This
coming week is one of my favorite weeks of the year. Everything slows down and
people focus on food, family and football.
It is right after a long, busy fall and right before a crazy Christmas
season. It is week when things slow down
allowing us to stop and reflect on what we are thankful for in our lives. Gratitude can change your life. Gratefulness is the one of the keys to true
and lasting happiness. Gratitude helps us shift our focus off of what we don’t
have onto what we do have.
I’ll
never forget living in Washington, D.C. in our little two bedroom house. The
kitchen had two feet of counter space and only two cabinets with no dishwasher.
The house was in a bad neighborhood where our car was broken into several times
and the house itself was attempted to be robbed. The closets were so small that they could not
fit one person’s wardrobe, let alone two adults. The bathroom was so small that
when Ellen was pregnant she had to turn sideways and shuffle on her tip toes to
lift her stomach over the sink to get to toilet. The house had a lot of “charm.”
My
wife and I had our fair share of complaints about our little two-bedroom home
that was until we entered Reggie and Victor Acevedo’s house. Victor was one of my students in math class
and I knew their family was going through a tight financial season so I got
them a Thanksgiving Dinner Box that was being offered through a local
church. Ellen and I went to their
apartment to bring by the dinner and I will never forget what I saw. It was a one bedroom apartment that housed
ten people. Beds and blankets covered
the floor. At that moment, the Lord
convicted my heart of how much I had to be grateful for in my life. I had my own two bedroom house with my own
kitchen with two feet of counter space and two cabinets and a sink to wash my
own dishes. I had much to be grateful
for.
Gratitude helps us see how much we have rather
than how much we need. Gratitude truly
can change our lives. And one of the things we need to be more grateful for is
authority. Authority is a blessing and a gift.
Jesus came preaching and teaching to establish his authority on
earth. The leaders of the day challenged
Jesus authority. Luke 20:1-2
One day, as Jesus was teaching the people in
the temple and preaching the gospel, the chief priests and the scribes with the
elders came up and said to him, “Tell us by what authority you do these things,
or who it is that gave you this authority.” (Luke 20:1-2)
The
leaders came to Jesus and basically said, “What gives you the right to do what
you do?” They did not like his teaching so they challenged his authority.
It is important to see all of chapter
20 in light of these leaders challenging his authority. Last week, we look at
the parable of wicker tenants which was spoken against the leaders who
challenged his authority as verse 19 makes clear.
The scribes and the chief priests sought to lay
hands on him at that very hour, for they perceived that he had told this
parable against them, but they feared the people. (Luke 20:19)
The
leaders sought to arrest and destroy Jesus because they did not want to submit
to Jesus’s authority. It is important to see that this concept of authority is
still a central idea for Luke throughout this chapter.
Who
is our authority is a central idea in all of Scripture. One could say that all
of the Bible is about restoring our ability to rightfully submit to God’s
authority. In the Garden of Eden, the serpent tempted Eve to challenge and
distrust God’s authority.
But the serpent
said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of
it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a
delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she
took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with
her, and he ate. (Genesis 3:4-6)
Satan tempted Eve to challenge
God’s authority and Eve sinned in believing him by distrusting God’s authority.
And ever since the Fall, (when God’s authority was first challenged and
disregarded by man) we have been tempted to follow Eve’s example. One of the ways we can overcome our
propensity to challenge God’s authority is to be grateful for it. So as we approach this coming week of
Thanksgiving, let me as your two questions about authority.
Are you Grateful for
Authority?
The
leaders continue their attack of Jesus’ authority by attempting to set a trap
for him by offering him a lose-lose question.
Luke 20:20-22,
So they watched
him and sent spies, who pretended to be sincere, that they might catch him in
something he said, so as to deliver him up to the authority and jurisdiction of
the governor. So they asked him, “Teacher, we know that you speak and teach
rightly, and show no partiality, but truly teach the way of God. Is it lawful
for us to give tribute to Caesar, or not?”
The goal of the question is stated
there in verse 20, “to deliver him up.” The Jews lived under Roman oppression
and did not have authority of the state to arrest. They wanted Jesus to speak against Caesar so
that he would be arrested and killed. In their minds, this was a no win
situation. He will either speak against Caesar and be arrested or speak for Caesar
and anger the Jewish people who hated paying tributes to him.
The spies approach Jesus with
flattery. They affirm his fairness and righteous teaching and how he teaches
the true way of God. And what they said
was true. Jesus did not show partiality and he taught what was right. There
words were true, but their hearts were insincere. (We can say all the right words and still
have our hearts far from God. Do not be impressed with people’s lofty words.)
These people would have appeared to being submitting to Jesus’ teaching, but submission
goes beyond mere verbal affirmation.
This is where we have to check our own hearts. Are we truly submitting to Jesus authority in
our lives or merely giving the outward impression that we are?
The
outward appearance of honoring God was the problem of the Pharisees. Listen to the hard words of Jesus in Matthew
23,
“Woe to you,
scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which
outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people's bones and all
uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you
are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. (Matthew 23:27-28)
God wants more than the mere
outward appearance of gratefulness for His authority, but wants a heart the
delights in His authority.
And this is why
God sent Jesus Christ. In the beginning,
man had a pure heart that delighted in God’s authority. They lived in the
Garden of Eden under his loving rule, but when Adam and Eve ate the fruit they
rejected God’s authority bringing sin into the world. So now, every human is born with a natural
heart that is set against God’s authority.
We do not acknowledge God’s authority in our lives or give thanks to
Him, but instead we have become futile in our thinking and our foolish hearts
are darkened. We claim to be wise, but we all have become fools living outside
of God’s authority. Titus 3:3 says,
For we ourselves
were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and
pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one
another. (Titus 3:3)
Paul and the rest of the apostles
looked at themselves as once foolish and disobedient, in bondage to sin, but
notice that is not what they are. They were foolish, but now they
have changed. What happened? Titus
3:4-8,
But when the
goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not
because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy,
by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured
out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by
his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.
God sent Jesus Christ to be our
Savior. He saved us according to his own mercy by dying on the cross to pay the
penalty for our foolishness. We could not be righteous so God gave us the
righteousness of another, Jesus Christ. After
Jesus Christ died, God raised him from the dead giving us the hope of eternal
life. All we have to do is receive eternal life is repent of sin and believe
Jesus Christ. Repentance is acknowledge and giving thanks to God’s authority in
our life. Are you grateful for God’s Authority?
We show our gratefulness through repentance and faith. And our
gratefulness is expressed through real concrete actions given to God.
Are you Giving unto
Authority?
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Jesus shifts the
focus off of the question of taxes and broadens the issue to one of authority.
Luke 20:22-26
Is it lawful for
us to give tribute to Caesar, or not?” But he perceived their craftiness, and
said to them, “Show me a denarius. Whose likeness and inscription does it
have?” They said, “Caesar's.” He said
to them, “Then render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the
things that are God's.” And they were not able in the presence of the people to
catch him in what he said, but marveling at his answer they became silent.
They attempted to trap Jesus with
their question, but Jesus sees right through their schemes and flips the
question back at them. With his responds, Jesus reveals two sovereign
authorities over their lives (and ours).
First, Jesus affirms the authority of the state. We live in a world in which God has given the
state authority to provide for its needs by collecting taxes.
No
one enjoys paying taxes. One of the
reasons that so many people are moving to South Carolina is because it is more
favorable in its taxes. We may not enjoy paying taxes, but they are necessary
for the state to exercise its authority. One of the most important texts
regarding the authority of the state is Romans 13. Paul writes, “Let every
person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority
except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. (Romans 13:1).
The state exists because God allows it to exist. And one of the purposes of the
state is seen in 1 Peter 2:13 which says that government should, “punish those
who do evil and to praise those who do good.” The only way the state can
fulfill its purpose to exercise authority in maintaining justice is to have
people do the work of justice.
As much as I do
not like paying taxes, I am grateful for the men and women of our police
department who protect and serve our community to maintain peace and order. I
am grateful for our firemen who protect and serve our community to keep us
safe. We may not love paying taxes, but
we should be grateful for what our taxes provide. This does not mean that every tax and/or roll
exercised by our government is morally right, but Jesus affirms that we have an
obligation to serve the state.
There will be
things that our government endorses that we must protest because it goes
against God, but we do so with gentleness following the example of Jesus
Christ. 1 Peter 2:18-24,
Servants, be
subject to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle but
also to the unjust. For this is a gracious thing, when, mindful of God, one
endures sorrows while suffering unjustly. For what credit is it if, when you
sin and are beaten for it, you endure? But if when you do good and suffer for
it you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God. For to this you
have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example,
so that you might follow in his steps. He committed no sin, neither was deceit
found in his mouth. When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he
suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who
judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might
die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.
How we submit to our earthly
authority is one way we display our faith in the gospel of Christ? Our
submission helps us become like Jesus Christ.
Secondly,
after affirming the authority of the state, Jesus establishes God as the higher
sovereign authority over our lives. Jesus asks for a denarius and said, “Whose
likeness and inscription does it have?” They of course said Caesar. Then Jesus
makes the application that the people should give to Caesar that which is in his
likeness, but also the people should give to God that which is in His
likeness. What is made in the likeness of God? Who is made in the image
of God? We are. Therefore, we are to
offer to God that which was made in His image: ourselves. We are to give
ourselves unto God. Romans 12:1-2,
I appeal to you
therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living
sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not
be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind,
that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and
acceptable and perfect. (Romans 12:1-2)
Everything we have and everything
we do belongs to God. So, are you giving yourselves unto God?
I
do not want to make this passage formulaic and thus minimize the depth and
comprehensiveness of Jesus’ statement.
In many ways the full application of this command is fulfilled in the
greatest two commandments. Jesus said in Mark 12:29-31,
“The
most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you
shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with
all your soul and with all your mind and with
all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor
as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
We give ourselves unto God’s
authority by loving Him and loving others.
Although I do not
want make this formulaic, I do think it would be helpful to look at three
specific ways we can give to God the things that are God’s: your Time, Talent,
and Treasure.
Time: Every day we make choices that
display what we value. We spent time on
things we value. What does the use of
your time communicate about your values? We are called in the Scriptures to
make the best use of our time because the days are evil (Eph 5:15-16; Col
4:5-6). Ask people who are close to you how about your use of time.
Talent: God has given us all various
gifts and talents primarily to be used for the building up of the body of
Christ. God has placed you in this community to use your gifts to help others
become more like Jesus Christ. Are you
using your talents to build up others in the faith? Do not squander the gifts
that God has given to this church by not using your talents for the good of
others.
Treasure: All your money does not
belong to you, but to God. Are you
giving your treasure unto God? We are
trained by our society to increase our standard of living as our income
increases, but God may increase our income so we can increase the blessing we
can be to others rather than our own comfort.
How you handle your treasure reveals the values of your heart!!!
Jesus wants us to give ourselves
unto God. The challenge for us now is the application of that command.
And
as we reflect and think through how we can give ourselves to God this coming
week, let us remember that Jesus is not asking us to do anything that He has
not already done. Jesus Christ gave himself for us. He offered his body as a
living sacrifice unto to death that we may live. And because of His obedience, He was exalted
to the highest place and was given the name that is above every name. Beloved, God asks you to give yourselves to
Him and He promises you that it will be worth it.
_____
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