Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Right. Right at the beginning.
[00:00:02] What a joy to be together today. Amen.
[00:00:06] We are, we're going to take. We're going to do something a little different today. So we've been off a couple weeks, kind of off our normal groove. We got to celebrate our church's birthday with a prayer and worship day, which is great. We got to have our church picnic and have a joint worship service with our sister church, Iglesia Emmanuel, who we shared this building with and got to have an ordination. All this fun stuff. We've been kind of off our normal groove. And so we're back at it. And I decided, you know, we're back at it, let's do something different again. So we're gonna hit pause on our little series on Matthew today. Just for today, we're gonna set aside and do something a little different. Normally here at Emmanuel Fellowship Church, we're really passionate about exegetical sermon or exegetical preaching, where we pick books of the Bible and go verse by verse through books of the Bible. Today we're gonna step away from that a little bit and do something more of what's called a doctrinal sermon, where we're going to consider a practical applied theology. We're going to consider an aspect of the gospel and look at the larger biblical teaching of how we apply that in our lives, in our cultural moment right now. And what we're going to talk about today is a practical theology of politics, which I think will be. Some of you are like, oh, you know, it's funny, I actually have to leave early today. See you guys later. And that's fine, I get it. But I want to, I want to encourage you to ride this out with me. I do think, I do think God has something really good for us today. LifeWay Research put out this big study last week where they talked about how the vast majority of American churchgoers want to hear their pastors speak into current events from a gospel centered point of view. And I gotta be honest, guys, that surprised me. That's a little outside my normal. And also, real quick, I'm going to go out on a limb and I'm going to guess a whole lot of you in this room could care less what I think about politics. And that's fine, right? Like, I get that there are people in this room. My parents age. My parents are in this room.
[00:02:11] And a lot of that is just, okay, Sam, that's cool. Think whatever you want. I got this one figured out. And that's fine, by the way, like, even to add on to that. I know several of us in this room already voted. And so you're like, sorry, should have got this one last week. I'm done.
[00:02:27] Which is fine again, because I think what you'll see as we take a few minutes to talk about this is that what the Bible teaches here is actually encouraging for all of us. Regardless of where you're at in this stage of life, regardless of whether or not you care about my opinion on politics, I really do think God has a challenge and an encouragement for each of us today. I mean, guys, at the end of the day, you shouldn't care all that much what I think about politics, Right? And that's not, hopefully, what we'll hear today and what we'll talk about today. But I do believe that every single one of us in this room wants to live lives that are informed by the heart of Jesus, expressed from the truth of Scripture. Amen.
[00:03:08] I believe that is how we want to live. We want to have our faith practically impact the way we live and the decisions we make. And can I take just like a confessional step and just guess I'm not the only one in the room right now who at some point in my life has had the culture seep in and affect me more than the word of God about my opinion on a particular issue. Like maybe all of us have experienced that at some point where you realized I've actually built my opinion off this based on my cultural narrative and not on the teachings of Scripture. And I need to be challenged and reminded what the word of God says. That's not just me. I'm guessing that's most of us in the room. And so I really do think God has something for us today. So if you are already mentally getting ready to check out, I just want to invite you not to. I want to invite you to stick this out to be present. And let's hear together what God might have for us today. What does the Bible actually teach about political engagement? And how are Christians today in our moment, in our context, to allow the gospel of Jesus to inform the way we engage our civic duty? Don't worry, I'll hand out the voting guides at the end. I'm just kidding. I actually won't do that. And there's a reason I won't do that. Not that I know a lot of us grew up in context where that sort of thing was the norm, but I actually think in our cultural moment right now, that's going to be kind of counter to what the scripture is going to challenge us To I believe there's a message of great hope and empowerment for us in the word of God. And the reason is this guys. The good news is that Jesus is sufficient for every need of the human heart and every aspect of the human experience.
[00:04:53] That is true.
[00:04:54] Christ and his work accomplished in our behalf is sufficient to meet the needs of the human heart and to meet the needs of the human experience. Many of us, and I know this from pastoral check in texts and calls and conversations over the last six months, many of us have a lot of fear, a lot of anxiety, a lot of anger, a lot of passion about this big election that's right around the corner from the national level all the way down to the local level here in St. Louis County.
[00:05:26] Because I believe, and this is my main point today, this is what I'm getting at to kind of put it all on the front end. The Gospel of Jesus frees us from the anxiety of politics and simultaneously empowers us to boldly engage the political world with a cris Christ like ethic. The two fold truth of the way the gospel speaks into Christian political engagement today that it frees us from the anxiety of the political circus and boldly empowers us to engage with a Christ like ethic. Pray with me and we're going to jump into the text. Jesus, thank you so much for this morning, God. We thank you for the gift of church family. We thank you for drawing us together on a beautiful day to come together and sing to you and meet with you and hear from you in your word. God, we ask that today you would be our discipler God for each and every one of us. Lord, we pray that your voice would speak the loudest to our hearts as we form our political worldview, that you would be the one who challenges us to engage the world around us with your kingdom in mind. Spirit, we need you to be the one to guide us in this. We need you, Lord. We don't need people, we don't need podcasts. We need you. So Jesus, we pray that you'd be our discipler, our challenger, our encourager today and that we would leave today having heard from you what our hearts need, having met with you and having done work with you. We love you, Jesus, and pray these things in your name. Amen. We're going to be in Matthew 22 today. I know I told you we were taking a break from Matthew and then I gave you a Matthew text. We're going to be in Matthew 22 today as our first text. If you want to jump there we're going to actually look at this text again in like the spring from a slightly different perspective. But Matthew 22, we're going to look at a really famous engagement. We're going to start in verse 17 where it says this.
[00:07:16] Then the Pharisees went and plotted how to trap him by what he said, he being Jesus in this text. So they sent their disciples to him along with the Herodians Teacher, they said, we know that you are truthful and teach truthfully the way of God. We know you don't care what anyone thinks, nor do you show partiality. Tell us then what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not?
[00:07:41] Perceiving their malicious intent, Jesus said, why are you testing me, hypocrites?
[00:07:47] That's a great way to start your response.
[00:07:50] Why are you testing me, hypocrites? Verse 19, show me the coin used for the tax.
[00:07:56] So they brought him a denarius. Whose image and inscription is this? He asked them. Caesars, they said to him. Then he said to them, give then to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and give to God the things that are God's.
[00:08:10] When they heard this, they were amazed and they left him and went away.
[00:08:16] Now again, we're going to dig into this text really deep next spring, but today it's going to be kind of a launching board for us to a larger discussion. So let me give you a quick snapshot of what's going on. This takes place right near the end of Jesus public ministry. He's made his final journey to Jerusalem during Passover, Passover week. His conflict with the religious leaders has reached a boiling point where they are actively seeking to arrest him and have him killed. And in the meantime, while Jesus is preaching publicly in the courts of the temple, they're sending people to publicly challenge him to these nitpicky debates and these hot button issues in the hopes to embarrass him or discredit him. And so in the midst of that, one of the challenges that gets brought to him is they come to him and they say, hey Jesus, give us your your thought on this. Should we pay taxes to Caesar or not?
[00:09:12] Now, this was a huge cultural hot button and a thorny theological debate in Jesus Day. It was a huge deal. And the reason is this. Israel were conquered subjects of the Roman Empire.
[00:09:29] They were dramatically oppressed and had no say in their government. And to make matters worse, they lived at this time under the Emperor Tiberius, who had titled himself a God and required taxes to be paid in his own silver coin. The Tiberian denarius, I actually have a picture of it for you to look at. It bore his image and inscribed in it was a declaration of his divinity.
[00:09:58] This is, this is Tiberius. He's awesome. He's God. You should love him. The Jews saw this as directly breaking the commandment to worship false gods. It was a big deal. It almost, it almost caused several revolts in Palestine to the point that Rome actually gave the Jews a special dispensation to mint their own copper coins that just had like Rome is awesome on them. And no picture of Tiberius. When you read the story about the widow going and placing her mites in the box, in the giving box, the copper coins that clinked together, these were the standard Jewish coin used because they had decided the silver denarius was blasphemous.
[00:10:38] They didn't use it.
[00:10:40] Well, they didn't use it because here's the thing, Caesar actually required that his imperial tax be paid in silver denarius.
[00:10:51] And the Roman or the Jews, they actually, as much as they hated their Roman oppressors, they also had been given a really long leash compared to most conquered subjects. They had been allowed to set up partially Jewish kings and guys like Herod. They had been allowed to rebuild their temple. They were allowed to practice their religion freely, which large parts of the Roman Empire were not. And so they actually buddied up pretty close to Rome as a society. And so there was this really big tension in their day. Do we pay our taxes to Caesar or not?
[00:11:26] If we pay taxes to Caesar, are we implicitly agreeing with and affirming their idolatrous oppressive regime or not?
[00:11:37] This is actually what birthed the zealot movement, which led ultimately to the destruction, the sacking of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple. Was the rebellions caused by the zealot movement. The standard theological idea and political idea of the everyman Jewish person at this point in was paying taxes to Caesar is blasphemy. That was the normal viewpoint of the average working day Jew, the majority of Jesus followers. And so they posed this question because it's a trap for Jesus. If he says, well yeah, you should totally pay your taxes, then he's discrediting himself with all of his followers. If he says you should definitely not pay your taxes, that's blasphemous. Well, he's saying it in Jerusalem, the Roman capital of Palestine, which can easily get him arrested and killed for sedition. And so they think they've set up this perfect trap for Jesus, but Jesus navigates it Perfectly, immaculately. First he asks for a coin. Who has a denarius. Let me see one. Which is a chief irony because they were banned in the temple and yet someone had one conveniently to hand to him, right? And so he holds it up and he goes, interesting. Who's. Whose image is on this? Woes with Caesar, obviously. That's why we don't like it. That's the controversy. It's cool. Yeah. So obviously you're willing to do Caesar's stuff. You've got his coins, so give him his stuff back.
[00:13:04] If you're willing to do business with Caesar, give him what's his, but make sure you give to God what is God's.
[00:13:11] Boom. It's like this mic drop moment, right? Literally, the guys are so upset by this. Like they have no way of engaging this. They walk away like it just ends the conversation. It's pretty amazing. But what I think is so cool here is that Jesus gives this incredibly practical political theology here. He's been presented with this catch 22. How can you possibly be faithful to God and interact with this obviously sinful, fleshly broken, corrupt political system? How can you do both? There's no way, obviously, right? And Jesus says, actually you can.
[00:13:52] You can actually navigate both of these things. You can render unto Caesar what is his, and you can render unto God what is God's. Jesus has spoken against the common political theology of his day and his people. The majority of conservative rabbis would have said, there's no way, there's no way. But Jesus says here, nope, you can do both.
[00:14:18] You're willing to benefit from Rome, so you should participate in Rome. And according to Jesus, you can do this while simultaneously giving God his due as well. It's a huge theological principle. God's people can engage their civil world in all its secular trappings and sinful injustices and still be people of God who give their best to the Lord. Beloved. If that was true in the Temple in the first century, it is true for you today, period.
[00:14:48] You can do that. Can you can figure out how to navigate the civic world within which you find yourself, the sinful, broken political ideologies within which you find yourself, and still give God his due. This is why, by the way, both Peter and Paul, some of the biggest theological leaders in the early church, gave thought out articulations of Christian participation in the Roman government. That's like a weird thing we don't talk about super often, but in the New Testament, there's a very fleshed out political theology. Romans 13:1 8 is probably the most famous passage. Paul wrote that one. But we're actually gonna. You can look at that one on your own. We're gonna look at Peter's take on it, which is very similar. It's in First Peter, chapter two, starting in verse 13. It says this.
[00:15:36] Submit to every human authority because of the Lord, whether to the emperor as supreme authority, or to governors as those sent out by him to punish those who do what is evil and to praise those who do what is good. For it is God's will that you silence the ignorance of the foolish people by doing good. Verse 16. So submit as free people, not using your freedom as a cover up for evil, but as God's slaves. Verse 17. Honor everyone, love the brothers and sisters, fear God, honor the emperor.
[00:16:12] I love that articulation at the very end. Honor everybody, love your brothers and sisters, fear God, honor the emperor.
[00:16:21] Peter and Paul both build off of Jesus's teaching and they flesh out this practical political theology for their immediate context. You can render to Caesar and you can render to God. And the early Christians go, how? And Peter and Paul help them flesh that out. Essentially, these passages teach that God has set up human government for the purpose of punishing evil and rewarding good. Jesus also, by the way, affirms this when he's being interviewed by Pilate. He says, you didn't really get your own authority. God gave it to you. God has set up earthly governments for a purpose. And that purpose, according to Peter and Paul in the New Testament, is to punish evil and reward good. You as a citizen within your society, benefit from human societies so you can participate in it. You get the benefits. You get the duty of participation, and you participate in this manner. This is what they say you do. You honor and submit to these earthly authorities out of your love for God.
[00:17:25] You honor and submit to your earthly authorities out of your love for God. It is the most practical way of summarizing what the New Testament says about your political engagement, honor and submission out of the motivation of love for God. No, it gets. There are like some practical applications of that. Like rendering unto Caesar in the New Testament is incredibly practical. It's not just a broad principle. You see four really clear things. If you look through all the different New Testament texts that talk about political engagement. I'm going to put them up here on the screen. You see things like, you should submit and obey authorities.
[00:18:00] That's Titus 3:1, and it says it about as clear as it can possibly say it. This is one of my favorite ones. 1 Timothy 2 says, you pray for the salvation of political leaders, period. You pray for them often. Romans 13 says you pay your taxes. I know none of us like that one, but that's like one of the most consistent New Testament teachings on politics is you pay your taxes. And then 1 Thessalonians 4 says this. You seek to live a quiet and godly life.
[00:18:30] And that may not sound like a political statement at first. It's an incredibly political statement. You seek to live a life that is quiet and godly that benefits your immediate community.
[00:18:41] It's a deeply political statement. And you do all this according to our text in First Peter, because that kind of life, a life that obeys and submits, a life that prays for leaders, a life that participates in the system and pays their share, a life that is quiet and godly and benefits their community. You do these things because that kind of life shines a light into a dark and sinful world.
[00:19:05] It silences the fools, according to Peter, who would seek to critique the Christian life. It glorifies God and guys, it can work to advance the gospel in your community.
[00:19:17] That kind of godly living in a pagan society, it shows that the gospel is real and works and changes lives. It's a different set apart way of living.
[00:19:28] This New Testament theology of political engagement is one of the most clear and unified like doctrinal positions given in the New Testament. It's weird because it's not one we talk about super often, but it's incredibly unified. And the reason it's so clear and unified is because it's built directly off of an Old Testament principle and theology that the Jewish people already clearly understood, understood, articulated and lived out in the time of Jesus in the early church. See, when God destroyed Israel because of their covenant faithlessness, he sent them into exile. You remember these stories like the first two Kings and Chronicles, Israel divided into two nations by civil war. The northern kingdom, the southern kingdom. And as they broke covenant over generations, God warned them and warned them and warned them. But eventually he anointed leaders in pagan nations, namely the Assyrian empire which conquered and destroyed and deported the northern kingdom of Israel. And then the Babylonian empire which conquered and destroyed and deported the southern kingdom of Judah. God set up these secular, sinful, evil, fleshly worldly governments to pour out his wrath on his people. In fact, this is really weird, but one of the only times in all of Scripture that the term anointed one or Messiah is applied to a non Jew is applied to Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, that God was his anointed Leader to carry out his wrath on Judah when he sacked and destroyed Jerusalem in the temple. It's nuts, right? But if you look at one of the most famous texts in the Old Testament, it spells out this Jewish theology of political engagement. Exile world. This is Jeremiah 29, right? This is the one we tell people when they graduate high school. But let me read us the larger chunk. Jeremiah 29, starting in verse 4, says this. This is what the LORD of armies, the God of Israel, says to all the exiles that I deported from Jerusalem to Babylon.
[00:21:14] Build houses and live in them. Plant gardens and eat their produce. Find wives for yourself and have sons and daughters. Find wives for your sons and give your daughters to men in marriage so that they may bear sons and daughters. Multiply there, do not decrease.
[00:21:30] Pursue the well being of the city. I have deported you to pray to the Lord on its behalf. And when it thrives, you will thrive. For this is what the Lord of armies, the God of Israel, says. Don't let your prophets who are among you and your diviners deceive you. Don't listen to the dreams you elicit from them, for they're prophesying falsely to you in my name. I have not sent them. This is the Lord's declaration. For this is what the lord says. When 70 years of Babylon are complete, I will attend to you and will confirm my promise concerning you, to restore you to this place. For I know the plans I have for you, and this is the Lord's declaration. Plans for your well being, not for disaster. Plans to give you a future and a hope. And you will call to me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you search for me with all your heart. And I will be found by you. This is the Lord's declaration. And I will restore to you your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and places where I banished you. This is the Lord's declaration. I will restore to you to the place from which I deported you. God told the Israelite people through Jeremiah, don't fight your exile.
[00:22:40] This is my will.
[00:22:43] So don't just accept it, flourish within it. Make the best of the community you find yourself in. When your community does well, you do well. So seek the good of your community. And here's the amazing part, because as the text moves on, it says this because God has plans for his people. They should do this.
[00:23:05] They may be exiled in Babylon now, but he has an ultimate plan for them, plans to bless them. He has something better than Babylon for Them because they are not Babylonian.
[00:23:18] Babylon may have won, Babylon may have conquered, they may have been exiled, but they are not Babylonian. They may be stuck there, but they're not Babylon. They belong to God.
[00:23:30] Jesus and the apostles adopted this same mindset for the Church. We are not of the kingdoms of. Of this world.
[00:23:39] Here and now. You seek the best for your community because it's good for you and it glorifies God. But don't be deceived. Beloved, your citizenship is not in Babylon. It's not in Rome. And hear this, beloved, it's not in the United States.
[00:23:57] Paul said it to the Philippian Church, the most patriotic city in all the Roman Empire, founded by retired legionnaires.
[00:24:05] Philippians 3:20. Our citizenship is in heaven, and we eagerly wait for a savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ. Beloved, Jesus has plans for you because of his Gospel, because of what Jesus did. Your citizenship is in the kingdom of God. God has a wonderful future for you, a future that is, hear this. Your eternal salvation, your eternal life with Jesus in his heaven.
[00:24:33] This is why Peter ends his text by saying, fear God, honor the emperor. Remember, he was speaking into a context where fear of the emperor was the norm.
[00:24:46] Rome was a brutal empire.
[00:24:50] Citizens and subjects had no power or authority over their own government. If the local governor ordered you beaten, tortured, or killed, you did not have a recourse. I mean, remember, guys, Jesus said, render unto Caesar about three days before, a Roman governor ordered his execution by crucifixion, right?
[00:25:11] Peter said, honor the emperor, speaking of Emperor Nero, who later had him crucified in front of his family.
[00:25:21] Paul said, submit to the emperor, speaking of Nero, who had him beheaded.
[00:25:29] Rome was rough, right?
[00:25:33] But Peter says, don't fear the emperor, fear God. He's the one in charge. He controls the empires and the governments he sets up. The authorities fear him. The emperor, your earthly authority, honor him. He's worthy of honor. God's put him there. This was an absolutely monumental perspective shift for early Christians, the fundamental reconstruction of their understanding of political and social ideology. They were to see their primary identity as belonging to God. And God was to receive their primary allegiance, their government.
[00:26:13] Well, they participated in that. So they should honor their leaders. They should follow the rules. They should seek to better their societies. But this was out of their fear and worship of their true king, Jesus, not out of any loyalty to an earthly emperor.
[00:26:31] But all this brings us to the main point and the main difficulty for us today. We don't live in Rome, right? Like, I think the reason we don't talk about this super clear, simple New Testament theology of government so often is because it doesn't really easily apply to our context. We don't live in Rome. I mean, I highly doubt any of us have had much of a problem with anything I've said so far. It's a beautiful truth to remember that our identity is in Christ and our citizenship is in his kingdom. Right. That's a beautiful thing. This does like it when embraced. This removes the anxiety of politics.
[00:27:10] We need have no fear over who wins elections or what country is the best, because God is ultimately in control. And here and now we are only passing through.
[00:27:21] We're sojourners, travelers. Our true destination is heaven and it is secure. Amen here. Now, by the way, things also aren't too bad politically for us as Christians.
[00:27:36] And I know a lot of our news sources don't tell us that, but let's stop for a second and remember we have constitutionally protected religious liberty.
[00:27:45] That we don't live in a context where we worry about the whims of an emperor leading to our literal crucifixion.
[00:27:53] I don't mean metaphorical. My life got hard. People were mean to me. I mean, we don't live in a realm where you might make the mayor angry and he kills your family in front of you and then kills you in the city square.
[00:28:07] That's not a thing we deal with in our context.
[00:28:11] None of the New Testament teaching envisioned a democratic republic where the government is accountable to the people, rather than the people living under the thumb of the government's power.
[00:28:22] The New Testament writers didn't have a category for that. The norm in the day of Jesus, Paul and Peter was fear the emperor. So they spoke into that. Right, but that's not really what modern Americans do.
[00:28:35] We tend to idolize the politicians we agree with and then openly mock the politicians we disagree with. Right. I mean, we have a whole history of political cartoons. We love to make fun of their voices and their vices and their slips of the tongue and exaggerate them in the way they dress.
[00:28:53] So how do you possibly apply this truth today? I mean, of course Paul encouraged submission and obedience in the hope of local societal mission. What other option did he possibly have? Right.
[00:29:08] Roman. The Roman government was brutal and authoritarian.
[00:29:13] What about a society where your religious practice is protected and you get to speak into practical, lived out laws and policies? What do you do with that?
[00:29:22] Well, guys, I think there are several ways we can practically apply this truth today. I believe this with my heart of hearts. Beloved, you can render to Caesar and God in our context. Because the gospel doesn't just free us from the fear and anxiety of politics, it also empowers us, uniquely in many ways in our cultural moment in history, to boldly participate in the political system with a Christ like ethic.
[00:29:49] That's something our brothers and sisters in church history did not have the option to do.
