Earlier this week I read an article,
an old article by Brother Henry Mahan. I've been keeping his
bulletins for years, but this one I picked up off one of the
webpages. It has to do with the believer
being dead to the world. Now the scriptures declare and
emphasize the fact that you and I, if we truly know Christ, if
we follow him, if we believe him, are crucified with him. Now there are two aspects to
that. One is we were crucified to the
law and justice of God and by the law and justice of God when
Christ died for us to put away our sins. And we are continually
crucified to the world and the world to us by the cross of Christ
so that we must and shall, if we are his, be dead to this world. And the article related a story
of a young Bible student who asked his teacher, how is the
believer dead to the world when he lives in the world, works
a regular job, raises a family, and owns property in the world? And the teacher answered by giving
him something to do. He said, go out to the graveyard.
and look up a friend, he gave him his name. He said, now when
you find him, I want you to criticize him, and harass him, and I want
you to speak evil of him. And then, after you've done that,
praise him excessively. Extol him, honor him, just speak
adulation concerning him. And the student did, and he came
back, and the teacher asked him, said, when you criticize My friend,
what did he do? And the boy said, nothing. He
said, when you praised him, what did he do? The boy said, nothing,
he's dead. And the teacher said, that's
exactly what it means to be dead to the world. It's applause means
nothing. It's hatred means nothing. We
neither admire the people of the world nor fear them. We do not court their favor,
nor do we care about their frowns. The riches of this world are
just the fancy of fools, and the honor of the world means
little or nothing, for we are the children of God, and that's
the highest possible calling. The religious traditions and
ceremonies of the world have no attraction and no meaning,
when Christ truly is all. Now that which was once important
to us, that for which we live, that for which we constantly
were concerned and careful, now we consider lost for the excellency
of the knowledge of Christ our Lord. Now this spiritual life
in Christ cannot be explained until you experience it. It just
can't. No way to make me and understand
that except by experience. And yet, that's exactly the way
it is. No one so thoroughly exemplified
this deadness to the world as did our Lord Jesus Christ who
came here on assignment to do the will of his Father and always
did those things which pleased his Father. Now in order to do
that, in order to do the will of God, you listen to me. In order to do the will of God,
we must be dead to this world. We must be. We must be. Our Lord
exemplifies that in our text this evening in Mark chapter
12, verses 13 through 17. I want you to turn there with
me and follow along. Be sure to follow along. And they send, verse 13, they
send unto him certain of the Pharisees and of the Herodians. Now you ought to mark that at
least in your mind and not in your Bible. That's a strange
mixture. You just would not expect these two fellows to be together.
They send certain of the Pharisees and of the Herodians. Now here's
the purpose, to catch him. To catch him in his words. And
when they were come, they say unto him, Master, so sweet, so
nice, Master, we know, we know that thou art true, and carest
for no man, for thou regardest not the person of men, but teachest
the way of God in truth. Those lying scoundrels. Just
lie through their teeth. But preacher, these are the leaders
of the Jewish world. These are folks who are somebody. Yeah, lying through their teeth.
Look at it. They ask a question. Is it lawful
to give tribute to Caesar or not? Now here's the significance
of that question. If the Lord Jesus had responded
by saying, yes sir, you pay tribute to Caesar, then they would say
that he is telling us we're in bondage to Caesar, we're bondmen
to Rome, and therefore he's to be put away. If he should say
no, no sir, don't pay tribute to Caesar, then they go to Pilate
and say this man is an insurrection against Caesar and Rome. So they
tend to catch him with this phrase. Is it lawful to give tribute
to Caesar or not? Shall we give or shall we not
give? But he, knowing their hypocrisy, he knows because he's the omniscient
God, but if you read this text, it's not too hard to spot it
just if you look at it. Knowing their hypocrisy, said
unto them, why tempt ye me? Bring me a penny. Reach in your
pocket. You use Caesar's money. Bring
me a piece that I may see it. And they brought it, and he saith
unto them, whose is the image in superscription? And they said
unto him, Caesar's. And Jesus answering said unto
them, render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God
the things that are God's. And that's the end of it. And
they marveled at him. Now I want to show you five very
important spiritual lessons from this passage. May God the Holy
Spirit be our teacher. May he be pleased to graciously
and effectually apply this portion of scripture personally to each
of our hearts. Number one, lost men and women
who despise each other, lost men and women who despise each
other will always unite in opposition to Christ and his gospel, always. I had a fella some time back,
this had been a couple years ago, I was preaching out in California,
and he attended church while I was preaching, and he had on
one of these t-shirts, he had been to some anti-abortion rally,
been marching and carrying his banners, you know, and he got
talking to me about this stuff, and now please understand, I'd
be real happy if they quit abortion right now, everywhere in the
world, stop it, flat, cold turkey, done, that's all. But you're
not going to catch me on your life marching with those fellas.
That's what I told him. Well, shocking. Nothing shocking about it. If
I went down there and lined those fellas up on one side of the
street who are opposed to abortion, all the preachers and the religious
folks and all the church-going folks, and then I got all these
liberal folks who are fighting for abortion, and lined them
up on the other side of the street, and I stood before them and preached
the gospel of God's free grace, they'd all get together in one
circle around me. That's exactly what I told him then. Lost religious
men and women will always unite in opposition to Christ and the
gospel of his grace. The Pharisees were the most religious
fundamentalist you can imagine. Superstitious, ceremonialist,
self-righteous moralist. That's what these men were. Religion
was their life. They went to Bible studies every
day. They lived to go to church. They lived to do religious stuff.
The Herodians, on the other hand, well, they were just mere worldlings.
They had no... no use whatsoever for any religion. They cared no more for the honor
of God, His name, His will, and His glory than for the life of
a maggot. And yet when the Lord Jesus came
preaching the gospel, when He came declaring that I and I alone
am the way, the truth, and the life, when He came declaring
that you must have life in me, and by me, and from me, or you
have no life, you must stand before God washed in my blood,
robed in my righteousness, or you cannot stand before God.
You must be saved by my grace, or you cannot be saved. Well,
these Pharisees and Herodians were as united and tight-knit
and close together as blood can. They came together with a common
cause. We got a reason now. We got a reason to put aside
our differences. We got a reason to put aside
all of those things that split us apart and now we will fight
to oppose this thing because everybody knows he's wrong. Both
the religious crowd and the worldly crowd. despised the gospel of
God's free and sovereign grace in Christ, as Christ himself
preached it and personified it. That's the way it's always been,
and that's the way it is now, and that's the way it's always
gonna be as long as time shall stand, until our God makes all
things new. You mean, pastor, there's no
way we can ever get along with the religious people of this
world? No way. Not only religious grounds. Now,
we can sit down and have coffee, we can work with them and we
can be nice to them and be as friendly and kind as possible,
but I don't care whether it's your mama, your daddy, your brother,
your sister, your son or your daughter, the lost religionist
and the lost worldlings of this world, there's absolutely no
way we who believe the gospel of God's grace can have any terms
of agreement with them. Can't be done. You see, the cross
of Christ, the Apostle tells us in Galatians 5.11, is an offense. Always has been, always will
be. The preaching of Jesus Christ
and Him crucified offends the pride and arrogance of man. The
preaching of Christ and Him crucified causes men all to be put on one
level as sinners with nothing to offer God, nothing to distinguish
themselves with no hope except Christ's blood and righteousness.
Look in 1 Corinthians chapter 1. Hold your hands here in Mark
12 and look with me at 1 Corinthians chapter 1. Let's begin at verse 17. The Apostle Paul is writing to
the Corinthians. This man who had been such an
influential Jew and who had tried with great earnest care to get
the gospel into the Jewish community. He now writes to these Gentiles
at Corinth. And he says, Christ sent me not
to baptize. Now that doesn't mean Christ
would not have me baptized. Some fools get hold of this passage,
you know, these ultra-hyper-dispensationalists say, well, no such thing as baptism.
Paul said, Christ sent me not to baptize. If that was the case,
why did he baptize anybody? What Paul is saying is baptism,
in comparison with the business of preaching, is nothing. What
he's saying is baptism is not the primary thing. Baptism is
not first and foremost. But Christ sent me to preach
the gospel. The means of grace is not baptism,
the means of grace is the gospel. Not with the wisdom of words. This man was brilliant. He was
brilliant. Paul was not some stump preacher
from Eastern Kentucky, or from West Eastern North Carolina.
He wasn't. The apostle Paul was brilliant.
He was brilliant. And this fella says, I come to
preach the gospel by divine commission, not with wisdom of words. I didn't
come to you with philosophy and metaphysics and logic. I didn't
come to you with historical data and come to you with this thing
and that. I didn't come with this argument and that. I came
just declaring God's truth as plain as a nose on your face.
Read it. Lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect.
For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness."
Folks look at the preaching of the gospel and say, well that's
absurd. That's all y'all do. Well, nothing to that. But unto
us which are saved, it's the power of God. For it is written,
I will destroy the wisdom of the wise. God holds the wisdom
of this world in utter contempt. And I will bring to nothing the
understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? Where is the
scribe? Where is the disputer of this
world? Not only does God hold the wisdom of the world in contempt,
He holds the religion of the world in contempt. Read on. Hath
not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that
in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased
God by the foolishness of preaching. Not foolishness, not foolish
preaching, but that which the world considers foolishness.
It pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that
believe. Now I could camp there for a
long time and probably ought to sometime. In this generation,
you know, we have, they call it dialogue preaching. The preacher
stands up here, one of them, he takes this side. And then
another one comes on, he takes this side. And y'all decide which
one's right. And they call that, you know,
we don't want to be too dogmatic. Or they, folks have the idea
that we're going to, what we need to do is sit down and we'll
study the scriptures and we'll just discuss this. Or the popular
phrase now is I want to share with you. I'm not here to share
anything. I'm not here to discuss anything.
I'm not here to offer you an opinion. I'm here, Rex Bartley,
to give you God's Word, and I'm telling you, you'll either bow
to God's Word or you'll perish in your sin. God hath chosen
the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. The
Jews say, give us a sign. The Gentiles say, give us something
wise. But we preach Christ crucified.
That is Christ Jesus, our Savior, who by His blood has accomplished
redemption. Unto the Jews is a stumbling
block. Unto the Greeks is foolishness.
But we're not going to change our message. For unto them which
are called, both Jews and Gentiles, Christ is the power of God and
the wisdom of God. All lost men hate the gospel
of Christ and despise those things plainly revealed in it. Secondly,
back here in Mark chapter 12 again, these Pharisees and Herodians
stand before us in this text as glaring examples of the brazen
boldness of hypocrisy. Sitting there looking over this
message just a little bit ago, I contemplated whether this is
too strong a statement, but I think this text of scripture will bear
it out. All who are confronted with the
claims of Christ in the gospel and choose to deny it. All who
hear but despise the word of God are hypocrites and deceivers. All of them. You say, well, don't
you think they're sincere? Not a sincere bone in them. No,
sir. Don't you think they mean well?
No, sir. I think they mean for themselves and only for themselves.
No one is more confident, bold, or arrogant than that person
who is an utter hypocrite. He never openly shows his true
colors. Never! Never does he just openly
show you exactly what he thinks and what he believes. In order
to cover his hypocrisy, however, he has a bold, brazen, outward
pretense of sincerity. You can certainly see this in
their text. They came to catch Jesus in his words and they said, We know, now, you know, we're
here, we're here because we're just as sincere as we can be
and what we want to do is we want to see if there's not some
common ground for us to get along. The whole world out yonder, you
know, they need to hear a unified voice from us. We know that you're
true. We know that you don't care for
any man. You're not one who regards the
person of men, but you teach the way of God in truth. Now
this is what they did. When they could find nothing
against our Savior's doctrine or conduct for which they could
lawfully kill him or have him killed. These proud hypocrites
thought they could outsmart the Son of God and trick him into
saying something with which to accuse him. They began by flattering
him. They said, now we know you're
a man who is true, sincere, faithful, and honest. Boy, that's good
to hear. We know that you're a man who
is unmoved, unimpressed, and uninfluenced by power. Boy, I
love to hear folks say that to me, don't you? You're a man's
man. We know that you're a man beyond
the reach of bribery and intimidation. Thou regardest not the person
of man. And we know that you're faithful
and true. You teach the way of God in truth. Now there wasn't
a sincere word in that. Not one. Not one. The Lord Jesus,
however, was much more than a mere man and is. He is and was the
omniscient God before whom all things are naked and open, and
He knew their hypocrisy and caught them in their own trap. And you
can see that clearly in verses 15, 16, and 17. Our Lord said,
you got a penny? You want to know, is it lawful
to give tribute to Caesar or not? Should we give or should
we not give? You got a penny in your pocket? You're standing
here in Caesar's domain, using Caesar's money, living under
Caesar's law, and you want to know if it's lawful to pay tribute
to Caesar or not? Give me a penny out of your pocket.
And thus he demonstrates to them, though you would deny it, though
you say otherwise, you live here under Caesar's government, surrender
to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things
that are God's. No one in this world is more
subtle and deceiving than a religious man or woman who hates God. No one. I'm not looking for something
to say, I won't let it sink in. No one in this world is more subtle
and deceiving than a religious man or woman who hates God. You'll be smart, you'll be smart
to get that etched away somewhere in your memory. Thirdly, there's
no greater, more effective snare by which both God's people and
his servants are apt to be ensnared than over much concern about
the cares and controversies and affairs of life in this world,
particularly of civil government. Our Lord would not allow himself
to be drawn into the trap of political wrangling about worldly
strife. Now, we can't be too careful
about these things. Turn to Psalm 37 for a moment. Psalm 37. This time of the year everybody's
got their political billboards up and everybody's trying to
get your vote to do this or that. And let us be careful that we
exercise our responsibility as citizens in this country. But be even more careful that
we exercise our responsibilities as citizens of another. fret
not thyself because of evildoers. Neither be thou envious against
the workers of iniquity. You read the newspaper and you
read about the shenanigans going on in Washington, and they're
bad, but they're not any worse than they've always been. More
open, but it's not any worse than it's always been. It's always
been a cesspool up there and will continue to be. For they
shall soon be cut down like grass. They're not going to last too
long. And they shall wither like the green earth. Well, preacher,
what are we to do? We want to preserve this nation
for our children and our grandchildren. There ain't much left to preserve.
I'm just going to be honest with you. They're just dissidents.
Oh, but you know, we're greatest society in the world. That's
not saying much. That's just not saying much.
Our concern as believers in this world is not as much for this
nation as it is for that holy nation that belongs to God. Read
on. This is what we're to do. Trust
in the Lord and do good. That's what we're to do. Trust
in the Lord and do good, so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily
thou shalt be fed. Delight thyself also in the Lord,
and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart. Commit thy way
to the Lord, trust in him, and he shall bring it to pass. Now
this is what I'm saying. I wish I had the ear of every
preacher, particularly in this world. I'm talking about every
true gospel preacher. I don't have their ear right
now, but I do have yours. And this I can and must say to
you and to me. We must not allow ourselves to
be overly concerned about the things of this world. We must
not. Preachers above anybody else
dare not meddle in the politics of this world. I don't think there's any doubt
in any of your minds about how conservative my political views
about things are. I'm just, I'm the kind of conservative,
I wrote one time to William F. Buckley, and a teacher asked
me one time when Shelby and I were taking classes at Morris Harvard
University, or Charleston University in Charleston, West Virginia,
he said, why'd you write to him? I said, because he's too blooming
liberal. So you know something about my conservative thoughts
about things. But when all is said and done,
I wouldn't be found five minutes trying to defend Republicans
over Democrats or Democrats over Republicans. I'm just telling
you the truth. The politics of this world are not my concern.
Don't let yourself be overly concerned with the pleasures
of this world. That's an even greater danger,
or the riches of this world, or even the opinions of this
world. I'm crucified with Christ. I
hope you are. Let us then be dead to this world. Dead to it. What about the cares
and all the responsibilities we have in this world? It is
my prayer that God will crucify me to the world and the world
to me continually. Yet, and here's the fourth thing,
Faith in Christ and obedience to him is never a justification
for any of us neglecting our God-given responsibilities in
this world. Our Lord Jesus commands us to
render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things
that are God's. Now this is what that means.
It is the responsibility of all men in this world both to worship
God and to be responsible, productive citizens in the land where they
live, in the place where God's put them. There's a little verse
over in 1 Corinthians 7, it's verse 20, where the apostle Paul
says, let every man abide in the calling wherein he is called. And if you read the context,
that's not hard to understand. Paul says if you're a servant,
Doesn't matter if you're a servant, you're the Lord's freedman. If
you're a master, it doesn't matter if you're a master, you're the
Lord's servant. So let every man abide in the calling wherewith
he's called. He said, I'm going to apply it.
Rex is a cabinet maker, and God saves him by his grace. And Rex
said, well, I'm going to quit making cabinets. I saw that sign
in the clouds. PC, preach the gospel. Or PG
rather, preach the gospel. He said, I want to go sell it
all and go preach. Don't you dare. Don't you dare. Well, don't you think the Lord
will follow his calling? God called you as a cabinet maker.
You stay right there. He knows where you are. And do
the best job there is to do it. The best there is. He got an
employee. He said, well, the Lord's called
me to preach. If he called you to preach, you
wouldn't be making cabinets. You'd be preaching. You understand
that? God's servants are men who have been placed in a position
where they preach the gospel given that responsibility by
God. But this fellow says, Rex, the
Lord's called me to preach. Whenever somebody called me to
preach, I won't be here Monday. You mean you're going to shut down
the shop? Because you're going to go preach? That's not serving
Christ. That's exactly what 1 Corinthians
7.20 is talking about. You and I in this world are to
be the most productive, responsible citizens possible in all our
responsibilities. Render to Caesar the things that
are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's. One last thing. Many marvel at Christ and his
doctrine who never believe him. You see that last sentence? And
they marveled at him. They saw the Lord's wisdom. And they were astonished. These
fellows who came to trick him. They marveled at him. The same
thing often happens today. Frequently, men and women are
impressed with the system of doctrine, the abilities of a
preacher, a particular church or a group of people, and they
attach themselves to us. Boy, I like the way y'all do
things down at Grace Baptist Church. I like the way Brother
Fortner preaches. I like those other preachers
in there. Y'all so warm and friendly and so kind. Now, be warm and
friendly. Do that. By all means, be warm
and friendly. But folks say, well, I'll attach
myself to them. It'll do you no good to attach
yourself to us. You got to be attached to Christ.
Marveling at Christ is nothing. Many are now in hell who marveled
at his doctrine. Love the system, love this particular
creed, love this denomination, love this doctrine. It'll do you no good to marvel
at him until you believe him. Life eternal is knowing Christ. Life eternal is believing God. Life eternal is trusting Christ
the Lord. Until you trust Him, until you
know Him, it'll do you no good being impressed with Him. Without
Christ, you're without life, without forgiveness, without
righteousness, without God, and without hope. I pray that God
will give you a heart that goes beyond marveling at Him and comes
to trusting Him. God give you grace now to believe
on His dear Son for the glory of His name. Amen.