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  GIVE CAESAR WHAT IS HIS
  by Anton Bosch
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Summary: This sermon delves into Luke chapter 20, focusing on the
encounter where Jesus is questioned about paying taxes to Caesar. It
emphasizes the importance of obeying earthly authorities while also
giving to God what belongs to Him, highlighting the need for Christians
to submit to both governmental laws and God's sovereignty. The sermon
addresses the current climate of rebellion and political polarization,
urging believers to maintain a meek and obedient spirit, trusting in
God's ultimate justice and authority.

Topics: "Obedience to Authority", "Trusting God's Sovereignty"
Scripture References: Luke 20:20, Romans 13:1, Genesis 1:27, Matthew 22:21, 1 Peter 2:13

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DESCRIPTION
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This sermon delves into Luke chapter 20, focusing on the encounter where
Jesus is questioned about paying taxes to Caesar. It emphasizes the
importance of obeying earthly authorities while also giving to God what
belongs to Him, highlighting the need for Christians to submit to both
governmental laws and God's sovereignty. The sermon addresses the
current climate of rebellion and political polarization, urging
believers to maintain a meek and obedient spirit, trusting in God's
ultimate justice and authority.

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CONTENT
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Luke chapter 20, so we get back to Luke after a bit of a break, and Luke
chapter 20 and we're going to read 20 through 26. Luke chapter 20, 20
through 26. Luke chapter 20 verse 20, so they watched him and sent spies
who pretended to be righteous, that they might seize on his words in
order to deliver him to the power and the authority of the governor.

Then they asked him, saying, Teacher, we know that you say and teach
rightly, and that you do not show personal favoritism, but teach the way
of God in truth. Is it lawful for us to pay taxes to Caesar or not? But
he perceived their craftiness and said to them, Why do you test me? Show
me a denarius, whose image and inscription does it have? They answered
and said, Caesar's. Then he said to them, Render therefore to Caesar the
things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's.

But they could not catch him in his words in the presence of the people,
and they marveled at his answer and kept silent. And so remember, this
is the last week of Jesus's earthly ministry. He is headed for the cross
at the end of this week.

Well, the week in the book of Luke, of course. And the forces are
gathering against him, and they're looking for some way to get him out
of the way, to get him killed, to get him imprisoned if necessary, but
somehow to get rid of him. And so the chief priests and the scribes that
very hour sought to lay hands on him.

Now he'd just given them some answers to trick questions, and questions
that were not answerable from a human point of view, and so he had
confounded them, and he'd really put them in a corner with the previous
answers that he had given. And so they're looking for some way to trip
him up. Notice it says the chief priests, not the high priests.

Although they functioned as the high priests, they were the chief
priests, and we're going to come back to these guys at a later stage.
And the scribes, they sought to lay hands on him, but they feared the
people. So they couldn't just grab him and hand him over to Pilate, or
do something to him, because Jesus still has a large following.

Many people, thousands literally, following him, believing that he is in
fact the Messiah. For they knew he had spoken this parable against them,
that we looked at in the last And so they watched him, and sent spies
who pretended to be righteous. So when it says they, the book of Mark
and Matthew tell us who the they is, and this is important.

The they here, it says, were the Herodians and the Pharisees. Now the
Herodians, we've not come across these guys before in the book of Luke.
The Herodians were obviously those of the sect of Herod.

They, remember Herod was one of the governors, and there was a series of
Herods right through the scriptures, right through the New Testament.
And so there were those amongst the Jews who had allied themselves to
Herod, the Herod party. They were sellouts.

They had sold their people for money, and for power, and for
convenience, basically to the Romans. And so today we would call these
guys the liberals. Then there were the Pharisees, who were on the
totally opposite side of the spectrum.

These were the conservatives, what we would call the right wing. And so
you have the left wing and the right wing. You always have these two
concepts.

But what is interesting here is that both of these groups had now united
in their fight against Jesus. And this is significant, and this is
important because you remember that I've warned before, that in the time
that we're living, that in these days in which we're living, both the
left and the right on the political spectrum, not just in America, but
in other parts of the world, are uniting and will unite against the
church, against the true church. We say, well, that's impossible because
the right is for the church.

Well, the Pharisees were for Judaism, but they were not for Jesus. And
that's the problem, is you can be for the church, you can be for
Christianity, but still not be for Jesus. And that's the problem.

And so they have one common enemy, and that enemy are the true
believers, the true church, as it was then against the Lord Jesus, so it
is now. And so you have this unbelievable alliance of two enemies. Now
we've seen this happen before in scripture.

We've seen Israel ally with enemy nations so that they can fight a
battle against another enemy. And even today, we have that happening in
the Middle East, and I'm not going to get into details, but we see how
that America allies with certain nations in the Middle East in order to
defeat another enemy. And so your enemy, how does the saying go, your
enemy, now forgotten.

But anyway, because we have a common enemy, we are now sort of friends.
And this is something that we see in many environments. And of course,
this is a terrible situation.

We should never enter into alliances with those that we are not in
agreement with, no matter how hard we want to fight against a common
enemy. And so they watched him, and they sent spies who pretended to be
righteous. So these guys are literally hired hands, and they're coming
to Jesus with the express purpose of trying to ensnare him, trying to
get him to say something that would be able to, by which they would be
able to hang him.

And so that they might seize on his words in order to deliver him to the
power and the authority of the governor. Then they asked him saying,
teacher, we know that you say and teach rightly, and you do not show
personal favoritism, but teach the way of God in truth. Now, everything
they're saying is true.

Is Jesus the teacher? Yes, he is the teacher. Does he teach correctly?
Obviously, he teaches correctly. Jesus never taught heresy, never taught
anything that wasn't right.

Did he not show favoritism? No. In fact, one of the attributes of God
himself is that God does not have favorites, that God does not choose
one over the other because he likes one and he doesn't like the other.
God is totally righteous.

And so Jesus doesn't have favorites. When his closest disciples, when
Peter said, Lord, don't go to the cross, the Lord Jesus rebuked him.
When his enemies came against him, he rebuked them.

And so Jesus didn't show favoritism. And he taught the way of God in
truth. So these things were true.

But did they believe these things? Obviously not. This is flattery. And
folks, all of us are susceptible to flattery.

Preachers and politicians particularly are susceptible to flattery.
Jesus is not fooled by that kind of thing, and neither should we. When
people try and say nice things just in order to get something out of us,
or in order to get us to do what they want us to do, we need to be wise.

It's easy to make a mistake simply because somebody has said a few nice
things, but in fact they have another agenda. And so they asked the
question, and here's where we want to spend time this morning. Is it
lawful for us to pay taxes to Caesar or not? Now remember that he had
very cleverly answered their previous questions.

And clearly they had gone away, and they had spent time figuring out how
can we entrap him. They realized, whether they realized that he was
divine or not, or whether that he had God's wisdom or not, that's beside
the point. But what they realized was that Jesus was more clever than
they expected him to be.

And that if they were going to ensnare him, they needed to come up with
a question that he would be boxed into a corner, and that he would not
be able to answer. I think we have a little joke when you ask somebody,
do you still beat your wife? And we say, well, you know, what is the
answer to that question? Now I'm not asking the question, you know, do I
look fat in this dress? I mean, that's another question. Do you still
beat your wife? What is the answer to that question? So if you say no,
what does it mean? I used to beat her.

If you say yes, well, so there's no way out of that question. Because
it's designed to entrap you. It's designed to put you in a position that
no matter what you answer, obviously, unless you give a long
explanation, there is no quick, easy answer that's going to let you off
the hook.

So here's the question. Is it lawful for us to pay taxes to Caesar? Now,
remember, there are two parties. There are two groups that are trying to
ensnare him.

And amongst the people who are listening to him, there are two sets of
people. There are the Jews, the Pharisees, those who are strict on their
religion. They did not want to pay taxes to Caesar because Caesar was a
foreign king.

He wasn't the king of Israel. He was an imposter as far as they were
concerned. And we'll have a look at the coin in a moment.

The coin was blasphemous as far as they were concerned. And so to pay
taxes to Caesar was blasphemy, because it was acknowledging him as being
there by God, which they didn't recognize. So if Jesus said, yeah, we
must pay taxes, well, then at least half of his congregation would have
walked out on him.

If he said, no, we don't pay taxes, there were those in the crowd who
were allied with the Herodians, who were allied with Rome. And what
would they have done? Well, specifically, these spies would have run
straight back and said, this man is an insurrectionist. He is against
Rome because he's telling the people, don't pay taxes.

And remember, the issue here is not just the paying of taxes, but it is
the message that goes with paying the taxes. And the message is that we
submit to Rome, and we acknowledge Rome's authority to levy taxes on us.
And in fact, you'll know that there have been cases in American history
where certain preachers have said, we do not pay taxes to the American
government.

And the core of the argument has been because God is the only government
we recognize. We don't recognize the American government, therefore we
do not pay taxes. And obviously that's a stupid argument based on the
passage that we're dealing with this morning.

And so it's not just the issue of paying taxes, but it's the issue of
acknowledging Caesar's right to levy taxes and Caesar's position of
authority over the Jews. So there's no answer. So if Jesus says, you
must pay taxes, he's in trouble.

If Jesus says, don't pay taxes, he's in trouble. So how does he answer?
And of course, we know how this works out. But I want us to just look at
the detail this morning, because there are some important details to
this that may be helpful for us to understand our present situation here
in the world today.

And so he perceived their craftiness and said to them, why do you test
me? So Jesus recognized and he says to them straight up, you're trying
to trick me. You know, in modern English, why are you trying to trick
me? Why are you testing me? And so he said, show me a denarius, whose
image and inscription does it have? And they answered and said,
Caesar's. So I think this is probably one of the verses that many
people, even non-Christians know probably off by heart.

Show me a denarius, show me a penny. Remember, this was a day's wage.
Now, here's a picture of one.

And this is a genuine one, you can still buy them, about 800, sorry.
Yeah, I think about $800. Remember, there were many of these, this was
very common, this was a day's wages.

This would have been the, not the specific coin, but the currency, this
would have been the one that they show Jesus. It has on it the picture
of Tiberius, who was the Caesar at the time. Remember that Jesus was
born at the time of Caesar, or just after Augustus came Tiberius.

And so this has the image of Tiberius on the front. It looks like a
particularly ugly character. But it is the inscription that is
particularly the problem.

Now, one of the things that they did is that they, that in the
inscription is obviously in Latin. There's another inscription on the
back which we'll talk about. The inscription is in Latin, but it is also
abbreviated, so you can get a lot more information on it.

And the inscription says, Caesar Augustus Tiberius, son of the divine
Augustus. And that's where the problem lay. On the coin, he claims to be
the son of God, the son of the divine Augustus.

And of course, the Caesars did claim to be divine. They claimed to be
gods. And of course, just Jesus asking for the coin puts them in a
difficult position.

And I think we don't recognize this when you just read the passage.
Because in their pocket or in their money pouch, purse that they were
carrying, they contained, they had in their hands a thing that says,
Caesar is God. And so just to have it in their possession was a problem.

So they are answering their own question in a sense. And Jesus maybe
didn't even have to go beyond that, because he could have said, show me
your coin. And the moment the guy reached into his purse and pulled out
the coin, that answers the question.

But you have a coin. You're saying to me, I shouldn't be paying taxes to
Caesar, but you carry this thing around that says, Caesar is God. Not
only does it say, and for Jesus, this is a particularly blasphemous
coin, because on the obverse, on the backside of the coin, are the
words, and you can make it out clearly on this one.

This one's difficult to read, but on the right, Pontiff Maxim. Pontiff
Maxim, the woman that's sitting on the throne is Tiberius's mother. And
that's not going to get into that.

Pontiff Maxim is abbreviation for Pontifex Maximus. Maximus, you don't
need to be a student of Greek to understand, means the greatest.
Pontifex is priest, the great priest, the high priest.

So not only does Tiberius and other Caesars claim to be God, but they
claim to be the greatest high priest, literally the greatest high
priest, the high priest of all high priests. You'll recognize from our
studies in the book of Hebrews that that is the title of the Lord Jesus.
He is the great high priest.

There is no greater high priest than him. So not only does the coin say
that Caesar is God, but the coin also says that Caesar is the great high
priest. You'll also recognize that statement, Pontifex Maximus is the
title of the Pope today.

You may not have heard that title, but that is his title, one of his
titles. But normally we speak of him as the Pontiff, which are the same
words. And so the coin is a problem.

So Jesus says, show me the coin. And of course his question is, whose
picture is this? Now the symbolism of course is, the coin is Caesar's
coin, because it's got his name on it. If you borrow a book from me,
it'll have my name in the front of the book.

What does it mean? It means it's my book. You need to give it back. The
fact that the coin has Caesar's name on it means it's Caesar's coin.

And literally, in their understanding of the law, it was his money. And
so they had to pay this, just by the way, the tax that he's talking
about here is not the tax that the tax collectors would collect, which
would be a toll tax. So if you passed by and there would be a tax on
goods that you were moving and that kind of thing, this is what they
call a poll tax.

In the old days in England, they had a poll tax. And a poll tax was
simply a tax because you existed. That's all.

You didn't have to do anything if you were an adult, male or female, you
paid this every year just to exist, just to be. And so by paying it,
again, you're saying, I'm Caesar's, in a sense. So you can see the
problem that Jesus has in answering the question.

And of course, we know the answer. Give to Caesar what is Caesar's. So
what is Jesus saying about the coin? Whose coin is this? It's Caesar's
coin.

Is it God's coin? No. Are the dollar bills that you have in your pocket,
is that God's? Well, obviously we understand that ultimately everything
is God's. But God doesn't deal in dollars or in pesos or in anything
else.

God is beyond those things. These are the world's things. They belong to
the world.

And so Jesus says, whose coin is this really? He's part of what he's
asking. Whose coin is it? It's Caesar's coin. And of course, the answer
is give to Caesar what is his.

This belongs to him. And of course, we know that that's only half of his
answer, because he then answers the other half of the question. But I
want to stop here for a few moments, because this is the question that
we struggle with today in America and in many other countries.

As a result of COVID and the imposition of mandates and all of these
kinds of things, there is an ongoing serious debate amongst Christians
as to what degree do I need to obey the government? To what degree does
the government have the right to dictate to me? Now, Romans chapter 13,
and this is the most abused—well, not the most abused, but one of the
most abused chapters in the Bible right now. I don't know how many
sermons I've listened to that totally use this passage and twist it and
turn it in every which way, basically to get it to say what it does not
say. I listened to one this last week, and I was so disgusted because it
came from a good church.

But the guy was preaching, and he was saying basically this says that
you don't have to do what the government tells you to do, which is
exactly what the passage doesn't say. Now, I'm turning to Romans 13. I'm
not going to go through Romans 13, but I want you to see that this is
not just money.

This is not just taxes. Romans 13 says, for because of this, why?
Because of what? Because the government is set by God. That's the
previous verse, verse 5. The government is set there by God.

Now, understand me. I'm not saying that the Biden government is
specifically set by God, and that before that the Trump, and then and so
on. But the principle of government is set by God.

God has designed order, and God wants order. In fact, Paul says we need
to pray for the government that we might live peaceable lives. Not
comfortable lives, but peaceable lives.

And so the purpose of the government is to bring order into society. And
that is a principle that God established, and God stands behind that.
God does not choose, and of course God has his plan, and God sets things
in motion in order to fulfill prophecy, and all of these things.

We understand that. But at the end of the day, we can argue and say,
well, is Putin set there by God? And I don't know. I don't know the
answer to that question.

But what I do know is that the principle of government in Russia is set
there by God. Remember that the context in which Jesus is operating and
Paul is writing is in the context of a Roman government, a wicked
government, an immoral government. All of these Caesars who claim to be
the great high priest, who claim to be divine, were sexually of the most
immoral people of all ages.

They had no respect for life. They would kill their brothers and their
mothers. Nero killed his mother.

They had no respect for life. They were evil, and they were wicked. And
yet Jesus says, give to Caesar what is his.

And Paul is saying here, because the government is set there by God, the
principle of government is set by God, pay taxes, for they are God's
ministers, God's servants, attending continually to this very thing.
Verse 7 is where I want to get you. Render therefore to all their due,
taxes to whom taxes are due, customs to whom customs, fear to whom fear,
honor to whom honor.

So the issue of taxes is not just taxes, but it is honor, it is
obedience, it is fear, it is respect. All of these things belong to
Caesar. Now I know you're going to say, well what about God? I'm going
to get to God.

But the degree to which the government is entitled to respect, notice he
doesn't say love them. He doesn't say you have to like them. But the
principle is that they are set there and they have the sword.

In other words, there is a system of punishment. And because of that,
you need to respect them, you need to obey. And so do we obey the
government? Yes, we obey the government.

Now it doesn't matter how you twist this, and it doesn't matter how many
counter arguments you come with. The scripture is clear, Romans is
clear, Peter is clear, Jesus is clear when he says give to Caesar what
is Caesar's. There are two exceptions in my understanding.

The one exception is when the government tells us to do something that
is anti-God, that is against what God tells us, or the Bible tells us,
or when the government tells us not to do, that we're not allowed to do
what God tells us we must do. So if the government says we may not meet
as a church. Now you see, you remember we went through all this whole
thing last year.

The government has never told us here that we may not meet as a church.
They simply said you can't meet inside. So what do we do? We meet
outside.

But they never stopped us from meeting. Now if the government says you
may not meet, and we may not meet while you can go to discotheques and
bars and they're all open, and you know everything else is open, you can
go to the gym, but churches can't meet. Is there an issue here? Yes,
there's an issue here.

They are now specifically making a law against the church, and we cannot
obey that law. But when they are making rules that apply to everyone for
the good of everyone. Now remember, we don't all agree on what is good
for us.

I've used the example of the speed limit. You may think that 20 miles an
hour is a safe speed. I may think 80 miles an hour is a good speed.

The government says 35. So what do I do? I do what the government tells
me to do, because the rule is not made to make life difficult for me.
It's what they believe to be safe.

Now are they right? No, they're not necessary, right? Most of the time
they're wrong, I think. Well, that's a big statement. They're often
wrong, but it doesn't matter, because the principle, the reason the laws
and the rules are made is to keep order in society and for the good of
the community.

Now we can argue about whether this rule is fair and whether it's not
fair. Folks, there were many rules that the Romans made that were not
fair. You remember, one of those rules was that if a Roman soldier was
moving from one place to the other, he could grab the closest Jew that
he found and said, carry my kit for me, carry my pack.

And he was entitled to command that, to commandeer this man for a mile.
And it doesn't matter if the man was going in that direction, he has to
carry the pack for a mile. And Jesus says, that's a stupid rule.

He's got no business taking you out of your way to get you to carry his
pack. Is that what Jesus said? No, he says, if he makes you walk a mile,
and it's specifically a Roman soldier that he has in mind, then you walk
another mile with him. You give him two.

Why? Because in honoring and respecting the government, we respect God
who put the government in place. But more specifically, because of our
testimony. Folks, when Christians don't pay taxes, when Christians rebel
against the government, as Christians are rebelling against the
government in America and in Australia, many other countries right now,
it is a bad testimony.

Because the world looks at us and says, you guys claim to be Christians,
but you're actually rebellious. Instead of being meek and lowly like the
Lord Jesus, you just want to fight all the time. And folks, our
testimony is being damaged by our behavior.

And so, give the government what the government requires, unless it
contradicts scripture. There is a second one, and I don't want to spend
too much time on this, unless it goes against your conscience. You have
the right to say, I have a personal conviction about this thing or that
thing.

But here we get into murky water. Because what has informed your
conscience? If your conscience is based on Facebook, you can't trust it.
If your conscience is based on the word of God, you've steeped yourself
in the word of God, you've studied the word of God, you've meditated on
it, it's the thing that forms, that permeates every fiber of your being.

I would trust your conscience. The problem today is that the vast
majority of Christians' conscience is formed by the news media and by
the mass media, by conspiracy theories and all of these sorts of things.
And then you say, well, it's my conscience.

No, it's not your conscience, it's somebody else's idea. So when we
claim conscience, we have to be very, very careful how we claim that.
And so, those are the exclusions, that's the fine print.

Anything out of that, we don't have many choices. The reality is that
all of us have lived in a world in which we have all sorts of things
imposed on us. But we live with it, because the rules are made for a
reason.

Right there is an exit sign. I think the thing's ugly. I think it really
doesn't fit with our decor.

But the government says you've got to put an exit sign there, so we put
an exit sign there, so we can get on with the business of doing church.
Government says we have to have that door there. So if there's a fire or
something, it's an alternative way of escape.

Now, we never use that door, it has no purpose. It's just there. But
they say we must have it, we have it.

And we can go on and on and on about the building, and about how many
things that we do. I just, we say, well, that's arbitrary. I'm not even
going to begin to talk about ADA stuff.

The height of the counters in the kitchen, the height of the counters in
the restaurant, the size of the toilet, the list goes on and on and on.
And we've lived with that. Churches have lived with those things for
centuries.

Now suddenly the government says you have to wear a mask, we say, I'm
not wearing a mask, or whatever it may be. Now, I don't want to get too
far down this road, but I think you get the picture. And I trust that
those who are watching online, and I know that there are many who have
very different ideas, and I'm appealing to you, if you have different
ideas, take an honest look at what Jesus is teaching in Luke chapter 20,
and what Paul teaches in Romans chapter 13.

And if you have an honest look, you'll find that there is not much room
for disobedience and for rebellion. We must always remember that Jesus
comes in a particular context. If Jesus had been born, and if Paul, who
then writes a lot of the New Testament, if these men had come in an
ideal environment with a Jewish king on the throne, who is a God-fearing
king, with a priesthood that is functioning with Israel as God had
designed it to be, if Jesus had come at that time, we could throw all
these scriptures out and say, well, they were living in a different
setup.

They were in a godly environment, they had a godly king, they had godly
rules. But I really believe that one of the reasons Jesus comes, there
are various reasons, but one of the reasons Jesus comes into a Roman
situation is that we have no excuse. There is no way you can compare the
American government, or the English government, or the Australian
government, or even the South African government to the Roman
government.

This government was far worse than anything we have ever seen. And yet
they have no excuse but to pay the taxes, and to obey the laws. And if
they had no excuse, we have even less excuse.

All right, now I've lost my place here. Render therefore to Caesar the
things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's. Now
here's the other side of the story.

Genesis 127. So God created man in his own image. What was the question?
I'm not going to find it now.

Whose image is on the coin? Whose image is on your life? The image of
God. Man was created in his own image. In the image of God, he created
him.

Male and female, he created them. So if the coin belonged to Caesar
because it had his image on it, who do you belong to? To God. And
therefore, what is given to Caesar, what belongs to him, needs to be
given to him.

But what belongs to God must be given to God. Now remember, I said that
God doesn't deal in pesos, or in dollars, or in South African rands, or
English pounds. God deals in lives.

And so what does God want? What is God's tax? It's not the tithes. Look,
this has got nothing to do with money. For us, God wants you.

And we're not even speaking about the cross that he purchased us. We
were his to begin with. And sold under sin, and then he purchased us
again on the cross.

We are his. He says, you are not your own. You have been bought with a
price.

So give to God what is God's. What is his? You are his. And you cannot
buy God off by giving him money.

Or giving him a cut of your time. Everything is his. All of you is his.

And all of you must be given to him. It's very acceptable in some
circles to cheat on your taxes. And that thinking has come into
Christianity, where we feel it's quite acceptable to cheat God out of
his due.

So I'll give God some, but I'm not going to give him everything. No,
give God what is his. And folks, as we are at the beginning of this new
year, maybe, maybe we can think about this possibility of saying, Lord,
this year I'm going to give you what is yours.

But there is not one of us, including myself, who have not shortchanged
God in the past. Who have not used time and energy and resources just
for ourselves. And I'm not saying that God doesn't want us to have
recreation and rest and all of those things.

We understand those things. But at the end of the day, is all I am his?
Or do I just give him a little bit, just to keep him happy? Give to God
what is his. You see, now the problem here is that people will preach
against Romans chapter 13.

And they'll say, no, you don't have to obey the government. But that
rebellion does not just exist against God. The moment you are
rebellious, you will rebel against anything.

There's a stupid dad joke that I love, which most people don't really
appreciate. But there's this guy who was shipwrecked, and he washes out
on the island. And the islanders come and they resuscitate him and they
pump the water out of his lungs and he wakes up and he opens his eyes,
lying on the beach.

And his first question is, is there a government here? Because if there
is, I'm against it. You see, if we're against authority, whether it be
the authority in the home or the authority in the church or the
authority in the country, we're ultimately against the authority of God.
Because we're just rebellious.

That's just the human nature. But as Christians, we need to have that
rebellion dealt with. Jesus says, learn of me.

I am meek and lowly in heart. And in that process, you'll find rest. But
Christians are all hot and bothered and fighting everything and
everyone.

And they wonder why they don't have peace. They wonder why they can't
sleep. They wonder why they're depressed.

They wonder why they need to take sleeping tablets and all sorts of
stuff. See psychiatrists and all sorts of stuff to try and get through
life. Because they're all pent up fighting, arguing, debating, instead
of just submitting to God.

Say, Lord, I don't like the government. But you've asked me to obey
them, I'll obey them. I don't like my boss or my supervisor.

But you've asked me to submit to them, I'll submit to them. That's where
we find peace. You see, at the end of the day, we are not the judge of
your boss, or of your parents, or of the government.

God is the ultimate boss, and he will call them to give an account. By
the way, the coin that Jesus paid, and remember he sends Simon on
another occasion, he catches a fish, takes the coin, pays his tax. We
say, I'm not going to pay taxes because they use the taxes for wrong
purposes, for abortion, amongst other things.

The taxes Jesus paid, paid for his crucifixion. Think about that. He
paid the system that would crucify him.

So God, give me grace. That I may give to Caesar what is his. That I
give my boss what is his.

But at the end of the day, I give to God what is his. Because vengeance
is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. And one day Pilate, and Tiberius,
and Augustus, and Nero, and every one of those evil Caesars, and every
American president, and every American congressman, and every American
senator, and every judge, will stand before him and be called to give an
account for what they did.

God is keeping a record. It's not up to us. You see, sometimes we feel
helpless.

We say, well, why? I can't deal with this. They're making all these
rules for me, and they're changing the rules all the time. It's not my
problem.

If they're unfair, God will deal with them. It's not for me to make it
fair. And we say, well, we live in a democratic society.

We need to have our say. You have your say at the ballot box. And you
have your say at the throne of grace.

Those are the places where you have freedom of speech. Come to the
throne of grace and leave your problems there. He will deal with it.

It's not for us to try and fix things. Look, I'm as frustrated as
anybody about the decay in our city, about the filth, the potholes, the
injustice. But it's not my job.

That's God's business. God will deal with that in due course. My
business is simply to do what I need to do.

Give the world what I owe the world. Give the government what I owe the
government. Obey the laws, but give God what is his.

Let me just deal with the last verse. But they could not catch him in
his words, in the presence of the people, and they marveled at his
answer, and they kept silent. Father, we pray that you would help us.

Lord, these are difficult things. We live in an environment, Lord, where
we are being bombarded with messages to disobey this rule and that rule,
Lord. We're bombarded with ideas that are contrary.

And above all, Lord, there's a rebellious spirit that has come into not
just this nation, but into the world today. Lord, we're seeing
Christians fighting and arguing and protesting. Lord, I pray that you'd
help us to understand our place.

Help us, Lord, to understand that, yes, we need to give to Caesar what
is his. But at the end of the day, we are yours. And Lord, we give an
answer to you.

Help us, Lord, to live our lives in a way that would not dishonor you.
That as the world look at us, Lord, they recognize that we are different
because we belong to Jesus. Lord, let's leave the world to change
itself.

But Lord, let's help us to be those who preach the gospel. Help us,
Lord, be those who are living testimonies that as the world look upon
us, they may see the gospel enacted. Lord, these are hard things because
we live in a time that is so highly politicized.

Lord, the church all over the Western world has become so political. At
every corner, it seems that every preacher I listen to, there's a
political angle to it. Lord, I pray that you'd help us, that we may
recognize that we have a greater calling.

Lord, that we need to keep ourselves untainted by the world and its
politics and its ways of doing things and its fighting and its rebellion
and its argumentativeness. Lord, that we may show forth the love, the
joy, the peace, the long-suffering, the meekness, the kindness of the
Lord Jesus. Lord, we are different.

We have been redeemed and we're being changed. Help us, Lord, to not be
conformed to this world, but to be conformed to the image of the Lord
Jesus, of your Son. Lord, we pray that as that image was stamped upon
those coins, and even as, Lord, we looked at that coin this morning and
we saw that it was worn and that the inscription was worn off.

Lord, sadly, we bear your image, and yet at times that image seems to be
worn, seems to be filthy, so that it's not clear. Lord, I pray that
you'd help us, that your image upon our lives may be clear, that as men
look at us, they see your image, they see you. Help us in these things,
we pray in Jesus' name.

So, Lord, I pray that you'd go with us, keep us, protect us, bring us
together again safely on Thursday, I pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.

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Video: https://sermonindex2.b-cdn.net/JASBeCR6Zdo.mp4
Source: https://sermonindex.net/speakers/anton-bosch/give-caesar-what-is-his/
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