We’re reading Mark chapter 12 verses 13 through 17. This is God’s holy word. And 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 or 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.
Thus far, God’s holy, inspired, and infallible word. And it will please the Lord to take his word and transform it in our lives into service for himself. Thanks be to God. Heavenly Father, we come now to study together. We pray that You would encourage us, convict us, direct us. We pray, Lord, to rejoice in You and in Your Word this day. In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen. Once the opponents of Jesus decided that He must be eliminated, that means killed.
They searched for ways to do this without arousing either the Roman authorities or the general populace. Many Jews believed that it was sinful to pay taxes to heathens like the Romans. Any kind of anti-Roman tax protest was popular with the Jewish citizenry. But Jesus never spoke against paying taxes. He did, however, warn against greed and exploitation, which were at the heart of the taxation policies of that day, both in Judea and in the Roman Empire.
On this particular occasion, the Pharisees and Herodians believed they had Jesus trapped. If he denounced paying Roman taxes, well, he might be arrested, and then whatever consequences might follow, they would be glad for that. If he counseled paying the Romans, then people might turn against him.
So the question was, if we can paraphrase Shakespeare, to pay or not to pay, that is the question. Well, we have several things to consider as we study this morning. We’re going to take a look at the contestants in this sort of contest that’s taking place. Then we’ll try to enter into their minds and thoughts and see what they might have been thinking. And I’m including Jesus in all this as well. And then we want to stop and take a look at the world in which they lived and how they were trying to get along in it. We’ll talk about the tests that they had to face, particularly Jesus, and then the things that were rendered, things rendered to God and things rendered to Caesar, as they put it.
Okay, the contestants. You see, this is a rigged contest. That is, there doesn’t seem to be any way to get out of trouble if you are the one who is to answer the questions or have to face the matters that are placed before it. It’s a rigged contest, and that’s what they wanted, of course.
They wanted Jesus to be caught, and they were the trappers, as it were, the Pharisees and the Herodians. Now, it’s interesting, the Pharisees and the Herodians didn’t like each other very much. The Herodians had allied themselves with Herod, or the Herodian family, anyway.
And that was a very political family. They didn’t care much about religion. But when it was useful to them, they claimed to be good Jews, although they were half Edomites. And when it wasn’t to their advantage, they just forgot about it and did the political thing.
And the Pharisees, of course, were very committed to religion, but it had to be religion according to their definition. It was based on the Old Testament. In some cases, such as in Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, who are mentioned in the scriptures, they really tried their best to be godly men. But they had no use for the Herodians who didn’t seem to do anything with real zeal or commitment at all. And they didn’t have a full liking for the other Pharisees who just used their religion to get ahead. In fact, their hypocrisy was called out any number of times. Now, these opponents somehow had allied themselves to get rid of Jesus, and in their hypocrisy, here’s what they said.
They said, we know that you are true, and that you’re not swayed by appearances. What were they doing there? They were just using flattering words to try to get Jesus to enter into this contest that they felt was a certain way to have Him taken away from them. They meant the opposite really of what they said. They didn’t think he was true and they didn’t think that he could escape the flatteries and things that were directed his way.
And that means they didn’t know him very well because the matter is that though they were faking this, He really was true. He really was a person who wasn’t swayed by human opinions. He was a man who was completely a man of integrity. And if you could just put in more understandable words here, they would have said, we know that you are a man of integrity.
Ironically, it certainly is an irony here, ironically, Tiberius Julius Caesar. Now he’s not Julius Caesar, he’s Tiberius Julius Caesar, and he was known mostly as Tiberius, but he liked the title Caesar as well. He was a distant relative of Julius Caesar. But without knowing it, and this is the irony here, without knowing it, he helped to settle this question about who gets the attention, Caesar or God, which is the correct here. And that’s when Jesus said, look at the picture, and so forth. So it’s a real irony that Caesar, Tiberius Caesar, really was the one who helped settle the problem.
He didn’t know anything about it, of course, but his picture was there. and the inscription was there that he was the emperor. We don’t know fully the inscription but it was something to the effect that you better give him your allegiance and so forth. Well, the contest as it moved along here kindly kind of came down to Jehovah God versus Tiberius. And then it was also a contest concerning Jesus’ claim to be doing the will of God. And I don’t know about the Herodians, but I’m sure the Pharisees thought they were doing the will of God.
And then we need to understand there were other people here as well. There were observers. This was like a contest where you have a gallery of people who are watching what is going on. And anyone interested in this contest is challenged to decide whether or not Jesus is on their side, or on God’s side, or their own God’s side, or if they have strayed from that position. Well, those are the contestants in this confrontation, if you will.
Now we know that Jesus was very aware of the situation. He was able on any number of occasions to sort of slip away and not have to be caught up in sort of popular uprising, if you will, or whatever. But for those who are interested, you see the challenge is not just to Jesus or Jesus throwing it back on the Herodians and the Pharisees. The challenge is to all of us. Choose you this day whom you will serve. Joshua said, but for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.
Well, let’s go to their thoughts. Now, this is dangerous territory. How do you get inside people’s thoughts? Well, it is possible, psychologists and various ones are able to sort of determine what people are thinking sometimes, but it’s a difficult thing. The apostle said, the New Covenant says with him, let this mind be in you which was in Christ Jesus. So if you’re going to get inside any people’s minds and thoughts, that should be your first concern.
Is the mind of the Lord Jesus Christ in this person? And to us who are observing and listening, the question comes, is our mind, or minds, fixed upon the things that Christ was fixed upon, the things that pleased God, the things that He carried with Him into this world to be followed upon.
Jesus’ thoughts are those of His Father. What did He say? I and My Father are one. Meaning that they thought the same things. Jesus’ thoughts were God’s thoughts. Therefore, He did not err. Jesus did not err in any respect. But as we look at Him as a fellow human being, His thoughts are those of His Father.
They are grounded in the truth. And even though there was this hypocritical thing that said, we know you are true, in fact, that was accurate. He is the truth. He said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. They were meant, these thoughts of his, to be helpful to people.
Jesus was not a schemer. He certainly understood that judgment would come, that people would fall under judgment, but he said, I did not come into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through me might be saved. There’s a little question whether Jesus is talking there or John is writing the verses there after John 3, 16. But as far as we know, Jesus is saying, I came not to condemn, but to save. Well, that’s good news, is it not? We can know his thoughts because when he spoke, then we really have an idea of what he was saying accurately. Well, the Pharisees and Herodians, you see, are looking at this meeting as a kind of a chess game. What do I mean by that?
Well, I mean that which one could outsmart the other. Now, we know that nobody’s going to outsmart the Lord Jesus Christ. He knows the ins and outs, the ups and downs of everything. We’ve already mentioned how true He is and how set upon the mind of God He is.
But the Pharisees, as they see it, it’s a chess game. Who can outwit the other? They’ve tried several times to catch Jesus and failed, and now this time. As for these Pharisees and Herodians, their minds are full of collected opinions and traditions.
They know what the ancient rabbis said. They know what the opinion makers of their day were putting forth. They had all these things and their views on them. I think it’s probably accurate to say mostly they were influenced by the past, by what had been said before. And often Jesus said, you have heard such and such, but now I will tell you something.
And again, that’s the mind of the Lord, the mind that knows the will of God and the purpose of God. And also, because this is a contest, and because it’s a rigged contest, and because these men have nothing good to think of the Lord Jesus Christ, we can say that their minds are full of schemes.
How can we get Him? Full of tricks. Full of prejudices. in the hope that they will turn the people away from Jesus. May I say to you that that’s what the devil is really trying to do all the time, trying to turn us away from Christ. His mind is full of sedition, that is to overthrow God. His mind is full of tricks and schemes that he communicates in his own way to people of whom it said he was their father, that is the devil.
Observers are thinking now, and saying, no man ever spake like this man, thinking of Jesus. They are saying that no so-called worker of signs and miracles had ever reached the level that Jesus did. And even if they had impressed people, usually what they did came to nothing. So they’re full of the idea that Jesus is the teacher that they want to follow, not these Pharisees and certainly not the Herodians.
And they are thinking that The things that truly are marvels belong to God, although the devil sometimes has his counterfeits. But don’t forget that in addition to being very much attached to Jesus and what he says and the things that he does, that there are all these doubts that are being planted there. We can say they’re planted by the devil. But the men who are the devil’s instruments are these Pharisees and Herodians, and we could include any number of other groups there, but they’re trying to plant doubt.
So the people, they have this attachment to Jesus. There are also these doubts. So, have we succeeded? Did we really get into their minds? I think we have, at least as far as we need to be at this point. Now let’s think about the world that they lived in.
Jesus said, in the world you will have tribulation, but take heart, I have overcome the world. Jesus came from heaven. What was heaven like? Perfect. Perfect righteousness, perfect peace, perfect everything. He came from that into a world of sin, a world of sadness, a world of disappointment, a world of strife, a world of hypocrisy. That’s the world that Jesus came into. And yet, what was His statement? I have overcome the world. Is there any person that can stand up and say, me too, I’ve overcome the world? The answer is no. He has overcome the world. And if we have His Spirit, we can overcome, but not perfectly until we get to heaven. The Pharisees and Herodians were burdened with the cares of human existence. That is to say, they were never satisfied. They were always fearful of losing what little bit of joy that they may have found.
They were burdened, burdened people. So you have in this contest Herodians, Pharisees who were burdened It makes them mad. It makes them angry. It makes them difficult to get along with. And you have the Lord Jesus Christ who says, Come unto Me, all you who labor and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. I’ll take the burden off of you.
These opponents of Jesus were pulled this way, pulled that way by the things that were going on in the world, by politics, by religion, ambition, status, wealth, and a host of other influences. They were just pulled around. We would say that their chain was being jerked, as it were, by the devil and by their own sinfulness. Their lives swung between excitement and boredom, between purpose and frustration.
And again, all of us in the observing core, the multitudes as it were, find that our lives are being jerked around as well. Now, bring it down more to the issue here, paying taxes. If you paid all the taxes that were demanded of you, and some of it was illegal, but people still had to pay, you might go hungry because you didn’t have enough money to buy food, or your family might be on starvation rations, or something like that. It could mean the difference between hunger and contentment, that is, feeling satisfied.
Let me tell you that the Lord Jesus is in the business of fulfillment, of satisfaction. He’s not in the business of starvation. And the Psalmist himself says, I’ve never seen the true believers in the Lord going hungry, their children begging bread. This is the world that Jesus came into, but He said, I’ve come in to overcome this world. I’ve come in it to bring you, not hunger and uncertainty and the burdens of life, but I’ve come to make it up for you if you’ll just follow Me. If you’ll only trust Me and give your life to Me. And of course, this was going to happen because Jesus would go eventually to the cross and pay for our sins and rise for our everlasting life. This is all leading up to that at this point. Now we want to talk for a moment about the tests. Jesus said, why do you test me?
There’s a lot of testing going on here. There’s a lot of testing in the world today. Every school has multitude of tests that they give to their students, not just the ones the teachers pass out, but these mechanical tests, these tests that come down from some educational authorities. A test, test, test. We’re always facing tests. And so I wanted to emphasize that this incident involved more than just one test. Everybody is being tested.
The Herodians and the Pharisees had been given a challenge to expose Jesus as a fraud. That was their test. And I’m sure that some of them thought, oh, we can do that. And they failed. They get an F there. They were tasked with making this ingenious trap to succeed. We’ll say if he says one thing, he’ll be arrested. If he says another thing, he’ll be banished or not listened to. And they failed in that too. They get F for their little test.
All parties are challenged to know the Bible. If you want to know what test am I facing right now, do you know the Word of God? If you don’t, Nobody is keeping you from it. There are places in the world where Bibles are forbidden and you can go to jail and suffer for not having a Bible, but we don’t have that excuse. God says, learn my word. Hide my word in your heart and you won’t sin against me. Be a people of the book.
Now, some of these Pharisees knew the Bible pretty well, but they had skewed ideas about how to interpret it, and the Herodians, as we said, probably knew very little about it. Everyone, everyone was supposed to identify the picture that was on the coin that was held up.
And if somebody showed you a picture of Tiberius Julius Caesar, and you said, who is that guy? You’ve been in trouble. You’re supposed to know who the emperor is. And in this little gathering here, everybody that was there, as far as we can tell, everybody said, oh yeah, we recognize this one. That’s the emperor. Everyone was supposed to identify and to understand his authority.
There was an inscription. I’m not sure what the inscription was. It may have just been his name or it may have been something like ruler of everything. They like to think of themselves in that way. That’s the particular test, even though there are a lot of other tests going on around all the time.
But do you know the Word? Do you know what is written in the Scriptures? Have you hidden that in your heart? If you do, then you’re not going to bow down to Caesar. You’re not going to give your life to some of the other things that are maybe inanimate, but wealth or position or whatever it is, you’re going to give all the glory to God and worship Him. And we might ask, even though everybody, everybody could look at that coin and say, that’s Caesar, how many of these people could look at Jesus and say, surely this is the Son of God? You remember the centurion when Jesus was crucified?
The light kind of came on for him, at least briefly there. And he said, surely this man is the Son of God. Son of God. How many here in this particular incident would say, this man is the Son of God, and I accept his authority, and I’ll let him rule over me before I will give anything to Julius Caesar, Tiberius Caesar.
Well, that brings us to the last point, and that is the things that are rendered. That’s what Jesus said. Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s. What are the things that belong to God? Well, we can make a long list, I’m sure, but let’s say souls. What did the Lord say? All souls are mine. All souls are mine. That means you belong to God. Even if you don’t obey Him, you still belong to Him.
And lessons, the lessons that Jesus taught, they’re from the Word of God. Jesus didn’t make up things. He elaborated on what God had revealed. The Savior Himself was a gift of God. Thanks be to God for His unspeakable gift, said the Apostle Paul. The plan of salvation, God worked out that plan before the foundation of the world. What a gift. An eternal life. Jesus said, why don’t you come to Me and live and not perish?
These are the things that belong to God. And I say this is not exhaustive, but just to give you an idea. Render to God the things that belong to God. Jesus is more concerned that these people turn to Him and to the triune God than whether they got their way with taxes or not taxes.
What are the things that belong to men? Actually, nothing. Now, yes, Jesus did indicate that there are things over which men have some control and so forth, and that’s where he was directing their attention. But let’s just say from the beginning that when we say, the things that belong to Caesar or the things that belong to me or to you are not really ours.
They are the things of God. But for the sake of discussion and this incident here, You have all these coins. Bring me a coin. Bring me a denarius that has Caesar’s picture on it and so forth. It belongs to Caesar, yes, but it belongs to God in the sense that all coins belong to Him. All taxes belong to Him.
All thrones and crowns and writings and pictures and houses and roads, they all belong to God. What the Lord is really saying is here, prioritize things. Give unto God the things that you should in the first place. And then all these other things, well, God has raised up governments and given us roads and all this, and you can be thankful for those, but God is the possessor of everything. The things belonging to men are actually on loan. Talent on loan. Rush Limbaugh or somebody used to say, talent on loan from God. But even though you can’t really take that all that seriously, you can say that everything belongs to God. Everything. And when they’re not used for God’s glory, what happens? They are reclaimed by God. He better use them for His glory or He’ll take them back for sure. Jesus came to do the will of the Father.
And this we render. And this is our calling. Why am I here? And what am I to do with what I’ve got? Give unto the Lord what belongs to Him. That’s everything. But first, give Him your heart. Believe in His plan of salvation. Trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. For that’s what God has called you to do. Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, we do pray that we’ll see this incident as a matter for us to take seriously, that our thoughts and everything in the world around us and all these tests, God is in control of all this. And he’s using these things to cause us to put the Lord first in our lives, to turn from our sins and selfishness, grant that we may do so. And we ask in Jesus’ name, amen.