o Here, Christians must be honest about their worship - is it truly God-centered, is it in spirit and in truth, and is it truly free in the Spirit?

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1 Page1 Luke 20:20-26 : (Wrapping up our two month series) That we will worship is not up for debate - our default position in life is that of a worshiper - we were created worshipers and our hearts, minds, and bodies seek to worship. The only questions we have really are what/who we will worship and how well we ll go about it. Whether we think about our Sunday worship or a lifestyle of worship, the central questions are: Who is God - what is he like, what has he done/doing/will do? [and how (well) do you know?] How am I responding to all of God s being, words, and deeds? [Is it still performancebased, still in fear or guilt, still partially with divided allegiance, up and down inconsistency, etc.] How could I more truly respond to God? o Here, Christians must be honest about their worship - is it truly God-centered, is it in spirit and in truth, and is it truly free in the Spirit? o What barriers are there in your worship? What is stopping you from responding more truly? o How stunted or free is our worship? How am I (are we) responding to God with praise for all that God is, through my attitudes, actions, thoughts, and words? How much is my response based on the truth of God as He has revealed Himself? To take William Temple s wording - In our worship, is God s holiness transforming us, shaping us; in worship is the Lord s truth feeding my mind, is His beauty wowing me, cleansing my imagination and desires from those of the world as I see, adore, and am moved in my soul by His character; and is my heart opening more and more to His love, letting Him take over more and more of my life, so that my will is ever more devoted to the kingdom purposes of God? Simply, as a family, as a small group, as a church, how rightly are we reacting to that entire God is? How are we continually being shaped in our worship by the Spirit? Are we becoming freer, truer, Spirit-filled and Spirit-led worshippers on Sundays and every other day? : From this series, we hope that: We all come to have a greater appreciation for our worship as a family here, as the Body of Christ. [not individual focused or based on my personal experience] We each become freer in Sunday worship with nothing hindering our responses to God. [freedom to pray out loud, to clap, to say amen, to be engaged vertically and horizontally] We know how much we need the Spirit for everything involved in worship - for a Sunday and a total life of worship We more fully appreciate and experience each aspect of our Sunday Worship [worship is more than music worship]

2 Page2 o We naturally interpret our Sunday worship components through things we know in the world [ex. Sermon = lecture, Ted Talk; music = concert] which shape our expectation, experience and freedom; This also pushes many churches to turn each element into a more worldly experience [our music worship is only considered good when it looks, feels, and sounds like a concert or Hillsong] o We need to (re) learn God s language for each of these so that we appreciate them as and expect out of them what God says we should - our worship based on truth and in the Spirit. : And this is perhaps the truest when it comes today s aspect of worship- Offering to God. We all bring baggage to this topic. Some of us bring some confusion. And we all come to Offering with some barriers. We naturally see it through a worldly grid - it is a donation, supporting a cause, paying my taxes, chipping in, doing my part, paying a bill, a necessity we know is part of our budget monthly, a tip, a show, a regret. We re not tipping God, we re not buying him off, we re not placating him, like some angry God, we re not chipping in, doing our part, taking our share. We are exercising an opportunity of a lifetime to partner with God in what He is doing, to invest in the church, in mission, in His plans, but even more so to give worship to God to take our lives, our materials and say thanks, give praise, responding to all God is and all he has done his generosity, his mercy, his love, his care, his steadfast love, his promises fulfilled and met, His covenant loyalty, his faith, his grace, his Cross, his life poured out for ours, his blood and body given to us, offered up to the Lord on our behalf this is offering. Across Scripture it is seen as worship - to offer up to God what He requires, to give thanks, to give praise, to obey. Cain and Abel are a famous first example of responding rightly and wrongly in offering worship. We re not going to get into tithes today and the surrounding misunderstandings of Old Testament covenant - we covered that in our ND 4 series on Financial Management, and I do suggest you give that a review for the practice and nuts and bolts of offering/tithing to our Lord. But as we turn to Scripture, let this quote help frame what we re looking at today: "I do not think I exaggerate when I say that some of us put our offering in the plate with a kind of triumphant bounce as much as to say: "There - now God will feel better!" I am obliged to tell you that God does not need anything you have. He does not need a dime of your money. It is your own spiritual welfare at stake in such matters as these. You have the right to keep what you have all to yourself - but it will rust and decay, and ultimately ruin you.".. : So give back to Caesar what is Caesar s, and to God what is God s. Matthew 22:15; Mark 12:13-17 ; using as focus Luke 20:20-26 : Jesus has come to Jerusalem - he has entered triumphantly, has wept over the city, he has cleansed the temple. It is here that Luke 20 starts: Jesus is in the

3 Page3 temple teaching, when the chief priests, scribes and elders come to him to question his authority - by what authority you do these things, or who it is that gave you this authority. Then Jesus tells them of a landowner who has planted a vineyard and entrusted it to untrustworthy tenants who plot to steal the whole show from the landowner once they kill the owner s son who has come to visit the wayward vineyard (Israel). Jesus finishes, What then will the owner of the vineyard do to them? 16 He will come and destroy those tenants and give the vineyard to others. When they heard this, they said, Surely not! 17 But he looked directly at them and said, What then is this that is written: The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone? 18 Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces, and when it falls on anyone, it will crush him. The Son had come to the vineyard and the tenants had asked, By whose authority are you doing these things, and they sought to kill him so that the darkness of their lives would not be disturbed by the Light. Yet, the fate of everyone depends on what we do with the Cornerstone, how we respond to Christ. This is a not a tale of separation of church and state - that was an unheard of concept as politics and gods were always wrapped up together. Jesus was doing something here far bigger than simply telling them give to Caesar and God as they had been doing, just answering a tax question. All three Synoptic writers record that when Jesus had spoken they people marveled - they were so amazed, so awestruck that they were silenced. Their plans, and in some ways lives, were undone - and they had to go back to the drawing board; they were so stunned they withdrew. What is Jesus saying about our very lives here at which we should marvel? What is Jesus declaring about what we should offer to God? - Matthew and Mark include that the Pharisees and Herodians had joined together in this plot, strange because they did not like each other at all - Herodians supported Herod, which is to say, supported Rome and lived comfortably under their rulers. They flatter him to put Jesus off guard. They are trying to use flattery to trick Jesus into making a compromising statement about Roman taxation. Of course the writing is completely ironic: because what they mean to trap is actually true- : Jesus did speak and teach correctly. He was not partial to any. He did teach the way of God in truth. "The way of God" Truth is personified as someone following an appropriate path (cf. Ps. 119:105; Pro. 6:23; also note Ps. 16:11; 139:24). The first title for the church in Acts was "the Way" (cf. Acts 9:2; 19:9,23; 22:4; 24:14,22). God's truth is not hidden or hard to find. It is clearly defined lifestyle. The problem is human obedience! - If these hypocrites had believed what they were saying, they would have submitted themselves to Jesus! They come saying, teach us the way of God but do they really want to know it? With the connection to the surrounding parables - we know Jesus sees through them - they don t really care about government or following God, they aren t seeking truth or righteousness, they don t respect Jesus - they are looking for information they want, they are seeking to justify themselves.

4 Page4 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? Some make the mistake of thinking Jesus simply gave a clever answer to wriggle out of the trap. If that were the case, they could still have denounced Him to the people, since He was indeed saying to pay the tribute. They wouldn t have gone away silenced if He said something they could use. Nor do we do the passage justice if we say Jesus simply gave these evil hypocrites sound Biblical teaching on the relationship between civil and religious responsibilities. He wasn t giving counsel to believers for living under godless government they weren t looking for wisdom. Nor was He just using the coin as a visual prop in His teaching. He was making a statement about lordship. is called a tribute in Luke, which is a tax paid directly to the Emperor; they are asking a political question dressed as a religious one - they are trying to see if he ll rebel against Caesar by asking him - is this tax lawful by God s standards? is where things get interesting - and Jesus asks them for a coin. This is a denarius; it is a day s wage for labor. It was not used for the Temple tax - that is why there were money changers there. This coin itself was quite literally a graven image - these good Jews are holding in their hands an idol - a carved image of a god. is Tiberius Caesar, the emperor when Christ was crucified. He had reigned for almost twenty years, so many denarii in circulation would have been his, and the coin they brought to Jesus probably looked exactly like this. You see he s wearing the laurel, which is a sign of victory, of conquering. It read: Tiberius Caesar, son of the divine Augustus ; and Pontifex Maximus ( Chief Priest ). Tiberius was the adopted son of Augustus and had inherited the Empire. Augustus (which itself means majestic) has claimed he was divine. Tiberius is attaching himself to that - an adopted son trying to claim divinity from his father. Jesus drew their attention to the inscription, as well as the image, before He answered their question. This coin represented Roman power and rule. It also ascribed deity to the Caesar. So the true King (the real Caesar), the only true Son of God, the only legitimate divinity, is standing holding a little coin on which this Caesar is telling the known world - I am King, I am the Son of God. Can you picture that? The Gospel - Whose likeness and inscription does it have? They said, Caesar. They could not see that standing in front of them was the true likeness, the very image of the invisible God (Col. 1:15). Throughout the Gospels, the great mystery, the unfolding story is the identity of

5 Page5 Jesus - Who is this man? Who teaches like this? Who talks like this? Who calms storms and heals bodies? Who eats with and loves those people? Who is this that forgives sins? Throughout the Synoptics, Jesus main announcement is that the Kingdom of God is here, and it is here because the King has arrived. The Gospel - the Good News is good precisely because it has happened. This has happened - the Lord is here, the King has come back. There is a shift and the rightful ruler of the world has taken back his kingdom. It is Gospel because it is fact, because it is declared as living truth - Jesus Christ is the King, He is the Victor, the Conqueror, and the Savior. And Caesar is definitely not. : Gospel was used in Rome to mean news that the heralds cried out, they announced something had happened- a General had won a major victory, a Caesar has been crowned. It was not an opinion. It was not as we often say an invitation either. The Gospel of Rome was, Here is Nero, he is your new King It was not, Here is Nero, and if you choose to believe that he is king and want to submit to him then that would be a good choice. The Gospel of Jesus is a declared fact - Jesus Christ is King, He is the new ruler of the world, He is the Sovereign, not Caesar. How are you going to reorient your life to the new lord of all? Jesus answers: Give to God what is God s - proper worship, all you have, and all that you are. Whose Image is On You? Are you made in Caesar s likeness or in the imago dei? This coin was made by Caesar, and imprinted with his logo, his words, to declare his kingship and remind the world of who he is. Jesus is looking at his questioners: Give to God then what is God s, offering up not only coins but all of who you are. Psalms 24:1 "The earth is the LORD's, and the fullness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein." Jesus statement implies that just as the Roman coin had Caesar s image stamped on it and thus rightfully fell under his jurisdiction, so every person has God s image stamped on him or her and thus rightfully belongs to God. Just as Caesar had sole authority to issue coins stamped with his image, so God is the only one who creates human beings stamped with His image. We owe God our very existence. He rightfully owns us, our possessions, our money, and our time. If we are not yielding ourselves completely to His sovereign lordship, we are disobeying the supreme authority of the universe [ ] The ones who thought they would put him in a bind, were themselves put in a bind to whom will you give allegiance as lord of your life? To whom will you offer your life? What will be your response? Two examples of response in offering come right before our passage in Luke 19 with two very amazing, very telling episodes.

6 Page6 Luke 19: Zacchaeus responds to salvation (Jesus) coming to his house this day. While some trip over the amount or frequency of offering money to God, others downplay or confuse Scripture over it. But see how Zacchaeus responds. He was a tax collector, a despised traitor to his own people, a thief who stole from his own people. He collected the taxes which are in dispute in Chapter 20. Look carefully here though he doesn t clean up his act in order to get Jesus in his house nor is he pacifying or paying God off. Jesus tells us it was divine initiative I came to seek and save the lost. What Zacchaeus offers generously is also voluntary a response to the gracious and costly salvation that came to his house and brought him into the kingdom of God. Luke 19: Ten Minas [this was 3 months wage] Here we see the principles behind offering nothing is ours but was given to us by God himself and is also still owned by His. The resources we have been given are given to our care, our stewardship, and not to our own selfish possession, hoarding, or to fulfill our agendas. Rather, we answer to our Father and we invest and steward for his kingdom. I am offering back to God what is his already he is graciously letting me keep some but does not owe me. My offering is a declaration of this fact. Example: What would this mean to steward our children, our money, our careers and education, our skills and gifts? What would it mean to offer these up to God? Like coming to the Lord s table, in our offering we must be reminded that nothing we have is deserved or earned, nothing by my own wits and hard work, nothing that I deserve, but all by the grace of God. All I am and have was given by him, for him, and all to his glory. I must constantly ask, God what would you have m do with what you have given me? and daily live to glorify him by knowing that it is all his and for his purposes, not mine. This is an act of worship it is heartfelt praise, true thanksgiving, accurately acknowledging my need, giving him due glory, and being captivated by his holiness and awestruck by his loving grace. Each right offering is a right response to what Christ has done for me and to what He revealed to us about who He is. 1 John 3:1 is built on an idiomatic expression that says God s love in offering His Son for our redemption is so amazing that it is beyond our words What otherworldly love is this that the Father has lavished on us that we should be called children of God through Christ. - : The tension behind today s passage is that Israel was not free - they were colonized by Rome. While some Jews profited and lived comfortably in the situation, most wanted to be free from Rome, to see the day God would finally liberate his people and return them to an exalted state. Yet, Christ s kingdom mission lets us know that Israel s subjugation to Rome was not the root problem but a symptom of their chief issue. The root enslavement was not to Rome but to sin. When John the Baptist introduced Jesus he did not speak of Him as the One who would overthrow Rome, but as the One who takes away the sins of the world. When salvation in Christ comes, when we are indwelt by the Spirit, we are then free to dwell with Christ out of his transforming grace. We are then free from all pretenses, from hypocrisy, from posturing, from trying to appear like something I am not, because God has already reconciled my life, accepting me by his grace and nothing of my effort. This also frees me from my agendas, living for myself and this world, which means I am now free to come and say, God

7 Page7 here I am, I belong to you, I want to give back, to offer up what is rightfully yours - Here I am to worship. : I am free to declare Christ Jesus alone is King and I am here to worship the King. I am here to sing to him, to hear from Him, to speak praises to and needs to Him, to come freely to His table to experience and remember the world s greatest offering - the Son of God for the sins of the world. I am free to offer up all I am because nothing and no one (sin, world, Satan, my old self) has a claim on my life anymore. I am free to offer with no hindrances because the worries of this world do not bind me, the taxes and the powers of this world do not hinder me, anxieties of security don t hold me back from offering, money has less and less of an evil root in me, and I am free to say, Here God, take this, take my life, my everything. And with money, this is so important because it has such a sticky, tight grasp on our hearts our minds, our flesh, our desires, our hearts, our dreams and plans, and our very identity so much of our lives wrapped up in money. In offering we say, here is something from you God, and I m giving it back- not because you need the cash, but because I need to give it to you to offer it you are my Lord, you are my God, and first love and nothing else will come between us. In our giving we enter into and participate in the grace of Christ. Together we worship in offering. By giving in concert with our brothers and sisters in Christ s body, we jointly worship him, as we are moved by each other s example and mutual participation. In the building of the tabernacle, building of the temple, and repair of the temple, it was the corporate involvement of the community of saints in which the spirit of God moved so dramatically to produce extravagant giving. The same was true with the New Testament saints of Jerusalem in the early chapters of Acts and those in Macedonia spoken of in 2 Corinthians 8. Paul doesn t guilt that early church into giving, he doesn t say come on now you have the money, or you know you re supposed to give to God and you have to fulfill your obligation. He says simply to think of Jesus, and what He did for you, how He set you free, and then to respond accordingly. Was Jesus satisfied with giving you 10% of His mercy, grace, and love? Did He only save you 10%? Did He humble Himself a little to die for you? Did He pour out only a little bit of himself for you? Did you only need a little bit of saving and then you can tip God back that amount? What percentage of your life has been redeemed? You who had nothing have been given everything. Live like it. Give like it. Worship is an act of ascribing ultimate value to something which engages your entire beingmind, will, & emotions. Worship then is a question of value. To what are we giving ultimate value in our lives?

8 Page8 Here is what is certain and this is huge we do not really control our lives as much as we are controlled by whatever we have given control over. We are controlled by what is lord of our lives. Each of our lives is being oriented, directed towards something to which we ve already given ultimate value to which we ve already, even if we wouldn t admit in our hearts, named lord of our life. One test of this: What easily attracts your time, attention, and money? That is your lord (or one of them) and that is what you worship. As we come to examine our worship we have to ask who is really lord of my life. We know the love or hope of money is such a difficult idol because it so subtly controls our hearts and reorients them away from God. We never think we re greedy, but only see others as greedy and with money as a lord of their life. Compounding this danger is the troubling way our culture and the world urges us to be independent, self-sufficient, and materialistic with money as the agent of dream fulfillment, satisfaction and security. Each right offering we give is a clear testament that Christ is indeed our true Lord and that neither the world, nor ourselves, or nor our desires (no matter how good they might seem to me) are not. Each right offering is a right response to what Christ has done for me and to what He revealed to us about who He is. 1 John 3:1 is built on an idiomatic expression that says God s love in offering His Son for our redemption is so amazing that it is beyond our words What otherworldly love is this that the Father has lavished on us that we should be called children of God through Christ. As worship, I offer to God saying and displaying God I see who you are and what you have, done, I know who you are and what you have done for more, and I am responding. It is declaring, I have been saved by you, changed by you, I am now yours - your servant, your adopted child, your beloved, and the receiver of so, so much of your grace, mercy, steadfast love, your patience, your care, your provision, and your Son. Here, here, here s my life, here s my offering please take this, take my life, take all of it -- and then help me to give you more.