Stan P.: Hello again.
Stan P.: My name is Stan Peppenhorst, one of the elders, and I have the honor and privilege of continuing to read in God's holy word today.
Stan P.: We are in the New Testament still.
Stan P.: We're in the book of Mark, Chapter 12, reading from the NIV, the New International Version.
Stan P.: "Later, they sent some of the Pharisees and Herodians to Jesus to catch him in his words.
Stan P.: They came to him and said,"Teacher, we know that you are a man of integrity.
Stan P.: You aren't swayed by others because you pay no attention to who they are, but you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth.
Stan P.: Is it right to pay the imperial tax to Caesar or not?
Stan P.: Should we pay or shouldn't we?" But Jesus knew their hypocrisy.
Stan P.: "Why are you trying to trap me?
Stan P.: Bring me a Denarius and let me look at it." They brought the coin and he asked them,"Whose image is this, and whose inscription?""Caesar's," they replied.
Stan P.: Then Jesus said to them,"Give back to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's." And they were amazed at him.
Stan P.: And God bless the reading of his word.
Dan Werthman: Good morning.
Dan Werthman: Jesus addresses a question as relevant today as it was then.
Dan Werthman: It's in some form a political question, but it's a question we all wrestle with.
Dan Werthman: One way of phrasing the question, I'd just put like this: what do Christians owe to Caesar?
Dan Werthman: If you are a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ, if he is your savior and your Lord, what do you owe to Caesar?
Dan Werthman: Now, Caesar, of course in that time, was the Roman emperor, Tiberius Caesar Augustus.
Dan Werthman: But when Jesus speaks something like this, he's speaking not just to the people that he's in front of; he's speaking to people of all times in all places.
Dan Werthman: So who is Caesar for you and who is Caesar for me?
Dan Werthman: Caesar is whatever government official, whatever government unit that we're under.
Dan Werthman: Caesar is our President.
Dan Werthman: Cesar is our Congress.
Dan Werthman: Cesar is our state legislature.
Dan Werthman: Our governor, Caesar is our city council.
Dan Werthman: So when you put it in that context, and you think about, what do you as a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ, what do you owe?
Dan Werthman: What are you obligated towards, in other words, in relationship to whatever governmental figures and authorities are over you?
Dan Werthman: That's a question that Jesus speaks to us today, and it raises to me a lot of related questions.
Dan Werthman: For instance, what if I don't like Caesar?
Dan Werthman: What if Caesar is not the man or the woman that I voted for?
Dan Werthman: What if the Caesar that I am speaking of, or thinking of, is from a different political party like me?
Dan Werthman: What do I owe that kind of Caesar in those circumstances?
Dan Werthman: Which certainly speaks to a lot of us.
Dan Werthman: Or what do we owe to Caesar when we see that when we pay taxes to Caesar, Caesar, that government official or officials, that governmental unit, are using our tax dollars to fund things that we don't agree with?
Dan Werthman: What if you believe that government should not be involved in going to war against other people and other nations?
Dan Werthman: Is it what do we owe to Cesar, paying taxes, when we know that at least some of those tax dollars are being used to fund that war?
Dan Werthman: What if Caesar uses our funds for something that violates our conscience, like supporting Planned Parenthood with their activities supporting abortion?
Dan Werthman: What do we owe to Caesar, to our governmental units, when they use our tax dollars in those ways?
Dan Werthman: You can see how what Jesus speaks to, right at the time there, is very, very relevant today in how he answers that.
Dan Werthman: What do we as followers of Jesus Christ owe to Caesar, to whatever governmental unit is over us?
Dan Werthman: Now in the immediate circumstances that Jesus is speaking here, he is speaking about paying taxes, and specifically he's speaking about paying poll taxes.
Dan Werthman: The word there for"taxes" in the Greek there, it's the word that we get our English word"census" from.
Dan Werthman: This is the tax that, if you think back to the Christmas story in Luke Chapter Two, why was it that Joseph and Mary had to travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem on the night that she ended up giving birth to the Lord Jesus Christ?
Dan Werthman: Because the Roman Empire took a census, and they required you to go to your hometown to register for that census and pay this poll tax.
Dan Werthman: That's the same tax that's being referenced here.
Dan Werthman: The Roman Empire imposed this tax on anybody, any nation that they had control over, and the Roman Empire had taken control over Israel.
Dan Werthman: And so in 6 A.D., they imposed this poll tax.
Dan Werthman: And if you were a man between the ages of 14 and 65, if you are a woman between the ages of 12 and 65, don't ask me to explain that difference.
Dan Werthman: I don't know.
Dan Werthman: But if you were within those ages, you had on a regular basis, to pay this poll tax.
Dan Werthman: This poll tax was simply for the privilege of living under a Roman-controlled government.
Dan Werthman: Whether you wanted that or not, you had to pay the tax.
Dan Werthman: That poll tax went directly to Caesar, the Emperor, so it was a greatly resented tax.
Dan Werthman: You think you don't like paying taxes; imagine if a tax was imposed by a government that came in and forcibly took control over the United States, and we had to pay taxes to that government that we didn't want over us.
Dan Werthman: That's the kind of sentiment that was stirred up by people, or in people, when they think about paying this poll tax.
Dan Werthman: It was a Denarius.
Dan Werthman: That is a coin.
Dan Werthman: You see a picture of that coin up on the screen.
Dan Werthman: It represented, probably, an average daily wage in Palestine at that time.
Dan Werthman: The coin had a picture of the Roman Emperor on it, and this was so hated by the Jews that there were several attempts to overthrow this.
Dan Werthman: In Acts 5:37, we read about a man named Judas, the Galilean who appeared in the days of the census, we read in Acts, and led a band of people in revolt.
Dan Werthman: What was he revolting against?
Dan Werthman: He was revolting against the imposition of this poll tax.
Dan Werthman: The same poll tax stirred up a group called the Zealots.
Dan Werthman: Zealots were Jewish people who hated the Roman Empire so much in their control over Israel that they made all kinds of attempts to overthrow the Roman government.
Dan Werthman: And this poll tax continually reminded them that they were under Roman subjugation.
Dan Werthman: And so in 66 A.D., the Zealots led a revolt known as the Zealot Revolt against Rome, trying to overthrow Rome.
Dan Werthman: That's the history that Masada gets wrapped up into.
Dan Werthman: That is the revolution or the revolt that ultimately led to the Roman Empire coming in in 70 A.D., surrounding Jerusalem, knocking down its walls, destroying its temple.
Dan Werthman: It had disastrous consequences.
Dan Werthman: That all began partially because of this poll tax.
Dan Werthman: So this was the perfect way, they thought, to test Jesus, to try and trap Jesus.
Dan Werthman: And there were two groups that came together to try and trap Jesus with this question about this government-imposed, this Roman-imposed, poll tax.
Dan Werthman: The Pharisees and the Herodians-- and you could not get two parties more on opposite ends of the spectrum-- they normally hated each other.
Dan Werthman: I guess it's kind of one of those situations, like you've heard that phrase,"The enemy of my enemy is my friend." That's the situation here.
Dan Werthman: They thought,"Maybe we can come together and we can trap Jesus." The Pharisees, first of all.
Dan Werthman: The Pharisees, you know as Jewish religious leaders.
Dan Werthman: The Pharisees, you may or may not know, they were also freedom-loving nationalists.
Dan Werthman: They hated the fact that the nation of God, the nation of Israel, was under the control of the Roman Empire, and they hoped and prayed that God would send a Messiah, not in their minds, the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ, but a political figure, a military figure, who would overthrow the Roman control over Israel.
Dan Werthman: They hated the fact that they were continually reminded when they had to pay this poll tax, that that coin, the Denarius, not only had a picture of the Roman Emperor on it, but it had the words inscribed around the circumference of that coin, that Caesar, that the Roman Emperor, was divine, that he was the son of God.
Dan Werthman: That was highly offensive to any religious Jew, as you might imagine.
Dan Werthman: So they doubly hated the poll tax and what it reminded them of.
Dan Werthman: They hoped that by asking Jesus this question, that they could trap him.
Dan Werthman: They knew that the people did not like paying this poll tax.
Dan Werthman: So they reasoned in their mind that if Jesus answered,"Yes, it's lawful.
Dan Werthman: You should pay this tax," that would alienate the people, that the people who despise the poll tax, that would bring an end to Jesus' popularity with these people and maybe even end his ministry.
Dan Werthman: Well, what is the thinking of the Pharisees that may even be relevant today?
Dan Werthman: There's an error, the Pharisaic error, that I think comes forward throughout history.
Dan Werthman: That's a way of thinking about the relationship between religion and government that existed not only at this time, but existed all throughout history.
Dan Werthman: And if I had to boil down how the Pharisees thought about the relationship of government and the relationship of, you know, what we think of as the Church, Christianity or religion, the Pharisees would basically say this: religion should take over the role of the state.
Dan Werthman: In other words, the Pharisees believed this is why they didn't want Roman control.
Dan Werthman: This is why they wanted the old nation of Israel.
Dan Werthman: They believed that religion should control the state, should control the government, that religious figures should dictate what governmental decisions need to be made, that religious leaders should have the ultimate influence, that governments should be used as a tool to control, to shape, what people think about religious things, to shape what people believe religiously.
Dan Werthman: We see that today in different parts of the world.
Dan Werthman: We see extreme Islamic movements that, when they gain control of a country, of a nation, what do they seek to do?
Dan Werthman: They abolish the civil government that's in place there, and they seek to put everything under the control of their religious leaders and enforce their religion through the arms of government, through the laws of the government.
Dan Werthman: We see this throughout history, even in the Church, the Roman Catholic Church at various times in history, the papacy, the power of the Pope, has risen at times to a point where the Pope actually was able to influence what kings and other rulers of other nations, what they decided on certain decisions.
Dan Werthman: So we've seen that kind of influence in different parts of church history.
Dan Werthman: We see it even today: there are believers today, there are people who follow Jesus Christ, the title or the name that they go under is theonomous.
Dan Werthman: And they believe that the Old Testament laws should be brought back in in such effect that all of the Old Testament laws, at least the moral laws, should be mandatory, and everybody should be made to obey them, and that is the goal that they work for.
Dan Werthman: We see that whenever, throughout history, that the Church has been able to gain influence over the state, ultimately it is the church, it is Christianity, that has been compromised.
Dan Werthman: Ultimately, it is the Gospel that has been watered down.
Dan Werthman: Whenever the state, whenever the government, is controlled by the Church, the Gospel loses out.
Dan Werthman: And so we want to avoid the Pharisaic error.
Dan Werthman: With the Pharisaic error even comes into that belief that America is a Christian nation.
Dan Werthman: While there is truth in the roots of that, that God has blessed the United States in ways that he's blessed no other nation in its founding, that men and women who were part of the founding of the United States loved the Lord Jesus Christ, that many of the principles that our country was founded upon, that our laws were built upon come from the Bible.
Dan Werthman: We can never say, nor should we ever say, that America is a Christian nation.
Dan Werthman: That is to commit the same error of the Pharisees, that in some way the Church should gain control over government.
Dan Werthman: And as we'll see, Jesus avoids that error.
Dan Werthman: Jesus points out that error.
Dan Werthman: On the opposite end of the spectrum is the Herodians, and the Herodians were not a religious sect like the Pharisees.
Dan Werthman: They were not even really a political party.
Dan Werthman: They were Jews, but they were Jews who backed Herod, who backed the Herodian Dynasty.
Dan Werthman: At that time, Herod Antipas was one of the rulers that was a puppet of Rome.
Dan Werthman: And even though Herod was a puppet of Rome, he profited greatly from that.
Dan Werthman: And so if you are a Jew who aligned yourself and collaborated with Herod, you could get personally rich as well.
Dan Werthman: You'd profit financially from that.
Dan Werthman: And so these were individuals, Jewish individuals, who said, you know,"I am Jewish, but really, what's in my wallet is more important than my religion." And so basically, they were religious only in the very surface-y, secular sense.
Dan Werthman: Really, their religion was how much they profited, was their prosperity and their influence.
Dan Werthman: The Herodians, around the other end of trying to trap Jesus, that if the Pharisees thought that they could trap Jesus, if Jesus said that,"Yes, you should pay that tax," the Herodians were ready to trap him.
Dan Werthman: If Jesus answered that,"No, it's not lawful to pay the poll tax to Caesar," because the Herodians know if Jesus said, that he'd be siding himself with the Zealots.
Dan Werthman: He'd be taking the position of people that Rome considered to be insurrectionists.
Dan Werthman: And so the Herodians knew all they had to do was report that to the Roman authorities, and Jesus would be arrested and probably executed.
Dan Werthman: And that would be an end to his ministry.
Dan Werthman: Well, there's a Herodian error.
Dan Werthman: There's a way of thinking about the relationship of religion or Christianity and government that's on the opposite end of the spectrum of the Pharisees, and it's the error of the Herodians.
Dan Werthman: And it's this: it's the state should actually have control over the church.
Dan Werthman: If the Pharisees wanted to make the church or religion gain control over government, the Herodians wanted government, the state, Caesar, to have control over religion.
Dan Werthman: The Herodian error is to use the church, to use religion, to use Christianity, as a tool to accomplish the goals of government, as a tool to control what people think and how they behave and what they believe.
Dan Werthman: And again, we see that throughout history as well.
Dan Werthman: If you study World War II history and what was going on in Nazi Germany, the Nazi party, when it gained control, they didn't wipe out the church in Germany.
Dan Werthman: They co-opted it.
Dan Werthman: They removed the leaders of the churches in Germany that wouldn't cooperate with them, and they began to shape the church.
Dan Werthman: They began to demand absolute loyalty first to the Nazi party, over and above any loyalty to the Lord Jesus Christ or to God.
Dan Werthman: And then they began to work through the churches, telling them what they could teach, what they had to preach.
Dan Werthman: And they ultimately used the church, under the Nazi government, as a tool to spread the Nazi beliefs.
Dan Werthman: We see this today in totalitarian governments like North Korea, where you have leaders who want to raise themselves up to the status of being divine, who suppress any Christian Church because that would compete with the people worshiping them.
Dan Werthman: You see it even in fiction.
Dan Werthman: If you read in a common book in high school, in 1984 by George Orwell, that's the whole picture of Big Brother, a governmental system that takes absolute control, that wants to control not only what you do, but what you say and even what you believe.
Dan Werthman: That is the Herodian error: that the church should be used by the government to accomplish its goals.
Dan Werthman: And the Herodian error can be seen today, even in our country, in the growing tide of secularism and the attempts to push Christianity and any thought of Christian morals and Christians' beliefs influencing our behavior, to push that out of the public square.
Dan Werthman: The Herodian error can be seen today in all of those who've turned completely away from Christianity, and they look for their salvation in their political party.
Dan Werthman: They look for salvation in a man or woman that they believe is their political messiah.
Dan Werthman: That's the Herodian error.
Dan Werthman: Well, how do we avoid both these errors of the Pharisees and the errors of the Herodians when we think about the relationship between government and our faith, the relationship between Caesar and God in following Jesus Christ.
Dan Werthman: How do we avoid those errors and make sense of our relationship?
Dan Werthman: I want to give you just four brief principles here.
Dan Werthman: They are shaped a lot by a man named David McKenna who has helped me understand this passage.
Dan Werthman: He was, for many years, the president of Asbury Seminary, over in the neighboring state of Kentucky.
Dan Werthman: And when we look at what Jesus says in verse 17, we see these four principles.
Dan Werthman: There's probably no more wise words that have ever been spoken about the separation of church and state, about the relationship of politics and religion, than what Jesus says in verse 17:"Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar and to God the things that are God." Jesus first of all says-- here's the first principle in this.
Dan Werthman: He says,"Caesar has a legitimate claim over you." In other words, whatever government you are under, whether it's a government you like, whether it's a government that is run by people you voted for or not, even if it's a government that you are persecuted by, Jesus is saying that that Caesar, that government, has a legitimate claim over you.
Dan Werthman: Even the Pharisees and the Herodians: the fact that they used a Roman coin, the Denarius, shows that they accepted the Roman economic system.
Dan Werthman: They accepted that the hated Roman government was the one that used those coins to really fuel the commerce system.
Dan Werthman: You couldn't buy or sell without Roman coins.
Dan Werthman: They accepted that Roman tax money was used to build roads and set up public safety and sanitation systems.
Dan Werthman: So government had a legitimate function represented even by the fact that they decided, they willingly used, the coinage of Rome And Jesus here-- it goes further than that-- Jesus acknowledges that there are legitimate functions of government, of secular government, whether you like that government or not.
Dan Werthman: Government, he acknowledges, is there to provide for public safety.
Dan Werthman: Government is there to keep the peace, to maintain order, to foster commerce.
Dan Werthman: The apostles say this as well.
Dan Werthman: Peter says,"For the Lord's sake, submit to all human authority, whether to the Emperor as the supreme authority or to governors." Why?
Dan Werthman: Because they are sent to punish those who do wrong.
Dan Werthman: Peter is acknowledging that it is a legitimate function of government, in God's eyes, to maintain order, to maintain public safety.
Dan Werthman: Paul says,"The one in authority--" Romans 13--"the one in authority is actually God's servant for your good," that it is a role of government to ensure the public good.
Dan Werthman: He goes on:"They are God's servants, sent for the very purpose of punishing those who do wrong," of protecting you, of establishing order.
Dan Werthman: So Jesus here, by saying that,"Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar," he is affirming that there are functions, there are duties, that God has delegated to human government.
Dan Werthman: And, really, in response to that, he's acknowledging there are legitimate demands that government can make upon you and me, whether we voted for that government or not.
Dan Werthman: One of those is the obvious one that we're talking about here, paying taxes.
Dan Werthman: I don't like paying taxes any more than any of you.
Dan Werthman: I look for every way to pay the least amount of tax that I absolutely have to, but at the end of the day, I write that check or I have that money withheld.
Dan Werthman: Why?
Dan Werthman: Because Jesus has said that that is a legitimate obligation that I have to the government that God has installed, or God has allowed to raise up, and that he has providentially placed me and you under.
Dan Werthman: Romans 13:7 says this very clearly:"Pay your taxes to those who collect them, and give respect and honor to those who are in authority." We owe Caesar.
Dan Werthman: We owe him the taxes that Caesar says we have to pay, and I don't even get a voice.
Dan Werthman: And whether the amount that they're asking for is the amount I want to pay or not, we owe Caesar.
Dan Werthman: We owe the government respect.
Dan Werthman: We owe Caesar honor.
Dan Werthman: Paul even writes to Timothy in 1 Timothy 2:"Pray for your leaders." We owe Caesar our prayers, whether Cesar, the men and women who make up the governmental units or not, acknowledge Caesar or not, we are to pray for them.
Dan Werthman: All of that, Jesus is acknowledging that we owe Caesar.
Dan Werthman: And you notice that neither Jesus nor the apostles make any exceptions for government that I think is bad, for governmental leaders that I didn't vote for, for governmental leaders who implement policies and impose taxes and spend tax dollars for things that I disapprove of.
Dan Werthman: Jesus allows no exception.
Dan Werthman: He doesn't allow Christians to go off and form a commune out in the desert or live all on their own, separate outside of the reach of secular government.
Dan Werthman: Well, that's government's claim.
Dan Werthman: That is Caesar's claim, but Jesus doesn't stop there, does he?
Dan Werthman: He doesn't just answer their question, that yes, you render to Caesar what is owed to Caesar; he goes on, and he expands on that and says,"and render to God the things that are God." And that's the second principle.
Dan Werthman: God has a legitimate claim on us.
Dan Werthman: It is not just secular government that has a claim on us.
Dan Werthman: In fact, if secular government's claim is represented by a very small circle, God's claim is the huge, all-encompassing circle that surrounds it.
Dan Werthman: Government can make a claim for taxes, the payment of taxes, the payment of money.
Dan Werthman: God's claim upon the follower of Jesus Christ is so much greater.
Dan Werthman: Stan said it earlier, and we'll see this a little later in Chapter 12, when Jesus speaks about God's claim upon us, that it is to love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.
Dan Werthman: God's claim is so much greater than Caesar's claim upon us.
Dan Werthman: And that is why, at the end of the day, I, and we, have to hold any political party affiliation so loosely, because ultimately our loyalty is not to a political party that is doing what we hope they will do.
Dan Werthman: Ultimately, our loyalty is to the Lord God.
Dan Werthman: Ultimately, what we owe to God dwarfs and, really, in some cases, cancels out what we owe to Caesar.
Dan Werthman: That leads to the third point.
Dan Werthman: Don't confuse these two realms, Jesus has said.
Dan Werthman: Notice he speaks about these separately.
Dan Werthman: Yes, we render to Caesar what is due to Caesar, but we render to God what is due to God.
Dan Werthman: And whenever we try to blend those together, the error of the Pharisees and the error of the Herodians, the Church loses, Christianity loses.
Dan Werthman: So he is saying here that the church should not try to run the state.
Dan Werthman: We're not trying to set up a theocracy.
Dan Werthman: One day, and when the Lord Jesus Christ returns, the Lord Jesus Christ will reign over everything.
Dan Werthman: But until the Lord Jesus returns, there's no place for a theocracy.
Dan Werthman: The church should not try to rule over the state, but at the same time, he says, the state, the government, should not try to run or stifle or eliminate or somehow replace the church.
Dan Werthman: We need to guard against both of those errors.
Dan Werthman: And normally it's quite possible to live giving what is due to Caesar at the same time that we give what is due to God.
Dan Werthman: And for many years, we've been blessed to live in a nation where what Caesar, what your government, requires of you has not contradicted with what we owe to the Lord Jesus Christ as followers of Jesus Christ.
Dan Werthman: It's been very possible to render under Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God the things that are God.
Dan Werthman: But that is changing, and in many places of the world, it's been changed for a long time.
Dan Werthman: Again, I gave you examples of this already.
Dan Werthman: In Nazi Germany, if you were a Christian, what Caesar was demanding of you, the ultimate loyalty that the Nazi party demanded of you, directly contradicted with what it meant to pay to God, to render to God, the things that are God, to love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your strength.
Dan Werthman: If you're a Christian living today in North Korea or places like China, the claims of Caesar directly contradict and conflict with the claims of the Lord Jesus Christ upon you.
Dan Werthman: And even in our country, we're seeing more and more these days laws being advocated-- in some cases, laws being passed-- that that are making it increasingly illegal to be able to preach the Gospel, to be able to share who Jesus Christ is and the truth of Scripture, and when those kinds of laws directly contradict with Jesus's call, the Great Commission, to spread the Gospel, to lead people to become followers of Jesus Christ, We have that kind of conflict that is what I'm talking about here, when these realms conflict.
Dan Werthman: Any laws that would say that God's word and speaking God's word and teaching God's word and preaching God's word, that those are hate speech: those those laws again are a case of Cesar, the claims of Caesar, trying to set themselves up over the claims that God has upon the follower of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Dan Werthman: And so, last point: whenever these realms conflict, the believer has no option.
Dan Werthman: Whenever these two realms conflict, whenever Caesar, whenever government demands something of you and me as a follower of Jesus Christ that conflicts with what God requires of us, God rules over Caesar.
Dan Werthman: That has to be the operating assumption of a follower of Jesus Christ.
Dan Werthman: Paul says in Romans 13:1,"All authority comes from God, and those in positions of authority have been placed there by God." What is he saying?
Dan Werthman: He's saying that actually, God is Caesar's Lord.
Dan Werthman: God is-- you think of whatever political figure that comes to your mind-- God is his or her Lord, whether they acknowledge that's true or not.
Dan Werthman: The most unbelieving, atheistic governmental leader who's in a position of control is still under the lordship of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Dan Werthman: Now, Caesar, the government that we're under, has a limited authority over us.
Dan Werthman: It can require certain legitimate things.
Dan Werthman: We have to pay taxes.
Dan Werthman: We can be restricted from acting in ways that harm other people, that endanger public safety.
Dan Werthman: The government can even seek to influence our behavior and our choices in some appropriate ways.
Dan Werthman: But Caesar, the government, cannot dictate who we worship.
Dan Werthman: Caesar, the government, cannot dictate how we worship.
Dan Werthman: Government exceeds its authority when it infringes or restricts on how our conscience directs us to live out that first Commandment, to love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your strength.
Dan Werthman: Government violates the rule of God over us when it seeks to restrict us from loving our neighbor as ourself.
Dan Werthman: And that is why you have people like Jack Phillips, a baker in Colorado, who you may or may not agree with his choice, but he is a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Dan Werthman: He made decisions that honored his conscience of what it meant to follow the Lord Jesus faithfully, and that, the state of Colorado said, violated their laws.
Dan Werthman: And even though it could have cost him everything-- it has cost him a great amount-- he took that stand.
Dan Werthman: Why?
Dan Werthman: Because he realized that even though government has a legitimate claim, when the claim of government conflicts with the claim of God, when it violates our conscience as a follower of Jesus Christ, we have to be willing to place God as Lord over that.
Dan Werthman: That is why a florist by the name of Barronelle Stutzman, in the state of Washington, again took a similar stand, not out of hate, but actually out of love, out of love for her neighbor.
Dan Werthman: You may or may not agree with her choice, but her conscience in following the Lord Jesus Christ, in seeking to discern what does it mean to render to God the things that are God, made her make certain business decisions that the State of Washington said violated the claims of Caesar, the beliefs that government had about how she should behave in her business, and she's had to pay as well.
Dan Werthman: But again, she, they both model, and many other believers like her, what it means for us to place the claims of God over the claims of Caesar.
Dan Werthman: There are signs that what we read about in Revelation 18 and 19, the rise of Babylon is coming.
Dan Werthman: The rise of Babylon is not the old city in Persia that was a capital of Persia at one point.
Dan Werthman: Babylon in Revelation 18 and 19 is, I believe, a one-world government that we will see come about in the end-times, before the Lord Jesus Christ returns.
Dan Werthman: And as you read those chapters, what do you see?
Dan Werthman: You see that the signs of Babylon is it becomes an all-encompassing governmental power that demands everyone's loyalty, that doesn't just want your taxes and doesn't just want you to behave in certain ways, but wants to shape and actually control what you think, wants to shape and control what you believe.
Dan Werthman: And we see signs, I think, even in our nation and certainly throughout the world, that Babylon even now may be rising.
Dan Werthman: So what does it mean as a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ to live this out?
Dan Werthman: It means that you may be tested as Babylon grows and becomes more and more powerful.
Dan Werthman: And what are we to do when Babylon, when Caesar, when government, demands not just the things that are due to Caesar, but Babylon, but government, but Caesar, demands additionally the things that only belong to God?
Dan Werthman: We must say, as the Apostle said in Acts 5:29, when the law was put on them,"You shall not talk about the Lord Jesus Christ." And they said,"We must obey God rather than men." And that's what it'll mean for you and me, increasingly in the society around us, in the direction of our culture, until the Lord Jesus comes.
Dan Werthman: That's what it means to place the claims of God over the claims of Caesar: to be willing to say when they conflict,"We must obey God rather than men." Let me close with this.
Dan Werthman: I don't know if you share my angst in political matters.
Dan Werthman: I really realized how great my angst was about just all that happens in our political realm when, this week, I lost some of my cable stations.
Dan Werthman: It was one of those deals where I had a cable package that the promotional part of it came to an end, and they want to upsell at that point.
Dan Werthman: And then of course, if you can pay an additional amount, you can get the same channels that you've had or even more channels.
Dan Werthman: And I just made a simple decision: give me the absolute cheapest package that you can, not realizing that I was going to lose half my stations.
Dan Werthman: And in the stations that I lost, I lost all the cable news networks.
Dan Werthman: And you know what?
Dan Werthman: I've never had a more peaceful week.
Dan Werthman: And you know, I don't know that I would've made that decision willingly, but I am so glad that decision has been made for me.
Dan Werthman: Why?
Dan Werthman: Because the concerns of Caesar can rise and become too great.
Dan Werthman: The thoughts of Caesar, the thoughts of government and what it means to live in a world that is run by a secular government, a government that does have followers of Jesus Christ in it, but not enough.
Dan Werthman: Those thoughts can be so consuming, and to be free from that helps me to remember that the claims of the Lord Jesus Christ are the most important.
Dan Werthman: It helps me remember, as Revelation 11 tells us, that there will come this day when the Lord Jesus Christ returns, when the kingdoms of this world will become the Kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ.
Dan Werthman: And that is the day we hope for.
Dan Werthman: That is the day we pray for.
Dan Werthman: Let's pray.
Dan Werthman: Oh Lord Jesus, verse 17 ends there, Lord, with a statement by Mark that they were amazed by you as you taught these things, and we are amazed, too, Lord.
Dan Werthman: There's never been a more succinct statement about the separation of church and state, about the relationship of government and Christianity, and it is so simple and yet so profound.
Dan Werthman: Jesus, we want to walk in it.
Dan Werthman: Would you give us wisdom?
Dan Werthman: You did not go into detail in telling them how to apply it; you left the application up to them.
Dan Werthman: That's why there are people like Jack Phillips and Baronelle Stutzman, who is-- they seek to apply it.
Dan Werthman: Their decisions may or may not be the same decisions that any of us would make.
Dan Werthman: Give us wisdom, Lord God, to apply this powerful teaching.
Dan Werthman: Give us wisdom, Lord, to know what it means to render under Caesar, to government, what is due to government, but to have that all in the bigger picture of rendering under you, of paying to you what is justly due you.
Dan Werthman: You are due.
Dan Werthman: You are owed.
Dan Werthman: You are worthy of all of our worship.
Dan Werthman: You are worthy of all of our praise and all of our thanksgiving, all our energy, all our emotion, all our love, all that we have.
Dan Werthman: We offer it to you, Lord Jesus.
Dan Werthman: We pray in your name.
Dan Werthman: Amen.