Sermon in a Sentence: God seeks patiently endlessly
to draw us back to himself and remake us in his image.
The Problem: A
Question of Authority
You know the gospel text well enough. The series of
challenges that start here develop the question that the Jewish leaders ask
Jesus in chapter 21: “23 Jesus
entered the temple courts, and, while he was teaching, the chief priests and
the elders of the people came to him. ‘By what authority are you doing these
things?’ they asked. ‘And who gave you this authority?’” Jesus would not
answer him, but replied with his own question and with parables, which the
leaders recognized would undermine their authority; and they ramp up their
campaign against him.
So they ask him whether or not they should pay tax to the
Roman Empire. Taxes were no more popular in Jesus’ day than they are now. If
Jesus says, “Yes”, the crowd will object; if Jesus says, “No”, the Roman
government will object.
Instead Jesus asks to see the coin used to pay the tax. When
they observe Caesar’s image and inscription on the coin, he defuses their
question with the saying: “Give back to Caesar’s what belongs to Caesar, and to
God what belongs to God.” Rather than speaking about taxes—which he relativizes
with this saying: pay taxes because they really are not that important—rather
than speaking about taxes, he shifts the question to a new question: “What
belongs to God?”
I note in passing that we could use
this question to explore a two kingdoms theology: We live in the realm of God’s
reign, and we live in the realm of human authorities. So we ask what activities
belong in which realm. Such explorations are interesting, but irrelevant to Jesus’
words here. Jesus’ concern is with the reign of God.
This question, as in all the exchanges throughout Matthew 21
and 22, reveals the essential problem with the Jewish leaders: Their authority
had come to replace God’s authority, and Jesus is calling them back to God. To
see how he does so with this epigram, turn to the two Scriptures that preceded
the Gospel reading in our service this morning.
Exodus 33
To hear these verses from Exodus 33, we need to review
briefly the life of Moses to this point.
Chapter 2: Born to a “Levite woman”; hidden at home for
three months, then placed in a papyrus basket [ark] in the Nile River, where
Pharaoh’s daughter found him. She raised him as her own, with his birth mother
caring for him, and adopted him as her son (v. 10). When he grew to manhood, he
killed an Egyptian who was whipping a Hebrew slave, and ended up fleeing into
the desert, where he lived with Jethro and married J’s daughter, Zipporah. They
had a son, Gershom [“a stranger here”].
Chapter 3: While he is tending Jethro’s flocks, he comes to
Mount Horeb—the mountain of God, where he sees a burning bush. There he
encounters Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who sends him back to
Egypt as a reluctant saviour for the Children of Israel.
In the chapters that follow we have the delivery from Egypt,
led by Moses and Aaron—the plagues; the crossing of the Sea; Wanderings in the
Sinai Wilderness; Manna and Quail and water from the rock; and finally they
return to the mountain of God, here called Mount Sinai.
In chapters 20 to 31 Moses and Joshua ascend the mountain,
and Moses receives the Law—the Ten Words (20) and various laws to help the
people live as God’s holy and priestly kingdom (20-31). Finally we come to the
present scene.
In chapter 32 Moses comes down from the mountain and finds
the Children of Israel worshipping the golden calf, which Aaron had made for
them. Punishment falls on them and God threatens first to destroy them, and
then to abandon them. Our chapter contains Moses’ intercession for the rebels.
Verses 1-10: Go with us! No! Please!
Verse 11: The Lord spoke with Moses face to face, as a man
speaks with a friend.
Verse 13: “Teach me your ways.”
Verses 14-18: Go with us! I will (17). Show me your glory!
(18)
Verses 19-23: Agreed, but only my back.
You see, Moses knew that life without God is impossible.
Without God we die. If you had said to him, “Give to God what belongs to God”,
he would have said, “That is everything! That is life itself!”
1 Thessalonians 1
Look now at Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians with
me.
Verse 1: Greeting—Paul’s standard greeting to fellow
believers.
Verses 2-3: Thanksgiving—Again, Paul’s standard expression
of gratitude for God’s work in their lives.
Verses 4-11: Paul recalls the way that the gospel came to
the Thessalonians (see Acts 17)—in persecution, centred on Jesus the Messiah,
crucified and risen.
For us this morning, especially verses 6 and 7: You imitated
us and the Lord, and so became a model for all the believers in Macedonia and
Achaia.
Who did Paul imitate? Christ! (1 Corinthians 11:1, “Imitate
me as I imitate Christ.”)
Who did Paul want to know and be like? Christ! (Philippians
3:10-11)
Who do we imitate? Christ! We want to know Christ and be
like Christ.
Bring this to bear on the question: What belongs to God? God,
who comes to us in the person of Jesus Christ, is the centre of our lives.
Everything comes to us from him and belongs to him. What do we “render” to God?
Our very lives. Our self-identity. All that makes you and me who and what we
are.
Like Moses, like Paul, like the Thessalonians, we seek to
see God and know God and become like him. Guess what! God wants the same for
us. We desire God because God draws us to himself. Moses sought to see God’s
glory because God drew him to himself. One of my deepest beliefs is that God
works endlessly, patiently to draw us to himself and make us like Christ.
A Story
Let me tell you a story. Two years ago an OM worker named
Mike came into my class on Missions Strategies and talked about the kinds of
ministries that he does in various parts of the world. At the end of the class
he asked us to pray for his father, who was near the end of his life but still
did not know the Lord. Mike had been visiting him and wanted to encourage him
again to turn to God before the end.
Two weeks ago Mike came into my class again and told us more
stories about his work in various parts of the world. It was good, exciting
stuff, but I had a more important question. At the end of the class, I asked
him about his father. Mike lit up. “He died a few months ago, but the last 30
days of his life he was a changed man. An old minister finally got through to
him, and that old minister reaped where so many others had planted and watered.
So Dad knew a joy in his final days that he had never known through his life.”
I think that story about Mike’s father tells us all about
God’s love and patience and care. God loves us, and God works in our lives
until the day we die drawing us to himself.
My Own Experience
I have told my story before and will repeat it only briefly
now. I remember clearly a deep encounter with God when I was 24, and then God’s
presence working within over the next 30+ years. Then about five and a half
years ago through a time of personal darkness, and in a series of dreams, I found
that God had been waiting for a little over 34 years to finish what he began in
me back in 1974. You see, God is patient and loving and kind, and God waited
for the right moment to finish that piece of work. Truth: God’s not done
working in me yet!
Conclusion
This is not a theodicy—an explanation for the hard things
that come in our lives. Last week, as I visited my father in Pennsylvania, I
visited also a High School friend who is slowly dying of ALS. I don’t know and
cannot explain why Jeff’s life should end in this way. My reflections on these
Scriptures are not meant to answer the mysteries of life and death.
Rather they are a simple affirmation that God is good, that God
loves us, that God works patiently, endlessly, to draw us back to himself and remake
us in his image. I think of the Russian Mennonites, singing “In the rifted rock
I’m resting”, as they experienced bitter persecution leading up to their emigration
to North and South America. They sang of God’s love and care while they suffered,
not because all was pleasant in their lives.
So when Jesus tells us to return to God what belongs to God,
we give him ourselves and rejoice. Hear the way that the writer of Chronicles
tells it, in 2 Chronicles 7, when Solomon dedicates the temple:
1 When Solomon finished praying, fire came down from
heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices, and the glory of the
Lord filled the temple. 2
The priests could not enter the temple of the Lord because the glory of the
Lord filled it. 3 When
all the Israelites saw the fire coming down and the glory of the Lord above the
temple, they knelt on the pavement with their faces to the ground, and they
worshipped and gave thanks to the Lord, saying, “He is good; his love endures
for ever.”
I wish I could see God’s glory so clearly, so that as the
old hymn has it, “May they forget the channel [you and me], seeing only him.”
You see, without God, life is impossible. Without God, there
is no life. And with God, death itself will die.
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