Whose Money Is It?: Give & Take -- & Rendering What?

This morning, or this afternoon by now, we'll be looking at two things. One is biblical giving, and the other aspect is taxes. You may wonder why those two go together, but we put them together. This next week is going to be a really important one. Not that there aren't otherwise, but this next week is going to be a real important one. looking at balancing your income and outgo and that kind of thing. That's the one where I've had Nancy agree to have me interview her. We've got other important topics after that. Anyway, let's go ahead and dive into this.

The first thing we do here is to draw draw out a principle from the first week, and that's principle number four here, where in dealing with biblical giving, the first one comes out of, and this is just a couple of passages, we could have chosen more, Romans 6, 14, For sin shall not master over you, for you are not under law, but under grace. Not under law, but under grace. Or 2 Corinthians 3, 5-8, which gives us additional insight.

Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God, who also made us adequate as servants of a new covenant, not of the letter, but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. But if the ministry of death and letters engraved on stones came with glory, so that the sons of Israel could not look intently at the face of Moses because of the glory of his face, fading as it was, how will the ministry of the Spirit fail to be even more with glory? So the principle there, the law was given to Israel through Moses and the manner in which God has dealt with and will deal with Israel is not the same as the manner of dealing with believers of this age. Just a basic principle there.

And the reason we bring this up is because this is an area where a great portion of the church has tended to bring over something from the law and say, folks here in the church, you need to live by this law. It's funny, you almost wonder how they put it over, but at any rate, quite often folks will quote this Malachi 3, 8-10 passage, so I'll go ahead and read that. They'll say, in this passage, will a man rob God, yet you are robbing me? But you say, how have we robbed you? In tithes and offerings. You are a curse for the curse, for you are robbing me, the whole nation of you.

Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, so that there may be food in my house, and test me now on this. Says the Lord of hosts, if I will not open for you, the windows of heaven pour out for you a blessing until it overflows." Now, a tithe is how much? A tenth, okay? Tithe is a tenth. And the idea there was, here's this tithe, and you're supposed to give a tenth of all your produce, right?

And what was that produce for? What was it for? The Levites, right. So here are these Levites, and the Levites had a responsibility of taking care of the temple rituals, okay? The sacrifices and offerings and things of that sort. And so these Levites got this tithe. Why did they need a tithe? They did work on the temple. And what else was true of the Levites that wasn't true of the rest of Israel?

They didn't have any land. The idea is if you've got land, you can grow things. Nancy and I are experiencing that, having a fifth floor apartment. It's not great for cows and tomatoes and stuff. So the same thing here. There's no land, therefore you can't grow all the things you're going to grow. So because the Levites didn't have any land, Therefore, here's the way we're going to provide for him. Everybody else pitch in a tenth, and then the Levites will be fine. So that's the way the law came up.

Now, what are some of the reasons why we would say, well, that's certainly in scripture, it is written for our edification, but it's not written to us. Why would we say that? Why would we say that this passage we just read doesn't directly apply? What are some of the reasons?

We're not Israelites. Yes. There might be a few of us here who have a little bit of Jewish blood. Rumor has it I have some little tiny bit somewhere back there, but I have no idea if it's even Levites. And that's another question. We're not Israelites. Okay. What would be another reason? Was it? You stumped us. Oh boy. Okay. Okay, yes, we're not under law. Remember the first principle? Okay? We're not under the law. If you think about it, here is this Old Testament law, and it was laid out, and it said you're supposed to give a tithe attempt. Alright? Now, people will glom onto that. They'll grab hold of that, you know, I've got to give a tithe. Now why? The Jews had 613 laws. 365 of them were things you were not supposed to do. Don't do this, but do these other things. So they've got the whole list of rules.

We're not under them. But for some reason, this is one that people have grabbed hold of and said, yes, but we're going to make this one apply to the church. If you look in the passages where it is told, for example, at one passage in Deuteronomy where it's told about where you're supposed to give the tithe, earlier in the chapter it says you're not supposed to eat shellfish and crab meat and pig. Now how many people do you see also abide by that? Stay away from that pork, right?

So what they're doing is they're picking one Saying we're going to do this, but the one in the very same chapter right before it. They said well. We won't do that one Okay, so it's picking and choosing So does that seem to fit no okay? It's a problem isn't it? How about that 2nd Corinthians 3 passage? Remember it says The law does what the letter? It kills. We're not talking it makes you sick. The letter is spiritually deadly.

So that's another reason for saying, wait a minute, let's not take this on here. The rest of that passage talks about glory, talks about life. So we're not talking about a minor contrast here, are we? So just living under the law, or taking even some portion of it, and say, okay, I'll pick and I'll do this one and this one and this one, it has a consequence. It doesn't deliver life. Only the Lord Jesus Christ delivers life. The law does not.

Now, remember that passage in Malachi we read? There were actually two things that the Lord said the nation of Israel was short on. Tithes and what else? Tithes and offerings. And remember the Levitical system had not just the one-tenth that you give, but they had a whole long list. If you look up in the concordance, there's a whole long list of things that they were supposed to do. And all those were temple rituals. You've got an offering for this, an offering for that, an offering for this. By the time you look at the list of all the things that the Jews were supposed to give, not just the tithes, but the offerings, it's been variously estimated, but somewhere around 20-30% of your income.

So 10 is skimpy. If you're going to go by the law, right? 10 is a skimpy number. If you're going to go by the law, the tenth isn't anywhere near enough. You've got to do two to three times that if you're going to go by the law. So there's lots of ways in which the law doesn't fit. Now, if we say the law doesn't fit, we're not under the law, then what are we going to operate by?

Do we just give up? Grace? Okay. Got a little girl in here by that name. Is that... We let her decide? No. Well, maybe not. Okay. It turns out that there are certainly other New Testament passages that give insight into what the Lord had in mind. Okay?

And one of those is this 1 Corinthians 16, and this shows up on page 20 on your handout there. 1 Corinthians 16, 1 through 4. And I want to read the Wiest translation, which I've included on that page, because I think it offers some insight into some of the verb meanings there.

And so it says this, Now concerning the collection of money which is for the saints, even as I gave orders to the local assemblies in Galatia, thus also as for you, you do the same. On every first day of the week, let each one of you have the habit of putting aside at home whatever he may be prospered in, accumulating and keeping it in reserve in order that when I come, then there may not be any collection. And whenever I come, whomever you will approve after having put him to the test, these I will send to carry your bounty to Jerusalem. And if it, that is the gift, be sufficiently large so as to warrant me also going, they shall go with me."

Okay. Now, notice here that the collection is not for some specific group like the Levites, right? This is for the saints. This is for everybody's benefit. These are saints who are in need. It's for benefiting others. And notice, this is in contrast to a lot of Christian ministries.

They've got a machine they've got to keep going. Have you noticed that? Some of them, my son was kind of remarking, he was watching one of these televangelists, and he actually kind of wrote down and kept track how often he brought up, you know, money, money, money, send money, you know, call the number on your screen, this kind of stuff, and so they're harping on giving money, giving money, giving money, and they got a program, and they got, you know, so many dollars an hour they got to pay for, and pretty soon, instead of being a benefit to the saints, This whole giving thing can end up being just sort of feeding the machine. You're keeping the program cranking, you know?

And some churches even get caught up in huge debt. I talked to a fellow this last week and said their church is in massive debt because they went into this building program that the actual construction was twice what they had projected. And so they have $35,000 a month mortgage on the church building. So you can get in a situation where something like that, aside from benefiting the body of Christ, aside from real ministry, You end up feeding this machine, whether it's debt, or a program, or an organization, or paying for a studio.

Anyway, the other thing here, what gives us a clue, if we look at this passage, that this wasn't just some special instructions for the Corinthian church? Just this church. What gives us a clue that it's for other churches? Yeah, okay, to the other churches in Galatia. It's basically what he's just saying. I'm telling you the same thing I told them. And not just one other church, but a bunch of them.

Okay? So he's not giving them some peculiar instructions or something fitting just to an unusual situation. This is a general statement. Okay? Alright, now. What's the other thing you see? He has them set aside funds the first day of each week. We'd call that Sunday. And that implies some kind of regularity. Okay?

Now, but then the next thing, you notice he emphasizes here, each one of you. Did you see that? Each one of you. Now, why the each one of you phrase? Why bring that up? Some of you, why not just, you know, here and there or pick somebody? Why would he emphasize each one of you? Okay, it's an individual thing, yeah, yeah, certainly that. Each person has a responsibility. Okay, yeah, it is for each person, there's a responsibility there. Okay, we're going to come back to that in a little bit, okay?

The other thing he talks about, putting it aside. That's real interesting. Some churches, they'll go and they'll pass the offering plate every week and make sure you put the money in there and all that. He's saying, you take the initiative, each one of you individually take the initiative to put it aside. It's interesting. It doesn't seem to be quite the same as a give it to the offering box kind of arrangement.

But this is an important phrase, the next one, whatever he may be prospered in. There are churches who will have, you know, they'll go out and have a big pledge drive. You know, we need to get a bunch of promises, a bunch of pledges, because we got to get this, you know, building dealt with. And they'll come up with words, oh boy, I mean some of them are real humdingers. A faith pledge. A faith promise. See, that kind of thing.

And so what they'll do is they'll take this thing and make it sound real spiritual, but it's not in scripture. And so here you have this faith promise or faith pledge thing, but what you see here, it's once a week, however, and it's as you may be prospered in. It's kind of as you go, isn't it? It's, how did I do? Set it aside from there. Not, let's promise something out there several years from now when we have no idea what the provision is. So this is something as you're going along kind of thing.

Not presuming upon income in the future. See that? Paul didn't want the collection for the needs of the saints to be a panicky affair. You notice, do it regularly so that when I come, you know, when we come to collect for the need, it's not some sort of panicky or last minute thing. So this is something steady, not panicky.

Now, and here's an important thing. You notice at the very last, how is he talking about this money being handled? Who was going to take care of handling this money in terms of getting it where it needed to go? Someone they approved. Okay. Someone that they could look at and say, you know, that's someone who is reliable and trustworthy to deal with it, to get it there. And he says, if it's large enough, he says, I'll go with it as well.

Now, what kind of message do you think he's trying to get across there? How should we understand that? Yeah, when the money is given to the ministry, is it actually getting there? Is it actually getting there? And I think that's not only just in the transport of it, but also how effective is this?

And it's a real big question, I think, for people to ask. How many of you have gotten calls from the Police Protective Association? Someone brought up that they investigated and found out that 85% of what's collected goes to the person making the phone call. Isn't that wild?

So the bottom line is what's happening is the Police Protective Association is in ministry, but the point is this, that the Lord is desiring, I think, on our part, as we examine a ministry situation, to say, is this being effectively used? And not just wasting money on different things. I think also ministries that that don't just waste the money in frivolous ways like that, but they'll also put things in the wrong direction. Churches that go into fantastic structures end up, have this huge edifice, you know, and all it is is it's impressive to a man, impressive to human beings to look at, but it doesn't fulfill this real issue, is it ministry? Is it touching lives? Is it accomplishing what the Lord has in mind? So the final end of that giving is something that is useful, something that is helpful, something that is building up the body of Christ.

Let's take a look at another one on the next page, 21, 2 Corinthians 9.7. We talked briefly about the proportionality principle, and this one verse I think hits on a few of the subjects that we saw in the previous verse and underscores it a little bit more detail. And it says there, each one of you must do just as he has purposed in his heart, not grudgingly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.

Notice the phrase shows up again, each one. Do you notice that? This is an individual matter. Now, both places he brought up this each one thing. Let's dig into that. Why is this each one thing? In the end, if the money is not to be decided by law, not to be decided because of a magical percentage, how is it going to be decided? What's that?

Each one. And what this verse is underscoring, this zeroes in on the relationship that you have with the Lord. If you're a believer, do you have a relationship with the Lord? There's the each one. And that's why both places he underscores this each one. Giving comes out of a personal relationship with the Lord.

And he even, in 2 Corinthians 9.7, cautions against the other influences. Let's look at it. First, the giving is to be measured at the heart level, not by some magic percentage, not by a special number. It's at the heart level. It's measured at the heart. Each is purposed in his heart.

And what are the cautions there? There's two kinds of cautions, right? What's the first caution not grudgingly now you think about but where does the grudge come from? Yeah, this is this is something in ours this is I Don't I mean I'll put the check in the you know basket or in the slot or something, but I'd rather not I So this is purely at the heart level, isn't it? And it comes from inside ourselves. But there's also this other one. What's the other one that's given as a negative or a warning? Yeah, okay. No compulsion. In other words, this compulsion is external. And so he's giving not this. He says, we don't want this giving to be a grudging thing. We also don't want it to be something where there's this arm twisting. And let me tell you, a lot of organizations in Christendom have gotten really good at the arm twisting.

It is everything from a lot of beach-over-the-head badgering and pounding and guilt on the negative side. Some of them will go the other way, and they'll say, well, we won't do that. So we make a lot of real positive stuff. We'll have a banquet, and we'll give all kinds of stuff, talking this thing up, and we'll have pictures of the new building if that's what they're shooting for. But there's this big pump-up. But whether it's on the negative side, where they're beating you over the head with a lot of guilt, or whether it's on the positive side, where they go and they pump people up with a big program, it's compulsion.

Either way. And so he's given this warning. He said, this is a heart issue between you and the Lord, not under compulsion where you've got this external thing where this arm twisting is going on. and not grudging where you're giving it, but you say, well I'd really rather not. But he finally ends up with a positive statement, and what is that? This is a cheerful giving, so really he's giving some good tests. It's a heart issue, it's not to be done grudgingly, it's not to be under compulsion with external arm twisting to make it happen.

It says, God loves a cheerful giver. Again, it comes back to our relationship with the Lord. Now, I have to tell you, this word cheerful, it's Hilaros, which is the same place we get our word hilarious. So when you give, make sure you're laughing hysterically. Basically, this is giving because in your relationship with the Lord, which each one of you has, This giving is coming out of that relationship with the Lord. That's where it's at. And not based on numbers and arm-twisting and, you know, doing it because I gotta, you know.

And so the bottom line is these verses in the New Testament zero in on giving comes out of a relationship with the Lord, not out of an external law. Giving 10% does not make one automatically righteous. It has nothing necessarily to do with the relationship with the Lord. Giving will be a part of the life of the Lord and the believer. That's the source of the cheerfulness. It will be cheerful because it comes out of relationship with the Lord. And in that, there is no magic advantage.

Now, let's ask this question. Is 10% enough? Who knows? Right? This doesn't put that number there, does it? It doesn't do that. The Lord may cause one person to cheerfully give one amount and another person to cheerfully give another entirely different amount. And that's fine. It's as the Lord works in that person's life. Then they will give cheerfully.

But notice there's twice as much caution here against not doing it one way. Is that interesting? Twice as much caution against not doing it one way, and it has to do with even how the church and other ministries approach you, and it has to do with the motivation in your own heart. It's because the Lord is ultimately more concerned about that relationship than the percentage of that check or whatever the amount of money is.

In summary, it's proportional to household income received, past tense. It's systematic, but it's voluntary based on relationship with the Lord. That's critical. It's relationship with the Lord. It's because of the relationship that we have Not done with the anticipation of the relationship we're going to have because we gave. See the difference? The giving is not to buy anything. It's because of what the Lord already did.

He bought us. Okay? Alright. Let's look at page 22, which broaches our favorite subject, taxes. I know you've just been chomping at the bit for us to get to this one. Okay. And we start this section off with Scripture does not leave the subject of taxes alone. That's good because the government doesn't either. Okay? Yeah. This is also an area where we really need biblical guidance. But fortunately, Scripture provides it. And there's something else that's very fortunate in this. And that is that the context of the New Testament was the Roman government. When it came to taxes, the Roman government stank. They were nasty.

Here's how their income tax system worked. They had a combination income and property tax system where you would get districts. For each district, you would have a private property tax collector, an income tax collector. who would tell the government, okay, I'll collect this much money out of this district. And so different people would bid on the right to get the money out of the district. So the one who came up with the highest number that they would give the Roman government for that district got the job.

Now, there was no law limiting how much on top of that they could collect. And if you refused to hand it over when it was time, they could call on the Roman soldiers and they'd run you through. And they'd go through your house and take it anyway. Nice guys, huh? So that was the Roman tax system. Now, remember the story of Zacchaeus. Remember Zacchaeus?

As soon as he sees the Lord and he becomes a Jewish believer, from what we can read there, and one of the things he says right off the bat, he says, and whatever I've taken wrongly, I'll pay back four times. He was called a chief tax collector. That would make him head likely over a district. So this was one of the guys who had done the bidding and they could get whatever they got on top of that was theirs to keep. It was something. Now, why do I bring that up? It's because it's good that the passages we have are in the context of a rotten Roman tax system.

It had been around for less than a century by the time this was written. Representation? You know how many representatives you get? None. You don't get any. You have no representation, you get no vote, but you pay the taxes or else. Now, given that as the background, where it helps us is this. If you look at our American tax system, there's certainly a lot that you could complain about. There are even questions about the legality of its founding. And there are those who will refuse to pay the taxes on that basis. But what we have here is some real interesting insights. Let's take a look first at Matthew 17, 24-27.

Here's the disciples with Jesus. When they came to Capernaum, those who collected the two drachma tax came to Peter and said, does your teacher not pay the two drachma tax? He said yes, and when he came into the house, Jesus spoke to him first, saying, What do you think, Simon, from whom do the kings of the earth collect customs or poll tax, from their sons or from strangers? And when Peter said, From strangers, Jesus said to him, Then the sons are exempt. However, so that we do not offend them, go to the sea and throw in a hook, and take the first fish that comes up, and when you open his mouth, you will find a shekel. Take that, and give it to them for you and me.

Now, this tax was not a Roman tax. The next two passes we look at will be Roman tax. This is a Jewish tax. And this actually has justification in Exodus 30, 13 through 16. So it was actually a valid biblical tax. And regardless of income level, every Jew was supposed to pay this. However, there were no legal consequences if you didn't. But any loyal Jew would shell out the money.

There were also exemptions, just like we have tax exemptions. There were exemptions for people who either lived on alms, you know, people just giving them money, beggars, or people who lived on contributions, like Jesus and the disciples were. So that's why this would come to them as a question, not, you know, hey, you're going to pay it, aren't you? But they're going to say, do you and your people pay this tax? Okay. Question, because of the category of their income. It was a donated income, which was typically exempt. So anyway, the Jewish tax collectors, yup, they're going to pay it. So then, here's this tax, and the Lord asked Peter, who pays the tax? Is this something that the king's family pays? Or is it everybody else that pays? And so Peter's response, well, we collect from everybody else to support the royal family, right?

That's the way his question is set up there. So, because of the fact, you know, we're really exempt. You know, Jesus is who? The King, right? Exempt. But notice what basis on Jesus said, pay it anyway. Yeah. We don't want to offend them. How about that? That's all? Then we have a voluntary tax that are actually exempt but we don't want to offend them. How about that? Now let me ask you a question. Taxes end up being a big hassle. Would we actually say, well I'll put up with it because I don't want to offend them? Does that make sense? You pay taxes so you don't offend somebody?

I guess the point being here, these guys could have sidestepped this. But Jesus said, pay it anyway. And one of the things that I think comes out of this is just a matter of saying, what does my life declare? If I'm going to go out and be some kind of a tax protester and shaking my fist in the taxpayer space and going to court over it, what does my life declare? So what the Lord is saying here is, we don't want this issue to cloud what we're trying to say. We don't want this to stand in the way. So he says, don't offend them.

Well, he tells Peter, go to sea and throw in the hook. Well, the sea is the Sea of Galilee. That's right next to Capernaum. Here's the Sea of Galilee. In the shallows there, they had a kind of fish called a musht. And the musht had a large mouth and had a habit of eating things that were bright and shiny. And so frequently they'd find bright, shiny things in the mouth of this mush, which was in the shallows.

And that's why you'd throw in a hook, usually that Peter and the rest of the disciples that went fishing caught with nets, right? But this is just to catch one fish, and Jesus told them, the first fish that you find is going to have this amount. So if you turn the page there, what you'll see, the top coin, there is a Tyrian stater coin. That's the one coin that would have paid the whole tax with one coin, for both of them. So likely that's the coin that Peter then found in his mouth. What is a miracle is that the Lord said that's the first one, the first fish that you catch will have that coin. Alright, now let's take a look, what's that? There we go. That'll fix it. Yeah, as a consequence. Yeah, what are you doing? Pay my taxes, you know? Fishing for taxes. April 15th rolls around, there's a lot of fishing. Okay. Alright.

Matthew 22, 15 through 22, on page 24. Here's an instance, a few chapters later, when the Pharisees went and plotted together how they might entrap him in what he said. And they said to their disciples, Excuse me the center disciples to him along with the Herodians saying teacher We know that you are truthful and teach the way of God in truth and defer to no one for you are not partial to any Tell us then what do you think is it lawful to give a poll tax to Caesar or not?

But Jesus perceived their malice and said why are you testing me you hypocrites? Boy show me the coin used for the poll tax and they brought him a denarius and he said to them I Whose likeness and inscription is this? I said to him, Caesars. Then he said to them, Then render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's. And hearing this, they were amazed, and leaving him they went away.

Now, the way this works is, here's these insidious Roman tax collectors. In fact, what would frequently happen is they would have Jews in Israel be the ones collecting. And the Jews who collected the tax were considered such low-life scum that the frequent phrase, if you want to talk about low-life scum, is to say sinners and tax collectors, or tax collectors and sinners.

They just lump them all into one. Now here's the Pharisees, they're always opposing Jesus, with the Herodians. Now I have to tell you, ordinarily the Herodians and the Pharisees are enemies. But as frequently happens, if you get two people that are enemies and they have another enemy that's common to them, they'll join together. And so that's the case here. And so they come to Jesus with this question that they've cooked up. And think about what they're asking. They're going to come with this question, Is it lawful?

Now, they're not talking Roman law, right? They're talking about what law? Does Moses' law allow us to pay taxes to Caesar? We can't find anything in law Moses allows that, right? So that's the question. Now, what if he says, yes, what's going to happen? Who's going to be mad? He says, yes, you've got to pay taxes to Caesar.

Who's not going to like that? The Jews are not going to like it, particularly as a group called the Zealots. Simon the Zealot, one of Jesus' disciples, was part of that group. The Jews aren't going to like it, so he's going to offend them. What's going to happen if he answers the other way? No, it's not lawful to pay taxes to Caesar. The Romans, right?

So what they're hoping to get is to get him in a double bind here. Either way, he loses. Either way, he loses. He does a couple of things which, in retrospect, are real insightful. First thing he does, he says, okay, show me the coin. Now, who is he talking to that has the coin? These are Jews, right? That have the coin. He says, show it to me. So they've got to dig it up. I presume he didn't have one anyway. They've got to dig the coin up. If you look at the prior page, That fits in the next question.

He says, whose image and inscription is on the coin? On the front of it you see a picture of Caesar. On the back of it there's Caesar sitting on a throne. The back of the coin says Maxim Pontiff. And so here's Here's this coin, but he doesn't tell them what's on it, he asks them whose face is on it. They're responding. They're the ones who are about to hang themselves. Caesar's. So what he says then, render unto Caesar, that which is Caesar's, and God, that which is God's.

Now, what's happening here may at first blush escape us. But what was taking place in Deuteronomy 28, the Jews were told, if you obey me, you won't have anybody over you and invading your country and dominating you. But if you disobey me, you're going to have people on top of you and they'll be getting taxes from you and they're going to be running over you. They will rule you. You see that?

So in Deuteronomy 28, So what, by having the Jews hand him the coin, and by having the Jews say whose image and inscription was on the coin, he had them make it very clear that they were admitting to disobedience. Admitting to disobedience, because after all, they were the ones that had the coin with Caesar's face on it, and they were the ones who were reading off the identity here. It was an outright admission on their part that they were disobedient to God because of that. So we have this, you know, render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and render unto God that which is God's.

But this frankly doesn't make it real clear, I mean real clear, on this taxing issue yet. But we have Romans 13, 1 through 7. I won't read the entire verse there, but in the top of page 25, you'll see a couple of verses there that are in bold print. For because of this you also pay taxes for rulers and servants of God, devoting themselves to this very thing. Render to all that is due them tax to whom taxes due, custom to whom custom, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor." In the previous verses he had gone through and explained that these government authorities that the Lord had put in place doesn't necessarily mean that they're all going to be righteous, but they are ones put in place by God to maintain order.

Why do you need a government to maintain order? What's the problem? Why do human beings need government? It is the nature of man to head to mayhem without it, right? So government is set in place to maintain authority because men need it. Men need it.

Now, there's certainly all kinds of criticisms you could levy against the government, but the point here is government has a biblically valid place for this time. For this time. There will come a time, as we saw this morning, when the Lord's own government will stand in place, and this world's governments will come to an end. But for now, he says, because of this you pay your taxes.

And so in verse 7, render what is due them, tax to whom taxes due. Now it's interesting, this word render in the Greek there, is give is required by an obligation, and give them what's due. And that's basically a due is an obligation or a debt. The tax, this refers to a personal or property tax.

These are the ones that are collected by the guys who go and put bids in for how much they can collect from a district. And amazingly, that money is used to go support the Roman army. So pay, he's saying, pay the money that is used to support the Roman army, which in the case of, you know, many believers, those would be the ones that would be in By foreign rule, even. It's just pay it. Pay it. And the next one is custom. This is taxes on goods and transactions, somewhat equivalent to our sales tax, for example.

So, coming down to the final question here, suppose you've got this inept IRS, and they're a big bureaucracy. Things get lost and I understand something on the order of half the tax due notices sent out are wrong. I don't know the most recent statistic, but when you call up to get answers on the toll-free helpline, most of those answers in years past were wrong. I don't know if they've improved the percentage. Yes, they're inept.

Yes, there are questions about even the legality of their founding, but that's not the point. God has instituted them as an authority, and he says pay it. Now, here's something interesting. Should we just go ahead and pay it even if we don't agree with all they're doing?

How about there's all kinds of inefficiency? You ever seen some of those listings of some of the crazy things they spend money on? Doing a complete remodel on a military base just before shutting it down? Stuff like that, you know, crazy things. Tens of thousands of dollars studying some rare species of Japanese frog. I mean, just on and on and on, examples of waste. But here's something real interesting. The contrast between what we first looked at and this.

And that's, in our giving, we're to look carefully at how that money is used. Is this used responsibly? Is it used in a way that the money's getting getting there and it's getting where the need is. In the area of taxes, notice that the obligation is pay it. And we have far more opportunity to impact how the money gets used than they did then. But he says, don't give them 50% because that's the part that's efficiently used. He says, pay it. He says, pay it. So it's real interesting. We've got a situation on the one hand Use discernment. On the one hand, examine it. Make sure that the money is being effectively used. On the other hand, hear what the tax is. Just pay it.

Now, having said that, a couple of cautions. One is there's no need for us to pay more than what is legally required. There's a reason why a Christian can't look down and say, you know, clients are that. There's no reason for us to have to pay more than is legally required.

The flip side caution would be, be careful about some of the things that are sold as being a valid tax deduction. There's a lot of people getting in trouble because they're getting sold some sort of an invalid tax deduction or tax program. I have a friend over in California that he was marketed some tax reduction program that he was told would be valid and given all the reasons why this would be accepted. He not too long ago got called on by the IRS and is finding out that he was sold a bill of goods that wasn't right. So he's having to dig himself out of this hole. So a word of caution, there's no need to overpay your taxes, but make sure that the things that you're using to reduce that tax payment are valid, so you don't get buried.

Anyway, okay. Questions? I mean, we covered a lot of material here. Questions, thoughts, comments, exasperations? So when you say, when it says legal, it's legally required, bottom page 25. Yeah. And then go back up to... Right, right, in terms of what's legally required.

And frankly, this doesn't appear to go back to, was this founded properly? People, you know, I have run across folks and Christians that have said, well, you know, the amendment was not passed properly. or the enabling legislation that established the IRS was never recorded in the congressional records, so therefore the IRS is not legal. And frankly, there are some questions about those things. But both the Congress, the executive part of the government, and most definitely the judicial side are all acting as if the IRS is a valid instrument and basically the various tax protest cases kicked against the goads.

It's a problem, but on the other hand if you look at the Roman situation it was far worse and far more corrupt and yet the message is consistently, pay it. Pay it. And so I think as a point of comparison, certainly there's a lot to gripe and complain about. But when I put it in the context of the biblical situation, certainly our system, as ludicrous as it is at times, is still better than the Roman system, which is far more wicked and unjustified, and no sense of fairness at all.

The flip side of that, go back to the first week, does this not mean that God is using taxes to conform us to the image of Christ? The payment of taxes to conform us and that seems kind of strange. I mean taxes could well Yes, because it is a part of the all things That he's laid out. Yeah, and and the spiritual benefit is that's part of the all things Yeah, that's part of the all things that he's going to use conforms to the image of his son Yes, yes, and it and it may be it may be Yeah, it may be There's some 8,000 pages of federal tax code, and I don't know if anybody's figured it all out yet. It can be tough, but nonetheless, as far as we're able to decipher and determine, the biblical picture is consistent.

Yes, we have an opportunity to vote, and you know, that's something that they didn't get a chance to do in the biblical times. We have, in that sense, an opportunity to be represented, at least, as we pay taxes. They didn't even have that, and yet the command was, pay it. Yes? I have a question about when you're offering ties and taxes. Well, let's back up a little bit.

Let's compare it to the Roman system. You didn't get a tax deduction for money you gave to the church. As a matter of fact, if you brought it up, you're likely to get killed. So the Romans gave no allowance and matter of fact you would want to avoid admitting that you gave money to the church or they just take you out. We're in a situation where the government allows us to do that deducting.

There are reasons personally why I would rather that they didn't do that because here's where some of the issue can get clouded and I'm glad you brought it up for this reason. As we saw that 2 Corinthians passage, you notice that the encouragement was all at the heart level, and it was not under compulsion, and a cheerful giver, not grudgingly. Now, if I'm not careful, what's happening is I've got some other motive involved in my giving. I'm not saying that it automatically is a problem, but I think we need to be careful that what God intends to spring out of our relationship with Him ends up getting clouded and confused by the tax issue. So, I don't see a problem with deducting it, but I would say don't let the tax deduction determine whether you're going to give or not. That that giving, as this passage underscores, that giving needs to come out of our relationship with the Lord. and be pure from that standpoint. The fact that we get a tax deduction is nice.

As a matter of fact, people who either have a low amount of interest or are paying rent, they don't get one anyway. We'll talk more about this in some of the rest of what we're looking at. I'd be careful about letting it cloud what's important. There are lots of things where it's nice to consider the tax impact But don't let it make your decision for you.

Does that answer your question? Hopefully. Okay. It's real important we don't get distracted from this is an issue of our relationship with the Lord. So let's let taxes conform us to the image of Christ, not disrupt some opportunity for us to give out of a relationship with the Lord and nothing else. Okay, a couple of things.

One is if you're catching up with some prior weeks, chapters, there's some extra ones over on the table over there. And also I have some additional kind of supplemental charts if you want to take a look at them. I made some extra copies. They're not something I'll hand out with the material, but if you want to take one, they're available. Next week we'll be taking a look at balancing the income and the outgo.

And, you know, biblically, how do we do that? You know, how do we work through that? And I'm going to be interviewing Nancy, and I keep bringing that up because this is something where, you know, it is a big husband and wife issue. It is something that can be a really good thing. And I share it because Nancy and I came at a point about 13 years ago where this was a real breakthrough for us in our relationship and in our relationship with the Lord.

So, anyway, let's pray. Lord, we give you thanks and we're thankful that our relationship with you is entirely by grace. We buy our way into nothing. All that we have and all that comes into our hands is from you. We just pray as we ponder and think over these things that you will be working in our hearts to bring these truths home. We just pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.