Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
The text this morning is from the Gospel lesson, from the Apostle Matthew, chapter 22:
Then the Pharisees went and plotted how to entangle him in his words. And they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, "Teacher, we know that you are true and teach the way of God truthfully, and you do not care about anyone’s opinion, for you are not swayed by appearances. Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?" But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, "Why put me to the test, you hypocrites? Show me the coin for the tax." And they brought him a denarius. And Jesus said to them, "Whose likeness and inscription is this?" They said, "Caesar’s." Then he said to them, "Therefore render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s." When they heard it, they marveled. And they left him and went away.
Thus far the text.
Dear friends in Christ,
We have for so long thought to ourselves that the Word of God is nothing more than simple stories. Isn’t it so easy to distance ourselves from the text of the Bible? The story of Adam and Eve is just a simple fable in which we discover some truth about how we find ourselves in trouble now and then. The story of Abraham and Isaac makes for a beautiful painting, but we cannot believe that our Lord God would ever ask that one His followers sacrifice his son, so we see only that God provides His angels to take care of us. The story of Joshua and the walls of Jericho makes for a great Veggie Tales video with vegetables marching incoherently around some city in the middle of nowhere. The story of David and Bathsheba becomes yet one more story about how we should not commit adultery.
We so often take the stories that we find in the Scriptures and make them just that: stories. They are not really important in our lives. They really don’t have anything to do with what we understand about God. They’re not really history, they’re more just anecdotal tellings of general truths about life.
If the story of Adam and Eve is just a simple fable about how we think trouble came into our lives, we miss the fact that we were created to be perfect, God-mirrors. We miss that we were created in God’s image. We miss that we were created holy. We miss the fact that God created us. We miss the fact that God loved His creation. We miss the fact that we were given one simple command and humanity messed that up. We miss the fact that we have impaled the creation of God on a spike of sin. We miss the fact that we have inflicted the greatest evil on creation that anyone, anywhere has ever seen. We miss the fact that we have invited sin into our lives to be a false god, a false idol, which separates us forever from the love of God. We miss the fact that we have become nothing but sinners. We miss the fact that there are serious, eternal consequences to our sin.
If the story of Abraham and Isaac is just a beautiful painting, we miss the sheer horror of Abraham, who had been made a promise to be the father of many nations, now confronted with the order to take that promise and kill it himself. We miss the love of Abraham towards Isaac. We miss the terror that Isaac felt when he was bound and thrown onto the altar, watching the knife of his father come down onto his neck. We miss the fact that Abraham was declared righteous by faith, for he never stopped trusting in the promise of God. We miss the exact timing of God, sending His angel to stay Abraham’s hand. We miss the provision of God for a time of reverential worship, by giving a ram for the sacrifice instead of Isaac.
If the story of Joshua and the walls of Jericho is just some child’s cartoon, we miss the doubt of the Israelites in that they would take the land of Canaan. We miss the mercy shown by a prostitute to Israelite spies. We miss the continuation of God’s grace in Rahab, who was not an Israelite, yet the Lord Jesus was descended from her. We miss the seeming absurdity of God’s command to walk around the walls. We miss the grumbling and complaining. We miss the mocking calls of the residents of Jericho, declaring that the Lord God of Israel is no god at all. We miss the sheer amazement of the Israelites as the walls of Jericho fell with nothing but a sound. We miss the declaration of God to kill every living thing within the walls of Jericho. We miss the fact that God owns everything on the face of the planet, much less the universe, and declares it for His service.
If the story of David and Bathsheba is merely one that tells us to avoid adultery, we miss that David, a man seeking after God’s own heart, a shepherd, has fallen into the lap of luxury. We miss that David’s laziness, reclining on his couch, caused him to sin. We miss that he killed a man to protect his unlawful claim on that man’s wife. We miss that a child was conceived and that child would ultimately die. We miss that David had grown callous and hardened against his own sinful person. We miss that David was so rent asunder from being caught in his sin that he nearly kills himself. We miss that David and Bathsheba bore a second son, the wisest man who ever lived, Solomon, and from him we discover those beginnings of wisdom that point us straight to Christ. We miss the fact that Solomon is the man who would build God’s Temple, the Temple that stood on the highest point of the city so that all who saw it would be reminded of Who it was that dwelled among them, God Himself, and that they would be dissuaded from sinning and find forgiveness from Him. We miss that God begins to set up the revelation of the identity of His Son, Jesus Christ.
We tend to do this. We make the Bible stories just stories. We make the Scriptures into something child-like, something easy to understand, nothing that can harm us, nothing that warns us off from how we live our lives now. We make the stories basic principles to live by and completely bypass the action of God within the actual historical event that will ultimately point to and reveal the very God-man, Jesus Christ.
And we are no different than the Pharisees and those who would trap Jesus in the Gospel text today. You see, Jesus is now in Jerusalem. He has triumphantly entered, with shouts of “Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!” He then went, and from the day of His entry into Jerusalem until the day He was to be nailed to the cross, He taught in the Temple to all that would hear Him. And the Pharisees heard Him.
The Pharisees had taken all the stories from their own sacred Scriptures, the same Old Testament we use today, and allegorized them. They made them into just stories. They made them into nearly nothing but stories. They made them principles to live by. And when they heard Jesus speaking in the Temple, they thought He was doing the same!
And don’t we do that, too? Don’t we take Jesus’ teachings and make them just principles to live by? Don’t we take His stories and go, “Oh, so I guess I’m supposed to pay my taxes. Huh.” And I tell you the truth, if this is what you have done this morning, you have missed the point.
Of course you are supposed to pay your taxes! We know this from the 4th Commandment! We know this from Luther’s Small Catechism, we who have been confirmed in the Lutheran faith.
Honor your father and your mother.
What does this mean? We should fear and love God so that we do not despise or anger our parents and other authorities, but honor them, serve and obey them, love and cherish them.
Does Jesus really need to tell us to pay our taxes? Well, for some of us, maybe… But, no, we know this well. The point of this story is not about taxes.
But, here we have already forgotten what is going on. The text says, “Then the Pharisees went and plotted how to entangle him in his words.” At worst, the Pharisees were trying to get Jesus to say something false, at best, it was to contradict His own teachings! The Pharisees were trying to trap Jesus! They were trying to trap God! If they got Jesus to say not to pay the tax, then they could call down the Roman authorities to arrest and try the man right there for dissention against the Roman Emperor and He would die.
But on the other hand, if they got Jesus to say, yes, you must pay your taxes because Caesar is your Lord and ruler, then they could try Him for blasphemy and idolatry, because no self-respecting Jew, no God-fearing Jew could ever admit, either by their confession or by implication, that any man, any man at all, was on the same level of dedication, the same pedestal that the Lord their God was. If any Jew ever admitted that, then it would be heresy and blasphemy, and they could stone Jesus right then and there! There’s no right answer here for Jesus. They thought they had Him trapped. They had purposely backed Jesus into a corner.
The Pharisees were trying to get Jesus to contradict the Word of God. In their minds, they were making it so simple for themselves to trap Jesus and get Him dead. But they couldn’t do it! They couldn’t trap God then, and even if they tried today, here and now, they still couldn’t trap God! God is not someone that can just be put into a little box so that we can tie Him up in a bow and make sense of Him! No, God is so much bigger than the box! The box looks to God as an atom does to we who try to put it under a microscope.
God, you see, cannot be trapped. We can’t just sit here and go, “Gotcha, God! You lied to us! Or You’re unfaithful! Or You’re not real!” God refuses to be put into some kind of trap. His ways are not our ways. Even when things seem ridiculous, don’t eat of the tree in the middle of the garden, sacrifice your only hope for grandchildren, march around a city and then shout really loud, wisdom will be born from an adulterous relationship, even when they are this ridiculous, God’s ways are not our ways.
God knows all that there is, all that there ever has been, all that there will ever be. God knows. He sees all things, knows all things, creates all things, empowers all things, directs all things, and to try to trap Him against those things is as ridiculous an attempt as an ant trying to trap YOU in a corner of your house. You merely sidestep the thing or stomp on him for you are able to perceive a million ways and things that he cannot.
It would be so easy for God just to launch into us and destroy us all for attempting to trap Him. It would be so easy for God to say, “You’re gone! I’ll show you for treating Me and My Word as you have done! I’ll show you for making Me less than I truly am! I’ll show you exactly who I am!” It would be so easy to pour His wrath out on us for doing exactly what the Pharisees are attempting to do to Jesus!
And yet.
God pours out His wrath on His Son, the very Son who is unable to be trapped. Jesus willingly let Himself fall into the hands of the Pharisees, the hands of the Sadducees, the hands of the priests, the hands of the Romans, the hands of the soldiers, the very hands of even us, so that we might ultimately throw Him down on a pile of wood, the Cross, and drive the spikes into His hands and feet, place a crown of thorns upon His brow, and crucify Him, mocking Him and saying, “If you are the Son of God, come down from the Cross! What’s that? You can’t get down? Oh, well. Guess you’re not God then!”
And yet.
That is exactly what God did. God allowed Himself to be crucified in Jesus Christ for us, in our place, for our sins. He allowed us to think we had Him trapped, and only He knew different. A crucified Christ, a crucified would-be savior appears ridiculous to us, because God’s ways are not our ways! Only God knew that this was what He had intended from the beginning; this is what God has always intended to save His people, to redeem them from their sins, to bring them into a full life with God, for God, because of God.
We thought we were so smart, crucifying the man who would try to show us who God was. And yet, God raised Him from the trap of death we laid down for Him. More than that, God forgives us from even thinking of laying a trap down.
We tried to trap God and He Himself gave us an escape. We deserve death and He gives us the broken body of Christ. We deserve hatred and He showers us with love. We deserve wrath and He bestows righteousness upon us.
Looking at a crucified Christ, it appears that we have been successful, it appears the Pharisees were successful, because He was dead. But God cannot be kept in a trap! God cannot be trapped! Our traps for God lay empty, He cannot be chained down in them. Because Jesus has risen from the dead, we know there is no trap that can keep Him.
And He now bestows that promise on you! There is no trap that man or Satan can lay down for you that can keep you. Even if you should, God forbid, suffer the same fate as Jesus Christ, to be betrayed by those who claim to love you and be killed for their sake, Jesus has promised to raise you up to be with Him forever in the home that He has eternally prepared for you.
That is why there are no mere stories in the Bible. There are stories, that is true, but they always, always, always point to Jesus Christ and His life, death, and resurrection for us. That is why we can’t just draw the line at principles to live by. To do so misses the whole story of Jesus. It misses His deliverance. It misses His love. It misses His provision for your life, not that you will be granted everything you desire, but that your desire will be made to be only for Him. It misses the fact that He has taken the trap you set out for Him, has destroyed it, and instead has made it into a promise of life everlasting, in Him, for you. Amen.
Now may the peace of God that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord! Amen.
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