Well, good morning. Welcome to
our continuing Bible study in the Gospel of Luke. We're in
chapter 20. And today's text is from chapter
20, verse 19 down through verse 26. But just in remarking that if we look at the the bigger
picture, and it's always good to kind of keep that in mind.
We're in the week, the final week that Christ was here in
this world for the purpose that was set before Him in the covenant
of grace before the foundation of the world. And we find so
many things that tell us those things that he's here to finish physically
in time, says, though the works were finished from before the
foundation of the world. And remember always that he is,
as he always says, I am. And as we looked in our last
lesson in verse 9 through 18, and he gave us kind of a cliff
note summary of the gospel, the certain man had a vineyard and
and he sent servants forth and and they killed them and treated
them badly and and He sent another servant and they treated him
badly and he sent another servant and they treated him badly and
so forth And he says fine. I'll send my son. Maybe they'll
reverence him and and they said oh, let's kill him and and so
that takes us up to where we are today that in the closing
verse he said, the stone which the builders
rejected, the same has become the head of the corner, and whosoever
shall fall upon that stone shall be broken. But on whomsoever
it shall fall, it will grind him to powder, So reading of
today's text in Luke 20 19 and the chief priests and The scribes
the same hour that he the same hour that he just issued this
parable to them Sought to lay hands on him and they feared
the people for they perceived that he had spoken this parable
against them and some Some attribute that to the people saying man
I Jesus is talking about those religious guys that are giving
us the business here. And they watched him. And they
sent forth spies, which should feign themselves just men, that
they might take hold of his words, so that they might deliver him
under the power and authority of the governor. And they asked
him, saying, Master, we know that thou sayest and teachest
rightly, neither acceptest thou the person of any, but teachest
the way of God truly. Is it lawful for us to give tribute
to Caesar or no? But he perceived their craftiness
and said unto them, why tempt you me? Show me a penny. Whose image and superscription
have it? And they answered and said, Caesar's. And he said unto
them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things that be Caesar's,
and unto God the things which be God's. And they could not
take hold of his words before the people. And they marveled
at his answer and held their peace." It's kind of a triple
meaning there. In the end, they couldn't do
anything. Their scheming came to naught.
They couldn't do anything with the words before the people. because he didn't say kind of
what they had anticipated that he would say. They marveled at
his answer, because they didn't get it. The natural man receiveth not
the things of the Spirit of God, neither can he know them, because
they're spiritually understood. So, I misquoted that there, but
you get the idea. So, they have this They have
this set of schemes that they're rolling in place trying to catch
him. Remember, it's the Passover week's coming up. There's millions
of Jews in Jerusalem right now because it's Passover week, and
they all come for that feast. And so there's a lot of folks
there. And remember in the triumphal
entry, you know, there was that many people were there, and they
were throwing down their garments, and they were waving palm leaves
and saying, Hallelujah, and Hosannas to the King. All that kind of
stuff. And the religious leaders were
going, oh, this is not good. And so they
said, we have to do something. And remember, we read back in
chapter 19 that they sought to kill him right then. And I think
it was verse 47 of chapter 19. They sought a way to kill him,
but they were afraid to because of the multitude of the people.
And then we found out later that they They dickered with Judas,
who said, well, if you want to take him, we've got to do it
by night, because there won't be many people around him at
night. So we can come and take him away at night without a big
uproar from the multitude. And so that's kind of where we're
at. And they have these ones that they hired to go and be
spies. And then the next thing we're
going to find out is they're going to send some Sadducees
to him and try to catch him something there. And it's just endless. It's just endless. That's just
the way religion is. There are just endless ways to try and
arouse The trouble and so the the name
of today's lesson is render unto Caesar's Part one because this
is going to be a multi-part lesson and it's we're going to kind
of lay the groundwork for the rendering unto Caesar the things
that be Caesar's part and And then we're going to spend the
next lesson on rendering unto God the things that be God's.
So, we're going to break it down like that, and they're going
to kind of overlap a little bit, so we'll probably go back and
forth a little bit. But there's some interesting
words in this block of scripture. They sought to lay hands on him. That means Not like I want to
go put my arms around your neck and give you a big hug. The Greek
context here is with a violent intent. They sought to lay hands
on him with a violent intent to grasp, to arrest. You know, they sent forth spies. Well, that word sent is the same
word where we get apostles from. And on this side, we have the
ones that are sent forth from the world for mayhem and against
the Christ and against His child, against His people. And on the
other hand, we have the sent apostles that are sent forth
to declare the gospel, the good news. And so we have that dichotomy
there. Feign, this word feign, they
feigned. They would feign themselves just
men. What does that mean? That means
they would pretend to be righteous. They would pretend to be just
men. And boy, there's a lot of that in religion. They pretend
to be what they are not. And that's where that word hypocrite
comes into play. It means an actor, a person that
just pretends to be one thing when they're another. They would
feign themselves just men for the purpose that they might take.
They wanted to get into his inner circle. They wanted
to get into his group of people by, I'm one of you. And boy, you know, religion's
always trying to talk you into that. Hey, we all kind of believe
the same thing. Why don't we just get together?
But it says they feigned it. It means to pretend or to speak
a false part. They pretended to be just or
righteous men. And they couched it behind having
a seemingly legitimate righteous question. I have just something
that I just I want you to know how religious I am, and so I'm
going to ask you a real religious question. And that way you'll know that
I'm a religious person, and we have that groundwork that we
can share. He says, he knew their craftiness. One of the things that I really
want to point out in the series of lessons that we're going to
be going on through here, through Luke, the next few chapters, and the
next few verses in this chapter especially, is that every single
thing that occurs, everything that's said, everything that's
thought, is ordained of God to accomplish His purpose. So these
fellows think that they're coming with their own scheme, their
own thing, but, you know, really they're just being used of God.
He allowed them to do what they wanted to do, but it was Him
that ordains all things according to His own purpose and pleasure.
They said to him, rightly." That's an interesting word. Let's go
back here and read that again. In verse 21, "...and they asked
him, saying, Master, we know..." We're acknowledging you as the
teacher, the master, because that's part of our plan, is to
get you to incriminate yourself here. We know that thou sayest
and teachest rightly. This word rightly is orthos in
the Greek, and that is the root word for compound words like
orthodox, a right document. And when you have orthodox religion,
that means that it's the right, they have the right documents,
Most of them are not, but they say they are. And it's also where
we get orthopedics, and it means it's a treatment to straighten a deformed
bone. It was mostly applied to children
back in the old days where they had scoliosis or some kind of
curvature of the spine or something, and it was related to the treatment
of that. deformed bone structure in children
originally, and they use that first part of that Greek term
ortho for straight, and then pedics for the second part of
it. So, you speaketh right. You speaketh
straight. You speaketh true. the correct, the true or straight. And then they said, and you don't
accept the person of any man. And that's used in the sense
of, Lauren, come over here in the
corner and I want to tell you something. Because I know you
believe this way. And then I would say, Norm, I
want you to come over to this corner and I'll tell you something
different because I know you believe this way. But he says,
you don't do that, you just speak the truth face to face and you
don't change your message due to whoever it is you're talking
to. You don't send one message to the Greeks and you don't send
one message to the Jews and so forth like that. You don't change your opinion
or statement based on which man is in front of you, and that's
where we get the face-to-face part of that. The purpose of
their phrasing, again, is to entrap Jesus into saying what
they wanted through some lies, through some trickery, through
some hatred, and through some flattery. They flatter you and
say, I know you're really smart. And now I'll try to trick you
into saying something bad. So the root question is, here's
our religious question. Is it lawful to pay tribute unto
Caesar? And if he answered, they thought,
when they think this through and they think, well, if he says
one thing, we got him. If he says the other thing, we
got him. So it's like the question, are you still beating your wife? There's no right answer there,
is there? But this is a little bit different, but that was the
way that they perceived it. We're going to give him a question
that there's no escape from. Is it lawful to pay tribute?
If he said, It's not lawful to pay tribute to Caesar because
he's an idolatrous person, pagan king, and he's
enslaved us, and by some law we're not supposed to pay money
to him. Well then, that would be what the Romans would consider
insurrection. And remember, Remember, when
they're asking him this, there's like a million people around.
It's a big crowd. So, they're trying to trick him
into saying something in front of a mass crowd that they can
say, look, he was in front of a mass crowd saying, don't pay
any tribute to Caesar. And if he said, it's lawful,
yeah, it's lawful to pay tribute to Caesar. Then the people hated
him because all these people were following after him. They all said, he's a prophet
or the Messiah, potentially. And he was very popular. And that was kind of the conundrum
that they were under was, you know, the people are going after
him and they're leaving us. What's that? We can see that
we're on a slippery slope here in our control of things. So if he said, you should pay
tribute, the people would turn against him. And they said, yeah,
that would be good. Then they'd come back to us because
they're going after him. And we all say, we hate paying
tribute to Caesar. And so if he says the other thing
where, yeah, you should pay your tax, your tribute to Caesar,
we're going straight to the Romans with that. We have a connection. And as I read through this, So
many things fall together here that show the sovereignty of
God and how He's in control of every single aspect of every
single atom of every single thing in the world. It says in Luke chapter 23 and in our
next chapter 23-1, the whole multitude of them which refers to the elders, the
chief priests, the scribes that we will read about later on in
Luke 22, verse 66. The whole multitude of them arose
and led him unto Pilate. And they began to accuse him,
saying, We found this fellow perverting the nation and forbidding
to give tribute to Caesar, saying that he himself is Christ the
King." And they knew that was a lie, but he didn't really say
that. But they brought those insinuations
against him because that's what the Romans would be interested
in. They didn't really care about religious squabbles, and I think
in Acts a couple times they say, you know, this is a religious
thing, you handle it, we don't want anything to do with it.
But insurrection, somebody saying that they were a king in place
of Caesar, or forbidding to pay the tax to Caesar, That would
be insurrection and that would be dealt with swiftly and severely. So they were going to present
this evidence to Pilate, who was the Roman governor pre-late.
and for the purpose of effecting the execution of Christ. So just
imagine you're the Roman governor, and normally Pilate, he lived
over on the coast, on the Mediterranean coast. He lived in a town called
Caesarea Maritima. I don't know if I pronounced
that right, but he had a little villa over there on the Mediterranean
coast, and he came to Jerusalem when it warranted it. He wasn't
in Jerusalem all the time. He came there, and he would be
there at Passover time because there was going to be a million
Jews there, and somebody had better be there keeping an eye
on things to make sure there weren't any uprisings, of which
the Jewish history is just full of. They just had uprising after
uprising after uprising. And we'll look at a couple of
those here in a minute. But imagine what the reaction
of a Roman governor would be if it came to his attention that
this Jesus guy, who's surrounded by a multitude of people, and
it's Passover week, remember the triumphal entry, the Passover,
all these people coming to celebrate the feasts. And so if he was
in the midst of a million people, And he gets tricked into saying,
it's not lawful for Jews to pay tribute to Caesar. He'd have
a little bit of a dilemma on his hand. He'd have a little
bit of a problem. If he valued his life and his
position, he'd be forced to deal with this immediately and severely. And in truth, we find that every
action, every thought, every syllable, even though it's a
lie, is according to the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of
God the Father." We read that in Acts chapter 4. We're going to read that here,
but I want you to think about some of the terminology that's
used in this scripture in Acts. And these same guys come against
Peter and the disciples, we find in Acts chapter 4, and they're
threatening them because they're preaching Jesus and the resurrection. Man, I thought we got rid of that problem.
Now we've got a bunch more. So in Acts chapter 4, Peter's
declaring the truth of the sovereign will and purpose of God, and
in verse 23, they said, We can't really do much to them,
except let's threaten them and turn them loose. Say, we don't
want you preaching anymore in this Jesus name. In verse 23,
and being let go, they went to their own company. They went
to the disciples, the apostles. They went to their own company and reported
all that the chief priests and the elders had said unto them.
And when they heard that, they lifted up their voice to God
with one accord, and said, Lord, Thou art God, which has made
heaven and earth and the sea and all that in them is, who
by the mouth of His servant David hath said, Why did the heathen
rage, and the people imagine vain things? They're crying out
the Old Testament. They're taking these words right
out of the Old Testament, and they're quoting David. the kings
of the earth stood up and the rulers were gathered together
gathered together think about that against the Lord and against
his Christ for a truth of a truth against thy holy child Jesus
whom thou has anointed both Herod and Pontius Pilate with the Gentiles
and the people of Israel were gathered together for to do whatsoever
thy hand and thy counsel determined before to be done." How powerful
and true is this declaration? And, you know, people always
think, well, God is just a reactionary kind of a being, and He sees
something, and then He does something. He sees something, and He does
something. But that's not what the Scriptures tell us. all these
differing factions. You know, if we were to spend
an hour studying all these different factions, we'd find that they
didn't like each other. The Jewish religion guys, they
didn't really like the people other than the fact that they
were extorting money out of them. And it says, you lay burdens
on them that are too heavy to bear, and you take widows and
make life miserable for them, and you're like whited sepulchers. You don't let anybody into the
kingdom and you don't enter in yourself and those that would
like to come in you you hinder them so all these things that
say they didn't really care about the people other than their control
that they wielded over them and and The money that they got out
of them So these folks normally had little
to do with each other and And in fact, they didn't really like
one another but they're brought together to accomplish what God's
counsel before Determined to be done Him being delivered by
the determinant counsel and foreknowledge of God you've taken and by wicked
hands of crucified and slain So all these elements are coming
together pilot. He's the Roman governor normally,
I said he recited over at the coast and the Mediterranean and
when the need arose to be in Jerusalem, he would go there
and And we find that that's directed by God. And when he was there,
he recited in Herod's palace and he had his praetorium or
headquarters there where he would keep an eye on things and rule
over the things that came up and issue commands and orders. You know, the Romans, This entity,
they were hated by the Jews because they had conquered them and put
them in bondage and made them pay taxes and controlled practically
every aspect of their life. They could do their religious
stuff and they could kind of do their commerce and other things.
As long as they didn't cause trouble and they paid their taxes.
It's kind of like now. But the Jews looked at these
Romans and said, you know, we kind of hate them, but they'd
be useful to us in getting rid of Jesus. Why is that? Well, the Romans had taken away
their ability to accomplish capital punishment. The Romans said,
after a revolt in, I think, 135 BC, they said, we're going to be in charge of
all that now, and we're going to be the ones that decide who
is executed and who is not. So they kind of took that power
away from them. And so, that just plays into the whole
scheme of things. It would be a double bonus for
the chief priests and the Pharisees and the scribes and the elders
if the Romans arrested Jesus and executed Him. Because He
was real popular with people. If they arrested Him and stoned
Him, There would be an uproar. Thou who stonest the prophets
and all that Old Testament things that we read about previously.
He was popular. They thought he might be the
Messiah. They thought he was a prophet. And he did all these miracles
and raised people from the dead and healed the lepers, and the
blind, and the deaf, and the lame, and preach the gospel. And so the chief priest said,
man, if it were in our power to stone him, we'd do that. But
we don't really want to because people get mad at us if we do
that. If we have the Romans do it, ka-ching, he'll get the blame
for it. We'll be off the hook. We'll
be rid of him. and they'll be mad at the Romans. So, what could
be better? So, the Jews. The Jews, not the general population
so much as the religious leaders. the ones we've been naming, the
elders, the priests, the chief priests, the scribes, the Pharisees,
all those sects, the Sadducees, all those different religious
ones that had control over things for so long and had things their
own way. They hated Jesus so much they wanted Him dead, and
the sooner the better. So, the best plan for them again
is to have the Romans do it. The Romans didn't particularly
indulge the Jews in religious skirmishes, and so they had to
come up with something that would interest the Romans, and that
falls under the category of insurrection. And now we bring in the Jews
and the Herodians. They didn't like each other either,
because the Herodians were Idemians, or they were from the line of
Esau. And Herod was a king over them
that they didn't particularly like, but he had the control
of them. And he had the ear of the Romans because, as we learned
in our previous lesson, the Herods had to go to Rome to get tapped
with the wand and say, okay, you can be king. And remember
there was the four regions that were divided up among Herod's
sons. One got Judea, and one got Samaria,
and one got this region, one got that region, and then the
one that was in charge of Judea was so awful and corrupt that
they canceled his ticket and sent him to Vienna and turned
it over to one of the other sons, Herod, this Herod Antipas that
we're talking about here. So here we have them becoming
buddies. Oh, in Matthew chapter 22, 15,
it says, Then the Pharisees took counsel how they might entangle
him in his talk, and they sent out unto him their disciples
with the Herodians, saying, Master, we know that thou art true, and
teach us the way of God in truth, and neither carest thou for any
man, for thou regardest not the persons of men. So we have this
one more little detail here that's added in Matthew's account They
sent out spies, but part of those spies were Herodians. So now we've got the Jews trying
to figure out a way to get the Romans on their side. They've
linked up with the Herodians. The Herodians had a direct, because
they were there, Herod was there appointed by the Roman Caesar. He had to go to Rome and get
Caesar to say, okay, you are gonna be the guy. So he was their
direct link to the Romans. In Luke 23.12, a little further down the road
for us, but the verse says, the same day Pilate and Herod were
made friends together, but before they were at enmity between themselves. And so the only possible crime
the Jews could accuse Jesus of which would interest the Romans
was insurrection. They'd already pronounced him
guilty of blasphemy against God in their own court. But that
wouldn't really be of any interest to the Romans. So how do they
want to present that? They sent spies with this pre-planned
question for which they couldn't really see him giving any correct
answer for. And they watched him and sent
forth spies, which had feigned themselves just men that they
might take hold of his words, so they might deliver him under
the power and authority of the governor." Hatred coupled with
lies, coupled with false pretenses, coupled with flattery, all were
in full force when the question is posed. So again, I call your
attention back to Acts, where it says, all these ones were
gathered together. ones that didn't like each other,
and then normally they would not cross the street. They would cross the street to
avoid if they saw a Roman guy coming. And taxation was just
hateful to the Jews. Taxation to Rome especially.
Is it lawful for us to give tribute or taxes unto Caesar? Publicans. Publicans were the tax collectors
for Rome. There was a chief tax collector.
That was Zacchaeus. Remember, he was the head of
the publican network where he was. And he had all these little
sub-publicans that taxed various things. Merchandise coming into
that town. Merchandise going out. They had
a person tax, poll tax. They had an income tax. They had all kinds of taxes,
and they had a different publican that was tasked with collecting
each various kind of taxes. And remember, they were all able
to kind of be creative in their taxation so that they could pay
themselves, because they were obliged to turn over so much
revenue to Rome. And whatever else you can extort
out of the people, That's what you get to live on. And I remember
with that, Jesus said there were two men
that went to the temple. The publican and the Pharisee
said, I'm glad I'm not like other men. Extortioners, robbers, cheats,
sinners, even like this publican. He was like, when he was going
down the list of scumbuckets, Publican was way down there. Right below the adulterers and
the unjust. In Luke 5, verse 30, the scribes
and Pharisees murmured against the disciples and said, Why are
you eating and drinking with publicans and sinners? That is awful. The history of
the Jews was comprised of just revolt after revolt after revolt
against Rome. Rome wanted to build a capital
city on the ruins of Jerusalem from one of the other times that
they tore it down. The Romans tried to insert their
idols in the temples and that aggravated them. The Roman coins,
each Caesar issued coins with his picture on them. Each time
there was a new Caesar, they would mint a new series of coins.
And they used that a lot in archaeology to date certain things. And they'd
say, well, we found these coins, and those were only made after
this date when this Caesar came into power. So if it's another
Caesar, that means it was from a previous age. So they use that
kind of as a dating tool. And the image of Caesar was on them.
And then they had little words inscribed on them in Latin. And
the word penny here is actually denarius or denarii in the Greek. It was a Roman coin. and they
called it a tribute penny because it was the amount of tribute
that had to be paid and it was one day's wages and the penny
would have had an image of Tiberius. The ones that were in circulation
right at that time would have had an image of Tiberius Caesar
on one side and the inscription Tiberius Caesar son of the divine
Augustus on the back side. So it would be like having a
picture of Lincoln on one side and in God we trust on the other
only from a pagan point of view. Augustus, his coins had his picture
on it and it said Augustus, son of God. And the Jews went,
ick. They would not have wanted anything
to do with that. And so These very coins would
have been considered idols, pagan idols then, and they would have
been despised and avoided, although it seems like they could come
up with one readily when Jesus says, show me a penny. And they
said, OK, here's one. So it doesn't seem
like they had too much trouble coming up with a Roman coin there
when he asked for that. Imagine that. There's just so many things that
you can think of. When Jesus was up in the north
part in Caesarea, I think it was, and some guys came up to
Him and said, why doesn't your Master pay tribute? And this
had to do with the temple tax, because a month before the Passover,
they would have their tax goons out collecting the temple tax.
And they would tax the rural regions around. And you could
pay it out there or you could pay it when you were in Jerusalem. So they'd say, hey, doesn't your
master pay tribute? And he said, hey, Peter, hop
down to the beach there and cast in a line. Well, Peter, we was
a net fisherman. He said, OK, I'm just going to
cast in my line. And he caught a fish, and lo
and behold, it had a coin in its mouth. The creator of all
things arranged for that. And he says, there, go pay the
tribute tax for both of us there for the temple tax. So show me a penny. Whose image
and superscription have it? And they answered and said, Caesar's. I think it was in 135 BC, there
was a Roman, and he's recorded in Acts chapter 5, named Judas
of Galilee. He rose up in revolt against
the Romans, and a large part of it was over this taxation
without representation issue. They slew him and all of his
followers. He was in 6 AD, it says, Judas
of Galilee. In 6 AD, in Acts 5.37, after
this man rose up, Judas of Galilee, in the days of the taxing, and drew away much people after
him. He also perished, and all, even as many as obeyed him, were
dispersed." So the ones that they didn't kill, they ran off.
And in 135, there was an insurrection against Rome by the Jews, and
it resulted in the slaying or death by famine of nearly 600,000
Jews, and they sacked 58 cities to quell this insurrection. So they didn't put up with that.
I guess the point being that the Romans did not put up with
that lightly. And remember, this is all according
to the determinant and counsel and foreknowledge of God, all
these things that are occurring and all the things that contribute. Every action of every molecule
is coming into place as all these are gathered together to do what
He has before determined to be done. The reaction of the Romans
would be swift and deadly. It seemed to be the solution
that they desired. And yet, it's all according to
the purpose of God for the redemption of the church. Isn't that just
amazing? Next week, Lord willing, we'll
be looking at Render Unto Caesar Part 2, now that we kind of have
that background. He says, Render unto Caesar the
things that be Caesar's, And then to God, the things which
be God's. And we'll look at that aspect
of it next time, Lord willing. So, until next time, be free.