“Properly Distinguish Between God and Government”
In the name of the Father and of the X Son and of the Holy Spirit.
[Amen.]
Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our
Lord [Amen.]
“We give Thee but Then own,
Whate’er the gift may be;
All that we have is Thine alone,
A trust, O Lord, from Thee.”
(Lutheran Service Book, © 2006 Concordia Publishing House, St. Louis, MO.
781:1)
Gospel Reading.......................................................... St.
Matthew 22:15-22 (esp. 21b-22)
21bThen he said to them, “Therefore render to Caesar the things that are
Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” 22When they heard it, they
marveled. And they left him and went away.
Prologue: In the sermon that I delivered on September 4, 2011,
based on Romans 13:1-10 I stated the following: “In our orthodox Lutheran
circles we believe, teach, and confess that government is God’s ‘left hand’
of justice and the Church is His ‘right hand’ of mercy. That is, government
is God’s divinely-established agency to maintain peace, freedom, and order
in society. The Church is God’s divinely-established agency to proclaim His
Good News of forgiveness of sins, salvation, and eternal life that Christ
gained for us by defeating sin, Satan, and death itself with His holy life,
innocent suffering, crucifixion death, and majestic resurrection from the
dead.
“You see, God … ordained and established government to prevent chaos in
society. It does so to provide an environment wherein citizens can securely
live wholesome lives and the Church can dispense God’s good gifts of both
spiritual and material needs.”
Okay. Before we go any farther let’s realize that the issue in
today’s Gospel Reading, as it’s been the past few weeks, is “authority.”
The question that looms before us is, as was also true shortly after God
created the heavens and the earth and everything in them including mankind
and has been true ever since, “Who or what possesses the ultimate
authority?”
Sadly, Satan succeeded in deceiving Adam and Eve into wrongly
answering that question by denying divine authority, disobeying God,
considering themselves to possess higher authority than the Creator of all
things including themselves, and by their rebellion against God’s authority
introduced sin into the world that has plagued people (including you and me)
ever since. One major aspect of such throughout history that’s still very
present today is the difficult challenge to …
“Properly Distinguish Between God and Government.”
You see, this is a Fourth and First Commandments issue. In the
Fourth Commandment you are instructed to “fear and love God so that [you] do
not despise or anger [your] parents and other authorities, but honor them,
serve and obey them, love and cherish them.” “Other authorities” are
identified as “all those whom God has place over [you] at home, in
government, at school, at the place where [you] work, and in the church.”
On the one hand, this commandment teaches that “God forbids [you]
to despise [your] parents and other authorities by not respecting them or
angering them by [your] disobedience or by any other kind of sin.” On the
other hand, in this commandment “God requires [you] A. to honor [your]
parents and other authorities by regarding them as God’s representatives; B.
to serve [your] parents and other authorities by gladly providing what they
need or require; C. to obey [your] parents and other authorities in
everything in which God has place them over [you]; D. to love and cherish
[your] parents and other authorities as precious gifts of God; [and] E. to
show respect to the aged.” (Luther’s Small Catechism with Explanation.
Copyright © 1986, 1991 Concordia Publishing House, St. Louis, MO. Pages
74-76.)
Just when you start to think that, like the Pharisees in today’s
text, you understand this authority issue, the First Commandment jumps back
into the picture telling you to “fear, love, and trust in God [“Yahweh” that
is … the covenant God who some 2,000 years ago revealed Himself in the
person, teaching, preaching, and work of Jesus Christ] above all things.”
Of course, you transgress that commandment “C. when [you] fear, love, or
trust in any person or thing as [you] should fear, love, and trust in God
alone; [and] D. when [you] join in the worship of one who is not the triune
God.”
Mankind throughout history has, even as you have, miserably broken
that commandment in which “God requires that [you] fear, love, and trust in
Him above all things.” Furthermore, “A. [You] fear God above all things
when [you] revere Him alone as the highest being, honor Him with [your]
lives, and avoid what displeases Him. B. [You] love God above all things
when [you] cling to Him alone as [your] God and gladly devote [your] lives
to his service. [And,] C. [You] trust in God above all things when [you]
commit [your] lives completely to His keeping and rely on Him for help in
every need.” (Ibid. Pages 56-60.)
However, despite all that fine divine tutoring, …
I. Sin-deceived Mankind Perceives God to Be Weak and Vulnerable. (15-17)
15Then the Pharisees went and plotted how to entangle [Jesus] in his talk.
16And they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying,
“Teacher, we know that you are true and teach the way of God truthfully, and
you do not care about anyone’s opinion, for you are not swayed by
appearances. 17Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to
Caesar, or not?”
The author of the Higher Things Reflections devotion for October
26, 2008, observed that “Like the Pharisees in today’s text we often try to
test God. We want to catch God doing the things that He’s promised not to
do; we want to find fault in God and thus redeem ourselves. By testing God
to find His weakness we think we’ll be able to make it on our own. After
all if God is weak, then maybe we’re not?
“When the Pharisees looked at Jesus they only saw weakness; they did
not see God’s power.”
However, the fact of the matter was then (and still is today) that
“God has already been weak …, and it is impossible to entangle Him in His
own words. Our Lord’s weakness is in Christ Jesus, for in Him the power of
God was hidden in lowly human flesh. So weak was our Lord in His flesh that
He was nailed to a cross and crucified for the sins of the world. This
frailty though, as St. Paul reminds us, is the power of God. God’s power is
in His crucified flesh and in His spilt blood.
“We who are baptized into Christ Jesus look to weakness and see that
God makes weakness into greatness. He makes the weak strong in Him, because
only He has power to do so. By ourselves we are sure to fail, for our
weakness will only lead us to death.
“Jesus turns everything on its head though. That’s the kind of God He
is. He takes the weakness of flesh and makes it powerful. He takes death
and uses it to deliver life. He takes perfection and crucifies it with sin,
and then He takes sin and clothes it in perfection. Weakness outside of
Christ Jesus, looks to this upside-down-ness of God and sees absurdity, but
the baptized look to it and see forgiveness, life and salvation.
“The weakness of God is at Calvary and also at the font. At the font,
the Word of God is attached to everyday water and it delivers salvation. At
the altar, the Word of God is attached to everyday bread and wine and
delivers forgiveness. That’s weakness turned upside-down. Yet God uses the
everyday extra-ordinariness of water, bread, and wine to be the power of God
delivered to you.” (Copyright © 2008 Higher Things, Inc., Holt, MO.)
Not to be put off by the Pharisees’ hypocritically false honor and
respect for Him, Jesus “called their bluff” and challenged them with another
of His many insightful questions. In so doing, …
II. Jesus Confronted Evil and Exposed the Reality of Hypocrisy. (18-21a)
18But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, “Why put me to the test, you
hypocrites? 19Show me the coin for the tax.” And they brought him a
denarius. 20And Jesus said to them, “Whose likeness and inscription is
this?” 21aThey said, “Caesar’s.”
In another of my many past sermons, one that I delivered on
October 16, 2005, shortly after arriving here, I said: “It’s all about
faithful Bible-based Christ-centered worship. And faithful Bible-based
Christ-centered worship is all about God serving [you] His gracious means of
grace to which [you] respond with Spirit-motivated praise and thanksgiving.
That is, [you] hear God speak to [you] in His Holy Word, believe it by the
power of the Holy Spirit, and joyfully obey it as a way of praising and
thanking God.
“The powerfully-piercing questions that Jesus used in this instance
both accused the Pharisees and Herodians and gained their … attention. His
questions cut to the heart of why they asked Jesus their questions, namely,
to trap Him and, ultimately, compromise Him.
“Although [you] may not realize it, [you] sometimes do the same thing
with [your] wrong reasons for attending worship and sinful attitudes toward
such. The Pharisees and Herodians were just simply hypocritical ... and
[you] are sometimes the same [yourselves].
“… Jesus exposed the reality of their hypocrisy. Using the language of
recipes, Jesus did not mince His words. He was abruptly straightforward
when he called His interrogators ‘hypocrites’ and asked them to explain why
they were testing Him!
“Jesus exposed them for what they really were ... hypocrites ... people
who tried to appear good, righteous, and upright on the outside but inside
they were filled with self-serving, evil, and Satan-driven motives.
“In many ways [you] often do the same thing, ignorantly forgetting that
God sees right through [your] deceptive masks straight into [your] hearts
and minds. He knows the stark truth about [you] even as Jesus did about the
Pharisees and Herodians. That reality is often pure, right, and proper as a
result of the Holy Spirit dwelling within [you]. Sadly, there are other
times when [you] block His presence with sin-stained thoughts and attitudes
that prevent [you] from receiving the good, right, and salutary blessings
that Jesus earned for [you] and desires to give [you] in His Holy Word and
His Holy Supper.” Those blessings certainly include the comforting
assurance that Saint Paul wrote in today’s Epistle Reading: “For we know,
brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you, because our gospel came to
you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full
conviction.” (1 Thess 1:4-5a ESV)
In conclusion, therefore, the irony is that today’s text really is
not about how to …
“Properly Distinguish Between God and Government.”
The Reverend Dr. Jim Denison very accurately captured this truth
when he recently wrote: “God calls us to obey our highest authority. We
render to Caesar what is Caesar's, but to God what is God's (Matthew 22:21).
We obey civil authorities (Romans 13:1-7) unless they order us to disobey
our Supreme authority. In that case, we choose to obey God at any cost.
When the Sanhedrin, the supreme legal authority of the nation, ordered the
apostles to cease preaching, they replied: ‘Whether it is right in the sight
of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge, for we cannot
but speak of what we have seen and heard’ (Acts 4:19-20). Our sisters and
brothers in North Korea, Iraq, Syria, Cuba and China would tell us to stay
strong. We must serve our highest authority. And we must seek his wisdom
in knowing how best to serve him.” (“Houston officials demand pastors turn
over sermons.” A Details
Cultural Commentary by Jim Denison published on Thursday, 16 October 2014)
The greater lesson of Jesus’ instruction is that He possesses the
highest—in fact, all—authority in heaven and on earth. After all, “Jesus’
reply reveals His own attitude toward secular government. He had not come
to be embroiled in political issues. His messiahship was of another order.
He was content to allow Caesar to administer government affairs, whereas He
concentrated on the affairs of God.” You see, “Not everything on which the
State has impressed its image rightly belongs to its province. When
government conflicts with God’s will, God must be given precedence.” (Donald
Guthrie in Jesus the Messiah: An illustrated Life of Christ. Copyright ©
1972 by The Zondervan Corporation, Grand Rapids, MI. Page 282.)
To say it another way, “When Jesus distinguished between what we
owe to the government and what we owe to God, he was in disagreement with
the inscription that appeared in Latin on the Roman denarius … . Jesus’
words provided the basis for the first generation of Christians’ refusal to
offer a pinch of incense in worship of the emperor. As their refusal often
led to martyrdom, Jesus’ answer to the Pharisees and Herodians led to his
own crucifixion.” (G. Jerome Albrecht & Michael J. Albrecht in People’s
Bible Commentary: Matthew. Copyright © 1996 Concordia Publishing House, St.
Louis, MO. Page 313.)
So it was then and still is today that …
I. Sin-deceived Mankind Perceives God to Be Weak and Vulnerable.
(15-17) However, today’s Introit that stated “The Lord is your keeper; the
Lord is your shade on your right hand.” (Ps 121:5 ESV) clearly and correctly
contradicts that wrong perception. In the light of that it’s crucial to
keep on your heart and mind the petition contained in today’s Collect: “…
have mercy on us that with You as our ruler and guide we may so pass through
things temporal that we lose not the things eternal … .” Do so realizing
that …
II. Jesus Confronted Evil and Exposed the Reality of Hypocrisy.
(18-21a) That was even evident many years earlier when in today’s Old
Testament Reading Yahweh declared: “I am the Lord, and there is no other,
besides me there is no God; I equip you, though you do not know me, that
people may know, from the rising of the sun and from the west, that there is
none besides me; I am the Lord, and there is no other. I form light and
create darkness, I make well-being and create calamity, I am the Lord, who
does all these things.” (Isa 45:5-7 ESV) Today’s Gradual contains the
proper response to that, namely, “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is
within me, bless his holy name!” (Ps 103:1)
God grant it all for the sake of Jesus Christ, His humble Son, our
holy Savior. [Amen.]
In the name of the Father and of the X Son and of the Holy Spirit.
[Amen.]
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