A man and a woman found themselves standing at the pearly gates very disappointed to be getting into heaven. They were on their way to get married and ended up at the entrance to heaven instead of arriving at their wedding. The bride was in tears and she asked Saint Peter, “Could you find us a pastor, so we can get married?”
“I’m sorry”, said Peter. “There is no marriage in heaven; it is just not done”. At this, the bride melted into a pool of tears and was inconsolable. Finally, Peter could not take it anymore and told the bride, “Ok, ok, ok. I think this is a big mistake, but I will do my best to find a pastor and see if we can arrange a wedding.” The bride calmed down and the couple entered into heaven through the pearly gates.
Three months went by and they hadn’t heard anything, so they walked back to the pearly gates to see if Peter forgot about them. “No, I haven’t forgot about you,” he said. “I am still looking. I will get this done. Don’t come back. I will get a hold of you. Things like this just takes some time here in heaven.” Assured by Peter’s promise, the couple went back into heaven.
Six months went by, then nine, then eighteen months – the couple was not happy. Finally, they received a call – Peter had found a Pastor. “Are you sure you want to go through with this?” he asked them.
“Yes, we are so ready”, squealed the couple. All went well at the wedding, and the couple entered heaven as the first, and only, married couple in heaven.
A few months later, the married couple appeared again at the pearly gates. Both were quite upset. “You were right”, steamed the wife, “there is no marriage in heaven!”
“We want a divorce!” spit the husband. At this Saint Peter doubled over with laughter. He could hardly catch his breath
“What is so funny?” exclaimed the bride, “This is serious.”
“You bet it is serious”, said Peter “If you think it took me a long time to find a pastor in heaven, how long do you think it is going to take to find a lawyer?” (Peter Loughman, from his sermon Choosing Between Two Evils; www.sermoncentral.com)
Heaven is a very different place than this planet. Yet we as believers in Christ, find ourselves citizens of both worlds, and that’s hard sometimes. Our world is becoming increasingly hostile to our Christian values these days; and here in the United States, we find ourselves often disagreeing with our own government.
So how do we live on this earth as citizens of heaven? How do we conduct ourselves as those who are first of all citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven and yet have citizenship in one of the earthly Kingdoms? How do we live as citizens of two kingdoms – a heavenly one and an earthly one?
Well, if you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn with me to Mark 12, Mark 12, where Jesus addresses this very question. Actually it’s a trick question, because fellow citizens were hostile towards Him and trying to trap Him with His own words. Even so, Jesus’ answer is profound and gives us real guidance today.
Mark 12:13 Later they sent some of the Pharisees and Herodians to Jesus to catch him in his words. (ESV)
They want to trap him like a caged animal. Now, the Pharisees and the Herodians were polar opposites. The only thing they agreed on was that they didn’t like Jesus. The Herodians were pro-Rome and accepted Herod, a Roman appointee, as their rightful ruler. The Pharisees barely tolerated Herod, whom they considered a usurper, because they had no other choice. So when these two groups come together, you know something is up.
Mark 12:14 They came to him and said, “Teacher, we know you are a man of integrity. You aren’t swayed by men, because you pay no attention to who they are; but you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not? (ESV)
Now, the tax they are asking about is an annual poll tax (or head tax) which the Roman emperor had imposed on all the Jews since A.D. 6. That was the year Judea became a Roman province. The tax was particularly odious to the Jews, because it made them feel like slaves to Rome. They didn’t mind paying the Temple tax, because that represented their submission to God as their heavenly King. But to pay taxes to Rome meant that they were also in submission to an evil earthly king, and that grated against their conscience. Messiah was supposed to deliver them against such tyranny.
Well, for Jesus to say, “Yes, pay taxes to Caesar,” that would make Him unpopular with the people. But if He says, “No, don’t pay taxes to Caesar,” then he would be in trouble with the Roman authorities. It was a trick question, because no matter how Jesus answers, He is in trouble! So how DOES He answer?
Mark 12:15-17 Should we pay or shouldn’t we?” But Jesus knew their hypocrisy. “Why are you trying to trap me?” he asked. “Bring me a denarius and let me look at it.” They brought the coin, and he asked them, “Whose portrait is this? And whose inscription?” “Caesar’s,” they replied. Then Jesus said to them, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.” And they were amazed at him. (ESV)
The coin had the portrait (or image) of Tiberius Caesar, who reigned from A.D. 14 to A.D. 37. And the inscription read in Latin: “Tiberius Caesar Augustus, Son of the Divine Augustus;” and on the reverse side it said, “Chief Priest.” This inscription promoted emperor worship and was his claim to deity, which was particularly repulsive to Jews and quite frankly to all believers.
But Jesus says, literally, “Give BACK the things belonging to Caesar.” It’s Caesar’s coin, so give it BACK to him. On the other hand, make sure you give back to God, literally, “the things belonging to God.” Jesus may be referring to the temple tax in this context, but more than that He is countering the emperor’s claim to deity (John D. Grassmick, Bible Knowledge Commentary). You see, if we enjoy the benefits of civil government – like police protection, public utilities, and the like – then we have an obligation to pay our taxes.
The tax money belongs to the government, but WE belong to God. Whose image is on every human being? That’s right. We ALL bear the image of God (Genesis 1:27), and so while we give some of the government’s money back to them, we give ourselves back to God and to God alone.
How do we live as citizens of two kingdoms – a heavenly one and an earthly one? Jesus’ answer is profound. Pay your taxes to Caesar, but give yourself to God. Fulfill your obligations to the government, but worship God and God alone.
You see, being a Christian does not preclude us from being a good citizen. On the contrary, our faith in Christ demands that we…
ACT AS RESPONSIBLE CITIZENS.
Our faith requires that we fulfill our obligations to the civil government. Trusting Christ means paying our taxes even when we disagree with some of our government’s policies. In fact, a believer in Christ should be a better citizen than most. Believe it or not, that’s what some Communist Chinese officials discovered several years ago.
According to Open Doors Ministry, which serves the persecuted church around the world, Chinese government officials became so fed up with sky-high rates of crime, drug addiction, and sickness in the county of Lancan Lahu, Yunnan province, that in the mid 1990s they turned for help to the only model citizens in the area: the Christians.
“We had to admit that the Lahu people were a dead loss because of their addiction to opium,” confessed an official who did not want to be named. “Their addiction made them weak and sick. Then they would go to one of their “priests,” who required animal sacrifices of such extravagance that the people became poor. And because they were so poor, they stole from each other, and law and order deteriorated. It was a vicious cycle that no amount of government propaganda could break.
“We noticed, however, that in some villages in the county, the Lahu were prosperous and peace loving. There was no drug problem, or any stealing or social order problems. Households had a plentiful supply of pigs, oxen, and chickens. So we commissioned a survey to find out why these villages were different. To our astonishment and embarrassment, we discovered the key factor was that these villages had a majority of Christians.”
Officials launched a daring experiment in 1998, the likes of which would have been unthinkable in China 10 years previous—they sponsored Christians to go into the troublesome villages and share their faith.
They started by picking out the worst village, which had 240 people, 107 of which were hopelessly addicted to opium. Christian Lahus were bussed into the village at government expense, and the villagers were herded together by the police and made to listen to the testimonies of the Christians.
A year later, there were 17 converts in the village, and they began to grow rich because they stopped spending money on drugs. Eight of the 17 converts even had enough to own sewing machines and start small businesses.
By early 2002, 83 of the villagers were Christians and the prosperity had spread. The government official said, “We are delighted with the results and have been extending the tactic to many other villages since then.” (The Pastors Connection, Open Doors USA e-mail, August 2002; corroborated by Kelly Callaghan, prayer and courier coordinator, Open Doors USA; www.PreachingToday.com)
These Christians were model citizens even in a country where the government opposed their values, and that’s what Christ wants us to be wherever we are, because it brings glory to Him. So pay your taxes, obey the laws of the land, and pray for your government officials. Even if we don’t respect those in office, we must respect the office itself.
It’s a part of what it means to live in two worlds. It’s a part of what it means to live as a citizen of heaven while we’re a citizen here on earth. 1st we pay our taxes. We give back to Caesar what he is due, but we give back to God our whole selves. Caesar gets a little of his money back, but God gets everything we are and have. That means, at the very least, we need to…
KNOW GOD.
We need to understand his word and his power. We need to comprehend what he has said and what he is able to do.
That’s what the Sadducees failed to do. They were a group of people in Jesus’ day, the liberal elites (if you will), who did not believe in the resurrection, the existence of the soul, or life after death. They did not believe in the final judgment, and neither did they believe in angels or demons. That’s why they were sad-u-see. The Sadducees accepted only the Law of Moses as their religious authority; so, if an idea could not be defended from the first five books of the Old Testament, they would not accept it (Warren Wiersbe, Bible Exposition Commentary). Well, they come to Jesus with a question, again trying to trip Him up.
Mark 12:18-19 Then the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him with a question. “Teacher,” they said, “Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies and leaves a wife but no children, the man must marry the widow and have children for his brother. (ESV)
This is a reference to Deuteronomy 25:5-6, where Moses spells out the obligation of the deceased’s brother to marry the deceased’s widow to bear children in the dead brother’s name.
Mark 12:20-23 Now there were seven brothers. The first one married and died without leaving any children. The second one married the widow, but he also died, leaving no child. It was the same with the third. In fact, none of the seven left any children. Last of all, the woman died too. At the resurrection whose wife will she be, since the seven were married to her?” (ESV)
This was a question they loved to throw in the face of those who believed in life after death, because nobody could ever answer it sensibly. It was one of those hypothetical situations without an answer. Well, Jesus has an answer.
Mark 12:24 Jesus said to them, “Is this not the reason you are wrong” [or more literally, “Is this not the reason you are deceiving yourselves], because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God.”
Mark 12:25-27 When the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven. Now about the dead rising—have you not read in the book of Moses, in the account of the bush, how God said to him, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. You are badly mistaken!” (ESV)
Again, more literally, “You are deceiving yourselves.” It’s the same word in vs.24. The Sadducees were deceiving themselves, because they did not know the Scriptures nor the power of God.
The Scriptures are clear. People are not married in heaven. They don’t need to be, because there is no need for procreation when everybody lives forever.
Furthermore, God is not the God of the dead. Jesus quotes from Exodus 3, where God says to Moses, “I AM the God of Abraham,” not “I WAS the God of Abraham.” That means Abraham was still alive, who lived 500 years before Moses! There IS life after death. There IS a resurrection. Jesus uses their own Scripture – an account from the first five books of the Old Testament – to prove it to them.
They were deceiving themselves, because they did not know the Scriptures or the power of God. My friends, we dare not make the same mistake. If we’re going to give ourselves wholeheartedly to God, we must at least know His word and His power.
Some time ago, Larry Copeland wrote a story in USA Today about the danger of “peephole” driving. Now, most of us when it gets really cold in the winter have probably been a peephole driver at one time or other. We’re in a hurry to get somewhere, but when we walk out into the cold we find that our car is encased in a layer of snow and ice. So what do we do? We start the car and turn up the heater. Then we get out our scraper and battle to chip out a clear space on the windshield. After a few minutes, we have cleared away an opening the size of a large pepperoni pizza. By now, we are shivering and miserable, and we realize this will take 10 more minutes. So we move to the rear window and scrape off a narrower opening the size of a small sausage pizza with extra olives and do the same with the side windows. Then we throw caution to the frigid winds and get in the car and drive away.
That’s when it hits us: we can hardly see. So we drive really slow and lean up close to the windshield and peer out of our peepholes and hope against hope that we don't run into anyone before the windows are clear. Worse yet, as we peer out our peepholes, we notice that other drivers are peering out their peepholes!
Copeland ends his article with this warning from the North Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles: “Peephole driving is an invitation to disaster.” (www.PreachingToday.com)
So is peephole living! There are many people who pride themselves in being open-minded. But if they don’t know God’s Word or God’s power, then they actually have a very narrow view of the world. They are actually very closed minded, because there are whole realms of reality they refuse to even think about. They are involved with peephole living, and the sad fact is they don’t even know it.
You see, when we understand God’s Word and God’s power, our vision is expanded and there is no telling what God can do for us and through us as we seek to live for Him in this world. We’re not limited by the confines of this world. We’re not limited even by death itself, because Christ has conquered the grave and there IS a resurrection!
So open this Book (the Bible) on a regular basis. Get to know what God has said, and tet to know what God can do through you. I tell you: it’s the only way to live in two worlds. It’s the only way to live as citizens of heaven here on this earth.
Yes, fulfill your obligations to the government – give them a little of their money back and pay your taxes. But give your whole self to the Lord, and start by getting to know Him. Then…
LOVE GOD WITH YOUR ENTIRE BEING.
Commit yourself to Him heart, soul, mind & strength. This is what Jesus said was the most important commandment in all of Scripture.
Mark 12:28 One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?” (ESV)
The legal experts in Jesus’ day had counted 613 precepts in the Law, 365 negative precepts and 248 positive, and they loved to argue over which of these divine commands was the most important (Warren W. Wiersbe, The Bible Exposition Commentary). Well, Jesus has the definitive answer!
Mark 12:29-31 “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. 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: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” (ESV)
To love God with the totality of our being, and to love the one near us (whoever that may be at any given moment) summarizes the entire law. To give ourselves sacrificially and unconditionally to God and to one another is what the commandments are all about. So if we keep parts of the law, but don’t love God or people, then we have missed the whole point!
Mark 12:32-34 “Well said, teacher,” the man replied. “You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.” When Jesus saw that he had answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And from then on no one dared ask him any more questions. (ESV)
This man had a different spirit than the other questioners. He understood that relationships are more important than rules. He understood that his relationship with God and his relationship with people trumped everything else. All He needed to do was put His trust in Christ, and then he would be IN the Kingdom of God, not just NEAR it.
I invite YOU: Put YOUR trust in Christ. Trust Him with your life and your eternal destiny. Commit yourself wholeheartedly to Him. Then He will welcome you into His Kingdom, and He will give you the power to love as He wants you to love. That’s what God created us for, and that’s what He desires from each and every one of us.
Just a few years ago (February 2009) in Fast Company magazine there was an article about David Kelley. Kelley is founder of what many regard as the premier design firm in the country – Ideo. And he has been a professor at Stanford University for more than 30 years. He is a creative genius.
Unfortunately, at age 56, Kelley discovered a lump on his body, and the doctors told him he had cancer. Linda Tischler writes: What ensued was sheer hell. Chemo, surgery, radiation. Mouth sores. A throat so raw he could barely swallow. Nausea so severe he couldn't concentrate enough to read or even watch TV. “I spent nine months in a room trying not to throw up,” he says. The treatment wrecked his saliva glands and his taste buds. He lost 40 pounds.
Kelley is happily married and has one daughter. This is where the idea of being created for love comes in. As Kelley struggled through the difficult emotions that come with this kind of experience, he discovered his reason to live. Kelley says about his daughter:
At first, you think, “I don't want to miss her growing up.” That's motivating, but not that motivating. It's when you manage to get out of yourself and start thinking of her that you get the resolve to continue. When you think, “I don't want her not to have a father”—then you want to stay alive.
What gave Kelley a reason to endure the suffering of his treatment was not the pleasure he would get out of experiencing life with his daughter, as wonderful as that would be. Kelley realized that what truly motivated him was the benefit he could bring to his daughter. What motivated Kelley at the deepest level was selfless sacrifice for another. (Linda Tischler, “Ideo's David Kelley on ‘Design Thinking,’” Fast Company, Feb, 2009, p. 80)
That’s what love is all about, and that’s why God made us – to love Him and others. Love will motivate us to endure. Love will motivate us to serve. Love will motivate us to do and be all that God wants us to be. So above all, and in dependence upon Christ, love God and love the person next to you, whoever that may be at the time. For it’s the only way to live in two worlds at the same time. It’s the only way to live as a citizen of heaven here on earth.
Pay your taxes, to be sure. Give the government back some of its money. But give yourself to the Lord. In other words, know Him and love Him with the totality of your being.
Howard Hendricks once said, “Millions of Christians live in a sentimental haze of vague piety, with soft organ music trembling in the lovely light from stained-glass windows. Their religion is a pleasant thing of emotional quiver, divorced from the intellect, divorced from the will, and demanding little except lip service to a few harmless platitudes.
“I suspect that Satan has called off his attempt to convert people to agnosticism. After all, if a person travels far enough away from Christianity, he or she is always in danger of seeing it in perspective and deciding that it is true. It is much safer, from Satan's point of view, to vaccinate a person with a mild case of Christianity so as to protect him from the real disease.” (Howard Hendricks, "Faith in Tough Times," Preaching Today, Tape 140; www.PreachingToday.com)
My friends, don’t be content with just a “mild case of Christianity.” Instead, give yourself wholly and completely to God. It’s the only way to live in ANY world.
