Sermon Notes / Transcript

Mark 12:13-17 — Render to Caesar, Render to God

Speaker: Daniel Coughlin

Date: 08/30/2026

Scripture Reading

Our sermon today is from the book of Mark, chapter 12, verses 13 through 17. If you have a Bible, please open with me, or open your app on your phone or however you do Bible things these days. It's also up on the screen if you want to follow along.

This is the word of the Lord and it is eternally true.

Then they sent some of the Pharisees and the Herodians to him in order to trap him in a statement. They came and said to him, Teacher, we know that you are truthful and defer to no one, for you are not partial to any but teach the way of God in truth.

Is it lawful to pay a poll tax to Caesar or not? Shall we pay or shall we not pay? But he, knowing their hypocrisy, said to them, Why are you testing me? Bring me a denarius to look at. They brought one, and he said to them, Whose likeness and inscription is this?

And they said to him, Caesar's. And Jesus said to them, render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's. And they were amazed at him.

This is the word of the Lord.

Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, may the words of my mouth and the thoughts of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Introduction: The Problem of Taxes

All right, I want a show of hands. Who likes paying taxes?

Yeah, Ava raised her hand.

Who does not pay taxes, or at least hasn't yet? So that was my expectation is that none of you likes to pay taxes. It was a fairly safe venture there. The government is not like a charity. We're talking about, you know, World Vision and Compassion International. And, you know, it's an opt-in.

If you want to sponsor one of their children, you do it because they have told you that they're gonna be good stewards of your funds, right? 86% of the funds are gonna go. And you're gonna do it because you see the need. Taxes aren't like that.

Taxes are: you must pay taxes, and if you don't pay taxes, someone from the government will pay you a visit and charge you penalties, and it's not a pleasant process. And guess what? It hasn't been for a long time. Like, no one's really ever loved paying taxes.

You do it because there's some authority over you that said you must pay this.

The Trap Set for Jesus

Taxes are exactly where Jesus' enemies choose to attack him here. If you notice in the beginning, verse 13 it says, then they sent some of the Pharisees and Herodians to him. So we have kind of three parties who are all colluding and coordinating in this attack, this test of Jesus.

The “they” is the Jewish leaders, right? We were just reading about them, the chief priests and the scribes and the elders. They were the ones who were challenging Jesus just a minute ago in our previous verses. And so, you know, that line of attack failed.

So what are we gonna do? I got an idea. Let's get the very strict religious types, those who say that you have to follow every law exactly to the jot and tittle and their extension of it, their protectiveness of it. Right? The Pharisees were always the ones who were trying to make the law as strict as possible on everyone.

But we're gonna take them, and then we're going to go over here and we're going to grab the Herodians. Do you guys remember who Herod is? Herod is the ruler. He was a half-breed.

He was half Jewish, half not, half Gentile. He had made his peace with Rome such that there was a Herod who ruled over the Jews. And this was the way that Rome kept the rebellious Jewish community in check was through the Herod. And there were different Herods.

That's not really relevant to this. The point is Herods were not a religious people. They were a politically powerful, influential people. And so the Herodians were those who followed Herod, who aligned themselves with Herod, who knew that they could be powerful, not because they were going to take the law and they were going to make sure everyone knew exactly what the requirements of the law was—that was the Pharisees.

They were over here on this other side and said, we're with Herod, whatever he does. He can marry his ex-sister-in-law, he can chop off John the Baptist's head, whatever. We're in his camp, we're on his side. That's where our power comes from.

And so do you see the dynamic at play here? Were these guys good friends in general? No, it doesn't make any sense, right? I mean, you have the super religious and you have the super compromised political power here.

What brings those together? Well, a mutual enemy in Jesus. Right? Because Jesus both undermines the authority of the Pharisees, these keepers of the law, these holders of the law, these appliers of the law, and then Jesus, who had been preaching and teaching, and John the Baptist, who had been talking about the coming of this kingdom—what does Herod get worried about?

Well, he gets worried about a coming king, right? That's kind of intimidating. If you're the ruler and you hear this, there's this king coming. Well, do you guys remember what did they write on the cross that hung above Jesus' head?

King of the Jews. King of the Jews, right? Right? This was not lost on the Herodians, this political upheaval, this political threat, political turmoil. So we have this strange alliance.

Politics makes strange bedfellows, right? Isn't that a saying? There's probably a couple other ways to say that too. So the Jewish leaders seek an opportunity to trap Jesus and they send these two parties out to him with, you know, a fairly straightforward question:

Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or is it not?

And so here's the trick, here's the trap, right? If he says no, it's not lawful to pay taxes, the crowd is gonna do what? They're gonna cheer, right? Because if I told you today that you had a religious reason not to pay taxes, I mean, you'd be excited, right?

When you file your tax return, you just say, Pastor Daniel says, I don't have to. Right? Jesus says, I don't have to pay taxes. The crowd'll go crazy. But the Herodians, what are the Herodians gonna do?

They're gonna march over to Herod and they're gonna report, this guy's leading a rebellion. He's telling your people not to pay you taxes. And that's gonna get the government worked up, right? But then what if he says, yes, it is lawful to pay taxes?

How does the crowd react to that? Meh, I thought we were coming to you for bread and wine and free taxes. The Pharisees then win because they stay in power. They didn't want to pay taxes.

They're the ones who were really worked up about the fact that Caesar's image was on the coin. Right? And then they can point to Jesus as being sullied, as being dirtied by filthy money, and then they get their attack in.

So either way, it's a lose-lose situation. Whether Jesus says yes or Jesus says no, it's lose-lose.

The Kingdom of Heaven and Earthly Kingdoms

What's interesting is while the Jewish leaders think that they're testing Jesus with this dilemma, Jesus instead reveals what's going on really with all three of these groups. Right? The kingdom of heaven that Jesus brings is revolutionary.

It is a real kingdom. But not in the simplified sense that all his enemies thought. Right? The foundation of the kingdom of heaven is spiritual. It's not a one-to-one political replacement.

Like, it's not that you're either in the kingdom of Rome or you're in the kingdom of heaven. It's not that you're in the nation of the United States of America or you're in the kingdom of heaven. There's a dual citizenship here that creates a tension that really man has felt ever since the kingdom was presented.

Right? I mean, you can look back. I'm reading a book right now on the crusades and how Rome, the Roman Catholic Church and the governments of those times, how they interacted. Or you could have arrived at church before me this morning and gotten this tract.

Somebody left some tracts in front of our church this morning. And I don't know if you guys know what tracts are. There are things you can hand out to explain what Christianity is. Well, this one caught my attention because of what the sermon was this morning.

And again, no joke, this was in the door this morning. And I'm just gonna read you a little bit of it because I want you to see that this is still something we struggle with today. The tension between what are our responsibilities to God and what are our responsibilities to man is an ongoing spiritual, religious, theological struggle.

And I'm gonna get to this, but how many of you remember what is it now? Six years ago when COVID started happening? All of a sudden, there was conflict between the church and the state in a way that I had never seen in my entire life, right? With churches saying, well, now everyone needs to, you know—or sorry, with the state saying everyone needs to stay this far apart, or you know, and we're in Nemaha County, Brown County, it was fairly tame here.

But in a lot of places, they told churches they couldn't meet at all. And so it's like a lot of churches had to struggle through the reality for the first time of what do we do when the government says you can't. I have friends who were at a church and their local government said you can't sing.

Because singing is, you know, blasting out viral particles. And they had to struggle with that. They had to work through that. It wasn't easy, it wasn't pretty. People got it wrong on both sides. And so this is a real struggle.

This is a real struggle that pops up every once in a while in the United States of America, and in fact, you'll hear sometimes—actually, you'll hear in this pamphlet—it called the separation of church and state. And so some people get—well, I'm gonna read this. The title is called “Two Kingdoms,” and I'm not gonna read the whole thing, but I want you to read this and feel the tension.

Some questions are in order, so they talk about Jesus' kingdom and the earthly kingdom. Some questions are in order. How can a Christian vote in both voting booths? You talk about—that's kind of irrelevant.

I'm gonna skip that. Let's go on here down to here.

The Christian has dual citizenship, earthly and heavenly. However, his highest loyalty is to the heavenly, and he will not transgress the laws of the heavenly in order to please the earthly. At the same time, though, he will gladly honor the laws of the earthly, insofar as there is no conflict with the heavenly.

So far so good, does that make sense? Like if there's a conflict between what the government tells you and what God tells you, are we to obey man or God?

God. Okay, that's clear enough.

Thus, to obey driving speed limit set by Caesar is to honor both his heavenly and his earthly citizenship. But to carry a sword or to vote for one to carry a sword violates the charter of the heavenly domain. Christians are indeed a holy nation of kings and priests, their God.

And then I'm going to skip a little bit and read this next paragraph:

If the Christian joins the army, votes, or holds political office, then Christians are of this world. And if their vote puts a fellow believer in a political office and he remains in the church, then beware, for the church, the world is now in the church. It won't be long until the church no longer meets the biblical description of a pure and holy bride. It has become Babylon the Great, the den of every unclean and hateful bird.

And I could keep reading, but do you see where this is going? Like this little pamphlet here from a publisher that I otherwise generally have a good opinion of, what are they worried about?

If you vote or hold office or go into the military, you're not a Christian, is what they're arguing. Like, you can't do those things and be a follower of Christ. Do you see the tension? The tension is how much of are you affiliated with the heavenly kingdom and how much are you affiliated with the earthly kingdom?

Can you have any part of the earthly kingdom and still be a part of—and so what they're arguing for, and I read that not to say that I agree with this, but to show you that we still live in a land where there is this conflict.

Like, we've not figured this out. We've not figured it out in a way that everyone is agreed, that all Christians are agreed. So their argument is: if you're any part of the earthly kingdom, you are not at all a part of the heavenly kingdom. Is that what Jesus is teaching here?

Well, he's not.

No, this is Rod and Staff Publishers. And again, usually they have some decent stuff out. So that's why when I saw this, I was curious, and they seem Anabaptist. And so what the Anabaptists believe is that the earthly kingdom is corrupt and wicked and the kingdom of Satan.

But that's not what Scripture teaches. That's not what Scripture teaches.

Caesar's Image and God's Image

And so we're gonna get there. Jesus says, Bring me a coin. And if you have—you guys all know what a dollar bill looks like, right? So let's pretend, or a penny.

Do you know—have you all seen a penny? They still make them these days. Whose face is on a penny?

Lincoln. Lincoln. Right? Do you guys know who Abraham Lincoln is? Was he president? Right? So just like in our day, they had the image of their earthly rulers on their money.

We've got George Washington on the $1 bill. We've got Jackson on the 20? Okay, I'm not gonna stretch any more than that because, obviously, I don't know my dollar bills that well. The point is why do coins, why do dollars, why does our money have the image of our earthly rulers on them?

It's because they control it, right? I mean, who prints the dollar bills? Who guarantees that the dollar bill has value? It's the earthly government, right?

And so it's no surprise that we put the images of our earthly rulers on our currency. But with that image comes a claim of rights. Right? So the government today has the same sort of claim of right to taxes as Caesar did back then. Right?

If you're transacting financial transactions, what are you going to pay? If you go to the grocery store—well, that's not a good example. You go to the—where do you pay taxes these days? You go to a farm supply, you go to the gas station and buy your gas, what are you gonna pay?

Taxes. If you get paid, if you work a job, if you look at your pay stub, do you get all the money that you are paid? Let's say you make ten dollars an hour. Do you get ten dollars an hour? No. Some portion of that goes to the government before it even comes into your hands, and then at the end of the year, if you make enough money, you have to report that back to the government, and then you have to settle up however much you really owe.

Do you only have to pay taxes if you approve of your government? Do you only pay taxes to good governors, to good presidents, or do you have to pay taxes all the time?

The Herod in Jesus' time was—or Caesar, let's use Caesar. Was Caesar a good ruler?

Was he a godly man? Would you have voted for Caesar? Would you have voted for Herod? Would you have voted for the man who killed John the Baptist?

No, right? And yet, here's Jesus saying, it's his money. You gotta give it back to him. Like, this is who your governor is. This is who your ruler is.

You have to pay that portion back. He demands it. And it's got his picture on it. So really, that's no surprise.

Because I feel like oftentimes we get so wrapped up in politics that we think our life would just be better if the right guy was president, if the right people get nominated to the Supreme Court in Kansas or the United States.

Like, oh, wouldn't life be so much better if only the Republicans had a supermajority in Congress? Right? Oh, wouldn't life be so much better if this president got elected instead of that president got elected. And there's some truth to it, right? Our life is easier with some political solutions and it's harder with other ones.

Just like theirs was, right? Except they didn't have a vote. They had to take what they got.

Or maybe you're like the Pharisees and you want a spiritual religious reason to justify your rebellion against the authorities that God has given us, right? You don't want to pay taxes, you don't want to wear a seatbelt, you don't wanna drive under the speed limit, right?

There's all the ways that the government is burdensome to us. And wouldn't it be nice to have a religious reason that we could just exempt ourselves from all these things.

But then there's others, and maybe this is some of you, maybe you're like the Herodians. You know that the civil government is always going to be corrupt and so you've made peace with that.

And you're just going to align yourself with whoever brings home the bacon for you the best. And you're not so worried about their personal corruption. You just care about, you know, is the economy going to work well? Is everyone gonna be happy?

It's the path to power.

Render to Caesar and Render to God

Jesus' teaching doesn't end on pointing out that Caesar's image is on the coin. He continues and he says, render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's. Right? And so this is clear enough.

The coin literally has Caesar's image on it, right? So the coin is clearly something that should be paid to, rendered to Caesar. So there's no concerns with that. No concerns with paying the bills in our pocket that have, you know, Franklin's image on them, Washington's image on them, paying that back to the government.

We don't have any sort of religious argument for that.

But what about the second part? What about where Jesus says, render to God the things that are God's? What's the analogy? What should you be thinking of when Jesus just made the argument the coin has Caesar's image on it, so the things that are God's should go to God? What's the analogy?

What is the thing that belongs to God? What is the thing that has God's image stamped upon it?

Man. Right? Ron's pointing to himself, right? Adam was created in the image of God, right?

In all creation, all of Adam's children, all who flowed out of Adam, Eve, and all of their children, what are we all created in? We're all created in the image of God.

And so if the coin should be paid to Caesar because it's got Caesar's image on it, what does that mean for man?

What is Jesus saying when he says, render to God the things that are God's? It's you and I. It's you and you and you and you. What does that mean? You pay taxes on yourself to God? What is Jesus saying?

Render to God the things that are God's.

What do you owe to God?

Your soul. Your soul. Your worship, your obedience, your life, your breath, your talents. All of these things we owe to God.

You know, you look at the Ten Commandments and you see all the you shall have no other gods before me, you shall not make unto thee any graven image. And it's easy to think about all of those worship commands in the negative, all the things that you should not do.

But implicit in them and explicit in Deuteronomy 6, for example, is that you shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, all of your soul, all of your strength. That is the universal command to all of mankind. Everyone who's been stamped with the image of God owes God what?

All their heart, all our lives, all of your days, all of your worship, all of your praise. Just like Caesar had a claim on the coin that bore his image, God has a claim on you, your soul, your body, your mind, your thoughts, your affections, your hearts, the things that you desire, they're God's.

God has a claim on all that because He's your creator. He's the one that stamped His image on you. Every man, not just those of us who are gathered here on Sunday mornings, even the people who don't come to church, all mankind owes God full obedience, complete worship, allegiance.

Now, the struggle is that doesn't alleviate our duty to our earthly kingdoms. And I use the word kingdoms just because there's continuity there. Obviously, we don't live in a kingdom, but we live in a nation. We live in a nation with rules, with governors.

Sometimes wicked, sometimes very wicked, sometimes mildly wicked, every once in a while good, decent men. But for the most part, corrupt, wicked, self-serving, and yet established by God.

The Ordinary Life of Submission

This is where we continue to struggle. Because God gave us these authorities.

God established authorities over us. He didn't let every man go do what was right in his own eyes, right? Because have you ever read the book of Judges? That goes poorly every time.

Whenever men get to do whatever's right in their own eyes, they don't have rulers, they don't have authorities over them. They just turn into their own wicked sinfulness and things get really bad really fast. And so eventually people cry out, they say, give us a leader, put someone over us, we need someone to guide us.

And so God has established authorities. He's given authority in the civil government, right? We have a federal government, we have state governments. He's given authorities in the church.

We have elders, we have pastors, we have authority structure inherent in the church. And he's given authority structure in the family. We have mothers and we have fathers to rule over the family. And the hard part, buckle up, is that the ordinary life of a Christian is one of submission.

And so women bristle and men bristle, right? Because no one wants to be told to submit. And yet, we read in Romans, this is chapter 12, verse 18: if possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men.

And then a few verses later in Romans 13:

Every person is to be in subjection to the governing authorities for there is no authority except from God and those which exist are established by God therefore whoever resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God, and they who have opposed will receive condemnation upon themselves. For rulers are not a cause of fear for good behavior, but for evil.

Which means our normal posture is submission to our earthly authorities.

And that's kind of like telling you to pay your taxes. Nobody wants to hear that, right? We want to hear that sometimes we're right and they're wrong, and so we should stand up for our rights.

We should stand up for ourselves.

When Authorities Conflict

The hard part is even if we accept this premise of the dual nationality, right, we still get into trouble because sometimes those authorities come into contact. We saw a little bit of it in this pamphlet. Sometimes the civil government tells us to disobey God.

So what do we do then? That's where everyone wants to go, right? We all want to hear, well, what about the exceptional case? When should the wife disobey her husband?

When should the elders revolt against the pastor? When should the nation go against the president? When should we overturn and, you know, pack the Supreme Court?

We should proceed carefully when we see conflict between what God has told us to do and what the government tells us to do.

There are times when disobedience is right. But I think we should pass it through at least a three-step filter.

1. Is this a trap?

The Pharisees—I'm sorry, yeah, the Pharisees and the Herodians—they came to Jesus with a trap, right?

This wasn't a real conflict between what God has said and what Caesar demanded, right? Caesar says, pay us taxes, and God has not said don't pay taxes. And so what should you do in that case? Well, that's easy. Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's.

So you pay your taxes, right? That is a false dilemma. Some of these are going to be false dilemmas that are brought to you by people trying to trap you.

And guess what? In the day of the internet and social media, there are all sorts of people trying to trap you, to make you look foolish, to make you make bad decisions.

And so they're imposing on you false dilemmas, false choices that you don't need to fall for. They're not really a conflict between God's commands and what's going on in the government world.

Now, there are some, but there are many that are not. Some of them are just a trap.

And if you look and you saw—I just saw a statistic that Twitter, X, whatever they call it these days, they found like tens of thousands of these Chinese bots that really mostly their purpose was just to agitate people.

Well, guess what? That's happening on your Facebook feed every day.

When you log into Facebook, there are things that are like fake articles just to agitate you, just to get you worked up, just to get you riled up and opposed to things, and it happens with the news, it happens. This is real. These traps are real.

And we live in an interesting time when they can be targeted right to you, targeted based on what you're already susceptible to.

So be very careful.

Alright, that's the first filter. Is this a trap? That's the first question.

2. Is this just my personal preference or is this really God's command?

Is the conflict between what the government's telling me to do that I don't like and what God's telling me to do—is it really God, or is it just really what I like, what I prefer?

Because we have lots of preferences, and preferences aren't wrong. It's just easier to mix our personal preferences up with the commands of God and to elevate our personal preferences and pretend like God told us to do this thing.

And so the conflict in that situation is really just about your sinful pride and you having to kill your preferences in order to submit yourself to the earthly authority that God has put over you.

So this is the warning that we need to be careful that our personal individual rebellion—it doesn't honor God to say, no, I'm gonna stick with my preferences, even if the government tells me something that I don't want to do.

Alright, and the third and the last one is:

3. Is the conflict really about obedience to God?

And you might think it's related to the first one, but this is more objective. I'm talking here about really studying the Scriptures, praying, praying for peace, praying for a way out of conflict, seeking godly counsel, some third party.

I have a good friend, a dear friend, who decided that he was going to do something in rebellion to the government. And he made the decision very privately and it was bad for his family. He made a decision that had legal consequences. It was an act of rebellion, and he had to pay the price for that for 20 years, and it was a heavy price.

There are times when you have to make hard decisions. There's times when you have to take on heavy consequences. Don't do those without counsel and without guidance.

And if you're 20, definitely talk to somebody who's over 40. That doesn't mean that there's not sloth and laziness of us elder people who have made too much peace with the wickedness of our world. And young people, you want to set things right.

It's good. It's a good desire. But temper your desire with wisdom and experience, and learn to do things strategically, not rashly.

Study the Scriptures, pray for wisdom and seek peace, and get godly counsel. Only then, only once you've passed through all three of these filters, should a Christian conclude that disobedience to his government is necessary.

You Bear the Image of God

This is how we keep our prideful, rebellious spirits in check.

You bear the image of God. You owe him your worship, your obedience, and that obedience extends to the government that He's put in place over us. And that's where it gets hard because the government is really accountable to God as a first stop.

You know, our governors, our pastors, your husbands, your parents, they are accountable to God. Their failures—are their failures accountable to God? You don't have to correct them every time. You can submit to things that are even unwise, not to things that are sinful, but to things that are unwise.

Not forgetting that they belong to God just like you do. They're accountable to God just like you are. And God is the one who's put these authorities in place. This is where it's not fun.

It's like paying taxes. Submitting to authority. Taxes is just one way to submit to authority.

And Jesus says, render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's.

Don't forget then that you belong to God, and it comes with a claim.

Remember to love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your strength. That's your duty.

And don't think that we're going to resolve all the conflict between church and state, between bad authorities, which really do exist, right?

And don't fall into every trap of supposed conflict between Scripture and the government because there are many people laying many traps for unwary Christians.

We need the collective mind. We need the guidance and the wisdom of those who have gone before us.

Closing Prayer

Let's pray.

Heavenly Father. We live in this conflict. We live in this world, and we pray that we would not be found to be of this world.

And where that line is requires wisdom. Father, there are many Christians here who have struggled with this over the past 2,000 years, and we continue to struggle with this today.

So help us, help us to strive to live at peace with all men, inasmuch as it concerns us that we would do so, that we would set down our rights, that we would set aside our preferences, and that we would submit to the authorities that you've placed over us.

Give us the grace to do this. Be merciful to us when we fail. Help us to trust in your governance and your guidance. That, Father, whatever happens in this next election will not be a surprise to you.

And that regardless of who's in office, that you hold the hearts of our rulers in your hands. You guide them for your good pleasure.

Father, help us to grow in our trust and our submission to you and the authorities that you've put in our lives. Father, we need strength for this.

This is not our natural disposition. This is not our natural desire. Help us to grow in this, we ask in Jesus' name. Amen.

This is the word of the Lord and it is eternally true. Then they sent some of the Pharisees and the Herodians to him in order to trap him in a statement. They came and said to him, Teacher, we know that you are truthful and defer to no one, for you are not partial to any but teach the way of God in truth.

Is it lawful to pay a poll tax to Caesar or not? Shall we pay or shall we not pay Pay? But he, knowing their hypocrisy, said to them, Why are you testing me? Bring me a denarius to look at they brought one, and he said to them Whose likeness and inscription is this?

And they said to him Caesar's And Jesus said to them render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's. And they were amazed at him. This is the word of the Lord. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, may the words of my mouth and the thoughts of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer.

We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, I want a show of hands. Who likes paying taxes? Yeah, Ava raised her hand.

Who does not pay taxes, or at least hasn't yet. So that's that was my expectation is that none of you likes to pay taxes. it was a fairly safe venture there. the government is not like a charity. We're talking about, you know World Vision and Compassion International. and you know, they it's an opt-in.

If you want to sponsor one of their children, like you do it because they have told you that they're gonna be good stewards of your funds, right? 86% of of the funds are gonna go. And you're gonna do it because you see the need. Taxes aren't like that.

Taxes are you must pay taxes, and if you don't pay taxes, someone from the government will pay you a visit and you know charge you penalties and and it's not a pleasant process. and guess what? It hasn't been for a long time. Like no one's really ever loved paying taxes.

You do it because there's some authority over you that said you must pay this. Taxes are exactly where Jesus' enemies choose to attack him here. If you notice in the beginning, verse 13 it says, then they sent some of the Pharisees and Herodians to him. So we have kind of three parties who are all colluding and coordinating in this attack, this test of Jesus.

The they is the Jewish leaders, right? We were just reading about them, the chief priests and the scribes and and the elders. They were the ones who were challenging Jesus just a minute ago in our in our previous verses. and and so you know that line of attack failed.

So what are we gonna do? I got an idea. Let's get the very strict religious types, those who you know say that you have to follow every law exactly to the jot and tittle and and their extension of it, their protectiveness of it. Right? The Pharisees, the Pharisees were always the ones who were trying to make the law as strict as possible on everyone.

But we're gonna take them, and then we're going to go over here and we're going to grab the Herodians. Do you guys remember who Herod is? Herod is the ruler. He was he was a half-breed.

He was half Jewish, half not half Gentile, he had made his peace with Rome such that they there was a Herod who ruled over the Jews. And this was this was the way that Rome kept the rebellious Jewish community in check was through the Herod. And there were different Herods.

That's not really relevant to this. The point is Herods were not a religious people. They were a politically powerful, influential people. And so the Herodians were those who followed Herod, who aligned themselves with Herod, who knew that they could be powerful, not because they were going to take the law and they were going to make sure everyone knew exactly what the requirements of the law was, that was the Pharisees.

They were over here on this other side and said, we're with Herod, whatever he does. He can marry his ex-sister-in-law, he can chop off John the Baptist's head, whatever. We're on his camp, we're on his side. That's where our power comes from.

And so do you see the dynamic at play here. Were these guys good friends in general? No, it doesn't make any sense, right? I mean the you have the super religious and you have the super compromised political power here.

What brings those together? Well, a mutual enemy in Jesus. Right? Because Jesus both undermines the authority of the Pharisees, the these keepers of the law, these holders of the law, these appliers of the law, and then Jesus, who had been preaching and teaching, and John the Baptist, who had been talking about the coming of this kingdom, what does Herod get worried about?

Well, he gets worried about a coming king, right? That's kind of intimidating. If you're the ruler and you hear this, there's this king coming. Well, do you guys remember what did they write on the cross that hung above Jesus' head.

King of the Jews. King of the Jews, right? Right? This was not lost on the Herodians, this political upheaval, this political threat, political turmoil. So we have this strange alliance.

Politics makes strange bedfellows, right? Isn't that a saying? There's probably a couple other ways to say that too. So the Jewish leaders seek an opportunity to trap Jesus and they send these two parties out to him with you know a fairly straightforward question: Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or is it not?

And so here's the trick, here's the trap, right? If he says no, it's not lawful to pay taxes, the crowd is gonna is gonna do what? They're gonna cheer, right? Because if I told you today that you had a religious reason not to pay taxes, I mean, you'd be excited, right?

You just when you to file your tax return, you just says, Pastor Daniel says, I don't have to. Right? Jesus says, I don't have to pay taxes. The crowd'll go crazy. But the Herodians, what are the Herodians gonna do?

They're gonna march over to Herod and they're gonna report, this guy's leading a rebellion. He's telling your people not to pay you taxes. And that's gonna get the government worked up, right? But then what if he says, yes, it is lawful to pay taxes?

How does the crowd react to that? Meh, I thought we were coming to you for bread and wine and free taxes. The Pharisees then win because they stay in power. They didn't want to pay taxes.

They're the ones who were really worked up about the fact that Caesar's image was on was on the coin. Right? And then they can point to Jesus as being as being sullied, as being dirtied by, by filthy money, and then they you know they get their attack in.

So either way, it's a lose-lose situation. Whether Jesus says yes or Jesus says no, it's lose-lose. What's interesting is while the Jewish leaders think that they're testing Jesus with this dilemma, Jesus instead reveals what's going on really with all three of these groups. Right? The kingdom of heaven that Jesus brings is revolutionary.

It is a real kingdom. But not in the simplified sense that all his enemies thought. Right? The foundation of the kingdom of heaven is spiritual. It's not a one-to-one political replacement.

Like it's not that you're either in the kingdom of Rome or you're in the kingdom of heaven. It's not that you're in the nation of the United States of America or you're in the kingdom of heaven. There's a dual citizenship here that creates a tension that really man has felt ever since the kingdom was presented.

Right? I mean, you can look back, you can look back, I'm reading a book right now on the crusades and and how how Rome, the Roman Catholic Church and the governments of those times, how they interacted. Or you could have arrived at church before me this morning and gotten this tract.

Somebody left some tracks in front of our our church this morning. And I don't know if you you guys know what tracks are. There are things you can hand out to explain what Christianity is. Well this one caught my attention because of what we what the sermon was this morning.

And again, no joke, this was in the door this morning. And I'm just gonna read you a little bit of it because I want you to see that this is still something we struggle with today. The tension between what are our responsibilities to God and what are our responsibilities to man is an ongoing spiritual, religious, theological struggle.

And I'm gonna get to this, but how many of you remember what is it now? Six years ago when COVID started happening? All of a sudden, there was conflict between the church and the state in a way that I had never seen in my entire life, right? With churches saying, well, now everyone needs to, you know, or sorry, with the state saying everyone needs to stay this far apart, or you know, and we're in Nimaha County, Brown County, it was fairly tame here.

But in a lot of places, like they told churches they couldn't meet at all. And so it's like a lot of churches had a struggle through the reality for the first time of what do we do when the government says you can't. I have friends who were at a church and their local government said you can't sing.

Because singing is, you know, blasting out viral particles. And and they had to struggle with that. They had to work through that. It wasn't easy, it wasn't pretty. people got it wrong on both sides. and so this is a real struggle.

This is a real struggle that pops up every once in a while in the United States of America, and in fact, you'll hear sometimes actu,ally you'll hear in this pamphlet, it called the separation of church and state. and so some people get well I'm gonna read this. the the title is called Two Kingdoms, and I'm not gonna read the whole thing, but I want I want you to read this and feel the tension.

Some questions are in order, so they they talk about Jesus' kingdom and the earthly kingdom. Some questions are in order. How can a Christian vote in both voting booths? You talk about that's kind of irrelevant.

I'm gonna skip that. Let's give on here down to here. The Christian has dual citizenship, earthly and heavenly. However, his highest loyalty is to the heavenly, and he will not transgress the laws of the heavenly in, order to please the earthly.

At the same time, though, he will gladly honor the laws of the earthly, insofar as there is no conflict with the heavenly. So far so good, does that make sense? Like if if there's a conflict between what the government tells you and what God tells you, are we to obey man or God?

God. Okay, that's clear enough. At the same time, though, Thus, to obey driving speed limit set by Caesar is to honor both his heavenly and his earthly citizenship. But to carry a sword or to vote for one to carry a sword violates the charter of the heavenly domain.

Christians are indeed a holy nation of kings and priests, their God. And then I'm going to skip a little bit and read this next parag If the Christian joins the army, votes, or holds political office, then Christians are of this world. And if their vote puts a fellow believer in a political office and he remains in the church, then beware, for the church, the world is now in the church.

It won't be long until the church no longer meets the biblical description of a pure and holy bride. It has become Babylon the Great, the den of every unclean and hateful bird. And I could keep reading, but do you see where this is going? Like this little this little pamphlet here from a publisher that I otherwise generally have a good opinion of, what are they worried about?

If you vote or hold office or go into the military, you're not a Christian, is what they're arguing. Like you can't do those things and be a follower of Christ. Do you see the tension? The tension is how much of are you affiliated with the heavenly kingdom and, how much are you affiliated with the earthly kingdom?

Can you have any part of the earthly kingdom and still be a part of and so what they're arguing for, and and I I read that not to say that I agree with this, but to show you that we still live in a land where there is this conflict.

Like we've not figured this out. We've not figured it out in a way that everyone is agreed, that all Christians are agreed. So their argument is: if you're any part of the earthly kingdom, you are not at all a part of the heavenly kingdom. Is that what Jesus is teaching here?

Well, he's not. no, this is Rod and Staff Publishers. And again, usually they have some decent stuff out. So that's why when I saw this, I was curious, and then they are they they seem Anabaptist, and and and so what the Anabaptists believe is that the earthly kingdom is corrupt and wicked and and the king the this the kingdom of Satan.

But that's not what scripture teaches. That's not what scripture teaches. And we're so we're gonna get there Jesus says, Bring me a coin. and if you have you you guys all know what a dollar bill looks like, right? So let's pretend or a penny.

Do you know have you all seen a penny? They still make them these days. whose whose face is on a penny? Lincoln. Lincoln. Right? Do you guys know who Abraham Lincoln is? Was he president? Right? So just like in our day, they had the image of their earthly rulers on their money.

We've got George Washington on the $1 bill. We've got Jackson on the 20? Okay, I'm not gonna stretch any more than that because I I obviously I don't know my dollar bills that well. the point is why why do why do coins, why do dollars, why does our money have the image of our earthly rulers on them?

It's because they control it, right? I mean, the who prints the dollar bills? Who guarantees that the dollar bill has value? it's the earthly government, right?

And so it's no surprise that that we put the images of our earthly rulers on those on our currency. But with that image comes a claim of rights. Right? So the government today has the same sort of claim of right to taxes as Caesar did back then. Right?

If you're transacting financial transactions, what are you going to pay? If you go to the to the grocery store, well that's not a good example. You go to the where do you pay taxes these days? Because you go to a farm supply, you go to the gas station and buy your gas, what are you gonna pay?

Taxes. If you get paid, if you work a job, if you look at your pay stub, what do you get all the money that you are paid? Let's say you make ten dollars an hour. Do you get ten dollars an hour? No. Some portion of that goes to the government before it even comes into your hands, and then at the end of the year, if you make enough money, you have to report that back to the government, and then you have to settle up however much that you really owe.

Do you only have to pay taxes if you approve of your government? Do you only pay taxes to good governors, to good presidents, or do you have to pay taxes all the time. The Herod in Jesus' time was, or Caesar, let's let's use Caesar. Was Caesar a good ruler?

Was he a godly man? Would you have voted for Caesar? Would you have voted for Herod? Would you have voted for the man who killed John the Baptist?

No, right? And yet, here's Jesus saying, it's his money. You got to give it back to him. Like the this is who your governor is. This is who your ruler is.

You have to pay that portion back. He demands it. and it's it's got his picture on it. So really that's no surprise. Because I feel like our oftentimes we get so wrapped up in politics that we think our life would just be better if the right guy was president, if the right people get nominated to the Supreme Court in Kansas or the United States.

Like, oh, wouldn't life be so much better if only the Republicans had a supermajority in Congress? Right? Oh, wouldn't life be so much better if this president got elected instead of that president got elected. And there's some truth to it, right? Our life is easier with some political solutions and it's harder with other ones.

Just like theirs was, right? Except they didn't have a vote. they had to take what they got. Or maybe you're like the Pharisees and and you want a spiritual religious reason to justify your rebellion against the authorities that God has given us, right? You don't want to pay taxes, you don't wear want to wear a seatbelt, you don't wanna drive under theit speed lim, right?

There's all the ways that that the government is burdensome to us. And wouldn't it be nice to have a religious reason that we could just exempt ourselves from all these things. But then there's others, and maybe this is some of you, maybe you're like the Herodians. You know that the civil government is always going to be corrupt and so you've made peace with that.

And you're just going to align yourself with whoever brings home the bacon for you the best. And you're not so worried about their personal corruption. You just care about, you know, is the economy going to work well? Is everyone gonna be happy?

It's the path to power. Jesus' teaching doesn't end on pointing out that Caesar's image is on the coin. He continues and he says, render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's. Right? And so this is this is clear enough.

The coin literally has Caesar's image on it, right? So the coin is clearly something that should be paid to, rendered to Caesar. So there's there's no there's no concerns with that. No concerns with paying the bills in our pocket that that have you know Franklin's image on them, Washington's image on them, paying that back to the government.

We don't have a great any sort of religious argument for that. But what about the second part? What about where Jesus says, render to gods the things that are gods? What's the analogy? What should you be thinking of when Jesus just made the argument the coin has got has Caesar's images on it, so the things that are gods should go to gods.'s What what's the analogy?

What is the thing that belongs to God? What is the thing that has God's image stamped upon it? Man. Right? Ron's pointing to himself, right? Adam was created in the image of God, right?

In all creation, all of Adam's children, all who flowed out of Adam, Eve, and all of their children, what what are we all created in? We're all created in the image of God. And so if the coin should be paid to Caesar because it's got Caesar's image on it, what does that mean for man?

What is Jesus saying when he says, render to God the things that are God's? It's you and I. It's you and you and you and you What does that mean? You pay taxes on yourself to God? what is Jesus saying?

Render to God the things that are God's. What do you owe to God? Your soul. Your soul. Your worship, your obedience, your life, your breath, your talents. All of these things we owe to God.

You know, you you look at the Ten Commandments and you see all the you shall have no other gods before me, you shall not make unto thee any grave an image. And it's easy to think about all of those worship commands in the negative, all the things that you should not do.

But implicit in them and explicit in in Deuteronomy 6, for example, is that you shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, all of your soul, all of your strength. That is the universal command to all of mankind. Everyone who's been stamped with the image of God owes God what?

All their heart, all our lives, all of your days, all of your worship, all of your praise. Just like Caesar had a claim on the coin that bared his image, God has a claim on you, your soul, your body, your mind, your thoughts, your affections, your hearts, the things that you desire, they're God's.

God has a claim on all that because He's your creator. He's the one that stamped His image on you. Every man, not just Just those of us who are gathered here on Sunday mornings, E the people who don't come to church, all mankind owes God full obedience, complete worship, allegiance.

Now, the struggle is that doesn't alleviate our duty to our earthly Earthly kingdoms. And I use the word kingdoms just because there's continuity there. Obviously, we don't live in a kingdom, but we live in a nation. We live in a nation with rules, with governors.

Sometimes wicked, sometimes very wicked, sometimes mildly wicked, every once in a while good, decent men. But for the most part, corrupt, wicked, self-serving, and yet established by God. This is where we continue to struggle. Because God gave us these authorities.

God established authorities over us. He didn't let every man go do what was right in his own eyes, right? Because have you ever read the book of Judges? That goes poorly every time.

Whenever men get to do whatever's right in their own eyes, they don't have rulers, they don't have authorities over them. They just turn into their own win wicked sinfulness and and and things get really bad really fast. And so eventually people cry out, they say, give us a leader, put someone over us, we need someone to guide us.

And so God has established authorities. He's given authority in the in the civil government, right? We have a federal government, we have state governments. He's given authorities in the church.

We have elders, we have pastors, we have authority structure inherent in the church. And he's given authority structure in the family. We have mothers and we have fathers to rule over the family. And the hard part, buckle up, is that the ordinary life of a Christian is one of submission.

And so women bristle and men bristle, right? Because no one wants to be told to submit. And yet, we read in Romans, this is chapter 12, verse 18, if possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men. And then a few verses later in Romans 13, every person is to be in subjection to the governing authorities for there is no authority except from God and those which exist are established by God therefore whoever resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God, and they who have opposed will receive condemnation upon themselves.

For rulers are not a cause of fear for good behavior, but for evil. Which means our normal posture is submission to our earthly authorities And that's kind of like telling you to pay your taxes. Nobody wants to hear that, right? We want to hear that sometimes we're right and they're wrong, and so we should we should stand up for our rights.

We should stand up for ourselves. The hard part is even if we accept this premise of the dual nationality, right, we still get into trouble because sometimes those authorities come into contact. We saw a little bit of it in this pamphlet. Sometimes the civil government tells us to disobey God.

So what do we do then? That's where everyone wants to go, right? Every you we all want to hear, well, what what about the exceptional case? When should the wife disobey her husband?

When should the elders revolt against the pastor? When should the nation go against the president? When should we overturn and and you know pack the Supreme Court? We should proceed carefully when we see conflict between what God has told us to do and what the government tells us to do.

There are times when disobedience is right. but I think we should we should pass it through at least a three-step filter. The first of which is we should ask ourselves: is this a trap? Right? The Pharisees, I'm sorry. Yeah, the Pharisees and the Herodians, they came to Jesus with a trap, right?

This wasn't a real conflict between what God has said and what and what Caesar demanded, right? Caesar says, pay us taxes, and God has not said don't pay taxes. And so what should you do in that case? Well, that's easy. Render unto Caesar's what that which is Caesar's.

So you pay your taxes, right? That is a false dilemma. Some of these are going to be false dilemmas that are brought to you by people trying to trap you. And guess what? In the day of the internet and social media, there are all sorts of people trying to trap you, to make you look foolish, to make you make bad decisions.

And so they're imposing on you false dilemmas, false choices that you don't need to fall for. They're not really a conflict between God's commands and and what's going on in the government world. Now, there are some, but there are many that are not. Some of them are just a trap.

And if you look and you saw, I just saw a statistic that Twitter, X, whatever they call it these days, they found like tens of thousands of these Chinese bots that really their mostly their purpose was just to agitate people. Well, guess what? That's happening on your Facebook feed every day.

When you log into Facebook, there are things that are like fake articles just to agitate you, just to get you worked up, just to get you riled up and opposed to things, and it happens With the news, it happens. This is real. These traps are real. And they're it we live in an interesting time when they can be targeted right to you, targeted based on what you're already susceptible to.

So be very careful. Alright, that's the first filter. Is this a trap? That's the first question.

The second question is, is this just my personal preference or is this really God's command? Is the conflict between what the government's telling me to do that I don't like and what God's telling me to do, is it really God, or is it just really what I like, what I prefer?

Because we have lots of preferences, and preferences aren't wrong. It's just easier to mix our personal preferences up with the commands of God and to elevate our personal preferences and pretend like God told us to do this thing. And so the conflict in that situation is really just about your sinful pride and you having to kill your preferences in order to submit yourself to the earthly authority that God has put over you.

So So this is the warning that we need to be careful that our personal individual rebellion, it doesn't honor God to say, no, I'm gonna stick with my preferences, even if the government tells me something that I don't want to do. Alright, and the third and the last one is: Is the conflict really about obedience to God?

And you might think it's related to the first one, but this is more objective. I'm talking here about really studying the scriptures, praying, praying for peace, praying for a way out of conflict, seeking godly counsel, some third party. I have a I have a good friend, a dear friend, who decided that he was going to do something in rebellion to the government.

And he he made the decision very privately and it was it was bad for his family. He made a decision that had legal consequences. It was an act of rebellion, and he had to pay the price for that for 20 years, and it was a heavy price. There are times when you have to make hard decisions.

There's times when you have to take on heavy consequences. Don't do those without counsel and without guidance. And if you're 20, definitely talk to somebody who's over 40. That doesn't mean that that there's not sloth and laziness of of of us elder people who have made too much peace with with the wickedness of our world. and young people, you want to set things right.

It's good. It's a good desire. But temper your desire with wisdom and experience, and learn to do things strategically, not rashly. Study the scriptures, pray for wisdom and seek peace, and get godly counsel. Only then, only once you've passed through all three of these filters, should a Christian conclude that disobedience to his government is necessary.

This is how we keep our prideful rebellion Rebellion spirits in check. You bear the image of God. You owe him your worship, your obedience, and that obedience extends to the government that He's put in place over us. And that's where it gets hard because the government is really accountable to God as a first stop.

You know, our governors, our pastors, your husbands, your parents, they are accountable to God. Their failures are their failures accountable to God? You don't have to correct them every time. You can submit to things that are even unwise, not to things that are sinful, but to things that are unwise.

Not forgetting that they belong to God just like you do. They're accountable to God just like you are. And God is the one who's put these authorities in place. This is where it's not fun.

It's like paying taxes. Submitting to authority. Taxes is just one way to submit to authority. And Jesus says, render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's. Don't forget then that you belong to God, and it comes with a claim.

Remember to love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your strength. That's your duty. And don't think that we're going to resolve all the conflict between church and state between bad authorities, which really do exist, right? And don't fall into every trap of supposed conflict between Scripture and the government because there are many people laying many traps for unweary Christians.

We need the collective mind. We need the guidance and the wisdom of those who have gone before us. Let's pray. Heavenly Father. We live in this conflict. We live in in this world, and we pray that we would not be found to be of this world.

And where that line is requires wisdom. Father, there are many Christians here who have struggled this with this over the past 2,000 years, and we continue to struggle with this today. So help us, help us to strive to live at peace with all men, inasmuch as it concerns us that we would do so, that we would set down our rights, that we would set aside our preferences, and that we would submit to the authorities that you've placed over us.

Give us the grace to do this. Be merciful to us when we fail. Help us to trust in your governance and your guidance. That, Father, whatever happens in this next election will not be a surprise to you.

And that regardless of who's in office, that you hold the hearts of our rulers in your hands. You guide them for your good pleasure. Father, help us to grow in our trust and our submission to you and the authorities that you've put in our lives. Father, we need strength for this.

This is not this is not her natural disposition. This is not our natural desire. Help us to grow in this, we ask in Jesus' name. Amen.