Sunday 10.18.20 - "Unto Caesar, Under God" - Fr. Jeromie Rand

Christ Our Hope Sermons

In Matthew 22:15-22, the Pharisees pose a loaded question to Jesus: "Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?” Jesus replies with the well-known adage, "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's.” As Jesus often did when answering these sorts of insincere questions, He answers in a way that gets at the heart of the matter. In doing so, He gives us an important principle for how believers are to engage their governing authorities and political systems.
In this message, delivered at a time of considerable division in American politics especially, Fr. Jeromie Rand leads us into Jesus' deeper meaning in a text sometimes misconstrued. The realms of Caesar's and God's authority are overlapping, not separate. The Kingdom of God is breaking into the kingdom of this world. By giving us a direction that's not quite so clean and neat as in other places in the Scriptures, Jesus invites us to the greatest act of faith in a ruling authority: to trust God with radical dependence.

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