If you have a Bible, I invite you to turn to the book of Mark, chapter 11. We'll now continue our expositions in Mark. We left off more than halfway through the chapter of Mark 11, so we'll be in verse 27. We'll be covering a lengthy passage, three separate texts that cover the end of Mark 11 and the beginning of Mark 12. And I would recommend keeping your Bible open for this. We'll begin by reading Mark 11, 27 to 33. The Word of God says, And they came again to Jerusalem. And as he was walking in the temple, the chief priests and the scribes and the elders came to him. And they said to him, By what authority are you doing these things? Or who gave you this authority to do them? Jesus said to them, I will ask you one question. Answer me, and I will tell you by what authority I do these things. Was the baptism of John from heaven or from men? Answer me. And they discussed it with one another saying, if we say from heaven, he will say, why then did you not believe him? But if we shall say from man, they were afraid of the people for they all held that John was really a prophet. So they answered Jesus, we do not know. And Jesus said to them, neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things. Let's ask God's blessing on the word. Oh Father, we just sang that wonderful song, Speak O Lord. May that be our prayer. May you speak to our hearts from your holy word into our present situation for the honor and glory of Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen. Well, we sang about it just now, and we read about it just now. Today we're going to talk a lot about authority. It's not the first time we talked about authority in the book of Mark. I'll show you in a moment how it's a theme throughout the Gospel. But this is a text wherein Jesus, the King of Kings, coming into Jerusalem, comes face-to-face with the worldly and religious authorities of his time. These two authorities are about to clash, and as you and I know the story, only one authority will remain, and he will remain everlasting. We're all very aware of what's going on in our society today, and I know that if I were to survey this room, we would have quite a fun dialogue about the various opinions and interpretations of why things are the way that they are. We could argue about who has the better position, whether it be the looters of Black Lives Matter or the insurrectionists of the QAnon type. We could argue about Antifa, we could argue about the liberals and the radicals, but I think we could all agree on this point, that at the heart of looting and rioting, the heart of insurrection is a rebellious heart. And what all these groups have in common is a rejection of authority. And what Jesus has come to set the record straight for you and me is that we who follow the one authority, the Lord of Lords and King of Kings, have an entirely different approach to how we interact with authority. You see, we're living in a society that is, right now, very suspicious of all authorities. Very anti-institutional. The great institutions of the world have lost credibility in the eyes of many. People don't trust big medicine. They don't trust the universities. They don't trust the media. They don't trust the government. And they don't trust the church. And we can find reasons behind each and every one of these. There are justifiable concerns with every last one, sad to say, even the church. There have been high-profile leaders in our own midst, in our own circle of Christianity, that have squandered their authority, that have fallen from grace. And so it's no wonder that there's such an anti-authority, anti-institutional, very suspicious approach to authority. You may see this with children and parents. The Bible tells us there will be a time where children will become disobedient to their parents. I saw this as a teacher in school. I don't know if those movies from the 1930s and 40s are accurate, but when you see the teacher walk into the room and all the children stand at attention and they respect their teacher just because he or she is the older one in the room, that's not happening today. And many times I walk into a classroom, I had to earn their respect rather than be given it by virtue of the fact that I was the adult in the room. And so with all of this happening, this distrust, this rebellious spirit, where do the disciples of Jesus fit? Are we to pick one of those crowds and say, this is the one that's got it right, let's join them? Or are we to transcend what's going on today? I'm sure you've seen throughout the years different types of Christian groups that join together for a common cause. There are bikers for Jesus and athletes for Jesus. And it seems today that there might be a group we would call the rebels for Jesus. There are lots of talk today in the church about when is it appropriate to practice civil disobedience. Are the masks on our faces? Is the government intentionally trying to keep us under control? And should we as Christians rebel against them or not? Well, before I get into the text, I want you to know I'm not going to be able to answer every single question. My goal today is to take this text and give you a basic understanding of what Jesus said should be yours and my heart attitude towards authority in this fallen world. You see, when we read the Bible, we find a God who sets up authority. God gave us authorities. God gave us the institution of the family and of the government and of the home or the church. Daniel 2.21 says, "...for He removes kings and sets up kings." See, all those in authority are there because of God. And sometimes God gives a nation up. to unjust rulers. It doesn't mean God approves of every king and what they do, but there is no authority but God. And Paul reiterates that in Romans 13, that says there's no authority except from God and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore, this is very strong language, whoever resists the authorities, resists what God has appointed and those who resist will incur judgment. I think we can say God takes authority very seriously. And God has made clear roles of authority in government, the home, the church. Throughout scripture, we see children, you are expected to obey your parents. Wives are told to submit to their husbands. Church members in the book of Hebrews are told to obey their leaders. And citizens are told to obey their government. Now I know sometimes our mind wanders, what if? What if the husband's abusive? What if the parents are abusive? What if the government's abusive? And I understand we can tackle all these nagging questions, but we have to get back to basics today. What is the disposition of the Christian? We believe that this is our necessary food, then our disposition should be one of obedience to what it says. You see, worldly thinking has infiltrated the church as it does in every generation. Worldly thinking takes a sort of prove-yourself mentality, the one I was talking about in my experience as a teacher. I have to prove myself worthy of respect to the students, rather than them, by default, respecting me. There are ideologies today that would classify everyone in the world in two distinct groups, oppressors and oppression. And if you believe in this ideology, of course you're going to hate authority. Because the word authority sounds like oppression. But biblical thinking recognizes authority as a good thing. And why is it good? Because it comes from God. Therefore, it would seem rather strange, rather counterintuitive and unbiblical if you were to declare yourself a rebel for Jesus. One who follows Jesus is not a rebel. One who follows Jesus is submissive to Jesus. How can one claim on one hand I've given Jesus my allegiance, He's my Lord, He's my King, but on the other hand, have no respect for authority that His Word says is there in your life and mine by virtue of God's sovereignty. And so I want to be clear again, I don't intend today to exhaust every single question of every single instance of civil disobedience, but I hope that today's passage renews our minds, because let's face it, week in and week out, we are filled with things that are not from the Bible. They're from our favorite commentators, and we are putting them into our heads, and then we look a little bit at the Bible, but today I pray the Lord would use the Bible as the only infallible authority. and renew our minds as to what our approach should be to the worldly authorities as we follow the highest authority, Jesus Christ. I believe that today's text is super relevant for the times that we live in, if you and I are gonna be a witness to a rebellious world. So let's look at the text again. The exposition today, Mark 11, 27, all the way through 12, 17. We'll look at three different passages. In this passage, we could summarize them all as this. Jesus is confronting the religious authorities. Face to face with the Sanhedrin, then the Pharisees and the Herodians. All these men who were in charge of political and religious and social authorities or social ways of life in Jerusalem. And here comes now the King of Kings. What will they do with him? Well, Larry Hurtado mentions that the authority of Jesus was a theme all throughout the book of Mark. Actually, I was looking at a sermon from August of 2019, and the sermon was The Authority of the Son. That was from chapter one. So we have definitely covered the topic of authority in the book of Mark. Just listen to some of these verses throughout the gospel. Verse 22 of chapter one says, They were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority, and not as the scribes. Chapter two, verse 10 says, But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins. Chapter 3, 14, 15, He appointed twelve, the apostles, so that they might be with Him, and He might send them out to preach and have authority to cast out demons. And then chapter 6, verse 7, And He called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and He gave them authority over the unclean spirits. Gospel of Mark, likely written to Christians in the first century, living in the oppressive government of Rome, needed to hear a gospel, needed to hear a narrative of their leader who had all authority. It's so encouraging for the Christian to know that whatever authority is in front of us, mayor, governor, White House, that there's still a greater authority beyond him. And this is what Mark is encouraging his reader. You think you and I have it bad? Think about Nero, and we'll get to him in a little while. And he was encouraging those first century leaders as they read through or heard, many of them being illiterate, heard someone read through the book of Mark, they were encouraged that even though Nero's doing his thing, Jesus is still Lord. He's the one with all authority. And so now back to our text in Mark 11, the first section, 27 to 33, the end of Mark 11. Jesus is telling the religious leaders that by rejecting John the Baptist, they rejected God. By rejecting John the Baptist, they rejected God. Now, I read it before I prayed, so I won't read it all again. But if you remember, the last time we were in Mark, Jesus went to the temple and he cleansed it, right? He threw over the money changers. He ran all the people selling things out of the temple. He said, my father's house was a house of prayer. And what he did was, in their minds, extremely sacrilegious. How dare this street preacher come in here and overturn everything that we stand for? Who is he to do this? And that's the reason why, in verse 27, the chief priests and scribes and elders, that's the Sanhedrin, came to him and said, by what authority are you doing this? Who gave you, Jesus of Nazareth, the authority to come into our temple and turn over our tables. And that's why Jesus then answers with this question. This is a rabbinic style of question and answer, answering a question with a question. He says, well, I'll ask you, by whose authority did John preach? By whose authority did John the Baptist baptize people? Did John do this? by God's authority or by man's? And if you answer that question, then I'll answer your question. And the reason that Jesus brings up John is because the same authority by which John the Baptist preached and baptized is the authority by which Jesus did what he did. One commentator says, they have shown by their failure to recognize God's prophetic call to repentance in the ministry of John that they don't really want to be confronted with God's revelation. He presented to them a true dilemma. When somebody comes to us and preaches, when someone makes a prophecy, when someone declares themselves as a messenger of God, there really are two options. Either that person is from God or that person is not. That's it. There's no intermediate state there. Either John the Baptist was this eccentric man who lived in the wilderness and ate locusts and wild honey and just had a really prophetic voice but was not given authority by God and should be rejected, or John the Baptist was a messenger of God. But in posing that dilemma, The Sanhedrin realize, well, it's sort of a trap, right? Because if we say it was from heaven, if we say that John did what he did because God told him to, then we would be admitting to not believing God's messenger. We would be implicitly saying that God gave us a messenger and we rejected him. They're not going to give that up. They're not going to tap out. But if they say, well, John wasn't sent from God, he was sent from man, his own person, whether demonically possessed or just in his own mind, he was just a man, then they feared the people because the people revered John. They thought he was a prophet. And so either they're going to get in trouble from the people or from their religious tribe who thought they were denying God. Jesus here traps the very people that we've seen throughout the book of Mark continue to try to trap him. He trapped them in what I would call a true dilemma. Only two choices. John was from God or John was not. And so since they say, we don't know, he says, then I'm not going to tell you. I mean, I think that's a little interesting. Why would Jesus talk like that? But I think that his answer is actually implied He is saying that, since there's only two possibilities, he's implying that both John and Jesus have the same authority, which of course is God himself. But they did not want to admit that God spoke to them and they said no. Now, if there's any question about that, the next parable Jesus gives will make it more clear. So go with me now to Mark 12, verses 1 through 12. Jesus is now speaking to the same group, and he's going to give them a story by which he illustrates that they did not just reject John, they also rejected all the prophets God sent them, as well as his son. Chapter 12, verse 1. And it began to speak in parables. A man planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a pit for the wine press and built a tower and leased it to tenants and went into another country. When the season came, he sent a servant to the tenants to get from them some of the fruit of the vineyard. And they took him and beat him and sent him away empty-handed. Again, he sent to them another servant and they struck him on the head and treated him shamefully. And he sent another to have him killed. And so with many others, some they beat, some they killed. He still had another, a beloved son. Finally, he sent him to... But those tenants said to one another, this is the heir, come, let us kill him and the inheritance will be ours. When they took him and killed him and threw him out of the vineyard, what will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others. in scripture the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone this was the Lord's doing and it is marvelous in our eyes and they were seeking to arrest him but feared the people for they perceived that he had told the parable against them so they left him and went away well they perceived correctly the parable was against them the religious leaders are the tenants in the story and The owner is God the Father. All throughout the history of Israel, if we were to go back to the Old Testament, we would see cycles of sin, cycles of idolatry that would lead them into captivity over and again. And what would God do during those times? He wouldn't simply be silent. For generations, God would raise up prophets to speak to the children of Israel. Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Amos, Zechariah, you name it. He sent them to his people to cry out against them that they would repent and turn back to God. The owner of this vineyard wanted to collect his due, and he would send a servant, and every time a servant came, those tenants would kill the servant. And likewise, we find that Israel would often run the prophet away, stone the prophet, or in some cases, kill the prophet. This parable is about the failure of the religious leader's authority. The owner is the highest authority. There's no higher authority in this parable than the owner of the vineyard. And likewise, there's no higher authority than God Himself. But every time God sends His servants, His tenants, the people that were entrusted to take care of the vineyard, which is Israel, rejected them. Can you turn with me or listen to Jeremiah chapter 25? So you can hear about this from the Old Testament. Jeremiah chapter 25 talks about how Israel would not listen to the voice of God. Again, I want to remind you before this sermon, we sang, speak O Lord. There ought to be a certain hunger from God's people that want to receive God's messages, want to receive God's word. The children of Israel had the book of Psalms. They had many, many songs they could sing, reminding them of this pleasure and this privilege to listen to God's voice. But yet when God gave them the voice, Here's what happened, Jeremiah 25, verse 1-7, "...the word that came to Jeremiah concerning all the people of Judah. In the fourth year of Jehoiakim, the son of Josiah, the king of Judah, that was the first year of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, which Jeremiah the prophet spoke to all the people of Judah and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem. For twenty-three years, from the thirtieth year of Josiah the son of Ammon, king of Judah, to this day the word of the Lord has come to me, and I have spoken persistently to you, but you have not listened. You have neither listened nor inclined your ears to hear, Although the Lord persistently sent to you all His servants, the prophets, saying, Turn now every one of you from his evil way and evil deeds, and dwell upon the land that the Lord has given to you and your fathers, from of old and forever. Do not go after other gods to serve and worship them, or provoke me to anger with the work of your hands. Then I will do you no harm. Yet you have not listened to me, declares the Lord, that you might provoke me to anger with the work of your hands to your own harm. 23 years persistently through the generations, servant after servant, prophet after prophet, and Israel would not listen. So just like in the parable of the vineyard, servant after servant, beaten, thrown out, killed. What does the owner of the vineyard finally do? He says, I'll send my son. They got to respect my son. He's my son. He represents me more than even the servants do. And so I'll send them my son. But as we just read in Jesus' parable, the tenants look at the son and say, there's the heir. There's the one who has the rightful place, the rightful inheritance to take this whole vineyard. If we kill the heir of the father, then according to Jewish custom of the day, the tenants would have first dibs to take over the vineyard. And so let's kill the heir, they say. And that's exactly what they do in the parable. They kill the son of the owner. This would give the original readers of Mark the idea that Jesus' rejection was due to spiritual blindness, not just to Jesus, but to the prophets and to John. Jesus is revealing that just as they rejected John the Baptist, just as they rejected Amos and Isaiah and Obadiah and Jeremiah, they're rejecting Jesus. And all of that has nothing to do with their personalities or the message they're preaching. It has to do with a spiritual blindness. He says in this passage in Mark, at the end of the passage, that the owner will come, he will destroy the tenants, and he will give the vineyard to someone else. In Matthew 21, he tells the same story. He adds this, therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits. Now it's very clear here that the ultimate judgment is not Israel as a nation. It's the Israeli leaders, it's the Jewish leaders, the ones who were entrusted with the vineyard. Jesus has come to say, because you rejected God's voice through the prophets, through John and through his son, you will no longer have a stake in my vineyard. You will no longer be the authorities in the land for the true authority has come and you've rejected him. And it's interesting that Jesus says in this parable, in verse six, finally. He uses that word finally, which means after they kill the son, there are no more servants. Jesus is the ultimate and final revelation. Hebrews tells us that God in various ways and various times spoke to us through his prophets, but now in these last days, he's spoken to us by his son. And once they rejected His Son, it was over for them. He is the last and ultimate servant. There's no more chances left if you reject the Son. If you rejected Isaiah and Jeremiah and Amos and Zechariah and John the Baptist, there's still time to receive Jesus. But if you reject Jesus, there's salvation in no one else. So collectively, when the leaders of Israel rejected the Son of God, they sealed their fate. See, God loves His vineyard. His vineyard is Israel. Those were His people, the very people, the authorities He entrusted to take care of His vineyard. They not only disappointed Him, they conjured up his wrath. Listen to Isaiah chapter five, which talks about his vineyard, which is the people of Israel. Isaiah five, one to seven. Let me sing for my beloved my love song concerning his vineyard. My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. He dug it and cleared it of stones and planted it with choice vines. He built a watchtower in the midst of it and he hewed out a wine vat in it and he looked for it to yield grapes. But it yielded nothing. And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. What more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done in it? When I looked for it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes? And now I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard. I will remove its hedge, it shall be devoured. I will break down its wall, and it shall be trampled down. I will make it a waste, it shall not be pruned or hoed, and briars and thorns shall grow up. I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it. For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are his pleasant planting. And he looked for justice, but behold bloodshed, for righteousness, but behold an outcry." The father of the vineyard, the owner of the vineyard, cries for his people. And the greatest judgment is not so much on the people, but on the leaders, on the authorities who failed to take care of his vineyard. And that is a foreshadow of the end of the Jewish age. We talked about this a few sermons ago. The old is done away with. The new has come. Salvation was never meant to be by sacrifice and altars and lambs. It was never meant to be by obedience to the Ten Commandments because no one could ever do that. And when Jesus comes onto the scene, he inaugurates the new covenant and does away with the old. The vineyard is gone. And it's the authority's responsibility. Jesus ends the parable with this quote from Psalm 118 where he says that the stone the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. The cornerstone is the most important stone in a building, that which the building is built upon, and the very one they rejected, the Son of God, would become the foundation of this new covenant. They rejected Him, but He is building all things new. He's making a new covenant, and He calls to Him, Jew and Gentile, to repent of their sins and trust in Him, and they will enter the wonderful vineyard of the Lord. And so we see now the second point about authority, that the religious leaders rejected all of God's prophets and ultimately they rejected his son. And by rejecting all of them, they reject the very God they claim to be their master. And that I believe is the saddest irony of this whole thing. These people are not telling the world that they don't believe in God. What I opened with today, it almost makes sense because many people are self-proclaimed atheists. They don't have a high authority to answer to, but these were the Jewish religious leaders. They would confess with their mouth that God is our king and they would reject every authority God would give them. By rejecting them, they reject the God that they pay lip service to. Well, and so we end with one more passage, which also has to do with authority. What about the authority of a pagan government? I mean, we already talked about the failure of the religious government, the failure of the Jewish leaders, but there's one more challenge to Christ's authority that needs to be explored. And this is a very relevant text, I think, for our day and age. Verse 13 to 17, they sent him, this is back in Mark 12, they sent to him some of the Pharisees and some of the Herodians to trap him in his talk. I just want to stop for a second. The Sanhedrin sent two parties that are normally opposed to one another. the Pharisees, who were the Jewish religious leaders, the Herodians, who by the name Herodian, you can tell they were aligned with Herod, with the Roman government. Jews aligned with the Roman government. They would clash very often, but there was one person in Israel they both hated, didn't mind sort of conspiring together at the behest of the Sanhedrin, no less. Think about that when you read verse 13. They sent to him some of the Pharisees and some of the Herodians to trap him in his talk. And they came and said to him, Teacher, we know that you are true and do not care about anyone's opinion, for you are not swayed by appearances, but truly teach the way of God. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not? Should we pay them? Should we not? But knowing their hypocrisy, he said to them, Why put me to the test? Bring me a denarius, and let me look at it. And they brought one. And he said to them, Whose likeness and inscription is this? They said to him, Caesar's. Jesus said to them, Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's. And they marveled at him. They marveled at him because they never heard this before. You and I have heard this probably our whole life. There's even colloquial language will say, render to Caesar. So we've heard this before, but this is the first time anyone's ever heard this before. Now, why is this so amazing, what Jesus is doing here? We need a little bit of context, right? Palestine was a Roman province. We've mentioned this before. The Jews were hoping that one day the Messiah would come and bring them back to the days of King David and King Solomon. But those days have been long gone. And since those days, the region underwent several conquests, most notably the Greeks, the Greek Empire, Alexander the Great, then the Romans. One, Pompey sent troops to Palestine about 70 years before Christ. Judah was conquered by Herod the Great. Tiberius was the emperor of Rome at the time. And you need to know that these people came to power through a coup. They were not duly elected. Nobody voted for Caesar. Nobody voted for Herod. They came into power by force. Many of these Caesars were sexually promiscuous. Matter of fact, so much so that you take the worst modern sex scandal of any politician, it pales in comparison to some of the things that Nero and others did. And one look at the history of these emperor families reveals things like backstabbing, murders, imprisonment of people in their own family, crimes that would make the most corrupt politician today look like a saint. That's sort of where we're at in the first century. Now Jesus comes and he walks into this fight, right? The Jews who want the pagan government of Rome to be gone. And those like the Herodians who were loyal and thought for the sake of peace and for the sake of power and protection, we ought to align ourselves with Herod. Remember what we established earlier. Jesus' authority transcends the authority of all the leaders. These are the claims that he's making. Now, let's see how his authority comes to bear on political authority. It's funny here, we have this sort of this binary, right? So we're sort of like today, Republicans, Democrats. We have Pharisees, Herodians. The Pharisees hated paying taxes. We all hate paying taxes, let's face it. But they especially hate it because on that coin, on that denarius, was an inscription that made Caesar out to be a divine being. By carrying that coin, by giving that coin, by using that coin, and by supporting that pagan government, they felt they were participating in rank paganism. You could see that, right? We try not to participate in things that are against God, and the Pharisees felt that their allegiance to God would prevent them from participating in anything the Romans had to offer. But the Herodians, like I mentioned, they were of Herod. Some of them were tax collectors working for Herod. For the sake of peace and security, it was in their best interest to go with the status quo. And so when they come to test Jesus with this polarized binary, no matter how Jesus answers, one group is going to get offended. Isn't that how it is today? Criticize one group and the other thinks automatically you're supporting the other side. If Jesus tells them to pay taxes, well, then you are supporting a pagan government, Jesus. If Jesus says don't pay taxes, then the Herodians will go tell Herod that Jesus is subverting the state. He is trapped. Let me give you a little more context here. Land of Palestine under Roman rule, Jews felt as they were captives in their own country, right? In the Old Testament, they went to Babylon, But here, they're in their own country, the Romans are ruling over them. There were other groups that disdain the rule, like the zealots, who didn't pay taxes at all. There's a lot of controversy. If there were a 24-hour news network in the first century, it would be very much like today. One of the most profane aspects of this tax, this annual tax, was the silver coins on which there was an image and inscription saying, Tiberius Caesar Augustus, son of the divine Augustus. He was being called a divine heavenly being. So not only was the tax a financial burden, it was a religious scandal to participate, so much so that some would not even carry the coin. On the issue then of paying the tax, the Herodians and Pharisees were sharply divided. Do we go along with the party line or do we reject it? Would God rather that we participate in civil disobedience? And the fact, again, as these two, who are so divided on this, and yet, in this instance, they're tag-teaming against Jesus, means that Jesus is the equal opportunity offender. So who's right? Who's right? See, they trap him. Mark even says, they ask him this, to trap him. And they kind of butter him up, you know? Teacher, I know that you're not persuaded by man. I know you teach things that are in accordance with God. So, should we pay taxes or not? I'm not sure they really wanted the right answer. They simply wanted to make Jesus look foolish. Just as the scribes earlier thought through their two possible answers about John, right? Was John of God or was he of man? And they chose not to answer. But there's a big difference between the question Jesus asked and the question that the Herodians and Pharisees asked. It's the difference between a true and a false dilemma. Like I said earlier, I believe that what Jesus said to the Sanhedrin was a true dilemma. Either John was from God or he was not. But this is not a true dilemma. It's a false dilemma, a false dichotomy. He doesn't have to choose between the Herodians and the Pharisees. Oftentimes in our world today we are backed into a corner. We are told we have to choose between one ideology or the other. I want you to know, my brothers and sisters, that when you argue this way, you are arguing like the Pharisees and the Herodians. And we must, as Christians, rid ourselves of such worldly thinking. I can't tell you how many times over the past four years, if I've criticized someone on the left, I was immediately asked if I was a white supremacist bigot. And if I criticize somebody on the right, I'm immediately asked if I support abortion. These, oh, so you're okay with type of arguments are not something Christians should engage in. Some of you, I'm sure, looked at two platforms and you chose a platform you thought was better for the country. You are free to do so. And if you chose, for example, the Republican platform, maybe you had coworkers or cousins who said to you, how can you do that? You're a white supremacist. You're a bigot. I think that kind of thinking is worldly. Then there are some who criticize and say there are things that are happening on the conservative side that need to be called out. And then the people on the conservative side do the same thing. Four years ago, if I said something against Trump, I was asked, oh, so you're good with Hillary? I didn't say that. And the same is happening now with Biden. I'm telling you, my brothers and sisters, we need to transcend the way people talk today. that is worldly thinking. Christians give one another charity. Christians do not read into each other's statements the worst possible motive and then run with it. Christians don't put up YouTube videos of preachers taken out of context and then put it for the world to see and say, look, he's this, he's that, he's woke, he's a white supremacist. And it's happening in the Christian church. is so grieving. No wonder Christians are arguing like the world because we fill our minds with the rhetoric of unregenerate people. You may like some people on the conservative side because they will argue for pro-life causes and traditional values, but many of them are not Christians. You need to be careful of the podcasts and YouTube clips of your favorite commentator owning a liberal snowflake on the college campus when you're not cracking open your Bible with the same energy. It's easy for us to want to own the libs and fill our minds with the rhetoric of a Candace Owens and a Ben Shapiro and a Sean Hannity and a Rush Limbaugh and think that we are doing God's service. How many Christians, perhaps even in this room, would say that you are anti-public school? You'll never send your kid to public school because you don't want pagans to influence your children. Fair argument. You know the argument, right? Send your kids to the Roman schools, they'll come out like Romans. And then some of the very same people will turn around and watch countless videos of these unregenerate people using worldly rhetoric to win arguments. We fill our minds with the screeds and rants of Rush Limbaugh and Newsmax and Turning Point USA. And then we wonder why we can't have a conversation with our fellow Christians. That doesn't result in name-calling and a false binary. Please don't tell me that you're against the influence of the world if you fill your heads with that stuff. And it's no wonder, because I'm talking here about theologically sound Christians. arguing like schoolyard bullies, false dilemmas, name-calling, whataboutisms, blame-shifting. All these are part and parcel of punditry on the left and on the right, but some of us are knee-deep into it. And if that's the case, you're no better than the Herodians and the Pharisees. And I would suggest taking a fast, taking a fast from the punditry and just getting on your face before God. Please take what I'm saying in the spirit in which it's given. None of what I'm saying should be taken as a never listen to these people. You're free to listen to whom you want. It's about what consumes you, what influences you. Christians need a better way. And just as much as we would not endorse a Joel Osteen, and say, well, but if you look carefully through his books, he mentioned Jesus, so he's fine, right? We should be careful and have the same level of discernment when it comes to political influencers. Now, Jesus gives us the example then, how to respond to this false polarization, because he makes a distinction that we often don't make. which is a distinction between the political and the religious. See, Jesus presents here a challenge to that false binary. He's not gonna say something that makes only the Pharisees happy or only the Herodians happy, because if the Herodians get ahold of what he says, they could charge him for sedition, which is punishable by death. So what does Jesus do here? Well, first, I thought it was interesting. He asked for a coin. Remember I said that some Pharisees wouldn't even touch the coin? Well, somehow they had one. He asked for a coin, and one of the commentators points out how, like, if they really cared about this handling of a coin, they probably wouldn't have one on hand, but they did, and they gave him the coin. So maybe they weren't so troubled about the question. Maybe the question was really just to trap Jesus. And Jesus answers, whose image is on here? Caesar's image, and he says the famous line that we all know, render to Caesar that which is Caesar's, render to God that which is God. Jesus, in a sense, is rebuking both sides. By the way, by rebuking both sides, he's not saying they're morally equivalent, but he's showing where they're both wrong. By saying render to Caesar or give to Caesar, he acknowledges that contrary to the Pharisees, Caesar actually does have a legitimate authority. And I know that's hard to swallow, right? Today we're challenging authorities, but we're not talking about a democratic process. The Caesars came into power, again, through force. Bloodshed, murder actually happened to put Caesar in power. And Jesus says he actually has a rightful authority. And you need to pay your taxes. By saying that, Jesus does not condone everything. He's not supporting all that Rome stands for, right? The worldly people would look at him and say, oh, so you're okay with the Roman pagan? He's not okay with it. He's simply saying this is your duty as a citizen of this empire to pay taxes to your authority. He legitimizes the authority against what the Pharisees were hoping. He also parts from the insurrectionists, the zealots, who would want to bring violent action upon the state, all in the name of reclaiming Israel for God. Jesus says this often. He said, my kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would fight. But his kingdom is not of this world. So the first thing about that, render unto Caesar, is Jesus is saying that the Roman authority is legitimate. It should not be overthrown, and therefore, you need to pay your taxes. But then Jesus doesn't end it right there. He gives us a distinction. He says, but you also need to give to God what is God's. And by making that distinction, what he's doing is he's repudiating the idea that Caesar was divine. He acknowledges Caesar's authority, but he's saying he's not God. God is God. So that coin might say Tiberius Caesar, son of the divine God. but Jesus is rejecting that. There is a way for him out of this trap where he can both reject the paganism of Rome while also acknowledging their authority. In doing so, Jesus is setting a limit on the state. He is saying that God is above the state and distinct from the state. Jesus' classic statement here allows that the state should be given its rightful due regardless of how irresponsibly they handle it, but it is still subject to God who deserve the most loyalty. You could picture some of the Pharisees saying, wait a second, but they don't use the money wisely. I've had a Christian tell me as a pastor, come to me and say, I don't report all my taxes because the IRS is corrupt. There's no argument from me that there's corruption at every level. But where in Scripture does it tell you that you have the right to skirt your responsibilities? It doesn't. Jesus is clear. You can obey the Lord without necessarily supporting the corruption. This distinction is what gives many of our Baptist forefathers this push for the separation of church and state. This separation that we enjoy and the religious freedom we enjoy in America is largely Baptist history. So if you're ever interested, look that up. It wasn't just the founding fathers. There were Baptists in America who made sure that the state doesn't dictate what the church does or what people have to believe. And they use this verse for that. But let me just remind you as I come to a close here that the original audience was Christians living in Rome. Tiberius was the emperor when this happened, but by the time Mark got into the hands of Christians, Nero was in charge. And if you know anything about Nero, you know you're dealing with almost like Satan incarnate. This was a man that they said, when he would host parties in his luxurious estate, he would take Christians, according to tradition, and he would burn them and use them as torches to light the way up the road to his party. It was Nero under which Peter would say in one of his epistles, honor the emperor. Wait, Peter, Peter must be part of the deep state. No. Yes, the emperor is evil. Yes, the emperor should be called to repentance. John the Baptist had no problem looking at Herod and saying, you should not have your brother's wife. None of this means an entire silence. And thank God in this country, we can vote, we can advocate, we can petition. None of that's out of the bounds. But what is the Christian's responsibility? How clear is it in scripture? Render to Caesar. Honor the emperor. Submit to the governing authorities. It is right there. Jesus' answer gives us comfort because we know that we don't have all the answers. So we don't, you don't have to have all the answers, my brothers and sisters. You don't have to know exactly what's happening at every level of every government agency. Our Lord told us what to do. Just do it. Pay your taxes, be submissive, give Caesar his due. Your tax isn't supporting everything. Our government uses our tax today for things we would object to. But your allegiance to Christ demands that you submit to authority, so go and do it. I thank God we have the freedom to pay taxes to the government and yet meet on Sunday and say, Christ is Lord, Caesar is not. That's why the people marveled. So let me just hone in on the application here. You see three points. One, how then do we honor God in relationship to authority? I want to ask you this question. How does my submission or my rebellion to authority on earth demonstrate my submission or rebellion to the authority from heaven? If you don't hear anything else, I'm saying. or you're distracted by some of the names that I named. You can't wait to bring that up to me. Please understand, the point of all this is to say that there is a direct correlation between your submission to God and your submission to authority. This goes for children as well. You may not agree with everything your teacher says, your parents say, but unless they ask you to sin, that is the authority God put in your life. This goes for your employers. I'm sure you could think as you're sitting at work sometimes, I could do this better. I could be more efficient. Or you don't agree with their position on something. That's the authority in your life. Obey those who have the rule over you. And when it comes to government, it's the same. So we take all these three passages. Let me be very brief here. Number one, we honor God's authority first by listening to His appointed messengers. His appointed messengers, the prophets of old, John the Baptist, Jesus Christ, those are his appointed messengers. Today, God gives you fallible appointed messengers. Pastors are appointed. They have more weight in some of these controversies than unregenerate political pundits. Understand that, doesn't mean we're always right. We're not, we can be corrected. But if you're not first learning at the feet of the church, the church which is God's appointed institution to teach and disciple with pastors and elders and teachers and evangelists, then stop running to the world for information. Start with the church, start with the Bible, start with the people of God, and then you can listen to the world with a lot more discernment. But if you reject his appointed messengers, you are rejecting God. Number two, we honor God's authority by obeying his son. This is the most important point. The gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ calls us not only to believe, but to repent. Jesus said, the time is fulfilled. The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Repent and believe the gospel. Those tenants rejected the Son and God cast them out of the vineyard. There is no one who will ever make it to heaven who is not in the Son. You can only get to the Father by the Son. If you are here today or listening to me on livestream, I want you to know that if you are apart from Jesus Christ, you are apart from God. It doesn't matter what side of the debate you're on. It doesn't matter if you identify with the Herodians or the Pharisees. You cannot keep God's law perfectly. You cannot please God with the works of your hands. Only God's appointed and final messenger, the Son of God, the Lord Jesus, can take your penalty as he did on the cross and defeat death on your behalf. The only way for you to be made right with God is to listen to, to hear the voice of God, and obey the Son. Follow the Son. The only way to the Father is through the Son. Do not be like those tenants who killed the Son and cast Him out of the vineyard, because you will be cast out yourself into utter darkness. they will be weeping and gnashing of teeth because you and I deserve the wrath and penalty of God, but Christ absorbed it for our behalf. by dying for our sins and offering us forgiveness if you will turn and believe upon Him alone. So honor God's authority by trusting in His Son. And finally, and I won't beat the drum much more because I think we've covered most of this, but we honor God's authority by submitting to other authorities. And I want to make that clear. All these go together. All these last three points, you can't say, I listen to God's messengers, I listen to Jesus, but at heart, I'm a rebel against authority. It doesn't jibe. There's something wrong with the Christian who has a rebellious heart against authority. Because if they listen to his messengers, they would find that God is the one who sets up kings. If they listened to his son, they would find that God is the one who says, whoever resists authority resists God. So you can't claim to be a follower of Jesus and a maverick and a rebel. All of these go together. How can you say you are an obedient Christian if you have such disrespect and distrust for God's servants and God's words? Now, of course, the disclaimer that some might be thinking is, well, what about when the government tells us to sin? Obviously, Acts 5.29 tells us it's better to obey God than man. There are times in the history of the church where the government will outlaw prayer, outlaw preaching, as they did in the book of Acts. They could not teach in Jesus' name anymore, and the apostles rose up and they practiced civil disobedience and said, they can put us into prison, but we're not going to deny our Lord. That's not what today is about though, because the authorities are telling us to do things that we don't have to agree with, but they're not necessarily sinful. Just simply follow what Jesus told you to do. It's the basic stuff, right? If the world is going to be rebellious, shouldn't God's people be different? And I understand that if you submit to something, the world might call you all sorts of name, mindless sheeple, that kind of thing. But my brothers and sisters, who cares what the world says? We want God to be pleased with our lives. And so, honor the emperor, submit to the government, render to Caesar what is Caesar's. Can I just give you some good news about what happened in the first century? I already painted a picture for you of how bad Rome was, right? But it was in Rome that Christianity spread like wildfire and grew into what we have today. 2,000 years of Christian history began in the most persecuted part of the world at that time. So take heart. If things get worse, if we are ostracized, if our rights are taken away, it is not up to the servants of Christ to fight. Jesus specifically said that. It is for us to live in accordance with his word. We live in a rebellious society, polarized society, a society where people spurred authority. Christians ought to reject any ideology that conflates the kingdom of God with the kingdom of man. If you say, I don't want to be a doormat, I don't want to allow tyranny to reign, I understand your concerns. But what does the Bible say? You don't need to choose between the Herodians and the Pharisees. You can choose a third way, a transcendent way, the way of Christ, a way of self-sacrifice, a way of self-denial, a submissive attitude that pleases the Lord who is the only King of kings. And so give Caesar what is Caesar's. but give God what is God's. That coin, that coin bears Caesar's image. So it belongs to Caesar. But if you're in Christ, you bear the image of God and you belong to him. Let's pray. Oh God, please forgive us for when our hearts are rebellious against you, and help us to have discernment to process some very hard things. We confess we live in a confusing world, and we thank you that your word is not confusing. Help us to obey it, help us to love you above all else, and help us, Lord, to follow the King of kings. We do pray for those in authority, and we pray that you would save their souls. Father, we pray that you would grant repentance to President Trump and to Joe Biden, to Kamala Harris, and whoever else might be in authority. Lord, we want them in the kingdom. We may disagree with so many things, but we want them to be saved. Help us to see them as a mission field. Save our governor. Save our mayors. Lord, we pray that the authorities would come to bow their knee to the one King of Kings, the Lord Jesus Christ. In the meantime, help your people to stay true to the course and to not submit to worldly thinking, but to be biblical and to interact with one another, even in disagreement with Christian love. We pray all this in Jesus name. Amen.