The Way of Submission

So I wonder if you've ever been caught by a gotcha question. It's one of those questions where when you get asked it, if you answer, yes, it's not a good answer, if you answer, no, it's not a good answer. You know, there's some classics like, have you stopped beating your dog yet? If you answer, yes, that's not a good move. If you answer, no, that's not a good move because in either way you've acknowledged something. Or have you quit stealing from your business partner? If you answer, yes, I've quit stealing from my business partner, that means that you were stealing from your business partner. If you answer, no, I haven't stopped stealing from my business partner that doesn't work as well either. Gotcha questions are used sometimes in a variety of different ways. They're not honest, they push an outcome. It happens sometimes you'll see it in political journalism sometimes trying to trap somebody who's running for office or in office or whatever, and they'll try and trap them in what they're saying. And I was reading interestingly an old article from 2003 from the Columbia School of Journalism. And they were actually predicting, in 2003, that they were predicting the rise of what they called partisan journalism. I think they're prophets because in 2003, to talk about that, we obviously see it. In other words, it's the kind of journalism that is only about the affirmation of a side, not information so that you can decide. It's kind of, there's a difference in those things that we should pay attention to. And some of us actually are old enough to remember shows where they actually debated two different sides of an issue. Anybody old like me that remembers any of those shows? Some of you are going, I'm not confessing to that. Those of you who are younger then, you may not have seen those kinds of things, but they did exist at one point. And the truth is, now we don't have time for those things. We were too busy, everything's in soundbites, and so, really the goal is to craft a story to get you to do it, whatever it is, to vote for this person or to do this thing. And it's really quick. And it really is a quick hitter to try and get you in a particular direction, because we just don't have time for anything else. It's basically what commercials do, just writ large over really important issues. And it's an interesting thing. By the way, I'm for a free press, and for journalism, I started out as a journalism major at the University of Georgia. I'm not trying to critique those things. There's a lot of good journalists. There's also some that aren't. But when I was there, I realized that the article that I was reading, the old one from Columbia School of Journalism, was pointing out some things that I remember talking about in journalism classes. And that is, if you asked 10 journalists to define objectivity, you would get 10 different answers. And the reason for that, is because objectivity, maybe, is hard for people to define, and so we end up always kind of bringing our collective understanding to something, or we just bring our particular worldview to something and try to shape the story in that regard. I don't know if you knew this, but in 1996, the Society of Professional Journalists actually dropped objectivity from their ethics code. That was in 1996, that they just said, nope. Now, because it was difficult to define. I did find a definition from a professor. He's a distinguished Professor of Journalism from Ohio State named Dr. Michael Bugeja. And he said this, he said objectivity is seeing the world as it is, not as we wish it were. Objectivity is seeing world as it is, not as we wish it were. See that just doesn't apply to journalism by the way, that should apply to all of us, 'cause I think that's a reasonably fair definition of objectivity. You would hope that you have a reasonably objective definition of objectivity, right? And I think that's a fair one, that objectivity is seeing the world as it is, not just how we wish it were. But all of us, let's confess, I'm standing here too, all of us like to see the world the way that we want to see it. And so when we tell stories, if we got an argument with a friend, and then we're communicating that story to our spouse or to somebody else, sometimes we don't always represent how that went down perfectly, do we? Because we're shaping it in the way that we want it to be seen. In other words, we leave out the details where they made a really good point and we didn't have any response to that, we just leave that completely out. Or how they responded to us, "Oh yeah, when I told her she shouldn't do that, she was like, I'll do whatever I want to." Did she really talk like that? Is that really how we represented that conversation actually happening? We all have a tendency to do it. We do it when we represent other people's political views. We don't always represent those fairly, or truly, right? Oh, you must hate kids. Oh, you must want kids in cages. Oh, you must want police officers murdered. Like it's just gets crazy, right? That's certainly not the sole reason that they're taking certain positions, but we represent them that way, don't we? Well, this isn't new to our generation, it wasn't new to Jesus's either. There were all sorts of trap questions and "gotcha" worldviews that were present during the time of Jesus. And in fact, Jesus had some enemies. Now Jesus's enemies were not like the prostitutes, or the criminals, or the workers who were being disparaged. It wasn't that those were his enemies. His enemies were actually more of the religious leaders and the political types, those were really his enemies. And oftentimes, they would try to trap him or to trick him. And it was something that was common to his day and age. It's kind of interesting I think, because when Jesus was actually in Jerusalem for the last time, as we're walking through Mark's Gospel, when Jesus was in Jerusalem for the very last time, what we would call the Passion Week, and he's there to celebrate the feast of Passover. And while he's there, he's actually teaching. And some of the religious leaders that are there, they challenged Jesus's authority to actually teach, and Jesus, instead of arguing with them, or berating them, actually started changing his tactic a little bit, and he started telling stories, and he was telling parables, but the parables were actually about them. And they started figuring this out, wait a second, this guy's talking about me. And I don't think that I like it at all. And so, listen to what happened in Mark 12, in terms of what some of these religious leaders did. It's verse 12, of Mark 12, it says, "Then the chief priests, the teachers of the law, and the elders, looked for a way". There's our word again, right? We've been following this word all through Mark's gospel. "They looked for a way to arrest Jesus, because they knew he had spoken the parable against them, but they were afraid of the crowd, so they left him and went away". In other words, they created this way in their minds because they realized that Jesus was now speaking against them in some of these stories in some of these parables, they didn't like that at all, so they looked for a way to discard Jesus. Now the interesting thing about that is that, they thought that their way was right. These are religious leaders after all, chief priests, right? They thought that their way was right. And they thought eliminating Jesus would actually be a good thing. They didn't recognize that their way was actually not going to be the way of God. That their way was actually not going to be fitting with who God actually is. So here's what happened in the next verse, verse 13, it says, "Later, these religious leaders sent some of the Pharisees and Herodians to Jesus, to catch him in his words. And they came to him and said, 'Teacher, we know that you're a man of integrity. You aren't swayed by others, because you pay no attention to who they are, but you teach the way of God, in accordance with truth. Is it right to pay The Imperial tax to Caesar or not? Should we pay, or shouldn't we?'" Now, when we begin to look at how this all went down, what you have to realize is that the Sanhedrin, which was the ruling body at that time of religious leaders, they sent an interesting pair of groups of people to try and trap Jesus. They sent Herodians and Pharisees. Now I'll tell you about them in just a second, but these are strange bedfellows, 'cause they really had virtually nothing in common, the Pharisees and the Herodians, and yet they were coming to try and trap Jesus. Why was that the case? Well, my guess is, because Mark has already planted an idea in our minds back from earlier in his gospel. You see when Jesus was ministering in Galilee, a lot of the religious leaders, and by the way, a lot of the political types did not like what they were hearing. And so, you actually saw all the way back in Galilee when Jesus was ministering there, that the Pharisees and the Herodians were plotting to kill him. My guess is that those same Pharisees and Herodians are now in Jerusalem for the feast of Passover, and the Sanhedrin says, ah, you know him, and here's what we want you to do. By the way, if you're trying to find where that is in Mark 3, it's actually in verse 6. It says, then the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus, right? So that was actually going on in Galilee. And now everybody that's normally in Galilee is in Jerusalem for the feast, just like Jesus is. And the Sanhedrin, this religious ruling body, taps these Herodians and Pharisees on the shoulder and says, hey, you guys have already been plotting to kill him. Here's what I want you to do. We want you to go trap him in his words. Now, what they were looking for, is they were looking for Jesus to be in an unguarded moment. And so what they did, is they first came up and talked to him while he's teaching in the temple courts, and they tried to butter him up, right? You heard it when we were just reading it a second ago, they were like, "Teacher, we know that you're a man of integrity." They didn't believe that. They're just talking, they're just buttering him up. "We know that you're not swayed by others. We know you pay no attention to who they are, but you teach the way of God, in accordance with the truth." So they're trying to butter him up, right before dropping this question bomb on Jesus. And it was this. "Is it right for us to pay the Imperial tax to Rome? Should we pay or shouldn't we?". Now, some of you may think, when you read this, you're going, I'm not sure what's so controversial about a question about taxes? Well, it was really controversial, and I'll tell you why. Because this was not an ordinary tax, this is what they call either the Imperial tax, or the tribute tax. Here's what that meant. It meant this was a tax that Romans weren't paying. You know, who was paying? Countries that they conquered. It was a tax of conquest. In other words, now that Israel was conquered, they had to pay a tax, by the way, this tax was with a Roman denarius, and it had Caesar's picture on it. And so you actually had to pay now Rome with Roman money with Caesar's face on it, as a conquested people. And do you think that the Jews really liked that? Of course they didn't. And so what the Herodians and the Pharisees did, is they came together to craft a really, really controversial question in the hopes that they could either get Jesus to commit, one way or the other, or that he would trip on his words. Now, why was this so controversial? Listen carefully, because of what all of this meant. This was a hot button issue in their time. If you remember the time of Jesus's birth, right? You've read the story in Luke, when Quirinus was the governor of Syria, and a census was taken in all the land, right? You've either read the story, or if you've watched Charlie Brown when they read the story, you've seen it, right? You've heard it. Well, when they tell that story, that census when around the time of Jesus's birth, that census was taken by some of the Jews to be a real affront and an offense. In fact, there was one Jew named Judas, not the guy who ended up with Jesus, 'cause this guy was older than that. This guy Judas, ended up leading basically a revolt during that time, because he said, the census is an order to tax us. And this taxing is going to be for the purpose of enslavement, and we're not having it. And so, the band of people that this guy Judas ended up leading and influencing were called Zealots. So whenever you read about Zealots in ancient history, in Israel, you're reading about people who were adamantly opposed to taxes of any kind, because they felt like it was a partial enslavement by Rome, and they were angry about it. And in fact, they were going around, occasionally killing Roman centurions, and sometimes even turning on Jews, because if there were Jews who were willing to accept the tax, they weren't happy about that either, and they would deal with them accordingly. So this was a very, very serious thing for these Zealots. But then you have the Pharisees, right? That are brought into this question. The Pharisees weren't very political. And in fact, what they wanted to do is they wanted to kind of adhere to the way of God, so to speak, from the scripture, but what they ended up doing is they ended up adding a whole lot of things to the way of God, and making it more about their way, not about God's way. On some things, they certainly got some things right. But there were also things that they got really, really wrong. And it moved into a form of legalism, religiously. It's that kind of thing where you want your preference to be everybody else's conviction, that kind of idea. That's really not where you wanna land, but that's where the Pharisees were. And the Pharisees were offended by the tax, no doubt, because they wanted everything to be Jewish. They didn't like the idea that they were having to take Roman coins and pay the Romans for this enslavement, or this occupation of their own land. They wanted to deal with things in the Jewish coinage, and they wanted everything to be Jewish. So they weren't happy with this tax, but they tacitly kind of just went along with it and justified it, because they stayed mostly out of politics. Then you have the Herodians. As you can guess, right? What were the Herodians for? They were fans of the Herods, right? Now the Herods were like the Caesars. Herod wasn't just like a dude's name, like Jerry or Jeff. It wasn't that. It was Herod, somebody, then his name, Herod Mike, Herod Reggie. That's what it was. It's like Caesar. Julius was a Caesar. Tiberius was a Caesar. So the Herods were the religious dynasty in Israel. Truth is, the Herod the Great was only half Jewish anyway, and not all the Jews really liked him. And what they were is they were in league with Rome. The Herods were basically like puppets of Rome, and so they were perfectly fine with the taxation. They liked it. They liked the benefits of power. They like being under Roman occupation. They were good with it, why? Because they were people of power. This was gonna work out perfectly for them. So you've got this really interesting mix, these two bedfellows, Pharisees, and Herodians, coming together to try and trick Jesus. It's so weird. It's so weird 'cause they don't have anything in common except wanting Jesus gone. It gives meaning to that phrase, the enemy of my enemy is my friend, right? That's kind of what you see going on here. But the interesting thing is this, is that there are only really two options when you're dealing with Rome and dealing with taxation. In that day and age, you really had two options, rebel or submit. And what the Herodians and the Pharisees were doing is they were basically crafting a question around that idea, rebel or submit, because they wanted to trap Jesus in the way that he was talking, and in the way that he was thinking. I mean, think about how they crafted it. If Jesus says, I support the tax, 'cause they said, should we pay the Imperial tax? If he says I support the tax, do you think the Zealots are gonna be real happy about that? No. Are the Jewish people, as a whole, gonna be happy about that? No. And basically the Jewish people would stir up the Zealots, and the Zealots would take care of business and do the work for the Herodians and the Pharisees. But if Jesus says, I do not support this tax, then all they have to do is turn him in to the Roman authorities. And then the Roman authorities will take him and punish him. Either way, as far as they're concerned, if he'll commit one direction or the other, we'll be able to trap him in his words, and he's not going to be able to get away. That's why they asked a two-fold question. Is it right to pay the Imperial tax? Should we pay the tax? They wanted it to be both theoretical and emotive, and they wanted him to just start talking so they could trap him. But this is Jesus we're talking about, my friends. He's not a knucklehead, like some of us are. He's not going to be trapped by these human beings, who are trying to lure him into the trap. And so notice how he responds to their questions. "Jesus knew their hypocrisy. 'Why are you trying to trap me?,' he asked." So he's onto them, right? You gotta be scared at that point, when you know that he knows. "'Bring me a denarius and let me look at it.' And they brought the coin, and he asked them, 'Whose image is this? And whose inscription?' 'Caesar's they replied.' Then Jesus said to them, 'Give back to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's.' And they were amazed at him." This is a really unique thing that Jesus did here. He knew that their question wasn't sincere from the outset, so all of the blathering on about, we know you to be a man of integrity or blah, blah, blah. Jesus is seeing all through their hypocrisy. He knows that they're trying to trap him. And so when they asked the question, should we pay the Imperial tax? Is this right for us to do? He says, "Give me a coin." Now, interestingly enough, if had to asked to ask for a coin, it means he didn't have one. "Give me a Roman denarius." That's what it was. And he took the front side of that coin, as you and I would look at it, and he said, whose image is this on here? Well, it was Caesar's head, right? It had a head shot, a bust shot of Caesar on it. And they said it well, it's Caesar's. Now you and I kind of look at that and go, that's normal. It's money, we understand that. I mean, Abraham Lincoln's on our penny, George Washington is on our quarter, makes sense to us. It does, but it's not the same thing. Lemme make sure you understand. You see, in our day and age, whoever is on a coin, whether that's a president or a special figure, Harriet Tubman, whoever ends up on one of these Susan B. Anthony coins, whatever, it's there as a place of honor, it's like they're honoring a particular person with their image on a coin. But in this context, as attribute tax, image meant ownership, image meant ownership. You are a conquested people. You will take this coin, that's our coin, a Roman coin, with the Caesar's face on it, and you will pay with this coin to us as a people who have been conquested. So you could imagine, that that was a bit of an affront to all of the Jews, as you could only imagine. Image meant ownership, in that context. But then Jesus turned the denarius over. Turned the coin over. And he asked them, "Whose image is on the front?" And they said, "Ceasar's." "Whose inscription is this?" Well, it was also Ceasar's, right? In fact, it would say something like this, the inscription on the back of the coin would say something along the line of, depending on who the Caesar was, Tiberius Augustus, son of the divine Augustus. You can look those things up, by the way, you can still see some of the coins from that time and see actually how those inscriptions read. What they were fundamentally, is a statement of divinity, a statement of deity. In other words, they were actually affirming that the Caesars were gods, that's what they were affirming on their coinage. So Jesus said, "On the front, whose image is this?" and they said, "Caesar's." And he said, "Whose inscription is this on the back?" and they said, "Caesar's." and then Jesus said, "Well, give to Caesar what is Caesar's?" What's interesting about that, Jesus, didn't say, let's have a rebellion. Jesus also implicitly, identified the fact that there's a government. It may be unjust. It may be corrupt. But there's a government, and that government can do with their money what they wanna do with it. He kind of just understood that, right? He wasn't making the case for justice or injustice here. He was just simply saying, governments print their own money, and they'll do with it what they wanna do with it. So give to Caesar what's Caesar's. But he doesn't stop there. He says, "And give to God, what is God's." Now, what Jesus had done here is super interesting, because what he did implicitly, is he distinguished Caesar from God. You see, this coin was actually making the argument that Caesar was a God, that Caesar was divine. And Jesus distinguishes those things without saying it blatantly. He simply says this, give to Caesar what's Caesar's, but give to God. In other words, Caesar's not God. Give to God what is God's. You know what Jesus didn't do? Jesus did not give a free pass to idolatry. And this is what it really was, it was idolatrous to claim to be a God or a divine being. And they were doing that on their coinage. Jesus didn't give a pass to it. So what Jesus did when confronted with the two things that you had to do, which was either rebel or submit, he did both. He rebelled against idolatry and called for submission to God, which by the way, the Pharisees and the Herodians were probably at that point scratching their head. It's why they said that they were amazed at him, because they didn't really know how to deal with this at all. So Jesus is actually saying now he's reversing things on them. The reason that they're standing back is because they tried to trap him with a question, and now he's reversed everything. And now they have to deal with the question of this, will I rebel or submit to God and his Messiah? Now they are having to deal with this. They tried to trick Jesus, by the way, just a quick heads up, it's a pro tip, don't try to trick Jesus. Pro tip from church today, from me, and it was free. Here's what Jesus is also saying here, and this is what I don't want you to miss. God gets everything that's his. Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and give to God what is God's. Whose image is this on the coin? It's Ceasar's. Whose inscription is this on the backside? It's Ceasar's. We'll give to Caesar what's Caesar's, but give to God what is God's. Because what he's saying is this, is that everybody everywhere has God's image on them, and an inscription on them that says, God's possession. Jesus has just flipped the script. I wonder if you've ever had anything in your life, maybe as a kid, or maybe even as an adult, that you wrote your name on with indelible marker, like permanent ink. When I was a kid I had a lunch box, 'cause that's what we did back in the day, we had lunch boxes. Who is a lunchbox kid, like at school? Right on. The rest of you, you've missed out. You probably ordered them at school or something. I did that too. But when I was little I had a lunchbox, Evel Knievel lunchbox. Now, those of you are younger, you have no idea who Evel Knievel is, it's a bad man, it's a bad dude, not because his name was evil. It wasn't E-V-I-L, like, it was E-V-E-L. I have no idea what the origin of that name is. I just know the dude got on motorcycles and he jumped over buses, like loads of them. He jumped over the Grand Canyon on a motorcycle and failed, and pretty much died almost every day. It was like good TV, we would watch, and we would go, how many bones is Evel Knievel gonna break? And he would break tons of bones. He's broken every bone in his body many times over, right? The dude was a Daredevil before Daredevil was cool. He was an extreme athlete before extreme athletes were named. And I had his lunchbox, and I was the man. Don't be walking up in here with your Cabbage Patch Kids. You can take your weak lunchbox stuff over there, I've got Evel Knievel right here, right? And so, because I loved Evel Knievel so much, I wrote my name on that lunchbox in permanent ink, you could not have the lunch box. You wanna steal some grapes, you can have them, you wanna banana, get some. You wanna a little spam out of my lunch box, knock yourself out. You ain't getting the lunch box, it's got my name on it. We've all had those things in our lives, right? When we went to Cooperstown for a baseball tournament when I was with my youngest son, and he was 12 at the time, I was helping to coach the team. We had to stay in the barracks there at Cooperstown for this tournament. 106 teams that were gonna be playing that week. It was incredible, tons of fun. The barracks didn't have any air, I mean, it was just like, bring your own fan, whatever. And then they did your laundry for you. I'll tell you right now, 'cause there were four of us coaches, I wrote my name on every piece of my clothing, because I can tell you right now, I do not want another man's undergarments showing up in my clothing pile. So it was on permanent marker, where it would not get washed out. I wanted to make sure no, this is Jerry's. I do not want yours, and I'm sure you don't want mine. We write our names on suitcases. We write our names on books on the inside, to show people that they're ours. We write our names on food containers that we're putting in the break room refrigerator, in permanent marker. Back off of my belonging, that's kinda where we're at. Because it's ours. Here's what we need to understand. God has written himself on to every human being. They are made in my image, and there is an inscription in invisible ink that says, 'God's possession', they're mine. And everything that's mine, I want back.
Jesus said, give to Caesar what is Caesar's, but give to God, what is God's. You see Jesus was actually painting a picture of what submission to God actually looks like. If you wanted to say it in a simple sentence, it would be this, the way of submission is giving to God everything that belongs to Him. That's what Jesus said. Give to Caesar what's Caesar's, and give to God what is God's. The way of submission is giving to God everything that belongs to Him. What is it that belongs to God? Everything. So if you're saying, well, I gotta give God everything that belongs to Him, what would that include? Everything. It all belongs to Him. Isn't it an interesting contrast here in this story. And this story is so fascinating. It's an interesting contrast, because here's what Jesus is doing. He's basically saying this, Rome mints coins, God makes people. So you can do what you want with the stuff as a government, whatever, but everything that belongs to God should be given to God. You know, Jesus knew full well when he's talking to Pharisees, who knew the Bible, and talking to Herodians, who were Jewish, but liked the government and liked power, but also probably knew their Bible. Jesus knew what he was saying when he said all of this, because he knew what the old Testament said, and so did they. Genesis 1:27 says this, "God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created the male and female, he created them." The Psalmist says it this way, "The earth is the Lord's, and everything in it, the world and all who live in it." That summarize everything? Not everything. When God says, give me everything that's mine. What does that include? Everything. Period. Why? Because God's image is on every single person, and his inscription, as his possession, is on every single person. You see this truth, friends, is why we embrace the dignity of every single life, whether that life is preborn in a womb, or whether that life is a person with special needs or disabilities, or whether they are aged or infirmed. What we don't do, is discard them. We embrace the dignity and value of every single life. Why? Image. An image means ownership is on every single person, and the inscription of God, that they are God's own possession, is there. It's also, by the way, why we embrace a redemptive and restorative culture and we reject cancel culture. It's for this reason that we do that. People aren't supposed to be discarded. Jesus doesn't cancel people, he redeems them. He restores them. It's a remarkable, beautiful thing. Jesus doesn't cancel people. You know what Jesus does cancel? Sin. He's canceled our sins on the cross, according to Colossians. You see, because we embrace, as believers, a restorative and redemptive culture, because we believe that everybody is made in the image of God, and everybody has the inscription of God on them. That means we reject cancel culture, but it doesn't mean that we reject accountability. Because accountability is the only way to restoration. We had to be accountable for our sins. We confess, we repent. We are held to account that we are in need of a savior and we find grace and restoration and redemption. So we can be that kind of people. When we face conflict, what we have to keep in the front of our minds, friends, is that in the midst of a conflict we still must recognize, whomever it is that we might be in a conflict with, that they're an image bearer, that they have the inscription of God on their life, that they belong to Him, and what we should do is give them back. Now, I may not recognize that, and we understand that. And I know that sometimes with conflict, it can be hard. You faced it in your own world, and maybe it's been difficult. And sometimes you're like, well, man, how do I posture myself appropriately? Listen, as the people of Jesus, you can want both justice and healing, you can embrace both accountability and restoration, that's who we are. But what we can't do, friends, is we can't discard people, especially, and particularly the most vulnerable among us. Now, I say that because everything means everything. When Jesus says, "Give to Caesar, what is Caesar's, but give to God, what is God's", he's saying that everything belongs to God. Why? Because every person and every thing belongs to God, and God wants them back. Now, of course, if we're talking about everything, everything, that means everything, everything, that means our stuff. You're going, wait a minute, didn't he say like, Caesar's money can be Caesar's money. It's God's. It's all His. Listen to what the prophet Haggai said. Actually, he didn't say it, the Lord, God almighty said it. Here's what he said, "The silver is mine and the gold is mine, declares the Lord Almighty." Any questions? Any questions? Silver's mine, the gold is mine, says the Lord Almighty. Any questions? No, me neither. It also means that everything, also means our bodies. It means our minds, the way that we think. Listen to how the apostle Paul framed it in Romans 12, he said, "Therefore, I urge you brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, Holy and pleasing to God, this is your true and proper worship. Don't conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you'll be able to test and approve what God's will is, his good pleasing and perfect will." So often we want how we define everything, to be the way that we want everything to be, including how we want God to act and be. We don't define things by the way that God says, oftentimes, we just want God to do what we want him to do. Isn't it shocking how often God agrees with us? I know I find that in my own life sometimes, where I'm like, man, God agrees with me on everything. Aren't I incredible? Which is probably a hint, that maybe we need to do some thinking. And I don't really know if you identified with any of the people in this particular story, where Jesus is interfacing with some of these folks, and some of the cultural areas. Maybe you have, maybe like Zealots, maybe your first impulse kind of is rebellion. Maybe it's rebellion against governments. Maybe it's rebellion against authority of any kind. Maybe it's rebellion against anything that you don't like. Or maybe you identify more with the Pharisees, where you kinda just want everything to be the way that you want it. And you're gonna put spiritual angles on it, and God terms on it. And you want the whole world to just basically be how you see it. And it doesn't matter if some of it's really about God, and some of it's not really about God, it's just how you want it to be. Or maybe you identify a little bit with the Herodians, and you think, you know what, I'm good. I've got a place of influence and power, and that's all cool. And so I'm just good with keeping it. Or maybe you like big government, or you just good with like paying a lot of taxes, or whatever. I don't know anybody who says that by the way, but whatever. Well, guess what? One of each of these kinds of people, the Zealots, the Pharisees, the Herodians, each ended up becoming an apostle of Jesus. Interesting. So wait a minute, what? He had a Zealot? Oh, yeah. Just read through the list of disciples, there's a guy named Simon, not Simon Peter, the other one. And his name is Simon the Zealot, that means he came from a background where he was ready to just burn down the place, right? He's ready to take people out if he needed to be or whatever. And then he comes to Jesus, and he recognizes that the way that he was going is not the way that he was supposed to be going. And Jesus changes everything for this guy. And he joins Jesus's band of 12 to help change the world. Say, wait a minute, you're telling me Jesus had a Pharisee as an apostle. Yeah, he wasn't one of the 12, but he was an apostle. He wrote two thirds of the New Testament. His name was Saul, and it got changed to Paul. In fact, he said this about himself, I'm a Pharisee of Pharisees, studied under Gamaliel, the rock star of the teachers of that day. And in fact, he thought everything he was doing was right, so much so that he was persecuting Christians, and in fact, persecuting Christ. He wanted to see them all dead and gone because he thought they were all blaspheming And by the way, some of what he believed was absolutely true, because he knew the law of God, but he had seen it through wrong filters and done some things that left him in a very different way. And then he got blinded on the way to Damascus by none other than the resurrected Jesus himself. And all of the sudden, the one who was persecuting the Church, the one who was standing against Christ, is now a preacher of the Gospel. His life was dramatically changed because everything now got submitted to the true one, Jesus. And then of course, the Herodians. Well, there was a guy named Matthew, who was a tax collector. And to be a tax collector meant that you were actually in league with Rome and with the governing officials. The Herods and Rome, were like this. And if you're a tax collector, doing the very thing that the Jews didn't wanna do, you're saying that you're in league with them. In fact, you're getting your own cut. You liked it. You had a position of power and influence. You're taking some off the top. You're getting really wealthy during this time. Jesus actually ended up having each of these kinds of people with him. You know what he didn't do? Discard them. You know what he did do? Redeemed them. Restored them. Changed them. They had a way that they looked at the world that ended up changing significantly. They learned to love one another. And they learned to conform their thinking to the way of the cross, not the way they had been thinking. Now they were learning the way of submission to God, and they saw it in Jesus. And they knew that it was their responsibility to live the same way. In fact, this former Pharisee, named Paul, said this very clearly, I shared it with you last week, but I emphasize something different this week. He said, "In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus, who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage, rather he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness, and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross." You see, so for us in this time, it's very similar to the people in Jesus's time. You really have two ways that are before you, submit or rebel. We can either rebel against the way of God, and choose our own way. Try to make the world the way that we say that it's supposed to be, and make people the way they're supposed to be, or we can choose the way of submission to God. And that submission means everything. Give to God what is God's. And what is God's? Everything. Only one of those ways, rebellion against God, or full submission to have everything to God, only one of those ways leads to life. And it's the way of the one who lays claim to everything. Let's pray together. We'll be dismissed in just a moment. If you be kind enough to just stay with me for a moment. I realize that there are people, under the sound of my voice, whether here in this place or online, or maybe even listening on the radio, maybe watching on television. I would encourage you, if you've never come to a place of turning from your sins, and putting your faith in Jesus. I want you to know something, that Jesus was on the way to the cross. It's what we're celebrating this week, Good Friday, we commemorate his death on a cross, Sunday, we commemorate, and celebrate the resurrection from the dead. What was all that about? It was all about rescue. It was all about restoration and redemption. It was about canceling sin, not canceling you. It was about rescuing you. You see, Jesus wants you, because you have been made by him. Your image is there, and he wants to reclaim you and to restore it. But if we choose the way of rebellion, then we choose the way of living in our sinful selves, and it's not the way of life, it's the way of separation from God. But when we, by faith, turn away from our sins and put our faith in Jesus as the only one who can forgive us, and save us, and change us, and make us new, we can have new life. And if you're here and you've never before invited Christ to come into your life, you've received Jesus. I'm not talking about how you've maybe gone through a class when you were little, or maybe you were baptized as an infant, or you achieved confirmation. I'm not talking about any of that. I'm talking about, have you been made new by Jesus. Born from above. If that's never happened in your life, Bible says by grace that we are saved, through faith, it's not of ourselves, it's the gift of God. We can't work our way into it, because if we could, we could boast about that, right? Bible also says, to as many as received Jesus, to them he gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe on his name. So maybe right where you're seated, if this is your need, with all the faith that you have just right in your own heart pray something like this. There's no magic in my words, but you can just make this your own prayer. Jesus, I know that I've sinned and I can't save myself. I believe you died for my sin, and because of my sin. And I believe you rose from the grave, conquering it. I confess that you Jesus are Lord, I'm not, no one else is, just you. And I believe that you have risen from the dead. And I'm asking you with all the faith that I have, to come into my heart, forgive my sin, change me. I submit everything to you, 'cause I believe that only you are the way of life, and only you are the way to the Father. As our heads are bowed and eyes are closed, if you just prayed that with me, I wanna encourage you, in just a moment when we dismiss, after I kind of close us in prayer, we're gonna dismiss in just a moment. Would you just walk across the atrium into the clearly marked room called the fireside room. There's no scary people there. I mean, they got masks on but they're not scary. I wish you'd just come over there, here's what they wanna do. They wanna pray for you first, and they wanna send you home with something that's gonna help you in your journey of faith. Would you let us do that? Would you just identify yourself that way? There's no secret disciples, right? Jesus died for us. We walk with him. I hope that you'll do that. Father, for those of us who do know you, there was much for us to be able to grab from this passage. I know that in times in my own life, and I know I probably can speak for everybody, that there are times where we hold things back from you, when in fact you want everything. Give to God what is God's, and everything is yours. Forgive us, Lord, when we hold back on you. We hold back places in our hearts, we hold back places in our minds, we hold back things that we have, because we don't want you to touch them. But God, I pray that you would take away the fear from us and remind us that you call us to walk in life, abundant life, a life that is overflowing with life. And that your way is always the best way. Not just a good way, but the best way. Would you give us the heart to trust you in all things, with everything, that you may use us for your glory, and that other people may see us as people who are willing to give God what is God's. May we also look at the people around us and recognize that whether they are like us or not like us, behave like us, don't behave like us, that everything is yours, and that they have your image, and they have your inscription, and that you want them back, that you use us to be able to influence their lives toward you, so that they may know life as well. We pray in Jesus name. Amen.