Lesson 08 - Jesus and Politics

Lesson 08 - Jesus and Politics

Introduction

Welcome back to Sunday after the conclusion of the VBS week at the church here - I'm so thrilled at the vision of the young people at this church for our community and how much work so many of you put in to do what you do.
This should be a very interesting week as we get into the issues surrounding politics, but I think is going to be a little bit different spin than you're used to on the political world.
Remember what our purpose is here - we're working to get a right understanding of God so that we can gain a right understanding of ourselves, and then understand how to see other people around us correctly.
Last week we looked at our definitions of ourselves - what it is that is central in our lives and what defines us. That can be our looks, our jobs, our education, our skill at a job, our money, or lots of different things.

Ever since sin entered our world, we have been exchanging our relationship with God for God's stuff. Instead of focusing our relationship with God, we tend to focus on the good things God has given us that are designed to draw us to himself.
So we focus on the "tacos" of this world - great things God has given us to draw us to himself - and we make them an end in themselves instead of letting them draw us to the Lord and our relationship with him.
When we see ourselves instead of through the way Jesus sees us - as his brothers and sisters, in a family relationship that can't be changed - we see we have worth and value to him and that's where our true value originates.
Then we get to move our focus off of God's stuff, all the things in this world and instead back onto the Lord who has given us life and relates to us as his family.
We are the children of our heavenly Father and the brothers and sisters of our Lord Jesus Christ - that's an incredible relationship we have access to!

Jesus and the Real Political World

This week, we're headed into our next exploration of how God sees us by looking at how Jesus dealt with political questions, but kind of a different spin than what we've thought about before.

We often don't think of Jesus in a political sense, especially because we think of him being the teacher of spiritual lessons that involve just a heavenly world beyond this one, but Jesus had a lot to say about how we live life in this world.
Remember we talked about how Jesus was a real man, someone who knows what it's like to live like we do, and he lived in real times with a real government - involving an oppressive regime called the Roman Empire.

Jesus did not live in a democracy or a republic or a monarchy. He was subject to a tyrannical regime of Rome that ruled every area of his life.
People are all freaked out about socialism today, but Jesus lived under a dictatorship of Rome, with Roman soldiers oppressing the nation of Israel the entire time.
Jewish boys like Jesus would have been taught to be very careful around Roman soldiers - they could take anyone away at a moment's notice. Keeping your head down and avoiding notice was probably the best approach.
There were active movements within Israel to launch another revolution and get rid of Rome, but they always just flamed out. But they were always bubbling - you might say they were the tea party revolutionaries of their day.
The tax system of Rome was incredibly oppressive as well - huge amounts of a family's income was taken away by the tax system, and the people of Israel couldn't do anything about it - they couldn't vote or do much of anything about the problem.

That's the world Jesus was living in - one where government was apparent in every area of your life. It's the world Jesus was in.

Luke 20 - Render to Caesar

So it's in that world, of a very real, oppressive government that Jesus deals with a political problem.
Let's turn to Luke 20 and see where Jesus dealt with an interesting issue.

In Luke 20, Jesus had been dealing with questions about his authority to teach. Jesus then told a parable about the wicked tenants and how the owner of the vineyard had sent his son whom the owners had killed.
We're told in verse 19 that the chief priests and scribes then were trying to get a hold of Jesus, because they realized he had spoken the parable of the wicked tenants against them.
So let's pick up the reading in verse 20:

And they watched him, and sent forth spies, which should feign themselves just men, that they might take hold of his words, that so they might deliver him unto the power and authority of the governor.

These guys were pretending to be sincere - their goal was to catch Jesus in something he said, and look who they're trying to get him delivered over to - the governor, or the guy who represented the Roman authority that was there in Jerusalem. So what's about to happen is designed to make Jesus say something that will make him run afoul of Roman law.

Verse 21-22: "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 [taxes] unto Caesar, or no?"

Now, remember what we just talked about with the status of Rome and its influence in all areas of First Century life. These guys are buttering Jesus up (if that was possible) with the flattering "we know you don't accept anyone's person, or don't show partiality).
So this question was designed to be an unanswerable question - like the old "So did you stop beating your wife?"

Saying yes means that you used to beat your wife and now have stopped doing so.
Saying no means you are still beating your wife.
Not a good result either way!

So this question they were asking Jesus was the same thing - it was completely a trick question designed to make him run afoul of the government.

Saying it was lawful to pay the tax contradicted a lot of Jewish teaching at the time, that paying the taxes was against God's lordship over his people.
So it would be viewed as saying that Caesar was somehow more powerful than God or owed a higher allegiance than God. Saying that kind of thing would make Jesus' Jewish listeners go away.
But saying that you were not supposed to pay the taxes was clearly rebellion against Rome, and would subject Jesus to the power of the governor, which is what these guys wanted.

How does Jesus respond? Let's keep reading in verse 23-26: "But he perceived their craftiness, and said unto them, Why tempt ye me? Show me a penny [a penny was a denarius, or one day's wages for a regular laborer]. Whose image and superscription hath it? They answered and said, Caesar's. And he said unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which be Caesar's and unto God the things which be God's. And they could not take hold of his words before the people [literally this means they couldn't "catch him in what he said]: and they marveled at his answer, and held their peace."

These guys who thought that they had Jesus stuck in an unanswerable political question found that he had a higher answer than they could have ever imagined, and Jesus set out a key issue when we think about dealing with politics and government.
We are to give to Caesar, or the government system, what belongs to it. But at the same time, we are always to give to God what belongs to Him.
So that leads us to where I want us to focus our thoughts this morning - what do we owe to the government and what do we owe to God?
And more importantly, why do we tend to give to government what we should be giving to God?

What we owe to Government

We'll look first at the issue of what we owe to government. Obviously, our system of government is different than what existed in the first century Roman Empire. But in a sense, we have more duties to our government than a lot of First Century Christians did, because of our responsibilities with voting.
Now, a couple of years ago, I taught an entire semester class on government and what we owe to it, so a lot of this could be a semester-long discussion. And who knows, maybe we'll do some of that with current events sometime soon.
But when we think about what we owe to government, I'm going to give you a quick run through of our Biblical duties so that we can spend some time thinking about what we owe God.

First, and most obvious based on Jesus' story here is that we owe a duty to pay our taxes.

I know that doesn't apply to all of you yet, but it's rough, especially when you feel like the government is taking too much.
If you ever do some research on Roman taxes, though, they took a huge percentage of the income of people of that day - much more than ours today.
And yet both Jesus and Paul make clear that as Christians, we have a duty to pay our taxes.

Second thing we have a duty to do is to pray for our leaders.

Paul and Peter are the main guys who write about this in I Timothy and in I Peter of the importance of praying for those in authority over us.
And that doesn't mean we pray "Lord, make their children fatherless and their wife a widow" - even if we think about that sometimes.
The church fathers prayed some amazing things for emperors that were trying to kill Christians - health, long life, strong armies, a quiet people.
They prayed to support the leaders, recognizing that even if you disagree with someone's policies, that person is still an individual who needs to come to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus.

If Christians are always attacking that person, they may stop listening to the message of Christianity if they think Christians hate them as people.

Third thing we owe our government is related, and that's a duty not to speak evil of them.

Now, I have no problem with someone opposing particular policies of the President, or of members of Congress, or of anyone else.
But there is a problem if our opposition to them is based on personal animosity or hatred instead of a reasoned review of their policies.

Here's a great example that I hopefully can give without seeming too political.
A lot of conservative Christians reflexively oppose everything the President proposes, not because of the substance of his policies, but rather because of the fact that the President is the one who proposed it.
Here's an example - the President had to deal with a lot of issues this week related to the Afghanistan war.

He fired a general and put a new one in place. But in the mix of that, some people miss that the President is using a lot of the same strategies and tactics that worked in Iraq in Afghanistan.
But if you ask the average Christian how the President was doing on the Afghanistan war, they would probably tell you that he was doing terrible, was weak on defense, etc., without knowing any real substance about his policies. It's reflexive opposition to him because of him as a person, not to his policies

Or let me speculate for a minute - a new study came out this week that found that 245 million women around the world are widows today, and of those, 115 million live in devastating poverty.

As far as I know, the President has not proposed anything related to this.
But just go through this mental exercise with me - if the President did in fact propose anything to help alleviate the suffering of widows in the U.S., you would have a huge number of people react to it as terrible.
Now, is this primarily a church responsibility? Absolutely. But if we're not doing something, the government often has to step in to help.

So I said all that to say - opposition to government leaders is not to be to them as individuals - none of these personal attacks on their family or their sincerity. We're not to speak evil of our government authorities - we're supposed to pray for them.

Last thing on what we owe our government leaders - as citizens, we have a duty to be informed and to participate in the government God has set over us.

Although we are citizens of heaven, we still have citizenship here on earth. Part of that citizenship involves participating in the system we have.
In the first century, they couldn't elect the emperor. But we have the privilege of being able to elect our leaders.
But it is important to remember that we should be informed voters - we should know where we stand and work to elect leaders who share those positions.
And we should recognize that not every Christian will agree with our positions on every issue. But as long as those positions are based on thought-out reasons, I'm ok with that.

What We Owe to God

So that's what we owe to our government - to Caesar. But what about what we owe to God?
Coins bear Caesar's image. But whose image do we have on us? God's image of course.

If we give money to Caesar because it belongs to him, it follows that we give ourselves to God because we belong to Him.

It's pretty clear that Jesus was talking about taxes and general duties as a citizen when he talked about what we owed Caesar. But Jesus didn't get more specific about what owed to God.
So what is it that we should be giving to God?

First, we should be giving Him ourselves - we should recognize that we belong to him first and foremost, and that everything we have has been given to us by him, not by the government.

It's an extension of what we talked about last week - we should recognize that the good things we're given were designed to point us to God, and we owe him our thanks and gratitude for those things.

But second, we owe a responsibility to look to God as the solution for all things instead of looking to the government or a political philosophy.

Too many times, American Christians get caught up in a particular cool political position as the answer to America's problems.

So it began in the 1970s and 1980s with the pro-life movement gaining steam. If we could just elect pro-life leaders, everything about America would get better.
Then in the 1990s, Christians began to focus on tax policy, then on American heritage. In the 2000s, it was a variety of things, including just electing Christian leaders like George W. Bush.

Now, none of those things are bad in and of themselves. It's a lot like the tacos we talked about last week - they're good things (even arguably, great things) - but if they become the main thing you're looking to for a solution to government problems, it has replaced God as your center focus.

This can happen with any issue. I've been around and in politics long enough to see people with a religious devotion to the Fairtax - a proposal to get rid of the income tax system and replace it with a nationwide sales tax.
Everything about how people look at candidates becomes about the Fairtax - they could be a Christian with a great family, etc. everything just perfect but if they have anything less than devotion to every part of the Fairtax, people just wouldn't vote for them.
Now, there are some reasonable arguments against the Fairtax, and I don't want to argue that in here, but too many people look at it as the solution to all of our problems.

Or if it's not one issue, it's a philosophy. Can I let you in on a little secret? Every political philosophy is flawed, because it's designed by people. And we're all subject to original sin.

So liberalism can't save the country any more than conservatism or libertarianism.
All systems are designed by human beings and have inherent flaws.
So a lot of times, liberalism focuses on human suffering at the expense of responsibility with spending. Conservatism tends to focus on spending at the expense of recognizing that there is real suffering in the world, and that there are some things only government can do. Libertarianism focuses on the market fixing all problems, at the expense of recognizing that regulation is necessary sometimes, and there needs to be controls on some parts of the market.

But if we get all tied up in our particular political issues or political philosophy and try to make converts to that view instead of to the gospel, we're not giving God what we owe him - the responsibility to look to him for the solutions to our problems instead of to the government.

Third, we owe God our devotion and obedience as primary above the government.

If we're ever put in a situation where the government requires us to do something that God clearly says we can't do, or where government prohibits us from doing something God clearly requires that we do, we have to obey God first and foremost.
But this is a lot narrower than a lot of people make it - remember that Jesus and Paul paid, and taught that it was our duty to pay, taxes to a government that was murdering Christians.
So if we want to claim that exception, we better have an awfully good reason for doing so.

Fourth, we owe to God the recognition that he's doing a lot more in the world than just our country.

God definitely works in nations and through nations. But it's a very small, self-centered view of the world if we think that America is all that matters to God's plans for the entire world.
Sometimes I think we get so focused on particular issues that we miss the larger work of what God is doing in the world.

Let me give you another example - Arizona recently passed a law about immigration that I've heard a lot of conservative Christians express support for. I don't want to get into the entire law, but one of the provisions is that if you transport someone in your car who you know or have reason to know is not lawfully present in the U.S., you're guilty of human smuggling.
Now, think about this for a second. In ministry, I have transported people to and from church who I know are not citizens of this country.
But if I get so focused on the "are you a citizen or not" issue at the expense of the "have you come to know Jesus" issue, I'm missing something incredibly important.

I may get in trouble for saying this, but God isn't concerned about our American culture, our Southern culture, or anything else. He's concerned about people coming to know Jesus Christ in a personal way.
And if we just think for a second of the overwhelming opportunity we have where the world is coming to us - whether through the World Cup, international students coming to college in the U.S., people coming to work in our country - what a chance to share the gospel!
So I just want to be clear - get your eyes off of the temporary things and put them on eternal things. We owe God a duty to see what he's doing in the world and be part of that - it's incredible!

Finally, we owe God a duty to make him our all-consuming focus instead of government and politics.

Are we people who live in a very political world? Absolutely. Have Christians effected major change in the world through politics? Absolutely - slavery was abolished in most places in the world because Christians got involved to alleviate suffering and create an environment for ministry.
Are there political issues that need the church's voice? Absolutely. So speaking up for the unborn, speaking up against the international slavery that happens even in our city called sex trafficking, is critically important.
But we should always, always make sure that our involvement in any area of life - government, politics, job, school, etc. recognizes that we have a higher purpose - God has put us where he has so we can share the gospel.

We're not where we are to share our political views any more than we're there to share our dress standards, music standards, or any other rule about life.
We're put in places to live out a relationship with the Lord Jesus - that is what is critically important and if you don't have that relationship with him, everything else is peripheral, whether it's your rules for life, your standards, your politics, or anything else.

So we owe God a duty to make him our focus and priority in every area.

Conclusion

So, how do we wrap all of this up? Let's just recap briefly and then we'll throw this open for discussion.

Jesus was a real man who lived in a real political world. He faced questions about his politics just like we do, and he faced them with much higher consequences - treason involved the death penalty.
But when someone asked Jesus an unanswerable question, he gave a principle to us that we've been thinking about - we should give the things we owe to government to government. But we also have to give the things we owe to God to him.
We owe government a lot of things - taxes, prayer, being informed and involved.
But we owe God the primary things - not making an idol out of a political position or political philosophy, and not missing the larger things of what God is doing in the world because we have such a small focus on the political arena.

So, with that, I'll throw it open - I know this can get a lot of people motivated, but again, I'll ask for comments from the young people here about these issues.
Next week, since it's July 4th, I figured it was appropriate to talk through some more of these political things as a discussion week. I'll have some current events ready for us to discuss, plus some other issues to talk through - our goal is to think deeply about these things as Christians, and hopefully preview a little more of what we're looking forward to next semester on Wednesday nights.
Hope to see y'all at the July 3rd picnic, and let's close in prayer.