Amen. Grab your Bibles and stand. Matthew. Matthew chapter number 22. Matthew 22. Matthew chapter number 22. Make sure that's on. All right, we're gonna look at verse number 21 here. Matthew 22, 21. let's back up a little bit here verse 15 15 Matthew 22 15 says then went the Pharisees and took counsel how they might entangle him in his talk and they sent out unto him their disciples with the Herodians saying, Master, we know that thou art true and teach us the way of God and truth. Neither carest thou for any man, for thou regardest not the person of men. Tell us, therefore, what thinkest thou? Is it lawful to give tribute unto Caesar or not? But Jesus perceived their wickedness and said, Why tempt ye me, ye hypocrites? Show me the tribute money. And they brought unto him a penny. And he saith unto them, Whose is this image and superscription? They say unto him, Caesar's. and sayeth he unto them, render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's. Let's pray, Lord. We thank you so much for your word. We thank you for the opportunity to open it here this afternoon. We pray, Lord, that you just help us to look at this and apply these things to our lives. In Jesus' name, amen. You may be seated. All right, so What we're dealing with here is tonight we're looking at the last point of the Baptist distinctives. And this I was realizing this is my last sermon for like two weeks. Man, I don't know. I'm going to do noon Bible study, but it's going to be. today and then I'm having brother Travis preach Wednesday night and then I'm gonna be in Missouri over the weekend and we'll be back Sunday night be the tent meeting and then the tent meeting goes all of the evening services so that's from this Sunday next Sunday not and then the following Sunday will be my next time to preach so it's like wow It's gonna be a little while, so I'm gonna have to make up for it. It's gonna be about five or six hours tonight. No, I'm just kidding. Y'all are like, y'all look at me, y'all. You think I could make it five hours up here preaching? Okay, maybe I could. Yeah. All right. So what's that? You've seen it before? The longest you've seen me preach is three and a half hours. On record, yeah, that's true. That's true. That's true. Off record, on the other hand, that's maybe something else. Okay. All right, we're looking here at separation of church and state. So this, this passage here, I want to point out a few things about this passage. And before I do, though, I'm just going to mention we what we've been talking about Sunday school last couple of weeks, this really kind of goes hand in hand on that, as we've been talking about civil government, civil government has its place. We recognize that, but we recognize that there should be a separation. As Baptists, we've always believed, historically, ever since Jesus started the First Baptist Church in Judea, we've believed in separation of church and state. And, in fact, he said, basically, in his answer to this, he made the statement, that there is a separation between civil and religious authority, so to speak. However, I'm gonna give a little spin on it a little bit here, because often we don't look at this aspect of it. But first of all, in order to understand separation of church and state, you just have to understand that they're two different jurisdictions. They're two different realms of authority. Church and state have different realms of authority. The opposing view on this topic is a marriage of church and state. For example, like the Roman Catholic institution, okay? So their position is that the church and the state are one and the same, that the state gets its authority from the church. And that would be a misinterpretation of this passage. The state does not get its authority from the church. The state gets its authority from God. Just like the church gets her authority from God. And so, in this passage, you see here that these folks come to Jesus to tempt Him, to try to trap Him in His words. And they ask Him about whether it's lawful to give tribute. And He actually didn't answer them. He asked them. about whose image and superscription is on the coin. And they said, well, it's Caesar's. And he says, render therefore unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, or rather the things which are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's. Let me ask you this. If they were to bring Caesar before Jesus, and He were to ask them, whose image and superscription is on this man? What would the answer be? God made man after His own image. So, render that which is Caesar's to Caesar, but render Caesar to God. That does not mean that they were supposed to have him executed, okay? That's not what we're talking about. But recognize that that authority falls under God also. Not under the church, but under God. Now that does not mean that we have a responsibility to kind of usurp authority and go around and say, wait a minute, you're supposed to do what God says. Yeah, we can say that, but that authority will answer to God. Anyone who's in authority will answer to God and give an account for how they handled their authority, the authority that God gave them. And so this matter of the separation of church and state, you're gonna see some things throughout the Word of God where you have direct areas where you're told to pay taxes, direct areas where you're told to follow governmental authority, and then you're gonna see things like this. Go to Acts chapter five. Acts chapter 5. So, I'm going to give you a little background here. The apostles and disciples were out preaching the gospel. So what they're supposed to do, what we're supposed to do as disciples, we preach the gospel. And they got arrested for preaching the gospel. And in verse number 17 of Acts chapter 5, it says, A high priest rose up, and all they that were with him, which is the sect of the Sadducees, were filled with indignation and laid their hands on the apostles and put them in the common prison. But the angel of the Lord, by night, opened the prison doors and brought them forth and said, Go, stand and speak in the temple. to the people, all the words of this life. Now, they were arrested by civil authorities and God sent an angel to release them from prison and put them back doing what they were supposed to be doing. Yeah. What does that tell us about that incident? What's that? That's right. It tells you that there are limits to civil authority. Now, this is actually technically religious authority, but it was religious authority established by civil government. Now, it goes on here. It says in verse number 21, when they heard that, they entered into the temple early in the morning and taught, but the high priest came and they that were with him, and called the council together, and all the senate of the children of Israel, and sent to the prison to have them brought. But when the officers came, and found them not in the prison, they returned and told, saying, The prison truly found we shut with all safety, and the keepers standing without before the doors. But when we had opened, we found no man therein. Now, when the high priest and the captain of the temple and the chief priests heard these things, they doubted of them whereunto this would grow. In other words, they're like, who's going to find out about this? That's right. Then came one and told... Well, here we are 2,000 years later reading about it. Then came one and told them, saying, Behold, the men whom ye put in prison are standing in the temple and teaching the people. Then went the captain. with the officers and brought them without violence for they feared the people lest they should have been stoned. And when they were brought, now when they had brought them, they set them before the council and the high priest asked them saying, did not we straightly command you that you should not teach in this name? And behold, you have filled Jerusalem with your doctrine. Amen. And intend to bring this man's blood upon us. I mean, that is what they said when they had him crucified. His blood be upon us. Verse number 29. Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, We ought to obey God rather than men. Now, again, we recognize civil authority. We absolutely recognize civil authority and we are against rebellion against proper authority. But when authority goes beyond its realm or beyond its jurisdiction or goes beyond its limits of authority and tries to control things that are out of its realm, we ought to obey God rather than man. I know we've heard a bunch of preachers. I've heard a bunch of preachers over the years use this verse say, hey, we ought to obey God rather than man. And then they try to use that for breaking laws and stuff. It's like, no, we ought to obey God rather than man when it comes to preaching the gospel. Now, Jesus also told us to be wise as serpents and harmless as doves. We're supposed to be wise about these things. You know, in our society, we have freedom to preach the gospel. We can go anywhere and preach the gospel for the most part here in America. There are some places, now of course, you know, you've got some matters of private ownership, things like that, you know, private property. So obviously, you know, you you can go and preach the gospel in public places, but there are, you know, if you if you were to come and kick my door down and come in my house and start preaching some false doctrine, you know, honestly, I wouldn't care if you're preaching false doctrine or proper doctrine. I didn't invite you. you're violating private property. So that that our command to go and preach the gospel does not give us authority over private property. So understand that, you know, when I was in college, I was told that, hey, you can go preach the gospel anywhere. And I may still have let me see here. No, no, I don't think I do anymore. I had for years I had in my Bible the pink slip copy from the Greenwood Mall where they took me captive into an office and they took my picture and they wrote on a piece of paper, banned from the mall for, I can't remember how long, 30 days I think it was, because I was walking around the mall handing out gospel tracts. You say, oh that, you can't, they can't do that to you, you have a religious liberty. It actually is their private property. They can if they want to. They can. And so, did I ever go back to the mall, that mall, or any other mall and pass out gospel tracts? Yes, I did. I was just more careful about it. I wasn't like, hey, everybody, come and get, you know. It was just kind of like, you go to the food court, and, you know, you get your food, you're eating, and, you know, hey, could you pass the salt? Oh, there isn't any salt. Oh, I'm sorry. Here, take this. You know, you just got to be a little more careful about it, you know. You don't get as many out, but you also don't get kicked out. So, but it's really tricky. And then as far as like giving stuff to the shop owners or workers there, you have to be real careful about that. It's basically only when you're buying something. Then you say, oh, I'll give you an invite to my church, you know. But we do have we do have a higher authority when it comes to preaching the gospel. Jesus said all power is given unto me in heaven and on earth. Go ye therefore. Right. We're to go based on the authority of Jesus Christ, who has all power, all authority. Now, does that does that authority? Does that authority trump private property? Yeah, technically it does. What's that? Yeah, it technically does. But you know, what's that? He is the owner. That's right. He is the true and rightful owner of everything. But he's given us temporary temporary dominion, we'll say, over the things that we own. And so we do recognize private property when it comes to those things. That's why we knock on their door and ask them the opportunity to talk to them. So, you know, that obviously, you know, there's a point where you can take authority beyond what, there's a point where you can take authority past the ability to reach people, if that makes sense. Who's gonna listen to you when you're trespassing on their property? You know, that's the thing. You've gotta balance that. Of course you want to get the gospel out to people, and we have authority to get the gospel out to people. But at the same time, we want to be careful how we do it in certain places. You know, when we got during 2012 and we had the Super Bowl here, We had, between our church and a few other churches, 120,000 gospel tracts were passed out that week. 120,000 gospel tracts. We actually had our attorney draft a letter and send it to the NFL. to inform them that we will be exercising our First Amendment rights to share the gospel downtown. And he also came and passed out tracks with us. And we only had maybe one or two incidents where police officers said, you can't do that here. So what do you mean on this public street? And they're like, well, it's got there's this whole area is blocked and you can't do handbills. And I said, hold on a second. And the attorney come over and I said, can you talk to him about this? And the attorney talked to the officer and said, yeah, I'm their attorney and just want to let you know that we informed the NFL, you know, Sunphile and everything. So we were fine with that. But so, you know, you have to be careful about those things. You know, there was a time when whenever there's an event downtown, they would have a certain area of downtown closed off for that kind of thing for like trying to sell stuff, panhandle, pass out handbills is what they said, you know, because handbill can be a gospel tract or a flyer trying to invite people to the bar or whatever. A handbill is a generic term for anything you're passing out. And so when we were dealing with that, what we ended up doing is we ended up having, and it probably needs to happen again, but we ended up having our, Actually, we didn't have our attorney, somebody else did, got with the chief of police, the Indianapolis chief of police, and they actually had them put out a bulletin to all of the IMPD officers stating, helping them understand the First Amendment rights of people, even during events. And so it was a full-page thing that we used to carry with us in our phone or in our Bible, so that if they started hassling us, we'd say, well, here's what your boss said. So is that his name right there? Is that his signature? That's what he said. And this is a bulletin for you. You can have that copy. I've got another one. Yeah. We ought to obey God rather than man. Now, that also does not mean that we need to be disrespectful or argumentative to police officers because sometimes they just don't know any better or they're having a bad day. You know, if we're in the right and they're not, we're still respectful because they still hold the position of authority and we still respect that authority. and they're just trying to maintain order and maintain safety in that area that they're assigned. And so, you know, when they see something that they've been told, hey, these guys might, there might be these guys here, whatever, like sometimes it doesn't get passed all the way up and down the chain of command. And so sometimes it just has to be, well, okay. I have, so there are a few different ways to handle that. One is, You argue with them. You ask for their supervisor. You go through all that stuff. Or the other one is you just say, thanks for letting me know. Go around the corner. Do it out of their sight. And then when they stop you again, you say, oh, you know, I really didn't want to do this. I really didn't want to take a lot of time on this. I mean, you know, there was a bulletin put out by the chief of police that says we're allowed to do this. I don't want to waste your time or mine. Can you just let me do it over there? You know, just something like that, trying to be, try to be respectful. Sir, I, you know, sir, ma'am, whatever, you know, I, I, I appreciate what you're doing out here. I don't want to waste your time with this stuff. You know there's a bulletin out. Here's a copy of it if you want to look it over, but. We're just trying to. We're just trying to exercise our First Amendment rights. That's all I'm trying to trying to share the gospel were commanded by God to do so. So we're doing so anyhow, so that's that's that is that is really the issue in terms of government infringement on the rights of the people. Now you don't actually. Technically, we do not need a bulletin from the Chief of Police, because we have something in our United States Constitution and in the Constitution of Indiana. It's called Free Exercise Clause. The First Amendment gives us free exercise of our religion, and it is well known and very well historically documented that Christians are supposed to share their faith in public places, and so that's, That's the way it goes. The reason that we've lost those types of freedoms is because Christians fail to exercise them. But like yesterday, we were at this downtown circle thing, and I said, you know, let's we can pass out tracks or whatever, but let's not walk around passing out tracks because they've leased the circle. And they it's their private property for now. So let's just kind of leave a track for people sitting at the tables or whatever. And, you know, as we see people on the sidewalks, we can do that or whatever. But just trying to be wise about it. Right. Does that make sense? Make sense? Okay. It's kind of a balance because, you know, we do recognize a separation of church and state in that sense. Now, the other side of that is, y'all realize, and I know there's like a lot of conspiracy on this, but y'all realize that in Indiana, at least, in the state of Indiana, churches do not pay property tax. Did you know that? So we do not pay property tax on this building. We also do not pay sales tax on things that we purchase for the church. Because that is based upon, it's actually a biblical passage, and I didn't prepare to go to that today. If somebody wants to look it up, you can. When the, when the command was given to go back and rebuild the temple, the civil authority told the, in a letter to the civil, the other civil authorities, lower civil authorities, that they're not to charge custom or toll or anything like that for any of the temple workers. they base that, that's what they actually use a Bible reference as the reasoning behind them not taxing churches. Now I would say that it's just as well to say they don't tax churches because they recognize that they don't have that authority over churches. But Um, this is how we deal with it now. So yeah, if you want to look it up, you can try to find it. But that is it's in the Old Testament. But then there's there's also so in recent years, there have been I say recent years, it's been like the last 6060 70 years or so. Where So, y'all know what the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution says? First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Where's Brother Wilhelm? You took Brother Wilhelm home, didn't you? Here, let me read it to you. First Amendment. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof or a bridge or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press or the right of the people to peaceably assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. That's the First Amendment. That amendment to our Constitution is supposed to, the first clause of that amendment is that Congress shall make no law, what, respecting the, what was the word? No, it's about religion. but respecting the establishment of religion. They call that the Establishment Clause. The Establishment Clause, what it protects the American people from is Congress creating a law to establish what is a church, what is not a church, and what churches are accepted or not accepted, what religions are accepted or not accepted by the government. That's what that establishment clause is supposed to keep. the civil government from recognizing particular religions as a civil government. By the way, that's why our civil government is kind of generic when it comes to religion. It's because they have to be. They cannot establish a particular religion. For example, there's actually another part of the Constitution that talks about when it comes to holding public office, they cannot require a religious test on the person who is to hold public office. Does that make sense? A religious test, like they cannot make them, they can't test what religion they are and then make the decision on whether they're going to allow them to be in that office based on their religion. So that's the Establishment Clause. The concept or those things are related to the Establishment Clause. And then the Free Exercise Clause is that the government's supposed to not prohibit the free exercise of religion. And then the other parts have to do with other things, although lawful assembly and all of that, we exercise that when we have church services, but it's actually not, the intention is not for church services, it's for assembling for the redress of grievances. In other words, getting together to say, OK, the government's going haywire. We need to do something about it and redress grievances. And that's in writing, not with not with physical like battle or something. OK, so redress of grievances is, you know, a written statement that, hey, this is our issue, we would like for you to deal with it, fix it, whatever. And oftentimes those types of things come together as a bill and it goes to Capitol Hill, right? And sorry for those of you that grew up in the 70s or 80s. What's that? Yeah. Some of them move, some of them move. Some of y'all are singing the song from Schoolhouse. Yeah, yeah. So anyhow. So, but the idea there, we're not going to talk about all the First Amendment stuff. The idea there is that the First Amendment is supposed to recognize the separation of church and state. The term is not there, although Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Danbury Association. By the way, the Danbury Association was the Danbury Association of Baptists. It was an association of Baptist churches, and he wrote to them saying that the Bill of Rights gives a how was it a solid wall of separation between church and state? Because the Baptist said that that needed to be included in our governmental documents. In fact, so that was the Danbury Association associated with, or associated to Leland, John Leland, or associated with John Leland. And so, and John Leland was the one who, determined really he had a major, major influence on whether or not we would have had the Constitution that we have. If it wasn't for him meeting with James Madison in what's now called Madison-Leland Park and agreeing to make sure he got elected, because he was gonna make sure he didn't get elected, You say, wait a minute, wait a minute. Pastors aren't supposed to be able to make sure that somebody's getting elected or not. Historically, they were telling their people how to vote, historically. That didn't change until the 1940s. That changed when they, well, they call it the Johnson Doctrine, is when that changed. I think it was the 40s, right? Was it 40s? Maybe it's later than that, even. But I know people look at me funny when I say that, when I say that pastors used to tell their people how to vote. People are like, what? You can't do that. You're getting involved in politics. You can't do separation of church and state. That's not what that means. It's not what that means. And they can't take your tax. They can't take your tax exemption. Because here's the thing. They don't give it. They just recognize it. And as a matter of fact, as far as I know, there's only In fact, no, I don't think that there ever has been a church that has lost its tax exemption. There have been churches that have lost their property over something related to payroll taxes. But because churches that have employees do pay payroll taxes, that's, they pay their half of FICA. So, but anyhow. But they threatened to, they threatened to. Still hasn't happened as far as that goes. What's that? No, if you do, if you mishandle it, yeah, I mean, there are some rules related to those things, but. because of the fact that, you know, if a church accumulates property, it does so on a tax exempt basis. And then if you're going to pass that property to someone else, then that property has to be that person has to pay tax on it. So and if you don't do that, then it's there's you know, there could be an issue. So but. Anyhow, There's there's a whole lot of mess on this subject. There's a whole lot of conspiracy related to this subject. What I will say is, you know, we've been doing this a little while. And and I've been I've I've we've I've talked to attorneys. And I've talked to I've talked to judges and attorneys and. And and Congressman. pastors yeah a lot of different people on this subject and those that that kind of have conspiracy type thoughts about things like well you know you have to play nice with the government they're gonna take everything away for the most part Not a thing. I know we're in Indianapolis and somebody's going to say, well, what about Baptist Temple? Talk about that after when we're not live. I'll give you an answer, but but it wasn't it. Yeah, they didn't lose their tax exemption. They still have it. Then they still exist and they're still they've got a bank account. They've got their own property. They're operating their. Probably one of the biggest Baptist churches in Indianapolis. Still. So. I don't you know they lost some property. But I'll give you the rest of the story later, but it really, it had to do with payroll taxes is what it was. But yeah, Dr. Dixon was a good friend of mine when he was still alive, and we had talked extensively on the subject. And I can I can tell you what he's what he said. So, but anyhow, then I can also tell you the interpretation of it. Just looking at it from about from the outside in and then also talking to his attorney or someone. Well, yeah, so there he had these these two guys that were that were representing him and. I talked to one of them that was partner with the one so anyhow. separation of church and state. The idea is not that we get all crazy about, you know, politics and stuff that, you know, churches can't be involved in politics. No, they can't. Now, technically, when I say they can't, what I mean is, you know, the the. U.S. Code 26, it's the IRS, the Internal Revenue Service Code, says that if a non-profit organization, as long as a non-profit, or 501c3, as long as most of their operations is not related to politics, So, there is a fine line there. If an organization exists for the influence of politics, it's supposed to exist under a different tax code. It can't be a 501c3. It has to have a different tax code. So, it's not, you know, some people will say, like, oh, you're going to lose your tax exempt status. No, you would change your tax status if you're if more of what you're doing is related to tax or to to politics than it is related to other purposes. And so we don't have to ever worry about that, even if I tell you who I think you should vote for, because it would be a passing statement. Most of what we all of what we deal with is What? Yeah, the Bible. Okay, so I'll be real simple with the matter of voting. Vote for somebody who doesn't violate, who doesn't violate, or what's that? Who doesn't, who doesn't, who isn't going to support laws that are going to violate core principles of the Word of God. I'm not saying that you vote for them based on their moral purity. I'm saying you vote for them based upon their position related to core principles of life. They should understand the limits of government. That's a key, really. So anyhow. But separation of church and state is not separation of God and state. It's not separation of Christians and politics. It is the institution of the church doesn't run the state, and the institution of the state doesn't run the church. Make sense? Simple, simple put. All right, I think we covered that in a half an hour, 45 minutes. So we're gonna cut the live feed and have just some quick discussion here.