TH E KING’S BUSINESS
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catches them in their own trap. He says in effect: “You accept the money of the foreign government, you must then accept your responsibilities to it. If you use Caesar’s money, you must pay Caesar’s toll.” There are things which are due to human governments, and one thing due to them is the taxes which are necessary to support them in the functions of which you enjoy the benefit. Christian ethics demand the rendering to human governments the things which are due to human governments. But there are other things which belong to God (e. g., the absolute surrender of our wills, gratitude for His blessings, praise for His excellencies, worship of Himself) and we should render to God the things which be long to Him. It is very strange that usually in sermons on verse 17 the whole emphasis is laid on our duty to Caesar. When the Pharisees failed to entrap Jesus the Sadducees tried their hand. The Sad- ducees were the rationalists of the day, they denied the supernatural. Jesus’ plain and constant teaching that there is a resurrection of the body greatly annoyed them and they planned in a very scholarly and philosoph ical way to expose the absurdity of His teaching on this point. They came to Him with a supposed case, a favorite method with errorists and quibblers of all ages. Having put their subtle and ingeniously contrived question they await with great self-com plaisance to see Jesus discomfiture, but they are doomed to disappointment and chagrin, as are all challengers of our Lord. With a single sentence our Lord demolished the fine looking structure which their sophistry had so laboriously erected. Their error had arisen from their ignorance of two things— “the Scriptures” and “the power of God.” Most of the theological and philosophical and scientific error of today arises from the same ignorance. This ignorance is common even among men who call themselves and whom others call “scholars.” Thursday, August 5. Mark 12:18-27.
dares that while all the prophets, even the greatest, were only servants, that He Him self was the Son, and Only Son, of God (v. 6, cf. Heb. 1:1, 2, 5; 3:5, 6). This teaching of our Lord Himself shows the utter falsity of the popular modern doctrine that Jesus was the Son of God only in the sense that we are all Sons of God. If Jesus was not the Son of God in an altogether unique sense, then He was an outrageous blasphemer, and either one of the most dar ing impostors or most hopeless lunatics the. world has ever seen. It seems inconceiv able that the wickedness of the husbandmen should ever reach such a height that they would even kill the son and heir (cf. Jer. 36:3; Zeph. 3:7). The Jewish leaders did not recognize with >perfect clearness in Jesus the Messiah, and deliberately plan to get His kingdom from Him (Luke 23:34; Acts 3:17;1 Cor. 2:8), and yet there was a recognition more or less clear on the part of the leaders of who Jesus was, and a de termination on their part not to yield to Him lest they lose their own pre-eminence and power (John 11:47, 48). The Jews actually carried their appalling plot into execution: and we, by continuance in sin, take our part in this appalling treatment of God’s Only Son: for in the last analysis it is sin that crucified Christ. The parable of Jesus concerning the wicked husbandmen was clearly understood by the chief priests and Scribes and Phari sees and cut them to the quick but it did not bring them to repentance. Truth re sisted always hardens and the words of Jesus hardened them: they became more than ever determined to put Jesus out of the way. What they did not dare to do openly and directly, they now undertake to do underhandedly and indirectly. By a trick they sought to bring Jesus into con flict: with the Roman government. But He saw through their wily stratagem and by a question puts them to confusion and Wednesday, August 4. .Mark 12:13-17.
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