15 Whose Likeness is on this Coin? (Mark 11:27-12:17)

Speaker 1: Welcome to Wednesday in the Word with Krisan Marotta. This is the fifteenth lesson in the series titled Questions Jesus Asked. Jesus often asks questions designed to help us understand ourselves and God in a way that we had not thought before. The question, whose likeness is on this coin, often prompts a lecture on paying taxes and financial stewardship. But there is much more to this passage. Mark 11.27 through 12.17. Krisan Marotta: We are looking at Mark chapter 11 today, and as you know, we're going through the Gospels stopping at the places where Jesus asks a question. And I wanted to make sure we got the whole context for this question. So we're going to start in 1127. So Mark 11.27. They came to Jerusalem, and as he was walking in the temple, the chief priests and the scribes and the elders came to him, and they said to him, By what authority are you doing these things? And who gave you the authority to do them? That question, who gave you the authority, is what sets the stage for our passage. So where we are in the gospel is, if you scan back up to the beginning of chapter 11, this is the beginning of the last week of Jesus' life. And he is moving toward the cross. And the chapter opens with his triumphal entry into Jerusalem. He entered the city as a king, coming to claim David's throne, with the crowds following him. And then the next day he overturns the tables in the temple, and he drives out the buyers and the sellers. And that provokes a response from the chief priests and the scribes and the Pharisees. They're like, who gave you the authority to do this? And this is outside our passage, but I want to make sure you notice that there's a very significant act that's in this passage that only Mark records. And it's back up in Mark 11, 15 and 16. That says, And they came to Jerusalem, and he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold and those who bought in the temple. And he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons, and he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. Now, this is not the same act that's recorded in John's Gospel in John chapter 2. That act it was done at the beginning of Jesus' ministry. He actually overturns the tables twice, once at the beginning of his ministry, and here at the almost the end of his ministry. This is the second time. But Mark adds, he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. And that's significant because the people who carried things through the temple were the priests. Their job, according to Mosaic law, was to catch the blood that was that dripped off the animals that were sacrificed at the brazen altar. That was in the outer court, and they would catch it in a basin, and then they would carry that through the temple to the holy place and put it on the altar. And then, of course, once a year the high priest would go into the Holy of Holies and sprinkle the blood on the mercy seat, and it was very significant. So when Jesus stops anyone from carrying anything, he's stopping the priests from fulfilling their priestly duty by carrying the blood through to the altar, and he is in a sense, he is ending the sacrifices. And that's what provokes their wrath. They're saying, Who gave you the authority to do this? Now, it's true that the Jews resumed their the sacrifices and continued offering them until the destruction of the temple, but I think they did so without authority. I think Jesus is ending them here. Why? Because here's the Lamb of God, here is the sacrifice who is going to take away the sins of the world. So I think what's going on here is the cross is coming, and he's saying the sacrifices from here on out are meaningless, that they were a shadow, they were a prediction of what was to come, and now that is fulfilled. Here is Jesus, the perfect sacrifice, the Lamb of God who will be sacrificed once for all. So his actions then provoke a response from the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and they're saying, What who gives you the right? What gave you gives you the authority to do these things? So look at how we've gone through Jesus' ministry. He, I think as a student of the Old Testament, he would have been fully aware what it meant to write a cult through the eastern gate of the city of Jerusalem, that that was a prediction of this is how the Messiah would enter the city, and he knows he's fulfilling Scripture doing that. He's declared himself Lord over all the natural world through his miracles that we looked at last fall, and then most recently by telling the fig tree that it should produce fruit when he's there. That's earlier in the chapter that we aren't going into in detail. And he's been proclaiming himself Lord and the one who has authority, and now it's culminated in him stopping the sacrifices. So, how does he answer them? They say, Okay, who gives you the right? Look at, we're going back to 1129. And Jesus said to them, I will ask you one question. Answer me, and I will tell you by what authority I do these things. Was the baptism of John from heaven or from man? Answer me. And they discussed it with one another, saying, If we say from heaven, he will say, Why then did you not believe him? But if we say from man, they were afraid of the people, for they all held that John was really a prophet. So they answered Jesus. We do not know. And Jesus said to them, Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things. Just as an aside, have you ever noticed that the people that most opposed Jesus were the religious leaders of his day? The chief priests, the teachers of the law, the elders are the ones that were most against him, and they were the ones that had authority. The priests had religious authority over the people, especially with reference to the temple and its sacrifices. The teachers of the law were the intellectual authority of the day. They were the interpreters of scripture and tradition. The elders had socialist authority and weight in the community, and then the Sanhedrin had the political authority. They were the governing body that they were made up of high priests and they had civil and criminal jurisdiction over the people. And these are the people have we seen going through the gospel that challenge him and say, Who are you? What gives you the right? Because he's threatening their authority. They had the established kind of um social order and the they had an interest in maintaining the status quo. So he he they interpret his actions, I think rightly so, as a challenge to their own authority. Now for a long time I misunderstood his answer to this question. I thought his answer was a really kind of clever way of brushing them off and not really giving them an answer, like he's unmasking their hypocrisy but not really, maybe embarrassing them but not really giving them a straight answer. But the about the fifteenth time I studied this, I realized he actually does answer their question, and it's a really kind of beautiful and insightful way he answers them. Because what he's calling them to is the purpose of John the Baptist's ministry on earth was to prepare the people for the Messiah, to announce that he was coming, to identify him when he came, and to prepare them. So he asks them, was John a prophet? Was he a man of God? And if he was a man of God, if that the answer to that is yes, then they hands had the answer to their question, because John pointed to Jesus. John said, This is the one, this is the Messiah, the one we're looking for. So he really does answer their question. And he answers it also in a way that I think was really helpful for them. Because they were the interpreters of the Old Testament. That this is their area of expertise. If anybody in alive at the time knew, it should be the priests and the scribes because they were students of the Old Scripture, of the Old Testament. They were steeped in Judaism. So when a prophet came along, they ought to be the ones to recognize him. That was their area of expertise. So he's pointing to them in an area they knew something about. He could have said, you know, well, the evidence for my authority is all the miracles that I've accomplished, which but if you most of the miracles took place in Galilee, and it's likely that these people weren't there. They were probably in Jerusalem. So maybe they didn't have any firsthand knowledge of the miracles. Or he could have said, Well, the evidence for my authority is my virgin birth, but again, there's no way they would have, they would have been skeptical. So what he does say to them is, okay, you know what a prophet's supposed to look like. That's your job, that's your area of expertise. You ought to be able to recognize one. So I ask you, was John a prophet? And I think he's giving them the greatest possible chance to believe in him by that answer. And I was reflecting on this, and I thought, you know, God often meets us that way. When I became a Christian, I knew nothing about the Bible. I had never been to church, I was raised in a non-Christian home. I I really knew, I had very little knowledge of anything. But I was an expert at one thing, and that is I was a failed perfectionist. I still am, actually, a failed perfectionist, but I had become very aware that there's a standard up here and I was not there. Whatever it was, academics, friendship, service, compassion, I could see this standard and I knew that I didn't measure up. And fortunately, God brought me people who could meet me with the gospel to the failed and the weary. If they had come to me and said, Oh, you know, Jesus, he fulfilled 238 Old Testament prophecies, I would have said, so. Um, because I didn't know anything about Old Testament prophecies. Or if they had said, you know, well, hey, he's the second Adam who overcame the fall of the first Adam and all that theology that I would have said, okay, and your point is I I wasn't ready for those things. But I knew about being a failed perfectionist, and so God met me where I was. He gave me people who could talk about what God does for failures. And I think that's the kind of thing that's going on here. These are experts in the Old Testament and experts in the law, and so Jesus is asking, okay, so was John a prophet? You're the expert. Was he or not? They ought to know what a prophet looks like. And he's giving them a greatest a great chance, I think, to believe in him. But of course, they're stumped. Because they don't want to listen. They don't want to answer his question because they don't they don't like the reaction. If they say, yes, John was a prophet, then the obvious response is, Well, why didn't you believe him? What he said, the message John had was, I'm the forerunner of the Messiah. And um he said things like, I'm not w I'm I'm not worthy to untie the shoe of the one who comes after me, and that I baptize with water, but there's one coming who will baptize with the Holy Spirit. And he everything he said pointed to Jesus. So if they answer yes, he was a prophet of God, then they have to accept that Jesus is the Messiah, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world and believe in him, which they don't want to do. But he did answer their question, because that is the answer. If John was a prophet, John said, I'm the Messiah, and therefore my authority comes from God. So, but they don't want to say John wasn't a prophet because they're afraid of the crowd, because the crowd loved John and he was very popular, and essentially they were afraid of Caesar. If they upset the crowd and there's a revolt or people riot, then the Roman authorities could come down on them and say, you know, you've got to keep your people in line. If you can't do it, we'll kick you out of your positions of power and put someone else in. So they refused to answer. So Jesus, I think, makes the point another way. So go on into Mark chapter twelve. We're going to look at the parable he tells. So this is Mark twelve, one. And he began to speak to them in parables. A man planted a vineyard and put a fence around it, and dug a pit for the wine press, and built a tower, and leased it to tenants, and went into another country. When the season came he sent a servant to the tenants to get from them some of the fruit of the vineyard, and they took him and beat him and sent him away empty handed. Again he sent to them another servant, and they struck him on the head and treated him shamefully. And he sent another and him they killed. And so with many others, some they beat, and some they killed. He had still one other, a beloved son. Finally he sent him to them, saying, They will respect my son. But those tenants said to one another, This is the heir, come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours. And they took him and killed him and threw him out of the vineyard. What will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the tenants and give a vineyard to others. Have you not read the scripture? The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This was the Lord's doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes. And they were seeking to arrest him, but feared the people, for they perceived he had told the parable against them. So they left him and went away. Now we could probably spend the whole time on this parable, but we're not going to. But I do want to point out the contrast of the parable because I think that's where he's making his main point. The contrast between the actions and the character of the vineyard owner and the actions and the character of the tenants. He sets the story up by the vineyard owner making this huge capital investment to buy the vineyard, to plant the plants, he spares no expense, he puts the fence around it, he digs a pit for the wine press, he builds the tower. So all of this, you see this picture of this man who's doing everything possible to make this a success and to invest in it. He's generous and he's trusting, and then he leaves the vineyard in the care of others. When he comes back, it says he demands some of the fruit of the vineyard, so the implication there is it's a reasonable amount. He's not demanding all of it, he is uh just expecting a reasonable return. And um so you have this picture of him as generous and trusting and good and compassionate, and then repeatedly sending servants who are mistreated. So the contrast then is with the tenants or the vine growers, because every time the owner sends a representative to collect, that slave or the servant is treated harshly, each one more severely than the one that came after it. So you see the first is beaten and sent away, the second is struck in the head and severely shamed, and the third is killed and so on. And it raises the question, how can he just keep sending more messengers? Doesn't he get the point? How can he keep sending one after another when they receive such violent treatment? So finally the owner has but one servant left, and this is not a servant or a slave, it's his son, and there's I think that's an echo of Genesis 22.2 of my beloved son. And the implication is surely they will respect him. Um but of course they don't. When the son arrives, um, he is put to death, and the vint the tenets plot his death using the same language that Joseph's brothers used in Genesis 37 to plot uh his demise. So I don't know how intentional that was, but it's an interesting illusion. And so um they kill the heir and shamefully discard his body outside the vineyard thinking it will be theirs. So that raises the question, what now will the owner of the vineyard do? What option does he have left? And I think that's the point Jesus is making. God has done all he can. He has sent his son. What option is left? If you reject him, what is there left for you? So I think the story is frightening in one sense, but it at its heart it's a message of mercy and compassion and patience. Of time after time, God's sending uh someone uh like the vineyard owner to reach out to his people and yet they want no part of him. So you see God is patient, merciful, calling to us, repeatedly reaching out, and then we're resisting him. And the implication is if you're still resisting him, you can't blame God. It's not his fault if you're still turning your back on him or if you're still rebellious. He has done everything he could. So if you want nothing to do with God's mercy, if his patience is, you know, you're you're ignoring it, then what option does he have left? And the answer is rejection. Now, take back, take a step back from the story a minute and ask yourself, what has authority in your life? Because that's really what's going on here. Who gave Jesus the authority to say and do these things? He says, My authority comes from God, and now he's talking about repeatedly reaching out to his people and being rejected. And the question then is, to what do you pay the most attention? What commands your your heart and your allegiance? And if we find ourselves rejecting Jesus, part of the message of this parable is God's done all he can. That there will come a day when the answer is there there are no other options except rejection. How are we doing on time? Good. Okay, so the Old Testament prophets spoke of Christ, the law declares his character, the Psalms sing of his glory. You have this whole picture of the life of Jesus and the miracles that he performed that we looked at last fall, and it's building to this question of who he is and what he came to do. And then we have this parable where he says, This is it, this is the last option. If um, it's not difficult to see Jesus' authority if you're willing to see it, um, but if you're more concerned about Rome or prestige or authority, then we're blind to the things of God. Okay, so that's the setting. All of that is the setting for the last question in our passage today. So let's look at that. Mark 12, 13. And they sent to him some of the Pharisees and some of the Herodians to trap him in his talk. And they came and said to him, Teacher, we know that you are true and do not care about anyone's opinion, for you are not swayed by appearances, but truly teach the way of God. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not? Should we pay them or should we not? So, having failed in their last attack, now they send the priests and scribes, send the Pharisees and the Herodians, and these two groups were natural enemies of each other, but they are combined against Jesus at this point. The Pharisees were the holy society of the day, they were not necessarily rich or socially important, but they were zealous at keeping the law, and they were scrupulous in every detail and looked upon others with contempt. The Herodians were the people that supported the Herod's family and wanted to keep him on the throne, and they often took Roman payoffs and loved all things Roman and were very interested in maintaining Roman rule. So normally these two groups would not like each other at all because the Pharisees would have considered the Herodians idolatrous and unclean, and the Herodians would have considered the Pharisees insurrectionists because they weren't bowing down to Rome. But they're joining together to challenge Jesus. So they approach him with all this flattery of, we know you're this great man of integrity, and you always tell the truth, and you would you would never do anything that would be um swayed by appearances, so should we pay our taxes or not? And what's going on there is um the Jews hated the tax that they had to pay to Rome because it had to be paid in Roman coinage. For those of you that came in late, I have a coin here. This is a silver denarius, we can send it around again. But it had the image of Nero on it, or of Tiberius in Jesus' day, this particular coin has Nero on it. And they considered this idolatrous. So they had to pay the tax with a coin that was a Gentile coin that was unclean and can contained the image of the emperor supposedly proclaiming his divine ancestry as the Son of God. So it was this constant reminder that they were a vassal state, they were under pagan authority, and they had to pay this tax. So they come to Jesus saying, you know, what should we do? And they they flatter him with this phrase about I just turned the wrong page. We know that you were true and did not care about anyone's opinions, you're not swayed by appearances. The idea is you are so righteous and you are so good that you wouldn't even look upon an idolatrous image. Um, so what should we do? Should we pay the tax or not? And if Jesus says pay the tax, then the Pharisees are gonna say, that's idolatry. You can't do that and try to undermine his authority with the crowd. If on the other hand he says, don't pay the tax, then the Herodians are gonna say, Well, now you're advocating insurrection against Rome. So Jesus, however, is aware of their motives as we go on in verse 15. But knowing their hypocrisy, he said to them, Why put me to the test? Bring me a denarius and let me look at it. And they brought one, and he said to them, Whose likeness and inscription is this? And they said to him, Caesar's. And Jesus said to them, Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar, and to God the things that are God. And they marvelled at him. So the first thing he does, I think, is Expose their hypocrisy, which what's going on here is like this is just so clever to me. It's like if somebody came to you and said, you know, those Victoria's Secret catalogs, do you think that those are pornography or not? I mean, should we really have those in our house or not? And you say, I don't know. I haven't ever really seen one. And they go, Oh, I've got one right here in my palm pilot. Look, here are the images. It's kind of like, okay, if the coin's idolatrous, why is there one in your pocket? You know, I mean, that's that's kind of what's going on here. He's saying, let me see the coin, and they're saying, Oh, we know you're too righteous to even look at this coin, but they're carrying them around in their pockets. So it exposes, I think, their hypocrisy right off the bat. Um, which I just think is so clever. So because the very act of possessing the coin demonstrates that they didn't think it was idolatry to have it, they were carrying it around. So he looks, he identify asks whose image is on the coin, and they say it's Caesar's, and he says the now famous phrase render to Caesar the things that are Caesar, and to God the things that are God. So on the surface, it looks like, okay, he's just made this nice division between state and church, and that we're just to draw this dividing line. I think there's something much more powerful going on than that. I think part of it the implication of what he's saying is paying taxes to the government is inconsequential to the kingdom of God. That God can deal with what his plans and his ways, and you can pay your taxes. So send the idolatrous coins back where they came from. You're not going to thwart God. Governments exist because God permits them to. They have a right to make certain demands on their citizens, and within that sphere, obey them. There's nothing, there's nothing wrong with that. But the things of God are greater than the things of the government or things in Caesar's. And I think when he says whose image is on this coin, we have to answer and give to God or give to Caesar the things of Caesar. The more profound question is what belongs to God? Because he says, give to God the things of God. So that's the question we want to answer. What belongs to God that we should be giving to him? So when he says, whose likeness is on this coin, and it's an image of the Caesar, the question he's really asking is where does God stamp his likeness? Whose likeness is on you? Where does God put his image? And the word he uses here for image is the word that was used by a uh of a tool that a potter would use to stamp his creation. So a potter would engrave his name or his initials or so his signifying work on his pot to show that it was his, and that's the word he's using, whose image is on you. So let me give you an analogy here. I have two pots here. When my children were young, I have a boy and a girl, they each took a pottery class and they made a creation. So without knowing my children, which one do you think the boy made? And which one do you think the girl made? This, just for those of you listening in the other room, uh I have one that's a box, it's yellow and black, it's got the nuclear hazard symbol on the top, and it says caution around the edges. And then I have a tall vase that's purple and blue, it's got a cat on one side and a horse on the other. So anybody want to take a guess? You don't even have to know my children to know that my son made this one and my daughter made this one. And what I want to suggest to you is they were the potters and they left their image on their pots. You can tell whose is whose. Now they actually each have their initials on the bottom as well. But that's the image Jesus is drawing on. And Isaiah 64, 8 says, But now, O Lord, you are our Father, we are the clay, and you are our potter, and we are the works of your hands. And that's the point. Whose image is on you? It's Caesar's image is on your money, but God's image is on your heart. And remember back to Psalm 139, which Beth taught us at the beginning of this session, it makes the same point. Psalm, this is Psalm 139, 13 through 16. For you formed my inward parts, you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works, my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance. In your book were written every one of them the days that formed me, when there is yet was none of them. God made us. God, we are his workmanship, as Isaiah says, but now, O Lord, you are our Father, we are the clay, you are our potter, and we are all the work of your hand. So whose image is on you? That's the main point of this passage. Whose image is on your heart, and it's God's, and we should render to him what belongs to him, our very lives. He's the one who has the right to our obedience, to our every thought, to our actions, to our um all our our lives and our worship, and that's what we should give to God. So pay your taxes, that's irrelevant. Give your heart to God. Now, that raises the question: how do I know if I'm doing that? How do I know if I'm worshiping God or if I'm worshiping Caesar, or I'm giving God his due, or I'm, you know, really bowing down at the feet of money or fame or prestige or whatever. One way you can know is what happens when you lose those things. God like when we start leaning on them a little too hard, God takes them away from us, I think, and then we find out where our our allegiance really lies. So when we lose our idols, when we lose health or financial prosperity or intelligence or beauty or prestige, if you're worshiping them too much, then when you have to let them go, it's hard, it's painful. But if we're giving to God what's God, then we can let go of all those other things, knowing that He's the one who's in control, that He's the one that has a plan for our for our lives. So give back to Caesar what belongs to him, but don't give him what belongs only to God. That's your devotion, your broken and contrite heart. Let all the all of that you should lay at God's feet, not at idols. So let me just review the three questions in the passage to tie this all together. So the first one was back, who gave you the authority to do these things? That's the first question we see, and the the scribes and the teachers are challenging Jesus with that. And that I think it's the most important question we need to answer. Where does Jesus' authority come from? And it's as if he's the defendant, and we're the prosecuting attorney saying, Who do you think you are? Who put you in charge? And he will answer us. He will teach us, he will be merciful with us, he will open our eyes so that we can see him. And the answer is his authority comes from God. It was verified by the prophetic ministry of John the Baptist, it was verified by the voice at his baptism, by the miracles that he performed, by the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies, and most importantly by his death and resurrection, which we're going to look at in the coming weeks. But the second question is what will the owner of the vineyard do? Because Jesus is not going to remain a defendant forever. There's going to be a day coming when the options will run out. And his patience and mercy are long-suffering, but they will not last forever. Eventually the vineyard owner will return. Eventually Jesus will come back. And if we have rejected him and his prophets and his son, what option is left except rejection? So I think that's another lesson from this passage. It's important to know that the warnings of God are serious. They are meant to turn us from our rebellion. They're meant to turn us from resisting him. And in the same way we saw the vineyard owner reaching out to the tenants, God is reaching out to us, trying to teach us and call us back to him. And that leads us to the last question, then whose likeness is on the coin? And by implication, whose likeness is on you? There's only one person who has the authority to speak into your life, to demand your whole heart and your soul, and he is the one whose image you bear. So putting anyone or anything else before him is idolatry, and that's part of the call of this passage. He's proven his authority, he's proven who he is. The day is coming when his long suffering and his patience will run out. And in the meantime, we are to give back to him what is his, and that is our broken and cried heart contrite hearts. There's a word that describes a pot after it's been finally fired for the last time. It's called vitrified. And it means to be set forever. And I like that image because I think we're in the process of being vitrified now. We're being heated and tested by the trials and the sufferings of this life so that we will be set forever in righteousness. The day is coming when all of that will be, all the old will be put away, and all that was wrong will be put right, and that all the heat and sufferings and the trials now stamp us forever as God's children. But the purpose is to make us righteous and holy and forgiven and clean. And just like a potter stamps his creation, God's image is stamped on your heart. So you were created for glory, you are his workmanship, and you should give to him what is his. Speaker 1: We're glad you've been with us at Wednesday in the Word with Krisan Marotta. We hope you've been encouraged and challenged to depend on the Lord. Please let us know if you have questions about this study. We are on the internet at wednesdayintheword.com, where you will find this and other Bible studies.