Our Obligation to God and Government
Matthew 22:15-22
Let's open our Bibles to Matthew Chapter 22. A friend of mine asked me yesterday, as I was watching him eat pizza, he said, "Which of the Bible passages that you have studied have most affected your life?" And I said, "That's easy, the one I'm studying right now." It's always that way. I always enjoy what I'm studying and I can honestly say from the way I feel nothing has been more wonderful to me than to be studying this particular portion of Matthew because I see the majesty and the wonder of the Lord Jesus Christ. And particularly as we are walking with Him through this final week, as He moves to the cross, and we see all of the events taking place and particularly this confrontation that He's having here in Matthew 22 with the religious leaders of Israel. This has been so very very thrilling to me and I hope it has been to you as well.
Now for our lesson today, we come to verses 15 to 22. A very familiar passage is in this text. In verse 21 Jesus says, "Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's." That's a familiar text. In fact it's familiar not only to Christians, but it's familiar to non-Christians. Many people are familiar with the idea render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's. But this particular passage has more than just that statement. And to understand the meaning and import of that statement we have to stretch ourselves across the whole passage and get the context and identify the scene and the events that are taking place.
Before we do that, just a reminder that all of us are very very well aware of the proverbial inevitability of death and taxes, and some of us prefer death. We do a lot of discussing about this problem of taxes, and taxation in our particular society is a major issue. I don't know if you know this but the IRS, which John Whitehead calls "the tax police," the IRS have a budget in excess of two billion dollars a year just to collect taxes. There are seven regional IRS offices, 59 district offices, 13,500 field agents, 4, 460 office auditors, 2,800 special agents and nearly 70,000 other employees. And they maintain computer banks that are cross indexed to have all the data they need on every citizen of the United States and the whole reason for all of it is to make sure they can collect taxes. That is a major factor in our society.
Now we love our country and we realize that if we didn't pay our taxes our country would come to a halt. The services that our country renders to us would no longer be able to be rendered. No government, no services, no public provisions, and no protection, and so forth. So we're very dependent on the taxation system to provide for us the social structure in which we can enjoy our freedom and our life. And we do love our country and we do thank God for the tremendous provision that He has made in placing us in a country that knows the kind of freedom that our country, the kind of prosperity that our country knows. Our government is not a totalitarian government. It is a benevolent government. We may not think always what it does is exactly the way we would prefer it to be done, but it is nonetheless benevolent rather than oppressive totalitarian and we prosper and we should prosper with thankfulness. And taxation is an element of that.
Now in spite of these considerations we are somewhat barraged from time to time by some in the church and some who are Christians who tell us we ought not to pay our taxes. I don't know if you ever hear that, but I get all kinds of things on that in the mail, that we're not to pay taxes, taxes are both unconstitutional and ungodly and we shouldn't give the things that we have receive from God back to those who are godless and back to secular governments and so forth. And this is recently come to very very precise focus because of a new ruling by the IRS. The IRS ruled that of January 1, 1984, all church employed would be subject to FICA Social Security tax. They had never been before, which means that immediately all church employees, other than pastors who are self employed, were hit with a 6.7 percent tax on their wages withheld from them so everybody got a 6.7 reduction and the church had to pay the other 7 percent, so the church's payroll went up 7 percent from one day to the next.
Well there are some people in the church in America who are saying we can't pay that tax. It's not right to pay that tax and they are refusing to pay it. Grace Church is not one of those, but there are many. In fact, a pastor wrote us a letter and said, "Should we pay the tax?" We wrote back and said, "Pay the tax," and we were barraged with other letters from another pastor saying you're giving ungodly counsel. We are not to pay the tax and his reason was since the money was given to the church it was given to God. Since it was given to God who are we to give it to Caesar? And that is the dilemma. And it is raging.
In fact, it is raging in Washington D. C. The other day Dave Pollock called someone in the Senate to talk to try to present some things that they needed to know about, they're struggling with it, there's all kinds of lobbying going on as to how to handle the situation. They're thinking may they ought not to tax the church but just tax the employee, just give the whole nearly 14 percent tax to the employee and our answer to that was that doesn't help because that means we've got to pay him for what he's giving you, so that isn't the answer either, and they're discussing all kinds of things. It's created a very interesting stir in Christianity. And I think the solution to it comes in this text, and it'll unfold to you, I trust, with clarity as we look at it, a very very strategic section of Scripture.
Now remember this is Wednesday in Matthew 22. It's Wednesday of the last week of our Lord's life. Friday He will be crucified; Sunday He will rise from the dead. Monday He rode into Jerusalem and was hailed as the Messiah. Tuesday He cleaned the temple out of all the moneychangers and sellers and so forth.
And now it is Wednesday, He's cleaned the temple out, He's been acknowledged as the Messiah, hailed by the populace as the conquering hero who will overthrow the Roman oppression. They're a little concerned, however, that the day after they hailed Him as Messiah, instead of overthrowing the Romans He overthrew the Jewish religious system. They don't quite know how to fit that in with their messianic expectation, but now it is Wednesday, He's back in the temple, which He has cleansed. He's moving around in the temple teaching and His teaching is on the kingdom, and His preaching is on the gospel, and He's collected, as He always did by the magnetism by His personality and the dynamics of His teaching a massive crowd of people who are intrigued and interested and fascinated by what He is saying.
Now this makes the religious leaders irate. They resent Jesus Christ. They resent Him because He opposes them. He unmasks their pride, self-righteousness. They not only resent Him because He opposes them, they resent Him because He captures the hearts of the people, and envy and jealousy fills them. They resent Him because He claims to be the Messiah, the Son of God, and doesn't identify with Him. They resent Him because He cleaned the temple without getting their permission. He is everything they're not. He's genuine; they're hypocrites. He threatens the system that exists, the system of self-righteousness as opposed to God righteousness, a system of works as opposed to a system of faith.
And so they stop Him in the process of teaching in Chapter 21 verse 23 is where they stop Him. And they say to Him, "By what authority do You do these things and who gave You the authority?" Show us Your credentials. Show us Your papers. Show us your rabbinical ordination. Prove to us that You have the right to do what You've done, say what You said, claim what You've claimed. His response to them is I'm not going to tell you by what authority I do these things, but this is what I am going to tell you. You are under the judgment of God. And He tells them that in three parables. Do you remember them?
The first was a parable of two sons. One son said, "I will not obey you father," and later did. The other son said, "I will obey you father," and never did. And Jesus said, "You're like that second son. You keep saying you're going to obey God but you never do. And you will be kept out of the kingdom. On the other hand tax collectors and harlots are like the other son who live a life that defies the father but in the end they repent and do obey." And he said, "Tax collectors and harlots will enter into the kingdom instead of you."
And then He gives them a second parable and it was the parable of the vineyard you remember with the tenant farmers. The man that owned the vineyard is God. He leases it out to tenant farmers and they work the land and they produce the crop and then when the owner sends back his servants to collect what is due to him they beat up the servants and kill them and finally he has no servants left so he sends his son and they kill his son. And he says, "You are the tenant farmers; you who kill the prophets; you who will kill the very Son of God. The kingdom will be taken from you and given to someone who is worthy of it."
And then he gave them a third parable, which we looked at last week in Chapter 22, the parable of the wedding feast, the royal wedding feast. And He likens them to people who were already invited to come to the feast but when the feast begins and it is a royal feast to celebrate the son they will not come, they will not honor the son, they will not recognize the son, they will have no part of the celebration. And so they are shut out and the king goes out and collects others to come in and take their place. And again He's saying the same thing to them. You're going to be kept out of the kingdom of God and others are going to come and take your place. Three parables of judgment.
Now they've got to react to this, why, because this is public. This is in the middle of the temple courtyard with masses of people around. And everybody can hear everything that's going on. And the Lord Jesus has just devastated them with three prophecies of their judgment put in parabolic form. And they understood what He was talking about because in 21:45, it says, "When the chief priests and Pharisees had heard His parables they perceived that He spoke of them." They knew exactly what He was saying. The day before He'd cleaned up their physical temple, he had devastated their physical situation and now He verbally devastates their spiritual situation. He attacks their unbelief. He attacks their rejection and calls down the judgment of God.
Well this is more than they can stand, frankly. And they in their anger in their fury, in their rage and their desire to eliminate Jesus design a strategy. And their strategy is very simple: while the whole world can hear Him we're going to get Him to say something that will discredit Him, that will make Him appear as a revolutionary, as an insurrectionist, then we're going to report Him to Rome and the Roman government doesn't like insurrectionists and they'll come down here and get Him and kill Him. That's their plan.
So the three parables are followed by three questions and those questions take us through the rest of Chapter 22. This morning we're going to look at the first of those three, verse 15 to 22. Let's begin with the aim, the aim. You have an outline you can follow right there in your bulletin. The aim: and this just gives us an idea of what they've got in mind. You could call it the motive if you wish. "Then went the Pharisees," after having these three confrontive judgmental parables, "and took counsel how they might entangle Him," literally how they might entangle in a logon, "in a statement." They want to trap Him. They want to ensnare Him. That's their aim.
Now the Pharisees say, time out, huddle, after the parables. And they pull back and they decide they'd better discuss what they're going to do. They have just been publicly discredited again by Him. It happened on Tuesday when He cleaned the place and here it is on Wednesday and He's done it again to them. And the fury is a mounting fury. Because unrighteousness that masquerades as righteousness always hates true righteousness. And so the Pharisees who are the religious legalists, the proud, self-righteous, envious, intimidated leaders take counsel. The word has the idea of mutual consultation. They got their heads together. They went off in the corner somewhere in the temple and they began to talk and figure out what to do. They wanted to trap Him in a statement.
You know it's so sad because of hearing the message of judgment, instead of hearing the message of doom, instead of really saying we don't want that to happen, we don't want to be kept out of the kingdom, forgive us, and instead of crying out for mercy, all they want to do is kill the one who brought them the warning and offers to save them. It's unbelievable really. I mean it's like the guy whose drowning who tries to kill the guy whose saving him. Like trying to do away your rescuer, it's their aim. And they're so completely consumed with this t hat in spite of the reality of what He's just told them, they pursue their goal to trap Him in a statement.
Now let's look at their approach. The second point: the approach. "And they sent out unto Him their disciples." Stop there for a minute. Now why do you think the Pharisees sent their disciples? Why didn't they go themselves? I'll tell you why. Because they long ago had been revealed to be fake. I mean there was no way they could go up to Jesus and pretend to really believe in Him. There was no way they could go up to Jesus and pretend to ask an honest question, right? I mean He would have recognized them. He knew who they were. He'd seen their faces. It would have been just another appearance of the people who had already been identified as false religionists, as hypocrites, and so they don't dare go themselves. They find a group who Jesus doesn't know of their followers, they brief them thoroughly and send them in their place to masquerade as very honest questioners. They're going to fool Jesus. They're going to sucker Jesus into their trap. They're going to bait Him with those that He doesn't know. He won't know that they're Pharisees disciples. He won't recognize them as the ones He's already given the parables to. And so they pick some other ones because it's a sneaky approach they have in mind.
And then it says, "It was the disciples of the Pharisees with the Herodians." This is fascinating. This is really fascinating. By the way Luke doesn't mention the Pharisees or the Herodians. He just calls all of them spies. He said, "They sent their spies." That's what they were doing. They were masquerading to be on the Lord's side and asking honest questions as if they were truly religious people who wanted answers, and all they want to get Him to do is make an anti Rome statement and a man with His power and influence making anti Roman statements would really be a threat to the Roman system and they'd run and report Him to the Romans and the Romans would kill Him and they'd be done with Him. They were spies masquerading as religious people interested in what He believed.
And so the Herodians went along. You say, why the Herodians? Who are the Herodians? I'm not going to give you a whole big history on the Herodians because we don't have much information honestly. Basically what we can gain is gained from the name of the group. They were identified with Herod. They were the ones belonging to Herod. Like Christians belong to Christ Herodians belong to Herod. They were not religious by identification; they were political.
Now let me just remind you that the Herods were a dynasty of Edomites who ruled the land of Palestine. Herod the Great, Herod Antipas, Herod Archelaus, and so forth, and one of the things you study when you study New Testament background is you study a lot about the Herodian family. The Herods had ruled that land and in A.D. 6, just a few years after the birth of Christ, Archelaus, who was the son of Herod the Great, was deposed. Herod had split up his empire. One of the sons was in the north in Galilee Peria, another son in the south in Samaria and Judea and so it was sort of split between them, but in A.D. 6, Archelaus, who was the son ruling in the south was deposed and in his place the Romans put a governor and that's how we identify Pilate as the Roman governor occupying the seat of rule in the southern part of that country of Palestine.
Now Herod Antipas still ruled in the north and he was the one responsible for beheading John the Baptist. But they were not Jews; they were Edomites, they were political rulers, they were kings of a dynasty. The Romans left them, at least in part in power in the north because it served their purposes. In the south it didn't and they occupied the leadership with a governor.
Now perhaps the Herodians, therefore, would be those Jews who identified with the political viewpoint and political power with the Herod's. And it may well be that they wanted a Herod in the south, that they would have much preferred a Herod ruling in Judea than a Roman. They were pro-Herod. We don't know why. We don't know particularly what they had to gain by that, but that is how they are identified. They were of the political party of Herod.
Now, note this, the Pharisees were vocally anti Rome. They despised the Roman oppression. They hated the Roman tierrney. They belonged to a group, which later became known as the zealots and they were insurrectionists. They went around doing acts of terrorism. They would start little fires here and fights here and things like that to bang away at the Romans. Some of them flamed in a rather large insurrection and later, as I said, they became knows as zealots. It may well be that Simon the Zealot, one of the disciples of the Lord belonged to that particular nationalistic, almost terroristic group of people. But the Pharisees leaned that way. They were very anti Rome. Rome coming into their land was a great intrusion. Rome with all of its paganism invaded the theocracy and it offended them greatly, so the Pharisees were anti Rome and many of them, no doubt, were zealots.
The Herodians, now here's what's interesting, were pro Rome. The Herodians were pro Rome. They were pro Rome in the sense that Rome had aloud Herod Antipas to stay in as ruler and if there was to be another Herod moved into the southern part it would have to be because the Romans appointed him. So they sought the favor of Rome. They played to Rome because they knew their only hope of getting their Herod in power or getting one Herod to rule the whole land would be by Roman intervention and Roman appointment. And by the way, the Herod's themselves seems to have played to Rome as well.
So here are the anti-Roman Pharisees and the pro-Roman Herodians getting together against Jesus Christ. Now you ask the question why? Well you have to understand the Pharisees recruited the Herodians. You say why did they recruit the Herodians? They recruited the Herodians because when Jesus said his anti-Roman things they needed to have some pro-Roman witnesses, who then having access to the governor and his people could run in there and say and be accepted in saying because they were known as pro-Roman, this man is an insurrectionist, this man is leading an anti-Roman rebellion and so forth and so on.
Now if the Pharisees ran in and said that they'd sort of look at them funny and wonder what they were plotting because they knew they wouldn't come to warn Rome about an insurrection. So they had to have the Herodians. You say, well why did the Herodians cooperate? Because the Herodians didn't like Jesus either; in fact, Herod Antipas cut off the head of His forerunner, John the Baptist, because John the Baptist confronted Herod about his vile, wicked, wretched life. And they didn't like Jesus who was the heir, in a sense; to the prophetic office of John any better than they would have liked John. And if you follow closely the last part of the Lord's ministry you'll find that He judicially avoided the territory of Herod because of hostility toward Him there. So they agree that they're against Jesus even though they can't agree maybe on religion or politics, and that sort of sets the stage.
Now go back to verse 16. The disciples of the Pharisees along with the Herodians come and the plot really looks well thought out. And this is their approach; we've gone from the aim to the approach. Watch this approach: "Master," it's just kind of sickening isn't it? "Master, deduscolae, teacher, the highest honor you could pay a man, great dignity went with that, admirable office. Why the Talmud says the one who teaches the law shall gain a seat in the academy on high. I mean that was to be revered above all others, teacher of the law. Great respect. And then they say, "We know that you are aleface, you are truthful. You have integrity. You really are a man of great integrity. If you believe it you say it, that's the implication. That's an honor. You really believe what you believe. You really live what you believe. You're a truthful person. Not only are you a truthful person, and you teach the way of God in truth, you have truthful information to give, you have truthful content, you have a truthful message. You're a man of great integrity and you're a man who speaks truly the way of God. What is the way of God? Well it is the opposite of the way, which seems right unto man, but the end thereof is the way of death. It's the way God ordains. It's the right way. It's the Psalm 1 way, the way that leads by the tree of life and by the river. It's not the way of scorners and sinners and those kind of people. It's the true way to God. It's the true righteous life. You are a man with integrity who teaches truth. I mean every teacher that ever lived would love to hear that. I mean to have a group come and say that to you would be the epitome of building up your ego.
Not only that they say, "Neither carest Thou for anyone." Now they don't mean you're indifferent to people with needs; they mean you're not swayed by other opinions. It doesn't matter to you what anybody else believes. They're saying you're a person of great conviction. What a commendation. You are a teacher. You are a teacher that has great integrity. In other words if you believe it you say it and if say it you believe it and you speak the truth. You not only have integrity but you speak truth. And not only that it doesn't matter to you what anybody else thinks. You have such tremendous conviction. And then they add this: "for you regard not the face of men." In other words you're not intimidated by anybody