a monastery, and we lived these hours. You know, we asked the monk to knock on our door at 3 in the morning. In the medieval times, if you weren't up, they would actually knock on you. And so here were these two groups of monks worshiping together. And all of a sudden, the Dominicans started to light up and smoke. And the Franciscans said, wait a minute. You can't do that. And they said, sure we can. No, the Franciscan said, you know, we wrote a letter to the pope. And we asked him if we could smoke while praying. And he said, absolutely not. And the Dominican said, ah, that's your problem. We asked the pope whether we could pray while smoking. And he said, sure. So you see the difference. If we're starting to confuse worship and bring foreign things into it, and we begin to bring idols into it, no. But things that are good in themselves are open to our worship. Now, to learn this difference is a lifelong learning of wisdom. And it's more than just learning how to handle your money, being a good steward. Those are important. But it's learning where to begin. And where do you begin? You begin with Jesus Christ, who's the central person in this story. The power to make these decisions comes not simply from getting wisdom about how to handle money, but from trusting in Jesus Christ, who willingly subjected himself to corrupt power, both the Pharisaic and the Roman power, in order to be raised up from the dead and triumph over them and have proper lordship over them. Jesus said, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, and make disciples. Being a disciple now can be done because Jesus has all authority. Did he not have it before? He did, as the creator. But because of sin, if he was going to have all authority to liberate us and to be his people, he had to die and to be raised. He had to be a victim of that corrupt religious group of legalists. He had to be a victim of that corrupt Roman government, which handled a lot of the money wrongly, so that as a resurrected Lord, he could then begin to direct his people not only into their own financial sanity and freedom from idols in every area of life, but to begin to be a force for good throughout the world. And indeed, with all her spots and stains, the church has had an extraordinary effect and impact on culture and civilization in every area of life, including money. It is the case. that much of our modern system of economics, to the extent that it's beneficial to others, to the extent that it's generous, to the extent that it raises the standard of living, has come directly or indirectly from a Christian motivation. And that's what the Lord Jesus has done for us. How do we tap into this power? Well, let's learn to look and see the face of God everywhere in creation. It's a smiling face when we handle it right. God is full of generosity as we have sung and we will be singing in this beautiful world. He'll help us in every area. He'll help us with our taxes. But He'll also freely give us all things that we need. Yes, life is hard and stewardship questions are difficult. But if we turn to Jesus, And we remember that he was rich and made himself poor so that we could become properly rich, not with filthy lucre, but with stewardship in every area of life. Then we will learn not only how to navigate this difficult world, but we'll learn something far deeper and far more important, to bask and commune in his love as true image bearers were meant to do. Let's pray together. Lord, thank you for the comprehensive nature of the gospel. Thank you that you care about large areas and small, that we will glorify you whatsoever we do. May we learn to see your face in the coin of this world and also in Jesus, your image. Help us with this. in his name, amen.
Broadcast #661, Is Money Filthy?
Series August 2018 Encore Series
Sermon ID | 9418127595 |
Duration | 24:44 |
Date | |
Category | Sunday Service |
Bible Text | Mark 12:13-17 |
Language | English |
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