Preacher: Jeff Davidson
Scripture: Isaiah 45:1-7; Matthew 22:15-22
Some of you will remember the slogan from back in the 1990s.
WWJD – What Would Jesus Do? There were WWJD bracelets, there was a
WWJD book that was an update of the original WWJD book from the 1800s
by Charles Sheldon, there were lots and lots of WWJD sermons, a couple
of which I even preached.
As these things go, WWJD isn’t a bad question. Asking yourself what
Jesus would do in a given situation is a good quick guide for what we might
want to think about doing. It’s not perfect, because Jesus can do things we
can’t do, but it’s a good starting point.
Our reading from Matthew suggests a different question. WWJND –
What Would Jesus Not Do? Matthew tells about a time when what Jesus
did not do was let himself be trapped.
The Herodians and the Pharisees get together to try to get Jesus to
say something that will get him in trouble with someone. These two groups
wanted to see Israel be an independent nation once again, but the
Pharisees wanted the ruler of that nation to be someone from King David’s
line and the Herodians wanted the ruler to be someone from the dynasty of
Herod the Great. What united them besides their desire for an independent
Israel was their hostility to Jesus.
The scripture says that these two groups came up with this question
as a way to entrap Jesus. This is the only place in the New Testament that
this word translated “entrap” is used, so it’s worth taking a second to figure
out what the trap was. The word translated “lawful” here is used several
other times in Matthew’s gospel, and it also shows up in other gospels, in
Paul’s letters, and in Acts. Sometimes it’s used to refer to whether or not
something is legal under civil law, sometimes it’s used to refer to religious
law. It’s not clear here which meaning the Pharisees and the Herodians are
referring to, and that’s the trap. If Jesus says that it’s lawful to pay the tax,
then he could easily be running afoul of some Jewish religious law or
custom. If he says it’s not lawful, then he’s preaching disobedience to the
Roman government.
Instead, Jesus does something that I was taught in elementary school
not to do. He answers their question with a question. Okay, first he does
something else I was taught not to do. Jesus insults them and calls them
hypocrites because he knows it’s a trap and that they don’t really care
about his answer. Then, asking for a coin, Jesus answers their question
with a question. “Whose head and title are on the coin?” “Caesar’s. The
emporer’s.”
Now the tables are turned a little bit. Although this particular passage
doesn’t mention it, all of this is happening in the temple in Jerusalem. A
coin with Caesar’s image on it wouldn’t have been welcome in the temple,
because it had the image of a living person on it. In Exodus 20:4, one of the
Ten Commandments is “You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in
the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth
beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.” We typically focus on the
idol part of this, or what the King James version calls a “graven image”, and
we don’t mind having pictures taken or carrying pictures of living people
around with us. Some of the early Brethren would not do that, though, as
they considered pictures like that to be graven images.
For the Jews of Jesus’s time, though, it was a little different than it is
for us. They were closer to the early Brethren in their approach. They took
the idea of “the form of anything… that is on the earth beneath” more
literally. This coin had the
資訊
- 節目
- 發佈時間2020年10月18日 下午11:19 [UTC]
- 長度12 分鐘
- 年齡分級兒少適宜